Americans woke up to a decidedly bluer map this morning, as sweeping Democrat victories in Kansas, Texas and beyond dramatically realigned the country’s electoral makeup. With Congress soon to be under Democratic control, Republicans face a potential end to an era defined — and perhaps doomed — by President Donald Trump.

What did the commentators say?

After imploring voters “not once, not twice, but 47 times this fall” to act as if he himself were on the ballot, Trump got his wish, said Peter Baker at The New York Times. “Just not the way he hoped.” That Democrats won as decisively as they did suggests the country is “signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.”

There is “something bigger than the misadventures” of any one Republican candidate at play, said John Kennith White at The Hill. The “stench of political death has repelled even Trump’s most devoted followers,” as voters demand an “end to the anything-goes rhetoric” in favor of “leaders they can admire.”

GOP hopes that Trump’s previous victories were a “political realignment grounded in expanded support” from “working-class minority voters” have been “reduced to rubble,” said Ronald Brownstein at Bloomberg. The electoral “drubbing” also “exposed some cracks in the core MAGA coalition” of white men who did not attend college and rural voters that has “sustained Trump since 2016.”

Trump, “like lots of populists,” forgot the “economic bit of populism,” said Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times. That lapse made it “hard to distinguish him from a laissez-faire Republican of yesteryear.” A “voter rebellion” against Republicans could “force conservatives to rethink their undying allegiance” to the “80-year-old lame-duck leader,” said Steve Peoples at The Associated Press. Before polls closed Tuesday, some GOP candidates had already “begun to distance themselves from him.” These midterms mark the “beginning of a high-stakes fight” over the United States’ “political future in the twilight of the Trump era.”

What next?

How Trump responds to the midterm results will “shape the GOP’s fate,” not only for the remainder of his term but in the 2028 race to succeed him, said Bloomberg. While “Trumpism may be receding,” said the Times, its namesake has the “power of the presidency for two more years.” Trump may do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can.”

For the past decade, the Republican Party under President Donald Trump has been overtly dedicated to accentuating traditional gender roles. This administration has gone out of its way to celebrate “masculine” virtues including high testosterone levels, strenuous physical fitness regimens and a dedication to male-focused video gaming. In 2024, that strategy seemed to work, with young men helping to propel Trump back into political power. But now, as Republicans stare down a daunting final leg of the 2026 midterm race, polling shows this once-reliable MAGA voting bloc may be decidedly less reliable.

‘Evaporated’ gains and ‘instant ramifications’

Trump may have “won young men outright” in 2024, but a Cygnal poll from September shows Democrats now leading among men between the ages of 18 to 30 by 17 points, said USA Today. Among Republican voters, men under 40 represent the “group that is most at risk” of peeling off, given their “concerns about the economy and prices,” said The Washington Post. This bloc “proved pivotal” to Trump’s 2024 “sweep of some of the same battleground states holding critical elections this year.”

Republicans were previously able to “capitalize on an environment” in which young men felt “either ignored or actively disliked by the Democratic Party,” said the National Review. But the “cultural factors” that pushed men toward the GOP two years ago “may be outweighed by economic factors this time around.”

The GOP’s 2024 inroads among young men have “evaporated” in a shift that could have “instant ramifications this November,” said Politico. While “young men alone likely won’t determine control of Congress,” their “lack of enthusiasm itself” is a “warning sign for Republicans.”

A football-based strategy

The GOP is making a “massive bet on football” as it scrambles for “midterm momentum,” said Axios. The party is “pouring millions into advertising” at NFL and college games in an attempt to “hold onto male voters — football’s core audience.”

Despite these efforts, Democrats “appear to be gaining ground with young men,” said The Hill. The Cygnal poll showed the demographic has a “negative view of the Republican Party overall.” Democrats “fared slightly better,” though the party “still had a net-negative favorability rating among these voters.”

What happened?

The U.S. election map appeared to shift in favor of Democrats recently, heightening Republicans’ fears that voters angry over the Iran war and the rising cost of living are poised to deliver the GOP a midterm drubbing. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved three key Senate races toward Democrats, who must pick up four GOP seats to win control of the chamber. New Hampshire went from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat”; North Carolina from “lean Democrat” to “likely Democrat”; and Kansas, where megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton is neck and neck with Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.” Seemingly giving up on North Carolina, where former Democratic governor Roy Cooper has a comfortable lead over Republican Michael Whatley, the top GOP Senate super PAC canceled its ads there and shifted funding to South Carolina—which Trump carried by 18 percentage points in 2024— and Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. A New York Times/Siena poll found Democratic Senate candidates leading in reliably Republican Ohio, Alaska, and Texas, and one point behind in Iowa. With Democrats favored to take the House, a GOP strategist drew lines to the blue wave of 2006. “If the bottom continues falling out,” he told Politico, “this will be worse.”

President Trump floated suspending the federal gas tax to ease anger over pump prices averaging $4.50 a gallon, a move that would require congressional action. Trump, whose approval rating hit a record-low 32% in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, held rallies in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas. The dire polls are “fake,” Trump said in Mobile, Ala., and “don’t account for the fact that Trump is out campaigning.”

What the columnists said

A huge cash advantage was “supposed to be the GOP’s ace,” said Isaac Arnsdorf in The Washington Post. Since Labor Day, Republicans have poured half a billion dollars into competitive House and Senate races. But Democrats’ advantage on a generic congressional ballot has only widened since then, from about 6 points to 9, according to one polling average. Over $190 million in attack ads aimed at Democratic Senate candidates James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan hasn’t moved the needle—El-Sayed’s favorability is up 5 points since August, according to Fox News surveys.

Democrats are gaining ground with several key groups, said Ruth Igielnik in The New York Times. They include voters under 30, who in the Times/Siena poll favored Democrats by 30 points, and Latinos, who favored Democrats by 24 points in a recent NBC News/Telemundo poll, up from 12 points before the 2024 election. And in nearly every state the Times polled, Democrats are winning among independents, “the bloc of swing voters that typically decides elections.” The polls could be wrong, said Jim Newell in Slate. They’ve previously “underestimated Republican energy in the Trump era,” by failing to reach enough white, noncollege voters. Since those abound in red states like Kansas and Iowa, “the error there will be greater if pollsters are missing this cohort again.”

If the polls are right, Republicans see a potential “lifeline” in left-leaning New Hampshire, said Ken Thomas in The Wall Street Journal. John Sununu—a moderate former one-term senator— is narrowly trailing Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, who has for months “been urging the national party to avoid complacency in the battleground state.” Maine, where longtime Sen. Susan Collins is in a tight race with Democrat Troy Jackson, could give Republicans another swing-state win.

But it’s a marker of Republicans’ vulnerability that Democrats have “found an opening in one of America’s reddest states,” said Lauren Egan in The Bulwark. Trump won Kansas by 21 points in 2016, and 16 points in 2024. But Democratic Senate challenger Hamilton has “run a masterful race” pitched to the center—and he’s been aided by Trump policies. Medicaid cuts are squeezing rural health care providers in the state. Its farm industry, already hit hard by tariffs that shrunk exports, is now struggling with the soaring price of diesel for tractors and combines. And ICE raids at meat- processing plants have “enraged” those in the livestock industry.

That Kansas is in play beggars belief, said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. “This stubborn, spiritually rhomboid state” has voted GOP in every federal statewide race “since an aberrational blip at the dawn of the Roosevelt administration.” But such is the effect of Trump’s agenda on “otherwise deep-red, agribusiness heartlands.” I believe Marshall will pull it out, but with rough weather ahead for the GOP, the state is “officially on tornado watch.” The “conditions for a freak event are now fully in place.”

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

‘Trumpism is exhausted’

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

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

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

‘Wide open’ GOP future

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

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

What next?

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

What happened

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

Fox News on Thursday said it had parted ways with financial journalist Maria Bartiromo, effective immediately, thanking her for “her work over the last 12 1/2 years.” She last appeared on air Aug. 9. Asked about reports that Bartiromo was fired for leaking confidential news coverage plans to the White House, a Fox News spokesperson told reporters only that the move was a “business decision.”

Who said what

After joining Fox Business in 2014, following a long career at CNBC, Bartiromo became “one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies at the network,” CNN said. She was fired, Status reported, because she “effectively betrayed” Fox by telling the White House that network bosses had instructed staff to “steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims” in an “unhinged” July primetime speech on election security. Bartiromo “wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies,” Puck’s Dylan Byers reported, and when executives told her no, she “took a screenshot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials.”

What next?

Fox Business rebranded Bartiromo’s namesake programs and took down her contributor pages. “Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy,” Trump said in an online post. “Social media lit up with speculation that Bartiromo might be in line to become White House press secretary,” CNN said. But asked about that possibility yesterday, Vice President JD Vance said, “No, I don’t think so.”

What happened

The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that congressional maps redrawn by the Republican-led state legislature can’t be used in the November elections, likely thwarting a GOP effort to unseat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D). Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) “incorrectly” dismissed a “legal, sufficient and timely” referendum petition on the redistricting submitted in December, the court said in its opinion, so the new districts “did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters” in November.

In another “notable victory for Democrats,” The Associated Press said, the Maryland Supreme Court also agreed to let voters decide whether the Democratic-controlled state legislature can redraw congressional districts for the 2028 election, in a bid to defenestrate Rep. Andy Harris (R).

Who said what

President Donald Trump’s “quest for a midterm election advantage triggered an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle,” the AP said. Thursday’s rulings were among “only a few nationally to go against Republicans.”

The Missouri Supreme Court’s “surprising decision creates an unprecedented set of electoral circumstances,” because last month’s primaries “took place under the new lines,” Politico said. For “months, Missouri Republicans had signaled their intention” to stall “as long as possible while implementing the new maps,” and Hoskins waited until the day of the primaries to “declare the referendum insufficient.” The court’s “unprecedented decision” thrusts Missouri “into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said in a statement. She vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What next?

The Missouri court “did not specify how candidates would be determined for a general election,” The New York Times said. “Redistricting opponents had suggested that candidates who won their primaries” could “remain the nominees in the same-numbered districts.”

What happened

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Thursday vowed to halt all of President Donald Trump’s nominees until his administration eases a wetlands conservation policy aimed at protecting the breeding grounds of ducks and other waterfowl. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last weekend said it would at least temporarily retain the Biden-era program, which bars farmers from draining land near protected federal conservation easements.

Who said what

“My farmers are furious and so am I,” Cramer said in a statement to The Hill. The Trump administration’s “blind defense of a Biden rule favored by environmental extremists” just “confounds me,” particularly when farmers are “hurting so badly” amid “rising fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from limited traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.” But “other Republicans and hunters staunchly oppose any changes that would allow farmers to drain wetlands” and potentially “cause steep declines in duck populations,” said E&E News. The Upper Midwest’s Prairie Pothole region “supports more than half of North America’s ducks,” said the Washington Examiner.

What next?

“There will be no pause in my aggression” on the issue, Cramer told E&E News. “I have put a hold on all nominees, period, of all agencies. So I hope Clarence Thomas stays healthy.” Such holds “don’t necessarily prevent confirmation” of a president’s picks, said The Hill, but “they can cause a significant setback.”

What happened

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

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

Who said what

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

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

What next?

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

What happened

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday it will end a Medicare subsidy program aimed at lowering prescription costs for some seniors at the end of 2026, one year ahead of schedule. The Medicare prescription drug benefit, which is expected to cost the government some $3.6 billion in subsidies this year, was introduced by former President Joe Biden in 2024. It shields some 25 million people with “Part D” Medicare plans from steep insurance premium hikes.

Who said what

Characterizing the government subsidies as a “bailout” that “gave BILLIONS of taxpayer money DIRECTLY to Big Insurance Companies,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said on social media that the administration is “stabilizing the market.” All but a quarter of Part D enrollees are likely to see their premiums rise next year as a result of the change, some by $20 a month, an anonymous Trump administration official told The Wall Street Journal.

The change could “inflame the debate” about healthcare costs at a time when “voters’ concerns about the cost of living are a top campaign issue,” Bloomberg said. Republicans could find this “politically damaging” ahead of the November midterm elections, The New York Times said.

What next?

CMS will release the new monthly Part D premiums in September, which means Medicare users could be in for some “sticker shock while shopping for next year’s drug plan,” the Times said.

What happened

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) on Monday appointed Darline Graham Nordone, the younger sister of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), to serve the rest of her late brother’s term in the Senate following his unexpected death this weekend. Her appointment “comes with the support of President Donald Trump,” who had “recommended Graham’s sister to the Republican governor,” said CNN.

Who said what

“Lindsey has always been there for me,” said Graham Nordone at a press conference with McMaster. “Now I will be there for him.” She has “largely kept out of the public eye” and has “not previously held elected office,” said Fox News.

Her appointment comes after “several prominent South Carolina Republicans” have “expressed interest in running for the seat,” said The Washington Post. That group includes Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, as well as Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, “all of whom lost the competitive gubernatorial primary last month.”

What next?

Graham’s death launches a “sprint primary election to replace him on the November ballot,” said CNN. “At this point,” said Fox, it’s “unclear” if his sister will run for the full term.

What happened

The death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Saturday has triggered uncertainty over the future of his South Carolina seat and created fresh challenges for a party with a narrow Senate majority. Graham died at age 71, following a “brief and sudden illness,” according to his office, with preliminary findings from the Washington, D.C., medical examiner indicating a ruptured aorta.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) is expected to appoint a temporary replacement, while the state prepares for a special Republican primary to choose a new candidate for November’s midterm election. The winner will face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews.

Who said what

President Donald Trump already has someone in mind as a temporary replacement, but “I don’t want to say it now because it just, you know, it’s too soon with Lindsey,” he told “Meet the Press.” Graham’s death might not have any “short-term impact on the overall balance of power in the Senate,” CNN said, but he was a “key player on major issues in the chamber.” He would have been an “outspoken advocate for additional defense funding amid the Iran war.”

Without Graham, the president is deprived of “one of his most effective Capitol Hill operators,” Politico said. And his death leaves Senate Republicans “without one of their strongest links to the White House.”

What next?

The special Republican primary is slated for Aug. 11. South Carolina “leans heavily conservative,” so the next nominee “would have a strong chance of becoming the state’s next senator,” The New York Times said.

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

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

‘Relationship appears to be fraying’

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

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

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

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

Sacrificing principles at the ‘altar of Trump’

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

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

What happened

Vice President JD Vance said Monday that he and President Donald Trump had “digitally” signed an interim peace agreement with Iran and expected the text of the memorandum of understanding to be released before a ceremonial signing in Geneva on Friday. The potential breakthrough “drew cautious optimism and frustration” in Congress, where “even some Republicans were reluctant to praise a deal whose terms the administration has yet to disclose,” The New York Times said. “If it’s a secret deal, then how can I take it seriously?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said to reporters.

In Israel, people “from across the political spectrum reacted angrily” to news of the deal to end the war that their government launched alongside Trump, The Associated Press said. And they directed their “fury at one man: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Who said what

It’s unclear if Trump’s deal is “one that Netanyahu will stomach — or one he will seek to derail,” The Washington Post said. Politically, he “has every incentive to continue fighting, especially in Lebanon.” For Trump, “this is his decision,” Netanyahu told reporters. For Israel, “the struggle has not ended.”

What next?

“Early signs of bumps ahead” included Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli forces would remain in Lebanon and Iran saying it “intended to charge ‘fees’ but not ‘tolls’” to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the Times said. But “for all the confusion,” oil prices “tumbled, and Iranians expressed wary optimism that a war that has killed thousands could soon end.”

What happened

The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 215-208 to force President Donald Trump to stop military operations in the Iran war unless he gets authorization from Congress. Four Republicans joined all Democrats in passing the war powers resolution, which a bipartisan coalition pushed to the floor over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). It’s the first legislation to end the war approved in either chamber, though the GOP-led Senate advanced a similar measure in a procedural vote two weeks ago.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “remarkable rebuke” to Trump and his “handling of the conflict” from a GOP-led Congress that has “largely ceded its prerogatives” to curb his power, The New York Times said. Republicans who initially backed him on the war “have started to waver,” The Wall Street Journal said, as the conflict has “dragged on with no clear resolution in sight” and gas prices “continue to climb” while Trump’s poll numbers continue “sagging.” Later Wednesday, the House “bucked” Trump and Johnson on a “second foreign policy issue,” said The Washington Post, voting 218-204 to advance funding for Ukraine and “impose additional sanctions on Russia’s finance and energy sectors.”

What next?

The Iran war vote was “largely symbolic,” as the resolution is unlikely to gain the force of law, Politico said. But it “further stymies the White House’s political priorities” after Republicans recently “scuttled several Trump goals,” including funding his White House ballroom and paying off supporters with his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

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

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.

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.

‘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.”

Read more

‘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.”

Read more

‘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

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.

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

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.”

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.

Charlie Kirk, the political activist who was assassinated on a university campus in Utah last week, grew up in a moderate conservative household in an affluent suburb of Chicago. His father was an architect, his mother a mental health counsellor. But in his teens, he started to listen to the right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, and was captivated by his reactionary tirades, said The Telegraph.

Before leaving school, he had had an opinion piece published by the right-wing news site Breitbart, deploring the focus on left-wing views in school economics textbooks (he had himself been devouring the works of Milton Friedman), which led to appearances on Fox News and meetings with high-profile Republicans.

‘Prove me wrong’

He was only 18 when he dropped out of community college and co-founded Turning Point USA, a movement to combat the dominant liberal culture on US campuses. Touring colleges across the US, Kirk would invite all-comers to debate with him at “prove me wrong” events. A fluent speaker, who was formidably well read and blessed with a prodigious memory for facts, figures and arguments, he would often “win” these encounters. But his real influence came from his online presence: video clips of his campus events racked up millions of views on social media. Turning Point’s revenues started to rise (to $82 million in 2023), and Donald Trump Jr hired him as a media adviser for his father’s campaign in 2016.

Kirk became close to Donald Trump and kept backing him following his defeat in 2020 – promoting the conspiracy theory that the election had been “stolen”. Ahead of the 2024 election, he mobilised Turning Point’s many supporters to get out the youth vote in key states, and held huge right-wing conventions with light shows, music and pyrotechnics that drew tens of thousands of young people.

Standard bearer of Christian right

Seen as a standard bearer of religious values by many on the Christian nationalist right, he was anti-abortion and pro-gun ownership. Over time, his views on a range of issues seemed to become more extreme, said The Times. He urged students to monitor and expose lecturers who advanced “Leftist propaganda”; he promoted unscientific Covid treatments during the pandemic; he claimed that George Floyd had died of a drug overdose, not as a result of having his neck compressed by the police officer kneeling on it; and he accused liberal “Jewish communities” of “pushing hatred against whites”. Recently, he’d greeted the news of the singer Taylor Swift’s engagement by telling her: “Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”

He is survived by his wife Erika, a former Miss Arizona, and their two young children.

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.”

The Democratic Party is in trouble. A new poll shows a record share of voters view the party unfavorably, leaving party leaders scrambling to figure out how to broaden their brand's appeal.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have an "unfavorable view" of Democrats, said The Wall Street Journal, which commissioned the poll. That is the "highest share" of negative ratings for a political party in the paper's surveys going all the way back to 1990. Democrats hoping for a "voter backlash against the president" ahead of next year's midterm elections have a long way to go to persuade the public "they can do a better job" than the GOP. Republicans do not come off well, either — the poll shows the public dislikes President Donald Trump's "handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy." But Democrats "don't have the credibility to be a critic of Trump" or the GOP, said Democratic pollster John Anzalone.

'Hit rock bottom'

Democrats have "hit rock bottom," said Nick Catoggio at The Dispatch. Despite all the terrible events that have happened in America since 1990, "at no point" have voters disliked a party as much as they do Democrats at this moment. It is possible that voters will "come around." But the Journal's poll shows that Republicans get higher marks than Democrats even on "issues on which Trump receives bad marks." That looks like a "catastrophic decline in confidence in the left's basic ability to govern."

Democrats "express much less warmth" toward their own leaders than Republicans, said Philip Bump on his website. It is no coincidence that the "most vibrant expressions of opposition" to Trump come from figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who "sit at a distance from the party." If party leadership continues to stumble, Democratic candidates should "run against or apart from the party as much as possible."

"These are some tough numbers for Democrats," said G. Elliott Morris at Strength in Numbers. There is a bright spot: The same poll also shows that Democrats have a three-point advantage in the "generic congressional ballot," which measures which party voters would want to represent them if the election were held today. That seemingly slim lead "would be large enough for the Democrats to win somewhere around 230-235 seats" in the House.

'Nobody's voting on anything'

There is a "silver lining" for Democrats, said Jim Geraghty at The Washington Post. "If you're going to be unpopular, do it when almost nobody's voting on anything." There are a "handful" of special elections for the House of Representatives this year, but there is still more than a year to go before the 2026 midterm elections. The Journal's poll may be "ominous," but at the moment, "it doesn't count for anything."

"Democrats don't need to be popular," said Ed Kilgore at New Yorkmagazine . Right now, the party's candidates are favored to win "most of the competitive off-year races in 2025, including the New Jersey and Virginia governorships." If Democrats win a few elections, "that will take care of most of their morale problems."

President Donald Trump has been at the center of ethics concerns going all the way back to his 2016 candidacy, largely as a result of his strong business ties that critics say could represent significant conflicts of interest. These conflicts, many of which have to do with his Middle East dealings, have continued to cast a shadow over his presidency amid his second term in the White House.

Middle East dealings

The Trump Organization has long had ties to Middle Eastern nations. The company made several business deals in the region during Trump's first term and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, inked a $2 billion investment with the Saudi crown prince after leaving the White House. But in his second term as president, any "past conflict-of-interest concerns about Trump seem petty, as he strikes deals with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and members of the ruling families of the Arab world," said Mother Jones.

In one notable instance, Trump's son Eric "signed a deal with representatives from a Saudi real estate development firm, reputed to have links to the Saudi royal family, to build a Trump-branded resort just north of Doha, Qatar," said Mother Jones. But this is just one of a slew of connections the Trump Organization has to Middle Eastern deals. The president's sons have been "crisscrossing the Middle East, laying the groundwork for deals that will benefit the company and, in some instances, Trump himself," said The Washington Post. Trump has also "declined to duplicate his first-term pledge to not advance his personal business interests from the White House."

One of the most visible Middle East conflicts relates to Trump's plan to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar to be used as the next Air Force One. Accepting the plane could "violate the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars any U.S. official from accepting 'any present' of 'any kind whatsoever, from any king, prince or foreign state,'" said USA Today. Democrats and Republicans expressed concern over the plane given Qatar's alleged ties to state-sponsored terrorism. The deal "strikes me as being rife with political espionage, ethical and constitutional problems,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told CNBC.

Cryptocurrency

Trump has frequently been accused by his opponents of using the presidency for financial gain, and this has only ramped up in his second term with the advent of Trump-branded cryptocurrency. Trump launched a pair of crypto coins named after himself and first lady Melania Trump, and experts say the "tokens provide a way for foreign buyers to curry favor, as Trump-affiliated companies owned 80% of all stock and stand to benefit when the price rises," said Reuters.

In the first two weeks following its debut, Trump's crypto coin alone brought in $100 million in fees, Reuters reported. Trump also has a 60% stake in a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial. Using these crypto channels, there is "virtually no cap on the amount of money a person or government could funnel to the president, his family and the growing list of entities they control," said CNN.

Presidents "giving access to campaign donors is nothing new," but crypto "offers a level of anonymity and scale that the White House has never seen," said CNN. Even while Trump and his administration have downplayed the conflicts with his crypto brand, many "crypto advocates on the right aren't loving the optics of a president directly enriching himself and his family through an industry" that he is "actively working to deregulate."

Real estate

The Trump Organization has continued to pursue real estate deals throughout both of Trump's terms, including the aforementioned Trump resort deal in Qatar. Several of these deals "have connections to foreign governments in the Middle East," which is "raising concerns that Mr. Trump's financial interests could influence foreign policy," said The New York Times.

This includes deals in India, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam, among others. Many of these are branding plays in which the Trump Organization "sells its name to international developers that build residential and resort complexes and sell luxury units at a premium, they hope, based on Trump's perceived star power," said the Times. Trump's plan to take control of Gaza and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East" has also generated significant controversy.

Beyond his new buildings, potential conflicts have also erupted due to how Trump has used his existing properties during his presidency. The office of the president "provides Trump with an unlimited marketing platform to promote his properties," said the left-leaning watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). During interviews, Trump "finds or manufactures opportunities to shower his hotels, resorts and golf courses with praise and uses his influence to drive business to his properties." Trump often visits these locations himself, and his "near-constant presence at properties that he owns and profits from signals to those looking to influence him and his administration that they should follow suit."

Trump products

From Trump Steaks to a shuttered airline, the president has tried to sell dozens of products with his name on them over the years. But as president, these types of MAGA-aligned products "illustrate just how closely Trump's personal business interests are entwined with his politics," said CNN. This includes everything from urging his followers to "buy limited edition guitars that bear his signature and Trump-themed fragrances that 'represent winning,'" to an $899 "limited-edition" Trump inaugural watch.

The "opaque structure of the companies that produce these items could create fresh conflicts of interest for Trump — with few public details about who Trump is in business with and how much he profits," said ABC News. There is some publicly available information about his crypto business, but when it comes to his merchandise, he has undergone an "unprecedented effort to commoditize his political platform." And when it comes to any products not on his official website, the "external companies that Trump licenses to sell his other items aren't subject to oversight."

Personal financial gain

Trump has maintained that he does not have any conflicts of interest as president. But he has "drawn scrutiny in Washington" from "political opponents and even some allies, who point out that the president has not divested from the Trump Organization and continues to profit from — and personally promote — these business ventures in his second term," said NBC News.

The exact amount of money Trump has personally made in his second term is unclear. In just the first month after his return to the White House, Trump's ventures netted him about $80 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, largely due to a $40 million deal with Amazon to produce a Melania Trump documentary. And thanks to his merchandising, along with a massive boost from his crypto coins, Trump has "more than doubled his estimated fortune, from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion," said Forbes.

While there is an Office of Government Ethics whose job it is to investigate these types of conflicts, the "Trump administration has really been putting those systems under stress or just outright ignoring them," Eric Petry, a counsel for the Brennan Center's Elections and Government Program, said to Vox. Within the "executive branch, some of the tools that we typically look to to police conflicts are not going to be effective. It's a real problem that federal conflicts of interest laws don't apply to the president and vice president."

Nestled deep within Republicans' massive budget reconciliation bill, unveiled this week, is a surprising measure advocates say is necessary to ensure American dominance in the growing field of artificial intelligence. The bill is designed to capitalize on the GOP's congressional majorities with provisions aimed at scaling back Medicaid and other conservative policy priorities. But it would also enact a full moratorium on any state-level AI regulation for the 10 years following the bill's enactment.

Supporters argue the measure aligns with the Trump administration's focus on American AI leadership. However, critics contend that the proposed legislation would allow a predatory tech industry to run roughshod over local efforts to grapple with the challenges of the still-developing field.

What did the commentators say?

The focus on state-level AI laws comes as AI regulation at the federal level "remains in limbo," The Hill said, leaving state legislatures to consider "nearly 700 AI bills" last year alone. "It's very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week.

That patchwork of local legislation, Altman insisted, would "slow us down at a time when I don't think it's in anyone's interest for us to slow down." A "web of inconsistent laws" will "fragment national policy, delay innovation" and "create legal and technical barriers to scaling AI systems across state lines," said Center for Data Innovation director Daniel Castro.

But by establishing the federal government as the "sole regulator for U.S. tech firms in a booming industry," critics say, the bill represents a "giveaway" to an industry that will "enable harmful and discriminatory uses of the emerging technology," said The Washington Post. The push for reduced local regulatory authority "also stands in contrast to Republicans' advocacy of states' rights in education and abortion policies."

The language of the proposed legislation is "broad enough to cover relatively new generative AI tools," said Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media, while still applying to "technology that has existed for much longer." The result will be that it will become "impossible to enforce" laws designed to "protect people from and inform them about AI systems." Ten years of deregulation "isn't a path forward," said AI researcher Gary Marcus in an open letter signed by multiple state lawmakers. "It's an abdication of responsibility." The measure would be "deeply problematic under any circumstance," Marcus said, but it's "especially dangerous" given the way AI is already disrupting health, education, employment and other fields.

States have "quietly become the front line" in the tech regulation effort, said NYU Center on Technology policy director Scott Brennen and NYU Center for Social Media & Politics executive director Zeve Sanderson at the Post. Congress, meanwhile, has "puttered, backtracked and ultimately produced little AI regulation" and will "undermine the only concerted legislative effort aimed at balancing AI's myriad risks and benefits" without offering a solution of its own.

What next?

A state-level push for AI regulation may ultimately "force Washington to move," said the Financial Times — particularly as "some members of the MAGA crowd support a more interventionist approach." When even "anti-regulation evangelist" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who cosponsored the bipartisan Take It Down Act to address AI-generated sexual imagery, has accepted the "necessity to act in certain cases," some form of AI regulation will likely be inevitable. This will lead to "strange alliances and unpredictable zigzags along the way."

As part of a reconciliation bill, the proposed limits on AI regulations cannot be filibustered, which could "ease their path to passage" in the broader legislation, said the Post. If the entire bill passes, the logic of including AI regulation in a bill ostensibly restricted to budgetary issues will "face scrutiny from the Senate parliamentarian."

Republicans have never been known for their eagerness to raise taxes on high-income earners. So it is notable that GOP officials, including President Donald Trump, have in recent weeks openly contemplated the possibility of taxing the rich.

Trump last week asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to "include a tax hike on rich Americans" as part of a big new fiscal bill, said The New York Times. The proposal would create a new tax bracket for households making more than $2.5 million a year, charging income above that rate at 39.6%. But the president has gone back and forth on the issue, also sounding a note of caution, said CNN. "Republicans should probably not do it," Trump wrote on Truth Social, "but I'm OK if they do!!!"

That Republicans are even considering such a possibility is a "curveball for the ages," said Slate. The usual cycle of power is that "Republicans take power and cut the top rate," while Democrats "come in and raise it back." If a GOP-controlled Congress approved higher taxes on wealthy earners, it could scramble American politics by "stifling one of Democrats' central critiques of Republican governance."

What did the commentators say?

"Raising taxes on the wealthy shouldn't be Republican heresy," said Charles Lane at The Free Press. The idea has heightened the divide between anti-tax traditionalists like Grover Norquist and MAGA populists like Steve Bannon. Trump is waffling "between what he thinks is good policy and good politics." But a tax hike for the rich would be a "significant new step toward rebranding the Republicans as the party of the working class."

Don't be fooled. GOP politicians "promise to raise taxes on the rich routinely," said Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic. Trump made the promise "many times" during the 2016 campaign but never followed through during his first term. Republicans understand that "reducing taxes for the affluent is unpopular," so they "obscure their intentions." In truth, low taxes are the "force that holds Trump's coalition together." The president might entertain the possibility in public, "but you can bet your last dollar it won't happen."

What next?

There is skepticism among Republicans who have spent their careers opposing tax increases of any kind, said Axios. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said he is "not excited about the proposal" but added that Trump's backing may force the issue. The president's support would be a "big factor that we have to take into consideration," Crapo said.

The tax hike would affect "pass-through businesses" in which earnings are reported on the owners' individual forms and "are subject to the individual income tax," said MarketWatch. One analysis found that 90% of American businesses are organized as pass-throughs. But other experts say the effect of the proposed hike would be minimal, said Axios. Only about "about 0.1% to 0.2%" of taxpayers would be affected, though that would include "jumbo paychecks" earned by "high-paid doctors, some professional athletes and executives."

Despite President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs causing economic calamity and potential harm to millions of Americans, his congressional backers remain in the White House's corner. But some Republican lawmakers are beginning to cautiously speak out.

What did the commentators say?

Republican lawmakers have expressed "varying degrees of shock and alarm" at the "scale" of Trump's sweeping global tariffs, The Hill said. Many of Trump's latest tariffs have been "met with skepticism from even his strongest allies on Capitol Hill," including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Worried about a "brutal week ahead," a "growing number" of Republican lawmakers are joining bills designed to "rebuke Trump's tariff strategy," said Politico. There is a brewing "backlash" among a "handful of Republicans in Congress, former Trump administration officials, conservative activists and other prominent supporters," said USA Today.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a "right-wing firebrand from a deep red state," has been "raking in surprising praise from his Democratic colleagues" for pushing back on Trump's apparent "overreach" into Congress' constitutionally allotted power of the purse, The Washington Post said. Nascent congressional efforts to curtail Trump's budgetary infringement are, meanwhile, a "win-win situation" for Democrats, said James Downie at MSNBC. If Republicans block those bills, Democrats can "hang those votes around GOP necks next fall." Conversely, if those votes "make GOP defections from Trump even a little regular," it threatens the narrow GOP majority's ability to govern entirely.

Already "unpopular with the American public in general," Trump's tariffs are "even more unpopular" with the 2024 voters who helped secure his electoral victory, said Vox. A "stark divide is emerging" between Trump's "core base" of MAGA voters and the "less ideological, more diverse (albeit smaller) group of Republican voters" who propelled Trump into office but don't consider themselves "MAGA-aligned." That divide has expanded to include the GOP's funding mechanism, as well: "I don't know if I would be this worried about what will happen to the economy if Bernie f---ing Sanders were president," said one "big Trump and Republican Party donor" to Rolling Stone. But, the donor said, "I am not willing to go public yet."

What next?

For many Republicans, Trump's tariffs are a "risk like no other," said The New York Times. If the "economic fallout" from these market-roiling measures is "bad enough," leading to previously safe red states looking "plausibly competitive" ahead of the midterms, GOP support for Trump "could be in jeopardy." Trump's tariffs are like a "long ball deep into the end zone," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on his "Verdict" podcast this week. If the lasting impact is a "bad recession," then the 2026 midterms "in all likelihood politically, would be a bloodbath" for Republicans.

For now, however, GOP defections from Trump's tariff agenda are relatively rare. "If Republican members start drifting away from supporting President Trump," said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) to Politico, "everybody gets weaker." House Republicans are "going to give" Trump the "space necessary to do it," said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reporters. "We'll see how it all develops."

Donald Trump may be president, but ever since Inauguration Day, it has been Elon Musk who's seemingly held the power of the federal government in the palm of his hand. As a leader of this administration's DOGE effort, Musk has directed the dismantling of major government agencies and initiatives. While Trump is the one granted constitutional authority, Musk has often seemed more interested in actually wielding executive power — at least until now.

"At some point," Trump told reporters on Monday, Musk is "going to be going back" to run his various companies, including the financially struggling Tesla car manufacturers in which the majority of his vast fortune is tied. "He wants to." A day later, Wisconsin voters delivered a stinging rebuke to Musk, decisively voting against the conservative Supreme Court candidate he had backed. This defeat was quickly followed by a Politico report that Trump had begun forecasting Musk's imminent departure to his inner circle, predicting it could take place "in the coming weeks."

What did the commentators say?

Musk's DOGE enterprise was "never supposed to become a permanent fixture in Washington," said The Associated Press. Musk had initially been hired as a "temporary government employee," a congressionally created position that allows both executive and legislative branches to hire workers for "specific short-term initiatives" up to 130 days, said Fox News. DOGE itself is slated to be "dissolved" on July 4, 2026, "according to Trump's executive order."

Nevertheless, Musk's work appears to be concluding "faster than anticipated," said the AP, and Musk has offered differing timelines for his potential exit. The world's richest man recently said he was "confident" he'd be able to "finish most of his stated aim of cutting $1 trillion in federal spending" before May, when his official governmental status is slated to end, Reuters said. But when asked by Fox Business' Larry Kudlow last month whether he planned "to go another year," Musk said, "Yeah, I think so."

Trump, too, has denied Politico's report, despite having offered a similar sentiment just days earlier. The "murkiness" of Musk's potential departure, including the possibility that he may simply "downgrade his public involvement" in the Trump administration, is "typical for a president who hates to be boxed in or give his critics validation," said Time.

Rumors of Musk's chronologically nebulous departure come amid a "parade of humiliation for the world's richest edgelord" due to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election and sinking Tesla sales, CNN said. "The question," said The Washington Post, is whether the GOP's Wisconsin loss could be the "beginning of a bigger loss of influence" for Musk within the White House. It's unclear whether the episode will "sour the relationship between him and Trump," said Barry Burden, the director of the University of Wisconsin's Elections Research Center, to the Post. While Trump has steadfastly supported the man many consider his de facto co-president, the recent election loss "could be the start of a slow divorce between the two of them."

What's next?

Musk's governmental role is "one factor weighing on Tesla's stock," CNBC said. Politico's report on the CEO's pending departure from the administration was enough to push the company's stock "more than 5% higher" shortly after it was published, as investors hoped the move would allow Musk to "return his focus on the struggling electric vehicle maker."

Conversely, Musk's presence in Washington has been a "colossal distraction and a magnet for controversy" among "what should be a unified Republican team," said Time. "Traditional Republicans have been counting on" Musk to follow Trump's penchant for ignominious dismissals. But even if Musk is encouraged to "play a lower-profile role" in the White House, said The Wall Street Journal, "that may not be an easy sell to a flamboyant billionaire."

Despite all the ambiguities surrounding the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency effort, there is little doubt that the Elon Musk-helmed enterprise is among the most consequential features of President Donald Trump's second term so far. Largely undeterred by various legal attempts at constraint, Musk and company have pushed ahead with DOGE's campaign promise of a slash-and-burn rampage through the federal government.

Democratic lawmakers have scrambled to form a coherent bulwark of opposition, but lately, a new line of DOGE criticism has emerged from an unlikely source: Republican lawmakers who have begun cautiously raising concerns about how the program is affecting their home districts and constituents.

What did the commentators say?

Capitol Hill conservatives are "growing unnerved" by a sense that DOGE is an "imprecise exercise," said Axios, as "job and funding cuts are now hitting GOP lawmakers' districts and states." All this is occurring amid a "larger conflict" over the White House's legal authority to "bypass Congress on these decisions." While most Republican lawmakers are opting for a "quieter approach" rather than frontal criticisms of Musk and the Trump administration, their anxieties "underscore the clash between shrinking government and parochial interests," said CBS News.

"Congress can't do anything except complain about it," said Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley during a press call this week. The comment was a "stark admission" that there is "little the GOP might be able or willing to do" despite party members' growing "discomfort" over DOGE's impact and effects, Politico said.

It's "far from a full-fledged GOP mutiny," said U.S. News & World Report. The "overwhelming majority" of Republican lawmakers have either cheered or "ducked questions" about DOGE's work. One move that has received particular pushback from Republicans is the limiting of National Institute of Health grants. Those caps are "poorly conceived," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and should instead be a "smart, targeted approach" so as to "not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions," said Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.).

Republicans are "particularly uneasy" with how DOGE's cuts have affected veterans who have been "disproportionately affected" by the group's expansive layoffs, Politico said. And this past week a "coalition" of New York Republican lawmakers offered a "rare sign of pushback" against the White House over cuts to the World Trade Center Health Program, which oversees aid for emergency workers who have been medically affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, The New York Times said. Although the conservative lawmakers' reactions began as "more muted" than that of their Democratic colleagues, their outcry became more "vocal" in a sign that "blowback to the firings was widespread."

What next?

Republicans have been receiving a "deluge of calls from worried constituents," said CNN, prompting some to begin "testing the waters for what a new era of pushback in a second Trump term looks like." To that end, some GOP lawmakers are "privately sitting down with representatives" from the largest federal employee union. Others remain "in the dark on what changes or cuts are occurring" and have resorted to using "back channels" to understand the scope and scale of DOGE's efforts before making any public moves. Republicans have unleashed a "frantic flurry of calls and texts" to members of the Trump administration, resulting in some "some small, scattered successes" such as the rehiring of Department of Agriculture employees involved in tracking cases of bird flu, said Politico.

Ultimately, Republicans are "not without leverage" when it comes to guarding the legislative branch's financial authority against potential executive branch overreach, said Axios. Trump will need to keep "nearly every GOP lawmaker sated" to pass his budget bill later this year. Given the party's "razor-thin majority" in the House, the administration simply "cannot afford more than a couple of defections" when the vote comes to the floor.

For years, the United States has been at the forefront of a global effort to bolster Ukraine's ongoing defense against a Russian invasion effort that has threatened the stability of Eastern Europe. Since the reelection of President Donald Trump, however, that vector of support has been called into terminal question.

Trump has continued his global overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin while falsely labeling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections." As a result, Trump's pivot away from America's historically adversarial stance toward Russia has roiled the traditionally hawkish members of his own party, who have spent decades operating under a geopolitical paradigm that seems to be rapidly losing relevance. As representatives for the Trump and Putin administrations prepare to discuss the future of Ukraine without any Ukrainian input, Republican lawmakers find themselves in an awkward political crossfire.

A 'widening gap' within the GOP

While Republicans on Capitol Hill have been "split" over Trump's broadsides against Ukraine and his increasingly cozy relationship with Russia, their public pushback has been "muted," The Washington Post said — a dynamic that underscores the party's "shifting stance on Russia's invasion." While once "strongly behind" Ukraine, support among Senate Republicans in particular has "eroded considerably" under Trump.

While some Republicans have "expressed dismay" at Trump's discrete statements and posturing, the party has yet to mount a "concerted effort to challenge him" on the merits of those actions, particularly on the part of those lawmakers who play "pivotal roles in overseeing military and foreign policy in Congress," said The New York Times. Although some have said they "do not agree" with Trump's position, "most have done so taking pains not to criticize the president" himself.

Despite a "widening gap" between the administration and the GOP's "defense wing," Republicans have not been ready to "break completely" with the president, Politico said. Even among those who have "expressed dismay" at Trump's comments, such as "regular Republican dissenter" Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), the critiques "will not translate into any tangible attempt to redirect Trump's foreign policy," said the BBC.

Giving Trump 'latitude for now'

Many Republican lawmakers have tempered their critiques of Trump's pivot on American support for Ukraine. This a reflection of the "reality" that there is "little appetite for approving any more foreign aid" for Ukraine within the GOP-held legislature, said NPR. And peppered throughout those critiques is the repeated theme that Trump's comments are part of a broader operating plan.

Trump may be "factually wrong" in calling Zelenskyy a "dictator," Sen. Kevin Kramer (R-N.D.) said. But while Kramer admitted he doesn't know Trump's "motive" behind the remarks, "as a negotiator, he's always positioning and he's in a negotiating mood these days." While Putin is "clearly responsible" for the war in Ukraine, Trump has used some "fairly successful, aggressive negotiating tactics in the past," said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). "So I'll give him latitude for now." Trump is "working to achieve" a "peaceful outcome" in and for Ukraine, said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). "Right now you've got to give them some space."

President Donald Trump has put the Federal Emergency Management Agency in his crosshairs. The department is responsible for coordinating relief and rescue efforts in the event of natural disasters, but Trump has often criticized FEMA as ineffective and a waste of money and questioned whether it should exist at all.

Trump has established a council to review the necessity of FEMA. The agency has "managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most," claims an executive order signed by the president. It also alleges "serious concerns of political bias" within FEMA and calls for a "full-scale review." The president cannot disband a federal agency without congressional authorization, but his actions have left many worried that Trump could drastically reduce its budget or push to have it shuttered entirely.

What did the commentators say?

Trump's taking aim at FEMA is not new, as Republicans have "previously suggested reducing the amount that states are reimbursed for preventing and responding to disasters like floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and more," said Chris Megerian at The Associated Press. Project 2025, which has been closely linked with members of the Trump administration, had "suggested changing the formula that the agency uses to determine when federal disaster assistance is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to states."

If Trump took this suggestion, the "federal reimbursement rate would be set at 25% of costs for smaller disasters and capped at 75% for larger ones," said Megerian. Presidents can currently authorize the reimbursement of 100% of costs for certain disasters, as former President Joe Biden "did for some costs from Hurricane Helene and the California fires." A request for FEMA aid must come directly from a state's governor asking the president to declare an emergency.

While the "agency could always improve, eliminating it would leave states scrambling to scrounge up resources during crises where time is of the essence," said Marisa Iati and Brianna Sacks at The Washington Post. To "disaster management experts, a better solution to FEMA's inefficiencies would be streamlining processes, rather than eliminating the entire disaster management system with no replacement." States need FEMA to "coordinate federal support, like bringing in the Army Corps of Engineers to remove debris," former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said to the Post.

The agency's "response to crises is generally strong," said Juliette Kayyem, the chair of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, to the Post. Trump is correct in that "post-disaster recovery is slow." However, this is an inherent challenge in "communities figuring out what they need to rebuild." Eliminating FEMA would "probably mean more deaths from natural disasters and chaotic response systems in which state officials struggle to marshal resources."

On the other hand, disaster response is "not supposed to be a top-down structure imposed by Washington," Chris Edwards said at the Cato Institute. Congress "should phase out FEMA aid for disaster preparedness, response and relief," and the federal government "should only fill roles where it can add value not provided by the states or private sector." Certain FEMA tasks, such as providing flood insurance, should "be privatized," Edwards adds.

What next?

Democratic lawmakers have hit back against Trump's FEMA attacks. Trump's "threats to get rid of FEMA and GOP House leadership floating conditional aid will hinder relief to Americans who've lost their homes and businesses in wildfires or floods," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) on CNN. Eliminating it would "cripple the nation's ability to respond to disasters and remove a critical lifeline for Americans recovering from wildfires, hurricanes, floods and more," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said on X.

Officials have also tried to tamp down concerns that Trump would disband the agency. FEMA is a "critical agency which performs an essential mission in support of our national security," Cam Hamilton, FEMA's acting head, said in a memo to staff obtained by Reuters.

"Oooh, that's a big one." So said US president Donald Trump, as, among his first-day flurry of executive orders, he withdrew America from the World Health Organization (WHO).

It's a move that may have flown "below the radar", given Trump's other headline-grabbing executive orders, but it's the "most momentous of all", said Lawrence O. Gostin, global-health law professor at Georgetown University – and a "cataclysmic presidential decision".

Founded in 1948, the WHO's stated mission is to "put science to work to build a healthier, safer world", championing "global efforts" to "give everyone everywhere an equal chance at a safe and healthy life". The WHO has brought countries together to confront everything from Covid-19 and Zika to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, it supports countries in health crisis, and anticipates and tracks emerging global health threats.

'Unfairly onerous payments'

This is not the first time Trump has ordered the US to pull out of the UN's global health agency: he took formal steps to withdraw in 2020, only for his decision to be reversed when Joe Biden replaced him as president. At the time, lawyers and health experts, writing in The Lancet, said that Trump's "unlawful" and "reckless" move would have "dire consequences for US security, diplomacy, and influence".

Monday's executive order declared the US was withdrawing "due to the organisation's mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic", as well as "its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states". Pointedly, the order also stated that the WHO "continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries' assessed payments".

It is true that the US is by far the biggest funder of the Geneva-based organisation, typically contributing about one-fifth of the WHO's total $6.8 billion (£5.5 billion) biennial budget. Although this is a tiny fraction of the total US federal budget, "resentment against the WHO has simmered in Republican circles since the pandemic", said The Guardian.

In 2020, Trump was highly critical of the WHO for being too "China-centric" in its tackling of Covid-19, and the organisation has since become a "target" of US conservatives over its work on a global pandemic treaty that they view as a "threat to American sovereignty", said the The New York Times.

'Political vacuum'

The fact that "this executive action" was carried out "on day one" means it's "more likely" that the US will actually leave the WHO this time, said the BBC.

Under terms adopted by Congress when WHO was founded, the US is required to give 12 months' notice of withdrawal but, were US funding eventually to be pulled, it would leave the WHO in "uncharted territory", said The Guardian. It may have to curtail its worldwide public-health works, "pressuring the organisation to attract private funding, and providing an opening for other countries" to exert an influence.

And here is the irony. "WHO is a pretty essential organization" and, with US withdrawal, there will be "a political vacuum that only one country can fill – and that is China", Dr Ashish Jha, The White House Covid-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, told CNN.

Right on cue, China's foreign ministry announced that the WHO's role in global-health governance "should be strengthened, not weakened", and that Beijing would continue to support it in "fulfilling its responsibilities", said China Daily.

"If your true concern is that WHO is captured by China, then removing the US from the equation just seals the deal", said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, in Science.

The U.S. Constitution is more than two centuries old. It hasn't been amended for three decades. Is it finally time for a rewrite?

Some Republicans have been pushing for a new constitutional convention for "more than a decade," said NC Newsline. North Carolina legislators in December voted to ask Congress to convene a convention to address congressional term limits, adding to a "pile of requests" already in the hopper. A conservative group called Convention of States is pushing a broader effort to call a convention for amendments to "limit federal power and rein in reckless spending." That could put America in uncharted territory. Amendments have been passed over the years, but the convention method of changing the Constitution has "never been used," said NC Newsline.

Democrats worry about a "'runaway convention' where anything and everything is on the table," Hayes Brown said at MSBNC. There is a precedent, after all: The original Constitutional Convention in 1787 was called to amend the Articles of Confederation. The founders instead "abolished the articles" and came up with the Constitution instead.

How would a convention work?

"A simple line" in Article V of the Constitution lets Congress call a convention "if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one," said The New York Times. It's possible the threshold has already been met. Scholars say most states have "long-forgotten requests on the books" that could trigger the provision if Congress chose to act. (Twenty-eight states have asked for a convention just to pass a balanced budget amendment, for example.) Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) has introduced a bill that would require the head of the National Archives to track already-passed applications. But it is "not clear how seriously Republicans would pursue a convention," said the Times.

An Article V convention is "one of the few provisions of the Constitution that has never been implemented," the Congressional Research Service said in a 2016 report. Because of that, there are no precedents to show how a gathering could and should work — instead, there is a "wide range of policy and procedural questions" that would have to be settled by Congress before the work begins. If a convention does occur, any amendments would have to be approved by 38 states. That "arguably acts as a deterrent" to any big changes.

What are the cases for and against a convention?

The Constitution needs "significant, even drastic, revision" to function properly in the modern era, University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson said in the Journal of Legislation & Public Policy. A convention would make it possible for Americans to "imagine what kind of system would make the most sense for 21st-century realities."

Many Democrats disagree. California State Sen. Scott Wiener (D) is sponsoring a bill to rescind his state's call for a convention. There's a danger Republicans could change the Constitution to "restrict voting rights, to eliminate reproductive health access and so forth," he said to the Los Angeles Times. The lack of clear guidelines poses a risk, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School. "There's no way to know" what choices Congress might make about how a convention would work, "since it's never happened."

What happened

The House Ethics Committee released its report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) Monday, saying its yearslong investigation found "substantial evidence" he "violated House rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts" and other violations.

Gaetz resigned from Congress last month as the committee was preparing to release its report and President-elect Donald Trump tapped him for attorney general. He withdrew from consideration when it became clear he did not have enough Senate support for confirmation.

Who said what

Gaetz "regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him" from 2017 to 2020 and possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, the House investigators said. Their "most egregious allegation," however, involved Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old, Politico said. Gaetz likely "did not learn" the high schooler's age until "after their first sexual encounters," the committee said, but "statutory rape is a strict liability crime" and he "met up with her again for commercial sex" soon after she turned 18.

There was not "sufficient evidence" Gaetz took the minor across state lines, which would be a federal crime, the report said, and the Florida statute of limitations for statutory rape has expired.

Gaetz, who has denied all the allegations, said the Ethics Committee unfairly targeted him in a "Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom" where he could "present evidence and challenge witnesses." He had sued to stop the report's release. The committee said Gaetz was "uncooperative" throughout and had "pointed to evidence that would 'exonerate' him yet failed to produce any such materials."

What next?

Gaetz is "set to join the right-wing One America News Network as an anchor in January," CNN said.

What happened

House Republicans abandoned a stopgap spending package Wednesday evening after President-elect Donald Trump told them to kill the bipartisan legislation and replace it with a more pared-down package that cut out Democratic priorities and also raised the debt ceiling. Trump's new demands, paired with threats of retribution, made a Christmastime government shutdown likely.

Who said what

The carefully negotiated spending package, introduced by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday, would have funded the government at current levels until March 14 and included $100.4 billion for natural disaster survivors. Johnson's late addition of $10 billion in aid to farmers "opened the door to a slew of unrelated demands by Democrats to ensure the bill could pass the House and Democratic-led Senate," The Washington Post said.

Trump's "opposition to what was considered must-pass legislation," and especially his "almost unrealistic" debt-ceiling demand, "reinjected a sense of chaos and political brinkmanship that was reminiscent of his first term in office," The Associated Press said. Trump weighed in after Elon Musk "used his social network X to stir Republicans into a frenzy," posting "100-plus tweets" attacking the legislation, often using "misleading or outright false claims," Politico said.

Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass any spending bill, "signaled they weren't in any mood to bail Republicans out," Politico said. "You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said.

What next?

Johnson "has not outlined a backup plan," and his "next step remains unclear," the Post said. Without a spending bill, "most federal operations would shut down" on Saturday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reportedly told Democrats last night that "we have a deal with Republicans and we're sticking with it."

Even by the freewheeling standards set during President-elect Donald Trump's first administration, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz stood out as a particularly surprising pick for a Cabinet position, to say nothing of being tapped to lead the Department of Justice as Trump's nominee for Attorney General. Not only had Gaetz, one of Trump's fiercest congressional allies, barely practiced law since earning his JD in 2007, but he was now being asked to head the department which had recently investigated him for alleged 2017 sexual assault of a minor. In a slate of controversial Cabinet nominations, his was arguably the most shocking to Democrats and Republicans alike.

No less shocking, although perhaps not entirely surprising, was Gaetz's decision to pull himself out of contention in the face of growing opposition from the Senators tasked with confirming him for the role. All told, this nomination saga lasted just eight days, with Trump turning to fellow Floridian Pam Bondi as his new AG-in-waiting mere hours after Gaetz's withdrawal. But in the wake of those turbulent days, keen-eyed observers and political commentators have been given a glimpse into both the inner workings of the President-elect's transition process, and his vision for his incoming administration.

As the dust from Gaetz-gate finishes settling, a new schema of power for Trump's closest circles has emerged.

Who came out on top?

No one can claim to have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in this instance more than Pam Bondi, who now stands on the precipice of one of the most consequential legal positions in the country, if not the world. As a "longtime Trump ally" whose previous efforts to join the Trump administration "never panned out," the former Florida Attorney General now "appears more likely to have an easier path to confirmation" than Gaetz, Politico said.

The Gaetz debacle "may strengthen Susie Wiles," Trump's incoming Chief-of-Staff, as well, said congressional scholar Norman Ornstein. Gaetz's nomination had been "announced before she had any input," and now that it's fallen apart, "Trump has to know that maybe he should take a little advice from her." Wiles is "even-tempered, can foresee risks, and is one of the figures most likely to talk Trump out of a bad idea," said Jim Geraghty at National Review.

By voicing their (ultimately nomination-killing) concerns over Gaetz, Senate Republicans, too, may have strengthened their standing. They demonstrated that while they want to "help Trump enact as much of his agenda as possible, they are not going to reflexively respond 'how high?' when Trump says 'jump,'" Geraghty said. The Senate GOP might "actually be a soft check on the leader of their party when they feel like he is going too far," said Politico — particularly incoming Majority Leader Sen. John Thune (R-SD), with whom Trump "might have a completely different relationship" than the adversarial one he experienced with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). This episode may even count as a "win for America — and even for Trump, who has just been saved from the consequences of a bad early decision," said Nicole Russell at USA Today.

Who's on the outs?

In the immediate short term, the most obvious loser from Gaetz-gate could very well be Gaetz himself, who is no longer in contention to become the next Attorney General and has retired from Congress with no plans to return in the coming term. Although he has yet to articulate his next steps, which could include a future run for office, or even a non-Senate confirmable position in the Trump administration, Gaetz's "future is not as bright as it once was," said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, to the Orlando Sentinel.

Gaetz's departure also refocuses the national spotlight on other controversial Trump Cabinet nominees, including Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who is now "by far the biggest headache" for the incoming administration, said The Independent. Hegseth's nomination "so far had been overshadowed by Gaetz," Politico said, but with Gaetz gone "scrutiny could quickly shift to Hegseth" and his record of extremist views and alleged sexual misconduct.

Trump may have escaped an embarrassing defeat had Gaetz not bowed out ahead of his confirmation process, but the president-elect nevertheless suffered a "stinging rebuke" by his nominee's resignation, Bloomberg said. The episode "illustrates the roadblocks" Trump's incoming administration faces in transforming his "campaign of 'retribution' into a governing coalition," said MSNBC.

Donald Trump is celebrating his presidential win, but it is going to be a "howling nightmare" for the UK government, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer.

While Keir Starmer has congratulated the president-elect on his election victory, the "truth universally acknowledged by officials in private" is that "a second Trump presidency will be a clear and present danger to the UK's most vital national interests".

No 'overnight love affair'

Let's not forget that David Lammy, now foreign secretary, once called Trump a "neo-Nazi sociopath", said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. And when polling suggested Kamala Harris "was about to sweep all before her" 100 current and former Labour Party staff headed to the US to campaign for the Democrats. Nobody cared that "The Orange One" was outraged as he seemed like a "dead-cert loser" at the time. "Well, 'oops', as they say."

Nigel Farage has offered to lend Starmer a hand in mending relations. "It won't be an overnight love affair," the Reform UK leader and Trump ally told the i news site. "It will take time, and perhaps it'll take a degree of humility from the British government."

Making the 'cogs turn more easily'

The new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the Commons yesterday that an apology was in order for Lammy's "derogatory and scatological references", to which Starmer pointed out that he and the foreign secretary had met Trump in New York for dinner in September, describing it as a "constructive exercise". A No. 10 spokesman later said the PM would "of course welcome a visit" from Trump to the UK in the future.

While the US and UK leaders might not share the same "worldview", said Victoria Honeyman, professor of British politics at the University of Leeds, on The Conversation, a friendly rapport certainly "makes the cogs turn considerably more easily". Trump and Starmer's relationship "does not have to be stormy". In the end, the UK government will have "no option" but to work with Trump "as best they can".

The allegations were salacious. The fallout, immediate.

It's been just days since CNN published a deeply reported story detailing the wildly offensive comments allegedly left on an adult website's message board by North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson. In that short time, the state's already-contentious 2024 governor's race has been upended, as strategists from both parties scramble to recalibrate with less than two months until election day. Robinson, currently serving as North Carolina's Lieutenant Governor, has denied the allegations that he called himself a "black Nazi" who endorsed slavery, describing CNN's report as "tabloid trash" while vowing to remain in the race against Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein.

As damning as CNN's report may be — and as politically damaging as it may become for Robinson — the controversy swirling around his increasingly radioactive candidacy is not, in and of itself, wholly new. For years, Robinson has worked to move past his documented history of making nakedly racist and bigoted remarks towards Jewish people, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. There have also been claims of a significant pornography addiction prior to his time in politics. Nevertheless, North Carolina Republicans nominated Robinson to run for governor by a margin of more than three to one, raising a larger, if more nebulous question.

How does someone like Robinson become a high level GOP candidate, and is he really as much of an aberration in conservative politics as many Republicans are now claiming?

What did the commentators say?

That Robinson, who first garnered political attention for an impassioned speech in favor of gun rights at a Greensboro, NC city council meeting, has been within striking distance of high elected office is "representative of an interesting pattern within the modern Republican Party," The American Prospect said. It's a pattern wherein one can "earn fame within the party for incendiary comments but are soon forced to backtrack once they’re in the national spotlight." Robinson is similarly indicative of the fact that the "Republican insistence on nominating crazy people elsewhere affects us all," said Charles Pierce at Esquire. While previous GOP candidates with their own list of controversies may have seemed at the time to be "one step beyond," Robinson is proof that "there is no Beyond," and "should stay on the ballot" as "the perfect GOP candidate for 2024."

"Republicans knew Robinson was a problematic candidate," said Noah Rothman at the National Review. "They just didn't care." In spite of being an "unnecessary risk" electorally, North Carolina voters "were persuaded to haul the baggage Robinson brought with him onto their own backs because Donald Trump insisted on it." Republicans "routinely looked past Robinson's breathtaking hypocrisy," and — prior to last week's report — "held him up as a champion" and an "example of America at its finest," Billy Ball said at MSNBC. The question ultimately becomes one of whether the GOP is "suffering primarily from a candidate quality problem or a base voter problem" said The Bulwark.

Others, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), have attempted to balance distancing themselves and the party from Robinson, while retaining the capacity to support him should his political fortunes change. "Should every Republican in the country be held responsible for this guy?," said Graham during a recent interview with NBC's Kristen Welker. "I would say no." At the same time, Robinson has an "obligation" to defend himself against CNN's recent reporting.

What next?

Robinson's extremism is a "bit much even for the modern-day GOP," and his "campaign appears to be in freefall" after CNN's investigation, said New York magazine. The real question is whether that free fall will affect Robinson alone, or drag other Republicans down with him. National GOP groups are already "pulling financial support" for Robinson's campaign, CNN said. Even Donald Trump's campaign is "alarmed" at the idea that Robinson's "political baggage and incendiary rhetoric will be a drag" on the presidential ticket, Axios said.

Republicans seem "uninterested in trying to change the dynamic" that led to Robinson's ascension through the GOP ranks, The Bulwark said. That disinterest means "more often situations like this will cause headaches for party bosses around the country." Robinson's scandal might close the "pipeline from viral comments at city council meetings to running for the highest office in a swing state," The American Prospect said. But "given the dynamics in the Republican Party, maybe not."

On the day of the Sept. 10 presidential debate, a conservative activist and journalist named Laura Loomer was photographed disembarking from former President Donald Trump's airplane in Philadelphia. Her presence in Trump's entourage sparked controversy, because Loomer is a combative media personality whose statements and actions have drawn widespread condemnation.

While both Trump and Loomer put out statements that she has no official role in the campaign, other Republicans have leaned on Trump to distance himself from her. Who is Laura Loomer and how did she come to play a role in Trump's campaign?

Loomer's background

Laura Loomer, who is Jewish, was raised in Arizona by conservative parents. She frequently watched Fox News with her father at night, she once told The Spectator World in an article that called her "America's most notorious political paparazzi." After one semester at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she claims she was discriminated against because of her politics, Loomer transferred to Barry University in Miami. She first rose to prominence there when she secretly recorded a video of herself asking university officials if she could start a pro-ISIS student group. She worked for highly controversial entities including Infowars, Project Veritas and Rebel Media. Loomer has staged a series of high-profile stunts, including donning a burqa and trying to vote under the name of Hillary Clinton's adviser Huma Abedin in 2016.

Perhaps her most controversial behavior has involved boosting various conspiracy theories and associating with white nationalist figures. In 2023, she tweeted a video that called the 9/11 terrorist attacks "an inside job." She has argued that school shootings are staged and that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas was perpetrated by a member of ISIS. She has appeared at the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), founded by far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes, an open anti-Semite who has also dined with former President Trump, as well as a 2022 conference organized by the white nationalist publication American Renaissance.

The latest

A self-described "proud Islamophobe," Loomer has run for Congress as a Republican twice, first in 2020 when she won the GOP primary in Florida's 21st District but lost the general election to Democrat Lois Frankel, and then in 2022, when she narrowly lost the Republican primary to incumbent Rep. Daniel Webster in Florida's 11th District. Today she operates a news and opinion website called Loomered, where she broadcasts video segments under the moniker Loomer Unleashed. She is single, and has said she thinks it's because she currently puts all of her energy toward getting Trump elected. Trump tried to hire her to work on his campaign last year, said The New York Times, until he was talked out of it.

The reaction

That long history of controversy-courting behavior helps explain why many Republicans are uncomfortable with the role that Loomer is playing in Trump's campaign. And she continues to say things that land her in hot water. The White House would "smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center" if Harris (who is Indian American) were to win the election in November, Loomer said on X on Sept. 8. That post drew muted criticism from Trump's running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), whose wife Usha is also Indian American. "I don't like those comments," Vance told NBC News.

Other Republicans have been more pointed in their calls for Trump to end his affiliation with Loomer. "Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans," said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on X. "This is appalling and extremely racist," said Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), a close Trump ally, in an X post referencing Loomer's "curry" comments. While he distanced himself from her comments, Trump also voiced his support for Loomer. Loomer is "tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me," Trump said in a post on his social media site Truth Social.

Loomer addressed the media in a video posted to her website on September 16. "You can't control me. That's why you hate me," she said.

What happened

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, posted racist and sexist comments on a pornography site forum, including identifying himself as a "Black Nazi," CNN said on Thursday. An email address CNN used to confirm Robinson's porn account was also registered on Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking affairs, Politico said. Robinson rejected calls to drop out of the race against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. 

Who said what

CNN said it was disclosing "only a small portion" of Robinson's comments from 2008 to 2012 on the site "Nude Africa," due to their "graphic nature." But it did record him saying "slavery is not bad" and "I wish they would bring it back"; admitting he liked to watch "tranny on girl porn"; and claiming he would "take Hitler over any of the shit that's in Washington" during Barack Obama's presidency. 

Robinson told CNN "these are not our words" or "anything that is characteristic of me." Presented with the "litany of evidence connecting him" with the account, CNN said, Robinson said he wouldn't "get into the minutia of how somebody manufactured this, these salacious tabloid lies." The problem for Robinson is the comments "sound extremely similar to what he's said elsewhere," David Graham said at The Atlantic, and his frequenting of a porn site doesn't "stretch incredulity" after a report this month found he frequented porn shops in the 1990s and 2000s. 

Donald Trump, who enthusiastically endorsed Robinson in March, has "foisted damaging candidates on the GOP" for years, Aaron Blake said at The Washington Post, but for once it could cause a "real problem for Trump personally," turning off voters in a crucial state he barely won in 2020 and is up for grabs this year.

What next?

Yesterday was the final day to withdraw from the race before ballots are printed, The Raleigh News & Observer said. So "Republicans now appear to be stuck with Robinson," The Atlantic's Graham said. "They can't say they weren't warned."