Another Problem for the GOP: Disease

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging.  Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain.

Mary Van Beusekom at CIDRAP:

As measles cases and deaths mount from multiple outbreaks across the United States, a four-day Reuters/Ipsos poll completed yesterday shows declining trust in the safety of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine for children (76%, down from 84% in 2020). The deteriorating trust was most apparent among Republicans.

But just 19% of all 1,143 adult respondents said they approve of President Donald Trump's handling of the measles outbreaks, while 52% disapprove, and the rest said they didn’t have an opinion or didn’t answer the question.

Registered voters in the poll chose Democrats over Republicans by 45% to 25% when asked which party has a better approach to stopping infectious diseases such as measles. About 31% of voters said they were very worried about measles outbreaks, compared with 58% who said the same about their cost of living.

Measles was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000, but declining vaccination rates have enabled the virus to re-emerge in recent years. As of September 11, the country had logged 3,294 cases—a 35-year high—compared with 2,289 cases in all of 2025. Nearly 700 of those cases (693) have been reported in Pennsylvania, as the state experiences its worst outbreak in 35 years.

In addition, the Pennsylvania Department of Health today confirmed another measles-related death, in addition to one reported over the weekend and two infants reported previously, bringing the state’s 2026 measles-related death tally to four. (See related CIDRAP News story.) No deaths have been reported in other states so far this year.

Two doses of the MMR vaccine confer 97% lifetime protection, but in 2025, average US vaccination uptake among kindergarteners declined to 92.5%, below the 95% experts say is needed for herd immunity, which can protect people in the community who, for health reasons, can’t get the vaccine.

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Today, the Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed two more measles-associated deaths after local coroners reported these individuals died from complications associated with measles. That's four total measles-associated deaths in our Commonwealth and the first Pennsylvania…

— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) September 15, 2026

SCOTUS Blocks Postal Maneuver

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

Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt President Trump a major blow when it blocked his executive order to restrict mail ballots. But Mr. Trump’s battle to assert control over the election process is far from finished.

The stymied attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots was just one piece of a broader effort involving the full power of the federal government to take more control of state-run elections.

Just days before the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Trump’s mail ballot order, the Justice Department sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, escalating a fight to gain access to private voter data and election records.

Federal agents are scouring voter rolls managed by states for noncitizens, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary recently pushed for an investigation into whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted, casting doubt on digital voting systems.

“This is far from over,” said Benjamin Hovland, who was ousted from the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission by the Trump administration this year.

...

Trump administration lawyers had urged the Supreme Court to step in and clear the way for its plan to use the Postal Service to screen ballot envelopes after they are submitted by state elections officials. The new rules would require states to submit lists of voters approved to receive mail ballots. The Postal Service would then deliver the ballots only to the voters on the lists.

In addition to the loss on Monday, Mr. Trump’s other attempts to pressure states over the election process have faced legal setbacks.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states for unredacted voter lists, which include personal information like driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

They have lost 23 of those cases. Decisions are pending in the rest.

Republicans Skittish About the Five Grand ... for Good Reason

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Trump's $5,000 promise is not taking off.

Chris Stirewalt:

Consumers are already getting crushed by inflation, high interest rates and high prices. Bond traders are punishing Uncle Sam for becoming a fiscal basket case with a $40 trillion debt and not even concepts of a plan for what to do about it. Even the most cynical Republican lawmaker would be able to see how the hangover would be worse than the high — a lesson Democrats learned the hard way in the Biden era.

So, like the tariff bonuses and DOGE dividends Trump has promised voters before, the midterm payola probably falls into the familiar category of “stuff the president says.” But like his decision to try to rescue two struggling Atlantic City casinos by opening a third one, Trump loves to raise the stakes. Trying to pay off voters with money mortgaged against future generations is a little like using his creditors’ cash to bring in Michael Jackson for the grand opening of the Trump Taj Mahal.

But who is the target audience for the dubious dividend? It certainly isn’t conservatives, who are already feeling seasick from a wild fiscal ride with Trump so far. It can’t be progressives and liberals since, even if they liked the idea of Trump’s anarcho-Keynesianism, they wouldn’t believe his promises anyway. The customers Trump is trying to get through the doors of the GOP casino are those who a) think a massive debt-financed stimulus would be good and b) still tend to believe the things the president says.

The share of Americans who believe that Trump keeps his promises slid from a November 2024 high of 51 percent to 38 percent this spring, and given his many failed efforts to declare victory in the Iran war since then, one does not imagine that number has increased.

Are there enough voters who both a) believe Trump will actually deliver on his promise and b) think that it’s a good policy to lift Republicans’ chances to at least avoid a wipeout of the kind they faced in 2018? People do love free money, but the belated introduction of such a wild policy proposal makes it hard to predict. Certainly, Republicans running in suburban districts and states with large numbers of college-educated voters won’t look forward to explaining their thoughts on the debt bomb.

 Mira Bhakta at The Hill:

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) appeared to shift his opinion on President Trump’s $5,000 dividends announced earlier this week.

In a debate at the Kansas State Fair against Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton, a moderator asked both candidates if they supported the dividends, citing the proposal’s $1.2 trillion cost amid the growing national debt.

“I’m going to bring in all the information, and then make a decision,” he said. “But look, this is not the first time I’ve disagreed with President Trump, and it probably won’t be the last.”

“Instead, I said, I’m going to be focused on Kansas jobs. I’m going to be focused on protecting Kansas agriculture and the Kansas cattle industry,” he continued.

Marshall’s remark comes after his apparent support for the president’s proposal in social media post Wednesday.

 Meredith Lee Hill, Jason Beeferman and Mia McCarthy at POLITICO:

 Top Republican lawmakers had no idea President Donald Trump was going to promise $5,000 checks to every adult American so long as his party keeps control of Congress. Now, they’re grappling with how to handle the fallout.

GOP leaders have privately pushed back on similar Trump promises of giving money to Americans in the past year, according to four people granted anonymity to share details of closed-door meetings. Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill were blindsided by Trump’s Wednesday night announcement in Dallas, and are trying to manage lawmakers’ and voters’ expectations about a trillion-dollar-plus proposal they cannot deliver.



The only thing that I knew of was that he has this concept of a dividend of all Americans being able to share in the success of America,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who appeared supportive of the idea, said in an interview on the sidelines of the party’s midterm convention. “But last night, no, I was just like you and everybody else when I went, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Okay.’”

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson added in an interview: “First, I’d heard of it, so I want to talk to him and get some details before I comment.” Hudson said the idea was “exciting,” but he didn’t indicate the House GOP campaign arm would start touting the idea in ads for battleground candidates.

As for the chances of the measure passing Congress, Hudson responded: “Not this Congress. Because Democrats in the Senate will never go through with it.”

Republican leaders, indeed, don’t have the votes to pass such an offer this year, with some in the party questioning the legality of Trump effectively declaring he would pay for votes. GOP fiscal hawks and others also quickly shot it down.

And some Republicans worry Trump’s last-ditch move steps on their carefully laid messaging about the economic benefits of their major tax cuts package — benefits which have largely been erased by the Iran war and tariffs, according to five senior Republicans, who were also granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“It seems incredibly desperate,” said one of the House Republicans.

Bread, Circuses, and Five Grand

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

Caleb Razor at Politico:

President Donald Trump dropped a hot mess of a half-baked midterm promise in lawmakers’ laps last night.

Trump at the GOP’s convention pledged to send $5,000 to every adult in the U.S. if Republicans retain control of Congress in the midterms, Ashley Ahn reports. And while the crowd of thousands of his supporters gathered at Dallas’ American Airlines Center cheered the announcement, GOP fiscal hawks were balking at the effort before Trump even left the stage.
...

If the president followed through on such a plan, it would likely worsen inflation by further boosting consumer spending and supporting higher prices, which are already elevated due to the war in Iran. The dividend could also exacerbate a rise in longer-term borrowing costs for the U.S. government, which have been going up in part on fears the federal debt is growing unsustainable.

The move comes after months of Republicans pleading with Trump to focus his messaging — and fundraising war chest — on helping the party retain control of Capitol Hill come November.

Some House Republicans following the speech told Meredith Lee Hill the effort showed how desperate the president was in the last weeks of midterm campaigning.

“It’s a little late,” one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said.

Others may have been relieved that the president was touting a message aimed at affordability concerns at the top of voters’ minds.

...

Sen. Ted Cruz in an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns after Trump’s speech, said he’d prefer to tie work requirements to the dividends, but added specifics would need to be worked through.

“$1.3 trillion dollars is a massive amount,” Cruz said, referring to his estimate for the plan. But, he said it’s less than if Democrats won back power and spent like “drunken sailors.”

Trump the Saboteur

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

In 2020, Trump's ineptitude cost the GOP control of both Georgia Senate seats, and thus control of the chamber.  He did the same in 2022.

Once again this year, Trump could directly cost the GOP control of the Senate.  

• In North Carolina, he attacked incumbent Thom Tillis, who would have been a heavy favorite for reelection.  Tillis withdrew, and Democrat Roy Cooper is likely to take the open seat.
• In Texas, John Cornyn could have cruised to victory.  Trump endorsed the crooked Ken Paxton, who could lose to Talarico.
• In Georgia, Governor Kemp could have defeated Ossoff.  But there was no way Trump would support someone who did not stand with him on election denialism.  Trump endorsed scandal-ridden Mike Collins, who will probably lose to Ossoff.

Stef Kight and Hans Nichols at Axios:

Zoom out: Trump has repeatedly forced Republicans to grapple with policies that aggravate their constituencies or collide with their own ideological convictions.His plan to import up to 300,000 metric tons of beef tariff-free for 90 days inflamed GOP lawmakers in red states. More than a dozen GOP senators publicly criticized the move, warning it would hurt American cattle ranchers.

Imposing higher tariffs on Canadian goods threatened to bring a trade war to two must-win border states: Maine and Michigan. [Not to mention Ohio and Iowa, too!] 

And his call Monday to target Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier could have outsized economic implications in Kansas, a red state with an increasingly competitive Senate race. Trump ally Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was forced to break with Trump over the call to boycott. Bombardier is a key employer in Kansas.

Republicans are taking an à la carte approach to data centers, which have suddenly become a political liability. Candidates in both parties have been scrambling to distance themselves from the industry.But Trump isn't brooking any nuance on the issue, calling communities that oppose data centers "backwards and poor." He doubled down four days later.

...

Trump is also restarting hostilities with Iran, dashing any GOP hopes that gas prices will drop before November.

People around Trump know he's self-destructive.  They don't even bother to push back anymore.  Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei at Axios:

For nearly a decade, Republicans acquiesced to nearly every Trump demand and idea — and rationalized it by saying his instincts proved smarter than theirs. Now, many no longer trust those instincts. But they find it just as futile to push back against virtually anything he wants.

• Start a war without an endgame? OK.
• Post a cartoon of you — wielding a hockey stick and sporting a Trump-branded USA jersey — towering over Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, sprawled on the ice, and telling him to "GET UP"? On it.
• Toss together an egocentric, first-ever Republican midterm convention that many endangered candidates don't want? Sounds like a good plan, boss! (Gavels in today in Dallas at 4 p.m. ET, in fact.)
• Oh, you want to speak both nights? Done!
• Make ads featuring you when your popularity is near its all-time low? You came to the right place, sir.
• Make the midterms a referendum on you? Check.
• Spend precious time obsessing about ballroom construction, and gilding and marbleizing the White House? You are the new Caesar Augustus.

 

Trump's Auto-Focus

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

 Annie KarniReid J. Epstein and Luke Broadwater at NYT:

In the White House Rose Garden last week, President Trump gathered some of the most politically endangered House Republicans for a dinner where he promised to make himself the face of the party’s uphill battle to keep control of Congress.

He was with them “100 percent — all the way until November,” Mr. Trump told the roughly two dozen lawmakers as they dined on prime aged beef burgers at tables adorned with bouquets of yellow roses. The president said he would travel to 35 key districts “to see if we can get everyone elected.”

The scene encapsulated the box that G.O.P. lawmakers have found themselves in as they stare down a bleak political environment.

They cannot afford to snub Mr. Trump, needing help from his enormous financial reserves and strong turnout from his base to win their campaigns. But they also do not want the election to be a referendum on the president, whose popularity is at a record low. And so far, he has shown little appetite for focusing on anyone’s political needs besides his own.

Two months before the midterm elections, Mr. Trump and the Republicans who have long tied their political fortunes to him appear to be at cross purposes as the party struggles to keep the House and Senate in G.O.P. hands.

As Republicans work to distance themselves from the president’s unpopular decisions, Mr. Trump is headlining a splashy convention in Dallas this week and has said that voters should “pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.” As the candidates work to show they are focused on the concerns of everyday Americans, the president is spending much of his time in Washington focused on the construction of a White House ballroom, a 250-foot arch and a golf course on a public park alongside the Potomac River. And as they brace for the final costly weeks of their campaigns, he has yet to dole out hardly any of the nearly $1 billion he says his political action committee has raised.

Zac Anderson and Joey Garrison at USA TODAY:

President Donald Trump has a solution for his party’s midterm woes as Republicans struggle to match Democrats’ election enthusiasm and face major headwinds to keep control of Congress ‒ more Trump.

Enter “Trumpapalooza,” the party’s first-ever midterm convention and the president's clearest attempt yet to inject himself squarely at the center of the election and position himself as the party's savior.

Never mind that Trump’s low approval rating has been an anchor weighing on the GOP, with the potential to drag down midterm candidates. The president and his advisers have suggested he’s the only one who can bring the MAGA faithful to the polls in large enough numbers to avoid a midterm catastrophe for Republicans.

“This is a turnout race,” Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters said in an interview with USA TODAY. “We need the president front and center.”

That strategy will be on display over two days in Dallas beginning Sept. 9 as Trump gathers his party for the final post-Labor Day push toward the Nov. 3 election. Trump is set to attend both days and deliver the headline speech on the first night. The event – dubbed “Trumpapalooza” by Gruters – is part of the president’s bid to further nationalize the election and wrap it around his own political brand, a tactic some Republicans question.

The convention risks tying Republican candidates more tightly to Trump at a time when some in the party believe they need distance from the president amid polls showing voters disapprove of his performance on everything from tariffs to the Iran war and inflation.

“One of the problems that the party is having right now is the president’s approval rating is not good,” said longtime GOP strategist Charlie Black. “So the more candidates can get the voters to focus on them and the issues that they’re promoting, and less on the president, the better in most states and most districts.”

Midterm Convention

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

George E. Condon Jr. at National Journal:

One constant in Donald Trump’s 11 years in politics has been his demand for credit for every idea, event, and program. In his telling, no one before him ever was clever enough to conceive of his newest scheme. As he likes to say, “no one’s ever seen" whatever he's currently talking about.

All that is on display again as Republicans, more anxious than excited, plan to gather next week to fulfill the president’s desire to have a midterm convention to showcase his second-term record. When he first proposed it last year, he boasted, “It has never been done before.” He repeated those words in June when he announced the date and location—Sept. 9 and 10 in Dallas.

The only problem is that it has been done before. And it didn’t work out very well, making this an instance when Trump would have been far better served if he had actually talked to Democrats. They’re the only ones with experience at midterm conventions—and the bruises to show for it.

Far from being an idea that sprang from the fertile mind of Trump, midterm conventions were first suggested by Republican National Chairman John Hamilton in the wake of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 24-point shellacking of GOP nominee Alf Landon in 1936, according to Hamilton College professor Philip Klinkner in his 1994 book, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993. Twenty years later, Sen. Estes Kefauver championed midterm conventions after Dwight Eisenhower’s 15-point thrashing of the Democratic ticket, which included Kefauver as vice presidential nominee.

Both Hamilton and Kefauver failed to sell the idea. But another 20 years on, a reform-minded Democratic Party, stung by its 23-point clobbering by Richard Nixon in 1972, revived the idea, even managing to stage events in Kansas City in 1974, in Memphis in 1978, and in Philadelphia in 1982.

They did not go well.

“Trump doesn't understand what came before. He just doesn't know history,” said Al From, an adviser in the Jimmy Carter White House and a loud voice for moderating the Democratic Party after Ronald Reagan’s two victories. From attended the Democratic midterm convention in 1982, which, he said, along with the editions in 1974 and 1978, “didn’t work out very well.”

That understates how disastrous the gathering was in 1978. In that year, like this one, it was the party that won the most recent presidential election that proposed the gathering—although, in a key difference, the Democrats assembled weeks after the midterms.

Carter gave a speech on the opening night to a tepid reception and then returned to the White House. He was not there on the concluding night when Sen. Edward Kennedy gave one of the most rousing speeches of his career, urging his party to “sail against the wind,” signaling he would be a likely primary opponent to Carter in two years.

It is an item of faith today that Carter was deeply unpopular at the time of that convention. The numbers tell a different story, though. While his approval, as measured by Gallup, was only 39 percent in August 1978, it was at 49 percent by the November election and at 51 percent when the convention started on Dec. 7.

The contrast with Trump’s current unpopularity is sharp. The University of Massachusetts poll conducted in late August showed 64 percent disapproving of his performance and only 32 percent approving. That is slightly worse for the president than other current polls—42 percent approval in Quantus Insights, 36 percent in YouGov/The Economist, and 33 percent in Reuters/Ipsos.

Democrats killed off their midterm conventions in 1985 when new party chairman Paul Kirk declared them “places for mischief” and a waste of party time, money, and energy.

The abiding lesson from the three mini-conventions was that they could prove to be boons to future candidates, but debilitating for incumbents. Jimmy Carter, the loser in the 1978 event, had been the star in the 1974 convention, laying the groundwork for his later campaign. Similarly, Bill Clinton effectively used the meeting in 1978, and Walter Mondale was a star in 1982. Indeed, as The Washington Post put it, Kirk said the conventions mostly just "kick off speculation about presidential contenders when Democrats should be focusing on electing senators, House members and governors."

All About Trump

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Michael Scherer, and Ashley Parker at  The Atlantic:

President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections.

Republican strategists are concerned about Trump’s low approval ratings and voter anxiety about the economy. One person familiar with the Oval Office strategy meeting put it this way: “When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters—or voters are pissed off at you about those issues—the question becomes: What do you campaign on?” Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues.

But Trump himself has rejected that approach. House and Senate Democrats, the president noted during the meeting, will make their fall campaigns a referendum on him. His advisers told him that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know about many of his accomplishments—the dozens of new stock-market highs, a decline in fentanyl deaths, the “sealed” southern border, the increase in domestic-manufacturing production.

The solution Trump settled on, according to three people familiar with the meeting, was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself. The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests. Trump wanted what one person described to us as “environmental lift” ads—commercials that would focus on nationalizing the midterms broadly around his victories—and he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks. “Go look at the clips,” the president told his team, according to this person. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”

Lotsa luck with that.  Jason Lange at Reuters:

• Support for US military action against Iran falls to 31%, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows
• Trump job approval stays at 33% for second straight survey, matching record low
• Poll finds 83% of Americans expect war to continue for ​an extended period

 

Iran Quagmire: Predictable and Predicted

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, and  Alex Leary at WSJ report that Trump summoned then-DNI Gabbard to brief him on how the Iran War would go.

Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard outlined assessments from America’s intelligence apparatus. According to people familiar with the meeting, she told Trump that killing Iran’s supreme leader would likely usher in a more hard-line regime open to acquiring nuclear weapons. Tehran would rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market. And it would strike U.S. forces and partners in the Middle East, prompting questions about American resolve and reliability with allies.

The notes of caution echoed warnings Trump was receiving from all corners. Top military leaders told the president that a war would lead to casualties, concerns about the weapons stockpile and readiness problems for an overstretched force, The Wall Street Journal reported.

...
Now Trump is relying on sanctions and a perpetual blockade wearing down U.S. forces to crush Iran’s economy, a wait-and-see strategy he argues will send the regime crawling to his feet.

An estimated 3,000 Iranians and 18 U.S. servicemembers have died related to combat operations, and the Pentagon says an additional 756 American troops have been wounded. The war also has damaged U.S. bases, drained oil reserves and shrunk munitions stockpiles. The conflict is weighing down Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections and sinking Trump’s poll numbers to the lowest of his presidency.

...

“This was all predictable and predicted,” said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative who worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. “You can draw a straight line from the fact that the war was launched without any clear political objective to the mishandled diplomacy in trying to end it.”

Trump's Errors Threaten GOP Senate Seats

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

The beef issue is a classic concentrated-losers/diffuse-gainers situation.  The GOP was in a similar bind in 1986 with oil prices.

Coming soon to a Democratic attack ad near you:

TRUMP: “We'll by Argentinian beef.”

Reporters:' What about the US farmers who are suffering?'

Trump: “Argentina is fighting for its life. Do you understand me? They’re dying.”

He says this as 77 American cattle producers are going out of business in the US per day.…

— ThePatrioticBlonde™🇺🇸 (@ImBreckWorsham) August 23, 2026

Trump has restarted a trade war with Canada.  Bad economics, bad politics.

David Frum at The Atlantic:

More than 30 percent of Ohio’s exports go to Canada, and almost 40 percent of Michigan’s. Both states will this year elect a U.S. senator and fill open governor’s seats. Not only is Trump putting at risk his party’s position in purple Michigan, but suddenly the races in beet-red Ohio look in jeopardy too. These states may turn control of the Senate—and Trump’s chances of facing meaningful accountability next year for his law-breaking and corruption.

Trump’s theory of his trade war, like his theory of his Iran war, is that the bigger bully always wins. Size counts for a lot, but not for everything.

As Trump has declared over and over again, his ultimate goal in this trade war is to add Canada as a 51st state. Why? To make the United States look bigger on the map. For that goal, which excites ultra-MAGA crackpots, Trump is hazarding not only America’s most important trading relationships but very possibly every other political equity he holds, including avoiding investigations and accountability by a Democratic House and Senate after January 2027

GOP's Beef with Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

The beef issue is a classic concentrated-losers/diffuse-gainers situation.  The GOP was in a similar bind in 1986 with oil prices.

Grace Yarrow at POLITICO:

President Donald Trump’s latest effort to lower beef prices ahead of November’s midterms has rattled cattle markets, infuriated beef industry groups and alienated some conservatives. And it’s not clear the move will pay off at the meat counter.

Trump said Friday that he plans to remove duties on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef, which he said suppliers have agreed to sell at a 25 percent discount that will be passed on to consumers. He’s set to sign an executive order to that effect within the next two weeks, according to a White House official who was granted anonymity to discuss the plans.

But growing backlash to Trump’s beef import plan illustrates the stakes of a White House political gamble to confront high food prices that threaten Republicans at the ballot box, despite the risk of sparking industry resistance that has previously derailed similar plans.

Many of Trump’s supporters cite the cost of living as the biggest failure of the president’s second term. Yet many ranchers and Republicans argue boosting imports from foreign countries won’t tangibly lower beef prices in the short term — raising the prospect that Trump’s still-pending order could alienate ranchers without delivering noticeable relief to voters.

“You don’t put America first by putting U.S. cattle producers last,” said Justin Tupper, president of the United States Cattlemen’s Association, in a statement after Trump’s announcement.

The increased imports will last 90 days — just through November’s midterm elections.

...

“This is Donald Trump in purgatory,” said one ag industry representative who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the plan. “He’s trading his long-term strategy for a short-term sugar fix, and it’s not going to do enough to alter the price of beef or any other higher elevated costs in the economy to help them in the election. It’s going to just piss off farmers and ranchers.”

It’s not the first time Trump has been caught between pleasing ranchers, a loyal GOP constituency, and addressing affordability. But the price of a summertime hamburger has continued to climb: Ground beef cost close to $7 a pound on average last month. Prices have skyrocketed due to high demand and a decades-low cattle inventory diminished by severe weather, industry consolidation and high operating costs.

Harping on Natalie

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. 

 Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic:

You are reading this story only because the White House didn’t want you to.

I’ll explain. This past Sunday, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia—who has become quite good at delivering viral campaign sound bites, slickly filmed by multiple cameras—unleashed a blistering indictment of President Trump’s leadership. Ossoff, a former documentary filmmaker who is generating 2028 buzz, denounced Trump’s handling of the Iran war this way: “While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

It was a pithy and well-structured attack, but not so different from the broadsides delivered daily by Democrats on the campaign trail or on MS NOW. But one new word stood out: Natalie.

The line got a knowing laugh from a handful of observers in the room, and it electrified a subset of political obsessives on social media, who took to their favorite platforms and group chats with some version of “Oh, he went there!” or “I can’t believe he did that!” But although Ossoff’s aside resonated with the junkies, the majority of Americans likely had no idea who this Natalie woman was, and might never have given it another thought.

But then the West Wing lost its mind. And Trump did too. Their pushback was so overwhelming, so obviously coordinated, so ugly and personal that it became a story. The White House inadvertently created news, as well as a permission structure for even the most cautious, fact-based media organizations to take on the topic. Which is why the name Natalie Harp is now everywhere.

And the resulting stories have not benefited the Trump White House.

 

SCOOP: Trump aide Natalie Harp worked at White House without security clearance for a year

Both people said Harp’s reasoning for failing to complete the process was unknown. After concerns mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president…

— Jake Traylor (@jake__traylor) August 19, 2026

Maggie Haberman shares new details about Trump aide Natalie Harp and her rise inside the White House: “She is a channel by which… foreign leaders try to reach him.” pic.twitter.com/ggzoV0DPk2

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 20, 2026

Quagmire

 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. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Trump's war drove gas prices up.  Now Vance says that the war's purpose is to lower gas prices.  Incoherent.

Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Rachel Chason at WP

Sixty days ago, seated beside French President Emmanuel Macron at a lavish dinner at the Palace of Versailles, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran and declared the beginning of the end of the U.S. conflict with Tehran.

The “historic breakthrough” would lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and ensure Iran never obtained a nuclear weapon, the White House declared. Trump advisers said the deal would demonstrate that the president could end, rather than prolong, the kind of “endless wars” in the Middle East he had spent years denouncing.

The agreement set aside two months for talks to turn the interim truce into something more ambitious: a broader settlement of the decades-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

That window has now closed.

The war has not ended. The Strait of Hormuz remains largely shut. Detailed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program never began.

The United States has resumed its blockade of Iranian ports. Tehran is demanding concessions that the Trump administration has rejected. And the administration has now publicly disowned several of the key points in the ill-fated memorandum, including development of a plan “with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and development” of Iran, a waiver of sanctions to allow Iran to sell oil, and a “dialogue” between Iran and Oman over how to run the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump on Monday went so far as to threaten to bomb Oman over its talks with Iran on management of the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil used to pass.

Incoherent Message on Iran and Energy

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. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Trump's war drove gas prices up.  Now Vance says that the war's purpose is to lower gas prices.  Incoherent.

Alexander Smith at NBC:

Keeping gas prices low is now the United States’ “goal No. 1” in the Iran war, Vice President JD Vance has said, as Washington threatened an indefinite naval blockade and signaled it would soon intensify economic pressure on Tehran.

The comments appeared to be the latest shift in the public rationale for the conflict, with Vance ranking Iran’s nuclear ambitions second.

The vice president’s remarks came as the Trump administration embraced a long-term effort to inflict more damage on the Islamic Republic, despite growing signs of strain on American forces and domestic pressure ahead of the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has suggested a shift away from military force in favor of “low-keying it” with economic pressure. That followed a deadly cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges that produced no clear resolution and depleted U.S. reserves of missile interceptors

Gas prices are down from their May peak, but still up 25% from one year ago.

They will remain elevated as long as oil supply is blocked in the Strait of Hormuz. pic.twitter.com/XOzs8hhD94

— Steve Rattner (@SteveRattner) August 12, 2026

The GOP's Trump Albatross

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

Aaron Blake at CNN:

In an interview released Friday, Trump denied not caring about the GOP’s fortunes in the midterms. But he didn’t actually dispel the idea that he’s not terribly interested in being a team player and doing the things his party needs.

In the interview with Punchbowl News, taped on Thursday, Jake Sherman asked Trump about the narrative that he doesn’t really care about Congress and holding the GOP’s majorities in 2026.

“It’s not right,” Trump said, adding: “We’re gonna fight hard,” and, “it’s very important to the country that we win.”

But then he said a bunch of other stuff.

The president suggested that he’s doing Republicans a favor both by potentially spending some of his war chest on them — “I could spend it on pretty much anything I want,” Trump said — and by taking time out to occasionally take his message on the road.

“I didn’t have to be away in Nevada yesterday, I didn’t have to be in Los Angeles yesterday making speeches,” Trump said. “I didn’t have to be supporting all the people. I have a busy schedule.”

Trump added that he recently told someone that he had already won his own campaign, so “I’m not campaigning.”

Then came the comment that should really make Republicans pull their hair out: that their problems are of their own making, not his.

“The question is, will [people] vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you,” Trump said, adding: “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.”

This is, to put it lightly, not accurate.

Trump has dragged the country into an unpopular war with unpopular economic consequences.  Iran will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.   

Patrick Wintour at The Guardian:

Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.

For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous.

While Iranian officials since the 1979 Islamic revolution have never trusted the US, that animus is now also directed personally towards Trump. He not only tore up the painfully negotiated nuclear deal in 2018, but he sanctioned the assassination of the military leader Qassem Suleimani and twice involved Iran in negotiations on its nuclear programme only to launch wars against it. He shows no remorse for the killing of the country’s supreme leader, or for the attempt on the life of Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Alexander Ward at WSJ:

For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.

But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.

This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed. Trump has repeatedly threatened—and then backed away from—a massive escalation of its bombing campaign. But the recent chaos in negotiations signaled Tehran is prepared for a long and grinding conflict.

“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”

 

Republlicans and Muslims

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. For more than a decade now, Trump has appealed to bigotry against Muslims.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in Michigan gave a double-digit victory to a congressional candidate who had dropped out of the race, choosing him over Amir Hassan, a President Donald Trump-backed former Muslim with an identifiably Arabic name.

On Wednesday, some people attending a Trump speech in Las Vegas booed the mention of another Arabic-sounding name before GOP Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo urged them to stop. Austin Abdelnabi was a police officer recently killed in the line of duty, and his brother once worked at the White House.

Either of these episodes could be dismissed as coincidences — as one-offs that say little about much of anything.

But it would seem little coincidence that they happened as Republicans this week launched an overtly Islamophobic campaign against the new Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.

But some good news from Ben Kasimar at NBC:

Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has lost his Republican primary, NBC News projects, falling to a former state official in a primary season that has seen an unusually high number of incumbents lose renomination.

Charlie Hatcher, the former state agricultural commissioner, rode support from prominent establishment Republicans to a victory over Ogles, a controversial congressman backed by President Donald Trump. He is a heavy favorite in the general election in the deep-red district.

Ogles was outraised and outspent on the airwaves, largely because of a massive ad effort from a pro-clean energy group — a last-minute campaign Ogles criticized in an interview with Fox News.

While Ogles had arguably the most important endorsement in a GOP primary in Trump’s, Hatcher had backing from Gov. Bill Lee, former Gov. Bill Haslam and other prominent Republicans, like former Trump Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Ogles has faced various controversies over the years. He said this year that Muslims don’t belong in American society, deleted a homophobic social media post after having blamed a staffer and argued last year that the federal government should revoke future New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship and deport him.

Trump and Money Laundering

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. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to enlarge his political empire.

William Marx at NPR:

Capital One bank has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit from the Trump Organization over the closure of hundreds of bank accounts back in 2021, arguing in new papers that the shutdowns were the product of a monthslong anti-money-laundering review — not retaliation for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as the Trump family businesses have claimed.

In a motion to dismiss the case filed Friday in a Florida federal court, Capital One's lawyers wrote that the bank's own filings and the Trump businesses' allegations "make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs' accounts for anti-money laundering ('AML') reasons."

The bank said the decision followed "months of analysis and a careful review" by its financial-crimes team, which it said was staffed by employees with "decades of law enforcement experience." But the filings suggest the Trump Organization and affiliated entities were given no opportunity to address any money-laundering or compliance concerns before the accounts' closures.

It's unclear if subsequent banks for the Trump Organization have ever raised money laundering concerns, or what steps the organization took in response to Capital One's allegations. The Trump Organization didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fight is one of several lawsuits Trump-aligned entities have brought against major banks since Trump returned to the White House.

Trump's Massive Shakedown

 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. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to enlarge his political empire.

Josh Dawsey, Dana Mattioli, Annie Linskey and  Emily Glazer at WSJ:

Almost every night in the White House, President Trump calls his fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, for an update.

Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much. He often asks her to make much larger financial requests than she was planning—for some donors the ask is $5 million, for others it is $50 million. And the president gives her names to call, often including people who have recently met with him, according to people with knowledge of the calls.

“This is very important to the president. He’s asked me to call you and ask you for this donation,” O’Rourke has relayed on phone calls with companies, persistently following up with them. In some calls, she has referred to Trump as the boss, saying “the boss wants this money.” In turn, Trump has called her the “princess of darkness” because she is such a “killer” with donors, according to people who have heard his comments.

SoftBank donated $50 million toward Trump’s presidential library. Apple cut a check for around $25 million toward his White House ballroom project, while Microsoft gave around $10 million and Amazon chipped in around $5 million, according to people familiar with the contributions. Meta Platforms recently gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, people familiar said, on top of a multimillion donation to the ballroom and a prior $22 million payment to the planned presidential library.

Trump stands out for taking personal control of the fundraising, and no sitting American president has ever raised these amounts for his pet projects. At the same time, companies have paid new attention to the White House as Trump has gotten involved in regulatory decisions that once were made by independent agencies, dramatically shifting the balance of power across Washington.

Trump has been demanding large checks from companies for a range of political and legacy projects—telling executives and lobbyists that their companies should give $25 million or $50 million. He has sometimes offered donors special access.

No laws prohibit presidents from raising unlimited sums of money for nonprofits, like the ones used for the ballroom and his presidential library, his super PAC or political issue committees. For most of these types of transactions, public disclosure of donors isn’t required and reporting on spending is infrequent.

All told, the second-term president has raised more than $800 million since returning to office, according to an updated Wall Street Journal analysis.