The Dictatorship
‘We are already cooked’: Republicans brace for a midterm reckoning
Gas prices are at a four-year high. Annual inflation has jumped to a nearly three-year peak. Americans are souring on congressional Republicans, President Donald Trump’s handling of inflation and the war in Iran. And his approval rating is at the lowest point of his second term in several polls.
The message from the White House: Things are still better than they were under Joe Biden.
It is not, on its face, the stuff of a winning campaign message — a backward-looking defense at a moment when voters are asking forward-looking questions about their grocery bills, gas tanks and a war with no clear end.
And privately, even some of Trump’s aides acknowledge it.
“The vibe right now is we know we are already cooked in the midterms,” a White House official told MS NOW, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The numbers help explain the gloom. For the first time since 2010, voters say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy, 52% to 48%, according to a recent Fox News poll. Economists have largely scaled back their forecasts for the remainder of the year. Energy analysts are warning that oil prices could surge even higher. And Moody’s recession model now puts the odds of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months at nearly a coin flip.
Six months out from the November election, Democrats are favored to take the House and are increasingly rosy about their prospects for the Senate despite a difficult map.
“As of this moment, of course you have to be very concerned,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., told MS NOW. “If you aren’t concerned, you’d be kind of foolish. … We are either going to win the majority by a little, lose the majority by a little, or lose it by a lot.”
Even so, more than a dozen GOP strategists, lawmakers and White House officials who spoke with MS NOW, said they remain cautiously optimistic that Republicans have enough time to at least stave off a blue wave.
But that optimism is contingent on several unpredictable factors — chiefly, whether the war in Iran comes to a speedy conclusion, and how long its economic aftershocks linger.
White House officials and their allies cautioned against writing the party’s obituary just yet. If 2024 proved anything, they argued, it is that the political environment can change dramatically in a matter of weeks, that news cycles move quickly and that voters have short memories. Internal polling circulating in the White House is not as dire as the public polling, according to one White House official. “Certainly there’s still a lot of work to be done, and that’s not a secret to anyone,” the official said. “But there’s still a lot of time left.”
Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., one of the few sitting GOP lawmakers openly critical of Trump, expects Republicans to hold the Senate, and told MS NOW that House Republicans can hang on to their razor-thin majority.
“If we’re disciplined, we keep control of the Congress,” Tillis said. “If we’ve lost, on Wednesday morning, don’t blame the Democrats. Republicans, go to the nearest mirror and look in the mirror. That’s why we’ll lose. If we play team ball, if we set aside our petty differences and recognize Republicans getting elected are the most important thing — no purity test, get them elected — then they’re not playing team ball, and they’re part of the problem.”
The plan, according to two White House officials, is a familiar one: pivot to kitchen-table issues and flood battleground states with Trump and Cabinet surrogates in the coming months. Republicans, these officials insisted, have a record to run on, including a cut in taxes via the One Big Beautiful Bill efforts to reduce drug prices and beefed-up border security.
But conspicuously absent from the game plan outlined by White House officials: any expectation of message discipline from Trump himself.
What matters, the White House official told MS NOW, is “doing what we need to do out on the campaign trail — the events, the fundraising, the retail politics of actually showing up in districts.”
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican party and he is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress to continue delivering wins for the American people,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement to MS NOW. Trump, she added, would continue to draw “a sharp contrast” between his agenda and that of congressional Democrats, whom she said allowed “millions of illegal aliens to flow through the border, unanimously opposed the Working Families Tax Cuts, and are soft-on-crime.”
But there is bubbling frustration among Republican strategists working House and Senate races that the president and his team have been slow to focus on any of it. Trump has been consumed by the war in Iran and by the construction of a $400 million White House ballroom that has become an unlikely political liability — a gilded symbol, his critics argue, of a president more focused on monuments to himself than on voters squeezed by more everyday concerns.
Some of the major fights Trump has picked of late have only made life harder for Republican incumbents. One House Republican up for re-election in a swing district pointed to the president’s inflammatory Easter morning social media posts, his attacks on the pope and his habit of naming things after himself — episodes which, the lawmaker said, only serve to “fire up the people that want to put a check on his power, instead of taking his energy and focusing on stuff that makes their lives better at home.”
“I still think there’s a lot of members that don’t understand what we’re up against — and that includes leadership,” the House Republican said, granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. “It’s hard to tell if they truly believe the rhetoric that we’re gonna hold the House, or if they’re just saying that to make us feel like we can take some risks and take some really [bad] votes, and they’re just trying to get us to walk the plank for another piece of legislation that they feel they need.”
Several Republican strategists who spoke with MS NOW pointed to missed opportunities to tout the president’s record, and said that the window to alter the trajectory of the election is narrowing.
“If we can somehow — on a grand scale — tout our wins, get our message out and find some clearly stated wins with Iran and foreign policy, we’ll be on better footing,” said T.W. Arrighi, a Republican strategist and former spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.” But I want to spend the summer doing that, with prices ticking down. I don’t want to be spending just two months of the fall doing it.”
Jacqueline Alemany is co-anchor of “The Weekend” and a Washington correspondent for MS NOW.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
A federal judge in Washington has denied a bid Wednesday brought by a watchdog group to immediately block the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund, for now choosing to trust the department’s assertions that it is not moving forward with the fund.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled immediately, denying Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the Department of Justice from taking steps to create the fund.
Throughout the 30-minute hearing, the DOJ reiterated that the administration was not moving forward with the nearly $1.8 billion fund, which seeks to compensate individuals who allege they have been politically targeted or victimized by the DOJ.
Andrew Block, the only lawyer present for the government, repeatedly cited Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s June 2 congressional testimonyin which he said the administration was “not moving forward” with plans to create the fund.
Leon indicated he agreed with the DOJ’s position that the case appeared to be moot, saying he was not persuaded there was an issue for the court to decide regarding the creation of the fund. He issued a stern warning to the DOJ, saying, “Don’t play possum with this court!” — meaning he does not want to be deceived.
The plaintiffs argued Blanche’s testimony did not amount to an official cancellation. Nikhel Sus, CREW’s attorney, said Blanche “refused to memorialize that rescission,” or in other words, put it in writing. Sus said that was “highly unusual.” Leon responded, “This whole case is highly unusual to say the least.”
Leon asked the government twice why they would not just rescind the order that established the fund. Block responded, “I don’t know,” and pointed again to Blanche’s public statements about the fund’s future.
Both Leon and Sus raised the issue of Trump’s continued public defense of the fund. “It can still be an important issue and also not moving forward,” Block said. “That isn’t a direction to move forward with the fund.”
Although Leon rejected CREW’s bid for an immediate block, he indicated he is still considering its request for a longer-term block against the fund.
A block order from a separate federal judge in Virginia remains in effect until at least Friday.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
The date when Social Security’s trust fund is expected to run out of money just got bumped up. The fund is now projected to empty in 2032according to a new report released by Social Security’s trustees.
The new depletion date isn’t an earth-shaking change — it’s only a quarter earlier than the estimate in last year’s report. But it illustrates how President Donald Trump’s policies are degrading a program he promised to never jeopardize — and accelerating an approaching crisis in how our government will assist the elderly and disabled.
The report names three factors that contributed to the earlier insolvency date. One is a declining fertility rate, but the other two drivers can be traced back to Trump: a drop in immigration into the country, and the “substantial effect” of the tax policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill he signed last summer.
Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities.
Reduced immigration during Trump’s second term — especially when coupled with a declining fertility rate — strains Social Security because the program is funded through payroll taxes. Those come out of people’s paychecks, and fewer workers supporting an aging population means the program receives less revenue. Indeed, Social Security already has been tapping its trust fund for the better part of the past two decades because the program’s costs have exceeded its cash income. And as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out last yearlast year’s tax cuts were a boon to the rich but a bust for the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.
To be clear, if the fund is depleted, Social Security won’t go belly up. Benefits will continue to be paid out, but there will be a large drop in the amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the “average monthly cut would total $500, which is more than what the average retired household spends on groceries each month.”
That would be a huge blow to the budgets of many older Americans. Social Security is a major source of income for most retirees, and roughly 40% of beneficiaries over the age of 65 rely on it for most of their income. And it would mark the destabilization of the sole source of retirement security for most Americans that is supposed to be insulated from ups and downs — unlike 401K plans. As the CBPP has pointed outSocial Security is “most workers’ only source of guaranteed retirement income that is not subject to investment risk or financial market fluctuations.”
Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities. His cuts to the Social Security Administration have left offices understaffedincreased wait timesand reduced quality of customer service.
Ultimately, Trump is exacerbating a colossal social safety net problem that predates him, and the trust fund will hit dire straits after he has left office. Democrats need to have clear plans for shoring up the program and making it robust for the future — which will require not being sheepish about taxes as a tool for renewing the social contract. And when Republicans try to claim that they, too, are champions of Social Security, all Democrats need to do is point to the truth.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The latest from Northern Ireland: “The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed for calm on Wednesday after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles. The appeal came as a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder and as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians in Northern Ireland condemned the violence by ‘masked thugs’ that had targeted ethnic minorities.”
* In related news: “The British government hit out at X owner Elon Musk Wednesday, accusing him of whipping up tensions online ahead of disorder in Belfast.”
* The tenuous state of a dubious ceasefire: “Trump said the U.S. is going to hit Iran ‘hard’ today when pressed by reporters in the Oval Office about his statement earlier that Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for taking ‘too long’ to reach a peace agreement. ‘Well, we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard, resuming bombing,’ he said.”
* The latest casualty figures from Lebanon: “Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 3,666 people, including 131 healthcare workers, and injured more than 11,300 since the U.S. and Israel began their war with Iran in late February, the Lebanese health ministry reported yesterday.”
* The changing nature of modern warfare: “Ukraine is wreaking havoc on unarmored trucks and trains in the battlefield’s rear, using drones with upgraded engines and batteries, integrated Starlink communication systems and new artificial-intelligence capabilities. The ramped-up attacks are causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations and reducing Russian military activity on the front.”
* This seems like a reasonable request: “Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee demanded Wednesday that Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s controversial pick for acting director of national intelligence, submit to a full security check before assuming the post, including an examination of his financial holdings and foreign contacts.”
* Some market trends can’t be stopped despite the White House’s best efforts: “Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power. Data released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said.”
* A bizarre schedule for a nonemergency vanity project: “Federal officials are laying more groundwork to begin construction on President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, sharing additional documents that detail the project’s scope and an aggressive timetable for potentially completing work before Trump’s term ends. According to National Park Service documents posted this month, the administration envisions 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round, in hopes of completing the project within two to three years.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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