Feds Losing Legal Talent

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. 

Eileen Sullivan and Andrea Fuller at NYT:

President Trump’s upheaval of the federal government has led to an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, a striking loss of legal talent that has left some agencies pushing to find attorneys to carry out his agenda.

Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to a New York Times analysis of federal employment data.

Along with the usual retirements and turnover in the federal work force, the last year saw deep staffing cuts and the resignations of some staff members who objected to Mr. Trump’s policies. Their departures show how rapidly the president has eroded the image of the federal government as the gold standard for lawyers seeking public service roles.

Instead, many of those looking for such work are flocking to the offices of Democratic state attorneys general and nonprofits that are challenging administration policies in the courts, boosting Mr. Trump’s opponents with seasoned lawyers.

The Wounded Bear Caucus

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  For the rest of the 119th Congress, Trump's victories in Senate primaries will lead to defeats in Senate roll call votes.

Siobhan Hughes, Annie Linskey, and Natalie Andrews at WSJ:

The group of senators willing to break with Trump in his second term started with moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as former party leader Mitch McConnell and libertarian Rand Paul, both of Kentucky. It has expanded to what some senators call the “wounded bear caucus” of colleagues forced into retirement by the president: Cornyn and Cassidy, plus Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who decided to step aside after Trump made clear he wouldn’t support him.

Cornyn is the newest member. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary runoff opponent, scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton, stunning colleagues and helping fuel a rout in the contest on Tuesday—the incumbent lost by more than 25 percentage points. Cornyn said he would back the nominee, and party leaders fell in line, saying they would support Paxton to preserve the party’s 53-47 majority in the Senate. But the ill will isn’t going away.

In a post on social media Friday, Cornyn related the tale of the frog and the scorpion, calling it an “old, but apt fable” and presumably a jab at Trump. (Cornyn’s office declined to comment.) The scorpion asks the frog to carry it across the river, then stings the frog and they both drown—despite the scorpion knowing that would happen. “I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character,” Cornyn recounts the scorpion saying.

Cassidy, in the interview, had his own thoughts on the Texas race. Paxton, he said, “is someone who Trump probably relates to in terms of all those ethical challenges—Cornyn is not.”

Bad Economic News

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. 

IndexBox:

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on May 28, 2026, that personal income edged down by less than $0.1 billion in April, a decline of less than 0.1 percent on a monthly basis. Disposable personal income, which subtracts personal current taxes from total income, fell by $19.9 billion, or 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, personal consumption expenditures rose by $111.1 billion, a 0.5 percent monthly gain. 

Texas Day

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

Trump endorsed Ken Paxton for the Senate.

Andrew Howard at Politico:

Paxton officially ousted Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP runoff by a hefty margin, after top Republicans in Washington lit $100 million on fire burning the man they now have to embrace for the incumbent they thought would be the better bet in the general election.

That rescue mission for Cornyn officially failed on Tuesday, but Trump had already sealed his fate when he endorsed Paxton last week. Now, those same Republicans who have spent months attacking the scandal-plagued Paxton are coming around. Grudgingly.

The NRSC, which backed Cornyn, scrubbed its social media and website of anti-Paxton posts.

In a statement on Tuesday, the committee led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the state “isn’t going to elect James Talarico,” the Democratic nominee, while attacking his record. Missing from the statement, notably, was any mention of Paxton by name, as well as any formal commitment to spending on his behalf. The Sen. John Thune-aligned super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, whose affiliated nonprofit poured millions into ads for Cornyn and attacking Paxton, had made no public comments as of 12:30 a.m. Eastern, hours after the race was called.

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who has had an occasionally rocky relationship with the attorney general, congratulated Paxton on X, but his public statement on Instagram focused on the broader GOP ticket, calling for Republicans to “crush socialist Democrats’ dream of turning Texas blue” and promising that a “united Republican Party will drive victory.”

Other GOP-aligned groups are jumping right in for their nominee. The powerful Club for Growth Action immediately lent its endorsement, and one of its aligned-PACs quickly dropped an ad that repeatedly mocks Talarico as a “woke weirdo.”

And the Akin ploy is alive and well.

Ben Kamisar at NBC:

Democrat Johnny Garcia has won his party’s primary in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, NBC News projects, defeating a rival whom party leaders had condemned for antisemitic comments as Democrats look to compete in a district Republicans redrew to their benefit.

The district stretches from Austin to San Antonio, the result of Republican efforts to combine two Democratic seats into one and create a new district leaning their way. Donald Trump carried the district by about 10.5 points in 2024.

Despite that result, there are signs the district could be competitive in the general election, including $1 million in spending from an opaque outside group aimed at boosting Garcia’s opponent, sex therapist Maureen Galindo, despite the controversies dogging her. Punchbowl News reported that the super PAC, Lead Left PAC, had links to a GOP fundraising platform.

”

2. Popular Information found that Lead Left is linked to Caleb Crosby, a Republican operative. Crosby is the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the primary super PAC of the House GOP.https://t.co/cwW6n9yUBV

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 27, 2026

Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: DOJ Edition

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Its incompetence sometimes compounds the harm it does, but it sometimes tempers it.

 Alan Feuer at NYT:

In the past several months, prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade grand juries that the cases they have brought warrant criminal charges. And if it were not unusual enough, they have also been admonished at least three times since last November by federal judges who have accused them of misconduct.

The latest setback came in Chicago, where a judge cited a remarkable list of grand jury errors in a case that was dismissed against four Democratic activists about to face trial for impeding the police during a protest last fall at a suburban immigration detention facility.

...

The government’s missteps were bad enough to necessitate tossing out the case against the critics of the president’s immigration plan just days before it was supposed to go to trial.

But the mistakes also pointed to a more important problem: As Mr. Trump has demanded more and more charges against those he perceives as his opponents, prosecutors have felt pressure to push weak cases through grand juries. And that, in turn, has led to an erosion in faith in the Justice Department by both the grand jurors themselves and the judges considering the cases.

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Part of the problem, legal experts say, is that Mr. Trump has hired inexperienced loyalists to fill senior roles in the Justice Department even as hundreds of career prosecutors have departed — either by their own choice or because they were forced out for having worked on cases that ran afoul of the president.

Junior prosecutors typically attend a weeklong course on the ins and outs of working with grand juries, and often trail more seasoned colleagues before they take the lead in presenting cases. But leaders in politically appointed posts do not get the same kind or amount of training.

...

All of these examples of grand jury malfeasance come on top of the many cases in which Justice Department prosecutors have failed to get grand jurors to return indictments. Such failures — known as no true bills — used to be essentially unheard-of, given the amount of sway that prosecutors have in the grand jury room and the department’s adherence to a tradition of seeking charges only in cases with strong evidence.

But over the past year or so, there has been a flurry of no true bills in federal courts across the country. Most have occurred in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, where grand jurors have rejected several cases involving people accused of protesting the administration’s immigration crackdowns and surges in federal law enforcement.

Epstein and the Midterm

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

Holly Otterbein at Axios:

Several top Democratic candidates in the midterms are airing scathing ads linking their Republican foes to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal — betting that the Trump administration's reluctance to release the Epstein files still resonates with voters.

Why it matters: Democrats are mostly focusing on high prices, health care and Trump's war against Iran, but some also are trying to tie Republicans to the late sex offender as part of a broader message accusing the GOP of protecting the corrupt elite.

Zoom in: In the hotly contested Ohio Senate race, Democrat Sherrod Brown has spent nearly $1.5 million on TV ads slamming his GOP rival, freshman Sen. Jon Husted, for previously taking donations from Epstein financial client Leslie Wexner, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
...

Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the Maine Senate race — a must-win contest for the party's hopes of gaining a majority in the Senate — also is making anti-Epstein messaging part of his strategy to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.In a six-figure TV ad, Platner accuses Collins of selling out voters to "the president and to the Epstein class," as an old video of Epstein and Donald Trump flashes across the screen.

In Georgia's Senate race — one of the GOP's best opportunities to flip a seat this year — Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) likewise has argued in speeches and media interviews that Trump's administration is made up of "the Epstein class."

Perceptions of the Economy May 2026

 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. 

Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Americans have continued to grow more negative about the economy in May, pushing Gallup's Economic Confidence Index to -45, down from -38 in April and the lowest reading since October 2022, when it was identical to now. Still, the current index score is above the recent low of -58 in June 2022 during a period, like now, marked by high inflation and soaring gas prices.

A release from the University of Michigan:

Consumer sentiment fell for the third straight month as supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz continue to lift gasoline prices, according to the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.

Sentiment is now just below the previous historical trough seen in June 2022. The cost of living continues to be a first-order concern, with 57% of consumers spontaneously mentioning that high prices were eroding their personal finances, up from 50% last month.

Independents and Republicans saw decreases in sentiment, with both groups reaching their lowest readings of the current presidential administration. Meanwhile, sentiment of Democrats was little changed from last month.

“Earlier this year consumers may have reserved judgment about how long the Iran conflict would last,” said U-M economist Joanne Hsu, director of the surveys. “Three months into the conflict, consumers appear to be worried that supply disruptions are unlikely to be resolved quickly. Moreover, consumers are clearly concerned that increases in gas prices will spread to other prices in the economy and that consequences may persist into the long run.”