Thursday, November 20, 2025

Dictator Stuff

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:
Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.

The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, come as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after the company announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.


Ellison often speaks to connections at the White House but, in at least one of the calls, engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, the people said
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Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Releasing the Files?

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. 

Perry Stein, Jeremy Roebuck and Theodoric Meyer at WP:

On Tuesday, the House and Senate agreed to pass a bill calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all unclassified information and files related to the sprawling sex trafficking investigation into the onetime powerful financier.

The Justice Department so far has continued to say nothing about how it would respond to that demand. There are many reasons to doubt that a bulk release of the files is imminent.
If President Donald Trump wanted Bondi to release all of the Epstein files, he could have ordered her to do so at any point in the past six months. He didn’t.

On Sunday, when Trump did an about-face and said House Republicans should vote in favor of releasing the Epstein files, he notably did not say he favored releasing them. Instead, he said in a social media post that the House “can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!”
What Congress is “legally entitled to” is a more complicated question than the rhetoric from Capitol Hill might imply.

The legislation that Congress agreed to pass Tuesday gives the Justice Department a few exceptions under which it can refuse to release material. Among them: If release “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”

On Friday, Trump ordered Bondi to launch a new federal investigation related to Epstein — this one aimed at his ties to several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, megadonor Reid Hoffman and former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers. Bondi said the top federal prosecutor in New York City would take on the task.

That investigation could become a reason for the Justice Department to block release of many files. Bondi and her deputies have previously said they cannot release information about active investigations.

 

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Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Epstein Stonewalling: Perverse Effects

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. 

At Politico, Jack Blanchard and Dash Burns report:

The House of Representatives will vote today to release the Epstein files, and the outcome is already a dead cert. After Donald Trump’s dramatic U-turn on Sunday, Republicans are expected to support the effort from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) en masse. And as Dasha revealed last night, the White House now expects this bill to become law. What a world.

But because there are still ways for the administration to withhold or redact files, suspicions will not go away.

How different the summer and autumn could have been for Trump if he’d picked a different approach. On the podcast this morning, Dasha characterizes this as the “double-edged sword” of the president’s “attack, attack, attack” mentality: It is, after all, this same aggressive resilience that propelled him back into the White House for a second term. But it doesn’t always serve him well in the day to day.

After months of high-profile political rows, the Epstein files are now a mainstream cause — witness the survivors’ ad that aired during Monday Night Football last night; paid for by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. These things don’t come cheap.

And what we’ve seen so far has already been damaging for Trump. There’s been no smoking gun, but that image in Epstein’s birthday book — the one Trump still insists he had nothing to do with — will not fade from public memory. And people now believe Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes. A new Morning Consult poll shared with Playbook shows 60 percent of Americans think Trump knew what Epstein was up to, compared to just 15 percent who believe he did not. It’s not a great look.



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Monday, November 17, 2025

Gift Grift


A Swiss delegation presented President Trump with lavish gifts — including a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar worth $130,000 and a Rolex desktop clock — during a Nov. 4 visit aimed at persuading him to ease the tariffs he imposed on their country.

The big picture: The Swiss visit is one of many this year in which foreign leaders and organizations have presented Trump with luxurious gifts as they try to maintain relations with his administration.

The Foreign Gifts and Decoration Act bars the president and federal officials from accepting gifts worth more than $480 — the current minimum value — unless they're accepted on behalf of the United States or purchased by the official.

Yes, but: Trump and his family failed to report at least 117 foreign gifts worth roughly $291,000 during his first term in office, according to a 2023 report by the then Democrat-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Here's a look at some of the most grand gifts Trump has been given this year:
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin presented Trump with a portrait of himself raising his fist — a depiction of him after the assassination attempt at Trump's 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
  • The Qatari Royal Family sparked major ethics concerns after gifting Trump a $400 million jet to be used as the new Air Force One —the plane is worth 100 times more than every other presidential gift from a foreign nation since 2001 combined.

...... 

  • South Korean President Lee Jae Myung presented Trump with a ceremonial gold crown. He was also the first U.S. president to be gifted a gold medal representing the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, the country's highest honor.
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Sunday, November 16, 2025

Nationalization of Elections

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections.  He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm.

At CNN, Ron Brownstein points to the increasingly important role of presidential approval/disapproval in deciding downballot elections:
From the 1970s through the 1990s, House candidates still won competitive shares (around 25% to 40%) of voters who approved of a president from the other party. But that number plummeted after 2000: Under George W. Bush and Obama, only 12 to 15% of voters who approved of the president supported House candidates of the other party.
...
As with many things, Trump intensified these trends. Widespread disapproval of his performance during his first two years powered the blue wave that swept Democrats to control of the House in 2018: 90% of voters who disapproved of Trump supported Democratic House candidates that year, the exit polls found.

Though Senate candidates have much more of an independent identity for voters than House members, the relationship was just as powerful in races for the upper chamber under Trump. Across the 2018 and 2020 elections combined, every Republican Senate candidate lost at least 89% of voters who disapproved of Trump, with only one exception — Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican Senate candidate to hold their Democratic opponent to less than 89% support among voters who disapproved of Trump, or to carry more than 8% of those disapprovers, according to the exit polls in states and races where such polls were conducted. (Collins won fully 23% of voters who said they disapproved of Trump, en route to her surprisingly easy 2020 reelection on the same day he lost her state decisively.)

Even in governors’ races — which were long thought to be more insulated from national currents than Congressional contests — Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, in his 2018 defeat, was the only GOP candidate during Trump’s term who carried even 10% of voters who disapproved of the president, according to exit polls.

Trump is uniquely polarizing.

Whatever the causes, the results of this month’s elections suggested that Trump’s impact on other contests remains uniquely intense. Significant majorities of voters in each of the major contests said they disapproved of his performance as president and overwhelming majorities of those disapprovers backed the Democrats: 93% of voters who disapproved of Trump voted for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and 92% of them supported Democrat Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, according to the Voter Poll conducted by SRSS for a consortium of media organizations including CNN.

Maybe most telling, 89% of voters — there’s that number again — who disapproved of Trump supported Jay Jones, the Democratic Attorney General candidate in Virginia who had been battered by a scandal over text messages in which he had mused about shooting political rivals. The Republican candidates drew a comparable level of support among the much smaller share of voters who approved of Trump.
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People Support ACA Subsidies

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In shutdown negotiations, Republicans refused to extend ACA subsidies, though Thune promised a Senate vote.  The issue is very likely to help Democrats.

KFF:
[P]ublic support remains high for extending the enhanced ACA tax credits set to expire at the end of the year, with three quarters (74%) of the public in favor of extending them, a new KFF Health Tracking Poll finds.

The expiring tax credits are a central issue in the ongoing Congressional budget standoff, as Democrats want the tax credits extended as part of a budget deal while Republicans want to reopen the government before negotiating over an extension. Without the enhanced tax credits, ACA Marketplace enrollees who benefit from them would on average have to pay more than twice as much out of pocket in premiums next year.
...
Other findings include:
  • Among those who want the tax credits extended, most say that either Congressional Republicans (38%) or President Trump (37%) would deserve most of the blame if they weren’t extended. Fewer say Congressional Democrats (23%) would deserve most of the blame.
  • About half (47%) of the public correctly says that undocumented immigrants are not eligible to buy ACA marketplace coverage. About one in seven (14%) incorrectly say that they are eligible to buy marketplace coverage, while the rest are not certain. Similar shares of Republicans and Democrats know the correct answer.



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Saturday, November 15, 2025

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Erica L. Green, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer at NYT:
When a trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails were made public this week, Donald J. Trump’s name was all over them. But on Friday, when Mr. Trump demanded that the Justice Department investigate a list of powerful men mentioned in the emails, his own name was nowhere to be seen — he had singled out only Democrats.

Equally remarkable was how quickly Attorney General Pam Bondi acquiesced to his demand, even though four months ago the Justice Department formally declared that nothing in the Epstein files warranted further investigation.

That about-face, as much as any action Ms. Bondi has taken this year, demonstrated the near-complete breakdown of the Justice Department’s traditional independence to prosecute cases based on facts and the law, as opposed to presidential fiat. And, crucially, it could foreclose any further disclosures of the Epstein files.

...

Ms. Bondi’s decision to press forward with the investigation is a complete turnaround from a memo issued by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. in July, which said that officials had thoroughly scrutinized the Epstein files and had found nothing in them that could sustain opening further inquiries into anyone else.
Still, if an investigation into any one of the targets suggested by Mr. Trump were to ultimately start, it could allow the Justice Department to refuse to release any further files related to Mr. Epstein by claiming that the disclosures could harm continuing inquiries.

In his social media post connecting Democrats with Mr. Epstein, Mr. Trump named Mr. Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and the venture capitalist and megadonor Reid Hoffman



 

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Friday, November 14, 2025

MAGA Grumbling

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.


Hannah Knowles at WP:
MAGA leaders erupted this week over President Donald Trump’s assertion that the United States needs foreign workers because it does not have enough “talented people,” questioning the president’s commitment to the “America First” politics he popularized.

A congressional push to release the government’s files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a years-long cause on the right — moved forward against the wishes of the White House, even as Republicans overwhelmingly dismissed newly released emails Epstein wrote, including some about Trump.

And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), a longtime Trump ally, sparred with the president on multiple fronts after suggesting that the White House was too focused on foreign affairs and denouncing recent aid to Argentina.
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Thursday, November 13, 2025

Trump Botches Epstein Messaging


Marc Caputo at Axios:
Four months ago, President Trump blocked the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Wednesday's disclosure of thousands of Epstein emails showed why.

Why it matters: The emails contained no real smoking gun. But they shed new light on the relationship between the two men, with gossipy, unflattering descriptions of Trump by Epstein.

Trump was put into a defensive crouch as the news dominated conversation on Capitol Hill, television and social media.

The tranche of emails released by the House Oversight Committee all but ensured the GOP-run chamber would bend to public pressure and vote for a measure to release the investigative records Trump has tried to keep hidden.The White House lobbied two key Republicans on Wednesday to drop their support for the effort, to no avail.

The big picture: Trump's reaction to the Epstein scandal is a window into how he handles major controversies that invite criticism about his leadership.Whether it's a question about the current affordability crisis, COVID in 2020 or the Russia probe in 2017, he has a penchant for pushing back against attacks by calling them Democratic hoaxes or con jobs.
He then tries to kill the controversy with such a heavy hand that it helps keep the story alive.


 

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Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Trump Scandals, Mid-November


Michael Gold at NYT:
House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.

Mr. Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. He has said that he and Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, were once friendly but had a falling out.

But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents received by their panel, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure.

 

Kevin Breuninger at CNBC:

President Donald Trump has doled out dozens of executive clemency grants in the past few weeks alone, issuing pardons and commutations to major business figures, political supporters and other allies.

Some hope he’s just getting started.

Trump started wielding his presidential mercy powers aggressively on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Presidential pardons erase federal criminal convictions, while commutations shorten or cancel prison sentences, and sometimes related fines.

In subsequent months, clemency recipients have included a slew of well-known names, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, ex-Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, Nikola founder Trevor Milton, reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley, disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.

On Monday, Trump granted largely symbolic pardons to more than six dozen people who were involved in efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin revealed on social media. The people included in the batch of pardons are not facing federal charges related to the 2020 election. The presidential pardon power does not extend to state-level prosecutions.

That group includes Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer and former New York City mayor, as well as his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

 

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Monday, November 10, 2025

Leaders Under Fire From Their Parties


Robert Birsel at Newsweek:
Seven Democratic senators and one Democrat-aligned independent voted with Republicans on Sunday to secure the 60 votes needed to pass the deal, which failed to address the key Democratic demand of extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits expiring on January 1.

Schumer was being criticized for failing to get Democrats to fall into line, underscoring growing tensions within the party over legislative strategy and leadership as it prepares for the run-up to midterm elections next year.

Alexander Willis at Raw Story:

An Arizona Democrat who was elected to Congress in September but still hasn’t been sworn into office is gaining new support from Republican lawmakers as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) faces growing scrutiny over an alleged attempt to block the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

“We're all hoping that Speaker Johnson is going to read the tea leaves and get to work, swear me in so we don't have to go seek judicial support in him doing his job, but that's where we are,” Adelita Grijalva, who won her election on Sept. 23 and has since launched a lawsuit to force her swearing in, told MSNBC Saturday.

Grijalva and others have accused Johnson of delaying her swearing in to avoid the passage of a discharge petition that would compel the Justice Department to release all of its files on Epstein, who died in 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The petition, which currently has 217 signatures, needs 218 signatures to force the House to vote on the matter — and Grijalva has pledged to sign it.

Grijalva told MSNBC’s “The Weekend” that a growing number of Republican lawmakers have joined her cause, however, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who told CNN recently that Grijalva “should be sworn in.”

 

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Sunday, November 9, 2025

Doddering Donald

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Trump is showing his age.  Sometimes, it's amusing, but sometimes it's disturbing. Cognitive decline is no joke when it involves someone who can wipe out all life on Earth.

Dan Diamond and JM Rieger at WP:

President Donald Trump hosted one of the more attention-grabbing press events of his term in the Oval Office this week, announcing price cuts for weight-loss drugs, only to be interrupted when one of the attendees collapsed in a faint.

Before that dramatic turn of events, however, Trump appeared to struggle to stay awake as his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and two other deputies took turns explaining the announcement. Clips of the scene have circulated widely on social media and drawn heavy criticism from Democrats.

A Washington Post analysis of multiple video feeds found that Trump spent nearly 20 minutes apparently battling to keep his eyes open at the Thursday event. It was a seemingly stark illustration of the strain of the presidency on a 79-year-old who typically keeps a vigorous travel schedule that even his aides say they struggle to keep up with — and who has reveled in calling his predecessor “Sleepy Joe” Biden.

Sitting behind the Resolute Desk on Thursday, the president displayed a constellation of movements familiar to anyone who has attempted to stay awake during a work meeting. He closed his eyes. He put his hand to his temple. He slouched in his chair.

Farrah Tomazin at The Daily Beast:

He spoke about people being forced to flee to Miami from “South Africa” due to communism, when he meant to say “South America.”

He recalled getting “indicted” over allegations he improperly sought help from Ukraine, when in reality he was “impeached.”

...

Ten months into his second term, 79-year-old President Donald Trump finds himself facing the same kind of scrutiny that haunted his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Over the past 48 hours alone, the Daily Beast has counted at least a dozen times when Trump has either confused names and dates, mixed up facts, or even appeared to drift off in public, prompting the obvious question: Is the president OK?

The confusion over his first impeachment, and his South Africa/South America mix-up, took place while Trump was in Miami addressing a business forum on Wednesday.

At the same event, the president declared communism began “1,000 years ago” (which would be 1025, when Vikings roamed the Earth) and that America’s electricity grid was built “200 years” ago (it was mostly built in the 1960s and ’70s, says the energy department).

He also claimed that the U.S. economy would be “in a depression” without his tariffs (history shows that is not the case), and bragged that the U.S. has “never lost a war” (apparently forgetting the Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba, or America’s retreats in Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan, to name just the most prominent examples).

In some cases, it is difficult to determine whether Trump is merely confused, deliberately lying, or simply uninformed about the facts.

 

 

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Saturday, November 8, 2025

The Departure Lounge of the 2026 Cycle

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Andrew Solender at Axios:

As of Wednesday, a record 31 House members had already announced plans to either run for another office or retire outright with months still to go until many states' congressional filing deadlines, Axios' Hans Nichols reported.

That number could further skyrocket with mid-decade redistricting pushing formerly entrenched incumbents into hostile partisan territory.

As of Wednesday, a record 31 House members had already announced plans to either run for another office or retire outright with months still to go until many states' congressional filing deadlines, Axios' Hans Nichols reported.

That number could further skyrocket with mid-decade redistricting pushing formerly entrenched incumbents into hostile partisan territory.
Many of the dozens of House Democrats in their 70s and 80s are also bowing to pressure from the party's grassroots to step aside and create space for a new generation of leaders.

The big picture: Looming over all of these dynamics is a growing frustration with the partisan gridlock and performative grandstanding that have sharply driven down the productivity of Congress.The 2024 election cycle saw an astonishing number of relatively young and middle-aged lawmakers with easy reelection prospects opt to throw in the towel without seeking higher office.
Many of those lawmakers cited the chaotic three-week speaker vacancy created by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ouster in the fall of 2023, which bookended a year of rebellions, brinksmanship and political stunts.
The shutdown appears to be something of a second act, with lawmakers grumbling about how D.C.'s dysfunction is worse than ever.

Between the lines: "It's not just the shutdown," stressed one House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candid thoughts about the downsides of serving in Congress."The whole experience of being in Congress — violence, dysfunction, emasculated authority, polarization, travel, no cost of living increase for nearly 20 years — can make this a truly miserable job," they told Axios.
"To the degree that the shutdown is involved," said a second House Democrat, "I think it's that it's reflective of dysfunction that makes this job less appealing."

 Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) announced his retirement in an op-ed at the Bangor Daily News:

I have never loved politics. But I find purpose and meaning in service, and the Marine in me has been able to slog along through the many aspects of politics I dislike by focusing on the good work that Congress is capable of producing with patience and determination.

 But after 11 years as a legislator, I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community — behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves. My team and I have strived to stay above the fray and, for that, we can hold our heads high with appreciation for each other and the way we have gone about our work.

 Additionally, recent incidents of political violence have made me reassess the frequent threats against me and my family. Last year we saw attempts against Donald Trump’s life, and more recently we witnessed the firebombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home, the assasination of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota and the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk.

 These have made me reconsider the experiences of my own family, including all of us sitting in a hotel room on Thanksgiving last year after yet another threat against our home. There have been enough of those over the years to demand my attention.

 Up to now, my daughters have been insulated from the worst of it by their youth. But as my oldest daughter reaches school age, the threats, the intolerance and hate that often dominate political culture, and my long absences, will be more keenly felt. As a father, I have to consider whether the good I can achieve outweighs everything my family endures as a result.
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Friday, November 7, 2025

CA GOP: Dead Parrot

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The  passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

Maya C. Miller at CalMatters:
Proposition 50’s landslide win owes its success in part to the abject failure of a disarrayed No on 50 campaign low on funds and unable to keep up with the Yes side’s deluge of savvy advertising.

McCarthy reportedly told his former Republican congressional colleagues that he would help raise up to $100 million to defeat the measure. But that money never materialized. Instead, his No on 50: Stop the Sacramento Power Grab committee only pulled in $11.6 million, with $1 million of that from McCarthy’s defunct congressional campaign account.

While the House Republicans’ super PAC pitched in $5 million to the Stop the Power Grab committee and $8 million to the state Republican Party, no financial help came from President Donald Trump or the White House donor circle, and the president only engaged at the last minute to call the election “rigged” and discourage Republicans from trusting mail-in voting.

Rob Stutzman, a California Republican political strategist, said he didn’t know what happened to the promised $100 million, but his best guess is the decision came from Trump and the White House to not open the fundraising floodgates. After all, a Republican from Texas, Missouri or North Carolina is just as valuable to building a House majority as a Republican from California — and far less expensive to elect.
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Thursday, November 6, 2025

Charting World War G

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The  passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

 Bruce Mehlman:




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Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Big Blue Night


Elena Schneider, Erin Doherty and Jessica Piper at Politico:
Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.

It was an injection of life into a depleted, depressed Democratic Party that had been cast into the political wilderness by Donald Trump’s decisive victory a year ago. Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, have spent the last year soul-searching and data-digging, as their brand sagged to historic lows.

But they also started to overperform in special elections, hinting that the tide was turning. And on Tuesday, their first big electoral test of the second Trump era, they didn’t just match the wins from eight years ago that had been a harbinger of a blue wave in the 2018 midterms — in several key races, they exceeded them.
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Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Trump Lies about Retribution

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.


Trump directed the Justice Department to go after his opponents.   Last week, he lied about what he had done.

On October 31, 2025, CBC correspondent Norah O'Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation

 PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Wait, wait, wait. And then you tell me about me. Just so you understand, you say I went after these people. These people are bad people. They're dishonest people.

NORAH O'DONNELL: No, I was just asking, is it political retribution--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And Comey's a dirty cop. Look, Comey's known as a dirty cop. I'm not known as a dirty person. They indicted me many times, indicted me. They were after me. I'm lookin' at you now. I'm President of the United States. I went through numerous indictments and two impeachments. And you tell me that I went after people? These people are dishonest.

Look. Biden didn't have a clue. He illegally used, as you know, a machine, the autopen in order to give pardons to people. The only pardon he signed it looks like was his son, Hunter. He signed Hunter's, so, "Hunter, you're free, con-- congratulations, Hunter." But everyone else, I think those pardons are all just, were just a waste of time. Those pardons--

NORAH O'DONNELL: Did you instruct--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --wait a minute, those pardons--

NORAH O'DONNELL: --the Department of Justice to go after them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Did I what?

NORAH O'DONNELL: Did you instruct the Department of Justice to go after them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, and not in any way, shape or form. No. You don't have to instruct 'em because they were so dirty, they were so crooked, they were so corrupt that the honest people we have, Pam Bondi's doin' a very good job. Kash Patel's doing a very good job.

...

NORAH O'DONNELL: But I was just asking, has this--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: For that, you should be ashamed.

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Monday, November 3, 2025

Expecting Violence


Erin Dohery at Politico:
A majority of Americans, 55 percent, expect political violence to increase, according to a new poll from POLITICO and Public First. That figure underscores just how much the spate of attacks — from the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year to the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life in 2024 — have rattled the nation.

It’s a view held by majorities of Americans all across lines like gender, age, party affiliation and level of education, though Democrats and older voters expressed particular concern.
Perhaps most troubling, a significant minority of the population — 24 percent — believes that there are some instances where violence is justified.

There was little partisan divide in that belief, but a strong generational one: Younger Americans were significantly more likely than older ones to say violence can be justified. More than one in three Americans under the age of 45 agreed with that belief.

While political violence can take many forms, more than half of Americans say that it is very or somewhat likely that a political candidate gets assassinated in the next five years, according to the exclusive survey. That view cuts across party lines, with agreement from 51 percent of last year’s Trump voters and 53 percent of Americans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Sunday, November 2, 2025

The Decline of Heritage

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.

 Jonah Goldberg:

Harvard, MIT, Columbia, et al., should be ashamed of their records of policing speech and providing cover for people who incite hatred. But you know what Harvard doesn’t have that Heritage does? A “one voice” policy.

Unlike other think tanks, scholars at Heritage are not permitted to publicly deviate from the party line. It shouldn’t surprise us that Roberts thinks the whole of the right should have a one-voice policy too. His statement is a call for a popular front on the right. He doesn’t think conservatives should actually argue among themselves because that “sows division” and serves the interests of those “bad actors” serving “someone else’s agenda.” For Roberts, Tucker Carlson is the right made flesh, so if his policy is to bring neo-Nazis inside the tent, we should all honor the “one voice” policy and stay focused on attacking the left. “Speaking with one voice is a distinguishing piece of the Heritage Foundation’s strategic advantage. While other organizations may have experts advocating contradictory points of view, Heritage employees are always rowing in the same direction.”

I have real sympathy for the scholars, staffers, and board members of the Heritage Foundation, because I know many of them have problems with this. Some obviously don’t. But some must. And because the Heritage Foundation has a “one voice” policy that rejects the robust debate Roberts claims to cherish, they are left with a dilemma. I am free to disagree with my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute. I’m expected—rightly—to be professional and respectful in my disagreements, but disagreement—public or private—is actually valued and protected.

Not so at Heritage, which is why so many people left when Heritage changed many of its traditional stances to better align with Donald Trump and MAGA small donors. Now the people still at Heritage are left in a similar bind. Do you stick around as the president of your institution labors to carve out a safe space inside the tent for bigots and anti-American cranks? If you stay, you can’t complain too loudly—literally and figuratively—when outside observers assume you, too, speak with that same, single voice. That is, again literally, the whole point of the “one voice” policy. And Kevin Roberts has put everyone who works for him in a moral and intellectual trap. All because he loves Tucker Carlson so much.


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Saturday, November 1, 2025

Antisemitism on the Right

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.

Nicholas Riccardi at AP:

As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The comments from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sparked outrage from some Heritage staffers, senators and conservative activists. But they also reflect increasing skepticism toward Israel and of Jews among some on the right, complicating the GOP’s efforts to cast the Democratic Party as antisemitic.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes , whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

...

Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance dismissed criticism of a Telegram chat among members of a New York Young Republicans group that included racist comments and flippant remarks about gas chambers.

He raised eyebrows again this week for his response to an attendee at a Turning Point USA event who asked why the U.S. was spending foreign aid on the “ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and said Judaism, as a religion, “openly supports the prosecution of ours.”
Vance responded without addressing the premise of the question and instead stressed the administration’s “America First” approach.

“Sometimes they have similar interests to the United States and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests to the United States,” Vance said of Israel.
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Friday, October 31, 2025

Goodbye Libertarian Tea Party, Hello Authoritarian MAGA

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments .




At WP, Naftali Bendavid reflects on how MAGA supplanted the Tea Party.
The current spending fight reflects the dizzying shift. The tea party’s core demand was fiscal responsibility, but Trump’s signature spending bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and passed with overwhelming GOP support. In the current dispute over the government shutdown, Republicans are pushing not for cuts but for an extension of Biden-era spending levels.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a rare Republican who opposes his party’s spending measures, said the tea party spirit has evaporated. “I think it’s largely been supplanted by something else,” Paul said in an interview. “We aren’t organized around ideas anymore. We’re organized around a person.”
...

[M]any Trump policies appear to contradict tea party ideals. The tea party abhorred taxes; Trump has imposed high taxes on imports with his tariffs. The tea party revered the Constitution; Trump routinely tests its limits, for example by seizing power over spending and tariffs. The tea party championed the rule of law; Trump openly targets his opponents using the legal system.

More fundamentally, the tea party — driven by anger at President Barack Obama — called for a modest presidency to allow homegrown democracy to flourish. Trump is a dominant, attention-seizing leader who brooks no opposition and regularly pushes to expand his power.

...

 The tea party and MAGA movements are linked by at least one striking quality — a fury at liberal elites who, they contend, have coddled unworthy groups at the expense of ordinary, hardworking Americans. That is evident from the two seminal moments that launched these political tidal waves. [The Santelli rant and the Trump announcement.]

A similarity:

Liberal critics charged that the tea party was motivated at least in part by racial animus, especially as a backlash against the first Black president. Others challenged its claims of grassroots credibility, noting that billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch contributed substantial funds to build up the movement.

Similar criticism has been leveled at MAGA — that it is driven by racism and funded by billionaires.

 

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