When DOGE began cutting up government entities in 2025, among the most severely affected was the Education Department’s little-known National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Now, more than a year later, experts say the gutting of this center has made it very hard to keep track of the nation’s education goals.

What does NCES do?

The NCES is the federal body “responsible for collecting, analyzing and reporting data on the condition of U.S. education — from early childhood to adult education — to help improve student outcomes,” said the agency’s website. It produces reports via “direct student assessments, longitudinal studies, international surveys, postsecondary institutions, adult surveys and synthesizing data from federal sources.”

The agency has been significantly hampered by federal cuts from the Trump administration. As part of nearly $900 million in cuts to the Department of Education last year, NCES’ work was “abruptly terminated and its headcount dropped” massively, said The Guardian. Prior to the funding slashes, NCES had about 100 staffers; it currently has just 12, according to a government directory. This has “hamstrung the historically under-resourced agency’s ability to collect and report on a range of data on K-12 and college students.”

What will NCES do now?

The American Statistical Association put together a report on how the situation at NCES could be improved. More streamlined data collection would allow NCES to “much more readily modernize how it meets its responsibility to report on the condition and progress of education,” said the report. NCES should also be “ensuring that data is handled safely and ethically and is more useful to state and local practitioners,” said Education Week.

It would be beneficial for NCES to “become a more modern, data-centric partner to states” instead of returning to the “structure it had before it was largely dismantled” and relying on the methods it used before being gutted, said StateScoop. “What is lacking is national comparability,” said Shelly Martinez, an independent statistical consultant who worked on the report, to the outlet. “I think there is an interest and an understanding that there’s federal data that could really enhance those analyses and that evidence is building.”

President Donald Trump has dominated the GOP for a decade. But that hold may be slipping, as Republicans prepare for an anticipated “blue wave” in the midterm elections driven by his unpopularity. Conservative candidates are starting to break with Trump, and the right’s pundits are rooting them on.

‘Trumpism is exhausted’

Trump has “become a real liability” for GOP candidates, said The Boston Globe. Senate candidates Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Mike Rogers of Michigan called for an end to the war with Iran, as did incumbent Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio. (Husted voted Thursday against a measure to withdraw troops, however.) The break “isn’t about just one issue,” either. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) last week criticized the president’s immigration policy, while Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) called for an investigation into the Russian oligarch who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding reception. There may be nothing “stopping a full-on revolt” against Trump’s brand.

MAGA acolytes could once argue that Trump’s agenda is “what Americans voted for in 2024,” Jim Geraghty said at The Washington Post. But polls now suggest that the electorate is “sick and tired of this version of Trump” and that “Trumpism is exhausted.” The mood was especially apparent in Vice President JD Vance’s recent plea to voters to “give us another chance.” That is not a “particularly inspiring rallying cry,” Geraghty said. Republicans have to decide if they still want to be the party of tariffs, enmity toward Canada and mass deportations to remove every “agricultural worker, hotel maid and restaurant busboy.” Vance, if he wants to save his own ambitions, will need to lead the way. “The clock is ticking.”

The GOP under Trump has “blown one of the great opportunities in political history,” Gerard Baker said at The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s election in 2024 was a “real chance to establish a new governing order” favorable to conservatives, and the president could have succeeded by controlling the border, reining in prices and keeping the U.S. out of “costly, ineffective” foreign wars. Trump instead has “widened the deficit,” levied tariffs and set off on a “reckless military adventure” that is damaging the U.S. economy. All due to “hubris, vanity, recklessness” and the GOP’s “abdication of accountability.”

‘Wide open’ GOP future

Polling shows that Trump is “slipping significantly with his own party,” pollster G. Elliott Morris said at Strength in Numbers. His approval rating with Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters remains high at 71%. But that is still an “11-point drop and the lowest we have recorded.” Those GOP defections have helped drive the president’s overall voter approval ratings to new lows.

This could be the beginning of a longer process for the Republican Party. The GOP candidates breaking with one or two Trump policies today “might be repudiating parts of his legacy tomorrow,” Andrew Prokop said at Vox. If Republicans truly start to believe that Trump is a “failure,” then a full-on reassessment could occur. The party’s future “will be wide open.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Thursday defended a campaign-style ad airing on Fox News and Newsmax that features President Donald Trump and says it was “paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House “did not say what agency paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning ‘love me’ over and over,” The Associated Press said. But in a statement, it called the ad a “public service announcement” aimed at “reminding Americans to love their country.”

Who said what

“Together we will defeat communism,” and “America will never be a communist country,” Trump says in the 30-second ad as his campaign slogans flash in the background. There are “several restrictions on how public funds can be used for PSAs,” including an annually renewed “ban on using funds for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes,’” ABC News said. The ad first ran Wednesday night, as Trump “welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, with a red carpet,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) on Thursday sent White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a letter demanding details about the ad, including how much it cost and what agency was involved. JMSN, who wrote and recorded “Love Me,” said he “did not authorize” its use and was “looking for a lawyer.”

‘I liked the idea of unions. Then I joined one at Starbucks.’

Joe Emmenegger at USA Today

“Liking the idea of unions — and actually wanting to be a part of one — are two very different things,” says Joe Emmenegger. Workers “often join unions that make big promises about improving working conditions but ultimately fail to deliver,” and “that was unfortunately my experience with Starbucks Workers United.” It “was the pervasive secrecy surrounding the union that struck me,” and “getting rid of a union is not easy, regardless of how detrimental it may be.”

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‘Some Republicans don’t want Indian American votes’

Sadanand Dhume at The Wall Street Journal

The “multiracial coalition that helped Donald Trump win the presidency in 2024 is unraveling,” says Sadanand Dhume. A “portion of the MAGA base appears to be increasingly hostile to ethnic and religious minorities, including the small but prosperous Indian American community.” Instead of “bringing new voters into the tent, a section of the party base appears intent on driving them away,” and “Indian American Trump supporters aren’t the only minority voters apparently feeling buyer’s remorse.”

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‘The hidden toll on Black doctors: We are saving lives but losing our own.’

John H. Stewart IV at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

There is a “truth medicine doesn’t talk about enough: Black doctors are getting sick too,” says John H. Stewart IV. A 2025 study “revealed that Black physicians die at more than twice the rate of white physicians.” The “very people trained to save lives are losing their own far too soon,” as “Black doctors are not exempt from the same inequities we work so hard to treat in others.” This “isn’t just a professional concern; it’s a public health crisis.”

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‘A “fight worth fighting”: Paramount settlement is less than desired, more than nothing’

Anita Chabria at the Los Angeles Times

Did “California come out a winner when Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta settled a multistate lawsuit against Paramount Skydance on Monday, allowing its $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery to move forward”? says Anita Chabria. Whether “California won is the wrong question,” as “there was always something bigger at play here.” The “question the lawsuit asked is, ‘do we live in an America where government institutions are so broken that power makes its own rules?’”

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The Democrats made a very wise decision this spring, said Lauren Egan on The Bulwark. They were considering whether to host their own midterm convention to steal attention from the one staged by the Republicans in Dallas.

In the end, they opted not to, because they were short on cash and thought it might be “strategically smart to cede the stage to Donald Trump in hopes that he would dig his own political grave”. Boy, did that pay off.

Trump, who has already alienated voters this summer by talking about how great data centres are and how he loves inflation, was on unhinged form in the two-day conference. He boasted that America “controls the Trump Strait”; he demanded that the audience join him in a pledge (“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States...”); he even promised every American a $5,000 bounty if his party wins the midterm elections.

Democrat insiders have long joked that Trump is trying to lose November’s midterms, but some are now seriously wondering whether he has lost his grip on reality.

An ‘incredibly risky’ bet

Republican candidates contesting swing seats in November certainly regard him as a liability, said Ayman Mohyeldin on MS Now. Many of them stayed well away from Dallas, wary of association with a president whose approval rating is down to below 35%. The Republican Party has nevertheless decided that, despite everything, it’s worth making Trump the face of the midterms, because of his unrivalled ability to drive Republican voters to the polls.

It’s an “incredibly risky” bet, said Kimberley A. Strassel in The Wall Street Journal. The Maga base is already “fired up”. It’s among the larger category of traditional Republicans that the GOP has a turnout problem. They need to inspire these people to vote by offering a coherent agenda.

There’s little evidence of that, said The Washington Post. Trump’s wild proposal to pay $5,000 to every adult citizen if the GOP retains control of Congress in November beggared belief. It’s a “desperate gimmick” that betrays a total lack of seriousness about America’s fiscal situation. It would cost more than $1.2 trillion, in a country already saddled with $40 trillion in debt.

The Democrats are in no position to accuse Trump of trying to “trade votes for cash”, said Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review. It’s what they do in every election, albeit in more disguised ways. But this bribe is still a terrible idea, not least because it would stoke inflation. Trump says he’s defending America from the socialists, but if his populism means throwing money at voters, “what need is there of socialism at all”?

Another Trump ‘con’

Trump’s cheques will never arrive, said Steve Benen on MS Now. Congress wouldn’t approve the move, the courts would object, and the money’s not there in any case. It’s just another Trump “con”. He pulled the same trick before the 2018 midterms, when he claimed that he and Congress were preparing a new, “very major” tax cut that would exclusively benefit the middle class. Even White House officials were “mystified” by this declaration, which had no basis in reality.

It’s bad enough that Trump spouts nonsense, said Eric Boehm in Reason Magazine. Worse was the sight of his VP, J.D. Vance, defending the bribe plan and insisting it could be funded through tariffs. Vance is supposed to be the heir apparent to Trump – “the guy with the political and policy chops” to redefine this populist movement for the next generation. Yet he has no problem with the concept of bribing Americans with their own money? “Trumpism is out of ideas, and soon it is likely to be out of power – no matter what ridiculous promises the president makes along the way.”

President Donald Trump last week promised to send $5,000 checks to Americans if Republicans win the midterm elections. But he is seemingly intent on making the election a referendum on his increasingly unpopular presidency, doubling down on policies — data centers, tariffs, war with Iran — disfavored by voters. That leads some observers to wonder if he really cares about GOP victories in November.

What did the commentators say?

Trump is “not spending a ton of his mind share on the races,” White House reporter Maggie Haberman said to The New York Times. The president believes GOP candidates “should be doing more to defend what he sees as his many accomplishments,” and he is committing the bulk of his time to “legacy projects” like the “triumphal arch, the ballroom on the White House complex, his goldification of the Oval Office” instead of policy and governance.

Trump has reportedly told advisers that he is “proud” that Republican candidates “don’t do as well when he’s not on the ballot,” said Haberman. His administration’s efforts to exert control over the elections process, however, remains a “significant X-factor” in the midterm election outcome.

House and Senate candidates usually try to “detach themselves from the national brand” when their party’s president is down in the polls, Jonathan Chait said at The Atlantic. Trump is making that “impossible,” launching a national ad campaign “focused on himself” and holding last week’s GOP convention highlighting the “synonymity of the party and its leader” to voters. The president “probably” cares about the midterms outcome “but not enough to permit Republicans to acknowledge his lack of popularity.” All of this makes sense if it is understood that “Trump’s interest in politics is purely egocentric.” But it leaves Republican candidates in a tough spot.

The president’s ideological allies are also perplexed. Trump “often sounds as if he’s campaigning against the Republican Senate,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. GOP seats in “at least six races are in serious jeopardy,” and even traditional red states like Kansas and Nebraska are looking shaky for Republicans. But Trump has made it difficult for his party by launching a “tariff brawl” with Canada and working to oust GOP incumbents like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. If Republicans lose their majority in the Senate, Trump will be the “main reason” why.

What next?

The president is “signaling that he might not accept the outcome” if Republicans lose in November, Bruce Stokes said at Chatham House. A Democratic win in the House or Senate would likely lead to two years of investigations into Trump’s “corporate donors and alleged ‘pay-to-play’ arrangements, and investments by foreign sovereign wealth funds in Trump family-linked businesses.” That provides a “powerful incentive” for Trump to “undermine the outcome of the election.” American democracy “may never be quite the same again” if the president tries once again to reject an election loss.

It has been more than six months since the first barrage of American missiles struck Iranian targets in what has become the defining foreign policy crisis of the second Trump administration. Less defining, however, is the language the White House has used to describe what is taking place between the United States and Islamic Republic.

While President Donald Trump himself often refers to the violence in bombastic terms, other members of his administration have conspicuously avoided calling the ongoing exchanges of missiles part of a larger “war.” Instead, they opt to downplay the conflict’s duration and severity for domestic audiences.

‘It’s small potatoes for us’

Vice President JD Vance argued this month that the “current hostilities shouldn’t even be called a ‘war’” since “‘active combat operations’ ended months ago,” said CNN. Vance’s claim came “despite three consecutive days” in which the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire. “I can understand what he’s saying,” said Trump during an Oval Office press scrum following Vance’s comments. “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”

From the start of the war, Americans have been “getting conflicting messages from the Trump administration and congressional leaders” about what to call the violence, said FactCheck in March. Given that Congress hasn’t officially declared it as such, “if political leaders were to say that this is a war, they would also be acknowledging that the administration’s actions were unconstitutional,” said Stephanie Savell, the director of Brown University’s Costs of War project, to the outlet.

“Because we haven’t officially declared war, my kids and I aren’t eligible for some benefits,” said Air Force widow Libby Klinner in a recent social media post highlighting the paradox of a nonwar war, per the Military Times. Air Force officials have since launched an “audit on our benefits to ensure that we receive all we are entitled to,” said Klinner in a subsequent message.

White House officials have “downplayed the scale of the conflict” in the “apparent hope that it will recede from the headlines” since hostilities have “already lasted far longer than the president’s initial predictions of victory within a few weeks,” said The Atlantic. Still, with “no end to the hostilities in sight,” the Navy is “staying on a war footing indefinitely.”

‘Just playing to his base’

Trump has “contradicted himself and his own Cabinet in the same week — and sometimes, the same day” in his assessments of the conflict, said the Los Angeles Times. The evolving language is part of an effort to “control the narrative of the Iran war.”

Trump’s more bellicose rhetoric, like when he personally and repeatedly refers to the Iran “war,” is being used in part to “save face for the quagmire he has put himself and Republicans in” ahead of the midterms, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to The New York Times. The president’s wartime language is “just playing to his base, whether it’s true or not.” It lacks “much of a strategy beyond trying to wish things into existence by sheer force of words.”

What happened

President Donald Trump capped off the first night of an unusual Republican midterm convention on Wednesday with a movie-length speech in which he defended his Iran war and tariffs while also saying he would send all U.S. adults a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans retain both houses of Congress in the November elections. “Please pretend that I am running,” he told the partially full arena in Dallas. Trump was preceded by a string of Republican candidates and Cabinet members, many of whom attacked Democrats as “communists,” and a surprise video appearance by Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

Who said what

Trump “reveled in making the upcoming elections all about himself,” The Associated Press said. But his “financially and politically implausible” dividend pledge reflects his “apparent calculation that he needs bold moves to revive Republicans’ chances” amid “his low approval ratings.” The payouts would cost about $1.2 trillion, Politico said, which “would dwarf the amount distributed during the Covid pandemic and likely explode the deficit” and “worsen inflation.”

Trump’s “DOGE divided” and tariff rebate checks “never panned out,” The New York Times said. And “there’s reason to think that Republicans in Congress, like they did with his two previous promises of quick cash, could shrug off the president’s suggestion.” The “Trump dividend” is a “last-ditch bid to prevent an electoral shellacking,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the GOP’s “all-Trump-all-the-time strategy” could also “drive away independent voters.”

What next?

Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to give Thursday’s keynote address, but Trump is closing out the convention’s second and final night.

This week’s midterm GOP convention in Dallas will be a “rally like none other” and a “truly Historic Event,” President Donald Trump said on Truth Social in June when he first announced his unexpected plans for an off-season conservative confab. Despite Trump’s enthusiasm, not everyone in the GOP is making the trek to Texas — especially during a brutal campaign cycle that has pushed many battleground Republicans into an electoral crouch.

What did the commentators say?

Republicans are “privately questioning” whether Trump’s midterm convention “strikes the right tone amid the electorate’s tightening budgets,” all while “diverting candidates from their districts just weeks out from Election Day,” said CNN. The “overarching fear,” though, is that an event “once dubbed ‘Trumpapalooza’” will end up being “far more about promoting the president than the candidates who are actually on the ballot.”

Republicans are staring down a “bleak political environment” in which Trump’s approval is at a “record low,” said The New York Times. GOP candidates in battleground races may therefore be “keeping their distance” from Trump’s Dallas rally, “choosing to stay home and campaign instead.” Republicans face “growing hesitation” about associating themselves with the “polarizing president so close to the election,” said Politico. “More than 70 GOP candidates and members” polled by the outlet revealed that “most either do not plan to attend or are still weighing whether to go.”

“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention,” Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who faces a “tough campaign to keep his central Michigan seat,” said to Politico. “But I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing.”

Still, party officials see the convention as their “best opportunity to rally voters behind Trump’s agenda,” said Reuters, even as some “remain skeptical” that the event can “meaningfully shift voter sentiment.” For organizers, the convention is “expected to serve a familiar purpose as a fundraising and networking hub for candidates and donors.” Many will feel “obliged ​to attend” in order to “court donors and raise their profiles through media appearances,” said RNC member Oscar Brock to the outlet.

Although traditionally “major party conventions” orient themselves around a “specific item of business” such as “formally nominating” candidates, the Dallas convention has “no such line items,” said The New Republic. Steep attendance costs reflect that the event has been “billed as a big Republican party” for which House members are asked to pay a “minimum of $25,000 to get in the door with a guest,” with “better packages” fetching “closer to $100,000.” The event also features multiple “corporate sponsors” whose funds are “being dumped into a nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors.”

Given the peculiar funding and “poor planning,” many GOP campaign strategists are “seething” that the convention is “little more than a fundraiser for an unnecessary Trump production,” said Puck. And then “there are the optics” of an event scheduled days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “Imperfect timing, perhaps,” for officials to be “photographed carousing in elephant hats with the party’s wealthy elite.”

Compounding those optics concerns is the convention being scheduled for the “same nights as the first two games of the NFL season,” said CNN. Primetime speakers, presumably the GOP’s heaviest-hitting figures, will be forced to compete with the “most-watched sport in the country.”

What next?

The convention is scheduled to last two days, said Texas Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser to The Hill. “Not two weeks.” The short time frame won’t be “taking away from anything else,” and so long as the event is a “net positive financially” and makes use of the time to “deliver a message,” then “it’s a good thing.”

“Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy,” said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The US is “still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth”, and the president – indulged by a “supine” Congress – still has far-reaching powers. Nevertheless, with more than two years of his second term still to run, Trump looks “thwarted and impotent”.

‘Deranged demands’

History will record that the disastrous war against Iran was a “turning point”. But evidence of his policy failures can be seen all around the world. Canada, citing unreasonable last-minute demands from US negotiators, has promised all-out trade war. The Ukraine conflict is as bloody as ever, despite Trump’s promise to end it. Europe, horrified by his indulgence of Vladimir Putin and his “deranged demands” for Greenland, has turned away. In the Middle East, America’s allies are furious that they’re bearing the brunt of Iran’s attacks. And at home, fuel prices are rising, and electoral disaster is looming: November’s midterms are set to flip the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate too, against the Republicans.

In a matter of months, Trump has “burned through decades of accumulated goodwill” across the democratic world, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. “He has created a sense that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, for it buys its enemies and sells its friends.” Never once has Trump spoken about Putin in the way he talks about Canadians, Danes, South Koreans and other partners.

‘Erratic behaviour’

A couple of years ago, it would have seemed impossible, said The Spectator. Now it’s quite normal for Washington, in its dealings with its allies, to threaten economic coercion, the withdrawal of military support, and even outright annexation. When Russia behaves like this, it is sanctioned. But in the case of the US, we sit back and do nothing.

There are still some who believe that “Trump’s erratic behaviour is part of a cunning plan to discombobulate opponents and get his way”, said Sam Freedman on Substack. The truth, as his lack of success makes clear, is simpler: “this guy is in obvious cognitive decline, ill-informed, and doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

Worse may be to come, said The Economist. Many would be delighted if “a fuming, friendless Mr Trump, so weakened by his own blunders and by plunging approval ratings” were to retreat to the White House to “tinker with plans for his ballroom”. Alas, that is not in his character. He’ll be less a “lame duck”, and more an ageing “silverback gorilla” – lashing out ever more viciously at anyone within his reach. “Now that his dominance is threatened, the world will find him more disruptive than ever.”

The president may not have had his name on the ballot in South Carolina, but Senator Darline Graham’s narrow win over Rep. Ralph Norman in that state’s GOP Senate primary last week was a major victory for Trump himself. By pulling Graham over the electoral line with massive cash infusions, backroom arm-twisting and MAGA vote-whipping, Trump reestablished himself as an electoral force to reckon with, even as his personal unpopularity threatens the GOP’s midterm prospects. But while Trump reaps the benefits of engineering Graham’s victory, some Republicans worry he’s also sown the seeds of future electoral agita.

Win that ‘defied electoral expectations’

Trump “stuck his neck out” on Graham’s behalf, putting his credibility “on the line” in a state that “twice in the last six months has rejected his preferences,” said The New York Times. Not only did Trump visit Myrtle Beach to “rally supporters,” he “personally called high-level state officials” to “compel them to endorse” his candidate of choice.

The MAGA Inc. super PAC associated with the president’s inner circle, which was “notoriously wary to spend on races this cycle,” also spent “nearly $800,000 on phone calls” for the Graham campaign, said the Times. The president’s pitch to voters was essentially to “treat Graham as an extension of himself,” said Politico.

“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” said Trump at his Myrtle Beach rally for Graham. “Just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.”

Graham’s win came “not only” thanks to Trump’s endorsement but also the “fact that he was willing to come down and campaign on her behalf,” said Jordan Ragusa, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, to South Carolina’s The State. As for “whether Trump still has the same clout” he previously enjoyed, “I think the answer is undeniably that he still has it.”

As Trump has “done often” since first being elected president, he “defied electoral expectations,” said the Times. South Carolina voters have “signaled that the party’s political identity, and perhaps its fortunes, remain tightly intertwined” with Trump, even as the GOP “begins to imagine what it might look like” after his presidency.

Clamoring for the ‘Darline treatment’

While Trump may have carried Graham over the line, he “lost a lot of support in South Carolina” in the process, said The New Republic. Attendees “booed and jeered at mentions of the president’s name” during Rep. Ralph Norman’s concession speech to Graham in a sign of “palpable aggravation” over Trump’s “unwanted involvement in the contentious Senate runoff.”

“I never understood why he got in this race,” said Norman in his concession speech. Still, he allowed that it was Trump’s “prerogative” to involve himself and that the president’s “policies are good.”

Adding to some Republicans’ frustrations is Trump has not “yet campaigned as hard” for other conservative candidates “looking to stem their party’s expected losses in the midterms,” said WPDE. Trump “hasn’t taken a meaningful step” into the states and races “that will matter in a few short months,” said Politico, despite Republicans in those races “clamoring for him to spend his MAGA Inc. money.”

After seeing how Trump helped Graham, “it’s now or never,” said one GOP consultant to Politico regarding other campaigns seeking the “Darline treatment.” With just months to go before polls close, “it’s put up or shut up time, and it’s really time to start to see if he’s going to get serious.” However, it “just doesn’t seem like there’s any sense of urgency” or understanding that “we are down big in some of these states.”

Trump’s “desire for sycophants” has “hollowed out his party and likely hurt his own cause,” said Bloomberg. Had congressional Republicans “pushed back” and “saved him from his worst instincts,” maybe his “policies might be more popular.” Trump must now instead “broaden his coalition” to convince potential voters who “may not be total MAGA loyalists” to “show up for weak candidates like Graham in November.”

With three words, Democratic senator Jon Ossoff unleashed a furious row last week, said Jason Kyle Howard on Salon. Speaking at a campaign event, he declared that Donald Trump was neglecting his presidential duties because he just wanted “to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar”.

The Natalie in question is Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant. Nicknamed Trump’s “human printer”, she’s always at his side – whether in the White House or on Air Force One or the golf course – armed with a portable printer, from which she feeds him favourable coverage and memes. Until now, Harp hasn’t drawn much public attention. But Ossoff’s comment, and the response to it, have changed that.

Fierce loyalty

Ossoff should be ashamed of his “disgustingly sly” insinuation, said Miranda Devine in the New York Post. Harp battled debilitating bone cancer in her 20s that left her in a wheelchair. Her fierce loyalty to Trump stems from the fact that she believes he saved her life by giving patients access to experimental drugs in his first term.

She expressed her gratitude to Trump in an impressive speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, after which he offered her a job in 2022. “Does Ossoff really think a hard-working single professional woman can’t succeed without sleeping with her boss?”

An ‘in-house stalker’

If only Trump and Harp were having an affair, said Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark. Their odd form of co-dependency is somehow worse. Harp has reportedly unnerved other staff by writing intense personal notes to Trump with messages such as “You are all that matters to me,” and “I don’t ever want to let you down.” In one, she thanked him for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life”. Trump, in turn, reportedly told staff, concerning Harp: “All of you will go off and make money … She’ll never leave me.” It’s not healthy that the president is employing “an in-house stalker”.

This isn’t just tittle-tattle, said Rex Huppke in USA Today. Trump backers are presenting Harp as some “innocent bystander”, but she controls a lot of his media diet and helps draft his social media posts. It turns out she worked in the White House for more than a year without the requisite security clearance. Ossoff was right to draw attention to her, because her case deserves scrutiny and “highlights the weirdness endemic to this administration”.

What happened

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Jared Kushner, a top outside adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump, “met privately in recent weeks” and “discussed potential areas of common ground,” The New York Times reported Sunday.

The meeting “shows the depth of Republican Party angst over losing their congressional majority,” The Associated Press said, and White House efforts to “stem any potential political fallout” on Trump if Democrats “wrest majority control” in November.

Who said what

Kushner and Jeffries “discussed housing, immigration and the high cost of living,” the Times said, all issues where compromise “seems remote.” The Trump GOP’s “my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing” has “failed the American people,” Jeffries said Sunday, and the “question is whether Republicans will join us” in “fighting for an affordable America.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “bristled” Sunday when asked about the meeting, the AP said. “I don’t know what that’s about,” but Kushner “hedges his bets” and isn’t “directly involved” in “day-to-day” White House operations, he said on Fox News. “I’m telling you, we’re going to defy history and hold this majority.”

What next?

Trump has “mostly steered around Congress in his second term, trampling its powers and prerogatives” with “little pushback from GOP leaders,” the Times said. “All that is likely to change if Democrats control either chamber,” the AP said.

The “knives are out” for JD Vance, said Natalie Allison in The Washington Post. As he prepares for a likely White House run in 2028, the vice president is facing a growing barrage of attacks from self-declared “Never Vance” Republicans, both online and in the opinion pages. Pro-Israel conservatives, including prominent commentators like Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, have claimed that the populist Vance is “unfit” for the top job because of his reported opposition to the Iran war and for “looking weak” during peace negotiations with Tehran. And columnists in the Rupert Murdoch–owned Wall Street Journal—the voice of traditional conservatism—have slammed Vance for his skepticism of free-market capitalism and for echoing “the anti-Israel left.” Vance’s allies claim the veep is delighted to have earned the enmity of “the pre-Trump GOP establishment,” said Mike Zapler in Axios. But the scale of the hostility shows his coronation as Trump’s successor is no sure thing, and that many in the GOP would prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the nominee in 2028.

The anti-Vance campaign is understandable, said Bret Stephens in The New York Times, because he “is by far the worst person ever” to serve as vice president. Consider his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast: He talked conspiratorially about aliens and claimed without evidence that Jeffrey Epstein may have been a Mossad agent and that Israel is trying to “manipulate” U.S. public opinion to keep the Iran war going. A “callow and sinister opportunist,” Vance likely doesn’t believe this bunk, but he knows the MAGA base will still lap it up. If it’s a choice between Vance and Rubio in ’28, I’ll take Vance, said Ross Douthat, also in the Times. The vice president has at least tried to get the U.S. out of the Iran quagmire, while Rubio has been “a profile in evasion, letting other officials take risks to either own the war or seek a peace while he keeps his options open.”

This fight is not just about Vance, said Kathy Gilsinan in Politico. The more traditional wing of the GOP is increasingly worried about “the rising generation of young staffers in their party,” many of whom seem happy to spout antisemitic and racist rhetoric and have no loyalty to the historical GOP platform. If Vance—who last year dismissed a racist Young Republicans group chat as “edgy jokes”—becomes the GOP’s torchbearer in 2028, it raises the question of whom exactly he’ll welcome into the fold, “and what exactly they’ll do with power once they get it.”

What happened

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) dropped his bid for reelection on Wednesday, two days after the House Ethics Committee recommended he be censured for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct toward two young female staffers.” But Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) reiterated his intention to stay in his race for a third term despite a House ethics investigation launched earlier this week following allegations he abused his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and their 2-year-old daughter.

Two House Republicans in Florida on Wednesday endorsed a primary challenger to Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who is also under investigation by the ethics panel over allegations including domestic violence. Mills and Miller, both endorsed by President Donald Trump, have denied any wrongdoing.

Who said what

The “serious allegations” against the three GOP incumbents have fueled Republican anxieties that the “mounting political crises” could “further endanger their majority,” costing them “seats once considered mostly safe,” CNN said. Some senior House GOP campaign strategists “worry that Miller’s chances of reelection” have “vanished,” The Associated Press said.

Pressure on Miller to drop out “exploded” on Sunday, Politico said, after his ex-father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), said Miller needed “professional help” and shouldn’t be serving in Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Politico he would talk with Miller but the Ethics Committee process needed to “play out.”

What next?

The Republican executive committee in North Carolina’s 11th District will meet next week to select Edwards’ replacement. Miller “would have to formally withdraw by sometime Saturday” for his party to replace him by a Monday deadline, the AP said. “Privately, some top Republicans are hopeful that Mills will lose his GOP primary” on Aug. 18, said CNN.

It is hot out there. Summertime heat can take a deadly toll on workers, especially in the era of climate change and frequent heat domes. The Biden administration initiated rules to ensure that U.S. companies provide their employees with breaks to hydrate and recover while laboring in warm temperatures. Now the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are looking to roll back those protections.

‘A matter of life and death’

Heat causes “hundreds of workplace deaths” every year, but the Trump administration is rewriting rules that “mandate breaks and access to water and shade for workers,” said The New York Times. The details of those changes are still unknown, but already the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is “curtailing workplace inspections” that had been designed to “raise awareness of heat-related illnesses.”

A House committee last month also gave approval to a bill that would block the Labor Department “finalizing any worker protections for extreme heat,” said E&E News. The Biden-era rule solves a “problem that doesn’t need solving,” Rep. Mark Messmer (R-Ind.) told the outlet. At least a few workers disagree. “We didn’t sign up for the heat to become as severe as it is,” Trina David, a baggage handler at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, said to the Times.

“Trump will cause some of you to die from the heat,” Robert Reich said on Substack. There are countless workers who toil “under the hot sun, or in stifling warehouses or in delivery trucks with no AC,” which can “trigger heat stroke, organ failure and chronic kidney disease.” Those illnesses and deaths “can often be prevented with strong safety standards,” but the Trump administration is “retreating from worker safety.” Workplace heat protections are “literally a matter of life and death.”

The Biden-era rules had a “deep benevolent paternalism” to them, Matthew Kahn said at Environmental and Urban Economics. But workers possess a “degree of choice over where they live and work, what job they take and what shifts they agree to work,” Kahn and Joseph Tracy said in a 2025 paper for the American Enterprise Institute. They can “move or switch firms” if conditions are too onerous. There is “no ‘crisis’” in on-the-job heat injuries that requires a heavy regulatory touch.

‘Can’t afford to stay cool’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in June signed an executive order “ensuring the safety of municipal workers in the heat,” said E&E News. Workers should not have to “choose between their paycheck and their health,” Mamdani said at the signing ceremony.

For many workers, though, the twin trends of “high temperatures and high inflation” are creating a “crisis that rarely makes headlines,” Sharon Block and Dr. Satchit Balsari said at USA Today. Cash-strapped workers increasingly “can’t afford to stay cool.” Rising prices force them to choose between paying for “food, rent and healthcare” or the electricity needed to “cool off during their off-hours.” The combination of low wages, increased costs and poor protections are forcing workers into “deadly trade-offs.”

What happened

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) revealed Sunday that a fall at his Washington home last month led to a hospital stay. His announcement ends a “weekslong silence” that had “spurred speculation about his condition,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The 84-year-old senator said he briefly lost consciousness after the incident but did not break any bones or suffer a concussion, stroke, heart attack or other serious injury. He was later diagnosed with a mild case of pneumonia.

Who said what

McConnell acknowledged the delay in explaining his condition, saying in a statement that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older.” McConnell’s injuries were “minor” and he “responded rapidly” to pneumonia treatment, his attending physician said. The Kentucky senator “has faced a string of health concerns in recent years that have caused some to question his ability to serve in the legislature,” The Hill said.

What next?

McConnell said he remains focused on completing his Senate work before retiring when his current term ends in January.

Historically unpopular and facing potentially catastrophic midterm elections in November, President Donald Trump has thrown an electoral hand grenade into the campaign calendar. “For the first time ever, the Republican Party will hold a midterm convention” in Dallas, Texas, Sept. 9-10 — a “rally like none other,” said Trump on Truth Social last week. And as the president tries to consolidate GOP strength ahead of a make-or-break election, Democrats see signs of desperation and political opportunities.

What did the commentators say?

Party officials have been “planning the logistics of the event for months,” after Trump became “enamored with the idea of a splashy midterm convention last year,” said The New York Times. Given that the party in power has “historically lost ground in midterm elections, Republicans see a convention so close to election day as “offering the party a large platform to make the case to stay in power.” Democrats had “briefly considered” holding their own midterm convention, but ultimately “decided against such a pricey event.”

The “Trumpapalooza” gathering will offer Republicans a “chance to highlight all the wonderful things this president has done,” said Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters to Fox News. GOP officials also hope the convention will “energize MAGA voters who don’t always vote when Trump isn’t on the ballot,” said the outlet. Despite being “designed to showcase Republican achievements,” however, the planned convention is “likely to have detractors, even among party officials,” said Al Jazeera. Critics fear the event could “draw resources away from key battlegrounds in the final stretch of the race,” and will “shine a spotlight on Trump himself at a moment when his poll numbers are drooping.”

Although the convention “comes at a politically vulnerable time” for Republicans, its “location in Texas is also significant,” said Time. “No further proof is needed” that the GOP is “freaking the f*** out” over their midterms standing, said Texas State Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez (D) on X. While Texas has “not elected a Democrat statewide in decades,” Democratic State Rep. James Talarico is currently neck and neck with Attorney General Ken Paxton for outgoing Sen. John Cornyn’s (R) U.S. Senate seat, and has become “one of his party’s top fundraisers,” said the Times.

Whether GOP officials “appreciate it or not,” there are “two main problems they should probably keep in mind,” said MS NOW. First, “holding a national convention is extremely expensive.” Second, and “just as important,” is the fact that the goal of a national convention is “nationalizing an election cycle.” Given how unpopular Trump is, the GOP should be “going out of its way to localize the midterms,” rather than the opposite.

What next?

It is likely that “many Democratic officials are looking forward” to Trump’s event, said MS NOW. The convention will “give the minority party an opportunity to do what it wants to do anyway: connect Republican candidates and officeholders to Trump.”

While much of the event’s programming remains under wraps, officials have begun to “fill in some of the details,” said The Dallas Morning News. The convention will “blend elements of a traditional political convention” with a “Trump-centered program designed to energize Republican voters.” The event will also “include delegates from across the country,” but it will feature “no official party business.” Organizers have also not clarified “whether members of the public will be able to attend” or how ticketing might work.

Trump’s scheduled convention will also be “clashing with a pair of NFL matchups that will kick off the 2026 season,” forcing both events to “potentially compete for viewership,” said Forbes. In the past, NFL kickoff games have been rescheduled to avoid overlap with political conventions during presidential election years. It is “not immediately clear if the same will happen to this year’s season opener.”

Reports of President Donald Trump’s total capture of the Republican Party may be premature. Faced with plummeting popularity and whack-a-mole crises, the president has clashed with some of the most powerful members of his own coalition: Senate Republicans.

Whether this conservative revolt becomes a logjam for the White House remains to be seen. As Republicans face midterm headwinds to keep their congressional majorities, is the nascent push for senatorial independence for real, or will Republicans once more adopt the MAGA party line?

‘Relationship appears to be fraying’

Trump has “enjoyed unbending loyalty” from GOP lawmakers for years, said NPR. But the “strength of that relationship appears to be fraying,” particularly as some “departing members feel more uninhibited to push back” and others begin to imagine a post-Trump Washington.

Senators whom Trump had “written off, alienated or even helped defeat” are now opting to support “Senate traditions over his political demands,” said Axios. And the president’s decision this week to cancel the planned signing of bipartisan housing legislation “further inflamed weeks of tumult” that have marked an “increasingly bitter relationship between” him and high-profile Republican senators, said The New York Times. While “lawmakers from both parties were shocked by the president’s decision,” many of them saw Trump’s canceled signing as an effort to “undermine the efforts of his own party to protect its congressional majorities” before the midterms.

Trump’s push for harsh voting restrictions, which he demanded as a prerequisite before signing the housing bill, is “colliding with a newly defiant Republican Senate” and sets up a “multifront battle” ahead of the midterms, said The Wall Street Journal. GOP lawmakers “have been deferential to the president to a point,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R - Texas), to the outlet. But that deference “doesn’t seem to have done any good.” Simply having endorsed Trump’s point of view in the past “doesn’t mean he’s going to support you,” added Cornyn, whose own reelection bid was scuttled by a Trump-backed challenger.

During a closed-door lunch on Wednesday, which Republican senators hoped would “clear the air” between them and Trump, the president instead “vented his frustrations with the senators for more than an hour, leaving them no closer to detente,” said Politico. Trump “said something negative about me,” in an attempt to “bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know,” said outgoing Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy to the outlet, after reports of an intense argument between him and the president during the meeting. “I’m not going to be bullied.”

Sacrificing principles at the ‘altar of Trump’

Senate Republicans that same day “proved yet again that their spines are made of pudding,” said The New Republic, after both Cassidy and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul bowed to White House pressure and flipped previous votes to kill a resolution limiting Trump’s Iran war powers. The waffling shows conservative lawmakers who “claim to have principles” will “gladly sacrifice them at the altar of Trump.”

It is unclear whether the vote will be “enough to appease Trump,” said The Associated Press. But blocking efforts to restrict the president’s war powers “was a clear signal” to Trump from senators who “still want to placate him.”

As Pride Month begins in the U.S., numerous Republican governors have “bestowed alternative titles” for Pride Month that “both supporters and opponents view as counterprogramming,” said The Associated Press. But this is just one of several ways the current Republican Party’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights has revealed itself during President Donald Trump’s time in office.

What did the commentators say?

The GOP governors of both Indiana and Tennessee “rebranded June as Nuclear Family Month to celebrate units made up of ‘one husband, one wife and any biological, adopted or fostered children,’” said the AP. Alabama deemed June Strong Families Month, whose “proclamation says fathers are ‘the head of the household.’” And Utah and Arkansas christened June as Fidelity Month, which “emphasizes fidelity to faith, country and family.” The “contest over the month of June reflects decades-long culture war questions, exacerbated by partisan polarization and a sense that red and blue states increasingly represent different values,” said Deseret News.

The current White House has also attempted to “enact a nationwide ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ sports,” expel transgender service members from the military and prevent “transgender Americans from having their gender on their passport,” said Roll Call. These efforts are a result of “rank animus against transgender people,” Jessica Clarke, a law professor at the University of Southern California, told the outlet. The “legislation dovetails with administration efforts and state laws intended to curb the rights of transgender Americans,” said Roll Call.

While both of Trump’s presidencies have been defined by anti-LGTBQ+ stances, his second term efforts are “more far-reaching and extreme than those he put in place during his first term,” said The 19th. Civil rights groups pushed back against Trump’s anti-trans executive orders during his first four years in office, but the courts are “not as friendly as they once were,” Mike Zamore, the national director of policy and governmental affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the outlet. These groups shouldn’t assume that a court case “that was successful in the first Trump administration would necessarily prevail this go around.”

What next?

The Republican ramp-up against the LGBTQ+ movement is likely here to stay, as “every Democratic president since Bill Clinton in 1999 has signed a Pride proclamation each year — and no Republican president has,” said the AP. There also appear to be changing public views on whether same-sex marriage should be legal, which is “largely because more Republicans oppose them” now than before Trump retook office.

Approval of “same-sex marriage, moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relations and endorsement of gender changes are all down from peaks reached in the early 2020s,” according to a recent Gallup survey. The poll of 1,001 adults found that 65% of Americans support same-sex marriage. While this still represents a majority of Americans, it is also “down six percentage points from the peak in 2022 and 2023.”

Many people also appear to be going back on their acceptance of the transgender community, according to Gallup’s results. The “share of Americans who consider changing one's gender morally acceptable has declined eight points over the past five years, to 38%,” said Gallup.

New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr. won his GOP primary election yesterday, a notable event given that he has not been seen in public for months. And the question of his whereabouts is drawing increasing scrutiny.

The mystery is “frustratingly unsolved,” said The New York Times. Kean last cast a vote in Congress on March 5, then was sidelined by what his aides vaguely described as a “personal medical issue” from which he is expected to recover. Voters, journalists and House colleagues “haven’t seen or heard directly from Kean” since then, and it is “still unclear” when he might return to work or the campaign trail, said CNN.

Kean is “focused” on “recovery” and expects to return to work “within a matter of weeks,” he said in a Tuesday night post on X. But his ongoing and mostly unexplained absence is “rattling” Kean’s GOP allies, who worry the “massive public relations failure” will damage the party’s ability to defend his “critical swing seat” in November, said CNN.

What did the commentators say?

Kean “owes voters” answers about “his mystery illness,” The Bergen (N.J.) Record said in an editorial. His absence has coincided with House debates about the “Iran war, funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other critical issues.” His team spent weeks creating the “illusion of a fully functioning representative” by sending out a “steady stream of first-person social media posts and news releases” before acknowledging his medical issue in late April. New Jersey voters deserve a representative “who is straight with people about his own capabilities.”

The lack of transparency is a “slap in the face to voters,” Max Burns said at MS NOW. Kean is one of several House members who have gone “missing in action” in recent years. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) missed weeks of votes after undergoing eye surgery, then announced her retirement. Kean and Wilson “can’t be blamed for battling health issues,” but they owe more candor to their constituents. And if they are “unwilling or unable” to work, they should “make way for someone with the capacity to serve.” The duo has a “right to privacy” but also a “duty as public servants to represent their voters.”

What next?

The congressman’s absence has not interfered with the operation of his political machine. At least five speeches in his name “have appeared in the Congressional Record” during his leave from Congress, said Roll Call. While it is “not uncommon” for House members to publish speeches in the record they did not deliver in the chamber, Kean’s “frequent submissions” while he is away have “raised eyebrows.”

Kean’s congressional district is “among the country’s most competitive,” said The Washington Post. The GOP “cannot hold the majority without this seat,” an anonymous operative said to the outlet. Republicans urgently need to know if Kean is “capable of running for reelection and winning.”

Kean still snagged President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the midterms, said The Hill. Kean “will never let you down!” Trump said on Truth Social.

What happened

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) lost his bid for reelection, placing third in Louisiana’s Republican primary on Saturday. Rep. Julia Letlow, the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, came in first and will face state Treasurer John Fleming in a June 27 runoff.

Cassidy’s defeat was the “latest example of Trump’s unrivaled power over the Republican Party,” even amid “persistent inflation” and “sagging approval ratings,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

Cassidy was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump in 2021 for trying to remain in office after his 2020 defeat, but he has “rarely bucked Trump since he returned to the White House,” The Washington Post said. Cassidy is a “disloyal disaster” and a “terrible guy,” Trump said on social media Saturday morning, before later celebrating his defeat: “That’s what you get by voting to Impeach an innocent man.”

“Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity,” Cassidy said in his concession speech. “Our country is not about one individual,” and if you lose in a democracy, “you don’t pout. You don’t whine. You don’t claim the election was stolen.” Cassidy spent five years “sucking up” to Trump, all for nothing, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. He “paid a price last night. And guess what? I think he deserved it.”

What next?

Cassidy’s “suddenly pointed criticism” of Trump “suggests he could quickly turn into a headache for the White House” during his final months in office, Politico said.

As polarisation increasingly divides America, violence is becoming embedded in its politics.

“We do believe it was administration officials,” said Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, when asked for the target of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “But as far as exacting threats that may have been communicated beforehand, we’re still actively investigating that evidence.”

For many Americans, Saturday night’s events were “at once shocking and familiar”, said Lisa Lerer in The New York Times. Politically motivated violence has become a “routine intruder” into our lives, bringing with it a “numbing narrative of assaults, bomb threats and assassination attempts”.

What did the commentators say?

“Instead of a speech stacked with heated barbs against the media, the event ended like many in the US do: with gun violence,” said Rachel Leingang in The Guardian.

The association’s initial decision to continue the event (it was later rescheduled) may have surprised some, but for many it “struck a chord about the regularity of gun violence in American life”. Trump said afterwards that the presidency is a “dangerous profession”, but the fact that violence in the political domain is a “feature”, rather than an “outlier, rang true on a night meant to celebrate the freedom of the press”.

Attacks like these are “convulsing” American politics from both sides of the partisan divide, said Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. The suspected gunman had barely been apprehended before “ranks of Maga influencers” were blaming Democrats, and left-leaning conspiracy theorists claimed it was a “staged” hoax to “advance Trump’s political agenda”.

So-called “conflict entrepreneurs” are “getting rich by making us angry at one another”, fuelled by a “loss of trust in democratic institutions that makes it easier to see illegal violence as a solution”, said William Braniff, from the American University. Modern assassination attempts are “backed by a growing public acceptance of the use of violence in the pursuit of political ends”, said Chazan. “Things could get even worse.”

Saturday’s events reveal how “dangerous” US politics has become over the last few years, said James Piazza, political science professor at Penn State, on The Conversation. Intense polarisation means opponents are “suspicious and hostile” towards each other, believing others to be “evil or immoral” instead of merely sharing a different view.

In turn, this has made violence more “normalised”, and because public backlash is “dampened” at each attempt, further violence becomes even “more likely”. Disinformation and social media have also accelerated this trend. Disinformed users are “hermetically sealed off” from alternative sources and this “facilitates radicalisation” for isolated communities.

Even with America’s “grim history of political violence”, Trump “certainly seems to attract a higher share than others of would-be assassins”, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. He has now been the target of three assassination attempts: his “ear was grazed” by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania; there was the Mar-a-Lago golf course incident that was foiled by Secret Service agents; and then Saturday’s Washington dinner.

Nearly following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy, Trump said that he was “honoured” by comparisons with the four assassinated presidents because he’s “done a lot”. Let’s not forget that eight children were killed in Louisiana last week, but it “only briefly made the headlines”: mass shootings are now “part of the texture of American life”, said Luce.

What next?

It is “absolutely critical” that both Democratic and Republican politicians “unite to condemn this attack and all political violence”, said Piazza on The Conversation.

Commentators should condemn any violence with political aims and political elites should “adopt rhetoric that does not normalise this sort of behaviour. If the message comes from across the political spectrum, it will be that much more effective at reducing the public attitudes that nurture political violence.”

Following the Pennsylvania assassination attempt the image of Trump with a bloodied face raising his fist “partly defined his campaign”, said Luce. This time around, “any sympathy wave is likely to be more limited”.

Before the incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Trump’s approval ratings hit a “personal low of below 40%” in some polls last week, and the “rising unpopularity” of the war in Iran is “driving his nadir”.

Though there is no doubt Trump will “try to make political hay” from the attempt on his life, “ironically” it has been his “early zeal for assassinating senior Iranians” that is “shaping his political future”.

From his podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Donald Trump reminded his base how he differed from past presidents. “It turned out that I was able to stop wars from happening,” he said.

That was in 2024, said Natalie Allison at The Washington Post. A year later, the newly installed president was back at CPAC, boasting about being “a peacemaker, not a conqueror”.

Notable absences

This year, Trump skipped the jamboree for the first time in a decade: he was too busy managing the war with Iran he’d launched a month earlier. And he wasn’t the only high-profile no show, said Katy Balls in The Sunday Times. At the last event, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio spoke, and Elon Musk ramped up the carnival atmosphere by brandishing a chainsaw on stage; this time, one attendee noted that there were more journalists present than politicians. That the event was rather more subdued than usual was due to several factors – including its relocation from DC to Texas; but the lack of buzz was indicative of the troubled state of the GOP as it gears up for the midterms.

A little over a year into his second term, Trump is discovering that for all his efforts to extend his authority, there are still constraints on what he can do, said Gerard Baker in The Times. Public revulsion has forced him to temper his migrant deportation policy; the Supreme Court has struck out his signature tariffs policy; the markets are squealing about the war in Iran. And even in his own backyard, the voters are restive: in late March, a Florida Democrat seized a red seat that takes in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Base betrayal

The die-hards remain intensely loyal, said Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic, but polls show that Trump is losing support among the coalition of younger Americans and Latinos that gave him his victory in 2024. Many already felt betrayed by his attempt to block the Epstein files and by the impact of his Big Beautiful Bill on the deficit. Now, they’re furious that he has taken the US into a war that is costing billions and further driving up the cost of living.

In the manosphere, prominent voices who rallied behind his “anti-woke” rhetoric in 2024 are complaining that Americans were duped. The podcaster Joe Rogan has called the war “insane, based on what [Trump] ran on”. There is dissent within Maga too, some of which has veered into antisemitism: Tucker Carlson and others have been peddling the line that Israel manipulated Trump into the war. Disenchanted Trump fans are unlikely to vote Democrat in November; but they might easily just tune out of the election – and so inadvertently deliver a “blue wave”.

It’s too early to tell how the military intervention in Iran is going to play out, said Emma Ashford in Foreign Policy, but we can already state one thing with certainty: this is not what Donald Trump’s “base or the American people wanted”.

Trump campaigned as a peace candidate. He promised an “America First” agenda that prioritised pocketbook issues and kept the US out of dangerous foreign entanglements. His adviser, Stephen Miller, depicted him as the opposite of Kamala Harris, whose team was, he said, made up of “warmongering neocons [who] love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves”.

‘Disgusting and evil’

But it seems Trump is not so different after all. Although only a quarter of Americans polled last week said they’d support military action against Iran, the president ploughed ahead with strikes without even bothering to make the case for war. Several Republicans, including former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have condemned the attack on Iran as a betrayal. The populist commentator Tucker Carlson called it “absolutely disgusting and evil”.

Trump is hardly the first president to grow more hawkish in office, said Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post. It has been the pattern with every US leader since Bill Clinton: they campaign on domestic issues, then get drawn into foreign interventions. Their previously expressed fears about military overreach tend to dissipate once power is in the hands of someone they trust completely: themselves. But they’re also more aware, once in office, of the gravity of the threats facing the US.

Military muscle

While the Iran strikes have upset some of Trump’s erstwhile backers, he has “calculated that he can strong-arm his base into line”, said Hugh Tomlinson in The Observer. As one Republican strategist noted over the weekend: “Maga is still whatever Trump says it is.” The important thing, said Jim Antle in The Daily Telegraph, is that Trump has so far limited his military actions to things that US forces are good at, such as killing enemies, rather than trying to emulate the neocon agenda of nation-building and democracy promotion.

As long as he can avoid a protracted conflict, he’ll be OK, said Mikey Smith in the Daily Mirror. Displays of US military muscle play quite well with his base: polls suggest that Maga supporters were not that averse to the idea of quick, punitive action against Iran. However, the second this military adventure “stops looking like a surgical strike and starts looking like a forever war”, Trump will find himself in a lot of political trouble.

What happened

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), a married father of six, acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that he had an affair with a congressional staffer who died in September after setting herself on fire. He had previously denied having a sexual relationship with the woman, Regina Santos-Aviles. Hours before Gonzales made his admission during a radio interview, the House Ethics Committee said it had opened an investigation into his conduct. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) on Wednesday filed a resolution to censure Gonzales, and several other Republicans have called on him to resign or abandon his re-election bid.

Who said what

“I made a mistake, and I had a lapse in judgment” and “take full responsibility for those actions,” Gonzales told conservative radio host Joe Pagliarulo. “I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has.” Gonzales said he “had absolutely nothing to do” with Santos-Avila’s “tragic passing.” But he “spent only a few moments expressing contrition before lashing out at the media, his political opponents and the widower of the aide,” The New York Times said.

The scandal — fueled by leaked text messages in which Gonzales appeared to pressure Santos-Avila to send him a “sexy pic” and her favorite sexual positions — “dogged him through his bitter GOP primary race” and helped force him into a May runoff, The Washington Post said. President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have both endorsed Gonzales.

What next?

The Ethics Committee is investigating whether Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct toward an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges,” the body said in a statement. Luna said she had reviewed fresh evidence that Gonzales forced a relationship on his subordinate, and “I will just tell you that there’s a lot there.” She said she had no doubt her censure resolution would pass.

The war in Iran has probably ended any debate over whether President Donald Trump is an isolationist. He is not. But his onetime promises of military restraint abroad were part of his appeal to MAGA voters, some of whom now find themselves alarmed.

Many Trump voters “didn’t want to attack Iran. Now he has to win them over,” said Politico. Polling taken before the war began showed that just half of those voters supported military action against Iran, but nearly a third did not. If the war “expands into a protracted conflict, or ends up with troops on the ground, it will be a liability,” said GOP strategist Jason Roe.

MAGA influencers were already feuding before the attack on Iran, which has caused them to “deepen their civil war,” said MS NOW. War with Iran “is AMERICA LAST,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on X. The administration’s shifting rationales for war are “to put it mildly, confused,” said right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh on the platform. Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson have also chimed in. But others are rooting for Trump. “Civilized people” in the West “will not bow down” to Islam, said influencer Laura Loomer on X.

Biggest war since Iraq

Trump and his pro-war congressional allies “think you’re stupid,” said Jack Hunter at The American Conservative. The president has failed to provide a “solid, pinpoint” reason for launching the war at “this very moment.” Most polls show that Americans “overwhelmingly” did not want this war, and the flailing justifications are “adding insult to injury.” No one should misunderstand: This is a war of choice “started by Donald Trump” that will reach its endpoint “only God knows how.”

The president in 2024 seemed to be the candidate “less likely to continue the Forever Wars,” conservative writer Rod Dreher said in his newsletter. Now the president has launched the United States’ “biggest war since Iraq.” When George W. Bush launched that 2002 invasion, he at least had 72% of the country behind him. Trump’s approval ratings these days are considerably lower. Congress is “sleepwalking” while Trump leads the country into a major war. “This is Caesar stuff. You know that, right?”

“Don’t confuse the Iran War’s MAGA critics with most Republicans,” David M. Drucker said at Bloomberg. Complaints from figures like Walsh and Greene “represent the minority opinion on the right.” The instincts of GOP voters are “little changed from the Reagan-Bush days,” said Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini. Even so, said Drucker, “cracks in the MAGA coalition may be showing.”

Trump embodies MAGA

While GOP voters have “largely supported” the war in Iran, the ongoing effort could still “challenge Trump’s ability to hold his base together,” Aaron Blake said at CNN. Polling suggests that while GOP support exists, that support is “pretty lukewarm.”

Trump may not be worried. Criticisms from Carlson, Kelly and other MAGA influencers are not a problem because “I think that MAGA is Trump,” the president said to independent journalist Rachel Bade. The MAGA movement “loves what I’m doing.”

What happened

The House Oversight Committee Thursday interviewed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for more than six hours as part of its Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Clinton told the Republican-led committee she had never met Epstein, had no knowledge of his crimes and was being used as a prop in “partisan political theater” aimed at protecting “one political party and one public official.”

Who said what

“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” Clinton told reporters after her deposition at a performing arts center near her home in Chappaqua, New York. “I never went to his island. I never went to his homes. I never went to his offices.”

The closed-door deposition was a “rancorous, partisan affair” from the start, CNN said. It “briefly went off the rails,” The New York Times said, after Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) violated committee rules by sending a photo of Clinton testifying to MAGA influencer Benny Johnson, who posted it on social media. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) said the breach showed that Republicans were using this “incredibly unserious clown show of a deposition” to get “their photo op” of Clinton, not hold anyone accountable for Epstein’s crimes.

What next?

Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said he “learned a lot” from Clinton but “we have a lot of questions for her husband,” former President Bill Clinton, at his deposition today. Republicans are “eager to make Bill Clinton their bogeyman,” Politico said, but the committee’s “focus on the Clintons” is “fueling accusations from Democrats that the GOP is deflecting from President Donald Trump’s own ties” to Epstein. Forcing Bill Clinton to testify “set a new precedent about talking to presidents and former presidents,” said the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia (Calif.), and his party plans to use that precedent to depose Trump if they win control of the House.

What happened

The House Tuesday failed to pass a bipartisan aviation safety bill that won unanimous approval in the Senate in December. The 264-133 House vote fell just short of the two-thirds majority required under special fast-track rules typically used for non-controversial bills. Nearly all 133 no votes came from Republicans.

The bill would have required most aircraft to carry advanced location tracking technology, ADS-B In, that the National Transportation Safety Board said would have prevented last year’s deadly midair collision near Washington, D.C.

Who said what

The Senate’s ROTOR Act is strongly backed by the families of the 67 people who died in the January 2025 collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight. It was also supported by labor groups, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and, until Monday night, the Defense Department. But it “ran into headwinds in the House from several powerful Republican committee leaders,” NPR said.

The bill’s defeat was a “major win” for Transportation Committee Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.), a longtime advocate for smaller private aircraft, Politico said. Graves argued that his rival ALERT Act addressed all 50 NSTB recommendations to prevent future collisions. But Homendy and the victims’ families oppose his legislation because it does not require the use of ADS-B In, as the NSTB has advocated since 2008.

What next?

The victims’ families said in a statement they were “devastated” by the Senate bill’s defeat and urged “House leadership to bring the ROTOR Act back for a vote that lets the majority pass it.” Given that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his top lieutenants voted no Tuesday, “it is unlikely that the House will revive the bill,” The New York Times said. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the ROTOR Act’s lead sponsor with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), called Tuesday’s vote a “temporary delay” and predicted the bill will “become the law of the land.”

What happened

Christian Menefee on Saturday won a special election for an open House seat in the Houston-area 18th Congressional District, whittling down the chamber’s already thin Republican majority. In a second Texas runoff election, Democrat Taylor Rehmet scored an upset victory over Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a state Senate seat in Tarrant County. Rehmet, a union leader, beat the conservative activist by 14 points in the solidly Republican district, which President Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.

Who said what

Rehmet’s victory was a “stunning upset that injected a fresh and urgent sense” of “panic into the GOP from the Texas Capitol to the White House heading into November’s midterm elections,” The Texas Tribune said. Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) and Trump, “had been sounding alarms” about the “too close for comfort” race, The Wall Street Journal said, but “the 31-point swing leftward was a surprise across the board.”

Saturday’s victories “followed a string of wins in recent months for the Democratic Party in local and state elections across the country,” Reuters said. Strategists and analysts view special elections as a “barometer for measuring the national political mood and voter attitudes,” The Washington Post said. But Trump, who endorsed Wambsganss and sent out three get-out-the-vote alerts last week, “tried to play down any effort to connect the unpopularity of his presidency and policies” to the GOP losses. “I’m not involved with that,” he told reporters Sunday. “That’s a local Texas race.”

What next?

Once House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) swears in Menefee, 10 months after former Rep. Sylvester Turner (D) died in office, his majority will be so “razor-thin” he will be able “lose only one Republican vote,” the Post said. Rehmet’s “win will be short-lived,” the Tribune said, as he will face Wambsganss again in November for the full four-year term.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday told House Republicans “you got to win the midterms” or “I’ll get impeached.” If Democrats retake the House, “they’ll find a reason to impeach me” for a third time, he said, claiming that his two first-term impeachments were “for nothing.” The GOP “can own health care” as an issue in the midterms, he told House Republicans at their annual retreat in Washington, but “you gotta be a little flexible” on abortion funding to reach a deal on health insurance subsidies.

Who said what

Trump’s remarks were a “rare acknowledgment” of his “political vulnerability as Republicans prepare to face a Democratic Party buoyed by a string of off-year election victories, favorable polling and voter anxiety over an economy now fully under Trump’s stewardship,” The Washington Post said. A Democratic victory “could stall his agenda and expose him to congressional investigations,” Reuters said.

“They say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterm,” Trump said. “I wish you could explain to me what the hell’s going on with the mind of the public.” Trump’s 84-minute “election-year pep talk,” Roll Call said, “veered between familiar topics” from his rallies and “verbal jabs at longtime political foes,” plus first lady Melania Trump’s advice that he stop dancing. “I think I gave you something,” Trump concluded. “It’s a road map to victory.”

What next?

Trump’s exhortation to lean in on health care puts House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “in a bind,” Axios said. The “vast majority of House Republicans” oppose extending Affordable Care Act credits without added abortion restrictions and “many Republicans see health care as a losing issue for the party, especially in the 2026 midterms.”

What happened

The Senate Thursday failed to pass competing plans to prevent a sharp rise in costs for people who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act when subsidies expire at the end of the year. The Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies for three years and a Republican alternative each drew a bare majority of 51 votes, but 60 votes were needed to advance under the Senate’s filibuster rule. A handful of Republicans voted for both plans.

Who said what

The dueling votes marked an “unceremonious end to a monthslong effort by Democrats” to extend the subsidies while Republicans “struggled to find an alternative,” The Associated Press said. Senate Republicans “eventually settled on” funneling up to $1,500 into health savings accounts for ACA customers who opt for a “lower-cost, higher deductible bronze or catastrophic health insurance plan.” That money could be spent on out-of-pocket health care expenses but not premiums.

The “stakes for American families are considerable,” but the “political stakes are also vast,” Politico said. For many Republicans, the “pressure posed by the subsidy cliff is rivaled by the anxiety they are feeling about the approaching midterms,” but “that sense of panic has not trickled up to Republican leaders, who appear ready to send lawmakers home next week until Jan. 6.” After “today’s vote,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, the “American health care crisis is 100% on their shoulders.”

What next?

Hope is “fading for any deal to extend the subsidies before the end of the year, if at all,” The Wall Street Journal said. The “next major legislative deadline is Jan. 30, when lawmakers need to pass a new bill funding the government.”

Congressional Republicans do not often love their leaders. They booted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 and replaced him with the then-nearly unknown Mike Johnson. Now Johnson faces a revolt from high-profile women in his ranks.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) hold on the speaker’s gavel “appears weaker than ever,” said The New York Times. Public anger has come from GOP figures like Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a member of Johnson’s leadership team, as well as Reps. Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.), who circumvented Johnson to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban. House Republicans are often fractious, “but it does seem like there is an unusually high level of discontent,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley (Calif.) to the Times. Johnson “wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” Stefanik said to The Wall Street Journal.

Female GOP lawmakers have “less representation in leadership” and hold just one committee chairmanship in the lower chamber, said NBC News. The women “feel they have been passed over for opportunities” and believe Johnson has repeatedly undercut them. “We aren’t taken seriously,” said one anonymous female Republican to NBC. Johnson’s team is pushing back. The speaker has “helped recruit and support women running for office,” a spokesman said. It is a conflict Johnson needs to resolve. Republicans have a slim majority in the House, and he cannot afford any defections.

What did the commentators say?

“The GOP women are humiliating Mike Johnson,” said Joe Perticone at The Bulwark. It started when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) backed the petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. It has come to a head with Stefanik, angry with Johnson over her proposal to require the FBI to disclose when it investigates congressional candidates. All of it is a sign that House Republicans are on the verge of “entering into open rebellion” against their leader. The party’s women are “giving Johnson the bird” while GOP men in the House are living with the “indignity of being subservient cogs in the party machinery.”

It is not shocking that a party built on President Donald Trump’s “macho, politically incorrect swagger” is having trouble with women in its ranks, said Matt Lewis at The Hill. Johnson in particular is an evangelical “fond of lecturing about ’distinct roles’ for men and women.” He also makes an easy target for Republicans frustrated by the party’s political challenges, but who will not challenge Trump directly. Is the speaker a “retrograde misogynist” or just a patsy? “Either way, the ending is the same.”

What next?

Johnson is “imploring” his members to “stop venting their frustrations in public,” said The Associated Press. If there are conflicts, “come to me, don’t go to social media,” he said to reporters Thursday. More and more, though, GOP members are “ignoring him,” said the AP. House Democrats are delighted. Republicans are the “gang that can’t legislate straight,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the outlet.

What happened

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Texas Republicans can use the congressional map they approved in August, at President Donald Trump’s urging. The court’s three liberal justices dissented. A divided three-judge panel in Texas last month threw out the new map, which could flip up to five Democratic-held seats, with a Trump appointee ruling it an impermissible racial gerrymander.

Who said what

The ruling was a “major win for Republicans in Texas and nationally,” boosting their odds of keeping their “narrow majority” in next year’s midterms, The Texas Tribune said. The lower court “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the Supreme Court said in its unsigned “shadow docket” ruling.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing separately in an opinion joined by two other conservatives, argued that it was “indisputable” Texas Republicans were seeking “partisan advantage pure and simple.” Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s liberals, said the ruling “disrespects” the lower court’s diligent work and “ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution.”

What next?

Trump’s push for Texas Republicans to redraw their map mid-decade sparked a nationwide scramble that has led to GOP-boosting maps in Missouri and North Carolina and a Democratic gerrymander in California. Other states are considering joining the battle. The high court just gave “a green light for there to be even more re-redistricting, and a strong message to lower courts to butt out,” UCLA election law expert Richard Hasen said at his Election Law Blog.

What happened

Republican Matt Van Epps won Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee’s deep-red 7th Congressional District, defeating Democratic state lawmaker Aftyn Behn 54% to 45%. Van Epps will replace former Rep. Mark Green (R), who won the seat by 21 percentage points last year as President Donald Trump carried the district by 22 points.

Who said what

Republicans won, maintaining their 219-213 advantage in the House, “but instead of celebrating, many are dreading what it means about the midterms,” Politico said. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) team “was bracing for a tighter-than-comfortable race,” but the “single-digit margin was still a hard pill to swallow after national Republicans pulled out all the stops — including a Trump tele-rally and Johnson visit to the district — to rescue Van Epps in the final days.” GOP-aligned groups spent $7 million in the race, versus $3 million for Democratic-aligned groups, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump hailed the “BIG Congressional WIN” on social media, calling it “another great night for the Republican Party!!!” Van Epps said his victory showed that “running from Trump is how you lose. Running with Trump is how you win.” Nobody in Washington “believed we could get even this close,” Behn said following her defeat. “Tonight isn’t the end. It is the beginning of a next chapter of Tennessee and American politics.”

What next?

The district’s “13-point shift toward Democrats” should be a “five-alarm fire” for Republicans “ahead of the 2026 midterms,” said elections analyst G. Elliott Morris. “A 13-point shift may seem extraordinary or jaw-dropping,” Nate Cohn said at The New York Times, but “for Republicans this year, it’s simply the norm.”

“Marjorie Taylor Greene just wrecked the cult of Trump,” said Greg Sargent in The New Republic. Standing outside the U.S. Capitol last week with a group of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, the GOP representative slammed the president for calling her a “traitor” and a “ranting lunatic” because she helped force a vote on releasing government files on the deceased sex trafficker. In a barb clearly aimed at Trump—who reversed his opposition to releasing the files as it became clear he couldn’t stop the congressional effort—the Georgia Republican said a traitor “serves foreign countries and themselves” while a patriot serves “Americans like the women standing behind me now.” This “rift is a big deal,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. That a “notorious Trump-slobberer” like Greene would openly resist the man who coined the phrase “Make America Great Again” is significant. But she’s also doing it while promoting the radical idea that MAGA “has discrete ideological content beyond the president’s whims and daily political needs.” If this notion catches fire on the Right, Greene could find herself leading “the first meaningful right-wing rebellion against autocracy of this era.”

The “MAGA crackup” goes far beyond Epstein, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. In recent weeks, Greene has chided Trump for being too focused on striking foreign deals while ignoring “the five-alarm fire” of affordability and health-care costs. Other MAGA types have been infuriated by the president’s un–America First defense of skilled foreign worker visas, which he told Fox News are needed because Americans lack “certain talents.” A few days later, Trumpist influencer Mike Cernovich was raging online about “how overt the corruption” is within this administration. It was against this backdrop of spreading disaffection that Trump rebuked Greene—rebukes she said led to death threats against her and her family. “Many right-wing influencers reacted with unusual fury” to Trump’s jabs. Some even posted images of burning MAGA hats, a sign “that the MAGA coalition is fragmenting.”

Perhaps, said Joan Vennochi in The Boston Globe. But if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that Trump’s “base sticks with him,” no matter what, and so far there’s little reason to think that this time will be different. True, Trump’s average approval rating— about 40%—is at a second-term low. But it’s only down some 2 points from September, which hardly signals some imminent sea change in his political fortunes. Trump’s Epstein-files “U-turn” may read as weakness to D.C. insiders, said Jack Blanchard in Politico. But it could be a “path to redemption” with his base. If Trump fulfills his promises and now delivers “an all-out blitz on ‘affordability,’” slashing tariffs and mailing out $2,000 “rebate checks,” MAGA might forget its “disenchantment.”

But Trump isn’t “losing control of MAGA” because of the growing incoherence of his policies, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. Figures like Greene are breaking with Trump, and MAGA is “splintering,” because the GOP’s voters, donors, and leaders are already looking past Trump to 2028, when the party will need a new standard bearer. Can a political coalition “created and unified by a cult leader” survive “without that cult leader”? asked Andrew Sullivan in his Substack newsletter. We’re about to find out. It’s less than a year until the 2026 midterms and perhaps only months before Donald J. Trump, as a political force, finds himself “quacking lamely in the rearview mirror.”

The longest government shutdown in US history ended with a whimper, said Nitish Pahwa on Slate. For 43 days, Congress had been in a stalemate as Senate Democrats withheld support for a government funding bill in a bid to force the Republicans to extend Covid-era healthcare subsidies.

The subsidies are set to expire next month, at which point the average health insurance premiums of millions of Americans will more than double. But last week, enough Democrats – eight senators – “caved”, allowing the budget to pass in return for the mere promise of a future vote on whether to revive the subsidies.

‘Angry activists’

How pathetic, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. The Democrats had been winning the stand-off. Polls showed that many voters blamed the GOP for the shutdown. Even as senators were preparing to capitulate, President Trump was booed by a crowd at an American football game. Talk about stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Democrats were right to back down, said Michael Powell in The Atlantic. The shutdown was hurting too many people. Poor families were going hungry without food stamps. Federal employees were struggling to pay mortgages and bills without paycheques. Unpaid air traffic controllers meant flight cancellations. The Democrats, who take pride in defending the less fortunate, couldn’t sustain their position.

It’s always the way with government shutdowns, said The Washington Post. Parties instigate them to placate “angry activists”, only to have to fold, prompting a backlash from those same activists.

Democrats ‘may have dodged a bullet’

The recriminations among Democrats have indeed been bitter, said Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine. There have been calls for the replacement of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But “losing” the subsidy-extension battle is no disaster for the party. On the contrary, the Democrats “may have dodged a bullet”. Securing the extension would have neutralised one of the GOP’s key political vulnerabilities: the Republicans have “emerged from the shutdown row having abundantly displayed their lack of interest in soaring healthcare costs”.

That’s not a good look at a time when “affordability” has become such a big election issue, and voters will remember it when their insurance premiums soar. “The short-term stakes of the shutdown fight may soon be overshadowed by more enduring public perceptions” of what the two parties stand for.

For as much as President Donald Trump seems the alpha and omega of Republican politics at the moment, a growing number of savvy conservatives are already eyeing a post-Trump world. Some are even starting to make moves accordingly. For Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), those moves include high-profile media feuds, conspicuous rhetorical pivots, and sending signs to potential donors that he may soon be running for the White House again. As Cruz plays coy with his plans, many political observers think he’s getting ready for something big.

‘Staking out turf’

Cruz has “positioned himself” for a second presidential run following his unsuccessful 2016 bid by framing himself as an “alternative to the more domestically focused wing of the GOP,” said Fox News. Questions surrounding the “issue of interventionism” have “divided figures in the GOP for months,” with Cruz having “gone against swaths of the party who have advocated for a retreat from international involvement.”

In particular, Cruz is “laying the groundwork” for a 2028 run, “staking out turf as a traditional, pro-interventionist Republican” by “leaning into his feud with Tucker Carlson,” said Axios. But while Carlson may be the immediate recipient of Cruz’s opprobrium for his relationship with antisemitic white nationalist Nick Fuentes, the senator is actually “putting himself on a collision course” with Carlson ally and fellow potential 2028 GOP frontrunner, Vice President JD Vance. And thanks to his “top-ranked” podcast and other broadcasting projects, Cruz has established a “formidable network for soliciting small-dollar contributors.” At the same time, Cruz’s pushback against Carlson and Fuentes is “endearing himself to powerful pro-Israel donors.” It’s “definitely getting noticed,” said Republican Jewish Coalition President Matt Brooks to Axios.

As host of “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” the senator also sits atop the “most popular podcast by far of any sitting politician in the United States,” said Politico. Given both the ongoing struggles of traditional media and the trend of social media influencers who “increasingly have parasocial relationships with their fanbases,” Cruz’s podcast affords him a “much bigger platform than the average politician” that could serve as a “potential head start for a future presidential run.”

Playing coy for now

As the “last GOP candidate standing” against Trump in 2016, Cruz has signaled that he “expects to run again for president someday,” The Hill said, even as he “sidestepped” questions to that effect during a Monday interview on Fox News’ “The Faulkner Focus.”

“You know, reporters are going to write headlines that get clicks and get eyeballs,” Cruz said when asked by host Harris Faulkner about 2028 rumors. “I got a job,” Cruz continued. “It’s representing 31 million Texans, and it’s fighting every day for 31 million Texans.” Without “denying the reporting,” Cruz then “highlighted his own contribution to Trump’s signature, sweeping tax and spending bill,” USA Today said.

Demure pivots aside, Cruz’s potential 2028 plans have earned plaudits, of sorts, from the epicenter of Republican politics today: Trump. It’s a “little early” to speculate about 2028, Trump said to a reporter who asked about Cruz’s potential plans this week. “It’s three-and-a-quarter years. That’s a long time.” But Cruz is a “very good guy. He is a very good friend of mine.”

Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust-denying white nationalist, has exposed a rupture on the right. The divide is between conservatives who would allow once-fringe views in the GOP coalition and those who reject Fuentes’ overt antisemitism.

The Carlson-Fuentes chat was “one of the most dangerous interviews ever in MAGA media,” Will Sommer said at The Bulwark. The country must overcome the challenge of “organized Jewry in America,” Fuentes told the former Fox News host. Such incendiary claims are a “catastrophe for more traditional conservative media figures,” Sommer said, and have drawn rebukes from Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan and writer Rod Dreher. (On Monday, conservative influencer Ben Shapiro posted a podcast episode titled “Tucker Carlson Sabotages America.”) By giving Fuentes a platform, Carlson “just accelerated the right’s already prominent tilt toward authoritarianism and hate.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts threw in his lot with Carlson on Thursday, said Politico. Fuentes’ views may be abhorrent “but canceling him is not the answer, either,” Roberts said in a video posted to X. The interview was not an isolated moment, coming after a “string of antisemitic incidents on the right” that included the revelation of racist comments on a Young Republicans group text, said Politico. The trend has “broadly divided” the Republican Party. Antisemitism is “rising on the right in a way I have never seen,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said recently.

Mainstreaming antisemitism

“The Groypers are at the gate,” Peter Laffin said at The Washington Examiner, using a term for Fuentes’ racist followers. Heritage’s Roberts compounded the problem with his public statement, which lent “credence to Fuentes’ and Carlson’s alt-right fever dream.” Groypers are threatening to take over the right and the “conservative movement, led by Roberts, is waving the white flag.”

Jewish conservatives “believe that Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous man in America to Jews,” conservative writer Rod Dreher said at his newsletter. That is because Carlson is the “most important mainstreamer of antisemitism on the right.” President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance could curtail the trend “by forthrightly denouncing it.” For conservatives and Christians, it is “time to find your courage” and push back now.

Fuentes is “shaping up to be the year’s major conservative breakout star” and is “clearly steering the right toward a wholesale embrace of bigotry,” Robby Soave said at Reason. The problem for his conservative critics is “their side is clearly losing.” Refusing to engage with him will not work, however. That would simply make his arguments “seem powerful, hypnotic and ultimately more appealing.”

Hostile toward Israel

Carlson, Fuentes and other influencers are trying to make the GOP “hostile toward Israel and the Jewish people,” National Review said in an editorial. But a version of America that is run by “anti-Israel zealots” is not one “any conservative should want to live in.”

The divide between Fuentes and conservatives is “narrower than it has ever been,” Ali Breland said at The Atlantic. His entry into the MAGA mainstream means his visions for a reactionary party “are closer than ever to being realized.”

We live in strange times, said Holly Hudson on The Daily Beast. Who’d have thought, for instance, that the day would come when Marjorie Taylor Greene began “sounding... kind of reasonable”?

The Georgia congresswoman has until now been best known as a conservative firebrand and conspiracy loon. She famously suggested that wildfires might have been started by “Jewish space lasers”, and railed against the “Gazpacho police” (she meant “Gestapo”).

Over recent weeks, however, this once-staunch Donald Trump loyalist has started taking the administration to task. She has blamed Republican leaders for the government shutdown; sided with Democrats in calling for an extension of tax credits for health insurance; railed against high inflation; and stated that her party has “no plan”.

‘Dipping a toe in the pool of Trump defiance’

Greene’s independent streak has not gone unnoticed by Trump, who has apparently been calling around and asking: “What’s been going on with Marjorie?” Trump is right to ask, said Melanie Zanona on NBC News, as Greene is “arguably more in tune with the Maga base than any other member of Congress”. Her attacks may, in fact, be partly motivated by pique: sources say she’s cross that the White House talked her out of running for the Senate, and is disappointed not to have been given a cabinet role.

But there’s also political calculation at work, said Rex Huppke in USA Today. Greene is positioning herself for the post-Trump era. She can see that the president’s popularity is sliding and that the economy is not working well for most Americans. She’s a “gifted grifter dipping a toe in the pool of Trump defiance to see if it makes waves she can ride”.

‘Echoing the frustrations she’s hearing’

Greene’s rebellion is a warning to the Republicans, said Matt Wylie in The State. “She’s not going rogue; she’s echoing the frustrations she’s hearing from her own base.” Trump keeps insisting that prices are falling, yet it’s clear his trade tariffs are hitting people in the pocket. Grocery bills are rising; pay cheques are shrinking. Some voters, meanwhile, are unhappy about Trump launching legal assaults on his political enemies and deploying troops in cities.

“Economic pain, institutional mistrust and political exhaustion are converging into something volatile – a storm of disillusionment that no amount of populist rhetoric can overcome.” The GOP needs to start governing more effectively, or “the cracks in the Maga movement will only widen”.

The filibuster is keeping the government shutdown alive. Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, but filibustering Democrats have enough votes to prevent the GOP from reaching the 60-vote threshold now needed to pass most legislation. Some Republican officials think it might be time to kill the rule and finally end the shutdown.

A growing willingness among GOP senators to consider ending the filibuster is a “sign of just how stuck things are,” said NOTUS. Longtime defenders of the 60-vote rule are now weakening in their resolve. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is a “strong supporter” of the filibuster, “but obviously I’ll look at any plan that anyone puts out in order to reopen the government,” she said. Republicans may have no other choice. “If we can’t get anything done, that’s what they’re gonna force,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). There are skeptics, however. “Bad idea,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

Creating excuses for Democrats?

“Republicans can end the government shutdown today,” said Bill Scher at Washington Monthly. GOP senators in September used the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster for many of President Donald Trump’s nominees. If they do not do the same in order to get government back in business, it will show “how little they care about keeping it open” and how much they prefer “creating excuses for vilifying Democrats.” That means “we shouldn’t expect a shutdown to end anytime soon.”

The GOP is “already chipping away at the filibuster rule,” said Matt Yglesias at Slow Boring. That is a good thing, actually. The “filibuster rule is dumb,” and scrapping it altogether is better than creating “weird loopholes” for a few special cases. Ending the filibuster would let Republicans pass their preferred bills while allowing Democrats to “vote no on legislation they don’t like.” Democrats might not win the budget battle, but “we still end up with a better outcome.”

Ending the filibuster is the “most shortsighted way” to end the shutdown, said The Washington Post editorial board. The rule has a history of “frustrating presidents” but has also moderated legislation from the “more unruly House.” If neither side can find common ground to break the deadlock, the “world’s greatest deliberative body will break forever.” That would be a “disaster for Republicans.”

Moving first

Some House Republicans are pushing their Senate colleagues to act, said The Hill. GOP officials “need to be taking a look at the 60-vote threshold,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). The filibuster makes Republicans “beholden to a broken system right now.”

“Turnabout is fair play,” said Nick Catoggio at The Dispatch. If Republicans nuke the filibuster now, “it will stay nuked when Democrats eventually recapture control of the executive and legislative branches.” That is the argument against ending the filibuster. The counterargument is that Democrats are already likely to kill the rule when and if they return to power. If you are a Republican senator, “you might reflect on that and wonder why you shouldn’t move first.”

What happened

Senate Republicans Monday warned that President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, would not get confirmed, following reports he repeatedly posted racist comments in a group chat last year. Republicans had already delayed Ingrassia’s confirmation hearing over discomfort with his history of inflammatory remarks and ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

Who said what

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Ingrassia wrote in a 2024 group chat with GOP operatives and influencers, according to Politico, which obtained the entire text chain from a participant. “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” Ingrassia, now 30, reportedly wrote a few months later, a comment that “was not taken as a joke” and drew pushback from three participants, Politico said.

“He’s not gonna pass,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) told reporters Monday, urging Trump to pull Ingrassia’s nomination. At least three GOP senators — Rick Scott (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and James Lankford (Okla.) — said they wouldn’t support Ingrassia. It was a “rare repudiation of a Trump nominee by a Republican Senate that has largely gone along with the president’s staffing choices,” Semafor said.

What next?

Scott, Johnson and Lankford “will have a chance to question Ingrassia Thursday — if Ingrassia’s confirmation hearing goes on as planned,” Politico said. A leaked racist and antisemitic group chat between Young Republicans leaders revealed last week led to the disbanding of chapters in Kansas and New York, the firing of several participants and the formal resignation Monday of Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass (R).

What happened

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority Wednesday appeared inclined to neuter the last remaining major provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The justices heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a challenge from a group of white voters to the state’s court-mandated creation of a second majority-Black congressional district. If the high court strikes down Section 2 of the landmark civil rights law, states would no longer be required to consider race when drawing congressional maps.

Who said what

The “increasingly conservative Supreme Court” has already “largely dismembered” the Voting Rights Act over the past 12 years, but they upheld Section 2 “just two years ago,” Nina Totenberg said at NPR. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the “decisive fifth vote” in that case, said Wednesday he thought “there should be an endpoint to racial remedies like this one.” Notably, said CNN, Kavanaugh “signaled an interest” in a Trump administration solution that would “erode” the provision’s power “while not gutting it entirely.”

Even weakening the law’s protections for Black voters would “potentially trigger a political avalanche,” The Associated Press said. Without Section 2, Republicans could “eliminate upward of a dozen Democratic-held districts across the South,” The New York Times said, leaving Republicans perennially “favored to win the House even if they lost the popular vote by a wide margin.”

What next?

The Supreme Court “typically issues major rulings by late June or early July,” the Times said. But if it “acts quickly,” NPR’s Totenberg said, the court “could facilitate the elimination of Louisiana’s second majority-Black district prior to next year’s congressional election.”

‘The Supreme Court left no doubt: it will gut the Voting Rights Act’

Elie Mystal at The Nation

Republican justices are “going to declare the Voting Rights Act inert and allow the dilution of Black voting rights through racist gerrymandering,” says Elie Mystal. “Some analysts believe that this Supreme Court ruling could result in as many as 19 congressional seats being shifted to the Republicans.” The Democratic Party “cannot survive the loss of Black voting rights,” and “we are now suffering the consequences of the Democrats’ past inaction.”

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‘Something is stirring in Christian America, and it’s making me nervous’

David French at The New York Times

The “steady decline of Christianity in America seems to have slowed, perhaps even paused,” and “younger generations of Americans are now attending church slightly more regularly than older generations,” says David French. But there is a “darkness right alongside the light” of “America’s religious surge.” Christians are “attacking what they call the ‘sin of empathy,’ warning fellow believers against identifying too much with illegal immigrants, gay people or women who seek abortions.”

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‘How Trump got his Nobel Peace Prize after all’

Steve Striffler at Al Jazeera

The Trump administration had to be “pleased that the award went to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado,” says Steve Striffler. Trump and Machado are “cut from the same right-wing authoritarian cloth, which in part explains why the president quickly congratulated her, and why Machado, in turn, dedicated her award to him.” In “awarding the prize to Machado, the Nobel Committee has provided an open invitation for Trump to continue, and even escalate, military intervention and gunboat diplomacy in Latin America.”

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‘“Dancing patients” aren’t the biggest problem with drug ads’

Steven Woloshin and Baruch Fischhoff at The Washington Post

The Food and Drug Administration has “issued dozens of warning letters to companies about ads ‘filled with dancing patients,’” and “‘glowing smiles,’” say Steven Woloshin and Baruch Fischhoff. “But misleading images are just the tip of the drug-promotion iceberg.” The FDA should address a bigger problem: These ads “fail to communicate what consumers most need to know — how well a drug actually works.” Unless “consumers learn how big the risks and benefits are, a drug ad has simply not informed them.”

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The government shutdown is about health care. Democrats say they want to extend tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act's insurance plans or else premiums will spike. Republicans are refusing, saying they want to replace Obamacare with something better. The details are elusive, though, and so is an end to the shutdown.

GOP leaders “don’t appear to have an alternate plan for what happens next,” said The Hill. When the shutdown ends, “we wil be open to have good conversations, productive conversations” about the future of health care, said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). He did not offer details. There are a “lot of options there,” he said.

Such vagueness has “increasingly emboldened” Democrats as the shutdown drags on, said The Hill. Democrats are vowing not to “back off their health care funding demands” as a condition of ending the shutdown. Republicans will not "even entertain the idea of an extension in the context of ending the shutdown.” So the stalemate continues.

What did the commentators say?

“Millions of consumers” have received notice that their health insurance premiums are “expected to spike next year,” said The Washington Post. Republicans are worried that Democrats’ demands to renew Obamacare subsidies are “proving salient with voters — including their own.” That is because GOP voters will be “disproportionately hurt” by rising costs: Residents of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina are all “more dependent on tax subsidies” to obtain health insurance.

Democrats have the upper hand in the shutdown fight “because Republican voters like Obamacare,” Chris Brennan said at USA Today. Researchers say that three-quarters of the 24 million Americans enrolled in the program live in states won by President Donald Trump in 2024. That is why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now warning that “insurance premiums for her adult children will double” if the subsidies are not extended into next year. But Trump does not “sound like a man with a plan,” said Brennan, perhaps because he is a “billionaire who doesn’t have to worry about the cost of his health insurance.” The question is whether GOP leaders will “keep marching along to Trump’s disastrous orders.”

A Republican deal to extend the subsidies “would be a stunning move for a party that spent years campaigning on repealing" the ACA, Audrey Fahlberg said at the National Review. Republicans do not even have to take action now — they can “simply let the credits expire.” But “political pressure” ahead of next year’s midterm elections “may just be too much for Trump and moderate Republicans to bear.” For now, there is a “huge chunk of GOP lawmakers and policy experts” ready to let the health subsidies end.

What next?

There are several possibilities for compromise, said Politico. Congress could extend the subsidies, but with new income limits for eligibility. Or they could “grandfather” current enrollees into the program while cutting off subsidies for new enrollees. Whatever the solution, it has to be “something not only Democrats can accept but also Republicans.”

Even before the invention of the printing press, books have been deemed subversive and threatening by authoritarian rulers. And maneuvers like book banning, confiscation and burning have been used repeatedly by tyrants fearful of a fully informed citizenry.

Book banning also has a long history in the U.S., from censors seeking to keep Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” out of the hands of readers to the targeting of birth control advocacy under the 1873 Comstock Act. But the country has never seen anything quite like today’s national campaign to silence voices disfavored by many in the contemporary Republican Party.

When did the recent book purge begin?

After the Covid-19 pandemic, far-right activists created a series of ideological bogeymen to wage war against, including critical race theory and what President Donald Trump calls “gender insanity” — a catch-all term that he and his allies use to describe anything that involves LGBTQ+ identity. Activist organizations like Moms for Liberty sought to take over local school boards and police the content of books in school libraries, sifting through literature to identify and eliminate race and gender-related content, arguing they were targeting material that was too explicit for children or young adults.

“Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country,” said PEN America, documenting what it claims has been nearly 23,000 book bans in the country since 2021. Most of these efforts are happening in public school districts nationwide, as conservative parents and activists identify an ever-growing number of ideas to which they do not want young people to have exposure. Many Republicans disagree. States and school districts are merely “providing students with a quality education free from sexualization and harmful materials that are not age-appropriate,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Increasingly, bans are being driven by elected officials rather than by parents raising concerns about a book. In November 2024, for example, the Florida Department of Education released a list of more than 700 books that had been banned in state public schools during the 2023-2024 school year, saying that “sexually explicit materials do not belong in schools.”

Which books have been targeted?

Some conservatives have challenged PEN America’s classification of book bans, arguing that many books the organization claims had been removed from schools in 2021 and 2022 were either under review or simply moved to a different age section of the library. In reality, there are “few actual book removals, and they are overwhelmingly based on parental objections to sexually explicit content,” said Jay P. Greene, Max Eden and Madison Marino in a 2023 report at The American Enterprise Institute. The organization’s definition of book bans focuses on “situations where objections or prohibitions result in previously available books being taken off limits,” said PEN America, replying to criticism of its methodology.

PEN America’s list of the most banned books of 2025 includes recent young adult novels and classics like Judy Blume’s “Forever.” The fourth-most-banned book is Malinda Lo’s “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” about an immigrant teenager, Lily Hu, who goes to a lesbian bar with a friend. The book is “beautifully written historical fiction about giddy, queer first love,” said Kirkus Reviews. It wasn’t beautiful enough for the South Carolina Board of Education, which made it one of 22 titles forbidden from all public school libraries in the state in 2025.

Another frequent target of right-wing censors is Sarah J. Maas’ young adult book series “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” which is the “story of a poor, disenfranchised young woman who escapes an abusive, tyrannical boyfriend; finds an egalitarian wonderland; learns to read; takes contraceptives and has sex on her terms,” said Jezebel. Book-banners hate it because there's “nothing as dangerous to the dried up strictures of the status quo as a mind on fire.”

What happened

Leaders of Young Republican groups across the country peppered a group chat with racist, antisemitic and violent comments, Politico reported Tuesday, citing 2,900 pages of leaked Telegram posts from January through mid-August. The comments, including half-joking praise of Adolf Hitler and calling rape “epic,” drew broad bipartisan condemnation and led to at least four of the participants losing their jobs in state government and politics.

Who said what

The exchanges between Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont “offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening,” Politico said. “They referred to Black people as monkeys,” mused about “putting their political opponents in gas chambers” and “lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.”

The messages “reveal a culture” within President Donald Trump’s Republican Party where the “loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders,” Politico said. The use of racial slurs and white supremacist codewords was similar to online discussions among neo-Nazis, said University of Dayton professor Art Jipson. “You say it once or twice, it’s a joke, but you say it 251 times, it’s no longer a joke.”

What next?

The Young Republican National Federation board told all of the chat participants to “immediately resign” from the organization. Vermont Republicans urged state Sen. Samuel Douglass (R) to step down for his contributions to what Gov. Phil Scott (R) called the “vile, racist, bigoted and antisemitic dialogue.” The Kansas GOP said its Young Republicans chapter was now “inactive.”

Israel confirmed today that the proposed Gaza ceasefire – the first of the 20 points in the agreement – has gone into effect, with the Israel Defense Forces beginning its withdrawal from parts of the strip.

If the peace plan is successful, it would be a “massive blow to Joe Biden’s legacy”, said The Independent. Few Democrats still defend his administration’s “hug Bibi closer” strategy, and recent developments appear to have validated Donald Trump’s “brash, demanding approach” towards Benjamin Netanyahu.

What did the commentators say?

If this agreement holds, it could stand as the “signature achievement” of Trump’s second term, said the BBC. Where Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu was more “tenuous”, Trump’s friendship with Israel’s prime minister and popularity with Israeli voters allowed him to put “pressure” on Netanyahu after the strikes on Iran and Qatar. Trump’s close ties to the Gulf states, business agreements with Qatar and the UAE, and presidential visits to Saudi Arabia have all won favour with leaders in the region.

Though much of the diplomacy has been conducted far outside the US, near-unconditional party support at home played a significant part, said Gerard Baker in The Times. In the last 50 years, no Republican president has “enjoyed such a level of trust” from his administration. With the party becoming something of a “personality cult”, if Trump “wants to move diplomatic mountains, he faces no resistance” from within.

That was an advantage certainly not shared by his Democrat predecessor, said the BBC. While Trump’s “solid Republican base” has allowed him “room to manoeuvre”, “every step Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support”, due to split opinion on the Gaza conflict within the Democratic Party and voter base.

Trump’s diplomacy skills may even be evolving, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. In addition to his familiar “imperious”, “go-it-alone” personality, the president arguably displayed “more flexibility and cooperation than are typical of him” by involving Middle Eastern partners like Turkey, Egypt and Qatar in diplomatic discussions.

The “boldness” of the president’s recent tactics left little room for “interagency”, Joel Braunold, managing director at the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, told Lawfare. But Trump’s “just try and get it done” attitude – “there’s something to be said for that”. Of course, Trump is no stranger to an eye-catching announcement, so the “proof will be in the pudding” as to whether his unique brand of diplomacy creates fair and lasting change.

“There are many unresolved details” and a degree of scepticism is in order, said Baker in The Times. The recent past is “littered with too many ceasefires, accords and peace deals” in the Middle East, and it would be misguided “to express any confidence now that this latest one will endure”.

What next?

The history of political turbulence in the region suggests that there is a long road ahead, said The New York Times. Questions over the proposed interim “technocratic” leadership in Gaza overseen by the US, and the extent of Palestinian Authority involvement, have yet to be answered satisfactorily.

Working out peace deals in the region is “a little like cleaning up after volcanic eruptions: There is a certainty it will happen again. It is just hard to know when, or how ferociously.”

A Reform government would turn Britain into “Trump’s America”, Ed Davey has said, as he tried to tie the policies of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump together in voters’ minds.

“Imagine living in the Trump-inspired country Farage wants us to become,” said the Lib Dem leader in his keynote speech at his party’s conference in Bournemouth. Davey painted “a nightmarish vision”, said the BBC, of the end of the NHS, a countryside destroyed by fracking, lax gun laws, racism, misogyny and “a constant state of chaos”.

Farage duly rubbished those claims but Davey’s warning about the Trumpification of British politics should be taken seriously, said Peter Geoghegan in Prospect: the American president is a “lodestar, the harbinger of a populist revolution that could be emulated on this side of the pond”.

What did the commentators say?

The year is 2029, and Donald Trump “holds two titles”, said Politico’s Paul Dallison: “US President-for-Life and UK prime minister”.

That sentence “would have been firmly in the realm of science fiction even a couple of years ago. But now, it doesn’t sound quite so far-fetched.” After all, the US president, with his British mother, would be eligible for the UK premiership, as former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out on GB News during Trump’s state visit.

For the past decade, “some of Trump’s biggest donors have been secretly funding a clutch of the most influential groups on the right of British politics”, said Prospect’s Geoghegan.

Former Conservative bigwigs Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and Liz Truss have “all traipsed to Washington” and spoken at the Heritage Foundation, the “hugely influential” think tank behind Project 2025, the “blueprint for a state-eviscerating” second Trump administration.

But few UK politicians are “as close to Trump as Nigel Farage”. He is “plugged into the very top” of the Republican party and has recently claimed Trump “knows” that he will be Britain’s next prime minister. He told the Harry Cole Saves the West YouTube show that Trump’s team saw “similarities in what they’ve done and what we’ve done, and you know what, we speak the same language”.

Farage has “enjoyed a friendship with Trump for almost a decade”, said Dominic Penna in The Telegraph. He joined him on the US presidential campaign trail in 2016 and told his supporters that a Republican victory would be “Brexit plus, plus, plus”.

What next?

Regardless of Trump’s next political endeavour, it’s clear that the tech billionaires who have supported him are already having their own impact on politics abroad.

Palantir founder Peter Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley “political kingmakers” are heavily influenced by far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin’s “dark enlightenment” ideas, said The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi. They believe “super-rich elites should have dictatorial powers” while the “hoi polloi should suck it all up”.

Elon Musk, Tesla boss and Trump’s former “first buddy” is “increasingly taking his political meddling worldwide”, from Canada and Germany to the UK. He “spent January posting about grooming gangs”, then, at the “Unite the Kingdom” rally, called for a “change of government”. Over a video link, he told the crowd, “Violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.”

It feels as if Musk is increasingly trying to “destabilise democracies worldwide so he can accumulate more power”, said Mahdawi. It is “not inconceivable” that a tech mogul “could effect regime change in Britain”.