Trump Clout in IN Primrary, Bad Sign for GOP in Michigan

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

Susan Page at USA TODAY:

He's still the boss.

President Donald Trump is beset by rising gas prices, falling approval ratings and an unpopular war in Iran. But in the Indiana primary May 5 he demonstrated his continued grip on the Republican Party by delivering a thumping to a half-dozen state senators who defied his demands to redraw congressional lines.

Of seven GOP senators who earned his ire, five lost their party's nominations to challengers the president had endorsed, with one race still too close to call.

It was an unlikely test, and an expensive one, in contests that typically attract little attention.

"Trump is perhaps not as popular in my district as he once was," Spencer Deery, one of the incumbent senators, told CNN while the votes were being counted, "but he is still overwhelmingly popular."

Patrick Svitek at CNN:

Michigan Democrats on Tuesday won a special election for a state Senate seat in another party over-performance after the district was almost evenly divided in the last presidential election.

Democratic firefighter Chedrick Greene defeated GOP lawyer Jason Tunney for a seat to determine whether Democrats would retain control of the state Senate. With an estimated 93% of votes in, Greene led Tunney by 19 points.

 

Jack Smith Testimony

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

On New Year's Eve, the GOP majority on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of special counsel Jack Smith's December 17 testimony.

For nearly three decades I have been a career prosecutor. I have served during both Republican and Democratic administrations and I've been guided by those principles in every role I've held. I continued to honor those principles when I was appointed to serve 7 as special counsel in November of 2022. 

The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump  engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.

Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President  Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. 

I remain grateful for the counsel, judgment, and advice of my team as I executed my responsibilities. I am both saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for doing their jobs  and for having worked on those cases. These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs.

I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump's political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election. We took our actions based on the facts and the law, the very lessons I learned early in my career  as a prosecutor. We followed Justice Department policies and observed legal requirements.

The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our  confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.

Recent narratives about my team's work are false and misleading, including stories about our collection of toll records.  Toll records were sought for historical telephone routing information, collected after calls had taken place, identifying the incoming and outgoing call numbers, the time of the  calls and their duration. Toll records do not include the content of calls. Those records  were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation.

January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to  assaulting police that day.  Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of  Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification  of the 2020 election. 

I did not choose those Members, President Trump did. 

 

Trump Doing Unpopular Things

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.  Americans are noticing.

PRRI:

A new national survey released today by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution reveals Americans’ responses to the unprecedented actions taken so far by President Donald Trump during his second presidential term. The survey — the 16th annual American Values Survey — also examines Americans’ concerns about the economy and how democracy is working, what it means to be “truly American,” and opposition to building internment camps for undocumented immigrants and allowing ICE agents to mask their identity.

Majorities of Americans say that the Trump administration cuts in federal funding for health care (60%) and universities and research institutions (55%), the implementation of new tariffs (54%), and the increase in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (52%) have gone too far. Across all areas, independents hold views more aligned with Democrats. For example, most Democrats (90%) and independents (67%) say that cuts in federal funding for programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act have gone too far, compared with only 25% of Republicans

Sarah Fortinsky at The Hill:

A majority of Americans said in a new poll they disapprove of President Trump’s plans to demolish part of the East Wing in the White House to make room for his $250 million ballroom.

In the YouGov America poll, released on Wednesday, 53 percent of Americans said they strongly or somewhat disapprove “of the decision to demolish part of the East Wing of the White House as part of the renovations,” while 24 percent approved and 24 percent said they are unsure.

Jason Lange at Reuters:

More than half of Americans, including about three in 10 Republicans, believe President Donald Trump is using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll that also found growing concern about U.S. political divisions nine months into his second term in office.

Some 55% of poll respondents in the six-day poll, which closed on Monday, agreed with a statement that the Republican president is using law enforcement to target his enemies, while 26% disagreed and the rest were unsure or did not respond. Some 85% of the poll respondents who identified themselves as Democrats agreed, as did 29% of the Republican poll takers.

 

Vindictive Prosecutions

 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.

Josh Dawsey, Sadie Gurman and Aruna Viswanatha at WSJ:

In his second term, President Trump has taken control of the Justice Department in ways he could have only dreamed of during his first.

Then, he publicly railed against senior department officials but largely heeded the counsel of aides who urged him to trust the legal process. This term, all it took was one errant post to get what he wanted.

On Sept. 20, Trump meant to send a private message to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging her to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and his other favored targets, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote.

Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly, addressing it to “Pam,” and was surprised to learn it was public, the officials said. Bondi grew upset and called White House aides and Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a “GREAT job.”

The misfire provided a window into how, through command and chaos, Trump has executed a wholesale transformation of the Justice Department.

NYT:

A prosecutor handpicked by President Trump secured an indictment of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, on bank fraud and false statement charges in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday after the president publicly demanded she be charged.

The five-page indictment accused Ms. James of falsely claiming in loan documents that she would use a home she purchased in Norfolk, Va., as a secondary residence, and using it instead as a rental investment property, allowing her to receive favorable terms that would save her close to $19,000.

The charges, coming two weeks after the Trump-directed indictment of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, deepened the president’s intervention in the justice system, casting away longstanding democratic norms as he seeks retribution on his political enemies.

 

Crooked and Vengeful

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

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

President Trump’s handpicked federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia is racing to present a case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to a grand jury before a deadline early next week, according to officials familiar with the situation.

Lindsey Halligan, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who was hastily appointed after the president forced out her predecessor last week, is rushing to draft an indictment under withering pressure from the White House. The president has demanded the department go after one of his foremost enemies, even though career prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey.

Prosecutors have been looking into whether Mr. Comey should be charged with lying to Congress in connection to the F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, which the president claims was a witch hunt aimed at destroying him.

Ms. Halligan, who had no experience as a prosecutor before her recent appointment, could seek to bring charges as early as Thursday, but is expected to take action by Tuesday, when the statute of limitations on Mr. Comey’s congressional testimony expires, according to officials who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The latest on Cash Homan:

Fola Akinnibi, Rachel Adams-Heard, and Sophie Alexander at Bloomberg:

Earlier this year, as a surge in arrests pushed immigration detention centers across the US to their limits, the Trump administration wanted more jail space. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was leading the way on a $45 billion project to detain more immigrants than ever, but the effort was stalling.

White House border czar Tom Homan, who’d said he was picked to run the biggest deportation operation in US history, helped keep the process going — working to move immigration detention contracts through the Department of Defense.

But Homan wasn't supposed to be involved in contracting at all. Former consulting clients of the border czar were seeking lucrative detention-related work that the administration’s agenda promised. And federal regulations advise those who’ve recently consulted for companies competing for government business not to involve themselves in the contracting process. To quell any concerns, Homan said in December he would recuse himself from anything having to do with government contracts.

In June, it became clear that wasn’t the case. According to a detailed account of a Defense Department meeting that month, a Navy official noted Homan’s participation in a military contracting process, saying the border czar had been “briefed by industry,” government parlance for meeting with private companies seeking contracts. Homan was then expected to discuss the matter with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to the account.

Retribution

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. “We are all afraid,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said this spring. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

 This morning, the FBI raided John Bolton's home, purportedly in search of classified documents.

Less than two weeks ago on @ThisWeekABC. I asked @AmbJohnBolton if he was worried about Trump’s vow to get retribution:

KARL: So I -- before you go, we're about to talk about Trump's retribution campaign we're seeing at the FBI and the Justice Department. You're obviously on his…

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) August 22, 2025

Less than two weeks ago on @ThisWeekABC. I asked @AmbJohnBolton if he was worried about Trump’s vow to get retribution:

KARL: So I -- before you go, we're about to talk about Trump's retribution campaign we're seeing at the FBI and the Justice Department. You're obviously on his…

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) August 22, 2025

Retribution, May 2025

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. “We are all afraid,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said last month. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

Adam Wren at Politico:

DHS targets Harvard: The Trump administration is revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, NYT’s Michael Schmidt and Michael Bender scooped, which would potentially force a quarter of the student body to either transfer to another school or risk losing their legal status. Jason Newton, a spokesperson for the university, said the action was unlawful. Harvard plans to sue.

The pretense: The decision stems from an investigation by DHS, which alleges that the university “created a hostile learning environment for Jewish students,” and comes after weeks of haggling between the agency and the university. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”

Critics blasted the move: Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), a Harvard alum who has been critical of his own alma mater at times, said the administration “is acting just like the most unhinged of the anti-Israel campus protestors last year –– performative, irrational and cruel.”

FTC targets Media Matters: The Federal Trade Commission is demanding documents from liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America “about possible coordination with other media watchdogs accused by Elon Musk of helping orchestrate advertiser boycotts of X,” Reuters’ Jody Godoy and Mike Scarcella scooped.

The pretense: “FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to run the agency, highlighted the potential for a probe in December. ‘We must prosecute any unlawful collusion between online platforms, and confront advertiser boycotts which threaten competition among those platforms,’ Ferguson said in a statement on an unrelated case.” (Notably, this comes as the FTC drops its case against the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger and a Pepsi price discrimination lawsuit, which is a good sign of its enforcement priorities.)

...

That’s not all, of course … The DOJ is investigating ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform. … The White House is punishing law firms that have represented Trump’s political opponents. … The U.S. attorney in New Jersey has charged Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) for allegedly assaulting law enforcement during a protest outside an ICE facility in Newark. … And Trump or his team have in recent days threatened investigations of New York AG Letitia James, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Bono, Oprah Winfrey, James Comey, “treasonous” aides to Joe Biden, the City of Chicago and the Kennedy Center, as the NYT’s Peter Baker noted.

"Retaliation Is Real"

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

 Zachariah Hughes at Anchorage Daily News:

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a room full of Alaska nonprofit leaders that the tumult of tariffs, executive orders, court battles, and cuts to federal services under the Trump administration are exceptionally concerning.

“We are all afraid,” Murkowski said, taking a long pause. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

...

“It’s called the checks and balances. And right, now we are not balancing as the Congress,” Murkowski said.

She expressed alarm at how the judiciary was increasingly being treated as a partisan entity, saying it was putting America in “a very dangerous place, because you stop believing in the rule of law.” And she called on Alaskans to “be affirmative” in protesting on behalf of programs they want to remain in place so that elected leaders are kept aware of where support and frustration exist among constituents.

“I think it’s important the concerns continue to be raised rather than letting the fatigue of the chaos grind you down,” Murkowski said.

Jade Walker at CNN:

Defy President Donald Trump and retribution will be swift. That’s the message the White House is sending to Harvard University after the school refused to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies, audit the viewpoints of students, faculty and staff and alter rules for on-campus protests. In response, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants at Harvard. The IRS is reportedly making plans to rescind the university's tax-exempt status. The Department of Homeland Security canceled two federal grants worth $2.7 million and threatened to strip Harvard of its ability to enroll international students unless it turns over its disciplinary records. And Trump trashed the school in a rant on his Truth Social site. As the university grapples with the sudden loss of funding, Harvard researchers are scrambling to figure out what to do about studies that are already in progress. Yet even as each school weighs having to cut budgets and staff, nearly 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging the university to resist the Trump administration’s demands.