• The future of the Supreme Court and the possibility of legislative action related to the court

• Whether there might be better ways to run congressional hearings, in light of Eric Schmitt’s faceplant

• How often midterm elections predict the next presidential election, and what 2026 will (and won’t) tell us about 2028

But first: I’ll give you a bit of a lay of the land for how I’m looking at the midterm elections right now, featuring some data on polling error in recent Senate elections and whether polls might currently be overestimating Democrats.

If you want access to the full Q&A edition, I hope you’ll consider joining as a paid subscriber. This week, I covered two stories that I believe were relatively under-covered by other news outlets: about an obscure tool Trump is using to yank the power of the purse from Congress and a court hearing on what happens when the president defies a judge.

These are the exact kinds of stories I try to cover in Wake Up To Politics, shining a light on parts of the political process that are important but not always fully understood. If you want to support that work, the best thing you can do is become a paid subscriber. I am so grateful for your help.

For now: let’s talk midterms.

My take on where things stand

Q: The “mainstream” media I digest daily (NYT, NPR etc) is filled with polls about how unpopular Trump is and how many races are neck and neck and the Democrats have the edge in the midterms. It honestly feels like Lucy and the football and that, by stolen election, Trump voters under polled or whatever else, we are going to wake up the week after the election with Republicans still in control of both houses. What say you?

First of all, since I get a lot of questions about this: The president has very little power over elections, which are run by the states, and there is currently no evidence that President Trump is trying (or would be able) to “steal” the 2026 midterms. If that changes, I’ll let you know, but those are the facts right now.

If Democrats perform poorly in the 2026 elections, it will almost certainly be for the same reason Republicans performed poorly in the 2020 elections: because they received fewer votes. Sometimes it can be difficult for parties to grasp this disappointing reality (in the case of 2020, Trump has still not grasped it), but it’s important to state up-front.

That said, the questioner also raises another scenario that is much more viable: Could the polls be overrating Democrats?

Because Democrats are polling really well right now.

According to the Silver Bulletin average, Democrats currently have an 8.9-point advantage when pollsters ask voters which party’s congressional candidate they plan to support. That’s a larger advantage than either party has had on that question at this point in an election cycle since 2008, when Democrats went on to win supermajorities in the House and Senate.

Some of the race-by-race numbers are even crazier. According to the Senate polling averages tabulated by the website Race to the White House, polls currently show Democrats leading in Ohio by 4.3 points (a state Trump won by 11 points in 2024), in Texas by 3.1 points (Trump won by 14), Alaska by 2.5 points (Trump by 13), in Iowa by 1.4 points (Trump by 13).

And not just that, the polling averages show Republicans trailing by 0.1 percentage points in the Senate race in Kansas (a state Trump won by 16 points) and by 0.8 points in the Senate race in Nebraska (a state Trump won by 20).

If these numbers are true, they would add up to a genuine political earthquake: not just a blue wave, but a blue tsunami.

These polls are fueling high confidence for Democrats among the modelers who try to forecast political outcomes. Here’s what the most prominent models currently show:

If you want to know what I’m thinking right now, I’m completely sold on the House numbers. In the last eight midterm elections, the president’s party has managed to win a House majority exactly once (in 2002). The average number of House seats gained by the opposition party in midterms over that timespan has been 21, which would place Democrats at 235 House seats come January, right around where most of the models expect the party to land.

235 is also the number of House seats that Democrats won in 2018, the last midterm election during a Trump presidency. This seems to me like a perfectly reasonable expectation.

What about the Senate?

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Our next Q&A newsletter will be going out on Friday — so this is your chance to send me some Q’s!

Election Day is just five weeks away. What’s on your mind in the final stretch? I’m happy to take questions about the midterms, or about any of the topics I’ve covered recently (from pocket rescissions to contempt), or about anything else on your mind in the world of politics and government.

Here’s the link to send a question.

Ask me anything!

I’m excited to see what you all are curious about!

Gabe

Have you ever been intensely interested in something, only to find out that not everyone else feels the same way?

That was my experience on Tuesday, except it wasn’t about a niche TV show or a trend that’s all over my TikTok feed but apparently no one else’s. It was a hearing on whether advisers to the president of the United States should be held in contempt of court.

You might remember the broad strokes of this case, which began back in March of 2025: President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a 1798 law that he claimed would allow him to deport certain migrants without due process; the government began putting these migrants on planes; U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the planes to turn around; they kept flying, eventually depositing the migrants in the Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT, where they were subjected to brutal conditions.

This 18-month-old case has largely fallen out of the news cycle and been overtaken by events. Boasberg’s order was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the case had been brought in the wrong venue — though the justices also shot down Trump’s interpretation of the AEA, ruling that the law still accorded migrants some due process. Trump has not tried to deport anyone under the statute since then. After about four months, the migrants against whom the law had been invoked were released from CECOT and returned to their native Venezuela.

But there’s still one more nagging mystery: Why didn’t the planes turn around when a federal judge told them to?

Judge Boasberg has been trying to answer this question for more than a year now, launching an inquiry into whether to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt, which the administration has repeatedly tried to stop. In Tuesday’s hearing, the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court heard arguments on whether Boasberg can continue probing the administration’s alleged defiance of his orders.

Having covered federal court hearings where it’s been necessary to arrive well before the proceedings start, I got to the D.C. Circuit courthouse an hour early yesterday. With the gravity of the case in mind, I was worried that I was already too late to get a seat. Instead, I arrived to find that not a single reporter was standing in the press line. Eventually, a few did trickle in, but once the clock struck 9:30 and we were told to rise, the press section was hardly full.

“I guess this is only interesting if your thing is rule of law,” one of the other reporters said to me. I guess. The events that were discussed at the hearing may have long stopped making headlines, but the underlying question — when can a judge investigate whether the executive branch has violated a court order — is a critical one, not just for this case, but potentially in setting precedents for the future as well. Let’s discuss.

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There is certainly a compelling case to be made that the Trump administration defied Judge Boasberg’s order.

It all went down on March 15, 2025. At 4:20 p.m., the administration publicly posted Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act against members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (which the president had signed in secret the day before). Officials immediately began rounding up migrants to deport under the statute, without giving them any opportunity to challenge their designations as gang members. (For many, the evidence would turn out to be quite flimsy.) Judge Boasberg hastily convened a 5 p.m. Zoom hearing in response to a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

When pressed, the administration’s lawyer couldn’t give many details on when the migrants would be removed from the U.S. At around 5:20, Boasberg recessed the hearing for 40 minutes to give the lawyer time to collect answers. It was during that break in the proceedings that two flights took off carrying the migrants, at 5:26 and 5:45 p.m.

When the hearing resumed at 6 p.m., the Trump lawyer still said little; if he was aware that the planes had taken off, he didn’t say so. The ACLU’s lawyer learned separately, however, and informed the judge. At 6:47 p.m., Boasberg orally ordered the Trump lawyer to inform his higher-ups “immediately” that the planes “need to be returned to the United States.” Boasberg followed that up at 7:26 p.m. with a written order stating that the administration was temporarily “enjoined” — prohibited — “from removing” migrants under the AEA.

A Justice Department whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, would later testify that as soon as Boasberg issued his oral order, Reuveni — who was listening into the hearing — sent multiple emails to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) telling them not to let any of the migrants off the planes in El Salvador, since they would need to be returned to the U.S. “We need to address this asap to avoid contempt,” Reuveni wrote.

Reuveni received no responses to his emails. The migrants were let off the plane and into CECOT. The Trump administration would later argue that, because the migrants had already left U.S. airspace by the time Boasberg issued his order, the government wasn’t bound by it. “Oopsie… Too late,” the president of El Salvador gloated on X, sharing a headline about Boasberg’s order. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted the message.

DHS was apparently getting its legal advice from then-Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. According to Reuveni, on March 14, Bove had said at a meeting that the administration would need to consider telling the courts “fuck you” and ignoring any order preventing the AEA from being invoked.

All that said, there are also a few complicating factors. At the March 15 hearing, Boasberg did tell the Trump lawyer, referring to his oral order, that “you don’t have to race to write it down,” since he would soon be issuing a written order, raising at least some questions about the formality of the oral order (although Boasberg also told the lawyer to “immediately” transmit the information to his bosses).

The written order was also a bit more vague than the oral order, saying nothing about the planes needing to be turned around and only preventing the administration from “removing” migrants under the AEA. (The administration thus argues that it didn’t cover migrants who were already out of the country. The ACLU retorts that a “removal,” under immigration law, is only complete when a migrant leaves U.S. custody, which these migrants didn’t until they left the planes. Still, the written order was certainly vague as to how it applied to ongoing removals.)

There’s also the fact that the Supreme Court later struck down Boasberg’s order. Can the administration be held in contempt for violating an order that has since been voided?

A majority of D.C. Circuit judges seemed to think the answer to that question is “yes” — or, at least, that they were willing to let Boasberg’s contempt inquiry proceed for now and leave that question for later.

The Trump administration is seeking to end the contempt inquiry under the exacting “mandamus” standard, which requires them to have a “clear and indisputable” right to the relief they are seeking. The D.C. Circuit judges seemed unconvinced that the administration had satisfied this high bar.

Based on Tuesday’s hearing, the appeals court appeared poised to rule along ideological lines; Democratic-appointed judges outnumber Republican-appointed judges on the court, 7-4.

The Democratic-appointed majority spent much of the three-hour hearing hammering the Justice Department lawyer, Brett Shumate, often with raised voices.

“I’m asking you whether contempt of court could be committed…[by] an attorney who advised somebody to ‘f expletive’ the court, and the court’s order, and go ahead and disembark people?” Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, asked Shumate sharply, implicitly invoking Reuveni’s account. “Would that potentially be contempt of court in the view of the United States?”

“I think it depends on the facts, Your Honor,” Shumate replied.

“Well, then I think like the district court needs to ask some more questions,” Millett concluded, sounding satisfied with herself.

Much of the proceedings turned on how much of an investigation Boasberg would be able to run. Under Rule 42 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a judge must alert a potential “contemnor” — that, I learned on Tuesday, is the word for someone who has committed contempt of court — that the judge has reason to believe they committed criminal contempt, in a notice that lays out the “essential facts” of the allegation.

The judge then has to refer the matter to the Justice Department, which can decide whether or not to prosecute. If the government decides against it, the judge is charged with appointing an independent attorney who can prosecute the contempt on the judge’s behalf.

The Trump administration argued that this means there is nothing more for Boasberg to do at this point. The administration has already told Boasberg who made the decision to let the migrants off the planes (then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem), Shumate said. Therefore, the only thing Boasberg can do now is either refer the matter to the DOJ or not, “because to investigate a crime is a role of a prosecutor rather than a judge,” Shumate pointed out.

However, the D.C. Circuit’s liberal majority seemed unconvinced that just because the administration had named Noem as the person responsible, Boasberg couldn’t at least examine the matter a little further, to ensure that there isn’t anyone else who might need to be referred.

“You are continuing to suggest, ‘Here, district court, just take my word at it, that this is the person.’ That’s also unfair to that alleged contemner, who might be a sacrificial lamb,” said Judge Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, suggesting that the administration might simply be putting Noem forward as the responsible official while hiding others who may have given her legal advice and committed the real contempt.

The D.C. Circuit is often considered the second-most important court in the country, a stepping-stone to the Supreme Court. Four of the nine current justices came to the Supreme Court from the D.C. Circuit; several of the judges at Tuesday’s hearing have been short-listed for vacancies in the past. Judge Millett, as well as Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, were considered for Supreme Court appointments during the Obama administration. Judge Childs was considered for an appointment during the Biden era.

Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, is seen as a potential Republican Supreme Court appointee down the line; she was the D.C. Circuit judge who most vocally came to the Trump administration’s defense during Tuesday’s hearing. She almost seemed to be auditioning for the role, as did Biden-appointed Judge Florence Pan, who is seen as a possible future Democratic pick. The two repeatedly cut each other off, both seeming exasperated with the other.

Because of some of the odd circumstances surrounding Boasberg’s order(s), it is hard to know where this exact contempt investigation will end up. But the D.C. Circuit ruling will be important regardless, as it will likely set out some guidance for what a judge’s role looks like in a contempt inquiry. Does a judge simply have to accept an administration’s accounting as fact, and then pass it off to the DOJ? Or can they dig a little deeper to try to figure out the “essential facts” of what took place?

At times, the very health of the judiciary seemed to be at issue in the case.

Shumate argued that the separation of powers prevented Boasberg from carrying out any further inquiry, but “the separation of powers is going to run two ways here,” Judge Millett noted. “It’s not a one-way street in favor of the executive branch.”

“The separation of powers respects the separate and co-equal authority of the different branches,” Judge Nina Pillard, also an Obama appointee, said. “If Article III judges’ orders are optional with the United States as a litigant, and they can disregard the orders with impunity, that’s obviously a diminution of the authority of the Article III courts.”

“Really, at bottom, what this case is about is whether Article III courts are at the mercy of the executive,” both in their orders being followed and then in that compliance being investigated, Pillard added. “I’m looking for you to respond to that concern, and help me feel more comfortable that my sort of more grim portrayal of the position of the courts under your theory is somehow—that I shouldn’t be concerned.”

“You should not be grim,” Shumate replied. “I can assure you, the government…is always complying, always advising our clients to comply with court orders.”

In some ways, I think this gets to my own question of why the D.C. Circuit hearing received relatively little coverage.

Thinking about the Alien Enemies Act case is like boarding a time machine to a distant era (18 months ago), when Donald Trump was at the peak of his powers and it seemed highly possible that the new administration might get into a habit of defying court orders. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump posted around this time. The president appeared like he might be untouchable.

But before long, it all came crashing down to earth. Trump’s popularity, then higher than it had ever been, started on its long demise. It is now commonplace for Trump to lose court battles; when he does, he no longer flirts with defiance. The Supreme Court strikes down his tariffs, or his birthright citizenship order, or tells him to remove the National Guard — and Trump does so. Trump stared down the justice system, and the justice system won.

The news outlet The Independent recently ran a headline, “Trump’s media ban shows steady slide of his regime into outright dictatorship.” In fact, that experience showed the opposite. There are certain reporters Trump doesn’t want in the White House; a judge ordered him to allow them; now they are back in the president’s house. That’s not quite how things work in an “outright dictatorship.” Notwithstanding the governmental system Trump may want, the one he is still leading is not a dictatorship, as judges retain the power to rule against him — and their rulings continued to be followed.

Put this way, the Boasberg contempt inquiry is about patching up the final hole from another time, back when Trump seemed much surer of himself and genuinely seemed to think he had the popular support sufficient to buck court orders with impunity. That didn’t last long.

Courts have “no influence over either the sword or the purse,” as Alexander Hamilton memorably wrote. Instead, it is with words alone that they have succeeded in blocking the president — even one who has flirted with defiance — from carrying out some of the initiatives most important to him. What a remarkable statement of our constitutional system’s enduring power.

But also its fragility. None of this means that Trump’s compliance will last forever, particularly as he heads into his lame-duck era — or that future (more popular) presidents won’t try to pick up where he left off in March 2025, and try to defy orders handed down by judges. If they do, it will be important to know what system is in place, if any, for judges to protect their powers. How do we balance the separation of powers on one hand by ensuring that judges don’t cosplay prosecutors, but also on the other hand by ensuring that judicial orders aren’t optional?

The influential D.C. Circuit is about to take a first swing at that question. I, for one, will be watching.

But this one did, on Friday.

“President Trump Takes Historic Action to Eliminate Wasteful and Harmful Spending,” read the headline of the White House statement, blasted out on Friday night, right as the weekend was about to start.

Trump was unilaterally canceling about $810 million in federal funds, the White House said.

How? We should back up a bit.

Congress famously holds the “power of the purse” — the authority to decide how the federal government spends its money — but presidents and lawmakers have long clashed about exactly what that means.

We know, courtesy of the Constitution, that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” But when Congress passes an appropriations law directing a certain amount of money to a certain priority, does that mean the executive branch can spend that money, or must spend that money? Can the president pick and choose which appropriations laws to follow?

A long line of presidents, unsurprisingly, have argued that the answer to that question is “yes.” But no president argued it as forcefully as Richard Nixon, who is estimated to have refused to spend about $18 billion appropriated by Congress, including for housing programs, disaster assistance, and enforcing the Clean Water Act.

When a president declines to spend congressionally appropriated funds, it’s known as an impoundment. In 1974, fed up with Nixon’s antics, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act. The goal was to set up an actual process for when the president objected to a certain funding provision, beyond just “Nah, I don’t really feel like spending that.” The result was the rescissions process, which starts when the president sends Congress a letter detailing the money he doesn’t want to spend.

That triggers a 45-day waiting period, during which the funds don’t have to be spent. But after 45 days, if Congress has not approved the president’s rescissions request, the president has to spend the money. Last year, Trump followed this process, requesting to rescind about $8 billion in foreign aid funding and $1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Congress approved his request. (Notably, a rescissions request is not subject to the Senate filibuster, which means an appropriations bill needs 60 votes to pass, but undoing part of an appropriations bill needs only 51.)

But here’s where things get a little trickier.

What if the president requests to rescind funds fewer than 45 legislative days before the end of the fiscal year (September 30), when most appropriated funds expire? Can the president wait all year to spend the money, then send over a request at the last minute, thereby freezing the funds—and then, oops!, the fiscal year is over while the waiting period is still in place, so the funds expire without the president having had to spend them as Congress intended?

Such a gambit is known as a pocket rescission, though it’s effectively a backdoor impoundment: the president using legalistic tactics to refuse to spend congressionally appropriated funds. And it’s exactly what Trump tried to do on Friday night.

I get that this all sounds a bit wonky. But it’s important.

Congress holding the federal pursestrings is crucial to our constitutional system. James Madison considered it the “most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”

Appropriations law might seem boring, but if you think about it, it’s really what undergirds every other area of law you might care about. Few things can happen in government without funding, so appropriations bills are really health care bills, and defense bills, and infrastructure bills, and border security bills. The appropriations process is how Congress decides how much money to put towards each of these priorities — in essence, showing which priorities it actually prioritizes.

As Joe Biden liked to say (in a line he would attribute his father): “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

Taken to its logical extension, pocket rescissions could topple this whole system. Congress could create a new program to combat climate change, and without persuading legislators to undo it, a Republican president could simply refuse to spend the money appropriated for it: in effect, singlehandedly repealing the law. A Democratic president could look at the budgets for ICE or the Pentagon, and decide they are no longer interested in sending quite so much money to either agency. The president’s powers would massively expand; Congress would be shoved into the backseat. All spending decisions would run through the Oval Office.

In his Friday letter to Congress, Trump framed the roughly $800 million in new funding cuts as “proposed rescissions.” But, of course, he only transmitted the “request” to Congress five days before the end of the fiscal year — and the House is already on recess anyways. There is no way Congress can approve or reject the request before the fiscal year ends, and the funds go up in smoke. Hence the triumphal tone of the White House press release; unless the courts step in, this isn’t so much a proposal as an order.

The largest pot of money that Trump is trying to wiggle out of spending is $567 million for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement, which helps refugees and asylum recipients relocate and assimilate in the U.S.

The pocket rescissions request would also claw back:

• $70 million in grants and fellowships that bring foreign students and faculty to the U.S.

• $56 million in grants for organizations that provide Americans with housing counseling.

• $28 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which studies ways to improve health care quality.

• $25 million from a program that offers educational assistance to the children of migrant workers.

• $15 million from the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, which aims to mediate local racial and ethnic tensions.

• $15 million from a program that provides mental health and legal services to immigrants and asylum recipients.

• $10 million from the Minority Business Development Agency, which supports minority-owned businesses.

• $10 million in grants that offer assistance for immigrants trying to navigate the citizenship process.

• $9 million from a program that provides debt forgiveness to foreign countries that make climate change-related investments for coral reefs and tropical forests.

• $5 million from the HHS’ Office of Minority Health, which aims to eliminate health disparities between racial and ethnic groups.

In Trump’s letter, he refers to several of these programs as “unnecessary and wasteful.” Some of the programs have been ineffective, he alleges. Others are redundant. Still more are not in the best interest of American taxpayers. And a few that preference certain racial groups, he says are outright illegal.

Trump may be right on all these counts, and may have excellent policy arguments for ending or defunding these programs. But the time to make such arguments is when lawmakers are writing their appropriations bills, not almost a year later. Congress is supposed to be the forum for these sorts of arguments.

This is now the second year in a row that Trump has attempted a pocket rescission. Last year, he used the tool to get out of spending about $5 billion in foreign aid funds. The move immediately sparked a legal dispute, which went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Four days before the end of last fiscal year, the court paused a lower court ruling blocking the pocket rescission. However, the justices said that their ruling was only because the plaintiffs in that case likely didn’t have standing to sue, and made clear that their order “should not be read as a final determination on the merits.”

In theory, this means the legality of pocket rescissions remains an open question: the Supreme Court wasn’t even taking a final view on the standing question, much less on the underlying legality of pocket rescissions (on which it didn’t weigh in at all). It was merely pausing the lower court order as the case continued to make its way through the federal courts.

In this case, however, it’s a bit more complicated, since it’s now been more than a year since the funds in question expired. This is the twisted genius of pocket rescissions: not only does it not give Congress any time to stop you; potentially, it might be difficult for the courts to as well, since the case comes so late in the fiscal year that it’s impossible to resolve it before the funds expire, arguably mooting the whole dispute. It’s a great example of the president’s ability to run laps around the court system.

That said, last year’s pocket rescissions case is still technically ongoing. The Trump administration tried to have it dismissed in January, making this exact argument, that the fight was moot because the funds had expired, so it was too late to order Trump to spend them.

But just last week, after many months of consideration, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali shot down the administration’s motion. Ali cited Supreme Court precedent on cases that are “capable of repetition, yet evading review”: disputes that are only applicable for a short period of time, giving one party the ability to quickly make a mootness claim — but that are also liable to keep happening again and again. In these cases, the Supreme Court has said, judges are able to reject the mootness argument and tackle the issue before getting caught in an endless loop.

“This is the quintessential example of a case that is capable of repetition but would otherwise evade review,” Ali wrote. “There is little question that claims challenging an agency’s decision not to spend appropriated funds will generally—indeed, nearly always—take longer to litigate than the window to spend the funds.”

And, he added: “The challenged action here—an agency decision to not spend appropriated funds by Congress’s deadline—is also ‘reasonably likely to recur.’” Ali’s prediction was quickly proven correct, when Trump tried once again to implement a pocket rescission as this fiscal year neared its end on Friday. So, in one vein, Trump has lapped the justice system: moving onto his second pocket rescission, while the courts are still considering his first. But, viewed another way, the courts are fighting back, refusing to let last year’s case die even as the next fiscal year is almost over.

Even if last year’s case is able to continue, it is still unclear how the dispute will be resolved.

Trump has argued that only the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can sue over failures to comply with appropriations law. The Supreme Court seemed sympathetic to this argument, but the justices never made a final decision on that standing question and — contrary to how some news outlets have framed the ruling — never commented on whether pocket rescissions themselves were legal.

The GAO itself has argued that pocket rescissions are illegal (though it has never brought a lawsuit to this effect). The agency has said that presidential refusal to spend funds violates the Constitution’s requirement that he “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” since appropriations laws are laws too. It has also noted that the intention of the Impoundment Control Act was to shut off presidential discretion over appropriations, not to expand it — though Trump retorts that the text of the law, whatever its intention, does not seal off the pocket-rescission backdoor.

Another factor worth noting here is that the Supreme Court said last year that it was preliminarily siding with Trump in the pocket rescissions dispute partially because the funding in that case was related to foreign policy, over which the courts typically give presidents significant discretion. The justices could potentially be less sympathetic to this year’s pocket rescission, if a lawsuit over them is filed, since some of the funding implicates priorities that are entirely domestic in nature.

No matter what happens in the courts, the pocket-rescission loophole offers an easy starting place for reform if lawmakers ever become interested in reining in executive power. There is already bipartisan frustration towards the tool: Senate Appropriations Committee chair Susan Collins (R-ME) called pocket rescissions “illegal” in an X post on Friday.

To address this issue, Congress could simply mandate that rescissions requests have to be made a certain amount of time before the end of a fiscal year, to ensure that there is always time for legislators to consider the request and for the money to be spent in the event the request is not approved.

While in power, one party or the other might enjoy pocket rescissions — but as soon as the shoe is on the other foot, with Republicans already canceling refugee programs or Democrats potentially canceling ICE funding, the tool will no longer seem so nifty. Far from being of concern only to budget wonks, pocket rescissions — if their use continues to expand — could fully snatch the power of the purse away from Congress and unravel one of the most important checks and balances put in place by our Founding Fathers.

Editor’s note: Processes like this one are cloaked in legalese, requiring you to understand words like “impoundment” and “rescission.” But once you sort through all this complicated language, I hope you can see that this is an important issue with big implications for our political system.

Many news outlets have gotten the facts of the pocket rescissions cases wrong. And not a single one has reported on Judge Ali’s ruling last week keeping last year’s pocket rescissions case alive.

If you want to support my work offering civics education that’s tied to the day’s news — so that everyone can understand their government and how it works — I hope you’ll consider joining as a paid subscriber:

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My latest YouTube video is about one such phenomenon: the idea that was promoted by a lot of pundits earlier this year that the key to political success in 2026 was attention, and that it no longer mattered whether candidates were accruing attention for good reasons or bad. All that matters now, we were told, is that candidates are getting eyeballs.

I happen to think this thesis has been proven wrong this cycle, not right, for reasons I explain in the video below. I hope you’ll give it a watch:

Today’s newsletter is about another one of these rules of politics we’re sometimes told has been shattered. Once again, I’m not so convinced.

To moderate or not to moderate?

This same question ricochets around political circles every two years, as party figures debate whether their candidates would be best served by moving to the middle or by doubling down on party orthodoxy.

On the left, dueling teams of political scientists have marshaled different sets of data to offer competing answers. On the right, Donald Trump is firmly on Team Double Down (hosting a whole party convention in his image, urging Republicans to stay in lockstep with his administration), while some operatives are openly wondering whether it’s time for their clients to jump ship.

In today’s newsletter, I won’t pretend to settle this question once and for all, producing a new piece of electoral math proving either that candidates benefit from moving to the center or from firing up their base.

Instead, I’ll merely suggest that this debate appears to be a largely academic one. As various pundits and professors go round and round, out in the real world, Democratic and Republican candidates both seem to have settled on the same answer: trying to moderate as fast as they possibly can.

Just consider the sheer number of examples from the past few weeks.

According to Punchbowl News, in 2024, as Republicans pummeled their opponents with ads on transgender policy, not a single House Democratic candidate ran an English-language ad rebutting the attacks. (Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez did run one such ad in Spanish.) Following Kamala Harris’ lead, most Democrats either refused to budge on the issue, or remained studiously silent. This year, however, several battleground Democrats are rushing to proactively paint themselves as moderates on gender issues.

“I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools, because parents know what’s best for their kids,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), seeking re-election in an R+5 district, said in a new ad this week. “And boys should not play in girls’ sports.”

“I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness,” Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico told Fox News last month, a reversal from his past position. “I just think girls’ sports are for girls and boys’ sports are for boys,” Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, recently told Politico.

Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola has broken with her party in support of expanding oil production. Amy Acton, seeking the Ohio governorship, has come out for voter ID. Will Lawrence, locked in a key House race in Michigan, says he no longer supports defunding the police or opening the border.

Even Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee who spent his primary contest insisting moderation was a fool’s errand, no longer seems to buy into his own theory. “It’s always funny to me that people want to say that this state votes for moderates when it voted for Donald Trump twice,” he told CBS News in August.

And yet, El-Sayed has been unmistakably sanding down some of his sharper edges lately. One of the biggest flashpoints during the primary was El-Sayed’s association with the leftist streamer Hasan Piker; at the time, when asked if he condemned any of Piker’s controversial comments, El-Sayed refused to do so. “I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” he told Politico in April.

But four months later, now locked in a close general election battle, El-Sayed did exactly that, disavowing Piker’s past statement that “America deserved 9/11.” He then issued a statement distancing himself from Piker after the streamer said that “eventually someone’s going to come around and take action” against American Jews if they “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel.” El-Sayed, who appeared repeatedly with Piker during the primary, now says he will not campaign with him.

El-Sayed similarly apologized last month for saying “hurt people hurt people” after a Michigan synagogue was attacked during the primary, while also distancing himself from his past stances on gender policy and the Green New Deal. None of this means that El-Sayed is suddenly a moderate, but it shows where he is moving — towards the center — after previously dismissing the need to do so.

In case you thought it is only Democrats making this late-stage calculation: think again. We are seeing some fascinating moves from Republicans as well.

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“The media won’t tell you this, but this has been one of the most productive Congresses in the history of the institution since 1789,” Johnson declared at the Republican midterm convention earlier this month. “In the House, we passed over 900 pieces of legislation, and that includes the SAVE America Act four times. It’s been the most productive Congress in eighty years, and we’re not done yet.”

Johnson is correct that the House has passed more than 900 pieces of legislation since the 119th Congress convened in January 2025. In fact, by the time Johnson excused the House for an extended recess last week, that number had gone up to exactly 1,000.

But he is not correct that it is the most productive Congress in eighty years (or even close), according to a Wake Up To Politics analysis of legislative data.

Below, I used Johnson’s own metric — pieces of legislation passed — to compare how productive the House has been this Congress versus Congresses past. To be fair to Johnson, I only included legislation passed through September 30 of the second year of a Congress, since lawmakers will often get a lot done in the lame-duck (post-election) session, and obviously this year’s Congress hasn’t had that yet. (The House is not expected to be back in Washington before the election, so there should be no difference between using today’s date, September 23, for this Congress and September 30 for previous Congresses. No more bills are set to pass the House this year before September 30.)

In the end, I did not need to go back eighty years. I only went back thirty, because the current House was so quickly outpaced by its predecessors. The House has passed more pieces of legislation this Congress than it did by this point in the previous three Congresses — but fewer pieces of legislation than it passed in almost every recent Congress before that. This is not the stuff of records.

Although it was not the metric Johnson used, I also included the number of bills signed into law by this point in each Congress. By that metric, the 119th Congress fares even worse, passing fewer bills into law (just 113) than any preceding Congress, partially due to rising tensions between the House and Senate (despite the fact that the two chambers are controlled by the same party).

All that said, I don’t think the number of pieces of legislation a chamber passes is actually a good way to judge its productivity, because it treats every piece of legislation as equal — even though that’s clearly not the case.

That ends up skewing the count in both directions. It undercounts productivity because a single bill can often really be several bills stapled together; this metric only counts a 1,000-page, multi-bill omnibus package as a single measure. And it overcounts productivity, because it includes all sorts of bills and resolutions that are purely ceremonial and not really helpful in measuring what Congress is getting done.

Clearly, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which made major changes to health care, tax policy, defense spending, border security, and more) should not be given equal footing with a ceremonial resolution mourning the death of Lindsey Graham (which counts towards the 900+ pieces of legislation Johnson touted).

By my count, the House passed 83 pieces of legislation last week before leaving for its pre-election recess.

I think you can categorize these measures into three categories, in descendfing order of importance.

At the bottom, Tier 3, you have not just the ceremonial resolutions or internal administrative work (like a resolution formalizing a new congressman’s committee assignments), but also hyper-local pieces of legislation that can’t exactly be said to carry national importance.

The bill revising the water rights settlement between the Crow tribe and the state of Montana. The bill parting ways with various tracts of public lands in northern Nevada. The bill — I’m not kidding — naming a bandstand at a National Historic Site in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (All three of these bills, as well as all the bills listed in each category below, were passed by the House last week.)

These are pieces of legislation that would seem more fit for a city council than a national legislature, except they happen to impinge on federal land, which means they require Washington’s sign-off. These are the congressional equivalent of fixing potholes, except (in some cases) fewer people will be impacted.

Next, you move up to Tier 2. These are bills that might not be salient to hot-button issues, and might only impact a specific slice of Americans — but at least that slice is spread out, with at least some national relevancy as opposed to relevancy only to a small geographic community.

Here, you might include the Kay Hagan Tick Reauthorization Act, which re-ups various CDC programs aimed at addressing mosquito- and tick-borne diseases. (The bill, named for the late Sen. Kay Hagan, who died of the tick-borne Powassan virus, has also passed the Senate, which means it’s headed for the president’s desk.) Or the Safe Beaches, Safe Swimmers Act, which allows local governments to provide lifeguard services to the National Park Service if swimming areas under federal jurisdiction are dangerously short-staffed. Or the bill that would make it easier for prisoners leaving incarceration to work at port facilities, jobs that are crucial for the supply chain but for which there are currently large labor shortages.

Few of us would name these issues as our most pressing concerns, but all things considered, we would rather have tick-borne diseases reduced, national beaches be safe to swim in, and port facilities fully staffed. Congress is often quietly working to ensure that these aren’t things we have to be mindful of day-to-day. (Tick-borne disease cases have been climbing this year, however, so perhaps that one is a bit more societally salient, even if it isn’t politically.)

Finally, you have Tier 1, pieces of legislation that actually speak to national issues that Americans frequently name as among their top concerns. The 119th Congress has only passed a handful of truly major pieces of legislation — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, say, or the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — but bills don’t need to rise to that level to reach Tier 1.

For example, last week, the House unanimously passed the Science of Reading Act, which would require that federal literacy grants preference programs that use phonics, a method focused on sounding letters out, which most researchers have found to be the most effective way to teach kids how to read (though there are some that dissent).

Education is a big issue. America is also in the throes of a brewing literacy crisis: just this month, a global exam found that the reading scores of American 15-year-olds had sunk to almost their lowest point in 25 years; another recent study found that reading scores were down last year in 83% of U.S. school districts compared to 2015. More than 40 states have already passed bills encouraging phonics; this bipartisan House-passed bill would mark a national step towards addressing reading education.

In its last week, the House also unanimously passed three bills to address America’s drug crisis. One bill, Tyler’s Law, would require the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance instructing hospitals to implement fentanyl testing as a routine procedure for patients who come into an emergency room experiencing an overdose. (The bill is named for Tyler Shamash, 19-year-old Californian who was tested for other drugs, but not fentanyl, when he arrived at an ER, despite his mother asking three times. He died the next day.)

The other two would increase criminal penalties related to manufacturing fentanyl and xylazine, a drug known as “tranq.” Synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) account for 60% of U.S. overdose deaths, killing nearly 50,000 Americans. An additional 6,000 Americans died from xylazine in 2023. These House bills would seek to address those tragedies.

Notably, the House also took bipartisan action last week on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation (voting to hold billionaire investor and Epstein associate Leon Black in contempt of Congress after he defied an Oversight Committee subpoena); politicization of disaster aid (voting to prohibit FEMA from discriminating on the basis of political affiliation); clean air (voting to reauthorize a program aimed at reducing diesel emissions); and taxpayer fraud (voting to codify the Trump administration’s National Fraud Enforcement Division). The first two of these measures passed unanimously; the clean-air bill was opposed by 79 Republicans, while the anti-fraud bill was opposed by 72 Democrats.

To cover Congress fairly is to acknowledge that more of these Tier 1 bills pass than is often portrayed in most news outlets, which covered last week’s House passage (in a bipartisan 262-159 vote) of the Russian sanctions package, but little else of the legislature’s parting output. These bills, if signed into law, would mark real, substantive changes in American public policy on issues that voters care about. Americans deserve to know when their representatives are legislating on these areas.

But full coverage of Capitol Hill also requires acknowledging how many issues are not making it to the House or Senate floor, from affordability to health care to immigration to the imminent collapse of Social Security.

The House also left town without voting on an AI bill; the closest they came was in approving the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill that might be categorized as Tier 1.5: a measure addressing a hot-button issue, but not in a way that will clearly do anything. The measure, which was approved 417-3, would require state utility commissions to consider mandating that the energy costs for AI data centers are paid by the companies behind the data centers rather than being passed off to nearby residents. However, the measure doesn’t require anything beyond that; the state utility commissions are able to consider such a mandate, and then promptly decide against it.

The Senate’s docket has similarly been full of issues that few Americans name as their top public policy concerns, including a failed crypto bill and a bill addressing name, image, likeness (NIL) issues in college sports, which advanced in a 70-21 vote last week. Notably, Democratic and Republican senators are deep in negotiations on a permitting reform deal — an issue that doesn’t sound sexy, but which does speak to affordability, as it could speed up the approval of new energy projects, increasing supply and reducing consumer costs.

The Senate could embark on its pre-election recess as soon as this week, although there is talk of the chamber staying longer if a permitting deal materializes. There has also been some chatter about the House returning to Washington to also approve a permitting deal if one passes the Senate, though Punchbowl News has reported that’s unlikely.

That means the House will have finished out its session with a few notable, but under-reported accomplishments — but also an agenda littered with small-ticket items, from hyper-local fixes to bills eliminating the penny (the second time the House has voted on such a bill this Congress) and designating the T. rex as the national fossil dinosaur.

To be clear, none of this is new for Congress: in fact, it’s sort of a return to form. Congress used to spend a large portion of its time sifting through petitions from constituents and passing “private bills,” measures that would intervene in one specific person’s situation (their immigration status, veterans benefits, etc.) In the 19th century, hundreds of these private bills would pass a year; Congress has now largely dispensed with that tradition, but often it seems like it has expanded its aperture only slightly wider, spending an inordinate amount of time on issues that aren’t quite applicable to just one person, but still don’t affect much more than one tiny community.

This is all the more glaring now because so many Americans are so deeply frustrated with the state of the country. Just 21% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States, per Gallup. 17% trust the government to “do what is right,” per Pew. Both statistics have collapsed in recent years.

There has never been a better time for Congress to act as a national forum for pressing policy issues, rather than a local city council managing land sales and renaming bandstands. Lawmakers are fixing potholes while Americans worry the country is driving off a cliff.

President Donald Trump escalated his war with the press on Friday, announcing on Truth Social that he was banning three news outlets — CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — from the White House.

Correspondents for each organization attempted to access the White House over the weekend; in line with Trump’s edict, all three were denied entry and told their credentials no longer worked. Here are four thoughts:

#1: The first White House correspondent was a 29-year-old reporter named William Price, though in Washington he was better known as “Fatty.” In 1896, towards the end of Grover Cleveland’s second term, “Fatty” Price stationed himself outside the White House gates, where he stood every single day, trying to weasel information out of the people going in and out.

That strategy started getting Price so many scoops for his newspaper, the Washington Evening Star, that soon other reporters started to join him. Suddenly, there wasn’t just a White House correspondent; there was a White House press corps. Cleveland’s successor, William McKinley, took pity on the horde of reporters standing outside (sometimes in rain or snow) and became the first president to give journalists space inside the White House (he gave them a table). That grew into a press room under McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, and (although the room itself has moved around over the years) there’s been one in the White House ever since.

How remarkable that, every day, journalists are allowed to waltz into the headquarters of the most powerful government in the world, where they have a room to call their own, dedicated to ensuring that Americans remain informed about what their president is doing (whether or not the information they are disseminating is information he wants the electorate to know).

In addition to playing host to the press briefings you see on TV, the White House briefing room is also open for reporters to use as a workspace on a standing basis. It is a fascinating ecosystem unto itself. Journalists for some top outlets have dedicated desks in the back, but when a briefing is not going on, you will generally see reporters from a range of outlets walking around the room, or holed up in a briefing room seat, working on their laptop.

The briefing room represents quite a cross-section of America — or, really, the whole world. There are usually some oddball characters milling about, many of whom are longtime fixtures of the briefing room: an ultraconservative Episcopal priest, an old lady who ran her own news service with her husband, many eccentric foreign correspondents. You would be shocked at how many fringe characters have gained access to the White House over the years, under the philosophy that America does not license its journalists; the First Amendment protects a random blogger (hi!) just as much as it does the New York Times. There has generally been a pretty low bar for journalists to be let into the briefing room.

Trump’s aides, to their credit, have largely continued this tradition — allowing a number of independent journalists into the briefing room, myself included.

The same philosophy of transparency pervades other government buildings in Washington, including the Capitol, where members of Congress literally cannot walk onto the House or Senate floor without first passing a pack of journalists trying to ask them questions. No law requires them to answer — but they can’t walk by without at least facing the press.

To state the obvious, not every world power handles things this way. There is no space in the Kremlin (the headquarters of the Russian government) or the Zhongnanhai (its Chinese counterpart) where reporters have standing access; the buildings are opened to journalists on an event-by-event basis. Even then, it is only a highly manicured list of reporters who are allowed in. In both countries, it is common for journalists to have their credentials pulled for reporting on information the government doesn’t want people to know.

In Russia, publishing “false information” about the war in Ukraine — including even calling it a “war” — is a crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. In China, before being accredited, journalists are required to pass an exam proving their loyalty to the country and their familiarity with Xi Jinping Thought, the ideology of China’s leader. America should not take for granted how open and accessible our government buildings are — or at least have been historically.

#2: Donald Trump sure loves losing lawsuits. The reason why the White House has traditionally thrown open its doors to such a wide range of journalists is not merely the beneficence of past presidents, many of whom have, in fact, despised the press with a white-hot fury. Instead, it is largely due to the First Amendment, which has repeatedly come to journalists’ protection in past White House access cases, a list of precedents that strongly suggests Trump is not headed for a victory here.

Last year, when the White House tried to kick the Associated Press out of the presidential pool, the rotating group of reporters who follow the president around each day, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals essentially ruled that he could. Being part of the presidential press pool gives a reporter extra access to places like the Oval Office or Air Force One; the D.C. Circuit panel ruled that journalists have no First Amendment right to access this type of restricted space.

However, Trump’s victory in that case explains why he is likely to lose this one. In that very same opinion, the D.C. Circuit panel wrote:

When the White House opens its facilities to the press generally, as it does in the Brady Briefing Room, it cannot exclude journalists based on viewpoint.

The president can pick and choose which reporters come into the Oval Office, a space where only a handful of journalists are allowed. But when there’s a space that’s open to the general press, the First Amendment prohibits the White House from practicing viewpoint discrimination when deciding which reporters are allowed to enter. Crucially, on Friday, the president didn’t just ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from specific private spaces; he banned them from the White House entirely, including places like the briefing room, where courts have said credentialing decisions can’t be made in response to an outlet’s ideology or content.

The three news outlets filed a lawsuit against Trump this morning. Their filing, as has now become commonplace, uses Trump’s own words as its best supporting evidence, quoting his Truth Social post to prove that the exclusion of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico was rooted in their content. After all, Trump literally wrote that the decision was “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”

The outlets sued under the First Amendment, alleging both retaliation and viewpoint discrimination. But they also sued under the Fifth Amendment, which enshrines the right to due process. There is also a lineage of White House press cases that reinforces this right in this context. As far back as 1977, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled that the White House owed due process to a journalist who had been denied access, which had to take the shape of “notice of the factual bases for denial, an opportunity for the applicant to respond to these, and a final written statement of the reasons for denial.”

During Trump’s first term, judges similarly ruled that the White House had violated the due process rights of journalists by revoking (without explanation) the credentials of Jim Acosta (then of CNN) and Brian Karem (then of Playboy).

By contrast, in 2023, the Biden White House unveiled new credentialing rules governing press access; one reporter who didn’t fit the eligibility standards sued, but the D.C. Circuit ruled against him, finding that the standards were not based on viewpoint and came with enough explanation to satisfy due process rights.

There is not necessarily a First Amendment right for there to be a White House briefing room. But as long as one exists, the White House is not allowed to decide who has access to it based on ideology or according to willy-nilly standards; any decisions must be rooted in viewpoint-neutral rules that have been comprehensively explained. Since that is not the case here, it is hard to see how Trump could win his case.

#3: None of this will help Trump. The president’s approval rating is at about 38%, according to Nate Silver’s average. Polls increasingly seem to suggest that a “blue wave” will crest in November’s midterms, almost certainly washing Trump’s party out of control in the House and potentially the Senate as well.

Banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico will not help Trump receive more favorable coverage from those outlets, any more than Richard Nixon’s banning the Washington Post from some White House social events helped him receive more favorable coverage from the Post (the newspaper continued reporting on Watergate, which ultimately brought about his downfall) or Barack Obama’s brief attempt to shut out Fox News brought him better coverage from the cable channel.

It will also mean less TV coverage of Trump overall, which will be miserable for a president who loves to see himself on television. Just like print reporters have a press pool for covering the White House (the one that the AP was kicked out of), TV networks have one too. When you see the president on TV signing an executive order or answering questions from reporters in the Oval Office, that footage comes from whichever network is that day’s “TV pooler.” The responsibility rotates between ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC; the footage recorded by the day’s pooler is then shared with numerous mainstream TV networks, including local news outlets.

Ironically, CNN was scheduled to be today’s TV pooler, which is obviously no longer possible now that their access to the White House has been cut off. This morning, the other networks that make up the TV pool announced that none of them would take CNN’s place. In fact, as of today, the five networks have decided to suspend the TV pool entirely, a remarkable show of solidarity from competing news outlets.

That means, until further notice, none of the major TV networks will be recording the president’s movements or comments on a day-to-day basis; because they were the ones responsible for disseminating the footage to other networks, this could mean that a lot less Trump will be on your TV screens soon. Trump is not going to like that; in fact, he might privately be grateful once a court inevitably strikes down his ban.

Deeply unpopular and facing expected losses in November, the president is lashing out. But punishing journalists is unlikely to yield more positive coverage (or more coverage, as Trump always desires), nor will it succeed in distracting from the core economic problems that have destroyed his political standing.

#4: One more way the ban will backfire. In a broad sense, Trump’s reprisal against these outlets represents his desire to live in an information environment of his own making, where he only needs to hear positive news about his presidency. In their book “Regime Change,” the New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan chronicle the absurd lengths that White House staff will go to in order to shield Trump from displeasing (but accurate) information.

In one scene, ahead of “Liberation Day,” Trump is trying to decide the tariff rates he will impose on other countries. To inform this, his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick had brought a printout listing out how high of tariffs different countries imposed on the U.S.

But Trump insisted that India and China set higher tariffs than Lutnick’s printout showed. “No, these are bullshit numbers,” Trump told Lutnick, according to Haberman and Swan. “These are fucking bullshit.”

“No, these are the real numbers! They come from USTR,” Lutnick said, referring to the office of the president’s own U.S. Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, who was also sitting in the Oval Office. “Right, Jamieson? Jamieson, say these numbers are real. Jamieson, speak up.”

But Greer, apparently unwilling to contradict the president, stayed silent. Meanwhile, Trump yelled out for his close aide Natalie Harp to find him the “real” numbers (meaning, the numbers he wanted to see). “Natalie, give me the real numbers,” he said. “Do your Google, do your computer thing, and give me the real numbers.” Harp was unable to find the “real” numbers, since the numbers in Trump’s head did not, in fact, exist.

Living in a world like this — where all information is “bullshit” unless it comports with your own pre-conceived assumptions — makes for maximum comfort. But it rarely redounds to a president’s benefit, in the long run, for him to be shielded from the truth.

As I wrote in July 2024, Joe Biden’s White House suffered from a similar case of epistemic closure, where poll numbers showing just how weak he was running against Trump clearly were not reaching the president’s desk.

But whether or not a president likes the truth, the truth has a way of winning out. In Biden’s case, reality eventually crashed into him in the form of Democratic lawmakers telling him, no, you are not as popular as your aides have told you. For Trump, the reality check will likely come courtesy of voters in November.

Hiding from bad information doesn’t change it, so a president might as well be aware of the truth while he still does have an opportunity to react to it and make a situation better. Remaining cloistered in a bubble can be nice, but all it ends up doing is forestalling the inevitable.

It was called “Politics Without Winners.”

“In the American political system,” they wrote, “the parties’ purpose is to form enduring national coalitions. Look at almost any point in American history, and you will find a majority party working to sustain a complex coalition and a minority party hoping to recapture the majority. Today, however, American politics features two minority parties, and neither seems interested in building a national coalition. Close elections and narrow majorities dominate electoral politics more than at any other point in American history.”

Gone are the days of LBJ winning a 44-state landslide in 1964, followed by Richard Nixon winning a 49-state landslide eight years later in 1972 and Ronald Reagan doing the same 12 years later in 1984. And gone, seemingly, are the days of either party even trying to replicate such success.

Most political operatives spend their days sweating it over over getting to 50% plus 1, the magic number needed to clinch victory. But narrow victories often prove to be temporary victories (just look at how power has ping-ponged between Democrats and Republicans in recent years). Small majorities, devoid of a mandate, also make it harder to enact very much of your agenda. Why are both parties so focused on catering to their bases, rather than reaching outwards to try to build a coalition that could cement lasting power and actually get a lot more done?

In the latest installment of the Wake Up To Politics Book Club, I speak to someone who is trying to change that. Adam Jentleson is a longtime Democratic strategist. As a top aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he watched the last political supermajority rise and then crumble. (Remember: Democrats briefly boasted a 60-seat Senate majority in 2009, not that long ago.) He’s now the president of the Searchlight Institute, which just published some fascinating polling data in the New York Times.

Jentleson is also the author of the new book “Supermajority,” which traces the history of past Democratic majorities and tries to lay out a roadmap for the party to build a more expansive coalition. “I wrote this book because I think we sort of got stuck in a moment where it’s felt like we’re prisoners of structural forces, right?” he told me. “And I think that’s not true.”

In our conversation, Jentleson and I talk about supermajority politics, which Democrats are practicing it, which Republicans keep him up at night, whether his old boss John Fetterman is going to switch parties, and a whole lot more.

I also raise some of my doubts about the supermajority thesis.

To put my cards on the table, I agree that neither party is trying for a supermajority right now and — purely as an observer who thinks our politics could be more than an endless, no-win 50-50 bloodbath — I would love to see one of them try.

But I’m not 100% sure it’s possible.

It’s true that it used to be common for one party or the other to win a supermajority of Americans, but it’s also true that the two parties used to be much less ideologically sorted than they are now. A party might win a supermajority, but that didn’t mean an ideology necessarily would.

Perhaps the country is simply roughly 50% liberal and roughly 50% conservative, which didn’t create an even party split in a time when liberals and conservatives could be found in both parties, but does in a time when almost all liberals are Democrats and almost all conservatives are Republicans.

Having such ideologically scrambled supermajorities also required party members to make huge sacrifices. FDR’s Democratic supermajority, for example, was made possible by bringing Black voters and Southern segregationists under one roof. The price of winning the New Deal was making many of its programs available only to white Americans.

Would Democratic base voters today be OK winning a supermajority if it meant making the party less pro-LGBT or less pro-climate? Would Republican base voters be OK winning a supermajority if it meant being more pro-choice or more pro-taxes? Are those sacrifices they would be willing to make? And after you make those sacrifices, what’s left? Have you simply built a large majority that’s too divided to get anything done?

All of these issues are also exacerbated in an age where so many decisions about a party’s direction are made by primary voters. What if a party’s leaders wants to take this more expansive direction, but primary voters — generally more rigid and orthodox in their views — refuse to nominate a wider range of candidates? Or, what happens if a more heterodox candidate does get nominated? A party might have a better shot at winning over swing voters, but might they lose support from their base? That might not be a gamble parties are willing to take, since base voters are much more engaged than swing voters; at the end of the day, they’re a more reliable constituency to target. Perhaps you have to dance with the one who brung you.

Jentleson, of course, had answers to all these critiques. It’s true that previous Democratic supermajorities were divided on social issues, he said, but they were united on economics. That was the only way to get the New Deal or the Great Society done.

He also said that Democratic primary voters, at least in swing states, have already begun nominating more heterodox candidates, like Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa or Mary Peltola in Alaska, who have broken with party consensus on issues like transgender rights or fossil fuels. That sets up 2026 as a key test of Jentleson’s thesis. If these candidates win, it might point the way towards a more ideologically fluid party. But if they lose, it suggests the party will have to stretch even further to achieve Jentleson’s hopes.

If a coalition from AOC to Fetterman already feels unstable, can it really survive expanding even more in either direction?

I think you will enjoy Adam and I thinking through these questions. The video is above. The transcript, available to paid subscribers, is below.

Transcript

Adam Jentleson, thank you so much for joining.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you. So, let’s start at the very beginning. The book is called “Supermajority.” What does it mean to you for a political party to compete for a supermajority and why do you think it’s so important?

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They gave respondents four options: “Often,” “Fairly often,” “Rarely,” and “Never.”

It turns out, both parties think the deck is stacked against them at One First Street. 63% of Republicans believe the court “rarely” or “never” rules for President Trump, while 77% of Democrats believe the court rules for him “often” or “fairly often,” starkly divergent perceptions of reality.1

Partisans are really just following their leaders here. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court left in place a lower court order blocking the Trump administration’s push to create new, nationwide rules for mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections.2

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) referred to the ruling on the Senate floor yesterday as a rare aberration from a “MAGA Supreme Court” that has “done Trump’s bidding too many times.” Within the same hour, Trump himself blasted the decision as Republicans receiving yet “another bad decision” from the court.

So, which is it? Does the court routinely side with Trump, or regularly rule against him?

The confusion is understandable, because simply following news reports about the court — which often treat every case as a loyalty test, either proving once-and-for-all that the justices are Trump lackeys, or that they’re standing up against him — can leave you dizzy, as the court sides with Trump on the White House ballroom in one case, and then breaks with him on mail-in voting in the next.

To cut through the conflicting signals, I compiled a dataset of all 48 actions the court has taken regarding Trump since January 2025. In the end, neither narrative has it right — but the court is also not wholly unpredictable when it comes to ruling on the president. Looking at how the court has handled Trump’s requests, some broad themes do jump out that make it possible to project how the court will rule on any given case.

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First, the court is happy to take almost any available escape route to avoid offering a conclusive ruling on Trump cases. If there is any reason to view a lawsuit against the president as procedurally flawed — either because the wrong person is suing, or in the wrong court, or at the wrong time — the court will frequently take that as an opportunity to temporarily block a lower court order in front of them and punt on the broader issue. When Trump has raised these sorts of process issues to the court, he has generally succeeded; about 15% of Trump-related disputes before the court so far have been resolved this way.

This strategy allows the court to momentarily side with Trump, without taking an opinion on the legal merits of what he is trying to do, while still preserving the possibility that they could block the action down the line if a more properly structured lawsuit comes before them.

We’ve seen the justices take this route in cases on Education Department grants (the plaintiffs were told they had to sue in the Court of Federal Claims, not federal district court); Alien Enemies Act removals (the plaintiffs were told they had to bring “habeas” cases, a certain type of lawsuit); government layoffs (a group of nonprofits were told they could not sue, while leaving open the possibility that a group of unions could); State Department grants (the plaintiffs were told only the head of the Government Accountability Office could sue under the law in question); mail-in voting, the first time it reached the court (the plaintiffs were told they had to wait for Trump’s plan to be finalized); and the ballroom (the plaintiffs were told they had not been sufficiently harmed by its construction to bring a lawsuit), among others.

To be clear, this is not unique to Trump. Many Supreme Court cases (politically charged or otherwise) start by considering whether the dispute is procedurally kosher. The justices similarly threw out major challenges to the Biden administration’s immigration, abortion, and public health policies by ruling that the challengers lacked the standing to bring a lawsuit.

However, many of the court’s critics (including at least one who sits on the bench) have argued that the justices should modify this approach for Trump, who moves unusually quickly and aggressively. The ballroom case is a great example: in its recent opinion, the court didn’t take a stand on whether the construction was legal or illegal; it merely said that the current plaintiff couldn’t sue, while leaving the door open for other challengers to try. But meanwhile, of course, the East Wing has already been knocked down and (according to the White House) the ballroom is 65% done. It’s unlikely another plaintiff will emerge before the construction is complete. (On the other side of the ledger, the justices ruled last month that it was too early to rule on Trump’s mail-in voting plan because the rule had not yet been promulgated. But then, once the rule was finalized, the court did allow it to be blocked this week.)

There are different ways to look at this. You can credit the court for treating Trump just like any other president, acting as procedural nitpicks when plaintiffs challenge their administrations — or you can blame the court for treating Trump like any other president, rather than as the emergency many liberals view him to be. You can paint the court as trying to avoid disputes with Trump, only ruling against him when they absolutely have to — or you could say the court is trying to ensure that any ruling against him is airtight, without any legalistic holes for him to poke.

Either way, it is clear that this is the first factor you have to consider when predicting a Trump case at the Supreme Court. If the president is not arguing on the legal merits of his policy, but rather on a technicality, odds are that the president will win.

Second, we have cases where Trump actually is arguing on the legal merits. Here, there is a key threshold question to ask: Have other presidents used this law to do this thing? When the answer is “yes” — when a case has turned not on whether a president has the authority to do something, but rather on how exactly Trump has carried out a universally recognized presidential power — he has generally won.

We’ve seen this play out in several immigration cases. No one doubts, for example, that the executive branch has the power to make immigration stops. When a case came up last year not about whether ICE had this underlying power, but about whether they were using it correctly (by potentially using race as a factor in deciding who to stop), the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

Similarly, in the transgender policy realm, there is no argument that the president has power over passports (it says so right there in the law). When a dispute arose over whether the president was using this power fairly (by requiring that passports display a citizen’s sex at birth), the justices said it was likely that he was.

Many of these cases have been over policies that have seesawed from one administration to the next. The Biden administration offers Temporary Protected Status or humanitarian parole to a group of migrants; the Trump administration takes it back. The Biden administration changes military policy to allow transgender service members; the Trump administration changes it back. In these cases, everyone agrees the president has a certain power and that other presidents have read a statute the same way, but the way Trump is using that power is controversial or has given rise to civil rights claims. The Supreme Court, at least on its emergency docket, has deferred to the president on each one of these cases.

This has given Trump (like other presidents) leeway to decide how to administer the executive branch in the spaces where all agree the executive branch is in control, from third-country deportations to access to the branch’s own internal communications, dashing challengers’ hopes of thwarting him.

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Third, we have cases where the answer to that threshold question is “No, a president has not previously read this statute to give them the power to do this thing.”

These are cases where Trump isn’t trying to execute on normal executive-branch things (but maybe in a controversial way); these are places where he’s tried to excavate old laws and hold them up to prove he has a certain novel power. These are the cases that Trump has lost basically every time.

I think it’s helpful here to try to act like Supreme Court justices ourselves, and look at the laws Trump was bringing to the court as a permission slip for what he was trying to do. I’ll show you the law; you be the judge.

To return to the question of immigration stops, here’s 8 U.S.C. §1357(a):

Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant—

(1) to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States.

Or on revoking Temporary Protected Status, here’s 8 U.S.C. §1254a(b)(3)(B):

If the Attorney General determines under subparagraph (A) that a foreign state (or part of such foreign state) no longer continues to meet the conditions for designation under paragraph (1), the Attorney General shall terminate the designation by publishing notice in the Federal Register of the determination under this subparagraph (including the basis for the determination).

Again, litigants might quibble with the specific ways the Trump administration has carried out these powers (though, as stated, the Supreme Court has generally not been sympathetic to those challenges). But the question in these cases is not whether the administration can do what it’s trying to do in general. It’s clear from the statute that it can.

Now, let’s take a look at the two statutes Trump was using to argue that he could set new requirements for mail-in ballots. First, he pointed to 39 U.S. Code § 401:

Subject to the provisions of section 404a, the Postal Service shall have the following general powers:

…(2) to adopt, amend, and repeal such rules and regulations, not inconsistent with this title, as may be necessary in the execution of its functions under this title and such other functions as may be assigned to the Postal Service under any provisions of law outside of this title.

OK, so the Postal Service can adopt rules that are necessary for it to carry out its functions. Which legal function did the Trump administration say necessitated the mail-in ballot rule? It pointed to 39 U.S. Code § 404:

(a) Subject to the provisions of section 404a, but otherwise without limitation of the generality of its powers, the Postal Service shall have the following specific powers, among others:

(1) to provide for the collection, handling, transportation, delivery, forwarding, returning, and holding of mail, and for the disposition of undeliverable mail.

This one feels like much more of a stretch! It is probably not necessary, in order for the Postal Service to collect and handle mail, for the agency to adopt a rule requiring states to send it lists of the voters pre-approved to receive mail-in ballots as part of an effort to combat voter fraud. The Postal Service seems to have delivered mail for many years without needing to do that!

To bolster its case, the Trump administration pointed to previous Postal Service rules constructing specific regulations for transporting “cremated human and animal remains” and “replica explosives.” See, the administration said, if we can regulate those specific types of mail, we can regulate ballots!

But, as the attorney Adam Unikowsky pointed out, those regulations stem from a law that allows the Postal Service to regulate deliveries that may “injure the mails or other property” (such as cremated remains that could leak or replica explosives that could cause panic and wreak havoc). Absentee ballots, fraudulent or not, do not harm mail or property.

And, so, without any clear grant of executive power from Congress or the Constitution — and plenty of provisions to the contrary, including the Elections Clause (which gives power over elections to Congress and the states) — the Supreme Court blocked Trump from carrying out his mail-in ballot rule.

I won’t march through the exact text from other cases, but the same thread runs through Trump’s other major Supreme Court losses. No other president had used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs. The Supreme Court said Trump couldn’t. No other president had read the 14th Amendment as allowing them to limit birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court said Trump couldn’t. No other president had deployed the National Guard without a governor’s consent under the statute Trump had invoked. The Supreme Court said Trump couldn’t.

These are all cases of Trump dusting off an old law and reading it in a completely novel way; the Supreme Court has yet to entertain any of these readings, even as it has blessed his controversial uses of other, more conventional presidential powers.3

Finally, there’s one more category. These aren’t cases where Trump has tried to read an old statute in a new way, per se, but a group of cases where Trump argued that a statute was unconstitutional: specifically, statutes preventing him from firing independent agency officials.

This is another category of cases where Trump has won, with the Supreme Court agreeing in the Slaughter case that the chief executive, constitutionally, had to be able to fire top officials in the executive branch.4

Make no mistake, this was a major victory for Trump, though it’s not necessarily an ideological one: the next Democratic president will be just as happy to exert control over the Federal Trade Commission or the National Labor Relations Board, though it still marks a change in how federal policy is executed.

But it is notable that this stands as the one real power Trump has succeeded in adding to the executive toolkit during his second term. Every other attempt he’s made at expanding the powers of the presidency has either ended in a standstill (as with the first category of cases, snarled by procedural issues) or been rejected by the Supreme Court (as with every time the court has considered, on the merits, Trump’s claims that an existing law gives him a power that no other president had claimed).

From this analysis, we can create a handy guide that will predict most Trump-centric SCOTUS outcomes:

This helps us understand why both sides are so convinced that the justices are either Trump puppets or Trump haters.

Trump’s opponents don’t like that the court tends to give him the benefit of the doubt on procedural legal questions and on questions of whether he’s correctly applying a known presidential power (including in controversial areas like gender and immigration), or that the court has given him new power over independent agencies.

Trump’s allies don’t like that, on many of the issues most important to the president — tariffs, birthright citizenship, National Guard deployments, mail-in voting — the court has declined to carve new presidential powers out of flimsy statutory language.

It’s up to you to decide whether the court blessing these more conventional presidential moves (and adding one big power to the toolbelt) or blocking these more aggressive, Trump-specific actions should carry more weight when judging the Supreme Court’s relationship with Trump.

But, with these rules of thumb in mind, you can at least cut through the thicket of cases a little easier. When wondering whether the Supreme Court is likely to rule with the president or not on an upcoming dispute, the right answer isn’t a reflexive “yes” or “no.” It’s asking four more questions about the case, which will generally prove predictive of which way the justices will lean.

In conversations I’ve had and events I’ve attended with AI experts over the last year, all expressing shock that Washington has spent so little time addressing the technology that will likely define the coming decades, a recurring theme always comes up.

At some point, some sort of AI-fueled crisis will unfold. It is then, and only then, that lawmakers will finally start feeling pressure to act.

“It’s going to take a Chernobyl,” the AI scholar Kate Crawford said at a conference I attended last summer. “It’s going to take something to go really wrong, and then maybe people will listen.”

We may not have reached that full-blown Chernobyl moment yet, but over the last week, the AI industry has faced something of a mini-crisis. That’s sparked a mini-wake-up-call in response in Washington, the first tremors of possible action on AI. It probably won’t be enough to usher a landmark bill to passage, but it has at least started igniting conversations that, until now, had only been held in whispers.

Remarkably, the latest AI frenzy was kicked off by a 27-year-old who was nationally unknown a week ago. Last Tuesday night, Jacob Coxon — a researcher at the major AI company Anthropic (maker of Claude), who also previously worked at its competitor OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT) — took to X to announce his resignation.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” he wrote, referring to his two former employers. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

As a primary piece of evidence, Coxon cited the recent incident in which more than 700 agents from unreleased OpenAI models hacked the company Hugging Face, an open-source AI platform. The AI agents (autonomous software systems that can perform specific tasks) had been instructed to solve a set of cybersecurity puzzles; they were not given access to the internet or to each other. The agents quickly escaped containment, discovering a vulnerability that allowed them to communicate. Together, the agents figured out how to cheat on the given tests and then teamed up to hack Hugging Face in order to steal data that would help them cover up their tracks.

Not only did OpenAI not instruct its agents to perform the hack: the company wasn’t even aware it had taken place until Hugging Face disclosed the breach and OpenAI realized their models had been responsible. A report released last month by independent investigators noted that the agents had sent so many messages back and forth (more than 70,000) that the investigators themselves had to rely on AI models to digest the communications and examine the incident; the sheer volume and complexity succeeded in reducing human visibility into what took place. The AI agents also sought to edit the transcripts of their activity to further conceal what they had done.

Last week, OpenAI revealed that its unreleased models had launched another unsanctioned cyberattack before the HuggingFace incident; Anthropic has also recently disclosed three incidents in which a Claude model hacked into other companies.

AI models will “soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” Coxon wrote in his resignation post. The people building the models are not taking the needed steps to minimize the risks, he added, even as they “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

To which Evan Hubinger, who leads a team at Anthropic working on “alignment” (the work of ensuring AI systems are aligned with human goals), responded: “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.” Oh. Great.

The firestorm continued to build until Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on Saturday bowing to the concerns unleashed by Coxon and calling for his own company and its competitors to “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly expressed his agreement, as did Elon Musk (who owns his own AI lab), a rare point of agreement between the three bitter rivals and tech titans.

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The momentum soon traveled from Silicon Valley to Washington, reigniting bipartisan calls on Capitol Hill about the need to regulate AI. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced an investigation into the HuggingFace hack. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded a classified briefing on AI for senators.

“Congress should be on an emergency footing in the coming week,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) wrote yesterday on X. “We have to move at the pace of the threat, not our own habits and rhythms. People are depending on us to take swift bipartisan action that meaningfully reduces AI risk.”

It’s the first time since ChatGPT was released in November 2022 that AI has soared to become the top issue being discussed in Washington. The only problem: it’s highly unlikely that it will stay there long enough for a bill to pass anytime soon.

The political calendar is simply not on the side of those calling for regulation. The Senate returns this afternoon after a five-week summer recess, but is scheduled to leave town again at the end of September, not to return until after the midterm elections. The House will be spending even less time in Washington: after canceling the last two weeks of its September session, the chamber is scheduled to be out from the end of this week until mid-November.

Both chambers do have major pieces of legislation on the agenda, including Russia sanctions for the House and crypto and college sports for the Senate. The House is even scheduled to vote on a bill tangentially related to AI: the Ratepayer Protection Act, which aims to address concerns about AI data centers driving up electric bills.

But, other than that — and that isn’t even much (the legislation would instruct state utility commissions to consider taking steps to ensure that electric costs for data centers are paid by tech companies, not passed on to nearby residents, but doesn’t require the commissions to take such steps) — there are no AI bills set to receive consideration before Election Day.

A group of House Democratic lawmakers penned a letter urging House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to cancel the upcoming recess to focus on the “catastrophic risk posed by advanced artificial intelligence.” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) similarly called for Congress to “convene a special session on AI and what the future of the U.S. looks like.” For now, these calls are likely to go ignored.

Still, the legislative process always takes time. As low a bar as it may be, the fact that legislators are even treating AI as a topic worthy of discussion is notable in and of itself; the renewed attention brought to the issue over the last week could jumpstart negotiations and put the Hill in a position to vote on something during the lame-duck session or next year in the new Congress.

There are already several bipartisan proposals on the table. In the House, Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) have introduced the FRONTIER Act, which would set transparency, auditing, and reporting requirements for AI companies before releasing new frontier models and allow the federal government to suspend a model’s development if the Commerce Department finds that the model poses an “imminent catastrophic risk.”

Across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) are working on a bill that would create a “duty of care” for AI developers, making the companies legally responsible for reducing the dangers of their models, and allow the government to block models deemed unsafe. The proposal could be released as early as this week, though negotiators from the two parties are still hashing out the language.

On the most extreme end of proposals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) have also unveiled a bill that would pause all advanced AI development until federal safety rules are established, while permanently banning the development of AI “superintelligence” (which they define as “an artificial intelligence system that exhibits or can easily be modified to exhibit capabilities that match or exceed human cognitive performance and capabilities across a broad range of domains or tasks, or AI systems that have sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the disempowerment of humanity, including by overthrowing or undermining the U.S. government.”)

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On the other end of the spectrum sits President Donald Trump, who has found himself in a minority in Washington, dismissing the need for AI regulation.

“Look, we’re leading China in AI,” Trump told reporters yesterday. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world. And, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins. And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

Trump doubled down in a Truth Social post this morning, suggesting that the only necessary check on AI development would be Trump himself. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” he wrote.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” Trump added. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

In taking such an anti-regulatory stance — even at a time when industry leaders (at least publicly) are calling for guardrails — Trump is positioning himself against the concerns of a bipartisan majority of Americans. A recent NBC News poll found that 70% of Americans are more “worried” than “excited” about AI. 58% said they were concerned about job losses; 73% said they were concerned about deepfakes and misinformation; 67% said they were worried about people becoming too dependent on the technology.

Only 15% of Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the major AI companies. 81% said the government is “not doing enough” to regulate the technology.

Trump is also swimming against the political currents with his defense of AI data centers. The same poll found that 69% of Americans, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, oppose data centers being constructed in their areas. Branding those concerned as adherents to a “SICK conspiracy” likely won’t help move the needle.

Trump’s comments are yet another reminder that he has always made for an uneasy fit with populism, his supposed strand of politics.

While popular majorities, and members of the populist “Horseshoe Party” bridging the MAGA right and the democratic socialist left, are ringing the alarms, Trump — who has raked in donations from tech CEOs — is on a pro-AI island.

He also seems barely focused on the technology: as I noted on Friday, AI did not come up in his speeches at last week’s Republican convention, likely the last political convention that will be held without mentioning the issue. He seems content delegating policy decisions (for now) to warring factions of his aides, and (for the future) to the next wave of political leaders.

Many of them are already jockeying to carve out stances. Vice President JD Vance — a populist Republican who also has Silicon Valley ties — has tried to offer something of a synthesis between these tendencies, warning against excessive corporate control of the technology while also calling for the government to be cautious in regulating innovation. (“I don’t think Americans should be scared of anything,” he told reporters this morning, echoing his boss.) Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), meanwhile, has been pushing for more AI guardrails. “Technology should enhance the human experience; it should never supplant it!” he wrote last week, while sharing the news of Coxon’s resignation.

Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon has also emerged as a leading AI critic; he will appear at an event tomorrow on “pro-human AI,” also featuring Bernie Sanders — the populist “horseshoe” in action. (The suddenly ubiquitous Coxon will also deliver remarks.)

On the Democratic side of the aisle, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has signaled that AI will be at the top of the agenda if the party wins the House in November. (In an ABC News interview on Sunday, however, he declined to offer a specific proposal he supported, instead saying House Democrats would be discussing the issue in a caucus meeting Tuesday.) As for potential presidential candidates, Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) called for federal AI action last week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has introduced a bill imposing a data center moratorium. At a rally this weekend, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) railed against the “crushing weakness of our politics against the massive stakes of our times,” referring to AI.

The conversations that have moved into the open over the last week in Washington are only the beginning of a debate that will likely grip U.S. (and world) politics for years to come. It will only grow louder as the technology develops, and as an aging class of leaders (eventually) steps aside.

At a primary debate last month, asked if he personally uses AI, 80-year-old Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) replied: “I use whatever is inside of my iPhone or my iPad, whatever comes up. I don’t know what companies my iPad might be using.” (Markey won the primary for another six-year term.) Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), seeking another term at age 86, told an interviewer in July that he only heard about ChatGPT for the first time the week before. He told another reporter this month that he uses “Control H” instead, which is not an existing AI platform.

And then there’s President Trump, 80, who said “Yeah, I use AI” when asked by a reporter last night. But asked to elaborate on his specific uses of the technology, he said simply “you can use AI for a lot of things” and “I don’t want to tell you that.”

Perhaps it really will take time — and that long-predicted crisis, something larger than one resignation — for Washington to act.

Good morning. It’s Friday, September 11, 2026. May the memories of those who lost their lives in the attacks of 25 years ago — in the Twin Towers, at the Pentagon, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — be a blessing.

In this morning’s newsletter, for paid subscribers: I offer my takeaways on this week’s Republican convention and my read on where the party — and the midterms — stand right now.

The most revealing moment of President Trump’s (first) speech to the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas came at about the halfway mark.

“You know, I decided to do this,” Trump said during his 105-minute address on Wednesday. He was referring to the Iran war.

He went on:

We had the best reports that our country has ever had. And I went to [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, I went to [Commerce Secretary] Howard [Lutnick], I went to all our guys, I said, “You know, I’m sorry to do this to you.” We just announced records, our stock market hit records. By the way, our stock market’s much higher today than it was when I first did the attack, just so you know.

But our stock market hit records. We were doing great, and oil was low. I was in Iowa. The oil was at $1.85 a gallon for cars. There was another one, $1.95, but I saw that last one, $1.85. We were doing great. I called them all into the office. I said, “Fellas, I hate to do this to you. We have the best records we’ve ever had, but we have a country that’s two, maybe three weeks away from having a nuclear weapon, and it’s the state sponsor of terror all over the world, considered just about the most evil country. We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon.”

And a couple of them, including Scott, who’s a great financial guy, [said] “Sir, is there any time we could do it later, maybe, sir? You think you could hold off in this a little bit, sir?”

Trump decided not to hold off.

You have to wonder how many vulnerable Republican lawmakers — either those in the room at the American Airlines Center, or the dozens of others who decided to skip the entire confab — sorely wish that Oval Office conversation had gone differently. They must wonder where their prospects might be now had Trump taken the advice of his Cabinet secretaries and declined to attack Iran.

Six and a half months into the war, not only has the conflict sunk into a military quagmire, but it is also a political crisis of Trump’s own making. Gas prices remain mired above $4 per gallon, more than a dollar higher than the national average before the war. U.S. diesel prices hit $6 per gallon this morning, an all-time record that will ricochet across the economy, making it more expensive to transport food and other goods.

These cost increases have made Trump the least popular second-term president at this stage in his term since Richard Nixon, and have suddenly put not just the House, but also the Senate, in play this year, a possibility most Democrats once dismissed, considering the political geography of the cycle. Polling averages now show the opposition party teetering on the edge of the impossible, with Democratic candidates currently ahead in Texas, Ohio, and Alaska, a key trio of Republican-leaning states, as well as in North Carolina and Maine, enough to clinch a Senate majority.

So, naturally, Trump decided that the best thing for his party was a two-day festival with himself firmly at the center.

The rare midterm convention revealed what the Republican Party, or at least those in attendance, are still united around (fealty to Trump, opposition to the Democratic Party’s cultural stances) and what it is divided on (almost everything else).

First and foremost, the party has been riven by the war. Trump mostly shrugged off these concerns in his two speeches at the party event; if anything, he likely exacerbated them, saying that the war — which he once said would be a four-week endeavor — will likely last until after the November elections. According to the Wall Street Journal, White House advisers have privately told Trump that the conflict might last the entirety of his second term.

Then, there are his tariffs (including the latest round in Canada, particularly damaging in Michigan and Maine, two key Senate states). “Tariff is my favorite word in the whole dictionary,” Trump said on Wednesday (not for the first time). Meanwhile, in their own speeches, battleground Republican candidates who addressed the convention steered clear of mentioning the import taxes, just as they ignored the war.

Isolationist or interventionist? Economically populist or fiscally conservative? These divides reveal a GOP — not unlike its competitors — that has been stretched in unsustainable ways. Even the signature proposal of the convention, Trump’s promise of a $5,000 check for every American adult if Republicans keep control of Congress, quickly split a party wrestling with whether to move towards a Reaganesque economic direction or one somewhat closer to the democratic socialism that they spent the convention jeering.

“I am hugely in favor of winning the midterms, and love much about this admin, but am strongly against bread and circus bribes,” billionaire Silicon Valley investor Joe Lonsdale, a top Republican donor who co-hosted a fundraising event at the Dallas convention, wrote on X in response to Trump’s proposal. Republican lawmakers were reportedly blindsided by the idea; many quickly poured cold water on it.

The most surprising moment of the convention was probably the presence (via video) of Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who praised Trump in a message introducing his home-state colleague, Republican Sen. Dave McCormick. This was a rare example of the GOP using the convention to broaden its tent, rather than just trying to rile up the faithful — but even this pull could come with an equal-and-opposite push. Fetterman’s main point of alignment with the GOP (and the issue he has said he would consider switching parties over) is support for Israel, yet another stance that divides the GOP.

One issue that Trump neglected to mention on either night of the convention was perhaps the one that will be most important in the years to come.

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A Gallup poll in April, conducted during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, found that a whopping 86% of Americans disapproved of Congress — the Congress they elected! — while only 10% approved.

The legislature’s numbers have improved a bit since then, but disapproval of the First Branch is still nearly unanimous and strikingly bipartisan.

Americans have a long list of complaints about their representatives, ranging from their age to their personal finances, but one recurring gripe is that members of Congress don’t get enough done and don’t work enough across the aisle. A Pew Research poll from 2023 found that 84% of Americans believe lawmakers do a bad job “working with members of the opposing party.”

A Pew poll from May found that 64% of the country believe the “ability of Democrats and Republicans to work together in Washington” is a “very big problem for the country,” outranking drug addiction, violent crime, and unemployment on Americans’ list of concerns.

Ready for a hot take?

Americans are wrong. Members of Congress are working productively with members of the opposite party, just as the voters would want.

Nearly every day, lawmakers announce new bipartisan initiatives aimed at fixing major problems. In fact, so far this month — and keep in mind that September is all of nine days old — members of Congress have introduced bipartisan bills to expand the Child Tax Credit, cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month, prohibit most non-compete agreements, boost rural hospitals, prohibit the use of federal funds to install the controversial Flock cameras, ensure AI systems are used only in a supporting role in health care settings, strip pensions from members of Congress who are expelled, expand the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, combat mosquito and tick-borne illnesses, strengthen efforts to eliminate tuberculosis, crack down on car insurance fraud, help veterans in job training programs, ban utility companies from selling Americans’ private data, increase federal funding for the suicide hotline, streamline the construction of new power lines, prevent key Education Department offices from being transferred out of the agency, and protect airline crews and passengers from toxic cabin air.

That list comprises efforts uniting Democrats and Republicans on health care, affordability, AI policy, privacy, veterans, education, and air travel — just in the last eight days!

Congress does not suffer from a lack of bipartisan cooperation among rank-and-file members. The problem is that when these members do work together, their party leaders often prevent those compromises from ever getting voted on.

Only about 4% of introduced bills receive a vote in the House or Senate, even though many more than that would likely receive supermajority support in both chambers — if only they were given the chance. As I’ve documented, fewer and fewer uncontroversial bills from one chamber are receiving consideration in the other. But the problem also extends to popular House bills going nowhere in the House, or popular Senate bills going nowhere in the Senate.

For decades now, party leaders have maintained a stranglehold on which measures reach the floor, often refusing to hold votes on measures that might distract from their partisan agendas, or would give a boost to an opposition party member — or would just require them to stay in Washington for more than a few days at a time — even if those bills would sail by with support from both sides of the aisle.

But the last few months have shown signs that the fever might be starting to break: rank-and-file lawmakers, tired of following orders and not getting much done, are increasingly trying to wrest back control from their leaders. Here’s how.

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I. Discharge petitions

For more than 100 years, if House members have been frustrated by the Speaker’s failure to put a certain bill up for a vote, they have had a release valve, only to be used in the case of an emergency. The procedural tool known as the discharge petition allows rank-and-file members to go around the Speaker and force a vote on a piece of legislation, as long as 218 of them (a simple majority) sign on.

The last time I wrote about discharge petitions — and their history helping everything from the first minimum wage to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation pass — I noted that three such petitions had notched 218 signatures this Congress, the most in 75 years.

Since then, that number has risen to seven, officially breaking the record for the most successful discharge petitions of any two-year Congress in history. (For context, only two discharge petitions reached the required threshold between 2000 and 2023.) The group of seven includes major bills to release the Epstein Files, undo a Trump executive order on federal unions, extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, reinstate temporary legal status for about 350,000 Haitian migrants, and boost aid for Ukraine while sanctioning Russia.

Now, discharge petitions for two more pieces of legislation — on expanding veterans benefits and creating a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” — are sitting at exactly 217 signatures, each one backer away from forcing yet another House vote unauthorized by leadership.

The veterans bill is particularly instructive for understanding the ways that congressional leaders subvert the will of majorities of the democratically elected members of Congress.

The measure, the Major Richard Star Act, is the most popular bill currently pending before the House or Senate. That’s no exaggeration: it has 338 co-sponsors in the House (203 Democrats and 135 Republicans), more than any other bill, and 80 co-sponsors in the Senate (44 Democrats and 36 Republicans), more than any bill except Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions measure, which has already passed the chamber.

It is named for Richard Star, an Army major and combat engineer who served deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He was ultimately forced to medically retire from the military, after contracting stage 4 lung cancer due to toxic burn pit exposure during his deployments.

When veterans retire from the military, they receive retirement benefits from the Defense Department. When veterans become sick or injured in the course of their service, as Star was, they receive disability benefits from the Veterans Affairs Department.

These are separate benefits, serving separate purposes, but a veteran can currently only receive the full amounts of both if they served more than 20 years in the military. If they served less than that, the amount of their DOD retirement pay goes down one dollar for every dollar in VA disability pay they receive. So, for example, if a veteran would otherwise receive $2,000 from each benefit, the $2,000 in disability benefits would cancel out the $2,000 in retirement benefits, and leave the veteran with $2,000 a month (just the amount of the disability benefit) instead of $4,000.

Here’s the thing: Richard Star served nineteen and a half years in the military. He only retired then because he was medically required to: he had no choice. But because he didn’t serve for 20 years, Star — who died of cancer in 2021 — received only a fraction of the retirement pay he was otherwise entitled to.

The popular bill that bears his name would make it so veterans who are medically required to retire before 20 years because of combat-related disabilities receive both their full retirement benefits and their full disability benefits. This is known as addressing the “wounded veteran tax”; it’s an issue faced by about 55,000 veterans who were required to medically retire, who each lose out on an average of about $1,200 a month.

The measure is not without its detractors. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would cost $78 billion over the next 10 years, which some lawmakers say would be fiscally irresponsible without offsetting the cost. My point today is not to advocate for or against the piece of legislation as a policy matter. But, as a matter of process, if 77% of the House and 80% of the Senate support the bill — whether they’re right or wrong — shouldn’t it at least receive a vote in the two chambers?

In fairness to House GOP leaders, the measure was included in a broader veterans package that was ultimately pulled from the floor in July after splitting veterans groups and Republican lawmakers. (The bill would have paid for the Major Richard Star Act and other expansions in benefits by reducing benefits for veterans with obstructive sleep apnea and tinnitus.) But with that package flailing, the Major Richard Star Act has yet to receive a standalone vote, despite its overwhelming backing.

Hence the discharge petition, which four House Republicans have now broken with Speaker Mike Johnson to support. Notably, the petition is missing the signature of one House Democrat, which would be enough for it to reach the 218-signature threshold.

“I appreciate and support the intent of the Major Richard Star Act, but I remain concerned that the legislation is not paid for with an appropriate offset,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA), the lone Democratic holdout, told me in a statement. “Our country is facing a $2 trillion deficit; we can’t keep spending taxpayer dollars and cutting taxes, particularly for the richest Americans, without the risk of financial collapse. And we could easily find an offset for this bill with any number of tax increase options.”

Without Smith on board, the discharge petition’s supporters will need to find a fifth Republican backer. One obvious possibility would be the bill’s original sponsor, Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), though an aide to Bilirakis signaled to me that he does not plan to sign on.

“While the discharge petition would force a House vote on the legislation, we have been advised that, in its current form, the bill would face the same obstacle it has encountered in the past: as it does not have a viable path through the Senate without an offset,” a Bilirakis spokesperson said. “The Congressman’s goal has never been simply to secure another House vote — or to engage in empty political rhetoric. His goal is to finally get this long-overdue fix across the finish line and signed into law for our combat-injured veterans.”

The spokesperson added that Bilirakis believes the “strongest opportunity to advance the provision through both chambers” remains the broader GOP veterans package, which the congressman expects to receive a House vote “before the end of the year.”

And thus, unless the discharge petition receives one more signature, as long as leadership declines to schedule a vote, a bill with bipartisan, supermajority support is able to remain in purgatory.

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II. Rule votes

What are the levers through which House leadership retains so much control over the floor schedule?

Barring a discharge petition, bills can generally only land on the House floor through approval of a “rule” (a procedural measure drafted by the House Rules Committee, which is traditionally dominated by handpicked allies of the Speaker) or by “suspension of the rules” (which is controlled by the Speaker and Majority Leader).

After a “rule” (which structures the terms of debate for a bill on the House floor) is approved by the Rules Committee, it has to be approved by the full House. In recent years, these rule votes have tended to be strictly partisan, with the majority party falling behind their leadership to vote “yea” and the minority party falling behind their leadership to vote “nay” (even if a majority party member opposes the bill in question, or a minority party member supports it).

Rank-and-file House Republicans have increasingly shown a willingness to break this trend, rejecting a total of 13 rules put forward by GOP leadership since Republicans retook the House in 2023, more than were rejected throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s combined.

Last week, a pair of back-bench House Democrats broke ranks as well, voting to save a rule that was about to fail due to GOP defections. The rule was poised to set up votes on measures denouncing socialism, expediting mining projects, restricting colleges that boycott Israel from receiving federal funding, and delaying regulations protecting the Atlantic large whale.

House Democratic leaders opposed all four measures. But Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), leaders of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, supported all four. In fact, Golden had co-authored the whale bill with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and identified it as his top priority; the regulations in question were going to pose obstacles for the lobstermen in Golden’s district.

This means that Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden were faced with the same fundamental question as signatories of a discharge petition: they supported a bill that their party leaders didn’t want there to be a vote on. Should they blindly side with their party leadership, or with their own judgement on the legislation?

Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden chose the latter, as have Republican signatories of the seven — and, soon, possibly nine — successful discharge petitions, a sign of rising discontent among rank-and-file lawmakers and increasing unwillingness to simply go along with party leaders if it means quashing bipartisan legislative efforts that the member supports.

III. What now?

These acts of apostasy have led party leaders to start thinking about institutional reforms that might whip their members back in line.

On the right, House Rules Committee chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has called for contributions from the House GOP’s campaign arm to be revoked from any Republican member who signs a discharge petition. Other Republicans have talked about raising the threshold for the petitions.

On the left, Democrats erupted with anger towards Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden last week. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, in a joint statement with his top deputies, that their vote to schedule a vote on bills that they support was a “significant breach of trust” that “necessitates a serious response.” Some Democrats said they should be stripped of their committee assignments.

That’s one direction for Congress to go: enforcing top-down rule and punishing members who break with leadership and follow their own instincts.

Or Congress can move in a more democratic direction, making it easier for bills to move through Congress if a majority of members support them, no matter what the small cartel of leaders would prefer.

Last week, the House Rules Committee held its biennial “Member Day hearing,” where members are invited to offer proposals for the next Congress’ rules package. Several members proposed ways for bipartisan, broadly supported bills to more easily be voted on, even without leadership’s sign-off.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) proposed that legislation approved by committee with bipartisan support receive an expedited path to consideration on the House floor. “By allowing these non-controversial bipartisan measures before the House, more legislation will be reviewed, adopted, or rejected,” she said. “We will do more work together, and our constituents back home will benefit.”

Similarly, Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) proposed that bills that receive supermajority support in the Senate should receive expedited consideration in the House.

The House has already created a pathway that should — in theory — bring broadly supported bills right to the floor. In 2019, the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus successfully pushed for the creation of a “Consensus Calendar,” through which bills co-sponsored by two-thirds of the House (290 members) are supposed to be ushered to the floor.

But the Consensus Calendar can be blocked in multiple ways: a bill is no longer eligible for guaranteed consideration under the calendar if a committee votes on it; in addition, House leaders can (and have) forced through “rules” that block Consensus Calendar bills from receiving a vote. Plus, 25 legislative days have to elapse between a bill reaching 290 co-sponsors and it ripening on the Consensus Calendar — and the calendar stops taking effect after September 30 on election years.

The Major Richard Star Act, for example, reached the necessary 290 cosponsors in the 117th Congress — but only did so in August 2022. By the time 25 legislative days had elapsed, it was late October; because it was an election year, that was too late for the Consensus Calendar. It didn’t receive a vote.

In the 118th Congress, the bill again returned to the Consensus Calendar, this time earlier in the year. But then the measure was acted on in committee, which meant a floor vote could no longer be forced. The measure is currently eligible for the Consensus Calendar in this Congress, but only the sponsor of the bill can place it there; so far, Rep. Bilirakis has not done so.

It is one of four bills currently languishing in House purgatory despite boasting 290+ co-sponsors; the other three are ineligible for Consensus Calendar action because committees have acted on them.

One of those, for example, is the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act, which addresses some of the problems surrounding “prior authorization,” the (often lengthy) process by which insurance companies require doctors to get pre-approval before offering medical services to patients. (95% of doctors say prior authorization leads to delayed access to care, with 26% reporting that prior authorization had led to an adverse event for a patient.)

The Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act successfully received a vote through the Consensus Calendar in the 117th Congress. It passed by voice vote, but then died in the Senate. This year, the measure notched its 290th co-sponsor in June (it’s now up to 302), but the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved it (unanimously) in July, preventing the bill from receiving a full House vote through the Consensus Calendar.

The House could ease passage for bipartisan bills simply by reforming the Consensus Calendar, making it so that these supermajority-backed bills are still guaranteed a floor vote even if committees act on them, and even if it’s the fall of an election year. The rules could also be changed so that any member, not just the sponsor, can place the bill on the calendar.

Frankly, the threshold for the calendar could also be reduced, potentially even to 218 co-sponsors, creating something more akin to an automatic discharge petition that embraces this principle: if a majority of democratically elected House members have signed onto a piece of legislation, it should receive a vote.

This would hardly overwhelm the House with new bills they’d have to vote on — and, even if it did, that problem could be alleviated by spending a bit more time in Washington — and it would create a pathway towards a more democratized Congress. These bills would not be granted automatic passage. But if a majority of members support something, it would at least guarantee that idea an up-or-down vote.

Considering how many supermajority-backed bills return year after year with overwhelming support, it also wouldn’t be a bad idea to allow bills that have previously passed by a supermajority to receive expedited consideration, so these measures can be more quickly sent over to the Senate, allowing the bicameral negotiating process to be jumpstarted without waiting for the House to pass a bill it already approved overwhelmingly two years before.

Contrary to popular belief, members of Congress are working together across party lines, coming up with bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems. But a select few party leaders prevent these measures from ever seeing the light of day. Members on both sides of the aisle are already tiring of this status quo, beginning to rise up against their leaders through discharge petitions and rule votes. Additional structural reforms would help these majorities work their will on behalf of the American people.

It was great chatting with so many smart students, and to be able to peruse the institute’s exhibits about its namesake, the late Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.

The Dole Institute, I was told, would have been the site of the senator’s presidential library had the three-time presidential candidate — and 1996 Republican presidential nominee — ever won the White House.

Instead, it stands as a monument to Dole’s 35 years in Congress, including his central role in numerous bipartisan legislative efforts, from the Americans with Disabilities Act to the McGovern-Dole international food program, which (as of 2022) had provided 5.5 billion school meals to more than 31 million children around the globe. You don’t need to become president to leave an enormous legacy.

And maybe we should have a few more congressional libraries to remind people of that!

Anyways, thanks to everyone who sent in such great questions for this week’s mailbag edition. Here’s what we’ll be tackling this morning:

• How is the Iran war being paid for?

• What’s the latest with Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots?

• Will ICE agents be sent to the polls?

• Could Alaska become a 2028 swing state?

• Can Congress change the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”?

• And more!

If you’ve found yourself wondering about any of these questions, then this morning’s newsletter is for you.

There will be no newsletter on Monday in observance of Labor Day, but I will see you back in your inbox on Wednesday. I hope you all have a great holiday weekend.

Let’s dive in!

Paying for the war

Q: I am interested in how America pays its bills for the Iran war in 2026. It seems the budget has been set and I don’t know that any additional funds were approved for the war. What happens if the Pentagon goes over budget? Do they take money from elsewhere? Can they just overrun the budget without consequence? Who stops them from spending money that wasn’t approved by Congress?

The Pentagon has a massive budget: more than $800 billion from the regular appropriations process, plus $150 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill.

That huge store of money has given the Defense Department a lot of room to move funds around and put together the resources to wage a war. However, the questioner is right that Congress has not approved a cent in extra funding for the Iran war — which means (even with almost a trillion dollars in its coffers) the war has forced the Pentagon to take money away from other important priorities and left the military squeezed for cash.

Per NBC News, the Defense Department has been forced to cancel some training exercises. It has had to delay repairs to bases in the Middle East that have been damaged by Iranian attacks. It also has little money to purchase new weapons amid a munitions shortage that has many military experts concerned about America’s ability to respond to future conflicts.

The questioner is right that, eventually, the Pentagon was bound to just run out — and potentially have to take money from elsewhere. In fact, that appears to be exactly what’s happened. Just yesterday, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) alleged that the Defense Department signed an interagency agreement to give it access to funding appropriated to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for biomedical research, in order to make up for the budget crunch created by the Iran war.

The Pentagon has yet to confirm this — though DeLauro said the NIH confirmed it to her — and we don’t know how much money was handed over. But this does provide us with a clue of how the DOD is paying for the war: taking money from other parts of the Pentagon, and then taking money from other parts of the federal government to make up for it.

In response to a request from the Trump administration, the House has advanced a plan to supply the Pentagon with $60 billion to help refill its coffers, but the measure has stalled in the Senate, leaving its future unclear.

How much has the war cost overall? The Defense Department has not been too transparent. Secretary Pete Hegseth offered an estimate of $37.5 billion in late July, though that number is already outdated — and even at the time, many experts said they believed the true cost of the war was likely much higher.

Blue-laska?

If Mary Peltola wins her Alaska Senate race, how seriously should Democrats take the state in the 2028 presidential race?

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With Labor Day looming, we are almost at the unofficial start of campaign season: just two months until the midterm elections.

Plus: the Iran war is still in a state of uncertainty. House Democrats are squabbling. The national debt has topped $40 trillion. And another Pentagon official has departed.

What’s on your mind this morning? I’m planning a mailbag edition tomorrow and would love to answer your questions about American politics, government, history, and more. Here’s the link to submit a question.

Send a question!

Wondering how a certain race will go? Curious about something that happened in Washington recently? Want to pick my brain on something? No questions are off-limits!

Excited to hear what’s on your mind and give some answers tomorrow.

Ask away!

Talk to you tomorrow,

Gabe

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Not to cast aspersions on anyone’s intelligence, but the 21st century political ecosystem is not particularly adept at doing this. In many political conversations these days, there is often little room for nuance or the possibility that two things might be true at once.

Let’s see if we can change that. When it comes to the White House ballroom, four things can be true at once:

1. It’s not crazy to think that the White House might need more of an event space. It’s a little silly that the president of the United States needs to put up tents every time he wants to host more than 200 people.

2. That doesn’t mean it’s that big a deal. If I were president, this would be something like #8,379 on my list of priorities.

3. Thinking the ballroom makes sense as a policy matter doesn’t mean it’s legal for the president to build it unilaterally. That is a decision best left to Congress.

4. But that also doesn’t mean just anyone can sue to stop the president from trying. Normal legal rules should still apply.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court paused a district court ruling that would have blocked President Trump from moving forward with construction of his ballroom. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices in dissent, and the rest of the conservative justices in the majority.

In my opinion, both groups of justices got something right: Roberts and the liberals were right about the ballroom construction being likely illegal, but the conservative majority was right that the group challenging it probably lacked the standing to sue.

This is not normally an issue I would devote much attention to. As I’ve already gestured at, I think there are fine arguments for the White House having a ballroom, but it’s not really an issue I find that important. I’m not an architecture reporter, and I won’t try to moonlight as one.

But I actually think the ballroom case is worth considering, because it lets us take a deeper look at an important concept you might not know much about: standing doctrine, the framework governing who gets to sue over what.

It also raises an important separation-of-powers question with implications that go far beyond the ballroom: Are there times when a president might do something illegal, but no one is able to challenge it in court? It’s a question that has come up repeatedly throughout Trump’s second term, on issues ranging from the ban on TikTok to the war in Iran.

In a presidency that has been marked by brazen executive actions — on which the courts have served as the primary check — it’s never been more relevant to think through this possibility. We’ll do that together this morning. But first: let’s do a bit of a ballroom talk to help understand how these legal gaps come about.

What Roberts and the liberals got right

We’ll start with where I agree with the Supreme Court minority: it was likely illegal for President Trump to unilaterally knock over the East Wing and start building a ballroom in its place without first getting approval from Congress.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to “dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States,” such as the White House. The president (even a president with relevant experience in the field) is given no competing real-estate power in the Constitution.

Congress has exercised this authority in numerous ways, including with 40 U.S.C. § 8106, which states:

A building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.

President’s Park, on which the White House sits, is a public ground of the federal government in Washington, D.C. Therefore, Congress needs to give express authority to build any structure, such as a ballroom, there. It may be President’s Park, but it is still within Congress’ jurisdiction.

The Trump administration agrees that it has no constitutional right to build a ballroom, but points to two statutes where it says Congress delegated that power to the executive. The first is 3 U. S. C. §105(d)(1), which states:

There are authorized to be appropriated each fiscal year to the President such sums as may be necessary for the care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting (including electric power and fixtures) of the Executive Residence at the White House.

However, the ballroom is not being built as part of the “Executive Residence” of the White House, which is distinct from the East Wing, the part of the building that was knocked down and is being replaced with Trump’s new event space. Even if that were not the case, it would be a stretch to say that destroying an entire wing of the White House and building something new counts as the sort of “alteration” or “improvement” that Congress had in mind here.

“We would not expect” authorization for such a major project to come alongside “such anodyne matters as the President’s ability to use congressional appropriations to maintain power outlets and keep the building warm,” wrote the appeals court judges whose ruling against the ballroom was blocked by the Supreme Court.

And even if that were not the case, this statute still wouldn’t allow the president to do anything, because this statute is not even directed at the president. It is what’s known as an “authorizing statute,” which is a directive from Congress to itself, authorizing not outside action, but future legislative appropriations. (Remember: federal funding is often disbursed according to this weird, two-step process, where Congress first passes an authorizing statute, allowing itself to appropriate money for a certain purpose, and then an appropriations statute, where it actually does so.)

All this statute is doing is letting Congress appropriate money for White House maintenance; by itself, it’s not a permission slip for the president to do anything. Indeed, for the current fiscal year, Congress appropriated $2.475 million under this authorizing statute — not nothing, but also not enough for a $400 million ballroom. (The fact that Trump says the ballroom will largely be funded by private donations is neither here nor there. The project would still need to be authorized by Congress under the statute giving lawmakers power over D.C. public grounds.)

The second statute that the Trump administration points to is 54 U. S. C. §100101(a), which states:

The Secretary [of Interior], acting through the Director of the National Park Service, shall promote and regulate the use of the National Park System by means and measures that conform to the fundamental purpose of the System units, which purpose is to conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in the System units and to provide for the enjoyment of the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

Once again, it’s quite a stretch to say that this broad language about the Interior Secretary being able to “provide for the enjoyment of the…historic objects” at National Park sites (of which the White House is one) equals permission to build a presidential ballroom.

Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia famously once wrote. Nor do they typically hide ballroom authorizations in laws about conserving nature.

And that’s it: that’s everything the White House has pointed to in order to say that the ballroom was legally authorized. Personally, I do not find it to be much, especially in light of the fact that Congress has typically passed specific laws to approve major White House renovations in the past.1

That said, just because the construction is likely illegal, it doesn’t mean that this lawsuit is the right one. Indeed, the Supreme Court majority didn’t take a view on the legality of the ballroom, because they ruled that the lawsuit against it was likely improper. And that’s what brings us to standing doctrine.

What the conservative majority got right

The landmark Supreme Court ruling on standing is Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, from 1992.

It says that, for someone to sue in a federal court, they have to have suffered a “concrete and particularized” injury. If I defame Taylor Swift in this newsletter, you would not have standing to sue, because you did not suffer any harm stemming from what I wrote. But Taylor Swift might have been harmed, so she would have a stronger standing case (no matter the merits of her underlying defamation case). Standing requirements prevent the courts from being clogged up by frivolous lawsuits from people who haven’t actually suffered a legal injury.

In the case of the White House ballroom, the Trump administration was sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered (but privately funded) nonprofit. They sued under something called associational standing, which allows an organization to sue on behalf of a member if that member would have standing on their own and the lawsuit relates to the mission of the organization.

As their injured member, the National Trust put forward Professor Alison Hoagland, a historian who used to work for the National Park Service and has written several books on the architecture of Washington, D.C.

Here is how Hoagland described her injury in a court filing:

I live on Capitol Hill, about 2 miles from the White House. I first moved to DC in 1977 and stayed until 1994, then returned in 2009 and have been here ever since. I travel to the White House neighborhood frequently to attend meetings, view exhibits, and have medical appointments. In the past year alone I have attended two rooftop gatherings with views of the White House. I regularly walk through portions of President’s Park, including Lafayette Square, in order to enjoy the historic buildings, the beauty of the L’Enfant Plan (which placed the President’s House on axis with 16th Street), and the innovative preservation project concerning the buildings surrounding Lafayette Square (overseen by Jacqueline Kennedy). I also regularly view the White House from the south side, whether driving by on Constitution Avenue or walking on the Mall.

…As a resident of Washington, D.C., I intend to continue to travel to the area around the White House, to walk through Lafayette Square, to attend functions in neighboring buildings, and to continue to be impressed by this iconic building. In the past I have had reason to be in the area about once a month, and I expect that pattern to continue. In addition, when the National Trust holds its board meetings in Washington, which it does at least annually, it usually holds them at the Decatur House on the northwest corner of Lafayette Square. I plan to attend those meetings in 2026.

Just as I was not compelled by the White House’s case that Congress had authorized the ballroom, I can’t say that I’m too compelled by Hoagland’s case that she has been injured by its construction.

To be fair, she’s not coming completely out of left field here. There is a thing called “aesthetic standing,” which dates back to a 1972 Supreme Court case and allows plaintiffs to sue when they use a certain area in the environment or outside world in a way that would be disrupted by a proposed change.

The appeals court judges in the ballroom case noted that past D.C. Circuit cases have granted aesthetic standing to people who fish in a river that was being polluted, an insect enthusiast who took annual trips to photograph a specific beetle that was being disturbed, and astronomers whose view of the sky was being impacted by light pollution. They, like Roberts and the liberal Supreme Court justices, ruled that Hoagland fit into this lineage.

However, there are some clear differences. While you can’t see a specific beetle if it’s not there, or the sky if it’s being polluted, Hoagland can continue to walk by the White House and go to her rooftop gatherings even if the ballroom is built. She might not like what she sees — but that isn’t an injury. Hoagland wants to “continue to be impressed by this iconic building.” But aesthetic standing, broad as it may be, is about being able to continually carry out a given activity, not about continually guaranteeing one’s subjective enjoyment. (After all, being impressed by something isn’t even internally stable: the same person could be impressed by one building one day, and not impressed by the same building the next. Their legal standing wouldn’t shift depending on their mood.) The fundamental activity Hoagland is referring to here — frequently being near the White House — will not be interrupted by construction of the ballroom.

If you remember the standing standards laid out in Lujan, the other issue is that an injury has to be “particularized,” like the specific person with an interest in that one specific beetle or the specific people who fish in that one specific river. It is always going to be easier to challenge a change to a local landmark that you might have a specific connection to than a national symbol like the White House, which obviously a lot of people walk by and a lot of people feel a generalized connection to.

To address this, Hoagland notes her professional interest in the White House as an architectural historian. Again, in her own words:

The White House affects my own research on more locally focused architecture in two ways. As one of the first prominent government buildings in the new capital city, it drove development around it, helping to define commercial and residential areas while also serving as a landmark defining [the original D.C. architect Pierre] L’Enfant’s plan for the city, and attesting to the promise that city construction would follow. Secondly, as the most important house in the city, the White House was also on the leading edge of all improvements—running water, water closets, electricity, etc. A study of Washington’s architecture without the White House as a reference point would be incomplete

In her court filing, Hoagland repeatedly praises the L’Enfant Plan, which promoted “republican simplicity” in making the White House look more like a house than a palace. But Hoagland has no legal right for the L’Enfant Plan — however admirable — to be carried out in perpetuity, and she can still continue to study the history of the White House and how it once looked without it still looking the exact same. A historian of Victorian-era England has no legal right for Victoria to still be Queen.

I happen to be sympathetic to Hoagland’s affection for the “republican simplicity” of the original White House. But, as a legal matter, how the White House will look in the future doesn’t really have a bearing on her ability to study how it has looked in the past.

If not her, who?

Would anyone have standing to sue? It’s possible, and the Supreme Court ruling technically leaves the door open for the ballroom to be blocked if such a person were to materialize.

Clearly, local architectural historians are out. Someone whose taxes go towards funding parts of the White House renovation also wouldn’t qualify: the Supreme Court has repeatedly dismissed the idea of taxpayer standing outside of specific circumstances.

One obvious answer is Congress, though there are issues there too. The Supreme Court has generally blocked individual members of Congress from bringing these sorts of lawsuits when they haven’t been authorized by their chamber and when legislative remedies are still available. The court has expressed more openness to lawsuits authorized by an entire chamber of Congress, which could become a possibility if Democrats retake the House. But the law there is still unsettled, and the fact that legislative remedies — like passing a law blocking the ballroom — would still be available might hurt the hypothetical case.

Finally, the Trump administration previously suggested that people affected by the noise of the ballroom construction might have standing to sue. (Per the president himself, Melania Trump is “not thrilled” with all the noise, so perhaps she is a potential plaintiff?) No one in this category has filed a lawsuit as of yet.

There’s also the possibility that no one has the standing to sue over the ballroom — even if it’s against the law.

We’ve seen Trump take advantage of this dynamic before. Courts have generally said that neither troops nor members of Congress have standing to sue over military conflicts (even those unauthorized by Congress), which leaves little judicial space to challenge Trump over the Iran war. Similarly, when the president refuses to enforce a law — such as the TikTok ban — it’s not always obvious who might have standing to sue. Trump’s acceptance of a plane from Qatar, in potential violation of the constitutional requirement that he seek congressional approval before receiving foreign gifts, falls into this same category.

These all speak to alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution: the Declare War Clause. The Take Care Clause. The Emoluments Clause. But, under standing doctrine, not every constitutional foul comes with an obvious plaintiff. If the president breaks the law, but nobody is specifically injured, does it make a sound?

Prior generations have wrestled with just this problem. The late Justice Harry Blackmun, dissenting in the landmark Lujan standing case, warned that the ruling represented an “unseemly solicitude for an expansion of power of the Executive Branch.” Justice Scalia, quoting an earlier precedent, responded in his majority opinion that the courts are not supposed to be “virtually continuing monitors of the wisdom and soundness of Executive action.”

The courts are meant to settle private disputes that emerge in response to specific injuries. “Vindicating the public interest (including the public interest in government observance of the Constitution and laws) is the function of Congress and the Chief Executive,” Scalia said.

Over the years, there have been some proposals to rejigger the status quo. During Watergate, then-Sen. Walter Mondale (D-MN) proposed creating a legislative office that would be able to bring a lawsuit attempting to “require an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government, or any agency or department thereof, to act in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the United States,” when requested by just six senators or 24 House members.

Earlier this summer, as part of a column outlining a hypothetical fourth branch of government, I proposed a “Fourth Branch Solicitor General,” who could bring lawsuits if the president was violating his constitutional responsibilities, as requested by a certain number of lawmakers.

Then again, the common response to ideas like this is, If Congress can vote to bring a lawsuit, couldn’t they also vote to stop the president through legislation? And if they can’t, doesn’t that suggest there isn’t a majority of Congress who oppose the given executive action, which means the president is acting in accordance with the will of Congress anyway? Why do lawmakers need to go to the judicial branch before they’ve even tried to exhaust their own legislative options?

The response to this is generally that, whatever legislative options Congress could be taking, they almost never actually take them — which means the system, as constructed, isn’t working. There is also the fact that, even if Congress were to pass a law constraining the president, the president could veto it, meaning the executive branch will always be one step ahead of the legislative branch in these competitions: able to take action as long as nobody has standing to sue them; able to block legislative solutions with their veto pen.

Then again, the veto was very much part of the constitutional design, so its use isn’t exactly a good argument for the judicial branch to start taking on cases that they might be constitutionally prohibited from taking.

The truth is, although progressive commentators are painting the Supreme Court’s ballroom decision as a betrayal of the separation of powers, standing doctrine is itself a product of the separation of powers. Descending from the Constitution’s command that the courts only take up “cases” or “controversies,” it is the court system’s attempt to stay within its jurisdiction without becoming a free-ranging referee for every dispute under the sun.

Through the decades, liberal and conservative jurists have repeatedly traded places in how they look at standing doctrine. Sometimes, a case being thrown out on standing grounds will be cheered by Republicans (as in the ballroom ruling); other times, it will be celebrated by Democrats (as when the Supreme Court, in 2024, unanimously ruled that a conservative group lacked standing to challenge medication abortion). While President Trump mocked Alison Hoagland as a “woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit,” he hasn’t always been a fan of standing doctrine either.

“The Supreme Court had ZERO interest in the merits of the greatest voter fraud ever perpetrated on the United States of America. All they were interested in is ‘standing,’ which makes it very difficult for the President to present a case on the merits,” he tweeted in 2020, after the court declined to hear his challenges to that year’s elections results.

There is a fair critique that — like everything else in the judicial realm — standing is in the eye of the beholder: held up by a justice as an attempt to enforce the separation of powers when they don’t want to hear a case, and swept aside by the same justice when they do.

Still, the broader concept represents the idea that the Founders did not intend for the courts to become an all-purpose arena to duke out policy disputes. Before they take any case, judges pauses to at least debate whether they are hewing to that vision.

I understand the frustration that my first assertion (the ballroom construction is likely illegal) can be sidestepped simply because of the second (this lawsuit is likely flawed). Shouldn’t the first statement be given more priority than the second? Not in the American judicial system, no.

Sometimes, liberals urge judges to grab more power for themselves and grant more expansive standing claims. Other times, conservatives will do exactly the same thing. But no matter who wins out in any given case: luckily, the Founders did create an all-purpose policy arena, and it’s located just down the road from the Supreme Court. In almost every case, when one side or the other blames the Supreme Court for ducking a case on standing grounds, their desired outcome is still very much available through the good, old-fashioned legislative process, if only they can persuade a majority of Congress to exercise it.

But, in my opinion, the most beautiful and essential part of the document comes towards the end: Article V, the section that outlines the process for the Constitution to be amended.

The Founders were humble enough to know that their work wasn’t perfect, and they embedded within the Constitution the possibility for it to be changed and transformed.

This has been the key ingredient that has allowed the document to persevere for 200+ years, by being flexible enough to mature along with the country and accommodate enormous changes: in who gets to vote (15th, 19th, 26th); in how the government is funded (16th); in how long its leaders are able to hold power (22nd).

The Constitution’s authors wanted this sort of change to be possible — but they also didn’t want it to be easy, which is why they set a high bar for amendments, which must be approved by two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures.

It has been 34 long years since any proposal has overcome that threshold. We are currently living through a constitutional amendment drought, which is unfortunate, because we are also living through a time of incredible frustration towards our system of government.

And yet almost nobody is trying to address this frustration through the path the Founders intended — constitutional amendment — because everybody is convinced it would no longer be possible, even though no one has really tried.

In the latest video for my YouTube channel, I speak to someone who knows a thing or two about amending the Constitution, because he’s singlehandedly responsible for the most recent amendment being ratified.

Gregory Watson has one of my favorite stories in American political history. He was a student at the University of Texas when he stumbled upon a quirky path to change the Constitution, and waged a 10-year campaign that ended with ratification of the 27th Amendment, which prevents members of Congress from raising their own salaries.

I talked to Gregory about how he was able to change the Constitution as a college student and his thoughts on what it would take to amend the Constitution now. I also give my perspective: while Gregory is fairly pessimistic, I think there could be an avenue for an amendment to generate bipartisan support in the next few years — if only someone tries. I even have a specific one in mind. I hope you’ll give it a watch:

While you’re at it, also don’t forget to subscribe to Wake Up To Politics on YouTube. It’ll help our videos find more viewers, and it will make sure you see them as soon as they’re posted:

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This video is actually coming at a perfect time because the House is set this week to do exactly what I recommended: vote on a constitutional amendment!

The chamber will consider H.J.Res.1, which would constitutionally set the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices (its current level).

I think it’s encouraging to see House leadership actually scheduling a vote on an amendment proposal, and I will be curious to see the vote breakdown. But I still wouldn’t say that this really fits the bill of what I was talking about.

For a constitutional amendment to actually be ratified, it would require nationwide attention and energy being put towards an issue. It would take more than just the House quietly slipping a vote on an amendment onto its schedule, without much notice or debate.

Gregory Watson’s story provides a great example of what it actually takes to amend the Constitution. I think you’ll enjoy listening to him as much as I enjoyed talking with him:

In race after race across the country, Democratic candidates are running into the same dilemma.

They said things in, roughly, the years between 2019 and 2021 — about opening the border, about defunding the police, about God being nonbinary — that they no longer seem so proud of.

Should they recant these positions to reassure swing voters, or double down to reassure their base? Increasingly, many Democrats are choosing Option C: dodging these questions entirely.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this has been Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who recently waved off some of the more left-wing stances that she and others took around this time. “Woke 1 was crazy,” Ocasio-Cortez shrugged to ABC News earlier this month, quoting a New York City councilman.

Abdul El-Sayed tried a similarly evasive strategy this week in an appearance on Fox News. As host Jesse Watters pressed El-Sayed on many of his past positions, the Michigan Democratic nominee opted each time to deflect the question.

How would El-Sayed go about enforcing immigration law? “When I travel the state, and I have traveled my state, more people are asking me about how they’re going to afford their gas and groceries,” El-Sayed responded. “They’re not asking me about immigration.”

Does he still believe that the NFL is racist? “The bigger issue that we have for football right now is I looked at ticket prices to try and go and see a game with my family. It’s astronomical, through the roof.”

Should minors be allowed to have gender transition surgeries? In the interview’s most viral segment, El-Sayed reframed the question by instead asking if Watters was circumcised. (He was.)

Watching El-Sayed bob and weave, I couldn’t help but think of yet another Democratic candidate who ventured into the conservative lion’s den when gearing up for a high-stakes general election.

In her high-profile sit-down with Fox News in October 2024 — the highest-rated non-primetime interview in the history of cable news — Harris was similarly pressed by host Bret Baier to account for a number of her 2020-era (“Woke 1”) stances.

Harris’ tactics were largely the same as El-Sayed’s. Asked, for example, about her previous support for taxpayer-funded transition surgeries for transgender inmates — the subject of a ubiquitous Trump ad — Harris declined to say where she now stood (merely saying she would “follow the law,” without saying what she wanted the law to be), then tried to tag the other side as hypocrites (suggesting that the Trump administration had allowed such surgeries), then tried pivoting to safer ground (talking about economic policy).

These deflections didn’t work for Harris, and so far, they don’t seem to be working for El-Sayed. A recent series of polls from Fox’s well-respected, non-partisan polling unit found that El-Sayed is the only battleground Democratic Senate candidate whose favorability rating is underwater (and 13 points underwater, at that).

According to the same poll, a majority of Michigan voters (54%) are concerned that El-Sayed’s positions are “too extreme.” (Similarly, according to a 2024 New York Times poll, 47% of the electorate viewed Harris as “too liberal,” compared to 32% who said that Trump was “too conservative.”)

So, how should Democrats handle questions about their past positions, which are only bound to grow louder as 2026 turns to 2028?

David Clementson is an expert in the Art of the Dodge. He is a former political operative who used to train candidates in answering (or ducking) questions. Now, he is a professor of political communications at the University of Georgia, who has made this area into a bit of a niche of his, researching how voters respond when candidates dodge questions.

Some of his findings are counterintuitive, and they’re not all bad news for Democrats trying to pivot away from questions about their previous stances. For example, Clementson has found: voters often don’t notice when politicians dodge questions.

In a 2022 study Clementson conducted, one group of voters was shown video of a politician dodging a question, while another group was shown video of the politician giving a straight answer. When asked to give their impressions of the candidate, members of the first group were no more likely to make a comment on evasiveness than members of the second group.

Only about 10% of them seemed to register the dodge. Even when party labels were introduced, Democrats were no more likely to notice a Republican candidate dodging a question, and vice versa.

Here’s the wrinkle, though.

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It has not been a great month for the polling industry.

First, Abdul El-Sayed won his Senate primary in Michigan by only a single percentage point, after the polls said he was on track to clean up by double digits. Then, Francesca Hong narrowly lost her gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin, after polling averages had her ahead by 20 points.

And now, pollsters have to contend with concerns not just about whether they’re wrong — but about whether they’re even real. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that “Median Strategies,” a supposed polling firm that had announced survey results in the Los Angeles mayoral race and Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, had been a complete sham.

The perpetrator was later revealed to be a 21-year-old recent college graduate named Rahil Prakash, who said he was conducting a “short-term social experiment.”

“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” Prakash told The Guardian. “And as it turned out, it could.” Before their origin was revealed, Prakash’s “polls” were shared by the mayor of Los Angeles and news outlets including the California Post, the West Coast offshoot of the New York Post tabloid.

These results and revelations have combined to create yet another round of hand-wringing about the role of polls in American politics and journalism. Some commentators, including the former New York Times and Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan, are now once again calling on reporters to stop covering polls entirely.

But this is a misdiagnosis. Our problem right now isn’t having too many polls; it’s having too few of them.

I know this might sound surprising. After all, we seem to be living through a time of polling abundance. The number of active national pollsters in the U.S. more than doubled between 2000 and 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. In the 2024 election cycle, more than 2,600 polls were fielded across the country. That’s not enough?

Well, here’s the problem: it’s easier than it’s ever been to field a poll — but harder than it’s ever been to field a good one.

This chart from Pew shows that the recent explosion in pollsters mostly comes from an increase in outfits fielding online opt-in surveys, at the expense of live phone polls, the “gold standard” method that once had a near-monopoly on the industry, and other forms of probability-based surveys.

Online opt-in polls are what are known as “non-probability” polls, where participants voluntarily select to be polled, by responding to ads on a website or social media platform. (Pollsters still generally screen respondents before letting them into the poll.) In a “probability” poll, meanwhile, pollsters use a database of phone numbers or addresses to proactively contact a random sample of the area they’re polling. Live phone polls generally fall into this category.

In both cases, after collecting responses, pollsters will “weight” their pool of respondents to match the demographics of the area being polled: as a very crude example, if an area is 10% Black, but their respondents were only 5% Black, then the Black respondents’ answers would be weighted to count for double, to try to represent the true proportion of Black voters in the area. (In reality, pollsters are trying to capture an accurate representation of a much broader range of demographics at once — race, gender, education, income, etc. — so the calculations are more complicated than this.)

Non-probability polls generally require more weighting than probability polls, since they don’t start out with a random sample: rather than choosing who to contact, they’re at the mercy of who decided to opt in to the poll at the beginning, which could have massively overrepresented some groups. The more weighting a poll has to do to mimic a representative sample, the more potential for error is introduced.

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Now, none of this is to say that non-probability polls are all bogus and probability-based polls are all perfect. In fact, some evidence exists to suggest that the two types of polls performed similarly in the 2024 election. But it is worth noting that non-probability polls are much, much cheaper to produce — putting out ads and setting up an online panel for whoever answers is relatively easy; for a phone poll trying to reach a specific sample, 50 phone calls will often yield just one respondent — which means they dramatically lower the barrier for entry for polling.

Not all non-probability polls are bad. But their rise has allowed the zone to be flooded with all sorts of low-quality polls, which end up mucking up poll averages and skewing perceptions of a race.

I often hear from people who say, “How can you still trust the polls? No one answers their landline anymore, especially not young people.” First of all, phone polls reach people via landline and cell phones, just to clear that up. (And, as can be seen by the Pew chart above, few pollsters only use phone polling now. Most use it in conjunction with other methods.) The age critique, meanwhile, mostly gets things backwards.

While phone polling might oversample older voters, online polling often oversamples young voters — and online polling is much more common nowadays, so more frequently, pollsters are dealing with samples that are disproportionately younger than the electorate, in addition to their samples being disproportionately politically engaged (a problem for pollsters using any method, since politically engaged people are more likely to opt in to a poll or pick up the phone for one).

The Michigan and Wisconsin polling misses were likely due to a plethora of reasons. Both states host open primaries, which make it harder for pollsters to predict who the universe of voters will be, since they’re not restricted to just Democrats or Republicans voting. The Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, in particular, contained a lot of upheaval: three top Democratic candidates ended their bids in the final month of the contest, including the eventual winner David Crowley (who only re-entered the race a few weeks before Election Day). If a poll was fielded while Crowley was out of the race, it can’t exactly be blamed for not correctly projecting the result.

But there are also sampling issues at play. In general elections in the Trump era, polls have often overestimated Democrats, since the most politically engaged slice of the country has leaned to the left, skewing polling samples. In these recent Democratic primary elections, it appears that polls suffered from a similar issue: the most politically engaged slice of the electorate has leaned really to the left, skewing polls towards candidates like El-Sayed and Hong. Since so many of the polls were online surveys, they appear to have similarly overrepresented young voters, who also disproportionately vote for more progressive candidates in Democratic primaries.

These ubiquitous online polls are also vulnerable other pitfalls, including respondents merely clicking things and not telling the truth, which can lead to eye-popping (but probably false) results, or being duped by AI bots that pretend to be human respondents.

So you have the existing background problems with polling any primaries, and the problems that popped up in these primaries specifically. Then you have the dominance of online polls, which bring a host of potential problems, including overrepresenting a specific type of voter. Plus, add in the sheer number of new actors in the polling space: some entirely fake, others merely irresponsible (one new polling outfit recently admitted to changing the raw responses they received, an enormous polling no-no), and still more who have an interest in changing perceptions of the race (the Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher has documented just how many polls now are internal polls, conducted and released by campaigns themselves).

Suddenly, you have a toxic stew of polls of varying quality, all of which are flattened and equalized once they’re blasted out on social media and injected into the discourse all looking the same, without much discrimination based on quality. A poll from Median Strategies, the firm that was pumping out fake numbers, is showered with retweets and treated the same as a poll from The Public Sentiment Institute, the firm that was fiddling with its own results, is treated the same as an internal poll, which campaigns only ever release for a reason (either to scare donors into thinking a favored campaign is losing or an underdog campaign has a shot, or to manufacture false momentum and convince voters that their team is winning and they should hop onto the bandwagon now) is treated the same as a poll by the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Any of these polls can then impact what prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket have to say about a race. Since actual news outlets now report these numbers as data — CNN has a partnership with Kalshi, for example — these prediction market figures can influence broad perceptions about a race, even though they generally just move in response to polls, and many of the polls are shoddy. Garbage in, garbage out. By the end of this not-so-virtuous cycle, questionable numbers from subpar (and maybe even malicious) pollsters have hardened into conventional wisdom about a race.

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After all that, how can I still be saying we need more polls?

Well, we need more good polls. Because of the high expenses involved (and reputational costs when they get things wrong), a number of blue-chip pollsters have exited the game. Gallup stopped polling elections in 2016, and stopped polling presidential approval earlier this year. Monmouth University closed up its well-respected polling shop last year. Iowa’s polling “queen” Ann Selzer stopped producing political surveys after getting the 2024 election very wrong.

This is the void that’s been filled by shoddy online pollsters and internal surveys that are trying to skew perceptions of a race, rather than dispassionately analyzing the electorate.

According to the New York Times, there were 11 polls conducted in the final month of the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. But only one was conducted by a firm deemed a “select pollster” by the Times. (“Select pollsters” must be conducting their survey for a non-partisan sponsor and meet two of the following three criteria: having a “track record of accuracy in recent elections,” being a member of a professional polling organization, and conducting probability-based surveys.) Most of the rest were conducted on behalf of El-Sayed’s campaign, or by other less reliable sources.

In the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary, there was only two polls in the final month by a “select” pollster (and they were both conducted by the same firm). The Minnesota Democratic Senate primary, another closely watched contest, didn’t see a single “select” poll.

We are in striking need of more high-quality polls of the 2026 midterms; otherwise, we are flying blind, guided by more surveys than ever, but surveys of low or uncertain quality. Think of how many people were absolutely sure about the results of the aforementioned primaries, based mainly on subpar polls and the prediction markets that moved in response to them, without much (or any) mainstream polling being conducted.

This problem isn’t brand-new. In 2022, the last midterm cycle, we also saw a surge of internal polls flood the zone, primarily from Republican sponsors. Many of them incorrectly overestimated the emergence of a “red wave,” skewing the broader narrative before the election — and leading to a narrative afterwards that the polls had gotten the election wrong. But, in fact, most traditional non-partisan pollsters had a good year. It wasn’t a question of listening to the polls. It was a question of which polls you listened to.

This will only get worse as time goes on, as more and more people realize they can make a quick buck by putting out a fake poll to juice prediction markets, and more and more candidates realize they can skew perceptions by blasting out internal polls. “Every candidate in 2028 will have their own cooked poll factory,” the Democratic strategist Lis Smith recently told the New York Times. (And, yes, studies show that seeing that a candidate polls well can increase the likelihood of people voting for them.)

That means that we all need to become more discerning poll consumers. When you see a poll, CTRL+F for “methodology” and see how the survey was conducted. (If the poll offers no information on its methodology, dismiss it out of hand.) Look into whether the poll was conducted on behalf of a campaign, or on behalf of a non-partisan organization or well-known news outlet. Consult the Silver Bulletin pollster ratings to see if the pollster in question has a track record of accuracy (or even any track record at all).

If all that sounds like a lot of work, well, you probably shouldn’t put too much stock in any individual poll anyway. It’s better to look at polling averages, which take an array of surveys into account, especially ones like the Times’, which separates the wheat from the chaff. Many mainstream news outlets didn’t include the surveys by “Median Strategies” in their polling averages — even before the firm was revealed to be fake — because they have a policy of not including pollsters whose methodologies they can’t discern.

Many polling aggregators on social media (including accounts with tens of thousands of followers) failed to put that same work in, and unwittingly promoted the sham numbers. Prediction markets also failed the test, proving liable to being swayed by misinformation: both Polymarket and Kalshi saw Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ odds of being re-elected rise after her campaign shared the fake Median Strategies survey.

Why are polls — good polls, that is — still worth paying attention to, despite these pitfalls (and despite the calls from some corners for media outlets to ignore them entirely)?

Because polls serve an important democratic purpose. We hold elections every two or four or six years; polls are the best tool, in between those contests, for Americans to understand how their fellow countrymen are thinking and for politicians to understand the mood of their constituents.

We all have mental models of the world. But our mental models tend to be very, very wrong. This is one of my all-time favorite charts, from a YouGov poll in 2022 that shows just how bad Americans are at accurately perceiving America, by comparing the proportion of the country that people estimate that certain groups make up, versus the actual proportion of those groups.

We’re also really bad at accurately estimating metrics like crime and unemployment. And the same dynamics hold true in public opinion. We tend to believe our policy positions are more common than they really are, an effect that is even more common among political elites, who are particularly vulnerable to this “egocentrism bias.”

This is why good data, including polling data, serves as such an important corrective in American life.

I often hear from people who express skepticism about a certain poll result, because the people they know in their life don’t reflect that outcome. But think about our vast, diverse country. What are the odds that the people you know make up a representative sample of America? Pretty darn low (especially in an era of geographic and social polarization). Polls, on the other hand, are purposefully designed to capture a representative sample of the country. Between a well-designed poll and your own experience, I’ll take the poll any day.

Good polling gives us the accurate picture of reality that we can’t just seem to construct on our own, which makes voters savvier observers of the country and what’s going on around us and makes politicians more attuned to the opinions of their voters.

The era of polling-driven journalism isn’t perfect, but it is much better than the sort of reporting that came before it — and that some are trying to usher in now — which relies merely on gut instinct, and “vibes,” and interviews with a handful of voters who might not be a representative sample of anything.

That doesn’t mean all polls are created equal, or that you shouldn’t be careful when consuming them. But, when done right, polls help us understand the country, beyond our narrow slice of it, and gird us against falling for fake “vibe shifts” that might show up in the conventional wisdom but don’t show up in the data.

That’s why we need more polls, not fewer. More good polls, at least.

These questions concern the legal status of two Trump actions: his recent executive order on vaccines, and the ongoing construction of the White House ballroom.

If you’ve had questions about one or both of these issues, this morning’s newsletter is for you.

As always, you can submit questions for me here or by emailing me at gabe@wakeuptopolitics.com.

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Q: Is it legal for Trump to create executive orders, like on vaccination, that run afoul of science?

In general, there is no freestanding requirement that executive orders comply with science. After all, what would that mean? Who, or what, would constitute the “science” that cannot ever be contradicted?

However, there are specific situations where the federal government must consult scientific advisers before making a decision, and vaccines do happen to be one of those areas.

Let’s start with the executive order in question here, “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” which was issued by President Trump earlier this month.

Federal childhood vaccine recommendations are split into three categories: vaccines recommended for “all children,” those recommended for “certain high-risk groups or populations,” and those recommended based on “shared clinical decision making,” which means parents are advised to make a decision in consultation with their child’s doctor.

Below, via the Congressional Research Service, you can see how Trump’s “Gold Standard” recommendations deviate from the child vaccine recommendations in place before he took office — including downgrading the Covid vaccine from “All children” to “shared clinical decision making” and removing the monkeypox vaccine (formerly recommended for high-risk groups) from the list entirely:1

Remember, though: executive orders are generally not the president saying, “I will do X,” because there are only so many things the president is empowered to do under laws and the Constitution. Rather, executive orders are the president telling an executive agency, “You should do X,” in an area where (in theory) a statute gives that agency the power to do something.

In this case, there is no law that gives force or effect to childhood vaccine recommendations from the president. That’s why, in his order, Trump directed “each executive department and agency” to “review” his recommendations and “take any appropriate steps to advance them, to the fullest extent allowable by law.”

When it comes to vaccines, the main executive agency that applies to is the CDC.

Funnily enough, Trump’s “Gold Standard” recommendations are identical to vaccine recommendations that the CDC already tried implementing earlier this year. However, a federal district judge blocked that effort in March, and here’s where the requirement for scientific rigor comes in.

Judge Brian Murphy paused the CDC’s recommendations because the agency had not consulted the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a scientific panel set up to offer advice on vaccines to the federal government. Murphy’s ruling pointed out the several places in law that Congress had required ACIP to play a role before decisions on vaccines are made. (The Trump administration argues that those are only specific situations that require ACIP consultation, and that its action falls outside of those requirements.)

Partially because of the failure to consult ACIP, Murphy ruled that the CDC recommendations likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the 1946 law that prohibits agency actions that are “arbitrary” or “capricious,” or taken “in excess of statutory jurisdiction.” This is a statute that frequently trips up presidential administrations trying to take sweeping action, as we’ve discussed before.

In short: Trump cannot just alter vaccine recommendations himself, he can only order the CDC to do it, which means this executive order will only mean anything if the CDC listens to it. But the CDC has already tried to do something similar, and if the agency follows Trump’s order, it will likely fall into the same trap its last vaccine push did: the fact that, per Judge Murphy, the CDC also cannot alter vaccine recommendations itself, without listening to scientific advisers.

It’s also relevant to keep in mind that CDC’s recommendations are just that: recommendations, not binding on doctors (who actually administer the shots) or states (which decide which vaccines are required for schools).

As is often the case, because of the limited role the president plays in our constitutional scheme, executive orders can end up being more flash than substance.

Q: Why when the courts have said the Trump Ballroom cannot go forward, he can continue to build during appeal? How many appeals can any one lawsuit have? Does everything have endless appeals until it gets to the Supreme Court? Regular people don’t have this.

There are a few questions to unpack here. First, to answer the “endless appeals” question, there are three levels at which litigants can bring cases in the federal court system.

Cases start at the district court level. The loser at that level can then appeal to a circuit court (also called an “appeals court”). The loser at that level can then appeal to the Supreme Court.

It’s important to note that regular people do have this! Anyone who loses a district court case can appeal to the circuit courts, and anyone who appeals at the circuit courts can appeal to the Supreme Court — you don’t have to be president of the United States or anything like that. Granted, you can’t force the Supreme Court to actually agree to hear your case, and the president certainly does have a better chance at that.

But you do both get to try under our system, and the Supreme Court does take up cases from “regular people” all the time (and also recently refused to hear a case from the president). This is true on both the court’s normal “merits” docket and its emergency “shadow” docket.

Earlier this month, a California woman who owned a dog named Bruce filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court asking the justices to pause a lower court ruling ordering that Bruce be euthanized after he bit three people. The court denied the request, but the fact that Bruce the dog got all the way to the Supreme Court underlines the idea that the same appeals process is available to everyone (even every dog).

But the real question here was about the White House ballroom, and why construction on it has continued despite a string of adverse court rulings.

The answer is something called an “administrative stay,” which is when a court pauses a ruling from a lower court in order to give itself time to make a decision on something.

In this case, Judge Richard Leon ruled on April 16 that construction of the ballroom was likely unlawful. On April 17, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit administratively stayed Leon’s ruling until it could make a decision.

Then, on August 7, the same three-judge panel upheld Leon’s ruling, but still kept it frozen, adding a new 14-day stay to allow the Trump administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court, which it then did.

On Friday, just before the 14-day deadline was about to expire, Chief Justice John Roberts entered an administrative stay of his own, which will last until the full Supreme Court rules on the administration’s emergency petition on the ballroom.

None of this is out of the ordinary. The idea here is that a court should be very careful before intervening in private or public conduct, so a given ruling shouldn’t take effect until the next rung on the appellate ladder has had a chance to look it over.

In cases where a ruling requires someone to do something, an administrative stay skews to the benefit of the person who doesn’t want to do something. But the ballroom case is a case where a ruling required someone to stop doing something. In a case like that, an administrative stay will generally skew to the benefit of the person who does want to do something — here, Trump wanting to build his ballroom.

As a result, ballroom construction can continue during this legal gray area; in fact, according to the White House, 250 people are now working on the construction 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The administration says that the ballroom is now about two-thirds complete.

Administrative stays keep the status quo in place; in this case, there is no question that the status quo favors Trump, although it is not unlike any other situation where an administrative stay allows someone to keep doing something they would otherwise be prohibited from continuing.

We’ve seen this with previous Trump cases as well, including the tariffs case, where lower court rulings against the tariffs were stayed as they worked their way through the courts (before the Supreme Court eventually struck the tariffs down for good). In the tariffs case, the fix for this period of time where the import taxes were (illegally, per the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling) in place has been refunding the businesses that paid the tariffs. So far, about $129 billion in refunds have been initiated (out of $166 billion that the administration collected).

Admittedly, it’s harder to know what the remedy could be here if the Supreme Court did eventually rule against the White House ballroom (though I wouldn’t necessarily bet on them doing so2). Judge Leon, however, hinted at one possible (though hard-to-imagine) outcome in his initial ruling.

“The Court gives fair notice to Defendants, however, that any above-ground construction [while the ruling is stayed] that is not in compliance with my Order is at risk of being taken down depending on the outcome of this case,” Leon warned.

Happy Friday and welcome back to another edition of Wake Up To Politics.

This morning, I have a mailbag issue for you, where I’ll be going deep on two great questions that were sent in by readers:

• What is the strategy behind Jon Ossoff’s recent viral dig at Donald Trump?

• After a string of outspent candidates have won Democratic primaries, does money really matter in American politics?

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As always, if you have feedback about the newsletter, you can reach me at gabe@wakeuptopolitics.com or by clicking “reply” on this email. It really does go straight to my inbox!

Let’s dive in…

Q: Sen. Jon Ossoff has raised the stakes with sharply outspoken public criticism of Donald Trump. Gavin Newsom has done it more quietly in social media for considerably longer. Sen. Mark Kelly added his own tart comments in the past week as well. When Trump does it, it’s called firing up his base. Is this an orchestrated strategy turning up of the tone as the midterms approach and do you think it will fire up Democrats and perhaps Independents for this fall’s election?

Ossoff caused quite the firestorm this week when saying, at a rally on Saturday, that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” and simply “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

With Natalie?

That was a reference to Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant and close aide who was among the handful of officials who joined him on a secret flight out of Turkey last month, while Cabinet secretaries like Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent remained on a decoy flight (the one that everyone thought Trump was on, but that he didn’t take due to an apparent threat from Iran).

Facing re-election in Georgia, Ossoff — a former documentarian — hasn’t been running a campaign so much as a content creation studio. Per Politico’s Jonathan Martin, Ossoff’s rallies are carefully staged to achieve maximum virality; before each one, his team “tips off a handful of progressive video clippers,” who are responsible for injecting his punchiest moments into Democratic social media feeds. To extend the wave of attention, he then generally appears on MS NOW “a few days after one of the weekend rallies, which ensures TV coverage of the clips and a cable news hit that itself can be clipped for the days ahead,” Martin wrote in June.

Sure enough, as of this writing, Ossoff’s “Natalie” comment has drawn 6.1 million views on X from a post by @Acyn and 10.9 million from a post by Aaron Rupar, two of the top “progressive video clippers” who spend their days finding (or, in this case, being directed towards) short-form videos to set the left-of-center Internet on fire. Then, like clockwork, there Ossoff was on MS NOW on Monday and Wednesday.

The remark had its intended effect. It’s not as though there had been no reporting about the uber-loyal Harp before Ossoff’s comment: Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported in the New York Times in 2024 that Harp was Trump’s main information conduit (known as his “human printer”) and that she had unnerved some Trump aides with a series of fawning letters she sent to the president. (“You are all that matters to me,” she wrote in one letter. “I want to bring you joy, to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work,’” she wrote in another.) Then, Haberman and Swan reported in their recent book that Trump had described Harp as his only aide who loved him as much as his wife and children. (“All of you will go off and make money. She’ll never leave me,” he would tell aides, referring to Harp.)

But Harp was still relatively little-known until this week, when Ossoff’s comment — as well as the fierce White House pushback — led every news outlet on the planet to run with more Harp stories, from CNN interviewing her estranged brother to the Daily Beast obtaining her full letters to the president.

So, yes, this was very much orchestrated: to get attention, to get under Trump’s skin, to shine a spotlight on a story that was sure to make him uncomfortable. (No, no evidence has emerged to support the speculation that there is anything untoward about Trump’s relationship with Harp.)

What will be its electoral effect?

The questioner asked if comments like this might help fire up Independents. Probably not. Trump, of course, mounts these sorts of personal attacks all the time, but polls routinely show that it is among his least favorable qualities in the eyes of the electorate, especially Independent voters.

If anything, this sort of rhetoric can backfire electorally: one study earlier this year found that candidates lose roughly 2.5-3 percent of the vote for every standard deviation increase of character attacks they mount.

But those comments from Trump do fire up the Republican base, as the questioner said, and Ossoff’s remark is designed to do the same on the Democratic side. The goal isn’t votes, per se: in fact, many Independent voters in Georgia will probably never hear about this firestorm.

Yes, Google searches for Harp’s name have exploded over the past few days, but I would be willing to bet that these searches have mostly come from people who are fairly politically engaged, enough to tune into MS NOW or to watch news content on their social media feeds. I would guess that, nationally, Natalie Harp’s name ID is still probably very low.

But Ossoff’s goal with the comment was to reach exactly this slice of voters, since these are the voters who donate to political campaigns: small-dollar contributions to Ossoff’s campaign are sure to skyrocket after his viral moment. (Indeed, Ossoff was the top fundraiser on the donation platform ActBlue this week, although he has been high on that list this entire year.)

Then again, Ossoff doesn’t really need the money. As of June 30, he had raised $98 million this cycle, compared to just $7 million for his Republican rival Mike Collins. But these sorts of voters are also the type who vote in presidential primaries, and this might be Ossoff’s true goal.

Early 2028 primary polls show that the best way for a Democrat to increase their stock is to be seen as the candidate fighting most aggressively with Trump. The questioner mentioned Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both of whom have been beneficiaries of this phenomenon. In the chart below, see how Newsom peaked last summer when he started trolling Trump on social media, while Kelly surged in November after Trump called for his execution:

Some of that energy is already starting to flow to Ossoff.

In March, when Saint Anselm College polled the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary field, Ossoff drew exactly 0%. By June, he had ticked up to 2%. When the university released a poll this week, conducted on Monday and Tuesday (right at the peak of Ossoff-Harp-mania), where was the Georgia senator? 12%, a 10-point increased that landed him tied (with Kelly) for third place.

Ossoff’s made-for-virality comment wasn’t designed to reach Georgia swing voters, many of whom probably didn’t see it and may not have even liked it. Or even Georgia Democrats, who are already lined up behind him. (96% said in a recent Fox poll that they planned to vote for Ossoff, while 86% said they are motivated to vote in November.) Instead, voters in the 2028 Democratic primary were likely his intended audience.

Mission accomplished, it appears.

Q: I would appreciate your take on the role of money in US political races these days. Some days I seem to get dozens of requests from political candidates across the country for contributions so obviously some still think money is critical. However, Nixon’s recent win in the Florida Senate primary race in spite of being heavily outspent and Peltola turning down Kamala Harris’s contribution seem counterintuitive. Are these examples just outliers or is something different going on in American political campaigning these days?

This is not just your imagination.

Read more