New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr. won his GOP primary election on Tuesday, which was notable because he has not been seen in public for months. The question of Kean’s 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

President Donald Trump on Tuesday spent more than three hours at Walter Reed Medical Center for his fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since returning to office last year. The White House did not release any details of the exam, but “everything checked out PERFECTLY,” Trump, who turns 80 next month, said on social media.

Who said what

Trump’s unusually frequent exams have put his health “under renewed public scrutiny after he has worked to dismiss concerns over his age and stamina,” The Associated Press said. He “frequently casts himself as more energetic and fitter than Joe Biden,” who left office at age 82 after “facing questions about his fitness for the job,” Reuters said.

Trump’s “health and fitness have been central to his political identity,” but as an “aging president, he now receives some of the same questions that dogged Biden — namely, whether he is mentally and physically fit” enough, The Washington Post said. “Independent doctors” have called the White House’s explanations for Trump’s bruised hands, neck rash, swollen legs and “occasional sleepiness” at meetings “insufficient.”

What next?

It was “not immediately clear whether the White House would release details” from Trump’s clinical exam to “support his claim” of good health, The New York Times said.

What happened

Republican redistricting efforts in Alabama and South Carolina were blocked Tuesday, stalling President Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering campaign. South Carolina’s GOP-led state Senate thwarted a plan to cancel an ongoing primary and swap in a new map that would erase the state’s lone Democratic and majority Black district. In Alabama, a panel of federal judges temporarily blocked the state GOP’s proposed map, saying it was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”

Who said what

The 12 South Carolina GOP senators who “effectively killed” the Trump-backed gerrymander cited “numerous” concerns, from practical and political to procedural, said The Post and Courier. “Neither my conscience nor my common sense is going to let me stop an election that’s already underway,” state Sen. Richard Cash (R) said before the vote. The “rebuke from fellow Republicans came as a shock to Trump’s political operation,” Politico said. But “even without the extra seat” or two, Republicans “have an overall edge in the redistricting war.”

What next?

In Alabama, the three-judge panel, which includes two Trump appointees, said the state had to use a court-ordered 2024 map that includes two substantially Black districts. Alabama said it would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court.

What happened

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary, unseating Sen. John Cornyn despite being outspent by about $80 million. Boosted by an “eleventh-hour endorsement” from President Donald Trump, Paxton’s 64% to 36% defeat of “one of the most successful politicians in Texas GOP history” was a “political earthquake” that “will reverberate nationally,” The Texas Tribune said. Senate Republicans and political analysts believe Paxton’s victory gives the Democratic candidate, state Rep. James Talarico, a fighting chance to win in November.

In notable Texas Democratic primaries Tuesday, former Rep. Colin Allred unseated Rep. Julie Johnson, newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee beat 11-term Rep. Al Green in a newly combined Houston-area district, and former sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia defeated sex therapist Maureen Galindo, a controversial candidate funded by a mysterious GOP-backed super PAC.

Who said what

Republicans just nominated “the most corrupt politician in America,” Talarico said Tuesday night, in his first ad of the general election. Paxton is “known for his polarizing style, ethical travails and lousy political judgment,” but his “fealty and bombast” won over Trump, The Wall Street Journal said in an op-ed. Republicans can now “spend $100 million or more trying to salvage the seat and keep their Senate majority.” Minutes after the race was called, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its Texas Senate forecast from “likely” to “lean” Republican.

What next?

Paxton has faced “allegations of corruption, financial malfeasance and infidelity,” The Washington Post said, but he “still stands a decent chance of winning” in solidly red Texas.

What happened

President Trump’s retribution tour rolled on with two more rivals losing to Trump-endorsed challengers in primaries last week, further cementing his hold over the Republican Party. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, an outspoken libertarian critic of Trump’s war in Iran and his handling of the Epstein files, lost by nearly 10 percentage points to former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. It was the most expensive House primary in history, drawing more than $32 million in ad spending. The president intensified his attacks on Massie in recent weeks, calling him “a moron” at the National Prayer Breakfast, and urging supporters to vote for his handpicked challenger. In Louisiana, voters swept out Sen. Bill Cassidy, who tried but failed to overcome his decision to vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial. That “disloyalty,” Trump wrote on social media, “is now a part of legend.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) may be next on the chopping block after an emboldened Trump endorsed his primary challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Trump called Cornyn “a good man,” but said he wasn’t “supportive of me when times were tough.” Brad Raffensperger, who defied Trump’s attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, also got trounced in his gubernatorial primary, finishing behind two pro-Trump candidates. In Pennsylvania, retired firefighter and union leader Bob Brooks—endorsed by both the Keystone State’s moderate Gov. Josh Shapiro and progressives like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—won a crowded Democratic congressional primary in a closely watched swing district.

What the columnists said

“Massie’s defeat may be the end of GOP dissent,” said Mary Ellen Klas in Bloomberg, at least among elected officials who still need to face voters. Massie voted with Trump 90% of the time. But he “dared to challenge the president over his abandoned campaign promises,” and he got crushed by Trump-faithful older voters. GOP lawmakers don’t answer to their constituents or even their own values anymore. The man in the Oval Office alone “commands absolute loyalty.”

Yet Trump has created a “conundrum,” said Shane Goldmacher in The New York Times. He seems “more keen to leverage his popularity with the MAGA base” to settle scores than “to repair his image among the independents his party will need” in November’s midterms. His approval ratings continue to crater, including in one New York Times/Siena survey that shows only 26% of independents support the job he’s doing.

The Paxton endorsement made “Chuck Schumer’s day,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The well-respected Cornyn “has been a reliable vote” for Trump for years and has shown “four terms over” that he can beat Democrats in November. The scandal-ridden Paxton, on the other hand, has been impeached by his own party, been accused of bribery, and confessed to infidelity. It’s no surprise that polls show he’s locked in a “dead heat” with Democratic nominee James Talarico, who could help flip the Senate. If that happens, “Trump will deserve ‘COMPLETE AND TOTAL’ credit, as he likes to put it.”

What happened

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday abruptly adjourned the Senate for a weeklong break, scuttling plans to get a $72 billion filibuster-proof ICE–Border Patrol funding bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by a self-imposed June 1 deadline. The “most urgent reason for the delay” was the Senate GOP’s “boiling anger” over Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, Semafor said. In another “striking setback that exposed fractures within the GOP,” The New York Times said, House GOP leaders canceled a vote to compel the end of the Iran war after it became clear it would pass.

Who said what

The GOP “retreats on both the budget bill and the war powers resolution reflected a pivot” away from “unquestioningly” deferring to Trump, the Times said. The opaque $1.8 billion fund is a “Trump priority,” but it faces “widespread opposition” from Senate Republicans, The Wall Street Journal said, alongside near-universal condemnation from Democrats, so the must-pass reconciliation bill “gave senators leverage to dig in their heels.”

The special budget process Republicans are using to pass the bill “allows a long series of amendment votes,” The Associated Press said, and “as it became clear” that Democratic amendments to kill or curtail the fund would pass with bipartisan support, Thune called a timeout. The fund “is in real trouble — and it should be,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the Times on Thursday.

What next?

“By leaving Washington,” Republicans left the “anti-weaponization” fund “intact and without any of the guardrails they might want to impose,” the Journal said. Thune said his party “will pick up where we left off” when they return from vacation.

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-47 to advance legislation that would halt the Iran war unless President Donald Trump obtained authorization from Congress. A trickle of Republicans began supporting the war powers resolutions over seven previous votes, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) joined them Tuesday, providing the crucial 50th vote.

Who said what

The vote “showed how Republicans are increasingly uneasy with a conflict” that’s “stuck in a fragile ceasefire” while “causing rising gas prices in the U.S.,” The Associated Press said. The “sliver of GOP skepticism” about Trump’s handling of the war “widened last week,” The New York Times said, a shift “fueled in part” by his “ignoring” of a 60-day legal deadline to seek congressional authorization.

Even Trump supporters are “concerned about this war,” and Congress is “in the dark,” Cassidy, who lost his primary campaign after Trump endorsed his opponent, said on social media. “Until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.”

What next?

This was “only the first step” toward passing the bill, and GOP leaders believe it would have failed if three Republican Senators hadn’t been absent, Politico said. The House is “expected to vote on a similar war powers resolution” Wednesday, the AP said, and “Democrats are bullish” on passing it.

What happened

Republican candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump won or advanced in primaries Tuesday night in Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky, and unseated Trump’s top target of the night, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). A seven-term libertarian-leaning lawmaker, Massie had angered Trump by opposing his Iran war and spending bills and leading the charge to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. He lost to Navy veteran Ed Gallrein by 10 percentage points in the most expensive House primary in history.

Who said what

Trump “notched several other wins” Tuesday night, Politico said, including engineering Rep. Andy Barr’s (R-Ky.) primary victory for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R). Trump’s “revenge campaign” also blocked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from advancing to the GOP’s gubernatorial runoff.

The winner of the Georgia runoff — Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones or healthcare executive Rick Jackson — will face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) in “what is expected to be another hard-fought race for the state’s top office,” The New York Times said. In Alabama, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) and former Sen. Doug Jones (D) won their respective primaries and will face each other in the state’s gubernatorial race.

What next?

Trump’s next chance to “flex his influence” and “reshape” the GOP “looms in Texas,” said CNN. His recent endorsement of the “controversial” and scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton could crush Sen. John Cornyn (R) in next week’s runoff vote.

The redistricting battles are over for now, and Republicans won. But Democrats might still have a path to recapturing the House in November’s midterm elections.

President Donald Trump “succeeded in tilting the playing field to the GOP’s advantage” by pushing for mid-decade gerrymandered maps to defend Republicans’ House majority, said The Washington Post. As many as 12 seats shifted to the right. Democrats would now have to “dig deep into Trump territory” to win the chamber. But redistricting may have also “diluted” GOP votes in existing red-leading districts, said Axios, a possible “dummymander” in which sitting Republican members of Congress could be “swept out of office” in a “Democratic wave” thanks to Trump’s growing unpopularity.

‘The GOP’s voter problem’

The redistricting wins “won’t matter if Republicans can’t get people to vote for them,” Russell Payne said at Salon. All the shuffling leaves Democrats needing to win the national popular vote by at least 3.5% in order to have a chance at winning the House, but polling currently puts them closer to six points ahead. A Democratic victory in the midterms “would buy them time” to respond with gerrymandering of their own in blue states like Virginia, Illinois and New York. Trump’s negative approval rating will not help Republicans. Redistricting “can’t fix the GOP’s voter problem.”

The new House map is “so tilted” that a national four-point Democratic voting advantage “might not be enough for a majority,” Henry Olsen said at The Washington Post. That outcome “would be highly unusual historically.” The GOP’s gerrymandering “might be enough to let the party keep the House,” but it could “hold back public opinion forever.” If Democrats keep that but lose the House, they will “rightly feel robbed.”

Trump and the GOP may have given Democrats a “lifeline” with Black voters, S.E. Cupp said at the Chicago Sun-Times. Republican redistricting is “carving up predominantly Black majority districts” and “potentially marginalizing minority voters” who were starting to move right: Trump received 15% of the Black vote in 2024, up from just 1% in 2016. Gerrymandering “might be the catalyst” Democrats need to win them back. The GOP “war on Black districts” could do just that “at least in the short term.”

Democrats: ‘May still have upper hand’

Democrats should not despair. Republicans “likely won’t realize all the gains” they hoped for, Jim Saksa said at Democracy Docket. And if Democrats play “hardball” after this year’s midterms by doing more “partisan redraws” in blue states, they could end up with an advantage of as many as 13 seats by 2028. But “it won’t be easy.”

The president’s party “typically loses seats in midterms,” said Reuters. GOP chances in the House “have increased,” said Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin to the outlet, and “none of the underlying politics has changed.” Inflation, gasoline prices and the Iran war will all be factors. Democrats may “still have the upper hand” going into November, said Reuters.

What happened

The Justice Department on Monday announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for “victims of lawfare and weaponization,” potentially including those who participated in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. The fund is part of a settlement President Donald Trump reached with his Justice Department to drop his $10 billion claim over an IRS leak of his tax records. The money will be doled out by five people appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, though Trump can fire them. Shortly after the announcement, Treasury Department General Counsel Brian Morrissey resigned, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Who said what

The Justice Department said Trump and his family will receive apologies but no payments from the fund. But the “highly unusual” settlement forges a “pipeline to funnel taxpayer money” to Trump’s allies, The New York Times said, and is an “apparent effort to skirt oversight by a judge” who “expressed concern” that Trump’s lawsuit “represented self-dealing between the president and a department run by his former defense lawyer.”

“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American,” Blanche said in a statement. This “slush fund” is “nothing but a racket” for Trump to hand taxpayer money “to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters and white supremacists,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

What next?

Blanche is “expected to be pressed on the fund when he testifies” on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, The Associated Press said.

What happened

Democrats were left scrambling last week after a back-to-back set of redistricting losses narrowed their odds of taking back the House in November, with the Supreme Court clearing the way for Alabama Republicans to redraw the state’s electoral map and Virginia’s high court throwing out a Democratic map designed to flip red House seats blue. The ruling by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could allow the Alabama legislature to use a 2023 voting map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts, both of which are currently held by Democrats. A lower court had blocked that map on the grounds that it violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which bars racial discrimination in voting. But the high court’s conservative justices said that decision should be reconsidered in light of last month’s Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court found the creation of majority-Black districts to be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” In the Louisiana legislature, a Senate committee passed a congressional map that will eliminate one of two majority-Black districts, while in Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a new congressional map that carves up the state’s sole Democratic-held district, based in majority-Black Memphis. It’s “unbelievable how people seem to want to turn things backward,” said Barbara Love, a Black woman who lives outside Memphis.

In Virginia, the state’s top court reversed a new electoral map approved by voters in a ballot measure in April, which was designed to flip four Republican-held House seats. The court ruled 4-3 that Democratic lawmakers had violated a procedural mandate by rushing to pass the redistricting before November’s midterms. State Democrats said the ruling amounted to “judicial defiance” of voters’ will and appealed to the Supreme Court.

In a rare setback for President Trump, who has urged red-state legislatures to redraw maps, Republicans in South Carolina rejected a redistricting plan designed to eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-held House seat. State Senate Majority Leader A. Shane Massey said carving up the district, held for 34 years by influential Rep. James Clyburn, could backfire by diluting GOP support in other districts. He also warned that the current redistricting wars may anger voters. “Too many people in power,” Massey said, “just want to do whatever it takes to stay in power.”

What the editorials said

“America’s re-gerrymandering arms race is here,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and you can thank President Trump. The seed was planted last year when Trump demanded Texas and other red states rip up their maps mid-decade to boost Republicans’ midterm edge, a practice previously “unheard of.” That left Democrats in California, Virginia, and elsewhere not only justified in following suit “but virtually obligated to.” Having state maps constantly redrawn to favor the party in power “is intolerable to democracy.” But that’s what we face until Congress steps in “to impose uniform redistricting standards.”

Pardon us while we “revel in” the “comeuppance of Virginia Democrats,” said National Review. With their “lavishly funded” referendum they rammed through an “absurdly lopsided” map that stood to boost their House-seat edge in the “purplish” state from 6-5 to 10-1. But state law dictates that any referendum to amend the constitution must be passed twice, with a general election in between. The first vote came late in October 2025, after some 1.3 million early ballots had already been cast for the November election. The high court’s ruling that Democrats violated the letter and spirit of the law “isn’t even a close call.”

What the columnists said

The blitz to disenfranchise Black Southern voters is “more than a tragedy for voting rights,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. It’s a virtual “revival of the Confederacy.” Even as aggrieved white Republicans have revived Confederate symbols, ended diversity initiatives, and otherwise tried to walk back the civil rights movement, progressives have held faith that their foes “were fighting a doomed rearguard action.” But it’s now clear that the Right never lost its own faith that with enough determination “the 1960s could be undone—and maybe some of the 1860s as well.”

Such “hooey” makes it sound like Republicans are demanding “literacy tests at voting precincts,” said Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. What they’re combating, and what the Supreme Court “rightly ended,” is the practice of “packing” Black voters into districts designed “to advantage one party.” Democrats can “gussy it up with lofty talk” of “vote dilution,” but the “ugly fact” is that such districts divide voters according to skin color.

The GOP’s strong-arming “could backfire badly,” said Henry Olsen in The Washington Post. Yes, it will boost the party in the short term. But New York, Colorado, Maryland, and other blue states could well turn the tables and rub out Republican districts. Lawmakers in many of those states are constrained by legal and structural barriers that prevent mid-decade gerrymandering. But they can be undone, and Democrats will be under “enormous pressure” to “fight fire with fire.”

“This is getting dangerous,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. The redistricting rush will push American politics to an “even more dangerous place of high partisan tension and ideological Balkanization,” where the House “looks something like the Electoral College.” A system in which a party can eke out control of a state capitol and then redraw congressional maps to lock themselves in power is “not a democracy in any meaningful sense.” But that seems to be “where the United States is headed, if it’s not already there.”

What happened

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) on Thursday signed into law a new congressional map that slices up Memphis to disperse its Black voters into Republican-leaning districts, seeking to eliminate the state’s last Democratic-held and majority-Black district. The General Assembly’s Republican supermajority approved the gerrymander earlier in the day amid raucous protests.

Who said what

Tennessee is the first state to draw a new map since the Supreme Court last week neutered the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act. That ruling “opened a new front, particularly in the South, in a bitter, coast-to-coast redistricting battle” launched by President Donald Trump to protect the GOP’s slim House majority, The New York Times said.

Tennessee Republicans “defended the new map,” saying their “partisan” goal was sending “an all-Republican delegation” to Congress, NPR said. “You cannot take a majority Black city, fracture its voting power and then tell us race has nothing to do with it,” said state Sen. London Lamar (D). The new map is “Jim Crow on steroids,” political scientist Norm Ornstein said on social media. The new map likely “would never have withstood scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act under the last several decades,” said David Becker at the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “Now, the Supreme Court almost seems to invite” these gerrymanders.

What next?

The NAACP on Thursday evening challenged Tennessee’s map in state court. Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina are taking steps to eliminate majority-Black districts in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

‘Why so few babies? We might have overlooked the biggest reason of all.’

Anna Louie Sussman at The New York Times

Having kids is “not simply a matter of affordability, the buzzword so often invoked to explain why people are choosing to have smaller families,” says Anna Louie Sussman. Overall, people are “having fewer children both in countries that offer very little and in those renowned for their generous family benefits.” What “unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics” is people’s “inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood.”

Read more

‘Nothing to fear, much to gain from Flock cameras’

Jason Riggs at The Minnesota Star Tribune

A “common misconception when discussing license plate reader cameras is that ‘each camera records passing vehicles and compiles the license plates into a time-stamped database,’” says Jason Riggs. Police “are not here to monitor your every move.” The cameras “are designed to notify law enforcement only when a license plate connected with a crime crosses their path.” Using them “can make all the difference when searching for a vehicle,” and “throughout the country, this technology has proven to be lifesaving.”

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‘The immeasurable endurance of the women of Gaza’

Huda Skaik at The Nation

“Even in the face of such brutality, Gazan women persist,” says Huda Skaik. They “carry their communities, serving as pillars of endurance amid the ruins of a society that has been all but erased.” Women in Gaza “have become both the primary caretakers and providers, responsible for securing food, water and shelter, caring for the injured, and sustaining their families.” Their “suffering is both physical and psychological, yet they continue to care for the next generation.”

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‘I’m not a pundit, I just play one on TV’

Christian Schneider at the National Review

When “physicians get political, they damage the medical profession’s reputation,” says Christian Schneider. In “recent years, the medical profession has endured a thorough battering, with doctors exposing themselves as just as misinformed and politically motivated as the general public.” Nowhere “has this provided more comedy than in President Donald Trump’s attempt to fill the spot of U.S. surgeon general in his administration.” The “diminishment of the medical profession by a wannabe political physician class has real-world consequences.”

Read more

What happened

Senate Republicans faced an uproar Tuesday for including $1 billion for President Donald Trump’s “East Wing Modernization Project” in their $72 billion party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement through September 2029. The East Wing project is what the White House calls Trump’s $400 million ballroom, which he has repeatedly claimed will be built only with private funds.

Who said what

Democrats “pounced” on the “surprise addition” to the GOP’s reconciliation package, The New York Times said. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on X.

The bill, released late Monday, allocates $1 billion for Secret Service “enhancements” related to the East Wing project, including “above-ground and below-ground security features.” A spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the bill “does not fund ballroom construction.” But “security costs would seem to be a significant portion” of the ballroom project, said CNN, and “no other project is mentioned in that section of the bill.”

What next?

Republicans hope to pass the filibuster-proof $72 billion package by the end of the month.

What happened

The House on Thursday passed a Senate bill funding all of the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement arms, and President Donald Trump signed it, ending the longest-ever partial government shutdown after 76 days. DHS agencies, including the Coast Guard, Secret Service, FEMA and TSA are now funded through September. ICE and Customs and Border Protection never lost funding thanks to the GOP’s 2025 megabill.

Who said what

After weeks of delay and GOP infighting, the House “unanimously” approved the DHS bill “through voice vote with little fanfare,” suggesting Republicans were “finally ready to put the impasse behind them,” CBS News said. After Democrats refused to fund ICE and CBP without new guardrails, GOP leaders agreed to finance the rest of DHS and separately give Trump $70 billion for deportation operations through a filibuster-proof GOP-only reconciliation bill.

If the House had “waited for the Senate to pass a reconciliation bill, as some GOP lawmakers insisted, it would have left DHS closed until mid-May,” Axios said. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had been facing a “growing revolt from centrists in his party,” CNN said, and his “major retreat” on holding out for ICE funding was a “major win for Democrats.”

What next?

After lawmakers “return in mid-May,” The New York Times said, Republicans will “try to meet the president’s June 1 deadline” to get their $70 billion ICE-CBP bill to his desk.

What happened

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office on Tuesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to erase the seditious conspiracy convictions of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders found guilty of playing key roles in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack to keep President Donald Trump in power. The Trump administration has “determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” Pirro’s office said. Trump pardoned most of the Jan. 6 rioters but commuted the lengthy prison sentences of the 12 covered by the new filing.

Who said what

The motion to expunge the convictions of ringleaders including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is the “latest effort by the Trump administration to erase the stain of Jan. 6,” Politico said. Asking the appeals court to “toss out the guilty verdicts” also lets the Justice Department avoid the “awkward situation of having to defend the convictions,” The New York Times said. That would “likely have required administration officials to assert that the far-right groups were acting on behalf” of Trump.

What next?

The request to vacate the last remaining Jan. 6 convictions is “likely to be granted because prosecutors have broad discretion to pursue or drop criminal charges,” The Washington Post said.

Donald Trump’s political rivals have denounced him as an “unhinged madman” and a “dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual” after he directed a string of expletives at the Iranian regime. “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell!” the US president said on his Truth Social platform .

But Trump is far from the only potty-mouthed politician, and trends suggest that swearing in politics is increasingly going from taboo to mainstream.

‘Profanity seal’

Woodrow Wilson “broke the profanity seal” in 1919, when the then president recalled a time he made a “conspicuous ass of himself”, said Joseph Phillips, a politics lecturer at Cardiff University. “Since then, presidents, their seconds-in-command, and presidential hopefuls have used profanity at least 692 times” – but the vast majority of curse words, 87%, occurred in the last 10 years.

We’ve “come a long way from our shock” at John Major, not knowing he was being recorded, using the word “bastards” while prime minister in 1993, said Robert Crampton in The Times. Although “tough talk is nothing new in politics”, leaders “long avoided flaunting it”, said The Independent. But now, public vulgarity is “in vogue”. During a political rally in 2025, Trump “used profanity at least four times”. J.D. Vance has also sworn publicly, and former vice president Kamala Harris “earned a roar of approval from her audience” last October when she said of the Trump administration that “these mother******* are crazy”.

Members of Congress and the Senate have also sworn as a “volley of vulgarities underscores an ever-coarsening political environment” on social media. Posts that “evoke the strongest emotions are rewarded with the most engagement”.

‘Anti-intellectualism’

There’s a “misguided belief” that “profanity is more ‘honest’ or ‘authentic’ than polite speech”, said Solomon D. Stevens in the Illinois paper the Journal-Courier. This suggests that politicians who swear are “telling it like it is” or “being real”, while those who don’t must be “holding back and not telling the truth”. But “politicians who swear are just politicians who swear. They can lie just as easily as those who don’t swear.”

There’s also “an anti-intellectualism at work”, as politicians who swear imply that those who don’t are “putting on airs”. While some intellectuals can “certainly be pretentious”, “refraining from coarse language” is not in itself a sign of that.

Trump’s “disinhibited language” sounded like a “tantrum”, said Melanie Phillips in The Times. It “suggested that he’d lost self-control because Iran wouldn’t do what he wanted”. Swearing points to an “emotional release and thus a loss of reason”.

The president’s recent profanity also distracted from “the message itself”, said the Deseret News. A “rousing and well-crafted argument” could have “built a compelling case for ousting the country’s ruling regime”, because “when it comes to war, calm self-assurance speaks louder than ranting expletives”.

Politicians aren’t “bawling swear words because they can’t contain their outrage”, said Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. They do it because, “like preteen boys trying to sound tough”, they believe “the odd public expletive enhances their authenticity” and gives them “an air of pugnacity apropos to the moment”. But they are mistaken. “Most Americans still prefer their leaders to talk like grown-ups.”

Nevertheless, Democrats are pushing back against the right, using bad language themselves and embracing more confrontational and crass tactics. They see it as a way to beat Maga at its own game, attempting to “step outside the bounds of the political correctness that Republicans have accused Democrats of establishing”, said The New York Times.

What happened

Republican Clay Fuller on Tuesday night won the special election to fill former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R) seat in Georgia’s heavily Republican 14th Congressional District. But he beat Democrat Shawn Harris by only about 12 percentage points, far short of President Donald Trump’s 37-point margin in 2024. That 25-point shift was the “largest leftward swing in a special election since the start of 2025,” The New York Times said. In Wisconsin, Democratic-backed Judge Chris Taylor won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Democrat Alicia Halvensleben narrowly won the mayoral race in Waukesha, a GOP-leaning Milwaukee suburb.

Who said what

Republicans were relieved to bolster their narrow House majority in Georgia’s “deep red” 14th District, The Associated Press said, while Democrats were hopeful this latest in their string of better-than-expected electoral results “will create momentum toward November’s midterm elections.” Democrats “notched their best Trump-era overperformance” even after “national Republicans made the remarkable decision to actually spend money on the race,” said CNN.

What next?

Taylor’s victory over Republican-backed Judge Maria Lazar means “liberals will have a 5-2 edge on the swing state’s highest court, putting the majority out of reach for conservatives until at least 2030,” NBC News said.

Traditionally seen as occupying a more staid, straight-laced and “conservative” end of the American political spectrum, the modern Republican party has, under President Donald Trump, become a hub for many of the theories formerly relegated to the fringes of national discourse. Over the past decade, the conservative movement has elevated adherents to claims of demonic possession, extraterrestrial infiltration and, most recently, instantaneous transportation.

Just months after being nominated to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s core Office of Response and Recovery in late 2025, top FEMA official Gregg Phillips became the subject of an investigation into his “rise to prominence” as a “far-right activist” who “spread conspiracy theories,” said CNN. Phillips’ claim that he’d spontaneously teleported to a Waffle House restaurant in the city of Rome, Georgia, has “generated numerous headlines and at least one biting late-night comedy segment,” The New York Times said.

Rep. Tim Burchett: UFO disclosures the country would ‘come unglued’ over

“We need full disclosure,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said to Newsmax in April. “The public has a right to know, dadgummit, it’s your tax dollars. Let’s get it out there.” Asked by host Rob Finnerty about the aliens-exist claims from former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, Burchett, who sits on both the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, said he’d been “briefed by just about every alphabet agency there is.” If the national security apparatus were to “release the things that I’ve seen, you’d be up at night worrying about or thinking about it.”

One of Burchett’s recent classified briefings “would have set the earth” on fire and cause the country to “come unglued,” the Tennessee lawmaker said. Outer space revelations are “getting covered up, and the people that know are dying or disappearing.”

Tucker Carlson: demonic origins of atomic weaponry

Onetime Fox News juggernaut Tucker Carlson insists a nocturnal attack from supernatural forces once left him bloody and scarred while his family slept unmolested. The claim, made in footage from the unreleased “Christianities?” documentary, was accompanied by “creepy music, reenactments of Carlson firing a gun and dogs running through the woods in slow motion,” The Seattle Times said.

Nuclear weaponry is also “demonic,” Carlson said on the Bannons War Room podcast to former White House advisor Steve Bannon. Anyone who “claims otherwise” is “either ignorant or doing the bidding of the forces that created nuclear technology in the first place, which were not human forces obviously.”

Matt Gaetz: alien hybrid breeding program

Once a front-runner to lead the Trump administration’s Justice Department, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed on The Benny Show podcast in late March that the U.S. government is engaged in a human-extraterrestrial breeding program, with eyes on making inroads to the broader galactic community.

“An actual uniformed member of the United States Army briefed me,” Gaetz said to right-wing political commentator and podcaster Benny Johnson. Despite taking place in a “non-classified setting,” Gaetz said the soldier showed him “locations of hybrid breeding programs where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication.” During the interview, Gaetz “admitted he didn’t verify the whistleblower’s claims,” HuffPost said, but added he was told there were “between six and 12 breeding facilities around the country.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Jewish space lasers

Perhaps the most infamous Trump-era Republican flight of sci-fi fancy is that of former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in 2018 claimed in a since-deleted Facebook note that a series of catastrophic California wildfires were potentially started by a beam from “space solar generators” under the nebulous control of the Rothschild banking firm — itself a longstanding shibboleth for antisemitic conspiracy theories. In a 2025 interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Greene said she “didn’t even know the Rothschilds were Jewish” and also claimed UFOs “could be fallen angels.”

Roger Stone: demon portal above White House

In 2022, longtime Trump ally and conservative operator Roger Stone claimed on the Eric Metaxas Radio Show that a “demonic portal” had appeared above the White House “around the time that the Bidens moved in.” Insisting he’d been initially skeptical, Stone said he was convinced, in part, by a friend’s sending him a “bunch of documents and also a bunch of notations from the Bible about portals,” adding that he had seen the alleged 1600 Pennsylvania Ave vortex “swirling like a cauldron.” Asked why the apparent rift in space-time hadn’t been reported on by mainstream news outlets, Stone said simply that the media “doesn’t cover a lot of things that are true.”

JD Vance: UFOs as demons

Asked during a recent interview with Benny Johnson about federal tracking of UFOs and other potentially extraterrestrial phenomena, Vice President JD Vance offered a slightly different take on whether or not advanced civilizations were visiting Earth: “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons,” Vance said. Pressed to expand on his assertion about “celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people,” Vance said there is a “desire to describe everything celestial, everything otherworldly” as “aliens.” Put simply, said Slate, Vance “appears to believe that aliens visit Earth” and that those aliens “are actually demons.”

President Donald Trump won the White House in 2024 on a promise to expel just about every undocumented immigrant. Attendees at that year’s Republican National Convention waved signs emblazoned with “Mass Deportations Now!” logos. But ahead of this year’s midterm elections, the GOP’s message is changing.

The White House wants House Republicans to “stop emphasizing ‘mass deportations,’” said Axios. “Nearly half” of Americans say the Trump administration’s deportation campaign has been “too aggressive” following the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota. Perhaps more concerning to Republicans: One of every five voters who backed the president in 2024 agrees, according to a Politico poll from January. House members should “focus their messaging on removing violent criminals” going forward, said White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, per Axios. The “change in rhetoric” is coming as GOP “fears of election losses mount” as the midterms approach, said The Washington Post.

What did the commentators say?

The administration “wants to rebrand its mass-deportation push,” Ed Kilgore said at New York magazine. Trump and his allies argued for widespread expulsions while also creating the impression “that virtually all its targets would be hardened criminals.” The problem? “All sorts of peaceable legal immigrants” have been swept up in ICE roundups, including health care personnel, farm workers and innocent U.S. citizens. Trump’s challenge now is that backing down on mass deportations “could discourage the MAGA base.”

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “turned a popular issue” for Republicans “into a PR nightmare,” Caroline Downey said at National Review. Her “aggressive and expansive approach” to deportations is “consistent” with Trump’s desires, but an approach focused on criminal migrants is “more politically prudent.” Americans “have ambivalence about deportation,” said Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review. Even Fox News polls show a majority of Americans think ICE has been too aggressive. Conservatives may wish otherwise, but Americans “don’t seem to believe they’re getting what they want” from Trump on immigration.

Trump “knows he’s losing on immigration,” Zeeshan Aleem said at MS Now. But efforts to rebrand his deportation push are “doomed” because the president’s political persona is “predicated on a sweeping nativism.” He has never merely targeted “worst of the worst” criminals but instead has used expulsions to “restrict and reshape American identity.” That makes it “implausible” that Trump could convince the public he is shifting on the issue. Deportations may be unpopular, but “that doesn’t mean a leopard can change its spots.”

What next?

Trump’s MAGA allies are “furious” about the administration’s deportation rebranding, said Politico, asserting that narrowing the focus to criminal migrants is “not a winning policy.” The administration “has a mandate on mass deportations,” said Chris Chmielenski, the president of the Immigration Accountability Project. Trump voters “expect” to see mass expulsions. White House officials are trying to strike a balance. “Nobody is changing” the deportation agenda, said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson in a statement.

President Donald Trump’s top domestic priority is the SAVE America Act, a bill to create new voting restrictions in the name of “election security.” But the bill does not have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and pass the Senate. Trump’s solution: The Senate should return to Jimmy Stewart-style talking filibusters.

Senators these days rarely speak for hours to obstruct legislation like Stewart did in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Procedures since the 1970s have allowed them to trigger a filibuster “simply by announcing they wanted to block a bill,” said PBS NewsHour.

Trump and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) are now pushing to impose a “marathon talking filibuster” requirement to wear down Democratic opposition to the SAVE Act, said The Associated Press. That would not guarantee passage of the bill, Lee said, but “we can be certain that failure will be the outcome if we don’t try.”

Under the Senate’s current rules, a talking filibuster “would require 51 GOP senators in or near the chamber at all times” to be ready to vote if a Democratic speech faltered, said NBC News. Just one Democrat would be needed to hold the floor. That sets up an “endurance test” that’s difficult for a Senate majority to win if it’s “not willing to go the distance” for days or weeks, said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University.

What did the commentators say?

“Make them talk,” Brian Darling said at The Hill. The Senate has been “dysfunctional for decades” thanks to “procedural tactics” that make it easier to block a bill than to pass it. A talking filibuster would change the dynamic. Democratic senators would “stop talking at some point.” When and if that happened, the Senate could just “vote and pass the bill with a simple majority.”

The talking filibuster is a “mirage,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. The 60-vote threshold “always frustrates the party in power,” but Republicans may benefit disproportionately: Without the filibuster, Democrats would restructure the Supreme Court and create “new states out of Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.” The talking filibuster’s requirements would turn legislative battles into an “endless GOP campout,” forcing senators to wait around endlessly for Democrats to tire of speechifying. “Bring your pajamas, toothbrush and CPAP machine.”

What next?

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has been a longtime defender of current filibuster rules. But he’s in a runoff with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race to keep his Senate seat and angling for Trump’s endorsement. On Wednesday, he reversed himself. The SAVE Act “matters more than the filibuster,” Cornyn said in a New York Post op-ed.

Cornyn aside, there are not enough GOP votes to change the rules and force a talking filibuster, said Politico. Many Republicans believe weakening existing rules would “pave the way” for Democrats to eventually “pass far-reaching legislation of their own” in the future. The voting math “doesn’t add up,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

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.

What happened

The Senate on Wednesday voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to continue waging his war in Iran without congressional authorization. The 47-53 vote was mostly along party lines, with bill co-sponsor Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) the only Republican to vote yes and Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) the only Democrat to vote no. “This essentially is the vote whether to go to war or not,” Paul told reporters.

Who said what

Democrats had “implored a handful of Republicans to break with their party” and “reassert Congress’s control over declaring war,” The Washington Post said. But Republicans “argued that ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war days after it started would send the wrong message,” even if they had reservations.

This was the eighth war powers resolution that GOP leaders “have successfully, though narrowly, defeated” since Trump returned to office last year, The Associated Press said. “This one, however, was different,” forcing lawmakers to “take a stand” on a deadly and “open-ended conflict that is already ricocheting across the region.”

The resolution’s defeat “should be bone-chilling to the American people who thought that we were done with feckless, poorly run ground wars in the Middle East,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters. “Six Americans have already died for an illegal war that nobody wants. The region is in chaos. American consumers are paying the price. And for what? We still don’t even know the reason for this war.”

What next?

A similar war powers resolution is “expected to get a vote in the House” Thursday, The Wall Street Journal said, and “it, too, is expected to fail, with few Republicans expected to buck the Trump administration.” In another “flashpoint for Capitol Hill,” Politico said, Trump is “expected to submit a request” for an additional “tens of billions of dollars” to “cover the costs of heavy military operations in the Middle East.” Democrats expected to lose the “symbolic” war powers votes, Axios said, but “they’re preparing for a bigger fight over the war’s funding” that “will be less predictable but more consequential.”

With the midterm elections just months away, President Donald Trump has been telegraphing his intent to dominate on election night, despite not personally being on the ballot. Whether threatening that the GOP could “take over the voting in at least 15 places” or insinuating that he might deploy Department of Homeland Security forces to polling locations, Trump and his aggressive posturing have caught the attention of candidates, party officials and electoral experts on both sides of the aisle. While polling and historic trends suggest the Democrats, as the party out of power, can expect a good showing in November, Trump’s rhetoric has alarmed and galvanized those who work to keep America’s electoral system running smoothly.

What did the commentators say?

Although the White House has “no explicit authority over elections,” it has, for generations, provided local election officials with “intelligence gathering and cybersecurity defenses” among other services that “only the federal government can provide,” said The New York Times. The administration’s newly combative posturing is a “sharp shift” for secretaries of state “after decades of close alliance with the federal government.”

The “vibes” at this year’s National Association of Secretaries of State conference were “completely different,” said CNN reporter Marshall Cohen to Vox. Democratic election figures are “terrified and strategizing” for a “potential assault by Trump on the integrity of the midterms.” In particular, officials are “very afraid about possible troop deployments” as seen in Chicago and California, as well as DHS immigration forces “being sent at the last minute when it might be too late to stop, but early enough to cause chaos and possibly intimidate or disenfranchise.”

Trump’s threats have pushed the country into “uncharted territory,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to Face the Nation. There is a “very real threat” that “without reforms at ICE,” there could be DHS patrols at polling sites on election day. “You don’t need to do a lot to discourage people from voting.” Trump intends to “subvert the elections,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to This Week, and will do “everything he can to suppress the vote.”

In particular, the “purpose” of the recent Tulsi Gabbard-led FBI raid for Georgia 2020 election data was to “establish a precedent for further federal intervention in state and local elections” as well as to “intimidate state and local officials from resisting such efforts,” said The Bulwark. Should Trump deploy federal troops, they could be used to “intimidate likely Democratic voters ahead of time,” as well as “affect the counting of the ballots.”

Congressional GOP pushes to enact laws like the SAVE and Make Elections Great Again acts, which would dramatically restrict voting access, “can be viewed as a continuation” of Trump's 2020 election denialism, said The New York Times. Similarly, they are seen by some Democrats, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), as “part of a larger pattern” including Trump’s nationalization rhetoric and regret over not having seized voting machines in 2020.

While this administration has worked to subvert the electoral process in the past, the “scope and severity” of his midterms effort is “unprecedented,” said Andy Craig at his UnPopulist Substack. Even so, although some of the threats are “more serious and pressing” compared to others, the overall “temptation to doomerism” is something that “we should reject.”

What next?

Unlike a “theoretical replay of 2020,” the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain local voter rolls and polling data are “operational now through four means,” said The New Republic: “Formal Justice Department demands, active litigation, seized election materials and scheduled federal briefings with state officials.” But while the effort seems designed to support Republicans at the expense of Democrats, “pushback has crossed party lines” with election officials in deep red states like Oklahoma and Kentucky bucking the White House’s initial asks.

The public should “take this seriously,” said CNN’s Cohen. Not because people should be “conspiracy theorists,” but because “we’ve lived through this before” with Trump’s many previous attempts to challenge elections. Yet “despite all this noise, despite all the fears, despite what you’ve been told that our system is garbage,” the “nonpartisan experts in election administration” agree America’s electoral structure is “quite resilient.” The public should ultimately “rest assured” that their ballots will be “counted fairly, despite all the drama.”

What happened

The House Wednesday voted 219-211 to rescind President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, with six Republicans joining all but one Democrat to pass the resolution. The Senate passed similar measures last year, but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had blocked such votes in his chamber for the past year through a procedural move that expired last month. Three Republicans joined Democrats on Tuesday to defeat Johnson’s effort to renew the blockade on tariff votes until August.

Who said what

Wednesday’s resolution would rescind the “national emergency” of fentanyl smuggling that Trump declared last year to justify slapping import taxes on Canada. As Johnson’s team was leaning on GOP defectors to switch their vote, Trump warned on social media that “any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!”

The rebuke of the president’s signature economic policy was a “rare instance of GOP defections at a time when Trump still maintains a strong grip over the party,” CNN said. But “Trump’s tariffs have proven politically unpopular,” even among many “self-identified MAGA Republicans,” Politico said. A Pew Research Center survey this month found that 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s import taxes. The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that Americans are paying 95% of the tariff burden.

What next?

The Senate now “must vote on the issue again,” and a “simple majority vote” would send the measure to Trump, The Wall Street Journal said. The resolution “stands a good chance of passage in the Senate,” Reuters said, but there aren’t enough GOP votes to override Trump’s certain veto. Still, “it won’t be the last tough tariffs vote for Trump,” CNN said. “Democrats have successfully unlocked a procedural power to force more votes.”

While Democrats and Republicans work to reach an agreement on funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the parties remain far apart. Despite Republicans controlling Congress, they are unable to pass funding for ICE without some Democratic votes. Democrats in both chambers of Congress have put forth a series of changes they want to see at the agency, whose funding expires Feb. 13.

What did the commentators say?

These reforms at ICE are a “line in the sand,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). One major issue involves Americans’ homes: Democrats want to “bar federal immigration agents from entering private property without a judicial warrant,” said The Washington Post. ICE has previously advised its agents that they can “enter homes to make arrests without a warrant from a judge, outraging Democrats,” who say this violates the Fourth Amendment.

Americans largely agree with this idea, polls show. Nearly 70% of Americans believe ICE must have “judicial warrants to forcibly enter homes of people subject to deportation,” according to an Economist/YouGov survey. Despite the backing of most of the public, some in the GOP have “balked, arguing that the proposal would add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy,” said the Post.

The widespread use of face coverings by ICE has also come under scrutiny, and Democrats are “pushing for a mask ban and identification requirements for federal agents,” said The Hill. ICE officials say that wearing masks prevents their agents from being doxxed online, but Democrats argue that officers’ practice of “masking and not displaying ID badges erodes accountability in these operations.” Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have “indicated changes to a mask and ID policy amount to nearly a nonstarter.”

The party seeks several other changes. They include prohibiting federal funds from being used to “conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child care facilities,” and places of worship, said The Guardian. Democrats also want to stop ICE from “conducting stops, questioning and searches based on an individual’s presence at certain locations, their job, their spoken language and accent, or their race or ethnicity.” This last measure follows one notable video that circulated of an ICE agent claiming he was detaining a man “because of your accent.”

And while ICE has recently said it will equip all of its agents with body cameras, this has Democrats “running headlong into a new problem: fear that the technology will provide another avenue for mass surveillance of protesters,” said Politico. Though the party has made these body cams one of their foremost demands, it must also navigate a growing “outcry from privacy advocates that surveillance tools will allow ICE agents to identify and track protesters.”

What next?

Democrats have rejected an offer from the White House, and “finding real agreement in such a short time will be difficult,” said The Associated Press. It will likely be an “impossibility,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), per the AP. And House GOP leadership is also “demanding that some of their own priorities be added to the Homeland Security spending bill,” including a provision that would require proof of citizenship before registering to vote.

Donald Trump has said his administration is “reviewing everything” after an intensive-care nurse was shot dead by Ice agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.

The US president’s advisers have been discussing his “aggressive deportation policies” for weeks, said The Wall Street Journal, but the shooting of Alex Pretti has “brought new urgency to those conversations”. Some of Trump’s aides see the “increasingly volatile situation” in Minneapolis as a “political liability, even as the White House has publicly doubled down on its operations”.

What did the commentators say?

Federal agents have not only killed a US citizen “like authoritarian thugs”, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox, but “their superiors in Washington justified that killing with the kind of bald-faced lie that recalls Tehran and Moscow”.

Trump’s “sycophantic lieutenants” reacted to the shooting “with characteristic mendacity”, said Simon Marks in The i Paper. Officials described the 37-year-old nurse as a “domestic terrorist” and, despite video evidence and witness testimony to the contrary, said the federal agents acted in self-defence in the middle of an “armed struggle”. These brazen attempts to blacken Pretti’s memory, coming so soon after the shooting of Renee Good, “may serve as a turning point that sparks mass resistance towards the President and the thuggish regime that he leads”.

“Your eyes don’t lie,” Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar told NBC. The contrast between what administration officials have claimed and what millions of Americans have seen on their phones this past weekend could be “crucial” in emboldening Trump’s “Congressional critics to confront him”, said Susan Page on USA Today.

Democrats, and even some staunch Republican supporters of the president, have called for an independent investigation into the shooting. Some have indicated they would block a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security until restrictions on Ice operations are put into place. This could lead to a stand-off in Congress or even another government shutdown – something the Trump administration is keen to avoid.

In this fight, “Democrats will prevail if they focus on a narrow set of reasonable demands”, while the president “will gain the upper hand if the left clamours for abolishing Ice” altogether, said The Washington Post editorial board.

What next?

Today, Trump sent his Border Czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota. He had previously threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and flood Minneapolis with even more military force but he seemed to change course late on Sunday. Such a “violent approach” is “unlikely to succeed in a country like the US”, said Beauchamp on Vox. Its domestic security forces “are not equipped for the level of extreme brutality necessary to make it work in the face of growing public outrage”.

“How Trump responds to the democratic outpouring” on Minnesota’s streets and to the “growing unease” even in his own party “will determine just how dark and brutal the next few months will be”.

What happened

Lindsey Halligan, the White House aide installed as U.S. attorney in Virginia to prosecute President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies, stepped down Tuesday night amid growing pressure from federal judges. One judge in the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday threatened disciplinary action against Halligan or any other federal lawyer who referred to her as U.S. attorney in court filings, while the district’s chief judge declared the position “vacant” in a posting for Halligan’s replacement.

Who said what

Halligan’s exit “ended a bizarre monthslong standoff” during which federal judges repeatedly pressed her to “explain why she continues to identify herself” as the U.S. attorney “despite a ruling in November that she had been unlawfully appointed to the job,” The New York Times said. “This charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this district in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end,” U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee, said in an order Tuesday.

The “pair of extraordinary moves” by Novak and Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck “signaled a breaking point for the federal bench” in Virginia over Halligan’s 120-day tenure, The Washington Post said. It also “intensified a battle playing out nationwide” over Trump’s efforts to install loyalists to back-to-back temporary positions as U.S. attorney without Senate confirmation. Halligan was the third such Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney to step down, following Alina Habba in New Jersey and Julianne Murray in Delaware last month.

What next?

It isn’t clear who will replace Halligan. Tuesday’s moves suggest the district’s judges plan to “select a temporary replacement,” as allowed under federal law, the Times said. But “it is likely that the president would try to fire that person and put his own choice — possibly Ms. Halligan — back in the job.”

What happened

The House of Representatives on Thursday approved a Democratic proposal to resurrect expired Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years. Seventeen “renegade GOP lawmakers joined every Democrat” in the 230-196 vote, The Associated Press said, significantly more than the four Republicans who helped force the bill onto the floor by signing a discharge petition last month. “The GOP revolt was bigger than anticipated,” Politico said, “and a stunning rebuke” to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President Donald Trump.

In a further blow to Trump, the Senate advanced a measure that would block further military action in Venezuela, with five Republicans joining all Democrats. And the chamber also agreed to install a plaque honoring the police officers who protected the Capitol from a Trump-inspired mob on Jan. 6, 2021, in a unanimous vote two days after Trump’s White House published a revisionist history blaming the attack on law enforcement and Democrats.

Who said what

The “dramatic” House GOP revolt on ACA credits was “driven by concerns about spiking health care costs in an election year dominated by affordability concerns,” Axios said. The bill “has no path to enactment” through the GOP-led Senate, The New York Times said, but the “largely symbolic vote” could “bring fresh momentum to bipartisan efforts to find a compromise on health care costs” and the ACA subsidies, which ended Jan. 1.

Taken together, Thursday’s votes showed that “Trump’s honeymoon with the Republican Congress is officially over,” Semafor said. He was “apoplectic” at the five Republicans who supported the Venezuela resolution, urging voters to defeat them in future elections. “Lawmakers voting against their party’s president is common in midterm election years,” The Washington Post said, but the “repeated rebukes” of Trump, “and the number of lawmakers defecting, are unusual.”

What next?

The Senate will have a final vote next week on Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-Va.) Venezuela war powers resolution. The House is scheduled to vote next week on GOP legislation to codify Trump’s push for more powerful showerheads. The Shower Act was “poised to be the first bill passed by the House this year,” the Post said, but “congressional leadership bumped it to next week” due to the ACA vote.

‘JD Vance must outgrow Trump to become president’

Jesse Edwards at Newsweek

Vice President JD Vance can “only become a serious contender for the White House if he figures out how to get out from under Donald Trump without alienating MAGA in the process,” says Jesse Edwards at Newsweek. He must break from Trump and “convincingly argue that he played along to get close to power, fully aware of who Trump was” if he is to be “remotely appealing.” If Vance “makes the turn clean enough and early enough, people will listen.”

Read more

‘I used cannabis daily for 25 years. I support reform — cautiously.’

Adam Levin at USA Today

As the “country reexamines federal cannabis restrictions, a long-overdue conversation about reform is finally underway,” says Adam Levin at USA Today. “Prohibition failed. Criminalization caused real harm,” and cannabis has “legitimate medical uses.” But there is “something missing from much of the celebration: an honest conversation about addiction.” Legal substances such as alcohol are “widely available, yet regulated, researched and accompanied by public-health messaging because access carries risk. Cannabis deserves the same treatment — not stigma, but honesty.”

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‘The winding path to a good Ukraine deal’

The Washington Post editorial board

Amid the repeated ups and downs of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the “thorniest issues” continue to be “punted,” says The Washington Post editorial board. But even if President Donald Trump’s latest “peace push hits another dead end, it’s worth noting what has changed.” The “West now has a clear sense of what a minimally acceptable peace would look like.” There are no guarantees, but the West should “bolster shaky promises with ample provisions for arming Ukraine like a porcupine.”

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‘An anti-AI movement is coming. Which party will lead it?’

Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times

Despite artificial intelligence’s promising future, the “list of things it is ruining is long,” says Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times. It is “true that new technologies often inspire dread,” but A.I. is rightfully alarming to many Americans, and it “divides both parties.” Going into 2026, one major question is “which party will speak for the Americans who abhor the incursions of A.I. into their lives and want to see its reach restricted?”

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This past weekend, some of the brightest stars in the conservative sky descended on Phoenix, Arizona, for Turning Point USA’s “Americafest 2025” conference. But the far-right revelry and MAGA backslapping quickly shed its veneer of camaraderie to expose deep fracture lines threatening the ultranationalist group’s mission. Across four days of dueling speeches and simmering behind-the-scenes feuds, TPUSA’s first major event since the shooting death of cofounder Charlie Kirk became a microcosm of the broader forces jockeying for MAGA power and influence nationwide.

‘Grifters,’ ‘charlatans’ and ‘hilarious’ attempts at deplatforming

Although its annual conferences have been “long billed as a show of unity for young conservatives,” this year’s TPUSA event was a “public airing of deepening fractures inside the MAGA movement,” Salon said. While “clashes over Israel, antisemitism and leadership” dominated the weekend, Kirk’s death and the “absence of a clear successor loomed large” as tributes “veered into ideological disputes, particularly over foreign policy and the influence of far-right figures within the movement.” After speakers “torched each other as pompous, cancerous cowards,” the group that had once been “so lockstep when President Trump was running” found itself “engulfed in an overt power struggle ahead of 2028,” said Axios.

Conservative broadcaster Ben Shapiro used his conference address to lash out at “grifters and charlatans” who he claimed were “guilty of misleading their audiences with falsehoods and conspiracy theories,” CNN said. He took particular aim at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for interviewing avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes in what Shapiro said was an “act of moral imbecility.”

Carlson returned fire during his speech, calling Shapiro’s attempt at “deplatforming and denouncing people” at a TPUSA event “hilarious.” He then “downplayed the problem of anti-Jewish hate,” said the Times of Israel, in part by framing antisemitism as “less pervasive than bias against white men.”

Speaking Sunday evening, Vice President JD Vance conspicuously declined to condemn the “streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days” of the event, The Associated Press said. That includes former TPUSA staff and now popular podcaster Candace Owens, who has “alleged without evidence that Israeli spies were involved in Kirk’s death.” Taken together, the “tension on display” over the weekend “foreshadowed the treacherous political waters” aspiring conservative hopefuls will face before the next election.

All eyes on 2028

The schisms exposed over the weekend “laid bare” the challenge for any conservative hoping to succeed President Donald Trump atop the MAGA movement, The New York Times said: how to address the “explosive debate” over whether conspiracy theorists and extremists should be “embraced or excluded from the conservative coalition.”

In Vance’s remarks, delivered after Kirk’s widow and current TPUSA CEO Erika endorsed him for 2028, the vice president signaled he was “more than willing to forgo imposing any moral red lines.” At the same time, some observers have claimed that the “narrative of tension” and a looming MAGA civil war is “ginned up by people who hope to prevent” Vance’s political ascension, said the AP. “This is a proxy on ’28,” former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said at the convention, per the National Review. “There are people who are mad at JD Vance,” Tucker Carlson said, per the same outlet, and “they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination.”

What happened

The House Wednesday night passed a health care bill proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) that would lower some costs modestly but not extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Defying Johnson, four of the Republicans who pushed his bill to its narrow 216-211 passage also signed a discharge petition Wednesday, clinching the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on a Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies for three years.

Who said what

Several politically vulnerable Republicans had pushed Johnson to allow a vote on their proposals to extend the ACA credits for a year or two, with new limits, to avert a sharp rise in premiums for 24 million Americans in January. “But with most Republicans opposed to the subsidies, Johnson refused to allow an extension in his bill, fomenting the strongest rebellion among Republicans from swing districts to date,” The Washington Post said.

“To me, the clean three-year extension is not ideal,” said Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the four Republicans who signed the Democrats’ petition. “But doing nothing is not an answer.” Johnson “forced this outcome,” said fellow moderate rebel Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).

The “stunning maneuver” by the House GOP “splinter group” was “all but guaranteed to prolong Republican infighting over health care, an issue that has bedeviled the party for years, into a midterm election year” with “considerable headwinds,” The New York Times said. It was also the “latest evidence” that Johnson’s “grip on his fractious majority has slipped” as “rank-and-file Republicans openly question his leadership and flout his wishes,” advancing four “once rare” discharge petitions, a feat last achieved in 1938. “I have not lost control of the House,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday.

What next?

Johnson’s bill “is dead on arrival in the Senate and will do little to quell a major intraparty split over the future of the subsidies,” Politico said. Senate GOP leaders say the three-year extension, if it passes the House next month, is also “doomed to die” in the upper chamber, but “House GOP moderates are now discussing options with their Senate counterparts about a bipartisan compromise bill that could pass both chambers” before the end of January, after the subsidies have lapsed.

The MAGA media universe is made up of influencers, podcasters and thought leaders who rally their conservative listeners and viewers behind President Donald Trump. Now, that right-wing ecosystem is “ripping itself to shreds” over conspiracy theories and petty feuds.

MAGA’s most prominent personalities are “attacking each other with a fury normally reserved for the left,” said Axios. Podcaster Candace Owens has attacked Turning Point USA after founder Charlie Kirk’s death. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is in a feud with Trump ally Laura Loomer over Carlson’s plans to buy a home in Qatar. And YouTube commentator Benny Johnson is threatening to sue over “personal attacks” from longtime provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

The “chaos” reflects a “wider Republican breakdown” as Trump’s poll numbers continue to drop, said Axios. The feuds are hitting high gear as the MAGA movement considers what happens after Trump. The combatants sense the “future of this political movement is up for grabs,” said Open Measures researcher Jared Holt.

What did the commentators say?

Owens was “MAGA’s favorite conspiracist,” but her “foray into conspiracy theories” about Kirk’s assassination has proven disruptive inside the movement, said The Washington Post. Owens has made a number of unfounded charges about Kirk’s death, including the notion that his murder was an “inside job” undertaken by “French or Israeli government agents.” She is “burning everything down,” said Tim Pool, another right-wing podcaster.

Owens’ antisemitic theories about Kirk’s death are “next-level lunacy,” said Rich Lowry at the National Review. She is “more alluring and sinister” than disgraced conspiracy-monger Alex Jones in working to “turn MAGA in a direction hostile to Israel, Jews, and Judaism.” She might be a “marginal figure” whose influence does not reach into the mainstream discourse the way Tucker Carlson still can. But she is working to “turbocharge” conspiracy thinking on the right, “with a special focus on the Jews.” That is a way of thinking “from which nothing good has ever come.”

MAGA influencers are revealing the “movement’s biggest weakness,” said Amanda Marcotte at Salon. The right-wing media ecosystem is “dominated by hustlers” more interested in a payday than the Trumpist “political project.” Aside from Trump, few GOP politicians hold sway over their party’s base. That leaves the job of shaping conservative opinions to the “social media influencer class” that understands “what gets the MAGA audiences going is lurid conspiracy theories.” Now that dynamic is getting out of control. GOP leaders have “no one to blame but themselves for this failure.”

What next?

Owens and Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, met on Monday in an effort to stem the feud. Both emerged from the “lengthy meeting” suggesting “tensions had eased,” said The Hill. “Time to get back to work,” Kirk said on X. “We agreed much more than I had anticipated,” Owens said. It is a sign of Owens’ “share of the media market” that Kirk felt the need to give her the “concession” of a meeting, said Chris Stirewalt at The Hill.

It is tough for any president to sense what their policies look like in the real world, surrounded as they are by security agents and yes-men. Those protective layers are called a “bubble,” and some observers wonder if President Donald Trump is trapped in his.

Trump has “dramatically scaled back speeches, public events and domestic travel” during the first year of his term, said The Atlantic. He has also cut back on his once-frequent rallies. That gives him limited contact with the American public, creating a “growing fear among Republicans” that the president has become “too isolated” from voter concerns.

Missteps can happen as a result. Americans voted for Trump to “lower prices,” said an anonymous ally of the president to The Atlantic. “They didn’t vote for him to build a damn gilded ballroom.” And Trump is “not hearing them.”

What did the commentators say?

The president’s heavy Twitter use “liberated” him from the "prison of the presidency” during his first term, said Semafor. Now he “scrolls the adulatory Truth Social” and fills more of his time with Trump-friendly Fox News and “new MAGA channels” like Newsmax and OANN. And aides tend to give him a rosier outlook on issues like the economy than what Americans actually experience. But his team pushes back against bubble allegations. Trump has his “finger on the pulse of the American public,” said a spokesman to the outlet.

“Every president wrestles with the White House bubble,” said Lisa Gilbert and Neera Tanden at Talking Points Memo. This one is a problem: Americans are concerned about affordability, but the president is building a ballroom, seeing a $230 million payment from the Justice Department and giving out pardons to the rich and powerful, all while refusing to address the health care crisis. The contrast between the public’s needs and Trump’s actions is “jarring, even grotesque.” It proves that the president’s “gold-plated bubble has cut off any contact with reality.”

The White House recently launched a new website that supposedly tracks anti-Trump media bias, said Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian. But the site is “revealing the bubble Trump increasingly inhabits” by criticizing journalism that does not offer “flattery and sycophancy” to the president. Given the president’s isolation from voters, “harsh reality via the media is a rude intrusion.” Criticizing the media will not help Trump “get out of the trouble — or the bubble — that he’s in.”

What next?

Trump is planning a cross-country “travel blitz” to offset criticism he has “prioritized global issues over pocketbook worries,” said Axios. The president has grown increasingly irritated with that criticism, though, saying that voter concerns about affordability are a "hoax" and "con job” perpetrated by Democrats and the media.

The White House, meanwhile, will continue its plans to expose anti-Trump bias by the media, said The Associated Press. Journalists say that will make it more difficult to get unwelcome news to the public and the president. The country suffers “when we’re not operating from some semblance of a common truth,” said Axios CEO Jim VandeHei.

As the United States and China jockey for global influence and power, American farmers and Republican lawmakers are growing increasingly anxious over one of the less-obvious fronts in the Trump administration’s trade war with Beijing: commercial drones.

The drone has become a staple of modern farming across the U.S., and while conservative China hawks in Washington push for a ban on Chinese-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over national security concerns, a number of Republican lawmakers are raising a red flag on behalf of heartland constituents whose agricultural livelihoods are at elevated risk. The congressional fight over farmland flyers is underway, with a legislative deadline looming.

National security or corporate protectionism?

At the center of this growing fight is Shenzhen Da-Jiang Innovations Sciences and Technologies Company Limited, commonly known as DJI, the “world’s largest drone manufacturer,” which sells “more than half” of commercial drones in the U.S., Fox News said. Lawmakers have “repeatedly raised concerns” that the company’s drones “pose data transmission, surveillance and national security risks” and have raised allegations that DJI is controlled by the Chinese military.

But DJI drones are a “key agricultural tool to treat more than 300 types of crops in fields and orchards,” said Michigan Farm News. “Over 90% of the spray drones our industry uses come from China,” said the American Spray Drone Coalition. A “drastic” cutoff like the one being debated in Congress will “devastate our industry.”

House Republicans, led by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, have succeeded in passing harsh restrictions on domestic DJI sales in their version of a must-pass defense funding bill, but they are “facing pushback in the Senate,” Politico said. Lawmakers in the upper chamber initially dropped the House’s language in their version of the bill, with a number of Republicans “raising concerns about potential negative impacts on U.S. businesses and law enforcement.” Banning Chinese drones would have “real cost ramifications for commercial enterprises, not just farming,” said North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven to Politico, citing transmission line tracking and rescue and recovery operations.

Members of the United States’ nascent commercial drone industry are ”eagerly awaiting“ DJI’s exit from the domestic field, The New York Times said, despite “few U.S. drone makers selling the kinds of consumer and industrial products that DJI makes.” The push to ban DJI technology in the U.S. is about “forcing the biggest manufacturer of drones out of the market” so domestic manufacturers “don’t have to compete with them,” said DJI Global Policy head Adam Welsh to Mashable. “The reality is the best drones on the market right now are from China,” said American Spray Drone Coalition President Eric Ringer to Iowa Capital Dispatch. Accordingly, the country needs to “do better” at “building up good domestic alternatives.”

A Christmas Eve-eve deadline

For now, all eyes are on Dec. 23, after which DJI would be automatically added to the FCC’s “covered list” of banned items that would block new drone shipments, as well as potentially disrupt future upgrades for existing devices — unless a national security agency were to audit the company to determine whether it poses a threat. But with no agency set to perform the check, “DJI can’t clear its name,” said Mashable, all while the “clock continues to tick toward a ban that the company can’t stop on its own.”

What happened

When the House passed the spending bill to reopen the government on Wednesday night, many Republicans said they backed it despite being furious over a provision Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) had slipped in allowing senators to sue the government for at least $500,000, and likely $1 million or more, if their phone records were obtained without notification after 2022. Rep. Greg Steube (Fla.), one of the two Republicans who voted no, cited that measure as the reason.

The provision was added to address Senate GOP anger over special prosecutor Jack Smith’s 2023 subpoenas of several senators’ phone call logs, part of his investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. But only one senator has announced “definitive plans to take advantage” of the payout clause, Politico said. Five of the other seven eligible Republicans indicated Thursday “they have no plans to pursue compensation,” CBS News said.

Who said what

Thune “thought he was giving Republicans a gift,” but most of them “don’t want it,” Politico said. The provision is “already creating political liability for Senate Republicans,” as Democrats “pummel the GOP for endorsing a taxpayer-funded windfall and fellow Republicans in both chambers decry the provision as poorly conceived.”

Dropping this language in “at the last minute” was “way out of line,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Wednesday night. The House is “going to repeal that, and I’m going to expect our colleagues in the Senate to do the same thing.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said the Senate’s taxpayer-funded “million-dollar jackpot payday” for senators was “one of the most blatantly corrupt provisions for political self-dealing and the plunder of public resources ever proposed in Congress.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he was “definitely” going to sue under the provision. “And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No,” he told reporters Wednesday. “I want to make it so painful, no one ever does this again.” Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) suggested they also might sue for financial damages.

What next?

With House Republicans “enraged over the provision’s inclusion,” Johnson’s promised repeal measure was “expected to pass overwhelmingly with bipartisan support” next week, Politico said. “It’s not clear what Thune plans to do with the bill.”

It happens to every president sooner or later — the moment when they are still in power but their influence wanes as politicians and voters look to the future. Last week’s GOP election losses raise the question of whether President Donald Trump’s lame duck moment has arrived.

“Welcome to the dawn of Trump’s lame duck era,” said Politico. Republicans are beginning to realize the president “will soon be gone.” While Americans should not “expect an immediate stampede” away from the president’s less-popular policies, there are “growing signs” that GOP officials are maneuvering around the fact that “they’ll still be around” after their term-limited leader has departed the political scene. Most Republican senators, for example, resisted Trump’s demand to get rid of the filibuster to end the government shutdown. That unwillingness could be challenging to a president whose operating style is to “run roughshod” over his party’s preferences in Congress.

Past his sell-by date?

Trump “seems to be defying the lame-duck precedent” at the moment,” said Ed Kilgore at New York magazine. No president has ever been “more dominant” within his own party, and while congressional Republicans may have misgivings in private they “publicly sing his praises.” But Trump is also “well past the usual sell-by date” for most presidents, having served as the GOP’s presidential nominee in three different elections. The last Republican to do that was Richard Nixon, and it “didn’t turn out well for Republicans.”

The GOP “appears to be fracturing” as it prepares for the “vacuum” that will be created when Trump leaves the scene, said Michael Wilner at the Los Angeles Times. Infighting over antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes and blame-casting for the GOP’s poor election performance are among the “vicious” fights going on among Trump’s supporters as they prepare for what is next. The “countdown to the midterms” signifies that the president has “precious time left” before the 2028 presidential contest gets underway and begins “eclipsing the final two years of his presidency.”

Third term talk

The president still has a “lot of juice,” said David M. Drucker at Bloomberg. While voters “often tire of reelected presidents,” Trump now has an approval rating of 93% from Republicans. (Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were “both at roughly 80%” with their party’s voters during their second terms.) That popularity with the base gives him more power than his predecessors. Any Republican thinking of a run for office must “win Trump’s endorsement and then win the voters — in that order.”

Trump keeps talking about a third term even though it is prohibited by the Constitution, said Time. That may fend off lame-duck status by helping him “maintain his relevance and power over the GOP.” But Republican losses last week are giving Democrats a “way out of the gloom,” said Edward Luce at the Financial Times. There is much to come, but it is now clear that the “opening act of Trump’s second term is over.”

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.”

Terms like “Nazi” and “fascist” get thrown around too freely these days, said River Page in The Free Press. But “when a Republican says ‘I love Hitler’ in a group chat, what the hell are we supposed to call him?” Politico reported on an almost eight-month trove of Telegram messages sent between a dozen prominent members of the Young Republican National Federation—the “GOP’s official youth wing”— “which was brimming with racism, antisemitism, and violent, authoritarian musings.” Politico counted 251 separate uses of “faggot,” “retarded,” and the N-word, along with references to Black people as “monkeys” and “watermelon people.” There were jokes about sending opponents “to the gas chamber” and of being “ready to watch people burn.” Some top Republicans condemned the comments and demanded those involved leave the party; the YRNF state chapters in New York and Kansas were disbanded. But JD Vance didn’t see a problem. Pointing to Jay Jones—the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general who sent texts wishing death on a Republican colleague—the vice president dismissed the outrage as “pearl clutching” over a few “kids” telling “edgy” jokes. “Kids?” Those involved are in their 20s and 30s, and included Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass, who has since resigned. And why can’t we denounce hate from both Democrats and Republicans?

These are Vance’s people, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. A product of the “alt-right,” he understands that “racists and philo-Nazis”— once a noisy fringe of conservatism—are now “the future of the GOP,” a party Vance intends to lead into the 2028 presidential election. “Hate is not a deal breaker” for this administration, said Katie Rogers in The New York Times. This week also saw the leak of texts by Paul Ingrassia, President Trump’s nominee to head a federal watchdog agency, in which he admitted to having “a Nazi streak” and, using an Italian slur for Black people, called for all “moulignon holidays,” from Martin Luther King Jr. Day to Juneteenth, to be “eviscerated.” Ingrassia, 30, withdrew his nomination in the face of resistance from Senate Republicans, but he remains employed by the White House as a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security.

Vance was wrong to dismiss the Young Republicans’ hideous remarks as mere jokes, said Katherine Dee in Politico. But we should also not mistake them for “genuine expressions of belief.” Among the Very Online Right, the “ironic” embrace of cruelty and bigotry is a way of “signaling group membership” as well as one’s disdain for the “moral surveillance and censoriousness” of liberals. Or at least that’s how it begins. But through repetition, “what begins as mockery can harden into conviction,” and someone whose original goal was to “own the libs” by performing a caricature of right-wing extremism can end up adopting “the worldview they once parodied.”

I fear there’s a simpler explanation, said George Packer in The Atlantic: ambition. These young Republicans wanted to rise in a political party that now prizes “contempt for everything decent” as a core value. After Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, Tucker Carlson’s dabbling in Holocaust denial, and Stephen Miller’s embrace of white supremacism, these aspiring politicians understandably thought “the viler their language, the higher they’ll go.” That remains a safe bet, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. Trump and Vance have a policy of leaving no Nazi-curious “chud” behind. Ingrassia and the Young Republicans may have had their career plans disrupted, but trust me: They’ll all “be directing ICE raids in no time.”

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.”

Could Democrats’ “big gamble” actually pay off? asked Zeeshan Aleem in MSNBC.com. For five decades, voters “have typically blamed the party not in the White House” when Congress can’t agree on a spending package and the government shuts down. But this time feels different. A new Washington Post poll shows 47% of voters blame President Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, with only 30% blaming Democrats. That poll was taken two weeks ago as the shutdown began, but Democrats have certain “unusual advantages” in the ongoing battle for public opinion. There is Trump himself, who has governed as such a “wrecking ball” since January that many voters simply assume the shutdown is part of his anti-government crusade. Then there’s the fact that Democrats’ modest demand—that any bill to reopen the government must include an extension of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans—is extremely popular, supported by 78% of voters, including 59% of Republicans. The political dynamic could easily flip, said Meredith Lee Hill in Politico. Some Republicans are “eyeing Oct. 15,” when active-duty military members will miss their first paycheck, as a “key pressure point.” But that prospect, and threats from Trump to cancel back pay for furloughed workers, have for now “only caused Democrats to dig in more.”

What are Democrats thinking? asked Matt Bai in The Washington Post. Extending the subsidies polls well as a stand-alone issue. But it’ll soon be “lost in the noise” of shutdown drama as Trump dials up the pain for Democratic voters. His White House budget director, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought, has already frozen $8 billion in funding for blue state clean-energy projects and some $20 billion for infrastructure projects. And Trump is openly vowing to “gut as many departments and eliminate as many jobs as he can” before the shutdown ends. “Even a Democratic victory in the Obamacare fight would probably be Pyrrhic, coming at the cost of a sacked and pillaged capital.”

This is “the right fight,” said Monica Potts in The New Republic. Some 1.6 million Americans will lose health insurance subsidies completely if they expire. Tens of millions more will see their premiums balloon, pushing overstretched households to the brink. Don’t believe me? Just ask Republican firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who this week tweeted that she supports extending the subsidies because without them “premiums will DOUBLE” for people in her Georgia district. In fact, the average annual premium for subsidized enrollees will more than double, from $888 to $1,904, and hardest hit will be working-class voters the Democrats lost in 2016, who are again shopping for “a party to fight for them.”

But “the times call for sterner measures,” said Chris Truax in The Hill. Four out of five Obamacare enrollees live in red states. So it’d be politically smart for Democrats to let the subsidies expire, force Trump supporters to experience the horror they voted for, and make the Republicans on next year’s midterm ballot “own the results.” Better yet, Democrats should raise the price for reopening the government to include a meaningful rollback of Trump’s autocratic project, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark: requiring ICE agents to go unmasked, say, or closing the fake “emergency” loopholes Trump uses to consolidate power. Ordinarily, “making voters’ lives better” would be a ransom worth demanding for Democrats. “But this isn’t an ordinary moment.”

What happened

Attorney General Pam Bondi Tuesday made her first appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee since her confirmation hearing in January. During nearly five hours of testimony, she evaded questions from Democrats about her controversial tenure, responding with personal insults while denying their charges that she was destroying the Justice Department’s independence to serve President Donald Trump’s personal revenge agenda.

Who said what

Bondi “repeatedly dodged” questions on “pressing issues” like her department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, closure of a bribery investigation of Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files, The Washington Post said. As she “lashed out” at her Democratic questioners, Bondi’s “personalized, non sequitur attacks” were “excerpted and shared on social media in real time by administration officials.” A Reuters photographer “captured some of Bondi’s preplanned attacks on the inside of a manila folder,” USA Today said.

Bondi’s stonewalling “meant little if any fresh insight was offered about her actions and decisions” in office, The Associated Press said. Republicans generally “did not press her to provide answers,” The New York Times said, and “largely seemed unconcerned” about Trump’s “efforts to erode the department’s independence,” claiming it was politicized under President Joe Biden.

Yet one of Bondi’s “most difficult moments,” the Times said, came when GOP Sen. John Kennedy (La.) “gently asked” about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s recent comments that Epstein, his former neighbor, was “the greatest blackmailer ever.” Top Trump administration officials are “apoplectic” that Lutnick “undermined the government’s entire story” that Trump’s former friend “did not run a secret sexual-blackmail operation targeting wealthy, powerful elites,” Asawin Suebsaeng said at Zeteo. Bondi told Kennedy that nobody from the DOJ or FBI had contacted Lutnick. When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asked if the FBI had found reputed Epstein photos showing “Trump with half-naked young women,” she declined to answer, instead accusing him of accepting campaign donations from an alleged Epstein associate.

What next?

Kennedy told Bondi the Senate might call Lutnick to testify about Epstein. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that his delay in seating incoming Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) had “nothing to do with” her promise to provide the final signature to force a House vote to compel the DOJ to release its Epstein files.

The U.S. federal government has shut down for the first time in six years, and while budget fights in Congress aren’t a rare occurrence, many political analysts say this shutdown could look drastically different from those that came before. In particular, President Donald Trump’s pledge to fire thousands of government employees, alongside continued fighting between Democrats and Republicans over Medicaid subsidies, could mean this shutdown has dire consequences.

What did the commentators say?

Federal shutdowns have happened before, including a 35-day closure during Trump’s first term that became the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But this event is “like no federal funding crunch before it,” said CNN. This seems to be “about far more than the classic feud over how the government spends its money, and whether a White House or its Capitol Hill foes will prevail in a political test of wills.” It also comes amid the “backdrop of the most aggressive attempt by a president to impose unfettered power in modern times.”

At the heart of this shutdown battle is a disagreement over funding Medicaid and Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies. Democrats are “focused on these enhanced subsidies from the Affordable Care Act that were enhanced during the pandemic,” said The Wall Street Journal’s flagship podcast, making it a sticking point of the Democrats’ negotiations. These subsidies are set to run out at the end of 2025, which could mean “tens of millions of Americans lose their health insurance starting in January because they can no longer afford to pay sky-high premiums,” former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said on his Substack.

Republicans have said Democrats want to shut down the government in order to provide insurance to undocumented immigrants. But this “claim is highly misleading,” said NBC News. The “Democratic bill would not change existing law barring people who are in the U.S. illegally from getting federal health care coverage.”

There is also the question of government workers themselves. Federal employees are normally furloughed during a shutdown and then go back to work when the shutdown ends. But the Trump administration “has asked agencies to look at places where they could reduce the size of the federal government during a shutdown,” said the Journal. This means they would “essentially fire people instead of just put people on furlough. That’s never happened.”

In a memo released by the Office of Management and Budget, agencies furloughing employees were directed to “consider whether or not you really need those roles and consider shrinking down your agency,” said CNBC. The Trump administration wants to keep only programs that are “in line with the president’s agenda,” even though there have “already been massive reductions in the federal workforce.”

What next?

It seems both sides are at a stalemate, though a “new NPR / PBS News / Marist poll shows that more Americans hold Republicans responsible for the impasse,” said NPR. This shutdown also “throws into question the operating status of sites like national parks and the Smithsonian Institution.” It is unclear how long the impasse may last. History shows that “multiweek shutdowns are relatively rare but have become more common in recent decades,” said NPR. The shutdown will likely extend until at least the weekend, given that the Senate is out of session until Friday.

Don’t expect Democrats to vote for President Trump’s agenda, said Chris Brennan in USA Today. If the Republicans want Democratic support to pass a continuing funding bill and keep the government open, they’ll need to “offer something” in negotiations. The Democratic minority leaders in the House and Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, insist that any bill that extends GOP priorities must also extend Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire this year and reverse Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. Trump, though, refuses to concede an inch: He posted last week that he wouldn’t even meet with Jeffries and Schumer, saying falsely that they were trying to “continue free healthcare for illegal Aliens” and “essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.” Given that Republicans alone don’t have the votes to pass a short-term continuing resolution that would keep funding at current levels, we are headed for a government shutdown when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

“If Democrats court a shutdown, they’ll own the results,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The idea that the GOP would repeal the Medicaid cuts passed in July’s “big, beautiful bill” is “fantasy”—and so is the Democrats’ counterproposal, which would tack on almost $1.5 trillion in new spending. The Republicans are offering what Democrats have always demanded in these situations: a clean continuing resolution that introduces nothing new. That’s more than fair. By demanding health-care concessions, Democrats lose either way, said Michael A. Cohen in MSNBC.com. If they force a shutdown, they will be blamed for federal workers’ missed paychecks. If they force a concession on Obamacare, they’ll take “a huge political problem” off the GOP’s plate in the midterms.

Worse for Democrats is that “a shutdown would give the Trump administration more power over federal spending,” said Jacob Bogage and Riley Beggin in The Washington Post. The Office of Management and Budget decides what agencies stay open and which shutter, which means it could halt programs Democratic voters depend on while continuing ICE immigration raids. Even a funding extension, like the one passed in March, enables the White House to divert money that Congress appropriated and use it for its own ends. That allowed Trump to eliminate a suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth and funds for early-childhood education. Schumer is betting voters will be angrier at Trump than at him—but with the shutdown clock ticking, that gamble gets riskier by the day.

President Donald Trump has traveled a lot since retaking office, but unlike the rallies that characterized his first term, Trump has largely used his time away from Washington, D.C., to hang out at sporting events. Trump’s second term has seen him attend the most recent iterations of the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, FIFA Club World Cup and the U.S. Open, as well as several UFC fights.

As with almost everywhere he goes, Trump has been met at these events with a mix of boos and cheers (ABC and ESPN were reportedly asked to mute the booing at the U.S. Open but declined to do so). Some feel that his attendance at these events has less to do with sports and more to do with politics.

What did the commentators say?

Trump’s idea behind going to the sporting events is a “strategy as old as human civilization,” said Kara Alaimo, a communications professor at Farleigh Dickinson University, to CNN. In Ancient Rome, leaders would host gladiator tournaments to “keep the people entertained and keep their focus off of what their government was doing.”

This type of strategy is “helpful for Trump because it’s keeping the spotlight off of two big things,” Alaimo said to CNN. The first is the “problems that Americans are facing,” and the second is that “so many Americans disagree with the policies that Trump has proposed or is pursuing.”

This could also be part of a ploy to gain more control over American institutions, experts say. As president, Trump has “asserted his dominance over politics, higher education and corporations,” and sports is “another venue he is trying to influence,” said The Boston Globe. While “most presidents have tried to use sports to unite a divided nation, he uses them to press a political advantage,” Tom Knecht, a political science professor at Westmont College, told the Globe.

Trump is “much more partisan in his approach to politics, and he is also much more willing to try to use the power of the White House to accomplish actual changes in the sporting world,” Knecht told the Globe. This presidential affinity for sports isn’t new, as “notable presidential involvement in American sports dates back to at least 1905."

But unlike prior presidents, Trump himself “loves being part of the professional sports world,” said The Athletic. He “seems intent on being America’s Commander in Chief of Sports, imposing his worldview on an area of society that has heretofore resisted such efforts.”

What next?

Trump will continue to attend sporting events; the president has claimed he will be in attendance for the Ryder Cup golf tournament in New York in September. This is unsurprising given that golf is the game Trump is most associated with. Bryson DeChambeau, a golfer who has previously played with Trump, was also “appointed to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition,” said CNN, among a slew of other athletes.

Trump is also bringing sports to him: The president has teamed with UFC head Dana White to host a UFC match at the White House in 2026. The event will be a “mixed martial arts throwdown to be watched by thousands of spectators” with “fighter weigh-ins and a press conference” at the Lincoln Memorial, said The Wall Street Journal. Smaller sporting events have been hosted at the White House, but “nothing, though, approaches the scale Trump is attempting.”

What happened

The Texas House Wednesday approved a new congressional map aimed at flipping up to five Democratic-held seats to Republican control. The 88-52 party-line vote followed a Democratic walkout that delayed passage of the contentious changes by two weeks. After the Democratic lawmakers returned to Austin on Monday, their GOP colleagues allowed them to leave the House only if they agreed to around-the-clock police escorts; some Democrats refused and slept in the chamber.

Who said what

Texas Republicans are "pursuing the unusual mid-decade redistricting" push "amid pressure" from President Donald Trump "to protect the GOP's slim majority in Congress" in the 2026 midterms, The Texas Tribune said. The new "aggressively partisan" map gives Trump the "gerrymander he requested," The New York Times said, but it also "set off a redistricting fever" that spread first to California but could infect another half-dozen states.

The California Supreme Court Wednesday denied an emergency petition from Republicans to halt Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) countervailing push to temporarily redraw his map's state to flip five GOP-held seats. Former President Barack Obama, a critic of gerrymandering, said Tuesday he approved of Newsom's "smart, measured" and "responsible" response to the GOP's attempt to "rig the game."

What next?

California lawmakers are expected to approve their new map today, sending it to a public referendum in November. The path is "far simpler" for Texas Republicans, "despite sustained Democratic opposition," the Times said. The state Senate will likely clear the Texas map today and "send it by the end of the week to Gov. Greg Abbott for his promised signature."