Political News

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 20 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Democrats appear to have flipped a state legislative district in western Pennsylvania that Donald Trump won less than two years ago by eighteen points. This has big implications for the midterms, and for hidden reasons, it’s really a reason for optimism. It’s no accident that this comes as Trump has hit yet another series of new lows in polling, and we have a bunch of new data that strongly suggests things are starting to trend in the Democrats’ direction in a new way.

We’re going to work through all of it with Michael Cohen, who has a good piece on his Substack, Truth and Consequences, arguing that the big story of this moment is GOP extremism. Michael, good to have you on.

Michael Cohen: Great to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me.

Sargent: So in this Pennsylvania state legislative district north of Pittsburgh in Butler County, Democrat Brandon Dukes is slightly ahead of Republican Scott Tempko. This district backed Trump by 18 in 2024. It’s voted reliably Republican for decades.

Note of caution here—the AP has not yet called the race, but either way, the fact that this district moved by this much is a big story for Democrats. Michael, your thoughts on that?

Cohen: It’s actually a continuation of a good story for Democrats, which is that in the vast majority of special elections since Trump took office in 2025, Democrats have dominated, and often by double digits. This is yet one more place where Democrats are overperforming. And look, the reality is that this kind of overperformance in special elections is usually a pretty good indication of where things are headed in the midterm elections.

You saw this in 2018—Democrats doing very well in special elections and then winning a House majority in November. I mean, that’s kind of where these things are leading. However, I gotta say that the level of overperformance is actually greater than we’ve seen before. I mean, again, you mentioned 19 points yesterday in Pennsylvania. This keeps happening, and it should tell us something about where the electorate is right now.

Sargent: Absolutely. And there’s actually an example from 2018 that applies very well. Recall that before the 2018 midterms, Democrat Conor Lamb won a House special election in southwestern Pennsylvania. Trump had carried that district two years earlier, in 2016, by like 20 points. And so this was a big shift, and it was a harbinger of the midterm blowout in 2018 that was to come.

Now, I think for a bunch of reasons, this midterm probably won’t match the huge pickup Dems made in House seats in 2018. But still, I think we should note that at least three very competitive House races are in Pennsylvania. And I see this as good news. Again, even though it hasn’t been called, the shift itself is good news, in a state that’s going to really help decide control of the House, right?

Cohen: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. You make a great observation, that you know, Democrats are unlikely to do as well as in 2018 just because there are fewer seats that are competitive. But when you look at the raw numbers and you look at where they are in the generic ballot, I actually think they might be in a better position, just with fewer seats that are available for them to win.

However, if the trend lines continue where they’re going, and Trump’s approval rating remains where it is, which is in the mid-30s at this point, you know, you could see a situation in which the bottom just falls out for Republicans, and you see a huge shift toward Democrats, which means that a lot of places we haven’t thought are competitive could be competitive.

Sargent: I will point out that the Fifty Plus One site has the generic House ballot matchup right now at Democrats plus six. That’s still not quite where we need it to be for Democrats to win the Senate. But it seems to be moving right now. It seems like Democrats are gaining in this generic House ballot matchup. And I think it’s worth focusing on this too. The electorate in midterms is different from the electorate in presidential years.

A new YouGov poll really gets at that. It has Dems up by seven points in the generic House ballot matchup, which is perfectly consistent with the averages showing it at six that we just mentioned. But the YouGov poll has Democrats leading by 23 points among those who are extremely enthusiastic about voting.

As you know, being a veteran of following politics, Michael, midterm election electorates tend to be highly educated, engaged voters. And so there are lots and lots of signs that Republicans could kind of sit out this election, especially without Trump on the ballot. Can you talk about that dynamic?

Cohen: I think that’s the biggest issue that we should be looking at between now and election day—these voters, Republican voters, who are not happy with Trump, but who are, as of now, still voting Republican. There’s this group, I guess called double haters, in which they don’t like the Democratic Party, but they’re not happy with Trump. And if those voters shift against the GOP, that’s when you see a real bloodbath.

But I mean, I think it’s important to point this out, that it’s still very hard for Democrats to do this. We’re still talking about a place like—take Alaska, right? Trump’s won all three of his elections there by double digits. Now you’re looking at a situation in which Democrats could potentially win a Senate seat. Right now they look like they’re pretty well positioned to do that. That’s a pretty crazy outcome.

In Texas, Democrats have generally done, you know, OK—I mean, OK at least in a red state. They haven’t lost by as big a margin as they’ve lost elsewhere. So you could see that begin to shift. But it’s really hard for any party, in so many places where they have done poorly, to all of a sudden overperform. And that’s what Democrats need to do. But again, the trend lines seem to be moving in that direction.

Sargent: You brought up the Alaska Senate race, so I will point out that in the nonpartisan primary that was just held in Alaska, the Democrat Mary Peltola got forty-eight percent of the vote. The leading Republican, Dan Sullivan, got forty-two percent of the vote. And so, God, that is a reason for optimism right there.

I mean, she’s beating the Republican right at this moment. Now, I don’t want to get too optimistic, but if you’re looking at Alaska really being in play, and now it looks like it’s really within reach for Democrats, you can start to see a path to the majority.

And so, I agree with you that Michigan heavily complicates the picture, but that is a real cause for optimism—Peltola being up.

Cohen: And it’s not just Peltola being up, it’s also Sullivan being, you know, in the low forties. An incumbent running for reelection—that’s usually a pretty bright red light that suggests you’re in serious trouble to win reelection. The thing with Peltola is that she’s won statewide before, right? She did this in, what, 2018, I believe—she won statewide, and she won again in 2020, and then she lost in 2022, in a bad environment for Democrats.

So I just think that she has a track record in Alaska. Sullivan appears to be an unpopular incumbent. The national environment is just terrible for Republicans. So yeah. And she’s leading every poll. So it does seem like she’s got a chance. But again, like I said a second ago, you have to remember, these are red states. And for Democrats—I mean, you could see Democrats win two or three Senate seats in red states.

I mean, I think we have to step back here and just realize for a second how unusual a situation we’re in right now, where you have this many Republican seats—places where Trump, again, won by double digits in many cases—competitive. This is just very unusual in our modern political environment. Keep in mind, right now, for example, there’s not a single Democratic senator in a state that Trump won three straight elections, right?

There’s one Republican senator in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024, and that would be Maine, and that’s Susan Collins, and she looks like she might might lose. So, for Democrats to be competitive in Iowa, in Ohio, in Alaska, in Texas—states that again went for Trump all three times—is really unusual. And I think it speaks to just how deeply unpopular he is as president, and how much his unpopularity has hurt the Republican brand.

Sargent: Well, that brings us to Trump’s numbers. We had a new Reuters poll this week that has Trump’s approval rating down to a dismal 33 percent, 64 percent disapprove. Now, it’s possible that Donald Trump’s approval isn’t down at 33 percent. It isn’t quite that low, possibly.

But note this: Trump has just hit his lowest point ever in The New York Times average of polls, which has him at 37 percent approving, with 59 percent disapproving. The Times average is kind of conservative. It has a lot of data in it. For him to be twenty-two points underwater by those averages suggests maybe that the 33 percent that Reuters has might not be far from where he really is now. What do you think?

Cohen: I mean, it’s hard with polling these days, because you have a lot of lousy polling out there. I mean, if you look at, when the Times breaks it down to the select pollsters and their other pollsters—amongst the good pollsters, he’s doing rather poorly. What I think is most interesting about his numbers is, it’s not just that he is unpopular. It’s that he’s really unpopular.

You look at, like, his strong disapproval, it’s generally flirting around 50 percent, with the somewhat-disapprove, like, in the single digits. And people who don’t like Trump really don’t like Trump. And that, I think, is a little bit unusual. I mean, look, George Bush at the end of his second term was this unpopular—he was actually more unpopular, it was in the 20s, right?

But that was not before a midterm election. It was before a presidential election, 2008, in which Democrats did exceptionally well. So you know, I do think that the Trump factor here is what is driving all of this.

Sargent: But one other thing—I want to pick up on what you said about the strong disapproval of Trump, because I think people miss the importance of this. It’s not that unusual to see a poll in which 50 percent of the country strongly disapproves of Donald Trump. That is unbelievable.

And again, if you think about that in the context of the midterm electorate, then it becomes even more meaningful. Midterm electorates tend to favor the out party. They’re made up of more engaged voters. The voters who come out in a presidential race, maybe for a Donald Trump, don’t come out as much. And so the strong disapproval drives the turnout for the out party in a big way. I think those two things together, they really have synergy, and could mean a lot.

Cohen: You raise a really interesting point here, I think, that people won’t comment on, which is that when Trump’s not on the ballot, Republican candidates tend to underperform. So it’s not just that he’s unpopular. It’s that without him on the ballot, all those Trump voters who turn out for him are not going to turn out. I mean, traditionally they haven’t turned out.

And so if that happens again, it makes the Republican challenge that much greater.

Sargent: Maybe this is how we should think about it. To the people who approve of Trump, at least—you know, whoever’s left that still approves of him—Trump’s not on the ballot, right? But to the people who disapprove of Trump, Trump is on the ballot.

Cohen: Right. That’s right.

Sargent: They’re going out to vote against Donald Trump. He is on the ballot. They see this election as an opportunity to, A, register their profound disapproval of the president and their profound disapproval with the direction of the country, and B, put a check on Donald Trump. So you put all that together, and it starts to look like even more of a perfect storm, I think.

Cohen: I agree. I think it’s exactly right. I mean, look, I would have said to you a year ago that I thought this would be a bad midterm, because look, midterms are always bad for the party in power. Historically, they always lose seats. And you could say it would be worse for Republicans because Trump’s not on the ballot, you don’t have those occasional Trump voters.

So this was always going to be a rough cycle for Republicans. I think what’s made it potentially an historically bad cycle is just how unpopular Trump has become. And frankly, that Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot with some of these really lousy nominees.

Sargent: Yeah. And just allowing for the point you raised earlier—which is that things could start shifting the other way if Republican voters come home, you know, that’s all very possible. There’s still a long way to go here. Anything can happen. But there are a lot of things falling into place right now.

CNN’s Harry Enten caught something really interesting, which is that Trump is absolutely bleeding Hispanic men. Enten pointed out that Trump won that demographic, Hispanic men, by ten points in 2024. But now, in CNN polling, his net approval among them is minus 41 points. And so I think this is significant, because it’s like another way in which the Trump coalition is falling apart.

Hispanic men were the big success story for the GOP in 2024. Reams and reams of punditry were produced that said that this shows that there was a major realignment underway. It’s all gone now. Hispanic men, according to Enten, favored the Democrats by twenty points, and Enten thinks this will have a, quote-unquote, “massive impact” on the midterms. In fact, he called the numbers bonkers, and they are bonkers. I mean, that’s just crazy stuff.

Cohen: No, they are. And if you look at—I mean, you could go back to last year, the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, some of the biggest overperformance by Democrats was in Hispanic districts, Hispanic areas, right? The drop-off in Hispanic support for Trump has been extraordinary.

And to your point—I mean, you said this Trump coalition. It was a coalition of convenience, right? The 2024 coalition that Trump won with, it was people who were upset with Biden, upset with Harris, upset with the state of the country. But those Hispanic voters have just, I think, more than any other demographic group, abandoned the Republican Party. And frankly, one of the reasons why I think Texas is—why I think Talarico has a good chance of winning—is because the drop-off in support among Hispanics in Texas has been extraordinary. And they’re a huge part of the electorate there. And that alone could be enough for Talarico to win.

So I agree with you. I mean, I think that is an underappreciated part of this. Look, Hispanic voters are localized in just a few states—Florida, California, Texas. But in the places where they are, where they vote in big numbers, they can make a big difference. And I think Texas is the most interesting place to see how much that bleeding of Hispanic support really hurts the Republican Party.

Sargent: Yes. And I think we should point out here as well that the successes that Republicans had in some of those South Texas counties that are very Hispanic-heavy were kind of seen as the locus of this realignment for Trump and Republicans.

And so for those Texas Hispanics to now be shifting back toward Democrats once again shows how absurd it was to read Trump’s one-point-five-point victory in 2024 as a major realignment moment, right?

Cohen: Don’t get me started on this topic. I mean, it just makes me crazy. All of the punditry about 2024, I think, just kind of missed the mark to a large extent. This was a 1.5-point victory, as you said—one of the lowest margins of victory in a presidential election in recent memory. And, it was really a backlash against the party in power.

And look, we’ve been going through this cycle every two years, right? 2016, you could say it was a backlash to Democrats. 2018, a backlash to Trump. 2020, a backlash against Trump again. 2022, backlash against Biden. 2024, backlash against Biden. 2026, a backlash against Trump. This is how these cycles go.

We were living in a period of extreme anti-incumbency, of anti-system politics. And, you know, it was not reasonable to believe that Trump would be able to hold this coalition—also because he’s, you know, he doesn’t seem to care about politics. He cares about going after his political enemies, and he cares about his little pet projects. He is not a politician who seems interested at all in growing the Republican Party, in helping it prosper. I don’t even think he cares. I really don’t think he cares at all.

And that is a problem for the party. And he has pushed them, the Republicans in the House and the Senate, to follow through on an agenda that is unpopular. And he has overreached, right? He acted as though he had this huge mandate, and that led him to pursue this policy on immigration enforcement that has created enormous backlash, not just among Hispanics, but among a whole host of Americans. He went forward with the tariff thinking that had broad support. Guess what? That’s creating a huge backlash.

And in a place like Iowa, it could actually cost Republicans the governorship, the Senate, and a couple of House seats. So I do think that, you know, we really do need to go back and look to 2024 and recognize that this was a response, a backlash, to Trump, to Harris, and to Biden. But it was not creating a new coalition, not by any means.

Sargent: So just to review all this very quickly: there’s been a huge shift in a Pennsylvania state legislative district toward Dems. Mary Peltola is looking very good in Alaska. Hispanics are abandoning Trump in enormous numbers. Trump’s approval is down at 33 percent in a new poll and down at 37 percent in the New York Times averages. And Democrats are plus six or plus seven in the generic ballot, and are winning by double digits among very, very engaged voters.

Those pieces all together, they paint a pretty good picture, I think, Michael.

Cohen: They do. I mean, look, again, we have two months to go until the election, and it’s easy, I think, for Democrats to get really excited about where things are going. But I think, as it stands, the trend lines point in one direction, and that is for Democrats to do well. I mean, at this point, I think—the chance Democrats take the House—I would be stunned if they did not end up taking the House. And the Senate, again, that it’s in play really says a lot about the direction American politics has gone.

But I think Democrats need to understand something, which is that if they do well in the midterms, it is not because they have convinced Americans they have the best plan for fixing the economy, or they have the best plan for health care, or they’re better on immigration. They will have won because they’re not Donald Trump and the Republican Party. That is the source of their success over the past year or so, and will, I believe, likely be the source of their success in November. But I think we have to be very clear as to what’s happening here. This is an anti-incumbent wave, OK? It’s not a pro-Democratic wave.

Sargent: Well, you know how politics is, man. The second things go your way, you think that it’s a realignment, just like they did.

Cohen: Right. Exactly. That’s exactly it. And I think both parties get into huge danger when they overanalyze or over-determine what happens in an election, right? I mean, a lot of what happens in November is going to have nothing to do with the campaigns Democrats won, right? I mean, some of it will. But it’ll have a lot more to do with the fact that Republicans are unpopular. That’s the biggest thing. And I think Democrats need to understand that.

And they need to have a plan for that when they go into 2028—to understand that, like, they haven’t made the case to Americans. Although, having said that, because, you know, how unpopular Trump is—this whole cycle feels like 2006, 2008 to me. 2006, Democrats had a huge victory in the second midterm for W. Then you go into ‘08, you have the Great Recession, you have the war, people are upset about that, Democrats got an even bigger victory in 2008. I think that’s kind of where things are going. But as you remember, in 2010, what happened to the Democrats? They got their butts kicked. So be careful. That’s what I said.

Sargent: All extremely well said. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Michael Cohen’s Substack, Truth and Consequences. Michael, awesome to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

Cohen: Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Greg.

Donald Trump has lost his war in reality and virtual reality, not only with Iran but also in the arena where he thought he was the eternal master, in image and myth. He has lost it on land, sea and air—and in thin air. He has lost his war both physically and metaphorically. He has lost it in the Strait of Hormuz, but, perhaps equally dangerous for his political survival, he has lost it in his manosphere.

Trump’s Iran War has shattered the once awestruck projection of him as the invulnerable alpha male. “There’s no one like that guy,” said Joe Rogan. “It’s the only reason why he survived all the shit they tried to put him through.” Now, symptomatic of the breakdown of Trump’s once seemingly granitic support along generational and ideological lines, Rogan calls the war “crazy,” “insane,” “nuts”; says Trump has “betrayed” his followers, and that Trump is blithering along with “no clear way to resolve this at all.” Trump has gone haywire. He is the arsonist igniting the bonfire of the manosphere.

The manosphere emerged in the 2024 campaign as an innovative component at the center of Trump’s political machine, a network of podcasters, influencers, and shock jocks serving as a pipeline to young men, exploiting their social and economic anxieties, particularly by targeting them with crude misogynist messages serving as vicarious defiance against an oppressive, woke feminist culture. 

The theory claiming a fundamental realignment of American politics in the 2024 election was based on the stunning statistic of 56 percent of young men in the 18-to-30-year-old demographic lurching rightward toward Trump—the exact percent that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and had supposedly given the Democrats a secure advantage. The manosphere was credited for engineering the reversal. It became instant conventional wisdom that the bros’ allegiance to Trump would be a permanent factor in American politics for a generation or more to come.

Barron Trump, the youngest son and least likely to play a significant political role, managed to insert himself as a go-between. Cloistered and cosseted, overseen by Melania supposedly hovering as a helicopter mom, he was an odd, extraordinarily privileged exemplar of the socially isolated and awkward young men who became addicted listeners of the transgressive talkers blasting outrageous riffs on how to escape the domination of overbearing women. He was the target audience. His foray was his attempt to take on an identity without breaking out of his cocoon. He was in an upside-down fairy tale where he became a prince in the shadow of his distant father, venturing forth to promote his father and gain his approval. Barron was proving himself to be one of his brothers, the most exclusive bro culture, and getting a backstage pass to be with his Rat Pack.  

Barron initiated the formation of the Trump manosphere by reaching out to the most notorious operators of them all, the Tate Brothers. Their reputation preceded them. The Tates had attracted one of the sphere’s largest followings, numbering beyond 10 million. They were prominently in the headlines when Barron spoke with them, held for trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking, violent assault of a minor, rape, and money laundering. (The brothers deny all the charges.) The ideology, if it rose to that, supported the enterprise. Andrew Tate held forth that “women shouldn’t vote” and they “belong to men.” 

Through Barron, the Tates geared up their networks for Trump, galvanizing the pupils of their Hustlers University who matriculated for PhDs, “pimping hoes degrees,” and the Tates’ more elite $8,000 membership fee “War Room.” “I’m very close with the Trump family,” said Andrew Tate. 

Barron kickstarted the manosphere campaign in April 2024, hosting a dinner of influencers at Mar-a-Lago, including Tate’s business partner, Justin Waller, who calls himself “the third Tate brother.” Waller insinuated himself as Barron’s style consultant and dating coach, according to The New Yorker, and met numerous times with Donald Trump. He posted a photograph of himself with Barron with the caption: “History in the making.” 

Waller ran a centralized command structure with a military-style hierarchy of “generals” and “operators” coordinating a network of content creators to push the MAGA line. The Tates and the others transformed their operations using them to transmit digital Trump memes and messages hundreds of millions of times. Millions of campaign dollars were siphoned to the Nelk Boys, podcasters who were close allies of the Tates, granted repeated interviews with Trump and speaking at his rallies. They created a “Send the Vote” operation to mobilize the “bro vote,” which, according to Fox News, “reached more than 140 million people through influencers, nearly 1 million on streamed content, and nearly 7 million people through podcasts specifically.” 

The manosphere effort also brought in a Republican operative, Alex Bruesewitz, 28 years old, to work closely with Barron. Bruesewitz’s sterling credential was having been as a former organizer of the “Stop the Steal” group that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to help plan the January 6 rally. When Bruesewitz was questioned by the Congressional Committee on the January 6 Insurrection about his activities, he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his counsel, Joseph McBride, who would go on to represent January 6 defendants and become the attorney for the Tate Brothers. 

After the campaign, Bruesewitz became a consultant to Trump’s personal political action committee called Never Surrender, Inc., which paid him to serve as the chief outside media advisor for the Trump White House, working hand in glove with the communications office to produce AI-generated videos depicting Trump as a strongman. 

Trump’s image has always been a centerpiece of the manosphere. He was idealized as the paragon of uber-masculinity, supreme domination and physical strength: the alpha male. The “bulletproof badass” was “the best president in history,” and upon his election Andrew Tate declared that “THE PATRIARCHY IS BACK,” adding, “Trumps back fellas. Get on your A game.”

On election night, the blowhards of the manosphere were kings of the world. At his victory party, Trump turned the stage over to Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, who called the roll of the manosphere heroes to thank them. At Trump’s inauguration, they were accorded seats of honor alongside the tech lords, front and center as the new powers that be. The influencers were hailed as the ultimate realignment champions.

At the core of the manosphere, however, was an alleged transnational criminal syndicate, charged with human trafficking, sexual violence, and money laundering. The very same operations that were purposed for the Trump campaign were simultaneously fronts to coerce women into sex work, where women claimed they were beaten and even strangled to the point of unconsciousness during sex.   

The Romanian indictment of the Tates’ global crime racket was hardly a secret to the Trumps and their team when they sealed the bargain. Crime and politics had become entangled, the politics spreading the crime, the crime advancing the politics. For the Tates, it was also a get-out-of-jail card. The Trump connection was the path to immunity—and impunity. 

While the manosphere stars were being feted in Trump’s Washington, the Tates were being detained in a Romanian jail awaiting trial on longstanding charges of human trafficking and money laundering. Romania was in the grip of a constitutional crisis. The Tates were backers of a fringe candidate for president, Calin Georgescu, a pro-Putin ultra-nationalist, who had polled in the first round of the election in November at 23 percent, though only days earlier he’d polled at 5 percent.

Romanian state security discovered 85,000 cyberattacks on electoral infrastructure and coordinated digital amplification. “Stolen election-server credentials were found on Russian forums, and intelligence assessments linked the interference directly to Russian hybrid operations,” according to a report of the Institute of International and European Affairs. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the first-round results.

On February 15, 2025, new Vice President JD Vance attended the Munich Security Conference, where he denounced the Romanian court ruling: “But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.” On the sidelines of the conference, Ric Grenell, Trump’s special envoy, cornered the Romanian foreign minister Emil Hurezeanu. “Hey, how are the Tate boys?” Grinell pointedly asked. It was taken as an implicit threat and a signal that Trump wanted their release, as Hurezeanu explained to The New Yorker. By the next morning, the Tates were on a plane to Miami. Roger Stone, the Nixonian dirty trickster and convicted felon whose crimes were commuted by Trump, posted a photo of himself flanked by the Tate Brothers triumphantly smoking cigars, with the caption: “Richard Grenell secured the release of the Tates.” 

Dana White orchestrated their celebratory return, greeting them at a UFC match in Las Vegas. “Welcome to the States, boys!” he exclaimed. They were seated within a ringside entourage that included the director of the FBI, Kash Patel.

Bruesewitz took on another task: to extend MAGA as an international movement, traveling as a non-official envoy to the far right in Europe. On November 5, 2025, he addressed a meeting of the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) in Berlin. The AfD is pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine, boasts leading figures who have promoted neo-Nazi rhetoric, and has been labeled “extremist” by the German intelligence agency. Bruesewitz told the AfD meeting that they were “brave visionaries.” “We are in this together,” he said.  

The first cracks in the manosphere edifice opened over the Epstein files. By May of this year, Rogan accused Trump of “trying to gaslight you on that.” Rogan railed on his show on June 16, “It’s like sometimes you just get fed up. Like, where the fuck are these Epstein files? The fuck is this? Why is this redacted? Where is it?”

For many of the manosphere performers, the war was the decisive event that shifted their tone from adulation to betrayal. Theo Von, a standup comedian turned podcaster, had been perhaps Barron’s favorite. “‘Dad, he’s such a big guy. You got to do an interview,’” Trump recalled his son telling him. Bruesewitz set up Trump’s appearance and inducted Von as the class clown into the manosphere. There he was at the inauguration, and few months later in May 2025 there he was again at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar where Trump introduced him to entertain the troops. “I want to influence you to clap for a man who’s a great influencer,” Trump said. Theo Von was supposed to be the manosphere’s Bob Hope. 

“I can’t believe we went to this war,” Von bemoaned after Trump launched it. “When we started bombing Iran, I was like, ‘This can’t be true.’” The jokester felt he had been pranked. By April, Von called Trump’s war “diabolical” and “insane.”

The Tate Brothers, meanwhile, set out as pilgrims to meet another strongman. On June 4, they landed in Moscow as Vladimir Putin’s guests to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, greeted upon their arrival with the red carpet ritual accorded to visiting heads of state, a chorus in folk dress singing “Motherland,” and traditional bread and salt. “We came to Russia because serious countries need to be taken seriously,” said Andrew Tate. While he was there, he visited a Russian tank training ground and fired weapons.

Andrew Tate had praised Putin for years for “competence and nationalism,” and said conservatives were disappointed he had not succeeded in “educating the American public on the insanity of the American system.” In 2022, Tate promoted a Russian video of Putin as Santa Claus saving a child from gay parents. “Russia believes the proxy war against NATO is necessary to preserve Christian values and fight satanism which controls the West,” Tate posted. Voice of America reported that the video and messaging had been created by the Russians.   

Upon the Tates’ return from Russia, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service charged them on July 19 with 59 counts of human trafficking, rape, and child pornography. They were arrested in Miami and held for extradition. The White House went silent. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated there were no plans to intervene.

The Tates’ lawyer, Joe McBride, issued a warning to Trump. “Andrew Tate was a material participant in ensuring President Trump’s victory,” he said. “And if Trump doesn’t support him, and if the next people who are going to be running for office potentially are just like, yeah, down the river he goes, that young cohort of people will break with the Republican Party in the next election.”

If the Republicans lose the midterm elections, in part having alienated the constituency that returned Trump to the White House, the manosphere will become the subject of an intense congressional investigation. Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Republican Chairman James Comer requesting a formal probe and specifically subpoenas of communications from the Department of Justice, the State Department, the White House—and, by name, Barron Trump. Comer has stonewalled her demand. Ansari told me that if and when the Democrats are the in majority, she would seek to systematically unravel the network that exercised influence, beginning with members of the Trump family, in order to shield the Tate Brothers. Barron Trump, the most protected son, is exposed as a midterm campaign issue and beyond that, perhaps one day as a witness under oath.

Trump, then, is at war with the world he has made. Alex Bruesewitz, working busily with the White House trolls, now churns out videos of Trump to prop up his image as the alpha male. Trump is the towering leader of “Guardians of the World” with jets and warships bombing Iran; Trump is the “Cosmic Commander: A New Era Begins Among the Stars”; Trump is a swashbuckler seizing an Iranian ship, crying, “It’s Our Oil Tanker Now!”; Trump is a superhero with a red Superman cape rescuing George Washington falling off Mount Rushmore; Trump is dignified standing next to John F. Kennedy in front of the White House; Trump is Vegas Elvis in a rhinestone jumpsuit unbuttoned to display his muscled chest. 

The Iranians, for their part, have produced viral, AI-generated videos to portray Trump as a petulant and impotent Lego character. The Iranian Trump figure naps at the Resolute Desk, frantically launches missiles to hide his name in the Epstein files, and sweats playing dice in a casino. The Iranian portrayal of the little plastic toy is far more realistic than the White House fantasies.

Trump’s response to his insoluble quandary is to launch a new crusade. His latest war is against an even more implacable adversary than Iran. His enemy now is time. He posts photos of himself with captions reading: “President Trump gets YOUNGER!” and “President Trump ages in reverse!”

Who’s your daddy?

The verdict was swift and unequivocal: Megan Romer’s interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick was a disaster for the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Romer is the national co-chair. And it wasn’t just the likes of the notoriously anti-DSA New York Post, which wrote that Romer “appeared clueless.” “What does the DSA actually want?” the Forward asked. “Its national co-chair can’t say.” The Independent wrote that Romer sounded “completely lost,” while Mediate said she “metaphorically stepped on a banana peel and tumbled into a thorny bush.”

Inside the DSA, opinions of Romer’s performance were more nuanced. Some said they were happy with how she portrayed socialism on camera. But the interview also concerned many inside a group desperate to keep itself unified amid explosive growth since 2024, when their own Zohran Mamdani launched his electrifying campaign for New York mayor. “I do think she’s caused damage,” one DSA member in a position of leadership said. “People from all across the political left have been messaging me and some others, begging us to take her off the air.”

It wasn’t Romer’s first media stumble. Just weeks earlier, she went on Fox News and went viral for her one-word affirmative answers—“yes,” “absolutely”—to rapid-fire questions about abolishing everything from the presidency to borders to prisons. That could be shrugged off as a right-wing trap. But the optics of the New Yorker interview weren’t much better, as Romer’s bubbly energy and bright-red eyeglasses clashed with Remnick’s calm, paternalistic tone. The editor spoke at times like a bored scholar holding office hours with a pupil. After the interview, Romer expressed annoyance with Remnick on X, calling him a “debate bro.”

“Listening to a lot of David’s questions, I don’t necessarily think they were bad,” said City & State reporter Peter Sterne, who covers the DSA and is a former member of the organization. “But I do think that they were hostile.”

Romer, who did not respond to my request for comment, certainly made some eyebrow-raising statements in the interview, such as saying she “probably would have” attended the controversial pro-Palestinian rally held in New York City on October 8, 2023, if she’d been able to. The DSA did not organize the rally—which was criticized by many as condoning Hamas’s attack on Israel the day prior—but promoted it on social media at the time before backpedaling with a statement apologizing for the “confusion” and calling for “peace, equality, and freedom for all Palestinians and Israelis.”

NYC-DSA member Eric Blanc said he was disappointed to hear Romer endorse the rally three years on. “We need to be really consistent about not giving any possible impression that fighting against the crimes of the Israeli government means in any way condoning what Hamas has done,” he said. “Megan, to her credit, at some points tried to push back a little bit against that, but then contradicted herself by saying, basically, we should still go to this rally.”

The DSA is not a monolith; differences in ideology are encouraged. The organization contains everyone from FDR-style social Democrats to revolutionary Maoists, and most DSA members join a smaller “caucus” that aligns with their beliefs. Romer is a member of Red Star, a Marxist-Leninist caucus on the left flank of the organization that’s even more committed to Palestine than she was willing to publicly admit; their post–October 7 statement was titled, “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You.”

The differences between national DSA and the New York chapter are especially pronounced, as writer and professor Nathan Newman explained an admittedly biased Substack post last month titled “The Sane NYC DSA vs the Crazy National DSA—A Guide for the Perplexed.” “It’s almost hard to believe they’re the same organization,” he wrote. “They aren’t, really. The pragmatic politics of the New York City chapter, with its broad neighborhood alliances and its block-by-block canvassing and its willingness to back candidates who can actually win and then govern, is radically at odds with the national leadership of the DSA, which is dominated by sectarian ideologues and has at points actively worked to undermine the very approach that makes New York succeed.”

So it’s no wonder that opinions of Romer’s performance in the New Yorker interview, and of Romer herself, vary widely within the DSA. “Megan is a very important leader to many in DSA, particularly those on the more left-wing side, and they’re not going to critique her publicly, nor would I expect them to,” said a source in regional leadership. This source added that the “most vocal opposition” to the interview was coming from Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork, two large caucuses on the right flank of the DSA.

Romer has history with both. SMC and Groundwork each pushed for an unconditional endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign in 2024. After internal debate, the national chapter instead offered a conditional endorsement, then withdrew it days later, citing an insufficient commitment to the Palestinian cause. Caucuses like Red Star were key in the decision to distance the DSA from the most prominent democratic socialist in America.

The most common criticism of Romer’s interview that I heard from DSA members concerned her unpreparedness for certain questions. When Remnick asked whether she believed there should be millionaires in this country, she said (not unwisely) that she was more concerned about billionaires. But she ran into trouble when she said she supported “taxing the hell out of millionaires,” and Remnick tried to pin her down on a number.

“Well, what does taxing the hell out of them mean?” he said with a huff. Romer dragged her feet. “Uh, yeah, you know, again,” she said, “I don’t have a solid—” Remnick cut her off. “But shouldn’t you?” he asked. “Um, that’s a good question,” she replied.

“If you’re the co-chair of DSA, shouldn’t you be more specific than just taxing the hell out of something?” Remnick asked. “What exactly do you mean?” Romer continued: “So, again, it’s democracy, right?...” She never got around to answering the question.

This response, one of several from the interview to go viral, did not sit well with some in the DSA. “She couldn’t really answer some of the basic policy questions about taxing the rich, which is really our bread and butter,” said the first DSA leader. “I think that’s quite damning.”

Blanc said Romer wasn’t convincing enough for those on the outside. The interview “didn’t articulate socialist politics in a way that I think would bring people closer to DSA if you weren’t already on board,” he said. “There were multiple times where … Megan said things that were obviously going to give the enemies of socialism in the Democratic Party and the Republicans a field day.”

Romer doubled down on a wholly socialist America (“We’re not fighting for a kinder, gentler capitalism”), defended abolishing the Senate (a position TNR editor Michael Tomasky agrees with), and said she opposed providing weapons to Ukraine in their war with Russia. “We should be sending huge teams of diplomats,” Romer said. Remnick’s response: “Russia would get off of Ukraine’s back by us sending diplomats?”

While Romer’s answers accurately reflect the DSA’s stances, they’re easily mocked by the establishment when put forth so directly. “The circles of DSA members that I talked to and were texting about this were pretty upset, because they understand the stakes right now,” Blanc said. “You’re not really speaking to Remnick there. You’re not speaking to Fox News people. You’re trying to speak to the people who are potentially going to watch that.”

Sterne was more sympathetic. “There’s a tension between wanting to appear reasonable and trying to win people over without moving away from what DSA actually believes,” he said. “I’m not sure that there’s that much Megan could have done differently, because she does have to represent this large and sometimes unwieldy coalition of DSA’s internal politics.”

Despite the criticism of Romer within the DSA, there’s little chance she will be replaced as co-chair before her term ends next summer. Ousting her prematurely would require a two-thirds majority vote from the DSA’s National Political Committee, or NPC, and the right branch of the organization knows that even suggesting the idea would enrage the left flank.

“She got by far the most votes during the co-chair elections last year,” Sterne said. “There is a lot of support for her. Even if people feel she’s not the strongest spokesperson, I think people are generally happy with her overall leadership of the organization.” Sidney Carlson White, an NPC member representing the left-wing Marxist Unity Group, confirmed as much. “There’s been no outcry from any of the caucuses,” he said, adding that he thought the interview was “generally viewed positively by membership.”

But that doesn’t mean others aren’t hoping for a sea change. “I think everyone thought she was doing a bad job, but it was sort of a ‘wait and see’ approach to assess the extent of the damage,” said the first DSA leader, who wants Romer gone. “As time has gone by, it does seem to be a serious issue.” Added the regional leader: “I don’t think she has a strong vision for what DSA should be. On top of that, she doesn’t seem like a strong spokesperson either. So I do support replacing her.” The same source said they expected Romer to “pull back” from public appearances.

Grace Mausser, the co-chair of NYC-DSA and a member of SMC, said she empathized with Romer. Mausser has also acted as a de facto spokeswoman for the DSA, recently making appearances on CBS and Fox & Friends. “Until the last two years, almost none of us had big media experience or did a lot of press,” she said. “I may disagree with Megan on some things, but Megan … like all of us in DSA, is adjusting to a very sudden spotlight on our movement.”

It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that just four days after the New Yorker interview, the DSA announced it was hiring a national press coordinator for the first time. “People feel that the co-chairs, both Megan and Ashik [Siddique], are doing their best,” Sterne said. “But there is a concern that they need better media training. Some people have also said maybe the co-chairs should not be the spokespeople.”

The level of discontent within the DSA is hard to discern; most regional and national members are reluctant to speak to the press. Requests for comment from Red Star and NPC members other than White went unanswered. Even those who are critical of Romer, or of the national chapter in general, are wary of giving fodder to the DSA’s bad-faith critics at a time when the organization is more politically successful than ever before. “We want people to understand that DSA is a nuanced organization that has its own internal political discussions and battles,” the regional leader explained, “but we also don’t wish to continue a media cycle that is always looking for divisions in the left.”

Since January 2025, a reigning principle of global markets has been something called TACO. TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” meaning whenever Trump does something stupid that creates financial instability, an adverse market reaction can be counted on to scare him into backing down. Until now TACO has kept the S&P 500 climbing to levels that make little economic sense. When 10-year Treasury bond yields spiked after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement in early April 2025, Trump chickened out, at least a little. Bond markets were “getting a little bit yippy,” he observed at the time. But now they’ve spiked to a 19-year high and (unless you count some dithering over a 50 percent Canada tariff) Trump isn’t chickening out. Asked Wednesday whether Americans should worry about the bond market, Trump said, “No, I don’t think so.” TACO, RIP.

There are all sorts of reasons the bond markets are going bonkers, not all of them having to do with Trump. Big Tech has decided it can’t sustain its enormous investment in Artificial Intelligence without borrowing, so it’s floated bonds this year totaling about half a trillion dollars. France, Canada, China and the United Kingdom are all carrying government debt that’s almost as big a percentage of their Gross Domestic Product as in the United States, where it’s 123 percent of GDP; in Japan the percentage is much higher.

But a lot of the bond market trouble is caused by two problems that Trump isn’t going to fix anytime soon.

One of these problems is entirely his own invention: the Iran war, which shows no signs of ending and is driving up inflation, especially overseas. In the United States, the Consumer Price Index is 3.4 percent, and while that isn’t catastrophic it does exceed wage gains. Should the new Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, move to check inflation with an interest-rate hike, there’s a good chance Trump will turn on him as he did with his previous Fed pick, Jerome Powell.

Trump could ease pressure on the bond market by announcing that he intends to let the Fed operate independently, but that isn’t going to happen in this lifetime. Meanwhile, growing evidence of cognitive failure in Trump’s endless, contradictory, and often deranged public statements about the war is creating serious doubt that, even if a plausible path to peace presents itself, Trump will be mentally competent to take it.

The other problem is the United States budget deficit, which is out of control in large part because of Trump’s 2025 tax cut, which is expected to expand the budget deficit by $4.5 trillion by 2035. Conceivably, Trump may announce some sort of spending cuts to show he’s lowering the deficit, but as with Trump’s earlier tax cuts, they will come out of the domestic discretionary budget, which is too small for any cuts to make much difference. Trump’s own Treasury department shows spending under Trump has gone up, not down, to the tune of $309 billion. The only thing Trump’s cuts to federal staffing managed to do is screw the government up; they’ve saved perhaps $53 billion, while incurring costs, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, of $71 billion. That nets out to a spending increase of $18 billion. That’s a high price to pay for a civil service less able to function.

Trump has taken cuts to Medicare and Social Security off the table, and he’s reduced somewhat the taxation of Social Security benefits. (He says he eliminated it, which is untrue.) The recent increase in Medicare and Social Security spending is driven pretty much entirely by demographic changes that can be undone only by lining elderly people up against a wall and shooting them dead. Politically, Trump has sworn off cuts to these programs, but even if he hadn’t, it’s hard to see how he could realize significant savings by cutting benefits A more practical approach would be to tax more of these benefits back by treating them the same as regular income, and also to eliminate the $184,000 income ceiling on Social Security tax. But that’s the opposite of Trump’s approach.

Both short-term and long-term, the only way to reduce the budget deficit is to tax our way out of it. Not even Democrats want to say that, but it’s true. The United States is an under-taxed country. Taxes on corporations, capital gains, and inheritance have fallen over time, and so has the top marginal income-tax rate. In 1980, the top marginal income-tax rate was 70 percent; today it’s 37 percent. As a percentage of GDP, federal tax revenues keep falling. At the start of the 21st century federal tax revenues were 20 percent of GDP. Today they’re 17 percent. When Barack Obama was president, the effective tax rate on the 400 wealthiest Americans was 30 percent. That was a scandal because it was no higher than the effective tax rate for all Americans. Today, though, the effective tax rate on the 400 wealthiest Americans has dropped to 24 percent. I’m on record opposing a wealth tax, but if we can’t find a way to tax, for instance, the income rich people live on by borrowing against their assets, a wealth tax will become unavoidable.

American insolvency is self-perpetuating. The more out of control the deficit gets, the higher 10-year Treasury bond yields rise. The higher 10-year Treasury bond yields rise, the more expensive it becomes for the federal government to borrow money. And the more expensive it gets for the feds to borrow money, the more the deficit grows even more out of control. Nobody wants to believe this, but deficits go down under Democrats because Democrats increase taxes. They go up under Republicans because Republicans cut taxes. It truly is no more complicated than that. Democrats are the party of solvency, and Republicans are the party of insolvency.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has attempted a mini-TACO in recent months by shifting United States borrowing to shorter-term debt (a gimmick Bessent criticized his predecessor, Janet Yellen, for resorting to). On Wednesday he announced that the federal government will double the size of its repurchases of long-term debt, from about $2 billion to about $4 billion. That’s another gimmick: reduce the surplus of 10-year Treasury bonds and you bring down the yield rates at which Treasury must sell those bonds to get anybody to buy them. It briefly sent bond yields downward Wednesday, but within a few hours they were rising again.

Another false hope, discussed by Andrew Duehren in The New York Times, is that the AI boom will increase productivity so spectacularly that revenue will gush into federal coffers. But everybody agrees that it won’t be enough to address the deficit problem in any meaningful way—and besides, absent a substantial increase in taxation of capital, revenue collection will be impeded by the reduction in revenues from labor as workers get replaced by machines. Our best minds need to get working on how to get a Large Language Model to pay income tax.

The experts say bond yields haven’t yet reached the crisis point at which a meaningful government response would be the only way to coax them back down, as President Bill Clinton, for instance, did in 1993 by cancelling his economic stimulus plan and turning instead to deficit reduction. But if we reach that crisis point, don’t expect Trump to do anything, because TACO is dead.

Donald Trump’s approval rating just hit an abysmal low of 33-64 in Reuters polling. That’s only one survey, but Trump also just hit a new low of 37-59 in New York Times polling averages, which suggests he’s likely in the mid-30s and may be trending toward the Reuters number. This comes as Democrats appear to have flipped a state legislative district in western Pennsylvania that Trump won in 2024 by 18 points. Though that race hasn’t been called yet, either way it’s an 18-point shift, a very good omen. Meanwhile, a CNN analysis finds Trump badly bleeding Hispanic men, a demographic he carried in 2024, another sign his coalition is imploding. We talked about all of it with Michael Cohen, author of a new piece on GOP extremism for his Substack, Truth and Consequences. We discuss what the Pennsylvania swing portends, why a Democratic Senate majority is now at least possible, why Trump losing Latinos is a huge deal, and what it means that Democrats are voting as if Trump is on the ballot this fall. Listen to this episode here.

It took only three words during a campaign speech from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff to throw the Trump White House and the Republican Party off its game. While lambasting Trump for corruption and laziness during a Sunday rally, Ossoff said, “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the…

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A cartoon by Tim Campbell. Related | Trump says struggling sailors haven’t been at sea ‘nearly long enough’…

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Sen. Darline Graham’s awful showing at Tuesday night’s South Carolina Republican Senate primary debate is a reminder that not everybody is ready for the job they aspire to. But in her defense, she’s just the latest in a long line of GOP blunderers in recent memory. The fact that someone shouldn’t be given an important job due to being corrupt or an incompetent boob does not necessarily…

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On Wednesday, the Fox News show “Outnumbered” wasted the world’s time with a segment called “Democrats enter their thirst trap era.” With large images of Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and former President Barack Obama projected behind the talking heads, the segment was a clear attempt to undermine the serious, policy-first progressives who have won seats and Democratic primaries across the country.

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The economy is teetering on the brink, with interest rates skyrocketing and gas prices creeping higher due to the quagmire President Donald Trump embroiled the U.S. in when he launched a war in Iran. But rather than working to fix what he broke, Trump is instead laser focused on the tacky renovation projects he’s undertaken—some of them illegally—on the White House grounds. On Wednesday…

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A cartoon by Jack Ohman. Related | Trump says struggling sailors haven’t been at sea ‘nearly long enough’…

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Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and comedian Janesh Rahlan took on the backlash against Flock cameras, as well as the media’s framing of “woke 1.0,” on this week’s episode of “Room Temp,” a new progressive podcast. As far as Flock cameras are concerned, Janesh pointed out that law enforcement’s claim that it needs the cameras to do a job it has done for decades, without resorting to a…

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President Trump hinted on Wednesday that his friendly relationship with North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un may owe a lot to the country’s strong nuclear capabilities.  

“He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons. Should have never allowed it to happen,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “But he’s got them. I get along with him very well…As long as we have a smart president, he’s gonna be fine.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump said that having “a good relationship” with Kim makes nearby countries like South Korea and Japan safer—which may sound reasonable in itself. But by “good relationship,” Trump seemed to mean building a collaborative connection solely with Kim: “I didn’t like the fact that we’re doing these massive military exercises really against North Korea when I’m friendly with him.”

Trump: "I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un … I didn't like the fact that we're doing these massive military exercises really against North Korea when I'm friendly with him."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-19T19:39:50.979Z

Trump’s remarks came three days after he announced that he ordered the Pentagon to cut back on joint military training with South Korea, citing President Lee Jae Myung’s refusal to join his war against Iran.

On Monday, Trump further justified the cuts to joint military efforts—which led Lee to call for South Korea to retake full control of its military operations from the US—by saying that the drills “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, a country that “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his presidency. Trump also said he plans to meet with Kim later this year. 

Q: Are you exchanging written letters with Kim Jong Un?

TRUMP: I can't tell you that. But I get along with him great. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons. He's gonna be fine. pic.twitter.com/AfhVw6Hrwl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2026

Trump’s explanation sends a blunt message to Iran: If the country already had nuclear weapons, it may have had a paradoxically friendlier relationship with Trump—and been able to avoid an ongoing war that has killed thousands of civilians, which the Trump administration has justfied on the basis of halting Iran’s nuclear development. As Iranian historian Behrooz Ghamari told me earlier this year, Iran’s nuclear program is tied to its pursuit of greater sovereignty, following several decades of intervention in its economy and politics by countries like the US and Britain.

To any country watching Trump’s words, it now looks like one of the only paths to prevent conflict with the current administration is to militarize or even go nuclear—a warning South Korea may also be taking to heart.

The upcoming Freedom 250 Grand Prix is making the National Mall look more like a sideshow.

Photos of the preparation for the Indycar race this weekend show grandstands, finish lines, and signage all around the area in the nation’s capital.

It’s unusual to see corporate signage and bleachers near the Capitol building, but that’s how President Trump wants to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The roads around the Mall are normally devoted to cars and tour buses at this time of year as tourists visit its national landmarks, museums, and monuments. But the streets look eerily empty except for construction workers, vehicles, and the barriers that will turn the area into a racetrack.

The Mall has been through a lot in Trump’s second term, from the heavily botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to that sparsely attended flop known as the Great American State Fair. He damaged the grass with his Independence Day celebrations and blamed nonexistent vandals for it when it was his own fault, just like with the pool disaster.

Now, the capital of the United States of America is about to see its first ever auto race. Under any other president, this might be considered cool, but now, the public is wondering not only how he’ll mess it up, but the damage he could cause to important national landmarks.

President Donald Trump is racing to build his big dumb bribe ballroom before the Supreme Court cuts him off—not that it’s at all a sure thing that they will tell him to stop. But he’s not taking any chances. So he’s got a team building this monstrosity 20 hours per day, seven days per week in order to beat the clock and, regrettably, you can see this thing is taking shape. Why?

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | What the Flock: Only ICE and cops seem to like creepy camera network…

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Air Force Major Jason Watson—who was arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building last month while calling for President Trump’s impeachment—has been arrested again.

Watson was detained on Tuesday, just one day after an exclusive CNN interview in which he said the president was “violating the Constitution, breaking the law, [and] engaged in rampant corruption.” He is now currently in pretrial confinement in Maryland based on “allegations of continued misconduct” according to the Air Force. They did not identify the specific misconduct allegations, although his attorney believes that his recent CNN appearance is to blame.

“What is happening with President Trump is not normal. He has failed us,” Watson told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “And not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”

Air Force Maj. Jason Watson, who was arrested on the steps of the US Capitol after calling for Trump & Vance to be impeached and removed from office, speaks out to @ErinBurnett in his first interview after his arrest: “[Trump] is flagrantly violating the constitution, breaking… pic.twitter.com/fB1F2G3rDz

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 18, 2026

Watson’s July arrest came during a news conference with the Removal Coalition in which he called for Trump and Vice President JD Vance to be “impeached, convicted, and removed,” over their feckless leadership in the war on Iran. He was arrested and escorted off the premises while in full uniform and holding an “Impeach. Convict. Remove” sign. He was placed under a gag order and could still be court-martialed or removed from the Air Force.

In an unprecedented act of dissent, active-duty USAF Major Jason Watson was arrested on the Capitol steps after calling for the impeachment & removal of Donald Trump. Risking his career to uphold his constitutional oath, his arrest marks a historic moment. ✊🏻✊🏿✊🏼✊🏾✊🏽#DemsUnited pic.twitter.com/quFmuxKxoQ

— TizzyWoman 🗽 ☮️ ~ Keep moving forward (@tizzywoman) July 1, 2026

Watson is an active duty servicemember who is placing his 17-year Air Force career on the line for exercising his First Amendment right—and his lawyers think he’s very well become a target for it.

“Nothing that is worth doing is something that you can do for free. Everything that is worthwhile is going to cost something. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to require sacrifice,” Watson told Burnett. “So all that I could do was ask myself: ‘What’s the highest price that I’m willing to pay?’ And this is what I ultimately came up with.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Trump administration said on Tuesday it plans to rescind the “roadless rule” that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years, potentially opening up almost 45 million acres of national forests to road construction, drilling, and logging.

Conservationists had feared the announcement was coming since last summer after Brooke Rollins, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, targeted a rule brought in by Bill Clinton’s administration, describing it as “overly restrictive” and an “absurd obstacle” to development.

On Tuesday the US Forest Service, an agency inside the Department of Agriculture, formally announced it had filed the proposal to rescind in its entirety the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Environmental groups immediately criticized the plan for rollbacks of protections to forests from Alaska to Oregon to North Carolina.

“[The rule] is the only thing preventing much of our wildest remaining national forests from industrial development. These forests offer critical habitat for wildlife, provide clean, fresh air and water for millions and contain vast swathes of the last remaining old-growth forests in the country,” said Alex Craven, forest campaign manager for the Sierra Club.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) appealed for submissions for the public comment period to “defend our forests from the administration’s chopping block.”

“These landscapes also support thousands of jobs and generate billions in economic activity each year.”

“Their scheme would open up tens of millions of acres of our national forests to destructive logging, drilling and road building—including iconic public lands from California’s Tahoe national forest to Alaska’s Tongass national forest to the Appalachian Trail,” the NRDC said.

The Trump administration said the move would remove obstacles to managing forests and fighting wildfires. “For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said. “Today, we filed a proposal to restore authority to local forest managers who know the land best, removing the barriers that have kept them from doing the work the land demands.”

“Active forest management is not an option. It’s essential,” said Tom Schultz, the forest service chief. “More than 40 percent of inventoried roadless areas, primarily in the west, have high or very high wildfire hazard potential. And only 5 percent of those areas have received hazardous fuels reduction treatments since 2014.”

But Craven of the Sierra Club said: “The administration’s attempt to blame the roadless rule for worsening wildfire risk ignores both the facts and the rule itself. Roads generally lead to more ignitions and result in more wildfires—not fewer.

“And,” Craven added, “the roadless rule has always allowed for targeted actions to reduce hazardous fuels. What it does not allow is using wildfire as an excuse to open some of America’s most intact public forests to industrial exploitation and new road construction.”

Clinton had championed the roadless rule late in his second term as president after concerns grew around unsustainable logging of national forests. The biggest roadless area is the Tongass national forest in Alaska, which stores huge amounts of carbon and is home to brown and black bears, wolves, and bald eagles.

“America’s last great backcountry forests are not bargaining chips,” Emma Powell, government affairs manager at Alaska Wilderness League, said on Tuesday about the plan. “The Tongass and Chugach national forests are global treasures.”

“From fisheries to tourism and outdoor recreation,” Powell said, “these landscapes also support thousands of jobs and generate billions in economic activity each year.”

Concerns of environmentalists were especially focussed on logging. “It’s clear the processes required by the National Environmental Policy Act are being treated as merely boxes to check on the path to enacting an entirely political agenda to clear-cut the last remaining intact old-growth forests in America,” added Maggie Rabb, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

The public has until September 21 to comment on the plan.

“Trump is pushing for the largest evisceration of public lands protection in American history and against what Americans want,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Once you start bulldozing roads for commercial logging and industrial development, there’s no getting them back.”

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Inside Washington

Dems are looking good in North Carolina—or are they?

If Democrats want to take back the Senate, they need North Carolina—their best chance to pick up a previously Republican-held seat, according to the Cook Political Report. So you think they’d be delighted: For months, polls have consistently put former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper ahead of his opponent, former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley. But Cooper’s campaign is on edge, and experts say it should be—Whatley could still win this race.

In early August, a Harper Polling survey of likely voters found Cooper up by 13 points against Whatley in the race to replace retiring GOP Senator Thom Tillis. A Change Research poll of likely voters from around the same time had Cooper up by seven points: 50 percent of respondents said they’d vote for Cooper, 43 percent for Whatley, and six percent were undecided. Those undecided voters could be where Whatley finds his margin of victory.

“I think that polls at this stage of the race, when we’re still a couple months out from an election in a race that will have very difficult-to-predict turnout, should be taken with a grain of salt,” said Jason Husser, a professor at Elon University and the director of the Elon Poll. “The race is far from over, and we have seen historical precedent of Republicans surging at the last couple weeks in the state.”

In the 2016 Senate race, for example, Republican candidate Richard Burr launched a barrage of effective attack ads against Democrat Deborah Ross toward the end of the campaign, and ultimately won. In the 2014 Senate election, Tillis was trailing Democrat Kay Hagan in the vast majority of polls, only to win by 1.5 percentage points. In Cooper’s run for governor in 2016, polls consistently showed him leading by at least two percentage points, but he won by only 10,000 votes.

The Cooper campaign is particularly concerned that a recent Supreme Court decision on campaign finance spending will help Whatley’s campaign. The decision says that political parties can now coordinate directly with campaigns and raise unlimited funds. Since the RNC has a major cash advantage over the Democratic National Committee (which is actually in the red financially), Republican candidates could get bigger infusions of cash this cycle.

“The RNC has been stockpiling their money because they knew their former chairman Michael Whatley would need to get bailed out,” Jeff Allen, Cooper for North Carolina campaign manager, said in a statement to The New Republic. “Whatley’s elite D.C. connections and party loyalty means he’s first in line for the RNC’s nearly $130 million war chest. The Supreme Court just guaranteed that this race will be among—if not the—most expensive races in the country.”

Despite that, Cooper remains ahead in direct campaign fundraising, having raised $35 million to Whatley’s $16 million. Outside group spending is in full force: In late July, the Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC, announced that it was spending $17 million on an ad buy attacking Cooper’s record on crime as governor. While Cooper’s campaign is focused on affordability—he’s been touring the state on a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour—Whatley has been hammering on crime and public safety.

Big ad spends could help Whatley with undecided voters and voters who don’t know who he is. After serving in state government for 38 years, with eight years as governor, 92 percent of voters are familiar with Cooper, while just 69 percent are familiar with Whatley.

“If we just look at the subset of voters who have high levels of familiarity with Michael Whatley, the race looks pretty competitive,” said Husser, who polled this question earlier this summer. “And so instead of it being a 10-point Cooper blowout, it starts looking like a typical North Carolina nail-biter.”

Husser found that voters’ familiarity with Whatley increased by 15 points over the course of this summer. A July Public Policy Polling, or PPP, survey found the closest margins yet, with 48 percent saying they’d vote for Cooper and 44 saying they’d choose Whatley.

But that poll also found that “Democrats are almost completely lined up behind Cooper, while a lot of Republican voters remain undecided. That gives Whatley much more room for growth,” PPP noted in its press release. That’s exactly the kind of analysis that should worry Cooper’s campaign.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued an executive order Tuesday blocking mining near the famous and fragile Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and boy are people worked up about it. Within hours, Republican Representative Tom Emmer had called Walz a “lame duck loser” who “let fraud run rampant while holding hardworking, tax-paying Minnesotans back from the opportunity for better lives,” while his fellow Republican Representative Pete Stauber called it a “spiteful and harmful attack against hardworking people.” The Minnesota Star Tribune’s liveblog of reactions to the news notes that Democratic Representative Betty McCollum, Democratic Senator Tina Smith, and Chair of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Carlos Hernandez praised the decision, although the Boundary Waters area’s Democratic State Representative Grant Hauschild registered his disapproval. Walz’s term is up in January, and state law dictates that executive orders expire 90 days after the governor leaves office. Democrat Amy Klobuchar currently leads Republican Lisa Demuth in the polls. (As of this writing, neither had weighed in on the decision yet.) This whole thing started when Congress voted last spring to lift a 20-year ban on mining in the area.

While votes are still being counted in Alaska, it’s already clear that Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Dan Sullivan will advance in the state’s nonpartisan “top-four” primary. Just before Tuesday’s primary, a poll from Data for Progress tried to simulate a general election matchup using Alaska’s ranked-choice program, and found Peltola up six points (47–41) over Republican Sullivan. That would be for the first round of counting. Peltola also led by six (53–47) in its attempt to calculate how a second round might go. You can read The TNR Blue Book’s prior coverage of this race here.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Center for Strategic and International Studies holds an “emergency” podcast episode to discuss Trump’s withdrawal from joint military exercises with South Korea. Mark Lippert hosts Andrew Yeo, Sydney Seiler, and Victor Cha. “At a strategic level, I think there’s a lot that’s being risked and a lot that could be lost,” says Yeo. Watch or read the rest here.

Public Citizen accuses Todd Blanche of violating the Hatch Act by attending a campaign rally with Trump in support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have released a statement cheering California’s “first-in-the-nation efficiency standards for replacement tires,” a development that “shows how practical climate policy can deliver meaningful benefits for Californians,” according to NRDC California climate and energy policy director Merrian Borgeson. The statement notes that, according to California Energy Commission calculations, the standards “will save drivers about $180 in gasoline costs over the lifetime of a set of replacement tires” and “will reduce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter pollution and cut annual greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to those from 400,000 gasoline cars.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, by Jill Lepore

THE GIST: Emerging from an outstanding 2024 New Yorker piece about the rise of the algorithm and the decline of trust in the state, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State argues that liberal, democratic governance is increasingly being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence. The book covers everything from pesky robocalls and scammy fundraising to what it means to be political in a world run by machines.

PRAISE: It’s an eclectic mix of blurbs—from novelists George Saunders and Philip Pullman to technologist Jaron Lanier and Lepore’s New Yorker colleague Elizabeth Kolbert. Kolbert calls the book “dazzling in its range and totally on target.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: This is a Jill Lepore book, which means it’s a sweeping history, not a polemic—or at least not just a polemic. The Simulmatics Corporation, an early data company founded in the 1950s that promised to predict human behavior—and shape American politics—is one area of focus. Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a supporter of the “Technocracy Movement,” which aspired to replace politicians with scientists (and an avid backer of Apartheid), is another. Lepore’s references are, as always, pleasantly diverse: The introduction features excellent close readings of both Hannah Arendt and poet Richard Brautigan.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: It’s hard to think of someone better to write a book like this—a history of humanity’s use of technology and data that doubles as a penetrating critique of artificial intelligence, automation, and the increasing tyranny of the algorithm in everyday life. As bleak as Lepore’s diagnosis is, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is also a surprisingly hopeful book. “A wall of mirrors can be smashed with the slightest hammer, the nearest rock,” she writes. “That rock is the right of the people to elect a government by consent and not by automation.”

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day

With Donald Trump now officially in the low 30s in approval ratings: In the modern history of polling, which president had the lowest ever approval ratings, and how low did he go? (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

In the middle of showing off work on the new White House helipad, President Trump unveiled yet another construction project, previously unknown to the public.

Trump told reporters to join him on the building’s South Lawn Wednesday where he excitedly revealed he replaced the asphalt on the White House’s driveway with white granite mined from California, CNN reports.

“This was always asphalt, which is very basic, not appropriate for a great house—for a great place like the White House,” Trump said over loud construction noise while gesturing at the newly redone driveway, which he described as made with a “very special stone.”

Trump, clearly feeling low on attention today, is outside the White House ranting and raving like a lunatic about his various vanity projects around the White House pic.twitter.com/X7HzDGLUdA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2026

Trump then went on and on about the new helipad under construction at the White House, detailing how he made workers redo weeks of work on the project because he didn’t like the helipad’s angle.

“I felt it was too much slope. It’s a slope for the rain, but I felt it was too much slope,” Trump said, adding that the helipad was now “dead flat.”

“Sorry to take an extra week-and-a-half, but lifting it up was one of the best things we’ve ever done, lifting it up, right? I’m sure you didn’t like that,” Trump later told workers on the grounds.

Trump also bragged about new grass on the White House lawn, claiming that newly added topsoil has “a lot of good ingredients in that earth for grass. If you’re grass, you’re very happy.” Without any shame or worry about a conflict of interest, he then revealed the grass was “given free of charge by Scotts Miracle-Gro, Scotts. And Scotts is a great company. They actually contributed to my campaign, I must be honest, you’ll figure that one out.”

Trump: "It was given free of charge by Scotts Miracle-Gro. Scotts. A great company. They actually contributed to my campaign ... I want to thank Scotts." pic.twitter.com/MPFCyBlnvX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2026

The president has spoken about his expensive pet construction projects, especially his White House ballroom, more than any other topic in 2026 except for the war in Iran, according to a Politifact analysis. It’s pretty obvious what Trump cares about more than anything else, and it comes at the expense of the American people.