War With Iran

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

The United States has gone to war against Iran. America has only one ally—Israel—in this operation (the Arab states of the Gulf, which fear the Iranian regime, are targets of Iran, but so far are not participating in the attack), and both Washington and Jerusalem are making claims about “imminent” threats that require “preemptive” strikes. But we should dispense with such statements: Iran is not presenting immediate danger to the United States or Israel. Even President Trump, in a recorded address, didn’t bother overly much with such excuses; instead he presented a farrago of charges and accusations going back a half century that included everything from killing American troops in Iraq to terrorism. These indictments are all grounded in truth, but none presents a rationale for immediate attack. Trump ended by calling on Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government.

Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll:

As the Trump administration mobilizes U.S. military forces in the Middle East and President Donald Trump threatens possible military actions against Iran if it does not reach a negotiated deal with the United States, Americans have to contend with the possibility of being at war in the Middle East once again. Our latest University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll finds 21% of Americans favor the United States initiating an attack on Iran, 49% oppose, and 30% say they don’t know.

The latest poll was carried out by SSRS, February 5th – 9th, among a sample of 1,004 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

 

The Akin Ploy in the Texas Senate Race

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

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.

Republicans are doing it in Texas.

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

Republicans in Texas, and nationwide, are looking to boost Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) in the closing days of the state’s Democratic Senate primary.

GOP spending on the race, which includes television ads and text messaging mobilization, underscores Republicans’ hope that Crockett, a congresswoman from Dallas, defeats Texas state Rep. James Talarico in the primary Tuesday. Some Republican operatives and leaders believe Crockett would be easier to defeat in November.

“I think Talarico is dangerous,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is locked in a high-stakes Senate primary of his own against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said last month. “He’ll probably beat Jasmine Crockett, and he’s capable of raising a lot of money. And if you look at the head-to-head with Paxton, it’s tied.”

A group with ties to longtime Republican operatives has been sending text messages to voters in recent days that tout Crockett’s opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an issue that polling shows motivates the Democratic base. One Texan who regularly votes in Democratic primaries received the text messages, according to operatives working on the Texas races.

The GOP's Nazi Problem

Our most recent 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.

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

Over the past few months, during his agency’s chaotic crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis, the U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino has worn an unusual uniform: a wide-lapel greatcoat with brass buttons and stars along one sleeve. It looks like it was taken right off the shoulders of a Wehrmacht officer in the 1930s. Bovino’s choice of garment is more than tough-guy cosplay (German media noted the aesthetic immediately). The coat symbolizes a trend: The Republicans, it seems, have a bit of a Nazi problem.

By this, I mean that some Republicans are deploying Nazi imagery and rhetoric, and espouse ideas associated with the Nazi Party during its rise to power in the early 1930s. A few recent examples: An ICE lawyer linked to a white-supremacist social-media account that praised Hitler was apparently allowed to return to federal court. Members of the national Young Republicans organization were caught in a group chat laughing about their love for Hitler. Vice President J. D. Vance shrugged off that controversy, instead of condemning the growing influence of anti-Semites in his party. (In December, at Turning Point USA’s conference, Vance said, “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.”)

Even federal agencies are modeling Nazi phrasing. The Department of Homeland Security used an anthem beloved by neo-Nazi groups, “By God We’ll Have Our Home Again,” in a recruitment ad. The Labor Department hung a giant banner of Donald Trump’s face from its headquarters, as if Washington were Berlin in 1936, and posted expressions on social media such as “America is for Americans”—an obvious riff on the Nazi slogan “Germany for the Germans”—and “Americanism Will Prevail,” in a font reminiscent of Third Reich documents.

.Trump, of course, openly pines to be a dictator. In his first term, he reportedly told his chief of staff, General John Kelly, that he wished he had generals who were as loyal as Hitler’s military leaders. (The president was perhaps unaware of how often the führer’s officers tried to kill him.) More recently, the White House’s official X account supported Trump’s pursuit of Greenland by posting a meme with the caption “Which way, Greenland man?” That is not merely a clunky turn of phrase; it’s an echo of Which Way Western Man?, the title of a 1978 book by the American neo-Nazi William Gayley Simpson, a former Presbyterian minister who called for America to expel its Jewish citizens.

Lies in the SOTU

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.  Also, predictable ones, such as Trump's lies.

CNN:

President Donald Trump made numerous false or misleading claims in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Many of them were long-debunked falsehoods familiar from his rallies, interviews and social media posts. These include various lies disparaging the fairness of US elections, his false claim that he ended wars that were never actually wars or never actually ended, and his fictional “$18 trillion” figure for supposed investment in the US over the past year.

The subject on which he was most frequently inaccurate was the economy. Among other things, Trump overstated the performance of the economy during this presidential term to date, overstated the inflation he inherited from the Biden administration, used highly misleading figures when discussing gasoline prices, and wrongly asserted, twice, that foreign countries are paying the tariffs that are actually being paid by US importers.

 

Click here for fact check of some of Trump’s remarks:

Americans Are Noticing Trump's Erratic Behavior

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.  In 2024, Trump was already showing signs of cognitive decline. It's getting worse.

Voters are noticing.

Jason Lange at Reuters:

Six in ten Americans, including a significant slice of Republicans, think President Donald Trump has become erratic as he ages, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The six-day poll concluded on Monday, the day before the 79-year-old president gives his annual State of the Union address to Congress following a month of angry reprimands of lawmakers and judges.

Overall, 61% of respondents in the poll said they would describe Trump as having "become erratic with age." Some 89% of Democrats, 30% of Republicans and 64% of independents described him this way.

 

The Electoral Fate of Senior Senators

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

Since the passage of the 17th amendment it appears that 25 senators who served at least four terms were unsuccessful in seeking another term. Two Senators could join this list this year - Susan Collins (five terms) and John Cornyn (four terms). pic.twitter.com/XjBjwysfKD

— Drew Savicki (@DrewSav) February 20, 2026

Erratum:  McKellar was from Tennessee.  h/t Jim Pinkerton.

This table updates and confirms a 1983 article: Tuckel, Peter. “Length of Incumbency and the Reelection Chances of U. S. Senators.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 8, no. 2 (1983): 283–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/439434 . Abstract:

This note examines the relationship between the number of terms U.S. senators had served and their reelection chances during two time periods—1920-1958 and 1960-1980. The results of the study show strikingly different patterns of winning reelection during these two time periods. During the years 1920-1958, senators who had served one or two terms were more vulnerable to defeat than were those who had served three or more terms. In the years 1960-1980, the opposite pattern holds: first- and second-term senators did considerably better at the polls than their more senior colleagues. It is hypothesized that two factors explain why the electoral position of junior senators has improved in the modern period: the greater diffusion of power within the post-1950s Senate and the entry of television into the domain of electoral politics. This second factor, coupled with the greater age of more senior senators, is also used to explain why the electoral position of senators who had served three or more terms declined during the last two decades.

Tuckel concluded the article: In the television era, age might be a greater political liability than hitherto. Because it is a visual medium and highlights the physical appearance of candidates, television may decrease the reelection chances of veteran senators."

Trump's Unhinged Reaction to the Tariff Decision

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.  In 2024, Trump was already showing signs of cognitive decline. It's getting worse.

From a transcript of Trump;'s reaction:

The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I’m ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country.

...
The Democrats on the court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote no. They’re an automatic no, just like in Congress, they’re an automatic no. They’re against anything that makes America, strong, healthy and great again. They also are a, frankly, disgrace to our nation, those justices.

They’re an automatic no, no matter how good a case you have, it’s a no. You can’t knock their loyalty, one thing you can do with some of our people.

Others think they’re being politically correct, which has happened before far too often with certain members of this court, and it’s happened so often with this court — what a shame — having to do with voting in particular, when in fact they’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats and, not that this should have anything at all to do with it, they’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.

It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think. It’s a small movement. I won by millions of votes, we won in a landslide. With all the cheating that went on, there was a lot of it, we still won in a landslide. Too big to rig.

But these people are obnoxious, ignorant and loud. They’re very loud. And I think certain justices are afraid of that. They don’t want to do the right thing. They’re afraid of it.

... 

But I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country. In other words, I can destroy the trade, I can destroy the country. I’m even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo. I can embargo, I can do anything I want, but I can’t charge one dollar because that’s not what it says, and that’s not the way it even reads. I can do anything I want to do to them, but I can’t charge any money. So I’m allowed to destroy the country, but I can’t charge them a little fee. I could give them a little two cent fee, but I cannot charge under any circumstances. I cannot charge them anything.

He took questions.  When a reporter asked if regretted nominating Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, he said:  "I don't want to say whether or not I regret. I think their decision was terrible. Yeah. I think it's an embarrassment to their families, you want to know the truth, the two of them. Yeah."

 

 

Bad Week for Trump Economic Policy

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. 

Jeff Cox at CNBC:

U.S. growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 as the government shutdown impacted consumer spending, while a key inflation metric showed high prices are still a factor for the economy, according to data released Friday.

Gross domestic produce rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to the Commerce Department, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.

For the full year in 2025, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.2% pace, down from the 2.8% increase in 2024.

At the same time, inflation held firm in December, according to the gauge most closely watched by Fed officials.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy, rose 3% in December, according to a separate release. That matched the consensus forecast but kept the pivotal inflation measure well above the Fed’s 2% target.

 Tara Suter and Sylvan Lane at The Hill:

President Trump on Wednesday touted the decline in U.S. trade deficit ahead of official data showing a small reduction in the country’s overall balance of trade.

In a Wednesday night post on Truth Social, the president claimed credit for reducing the trade deficit — the difference between the value of U.S. imports and exports — through tariffs he imposed last year.

Trump claimed to have cut the trade deficit by 78 percent in the Truth Social post, which came less than 12 hours before the U.S. Census Bureau released the official figures.

“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” the president claimed.

But the Census Bureau data released Thursday showed the trade deficit falling by only 0.2 percent in 2025, from $903.5 billion in 2024 to $901.5 billion last year.

David J. Lynch and Rachel Siegel at WP

The U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, despite President Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate it by imposing the highest tariffs in eight decades on foreign-made products.

Thursday’s Commerce Department report represents the first full-year assessment of the president’s ambitious reordering of global trade. The persistence of the deficit in the face of steep new taxes on imports from China, the European Union and scores of other nations reflects the limits of Trump’s preferred policy tool, economists said.

 

Colbert, Talarico, Carr, and Streisand

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. 

Sometimes their efforts to silence debate can backfire, big time.

Sophie Brams at The Hill:

“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday dismissed CBS’s denial that it blocked his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) from airing as “crap.”

“They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS lawyers, who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air,” Colbert said during his show Tuesday evening.

“In fact, between the monologue I did last night, and before I did the second act talking about this issue, I had to go backstage,” he continued. “I got called backstage to get more notes from these lawyers. Something that had never, ever happened before.”

Colbert told viewers on Monday that CBS, which is owned by Paramount, said he could not have Talarico on the broadcast over concerns about the Federal Communications Commission‘s (FCC) “equal time” rule.

The “equal time” rule requires broadcast stations to provide equal opportunities to opposing political candidates but has historically exempted talk shows.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr appears to be eyeing a change to those exemptions, suggesting in new guidance that programs “motivated by partisan purposes” should have to adhere to equal time protections.

“We looked, and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career, going back to the 1960s,” Colbert said Tuesday.

In January, the FCC raised questions about such exemptions but has not issued a formal ruling. 

Muskaan Arshad at The Daily Beast:

Carr singling out Talarico has drawn more attention to him, creating something of a Streisand Effect for the 36-year-old. The Streisand Effect was coined after legendary singer Barbra Streisand sued a photographer in 2003 for $50 million after he took an aerial photo of her Malibu mansion, causing the image to go viral.

According to Google Trends statistics, nationally in the past 24 hours, James Talarico’s name has been searched 5x more than that of Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett, his competitor for Texas Senator John Cornyn’s seat, and the attention could fundamentally shift the competitive election.

According to Texas Public Opinion Research, at the end of January, Crockett and Talarico were nearly tied among Democratic Primary Voters, with Crockett’s 38 percent to Talarico’s 37 percent.

One of the largest issues holding Talarico back in polling was his lower name recognition than Crockett’s, with pollsters identifying a serious “visibility gap” between the two candidates.

Ted Johnson at Deadline:

The attention surrounding James Talarico‘s Late Show with Stephen Colbert interview has been very good for the Texas Democrat’s campaign for U.S. Senate.

He raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours after the segment was shifted from CBS broadcast to YouTube, his largest single fundraising period for the campaign.

On Monday, Colbert said that he was prohibited from featuring Talarico on his late-night show, as the FCC has issued new guidance about the appearance of political candidates on talk shows.

Instead, Colbert said that the interview would be posted on YouTube. There, the interview has drawn almost 5.2 million views, greatly exceeding the show’s average broadcast audience.

 

Governorships in 2026

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

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

The 2026 gubernatorial map is not great for the Democrats.

The party simultaneously hopes to hold on to power in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado, and to flip Georgia, Nevada, Iowa and Ohio. All states have a DGA staffer on loan, and the group says it has plans to expand to more states.

The majority of those states went to President Donald Trump in 2024. But the DGA says it is investing personnel in all of these races because it believes that antipathy toward Trump — who has a negative approval rating that has declined steadily in recent months — will hurt Republicans. There is also hope that crowded primaries in states such as Arizona, Georgia and Kansas could yield Republican candidates with little appeal to general-election voters.

...

At the moment, 26 governors’ seats are held by Republicans, compared with 24 by Democrats. That’s up from the decline in the wake of President Barack Obama’s time in office. Democrats controlled 28 governors’ mansions after Obama was first elected in 2008, but the number fell to 20 after the 2010 midterms. After the 2016 election, the figure was in the teens, a low point for the party. Now, the DGA hopes to recapture the majority. (Unlike Congress, there is no reward that comes with controlling a majority of governor’s seats, though it can help parties execute agendas they are unable to enact on the national level.)

Midterms and Presidential Approval

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

Nate Cohn at NYT:

Historically, there’s a reasonably strong relationship between presidential approval nationwide and midterm outcomes. It’s not a perfect correlation — in 2022, for instance, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were worse than Barack Obama’s had been in 2010 (and as bad as Mr. Trump’s today), but Democrats held their own and nearly retained full control of Congress. But the relationship is good enough to say that Republicans are in trouble.

How much trouble? If the only thing you knew was Mr. Trump’s 40 percent approval rating (and the number of Republican-held seats), you might guess that Republicans would lose 30 seats in the House. And while there have been exceptions, this year’s midterms don’t look like one of them.

Take the 2022 midterms, when Republicans failed to capitalize on Mr. Biden’s unpopularity. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the persistent Republican effort to overturn the 2020 election kept voters atypically focused on the actions of the party out of power. “Democracy” and “abortion” rose as top issues; Mr. Biden, while unpopular, didn’t attract the spotlight. It was enough to give Democrats an advantage among highly engaged voters, which in many key states mitigated the usual midterm turnout disadvantage for the party in power. Democrats demonstrated their advantage with a string of impressive showings in special congressional elections before the November election.

There are still many months to go, but for now it’s hard to see a similar set of factors aiding Republicans. And it’s easy to imagine how this election could be a referendum on the president. He’s center stage, and that’s the way he likes it. The Democratic Party’s weaknesses, while real, are quite ordinary. There’s nothing that seems likely to fundamentally shift the most important issues at stake to the advantage of Republicans, as the court’s decision in Dobbs did for Democrats. And this time, the same Democratic turnout edge that hurt Republicans in 2022 will probably supercharge Democratic strength.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, this newsletter devoted a lot of energy to downplaying strong Democratic showings in special elections. I can’t offer similar reassurance to Republicans this time. For one, midterm electorates tend to have a bigger share of highly engaged voters than presidential electorates, making them much more like special electorates. If you have a clear advantage among the “special” electorate, you probably also do among the “midterm” electorate, albeit to a lesser extent. And this time, it’s clear that the Democratic strength isn’t merely a matter of turnout: There are many Republican-leaning voters backing Democrats.

Immigration Issues and the Texas Gerrymander

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

Myah Ward and Megan Messerly at Politico:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

...

The meetings this month came after Democrats crushed a Republican in a special runoff election for a state senate seat in a Trump-friendly district in Tarrant County, which includes most of Fort Worth, rattling Republicans nationally. New research from the American Business Immigration Coalition and Comité de 100, first obtained by POLITICO, shows how slipping support among Latino voters could affect Republican-leaning districts in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

This study was buried in the POLITICO story. GOP could lose 6 seats (including 2 of their own!) they thought they gerrymandered Dems out of if Latinos swing 15% left https://t.co/HniLYDFYuc pic.twitter.com/Z6jtvnqDGm

— BeshearStan (@BeshearStan) February 14, 2026

ICE Barbie

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski have done significant harm to DHS. Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Parti at WSJ:

Throughout her tenure as secretary of Homeland Security, a sprawling agency charged with carrying out Trump’s central campaign promise of a mass deportation, Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom at every turn. With Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, at her side, she has staged a headline grabbing immigration crackdown while sidelining rivals and dissenters.

She’s carried out confrontational operations over the objections of longtime immigration officials who warned such flashy displays would discredit the department’s ultimate mission, according to two dozen current and former administration officials. Instead, she’s made the case that her approach would lead to more arrests as well as induce more people to leave on their own.

She has donned flak jackets on ICE raids, posed toting a large gun and recorded messages urging immigrants to self-deport. In one, she stood before a group of imprisoned men with shaved heads packed into tight rows in a notorious El Salvadoran prison. And she has done it all with an eye to her style, with TV-ready hair and makeup.

Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.

Simmering criticism over the past year for Noem’s policies and publicity moves exploded in Minneapolis, jeopardizing her grip over DHS and putting her standing with Trump on thin ice. Though some in Trump’s inner circle have tried to persuade the president to fire Noem and Lewandowski, according to administration officials, he has so far resisted, saying publicly he has no plans to dismiss her. Lawmakers from both parties have been critical, and Democrats in Congress are demanding changes to the department’s enforcement methods, threatening to withhold DHS funding.

Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more:

The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million. DHS has previously used other planes through the Coast Guard or other agencies for the secretary’s use.

 

Pushback Against Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

Mike Allen at Axios:

Look how 2026 has started for Trump, and the new pushback he faces, as synthesized by Axios' Zachary Basu:

⚖️ Retribution: A federal grand jury unanimously rejected the Justice Department's attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video they made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. It's at least the fifth time that charges against Trump's adversaries or protesters have been turned away by a grand jury. A federal judge also shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attempt to punish Navy veteran Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over his role in the video.
🚨 ICE raids: Trump's border czar Tom Homan announced an end to the 10-week ICE surge in Minneapolis yesterday. The president acknowledged his mass deportation campaign could use a "softer touch."
🪖 National Guard: Trump withdrew federalized National Guard troops from L.A., Chicago and Portland after repeated legal defeats and opposition from local leaders, dealing a blow to his efforts to crack down on crime in Democratic-run cities.
📦 Tariffs: Six House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution rescinding Trump's tariffs on Canada. The vote became possible only after a smaller group of Republicans staged a floor rebellion against GOP leadership.
🗂️ Epstein files: Trump's push to shut down MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein obsession backfired spectacularly. The Justice Department is still grappling with backlash, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voicing rare criticism over revelations that DOJ tracked what lawmakers searched while reviewing the unredacted files.
📽️ Racism: A chorus of Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), condemned Trump's reposting of a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the decision to post the video, but removed it from Trump's account, blaming a staffer. Later, the president said he "didn't make a mistake."
🇩🇰 Greenland: Trump dominated Davos last month with his threats to seize Greenland by any means necessary — only to retreat amid market turmoil, European fury, warnings from congressional Republicans, and a vague "deal" promising the U.S. greater access to the Arctic territory.
🏦 Fed: The DOJ's criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has drawn deep skepticism from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has vowed to block confirmation of Powell's successor, Kevin Warsh, unless the probe is dropped.

Nationalization of Congressional Elections and Midterm Swings

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

 Alan Abramowitz at The Center for Politics documents how House and Senate elections have become more nationalized and polarized.  But significant seat swings are possible if the national vote margin is big enough.    

The results in Table 5 suggest that a large Democratic seat swing is possible in both the House and Senate, although we have much more confidence in the House predictions. The national popular vote results will not be known until after the election, but we can use recent generic ballot polling, averaging the results of pre-election polls asking voters which party they would support in the congressional election, to estimate the likely outcome of the national popular vote. However, the generic ballot is a much more accurate predictor of the national House popular vote than of the national Senate popular vote since not all states hold Senate elections in a given year. The correlation between the generic ballot and the national House popular vote is .89 while the correlation between the generic ballot and the national Senate popular vote margin is a much weaker .75.

A Democratic vote margin of 5-6 points, roughly what recent generic ballot polls have been averaging, would result in an expected Democratic gain of about 20-25 seats in the House and 6-7 seats in the Senate, more than enough to shift control of both chambers. However, the group of states holding Senate elections in 2026 is considerably more Republican than the nation. In 2020, the last year in which this Senate class was up for election, Democrats won the national popular vote for the House by 3.1 percentage points but lost the national popular vote for the Senate by 2.3 percentage points. A 5-6 point popular vote margin in the House elections might predict a less than one-point popular vote margin in the Senate elections and a gain of only about four seats—barely enough to shift control of the upper chamber. These results suggest that the battle for control of the Senate is likely to go down to the wire even if Democrats easily win a majority of seats in the House. Once again, we see that the peculiar make-up of the Senate, with its vast overrepresentation of sparsely populated rural states, poses a serious potential obstacle to electoral accountability in the 21st century.

 

A Day of Setbacks for Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

 Olivia M. Bridges and Valerie Yurk at Roll Call:

Three House Republicans helped thwart a White House push to block lawmakers from moving to terminate President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs until July 31, by which time the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the duties’ legality.

The 214-217 vote Tuesday evening to reject a rule that would bar use of a fast-track disapproval resolution for the tariffs came after House leaders delayed a floor vote scheduled for early afternoon while they tried to pressure Republicans to switch votes.

After the rule’s defeat, which GOP leaders expected after their whip effort fell short, the Rules Committee met again to report out a revised rule minus the tariff provision.

That would allow several unrelated bills to come to the floor this week if adopted, but also opens the door to an onslaught of Democratic tariff disapproval resolutions — starting as soon as Wednesday with an attempt to overturn Trump’s tariffs levied on Canadian goods.

GOP Reps. Kevin Kiley of California, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Don Bacon of Nebraska, who declared their opposition early, remained firm and voted against the rule, joining all Democrats.

Perry Stein and Salvador Rizzo at WP:

A federal grand jury in D.C. refused the Justice Department’s attempts to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their comments to military service members — the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s push to prosecute the president’s foes, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Federal prosecutors last year launched an investigation into the lawmakers — all of whom served in the military or with intelligence agencies — after they released a short video advising current military members to reject “illegal orders.”

The lawmakers include Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut from Arizona, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst from Michigan, both of whom sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. They have criticized the administration’s attempts to deploy the National Guard to cities run by Democratic officials and conduct strikes on alleged drug traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

It is exceedingly rare for grand juries to reject indictments, in part because prosecutors only need to convince a majority of grand jurors that there is a probable cause that a crime was committed — a relatively low threshold. But the Justice Department’s campaign to target President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries has repeatedly been rebuffed by grand juries and judges, including in its efforts to prosecute former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).

Jeremy Roebuck and Patrick Marley at WP:

The FBI relied heavily on previously debunked claims of widespread election irregularities in Georgia as it persuaded a federal judge last month to sign off on plans to seize 2020 voting records from the state’s most populous county, court documents unsealed Tuesday show.

In a pair of Jan. 28 search warrant affidavits, authorities said they were seeking evidence that would determine whether “deficiencies” in the vote tabulation in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were the result of intentional wrongdoing that could constitute a crime.

But many of the issues they cited — including claims of duplicate ballots and missing ballot images — have been previously explained by county officials as the types of routine errors that frequently occur, are typically corrected in the moment, and are not significant enough to sway the outcome of an election. Independent reviews have backed up that conclusion.

 

Epstein Files, Continued

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.

Jay O'Brien, John Parkinson, and Lauren Peller at ABC:

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a key member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet, is facing bipartisan calls to resign over new revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Documents released by the Justice Department late last month show Lutnick remained in contact with Epstein as recently as 2018, years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes including soliciting prostitution from a minor.

...

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein for over a decade, previously suggested he had distanced himself from Epstein back in the mid-2000s prior to Epstein's conviction in 2008.

"So, I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't going because he's gross," Lutnick said on the "Pod Force One" podcast back in October.

"That's my story. A one and absolutely done," Lutnick said.

But one email from Epstein's schedule for May, 1, 2011, showed plans for drinks with Lutnick.

And in December of 2012, other documents showed Lutnick and his family planned to visit Epstein's private island. That same month, both Lutnick and Epstein invested in the same business, according to legal documents.

 Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns at Politico:

WHAT WE’RE ALL READING: Ten days on from the DOJ’s mass dump of Epstein files data, the revelations keep coming. The files thus far have largely exposed a murky world of conspiring elites with questionable moral standards.

Digital democracy: And we are witnessing this through the prism of an entirely new phenomenon — an internationally crowdsourced scandal, unfolding in real time across your social media feed. In many cases, citizen journalists have been nearly as capable as professional journalists and investigators at finding insightful documents within the millions of DOJ files and bringing them to the fore.

Parlor games: Washington being what it is, the universal access to raw investigative data has given rise to another new fad. People are also scouring the Epstein files for references to their bosses, their corporate rivals, their political enemies — even their own families. Gossip about some of the highest-profile revelations had been swirling in D.C. circles for days in advance, uncovered by the associates of those involved. Plenty of people are hunting not for criminal behavior, but for the intrigue.

“We are all searching the files: for colleagues, competitors, clients,” one well-connected PR operative tells POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman. “It’s shocking to see what some of the most powerful people in the world say to each other in private — and it’s also shocking how many folks we know are mentioned in some capacity, even completely innocuously.”

The House Map and the Aggregate Vote

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

Hans Nichols and Kavya Beheraj at Axios:

House Democrats will need to overperform Vice President Harris by roughly three percentage points in swing districts to capture the majority in 2026, according to an Axios analysis of presidential margins in congressional districts.

Why it matters: In special elections over the last year, Democrats have been surpassing Harris' 2024 margins by double digits, putting the majority clearly in reach.

But the universe of competitive House seats is historically small, meaning that even an unambiguous national move toward the Democrats will result in a relatively narrow Democratic majority.

Flashback: The 2018 midterms saw a 6.5 percentage point swing in Democrats' favor compared to President Trump's 2016 margins, giving them 41 new seats for a 235 -199 majority, according to the Cook Political Report. A similar shift in 2026 would translate into 12 additional Democratic seats, giving them a 227-208 majority, according to the data, which includes redistricted maps, according to The Downballot and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

The other side: If GOP candidates fare just 1% better than Trump did last cycle, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could add another 12 seats to his majority, putting him at a comfortable 232-204 margin.

Zoom out: Democrats are banking that the electorate will look a lot less Trumpy when the president's name is not on the ballot. Their voters, Democrats argue, are highly motivated and engaged when Trump is in office.

...

Zoom in: Presidential performance in a congressional district doesn't guarantee a predetermined outcome, but in the Trump era, the number of crossover districts is at a historic low.Thirteen House Democrats prevailed in seats that Trump carried in 2024. A total of three Republicans held on in Harris districts.

n 2008, after President Obama's first election, there were 83 crossover districts.Two of the best lawmakers at convincing voters to split their ticket — Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who won in a Harris +4.6 district, and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who won in a Trump +9 district — are both retiring.

What we're watching: After tit-for-tat redistricting in six states, Republicans appear to have drawn themselves another three seats.Democrats on Thursday proposed adding another four in Virginia (pending judicial review), but Republicans are plotting to equalize in Florida.

The Senate Is In Play

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.   The early signs in the 2026 midterms do not favor Republicans.

Alex Isenstadt at Axios:

Top Republicans are increasingly worried about private polling that paints a dire picture of the midterms — and it's not just the House they're afraid of losing, it's also the Senate.

...

Here's what's setting off GOP bells about the Senate:

1. The map's expanding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is taking a lot of darts from his own party these days. But Republicans privately concede he's done a good job of recruiting Senate candidates in conservative states once seen as out of reach for Democrats.Schumer got former Sen. Sherrod Brown to run again in Ohio, and former Rep. Mary Peltola to run in Alaska. Ohio Sen. Jon Husted and Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan are the GOP incumbents.
Even if Democrats fail to win either race, Republicans now will need to spend potentially tens of millions to defend those seats.

2. The Texas problem

If incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn loses the upcoming GOP primary to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, polls suggest it could open the door to a Democrat winning Cornyn's seat in November.The NRSC penned a memo this week arguing that Cornyn is "the only Republican candidate" who can "reliably win a general election matchup" against either Democratic state Rep. James Talarico or U.S. Rep Jasmine Crockett (D). (Republicans might get some help — the Democratic primary has gone harshly negative recently.)
Even if Paxton wins in November, many Republicans warn, the party will have to unexpectedly spend tens of millions of dollars more than if Cornyn is the nominee.

Democrats haven't won a statewide race in Texas in more than three decades. But Republicans aren't dismissing the possibility this year. Last weekend the party suffered a lopsided special election defeat for a state Senate seat.Particularly glaring: Trump, who had endorsed the GOP candidate, won the district by 17 points in 2024.

3. The Georgia problem

The GOP's failure to recruit popular Gov. Brian Kemp for a Senate run has been a major setback in the party's efforts to pick off the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for reelection, Georgia's Jon Ossoff.Kemp's decision not to run has left three lesser-known Republicans to fight for the GOP nomination — none with Kemp's fundraising chops.
Ossoff's has raised far more money than any GOP challenger and has over $25 million on hand. Whoever wins the bruising GOP primary will have to burn through cash before facing him.

Trump's Racist Video: "No, I didn't make a mistake."

Our books have discussed Trump's low character, which was on display this week.

Erica L. Green, Isabella Kwai and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for even after he deleted the video following an outcry.

The clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was among a flurry of links posted by Mr. Trump late Thursday night. It was the latest in a pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Trump said he only saw the beginning of the video. “I just looked at the first part, it was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia,” Mr. Trump said. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”

He then tried to deflect blame, suggesting he had given the link to someone else to post. “I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.

Still, Mr. Trump offered no contrition when pressed. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

The White House response to the video over the course of the day — from defiance to retreat to doubling down — was a remarkable glimpse into an administration trying to control the damage in the face of widespread outrage, including from the president’s own party.

The clip was in line with Mr. Trump’s history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants, and he has for years singled out the Obamas. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on government websites and accounts, with the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging.

 

House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES has posted a new new video about the Trump video from Truth Social. Here is what the top House Dem said:

"This disgusting video, posted by the so-called president, was done intentionally.

"Fuck Donald Trump and his vile, racist and…

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 6, 2026