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So, Republicans: what’s the plan for Tommy Tuberville? The question may puzzle you. To use the GOP standard-bearer’s preferred metaphor, your team has what seems to be a 35-point lead with time winding down. Your quarterback can hand the ball off and manage the clock until time expires. But that guy under center is throwing deep and getting picked off. And he’s keeping the opponents in the game. Let’s go back to last Tuesday. Tuberville spoke with CNN, who asked him whether high gas prices — $4.09 a gallon in Alabama as of Saturday , up from $2.79 last year — hurt his constituents. There was a simple answer to this question: Yes. Tuberville opted for a convoluted one. He said that gas prices “go up and down” and agreed with a statement that Alabamians were willing to pay higher prices at the pump because of the state’s prior support for Donald Trump. Tuberville also took the floor on Tuesday to deliver a nearly 20-minute speech attacking transgender Americans. There was the usual...
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Focus group sums up Trump voters' feelings in one word

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From his waging of the unpopular Iran war to his enthusiastic support for data centers to ongoing rising prices that he has failed to lower, President Donald Trump keeps staking out positions on issues in ways that alienate him from his own supporters. Now a focus group demonstrates the impact of all these controversies on Trump's staunchest supporters: They're depressed. "The overwhelming vibe among Trump voters in our focus groups is depression," posted The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell on Monday . "Trump isn’t doing what he said he would! And depressed voters = depressed turnout. It’s not that so many Republicans are going to vote for Democrats, it’s that so many Republicans aren’t going to vote." Longwell has previously discussed how Trump's deeply unpopular presidency is hurting not only himself, but the Republican Party. Earlier in September , she described how Trump is rapidly approaching the "Bush line," or the moment statistically w...
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'Like the guy screaming by the freeway': Experts aren't buying Trump’s power

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"Treat the president the same as the guy screaming by the freeway exit." When Justin Levitt uttered that sentence in our interview, I felt a mixture of fear and relief. The fear stems from the fact that, unlike the guy screaming by the freeway exit, President Donald Trump has immense power. With that power, Trump has terrorized immigrants, persecuted transgender people, laid off thousands of hard-working federal employees, gutted the nation's once-superior scientific establishment, poisoned our natural environment and destroyed our longstanding international relationships. While doing these things, he has transformed the Republican Party into a political cult of personality, one in which members are literally told to pledge allegiance to him , and enriched himself to the tune of roughly $2 billion. Yet the "guy screaming by the freeway exit" analogy can also inspire relief. Levitt — a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who served under Presidents...
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Data uncovers a stark reality: Donald Trump’s base is fundamentally split

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Today, with just over five weeks to go before the midterm elections, I want to point out a critical distinction that’s not being picked up in the media — between people who voted for Trump in 2024 but do not identify as part of the MAGA movement and people who voted for Trump in 2024 and still do identify themselves as part of the MAGA movement. According to data from sources like the Economist /YouGov Poll , roughly 53 percent of Republican voters describe themselves as “MAGA Republicans” or consider themselves part of the MAGA movement. That leaves a considerable number of non-MAGA Republican voters. How do these two groups of Republican voters line up on the central issue of affordability? A recent Politico poll showed that just 28 percent of voters who describe themselves as being part of the MAGA movement say expenses have become less affordable since Trump took office. These MAGA voters are far more likely to say the economy has gotten better since Trump took office. On the ot...
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Trump ignoring huge 'time bomb' after he raged about it a decade ago

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President Donald Trump once warned against a huge "time bomb" facing the country while he raged on the 2016 campaign trail, but according to a new piece from The Hill , he now seems content to completely ignore it . Writing for the outlet on Sunday, legal scholar David Wippman and historian Glenn C. Altschuler noted that Republicans have been fussing about the national debt for decades , harkening back to warnings from Ronald Reagan in 1981 when it surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. They also noted that Trump himself said that the U.S. was "sitting on a time bomb" of debt when he first ran for president, pledging that he would eliminate it within eight years. As he reaches the halfway point of his second term a decade later, he has come nowhere close to that lofty promise, with the debt hitting the $ 40 trillion milestone last month . In fact, Wippman and Altschuler explained, he is doing considerable work to worsen the debt severely. "Since January 202...
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Collapse: Grim conservative media trend proves Trump is losing his grip

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I feel optimistic about the midterm elections, just over five weeks away. But my stomach aches when I think of what’s at stake. Call me nauseously optimistic. I suspect you’re in a similar place. If it were only the polls, I’d feel reasonably good. Here’s one that stuck out for me: The share of Republicans who say the economy is better than a year ago has collapsed from over 70 percent in January to 29 percent in September, according to last week’s New York Times /Siena poll . Here’s another: According to a Wall Street Journal poll , just 37 percent of Americans approve of the job that Trump is doing — the lowest approval rating of any president heading into a midterm election in Journal polls dating to 1990. Another good sign: Because of Trump’s unpopular war, his dreaded tariffs, and their effect on prices, Republicans in tight races are starting to tiptoe away from Trump. In recent days, Maine Senator Susan Collins and Kansas Senator Roger Marshall have distanced themselves from...
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Biographer: Foreign dictators play Trump 'like A fiddle' exploiting weakness

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Biographer Michael Wolff walked through the knots the White House staff must untangle as they try to get President Donald Trump to focus on tangible outcomes in meetings with foreign leaders. Over the past week, Trump welcomed China's leader, Xi Jinping , and it appeared their activities were centered around the president showing off his construction, his military and what appeared to be his first trip to the National Archives as president. Meanwhile, the visit from Xi was said to be a "summit," which would focus on trade, avoiding a crisis with Taiwan, discussions over minerals, market access, guardrails for artificial intelligence and arms control. Trump’s approach to meeting foreign leaders puts his aversion to detailed briefings on full display at a time of high-stakes diplomacy. It's a "difficult moment for a president" who must hold a lot of information in their brain about customs and gestures all while remembering the specifics about policy and in...
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