Political News

When Florida congressional candidate John Strand introduces himself to potential voters, he starts with his criminal record. “I’m John Strand, patriot for Congress, the J6 hostage who went to prison on principle so that you don’t have to,” he said at a January debate hosted by the Women’s Republican Club of Naples Federated.

The former international underwear model spent about a year in federal prison after a DC jury convicted him of five criminal counts, including one felony, related to his participation in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. In January 2025, Trump pardoned him, along with 1,500 people convicted of J6-related crimes. And now, Strand is using his J6 infamy to try to catapult into Congress in one of the weirdest GOP primaries in the country this year.

Of the 10 candidates currently running to fill a seat vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running to be the GOP candidate for Florida governor, Strand is actually one of two felons pardoned by Trump in the race. The other, former Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), resigned from Congress in 2019 and pleaded guilty to insider trading and lying to the FBI. He was serving a 20-month prison sentence when Trump pardoned him at the end of his first term.

John Strand speaks during an event hosted by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 13, 2023.Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP

Joining them is former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who lost his 2022 primary after being plagued by scandals ranging from sexual harassment allegations to carrying a gun through TSA—twice—and claiming he’d witnessed some of his House colleagues do a “key bump of cocaine” right in front of him. The frontrunner, Catalina Lauf, ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2020 and 2022—in Illinois. She lost the 2020 race to former Illinois state senator Jim Oberweis, who is also now running in Florida’s 19th.

To distinguish himself from the pack, Strand has leaned hard on his status as a J6 “hostage” while supplementing his rhetoric with the timeworn GOP campaign tactic of demonizing LGBT people.

“Hostage” is a bit of a stretch. After he was arrested in Beverly Hills a few days after the 2021 attack on the Capitol, Strand opted to go to trial rather than take a plea bargain, as did Simone Gold, the anti-vax doctor he accompanied into the Capitol. Gold was sentenced to only 60 days in prison as a result. Strand got 32 months after a jury found him guilty on all counts. The sentence included extra time for lying on the stand and fundraising off his “49 minutes of infamy” while a court-appointed lawyer represented him.

Strand likes to blame his prison sentence on an “openly biased DC jury,” but the evidence against him was overwhelming. After leaving the Capitol, he literally texted someone, “We stormed the Capitol. It was insane.” Video footage also showed him at the front of the mob, stepping over a fallen US Capitol Police officer on his way into the building with Gold.

As the crowd began to force their way into the Capitol building, Dr. Simone Gold and John Strand were part of the crowd that violently pushed/pulled an officer down the stairs.

I slowed down/highlighted the pair currently being sought by the FBI.
H/T: @Cineaste_C
: NyPost pic.twitter.com/nf7PGOqwJG

— 𝚃𝚘𝚡𝚒𝚌 𝚆𝚘𝚘𝚍𝚎𝚗 𝚆𝚘𝚖𝚊𝚗 (@Autre_Vierge) January 12, 2021

Strand has engaged in some revisionist history to spin this record into a selling point for his congressional candidacy. “I was innocent,” he insists on his campaign website and in ads. “The DOJ vacated every charge.” The judge, however, saw things differently. “This Order does not constitute a finding of innocence,” wrote US District Judge Christopher Cooper in an order dismissing Strand’s case after his pardon. “Nor does it affect the existence of probable cause for Defendant’s arrest and prosecution.”

Hard time clearly isn’t enough substance to drive a congressional campaign, especially in a race featuring more than one former felon. So Strand has adopted another popular MAGA strategy: attacking the LGBTQ community. Strand was homeschooled and raised in a conservative, Christian family. He has seamlessly supplemented his J6 story with Bible references and promises voters a return to “Judeo-Christian values.”

“The enemies of America—both foreign and domestic—are erasing truth, rewriting history, distorting gender, and sexually exploiting our children,” says his campaign website, where he’s portrayed as a “maverick” in a leather jacket like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

In May last year, Strand joined in a protest in Naples, Florida, to support the city’s decision to ban a drag show from a public park during Pride week. In December, he testified before the Naples City Council to further support city action against Pride events by speaking “some hard truth” about what he learned while working in Hollywood.

“Pride,” he said, putting air quotes around the word, “is a very aggressive, explicitly sexual enterprise with a terribly destructive agenda, confusing, distorting and then destroying the natural and healthy design of human sexuality.” He claimed that the “Pride movement” was “eroding the health and strength of the family unit,” and called it a form of tyranny that features “deviant sexual behaviors.”

WOW: I challenge anyone in the nation to watch this—and ask yourself:

“Are any other candidates for Congress speaking truth like this?”

There is only one way to save our nation:
Confront evil head-on…and overcome it with good.https://t.co/MlXjx59P2i pic.twitter.com/Yxg9rH14sO

— John Strand (@JohnStrandUSA) August 4, 2026

Strand, 43, doesn’t always seem to have found the “Pride movement” so toxic. In his memoir, Patriot Plea: The J6 Journey of a Political Prisoner in the Divided States of America, he briefly recounts his years couch-surfing through West Hollywood as a struggling model. But he omits some critical details.

“I met him in a gay bar,” says Loran Morgan, who has known Strand for more than 15 years, speaking about that time. Morgan says back then, Strand had many gay friends. He even attended Morgan’s 2010 birthday party at The Abbey, the “world famous gay bar,” according to its website, where drag shows are a staple, and went back there with Morgan at least one other time, in 2014. Morgan says in 2011, he even secured Strand a job working in an Equinox booth during the Pride Festival in West Hollywood.

Florida congressional candidate John Strand working at the Equinox booth at the 2011 Los Angeles Pride Festival.Loran Morgan

Strand’s years modeling underwear also landed him in gay media. In 2012, for instance, he graced the cover of Sensitif, a French gay magazine, and inside, he poses virtually nude. He also modeled skimpy underwear for RUFSKIN, a gay California fashion label. (Strand did not respond to several requests for comment.)

No one I spoke with claims that Strand was gay or engaged in gay sexual acts, but they say he definitely associated with LGBT people and seemed supportive of the community. For about a year starting in August 2011, Strand and his now ex-wife lived with Amy Messigian, a Los Angeles lawyer who let them stay rent-free in her house in exchange for caring for her dog while she was at work. “His group of friends was predominantly gay,” she told me. “He would go out with his boys in West Hollywood. His wife would stay home.”

John Strand and Loran Moran at the Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood.Loran Morgan

Messigian had a group of old friends who would regularly meet up socially, and Strand and his wife would often join them. One of those friends, Richard Valois, who works in advertising in Los Angeles, says he and Strand once went out without the group. “He had a place he wanted to go to in West Hollywood because he knew the bartender. It ended up being a gay bar,” Valois told me, noting that he was surprised to end up there because their friend group didn’t go to gay bars. He was even more surprised by Strand’s choice of venue “because he had a wife.”

“He had no problem with gay people back then, so why is he doing that now?”

“I’m not saying he’s gay,” he emphasized. “But when we went there, he knew the bartender. He knew everyone.” He’s mystified by Strand’s current campaign against Pride events and trans rights. “He had no problem with gay people back then, so why is he doing that now?”

In Patriot Plea, Strand says he lost many of his Hollywood friends after he embraced Trump. “I torched my Hollywood career with a Maverick barrel roll into public support for MAGA,” he writes. But his former LA friends say they never knew him to care about politics. “He had this insatiable thirst for fame. All his social media was talking about being famous,” Valois says. “He would post his laps that he did in the pool. That was his whole persona. He was not a political person in any sense of the imagination.”

Strand was famous, they say, for being marginally employed, never paying for drinks, and always looking for a place to crash. (In his memoir, he mentions bouts of homelessness.) Even before his turn towards MAGA, he’d fallen out with many of these friends because they tired of him taking advantage of their goodwill. Messigian asked him to move out after she says he neglected her dog.

Morgan and Messigian both reported Strand to the FBI after seeing photos of him at the Capitol on January 6. They were furious when Trump pardoned him. January 6 was one of the most “horrifying moments in our history that I experienced,” says Messigian. “So any pass that he’s been given is unfortunate and undeserved.”

“I was like, dude, so many of the LGBTQ people had your back and took care of you the whole time you lived here, and now you’re going after them.”

Morgan, who is gay, feels doubly angry about Strand’s latest reinvention as a congressional candidate. “I still can’t believe he is even running for an office. In one video I saw, he was going off on trans rights and gay rights,” he told me. “I was like, dude, so many of the LGBTQ people had your back and took care of you the whole time you lived here, and now you’re going after them.”

It’s not clear whether Strand’s J6 narrative or his attacks on the LGBTQ community are winning him many votes. He has secured a few endorsements from MAGA world, including from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Gen. Michael Flynn, and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell and talk show host Dennis Prager. But his campaign has failed to raise much money—little more than $100,000, with almost $20,000 of that coming from a personal loan from Strand himself. (Not even Simone Gold seems to have contributed, according to FEC records.)

Strand has made much of the fact that Turning Point USA, the conservative youth group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, had endorsed him. But the week before the primary, the group quietly unendorsed him and threw its weight behind one of his challengers, Catalina Lauf, who worked at the Commerce Department in the first Trump administration.

Strand had been fervently trying to win an endorsement from Trump. But the president doesn’t like to endorse losers, and a Victory Insights poll poll released August 7 showed Strand languishing at the bottom of the pack, with barely 3 percent support. On Friday, Trump endorsed Lauf.

A few years after her husband died, Sandie Slowey moved from Pennsylvania to a mobile home in Hernando, a small town in rural Citrus County, Florida, known for its open green spaces and pristine spring waters. Down the road from her home was a horse ranch, and Slowey enjoyed the serenity of her quiet retirement from her job as a nurse—strolling on lush walking trails and sitting outside in the afternoons to hear the birds sing. On chilly evenings, she sleeps with her windows open.

In February, on Valentine’s Day, a neighbor told Slowey that the Deltona Corporation, a Florida real estate developer, planned to construct an 800-acre data center next to their neighborhood. Then in March, Slowey noticed the horses were gone. When she checked tax records, she discovered that Deltona had bought the property. It also bought another lot next door.

Slowey was outraged. Friends back in Pennsylvania, who now live near data centers, had warned her about the constant noise, and she worried that the incessant humming would pierce through the thin walls of her home. As one among dozens of residents who spoke up against the project, she said as much at a county planning and development commission meeting in March. She joined with other residents and decided to form No Data Center Citrus and organized a community meeting that attracted many residents, some of whom voiced their concerns at commission meetings. Their efforts worked. “We had two overflow rooms full, and they had to stop people at the door because there was no room,” Slowey recalled. County officials ultimately rejected Deltona’s proposal and approved a one-year moratorium on any data center projects. 

The fight in Citrus County against data centers has played out in dozens of communities across Florida, and as residents in rural areas—already fed up with the encroachment of new development that has infiltrated much of the state in the last few years as its population has grown—feel threatened by the explosion of data center construction. As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz reported in May, there are at least 268 local opposition groups across 37 states. The local resistance against data centers “draws on a current of populism—and suspicion of big companies, and fear of AI-prompted job loss—that goes beyond party boundaries,” Hurwitz wrote this month.

Voters’ rage at these construction projects has extended into Florida’s politics and splintered the Republican base. Many of these Floridians, some of whom are lifelong Republicans, are not voting for US Representative Byron Donalds, the leading GOP candidate running for governor to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis, during this week’s primary election. Donalds has openly supported the technology infrastructure, provided regulations were in place. As Politico reported, he’s also accepted millions in campaign contributions from data center developers. “I’m not anti-data center. I’m pro having a plan,” Donalds said in February, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “Data centers are going to be a function of American life going forward.”

Although polls show he will win the Republican nomination, the data center issue likely will discourage many GOP and independent voters from supporting him, even leading them to cast ballots for his opponents. Slowey, a registered Republican, will vote on Tuesday for Jay Collins, the current lieutenant governor, who has vowed to put Floridians first before data centers, calling for stringent guardrails around the facilities.

I spoke to other residents who say they will vote for Bobby Williams, a grassroots conservative and third-generation Florida native who opposes data centers. It is unlikely he’ll win, according to polls, but the fact that he has amassed support in many communities outside bustling metro areas is one more example of a nationwide trend of how once-loyal voters are fed up with the current GOP establishment that takes money from large corporations at the expense of local concerns. 

“Most everybody that you talk to, everybody on Facebook, everybody that we talk to on the street, it’s all about the data centers.”

“Party labels are less important when it comes to our homes and way of life,” Slowey told me. “Everything for this election, for me, is based on the data centers at this point, and I think most everybody that you talk to, everybody on Facebook, everybody that we talk to on the street, it’s all about the data centers.”

If Donalds wins, come November’s general election, Slowey says she will throw her support behind David Jolly, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. Jolly, a former Congressman who was once Republican, announced in July that he would enact a statewide moratorium on construction, citing environmental and economic concerns. Slowey suspects others in her community are making the same calculations. 

This past week, I spoke with residents in several Florida counties that have dealt with the data center issue—Marion, Citrus, Escambia, Palm Beach, and Sarasota—and asked them how this topic is influencing their votes. Some registered Republicans told me they would not support Byron Donalds and instead vote for Williams or other candidates in the primary. Other voters, like Slowey, told me they will support Jolly in the general election.

Susan McManus, a seasoned political analyst in Florida, called the governor’s race a “bloody primary,” a term used to describe infighting within a political party during an election cycle. Eleven different Republican candidates are competing in the primary for governor.

The challenge for Republicans will be that in these red, rural areas, residents are hostile to data centers and to candidates—like Donalds—who openly support them. But the central question for Democrats will be if voters in these conservative, heavily Christian communities can get past the way that “socialist” has become affixed to Democratic candidates, she said. “Maybe they won’t vote for the Democrat,” McManus said of Republican voters in the general election, “but they’ll stay home, which is equally bad.” 

The local government in the city of North Port, in Sarasota County, is grappling with the data center dilemma. Like much of the state, in recent years, the once sleepy town has now boomed into a city of nearly 100,000 with a younger population and lots of development. Robin San Vicente, an environmental and wildlife consultant, moved there in 1999 and has warily watched the growth. So when the city received an application for a data center construction project, San Vicente was among those who spoke out. Wearing a black tank top printed with the words NO DATA CENTERS, she told commissioners at a July 21 meeting, “It is extremely important that we take the time to accurately assess all of the data required to implement proper citywide protocols and guidelines in the name of public health and safety.”

Last month, she created the Facebook group, No Data Centers North Port FL, and in the last five weeks, it has attracted more than 900 members. They post news articles about data center moratoriums or videos of community meetings. Comments range from concerns about the data centers being close to wildlife preserve areas, the excess water usage, the thought of having a nuclear reactor, which many data centers use, in an area prone to hurricanes nearly six months out of the year. As one North Port resident wrote: “DO NOT VOTE for public officials who don’t put the residents of North Port FIRST.”

The North Port city commission is now considering an 18-month moratorium on data center projects. San Vicente, who is an independent voter, says she is considering David Jolly in the general election. “We don’t trust Byron at all. He is supported by Trump, and people are not trusting Trump anymore.” She added that many people had their eyes “opened” and realized that “what party you belong to doesn’t matter with this particular issue.”

In Citrus County, Slowey and the steering committee she’s a part of are now helping the commission draft ordinances to regulate any future data centers, including the regulation of water usage, as well as distance requirements from schools and churches. They hope the measures will be enacted before the one-year moratorium ends.

Still, the threat of a data center being erected in town lingers. Deltona, the developer, still owns the land close to Slowey’s home. “We won the battle,” she told me, “but we haven’t won the war.” 

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 17 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.

Donald Trump just had two very strange outbursts that won’t make Republicans happy. In one, he angrily ridiculed the idea that anyone would be upset about higher costs created by his war. In the other, he brushed off the concerns of military families about the length of overseas deployments. All this comes as Trump is pushing through dramatic new changes to aircraft carriers that are roundly rejected by military experts.

And that prompted a scalding takedown from a Democratic senator who actually knows something about these topics. It occurs to us that all this captures something essential about the fix we’re in. Trump has been faking it all his life, and it’s finally catching up with us. We’re going to work through it all with MS Now’s Steve Benen, who caught a really interesting pattern buried in all this lunacy. Steve, good to have you back on.

Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here.

Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said at a rally just now. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (voiceover): For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—it’s really the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more. You’re at four dollars. It’s OK. I mean, it’s—I’m not, I’m not—I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.

Sargent: Steve, that is really something. Note the pure seething contempt for anyone who’s concerned by the added costs created by his war, his unnecessary war. He’s unable to grasp these voter concerns through any frame other than how it reflects on him. I think this is a big deal, big news. What do you think?

Benen: Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, here we are, twelve weeks out from the midterms. Polls showed that affordability and the cost of living are the number one issue on the minds of the vast majority of voters. And so one would like to think that the head of the Republican Party, the sitting American president, would have the wherewithal to express some empathy and to say, maybe I can try and help you. Maybe I care about the pain that you’re dealing with right now, and I’m going to maybe promise you new policies or a better tomorrow in some way.

But no, he doesn’t do any of those things. Donald Trump instead stands in front of a crowd full of supporters, mocks the very idea that they’re suffering in any way, and denies any responsibility for the fact that he’s to blame for these circumstances that people are suffering through.

And so, you said you think it’s a big deal. I agree with you. I think this is the sort of thing that can resonate with most voters, who see this and will be disgusted by it. And so I would not be the least bit surprised if this is one of those quotes that just lingers in the public mind for the next several weeks.

Sargent: Yes. And this is something that Democrats really have to grab onto. I don’t want to hear anything from any Democratic strategists about how Trump’s negatives are baked in or whatever. Grab this and use it. That’s what I think they should do.

Benen: Well, wait a minute. It’s a gift handed to Democrats on a platter. I mean, here we are, looking at a set of circumstances in which Democrats are saying that they want to focus almost exclusively on kitchen-table issues. They want to avoid social issues altogether, nothing about the culture war. They want to talk about the economy. Well, great.

The head of the Republican Party just said he doesn’t care about higher gas prices. He laughs off affordability as a scam. He doesn’t accept responsibility for the fact that he’s ultimately to blame for the fact that people are suffering through these higher costs, higher cost of living, higher prices. And so, I think you’re quite right. For Democrats who are looking for a strategy for the final 12 weeks, for this home stretch between now and November—well, here it is. Donald Trump just handed it to you.

Sargent: He absolutely did. This is the sort of thing that could really seep into the coverage. So let’s now go to this other Trump outburst. Reporting had indicated that on the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier, living conditions were poor, in part because it had been out at sea for far too long in the Mideast.

Now, the audio of this exchange is not great, but listen carefully and you can hear that a reporter asks Trump to respond to families’ concerns about these long deployments. Trump just brushes it off. Listen.

Reporter (voiceover): Family members of U.S. servicemembers are concerned with the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln…

Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, no, that ship is moving. No, they’re not. That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship.

Reporter (voiceover): Have the deployments gone on too long?

Donald Trump (voiceover): No, not nearly long enough.

Sargent: So there Trump says that the families just aren’t concerned about all this, because he says so. And then he says, you know, the deployment hasn’t gone on long enough, by which I think he means, we’re going to continue this until we win. But again, the seething contempt is the story here.

Steve, I recognize that Trump has rewritten the rules of our politics, but this plus the other thing together paint a picture of a president who feels zero obligation of any kind to take ordinary people’s concerns seriously.

Benen: I think that in both instances he had an opportunity to show empathy, but he’s simply incapable of doing so. It’s just not in his nature. It’s not part of his MO. He can’t bring himself to recognize that this was an opportunity to show some sympathy, to show some empathy, to show that he cares, that he understands the suffering of people who deserve sympathy—and yet he can’t bring himself to do it.

Now, in the case of high gas prices, it’s a much larger group of people, but at the same time, it’s just as important, if not more so, to sympathize with the sailors and marines on the USS Lincoln and the loved ones back home, who are concerned about the fact that they’ve had this modern-day record for the longest possible deployment, and now they’re running out of soap and food.

What is the president’s response to this? It’s to express indifference, to just shrug it off.

Sargent: Trump instantly converts everything into a question of whether he is getting the esteem and the adulation that he knows is due to him.

Benen: If he were to acknowledge the fact that these families exist, that these loved ones who are worried about the sailors and the marines on the USS Lincoln—if he were to acknowledge the fact that their concerns exist, it would reflect poorly on him. It would reflect poorly on his administration, on his poor judgment, on Pete Hegseth’s judgment, for an illegal war that he doesn’t know how to end.

And so if he were to acknowledge their existence, it would reflect poorly on him. And so therefore he has no choice, in his twisted mind and his twisted perspective and worldview, but to say, well, then therefore they don’t exist, because they can’t, in his mind. And it’s just so offensive on its face. A normal human being, much less a normal American president, knows not to behave this way. And yet here we are, seeing him once again demonstrate the fact that his entire worldview is broken.

Sargent: Yes, and it’s in this context that Trump is directing the Navy to completely uproot a system it uses for launching jets from aircraft carriers and replace it with steam catapults. Now, I don’t claim any expertise in this area, OK?

Benen: Neither do I.

Sargent: But a lot of experts are saying it’s a terrible idea that will needlessly cost billions of dollars. And the Navy has been battling the idea for years, because it’s been a longtime obsession of Trump’s. Steve, can you sort of sum up what this is all about?

Benen: Well, sure. About a decade ago, apparently, according to Donald Trump, he spoke to some sailor who said that the current system of launching jet fighters off of aircraft carriers was too complicated. And so apparently, as part of this conversation, this sailor—who may or may not exist, whose name we do not know—said that he preferred the steam catapults.

And ever since then, Donald Trump has said, for whatever reason, that he disagrees with the Navy, disagrees with the experts, disagrees with all the engineers and everyone who could possibly lend him good advice. He disagrees with all of them and says, no, no, we need steam catapults, not electromagnetic catapults.

And so, early on in his first term, he apparently directed the Navy to start pursuing this change. And they blew him off because—and this is the important part—they know what they’re talking about. Unlike the president, who doesn’t, they knew what they were talking about, and so they ignored him.

And yet here we are, second term, and we have an official document posted to the White House website that shows that Donald Trump has actually gone to the Pentagon and said, I am directing you to move forward with plans to swap out the existing system and replace it with steam-based catapults—because, according to the president, this is the smart thing to do, despite the fact that the Navy has told him that it is not.

Sargent: Yes. And so you caught this interesting, broader pattern in which Trump just declares himself to be one of the world’s foremost experts, or even the world’s leading expert, in all sorts of different areas, in whatever comes up at any time. You looked back and found that he said this on construction, on tariffs, on firearms, on health care, on drone technology, even on grass. That one, I didn’t know what to make of. Trump is an expert on grass. What kind of grass? I might be leaving a few out.

Tell us what you found when you looked at this pattern.

Benen: Well, you know, last week, in an offhand comment, Donald Trump said, quote, “I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world,” end quote. Now, if you’re laughing, as you should, because it’s hilarious—I laughed at it too. But in context, this is something that he does all the time. No matter what the subject is, he is the world-renowned authoritative source on every subject.

He not just claims to have familiarity with the subject, or a basic competence—he claims to have limitless expertise, without rival anywhere on the planet, on all of the subjects. Now, on the one hand, of course, we can laugh about that, because it’s absurd. But on the other hand, that arrogance, that misplaced arrogance, leads him to believe that he’s capable of making decisions about things he knows nothing about, because in his mind he is the foremost expert on these subjects.

And so when it comes to things like how best to launch jet planes off of an aircraft carrier, he doesn’t turn to people who know what they’re talking about. He instead says, well, I am the foremost expert on this subject. I talked to a sailor 10 years ago who likes catapults. So therefore, we’re going to go with that steam-based approach.

Sargent: Donald Trump is a devotee of positive thinking. He’s someone who genuinely believes that you can make things true by saying them. This has been true about Trump all his life. And all his life as well, it has also applied to him saying that he knows more than anyone else in the world about any subject.

But I can’t help but feel like, after a lifetime of Trump getting away with this, we might finally be at the point where he’s not going to be able to get away with it much longer. Is that too optimistic, or what?

Benen: Well, I don’t think it’s too optimistic. And the reason I believe that there’s something to this is that right now we see his approval rating sinking. We see his popularity collapsing. And I think that that is a reflection of the fact that the American mainstream has had an opportunity to get a good look at this guy, to get a good sense of where he’s leading the country, looking at the results of his approach to governance over the last year and a half—in fact, over the last five and a half years of his presidency. And they’re rejecting it roundly and soundly. And they’re saying, you know what? I’m sick of it.

There are a lot of people who voted for him who now regret that. There are a lot of people who voted against him, or who are now eager to vote in the midterms. And so I don’t think it’s overly optimistic to think that we’ve really turned a page here. We’ve got congressional Republicans kind of separating themselves from him. We see voters definitely rejecting the White House.

And so I think that combination of factors, plus what we’re seeing in terms of the special election results and primary turnout—all of these factors lead me to think that there is a blue wave taking shape, that there is a movement taking shape to reject what we’re seeing out of the White House. And so I think that optimism that you described, I think, is well grounded.

Sargent: I think a lot of people will listen to you and me talking about this with a little bit of pessimism or skepticism. They’ll say, OK, well, we went through this in Trump 1.0. And in a few years, everybody just forgot about what Trump had done, even though, you know, hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died and the economy was crashed into the shitter. And that’s true, right? But there is reason to think that things are different this time.

For one thing, voters wrongly, I think—but still, they concluded that COVID was kind of an external event that wasn’t Trump’s fault. It was imposed on him, and that that’s what crashed the economy, right? I don’t think that’s right, but I can see how voters concluded it. For another, during Trump’s first term, he actually did listen to people to a degree that he simply does not right now. And I think that’s a critical difference.

We’re seeing in his second term Trumpism unshackled on every front—immigration, tariffs, America First in the world. And I think that that fact, that the three major pillars of Trumpism, of MAGA, of right-wing populism, were really tried in this new kind of way and are failing so miserably, kind of creates an opening for a different level of rejection of Donald Trump and Trumpism. Do you think that’s too optimistic?

Benen: I don’t. And I want to back up for a second, because you were saying that a lot of people who are listening to this are going to think that, well, we’ve been through this, but Trump had kind of worked his way out and he ends up on top anyway. But I’d remind folks, in his first term, his first midterms were a disaster for Republicans. Democrats took back the House. And in a presidential election, Trump lost roundly, by more than five million votes to Joe Biden.

And so I don’t want to make it seem as if somehow Trump has always persevered under these circumstances, because I think we look back in recent history and that hasn’t been the case. But putting that aside, even looking at more contemporary conditions, I think that what we’re seeing now is a wholesale rejection based on a wholesale failure.

I mean, I think that the benchmarks that you just identified are true. I think that right now the fact that Democrats have an advantage on immigration for the first time in many, many years is a reflection of the fact that people see the status quo and they’re not satisfied with it. They are rejecting it, and they’re opening the door to something fundamentally different.

Sargent: Some polls are showing that Democrats have the advantage on the economy for the first time in many years. So immigration and the economy and national security—three areas where Republicans have had traditional advantages, all thrown away by Donald Trump’s incompetence. That’s the story, I think.

Benen: Right. And it’s fueled by fact. This is not just based on perception, it is fueled by fact. I think that ICE and the immigration agenda has been a spectacular failure. We look at the economy, we see the economy losing jobs and with stagnant growth. These are not just based on perceptions. It’s not just based on media narratives. This is about facts. This is about reality. This is about the daily lives that Americans are experiencing, and they’re seeing failure, and they’re sick of it.

Sargent: These are really the three pillars of right-wing populism more broadly, right? Immigration, economy, America First in the world. And so I think, as you said earlier, the American people might be ready to hear something different. I think really they may have their ears open in a way that maybe they haven’t in a very long time. I sure hope so, anyway.

Benen: I think you’re right. And I think that there’s ample public opinion research that shows that this is not just something that we’re kicking around as a possibility. It is something that is absolutely happening right now as we speak.

Sargent: Well, let’s conclude on Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. He responded to Trump’s craziness about the Navy and the uprooting of the system. Listen to this.

Mark Kelly (voiceover): By the way, Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff. Not in any world would I ever suggest to the Navy to change the design of some system on a ship at this point. I mean, does the guy know nothing about the way our government is supposed to work and how it’s supposed to be managed? For him to get in these details, especially with his background? I mean, what is his background? He’s a marginally failed real estate developer, right, with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems on aircraft carriers. But for some reason, like something like six years ago, somebody said something to him, and he’s been fixated on this issue that, to a president of the United States, should not be an issue.

Sargent: That’s quite a takedown, Steve. I think that Democrats have an opening to really recapture national security in a very broad sense here, by putting people like Mark Kelly out there to just scaldingly ridicule the idea that this guy has any idea what he’s talking about on any of these fronts, especially when we’re in the middle of such an absolute global catastrophe as the one he’s drawn us into. What do you think?

Benen: It reminds me a lot of what the political landscape looked like towards the end of 2008. You know, the economy was in ruins, and Americans were not only upset about the Great Recession, they were also upset about the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had launched two unsuccessful wars in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. And at that point, there was an opportunity for people to say, you know what, I’m sick of this, I want to be ready for a change, not just on the economy, but on foreign policy too.

And I think the fact that Trump is failing so miserably in Iran, and the war continues to drag on—here we are, it’s nearly six months in. Americans were told that this was going to be a quick war, this was going to be an easy war, that this was going to be a casualty-free war, and none of those things have happened. And so now we have people like Mark Kelly, who has a lot of credibility on this, clearly speaking out, but others are speaking out as well.

And this message is getting through. The war is wildly unpopular with the American mainstream, nearly as unpopular as Trump’s economic performance. And that one-two punch is absolutely devastating, not only to the White House and its agenda, but to the Republican Party at large, especially here we are in this critical election period.

Sargent: Just to take your 2008 and George W. Bush comparison one step further—everybody should recall that in 2004, after George W. Bush was reelected, he looked absolutely untouchable. I remember the atmosphere at the time was that because of September 11, and because of, you know, all the sort of theatrics that Karl Rove was doing, which at the time looked really formidable, right?

The sense was that he had absolute dominance over our information space, that there was no way they could lose arguments, that Democrats were just scattered and listless and without direction. And then, in two short years, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. And, then we got 2008 and one of the biggest Democratic victories in, I guess, our lifetimes.

Benen: Exactly. You know, it’s so easy to forget that after 2004, we heard the same things that we were hearing shortly after 2024—that we had entered an era of Republican dominance, that Republicans were going to be leading for the foreseeable future, that they’d cracked the code, they’d rewritten the alignment, everything was going to be different from here on out. That’s what we heard in 2004, when Republicans were running the show. They had the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And as far as we were told, the conventional wisdom from most of the pundits was that Democrats were just lost at sea for the foreseeable future. Two years later, Democrats took back Congress. And then two years after that, they controlled the show. They were in charge.

And so I think that when you heard similar talk in 2024, after Trump won, that he had somehow realigned American politics, I couldn’t help but laugh at the time, thinking, yeah, let’s get back to me in a year and a half. Let’s see what’s going on as we approach the midterms. And here we are. It’s exactly what’s happening. History is repeating itself. They didn’t really earn a mandate in 2004 or in 2024. They overplayed their hand. Americans rejected the poor economy and a failed war in the Middle East. And it’s happening just like it happened then. It’s happening again now.

Sargent: And Trump was supposed to be the guy who was much shrewder than the Bushes and the Roves of the world. Steve Benen, all of that was beautifully said. Thank you so much for coming on. Folks, if you want to check out Steve Benen’s stuff, make sure to check out the MaddowBlog over at MS Now. Steve, great to talk to you.

Benen: See you soon, Greg. Thanks.

In March, a group of around 50 activists broke into Ridglan Farms, a dog breeding and animal research facility, and liberated 22 beagles, a breed said to be favored by the industry because of their docile and eager-to-please temperaments. The company, which had been the focus of a largely successful multiyear animal rights campaign, was scheduled to surrender its breeding license on July 1 to avoid criminal prosecution after a state investigation had found evidence of felony animal abuse, including severe and unsanitary confinement, eye surgeries performed without anesthesia, and unnecessary euthanasia.

But the protesters still weren’t satisfied. They also wanted Ridglan to surrender the animals in its possession to ensure they wouldn’t be killed or sold for use in future experiments. And so, on a bright and chilly April morning, a surprisingly bipartisan group of 1,000 activists traveled to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, to engage in what they hoped would be a mass “open rescue” of the more than 2,000 beagles that were still held in the facility.

The first, smaller liberation was met with comparatively little resistance. This time, however, the company was prepared. Perimeters were blocked and trenches dug and filled with manure to dissuade trespassers. Private security guards and police patrolled in force, ready to repel demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Some of the protesters wore hazmat suits and carried tools intended to help them enter the facility and open cages, but the majority of attendees were dressed in regular clothes and looked like ordinary Americans. Which is what they were, for the most part. Lawyer and organizer Wayne Hsiung had intentionally emphasized a shared concern for animals and a commitment to the principle of nonviolence that attracted people from across the political spectrum. Anti-capitalist vegans stood shoulder to shoulder with dog-loving conservatives. Parents with children and seniors in wheelchairs cheered from the sidelines as more brazen activists tried and failed to breach the barriers.

Not long after the attempted rescue mission began, Gretchen Primack crouched in pain, her eyes burning from pepper spray. A poet and bookseller from New York state’s Hudson Valley, she had traveled roughly 1,000 miles to try to rescue the dogs. But facing pepper spray and rubber bullets, protesters like Primack had been beaten back.

After four tense hours, the crowd retreated. Twenty-seven people had been arrested, and several were hurt; one demonstrator reportedly lost multiple teeth. As Primack rushed a friend who had been hit with rubber bullets to the ER, she wasn’t alone in feeling, she told us, “totally demoralized.”

And then, just as fast as the cops had gassed the protesters, the activists won. Hsiung called it “the greatest turnaround in animal rights history.” Their victory was, in part, thanks to support from right-wingers.

In April, shortly before the smaller scale raid on the facility, the popular conservative podcaster Tomi Lahren interviewed Hsiung and praised the activists for their bravery. The “bipartisan” issue of animal cruelty, she said, is “one of the few areas I think we can all come together on.” After the action, Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and a proud beagle owner, urged Ridglan to make a deal and sell the dogs. Working behind the scenes, reportedly aided by well-connected allies and some deep-pocketed Trump donors, the activists secured the release of 2,000 dogs on undisclosed terms.

Under past administrations, bold direct actions like the one seen in Wisconsin have typically been dealt with harshly; for decades, law enforcement equated animal liberation with domestic terrorism. Yet even as it viciously suppresses First Amendment dissent in other arenas, the Trump regime has seemingly embraced some forms of militant animal activism and opportunistically seized the moment to take credit for the heartwarming Ridglan outcome. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a joint video statement boasting about the “major win for animal welfare,” while Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin posted a photo of himself with a beagle and doubled down on the administration’s preexisting commitment to eliminating animal testing in January. The far right clearly sees political value in these animal welfare fights. So why has the left largely ceded the issue to them?

In 2019, Emily Atkin wrote an insightful article for this magazine titled “Why Animal Rights Is the Next Frontier for the Left.” In it, she predicted that “it’s only a matter of time before [the left has] a serious discussion about the ethics and wisdom of consuming billions of animals every year.”

When it was published, we nodded our heads in agreement, hopeful her analysis would prove prescient. What neither we nor Atkin foresaw was the possibility that animal rights might actually be the next frontier for the right. When, the day before the 2024 presidential election, Vivek Ramaswamy posted that “animal cruelty will eventually become a genuine concern for conservatives,” and that it “shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” we scoffed in disbelief. Perhaps we shouldn’t have. Even then, conservatives were up in arms about P’Nut, the pet squirrel turned social media star who had recently been seized and euthanized by New York state authorities, a viral symbol of supposed government overreach and hostility toward pets. “Just go out there and vote for P’nut,” advised Elon Musk.

Today, Ramaswamy’s call is even harder to discount. A movement is gaining momentum on the far right that can’t simply be reduced to opportunistic concern about celebrity squirrels. In addition to launching a “strike force” to crack down on puppy mills and dogfights, the Trump administration is working to rein in animal experimentation. The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, the world’s foremost funder of biomedical research, has dedicated $87 million to the development of animal-free research methods, and the Food and Drug Administration has published a strategic road map to phase out animal testing. Kennedy has met with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, about the possibility of turning NIH-backed primate research centers into animal sanctuaries—a possibility the NIH has reportedly followed up on.

Tomi Lahren, along with fellow influencers Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich and Republican officials including Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, all worked to defeat the Save Our Bacon Act, a misleadingly named bill being pushed by the pork industry that would have preempted state-level welfare protections that provide gestating sows a tiny bit of room to move.

To be clear, the Save Our Bacon Act is a Republican bill, a fact that underscores the fundamental incoherence and hypocrisy of the right’s relationship to animal welfare. Trump’s fossil fuel–guzzling and pro-corporate policies are, of course, disastrous and deadly for humans and nonhumans alike, and the president and his allies are busy deregulating the government agencies capable of monitoring and halting the animal welfare abuses some right-wingers have begun to decry—including, most recently, with a major rollback of the Endangered Species Act. RFK Jr. may sincerely love dogs, but he has also used his bully pulpit to promote red meat consumption and claims to follow the flesh-heavy “carnivore diet.”

Still, you don’t have to squint too hard to see the potential outlines of a phenomenon similar to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA. Once again, we have a set of broadly popular issues generally seen as belonging to the left, but never centered or taken seriously there, leaving a vacuum to be filled by savvy conservatives.

The polling justifies the enthusiasm, “While the Left and Right don’t align on much these days, over 85 percent of Republicans and Democrats do agree animal testing should be phased out,” reports the conservative Washington Examiner. Eight out of 10 voters also consider preventing farm animal cruelty to be a moral concern, while 72 percent report being more likely to vote for a candidate who supports protecting threatened and endangered species.

Few progressives appear to take seriously the transformation unfolding on the right—one that may well secure victories for some vulnerable animals while also further elevating an anti-government, anti-science, anti-egalitarian agenda. That appears to be the goal of the White Coat Waste Project, an initiative led by Anthony Bellotti, a former Republican operative who cannily connects animal testing to right-wing preoccupations including Covid conspiracies, federal spending cuts, and transgender fearmongering (based on misrepresentations of hormone studies conducted on mice).

Justin Marceau, faculty director of the Animal Law Program at Sturm College of Law and co-founder of the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, is hopeful about a subset of conservatives expressing what he describes as “genuine care about nonhuman animal well-being.” Meanwhile, he and many of the people he speaks to are also deeply frustrated with many of their ostensible political allies, including a Democratic Party that appears to take animals and their human advocates for granted. “For nonhuman animals who are dying by the billions every year, we’re already in the worst-case scenario,” Marceau explained. “I think Democrats view people who care about animals as a fringe subset of people who care about climate and the environment. They seem to think it’s just not a constituency that they could lose. I think they’re wrong about that.”

A few years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine crunchy moms who hate Monsanto becoming a key part of Trump’s electoral coalition. But here we are.

Once again, the parallels to MAHA feel inescapable. A few years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine crunchy moms who hate Monsanto becoming a key part of Trump’s electoral coalition. But here we are.

Of course, MAHA quickly revealed its MAGA-laundering fraudulence. Every time its goals have come up against corporate interests in this administration, the corporate interests have won out, often spectacularly so—as when Trump successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to shield glyphosate manufacturers from liability for the health impacts of their pesticides, an almost farcical contravention of MAHA’s ostensible values.

“I don’t see the political right turning on big corporate power when it comes to factory farming,” Marceau acknowledged. “But Democrats have not gone to battle with these big corporate interests either.” And even if the right doesn’t take on the meat industry directly, it “could plausibly deliver victories for animal advocates that were truly unimaginable under Obama or Biden.”

Our conversations with animal rights activists revealed a personal and profound sense of betrayal with regards to the wider left—the ideological and political community, or constellation of communities, separate from the Democratic Party. Consider the fact that the Ridglan protests were covered by mainstream and right-wing news outlets, but barely made it onto the radar of liberal and left media, a massive direct action against a corporate target seemingly unworthy of serious coverage or consideration.

This resistance on the left to even a basic vocalization of compassion for nonhuman animals helps explain why the animal rights movement celebrated some MAGA figures who have begun stepping into the vacuum. “It’s difficult to watch animal rights folks accept this embrace from the right, but at this point I honestly can’t blame them,” explained an activist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If you tell people to fuck off enough times, they’re gonna fuck off. And that’s what the left has been doing to animal rights activists for decades.”

Much of the reluctance to embrace animal rights seems to stem from a broader, zero-sum assumption that these fights distract from or are irrelevant to more traditional leftist issues. This perspective is profoundly divorced from the reality of our industrial system of meat production, the horrors of which are deeply intertwined with the consolidation of corporate power, the exploitation of workers and immigrants, and the destruction of our environment. Far from the prevailing sense of animal rights as a sort of individualistic lifestyle issue, disconnected from a broader critique of capitalism, ending systemic violence against animals actually requires taking on a range of fights that fit in perfectly with the populism that is driving the left’s current political resurgence.

Interestingly, of all the interviews conducted for this piece, it was a conservative activist who best articulated a shorthand for this synthesis. Liam Gray, a former editor for The Daily Caller, is founder of the Wilberforce Institute, a conservative animal rights outfit “focused on ending big government, taxpayer-funded animal cruelty.” Speaking about animal testing companies like Ridglan as well as Big Ag actors like Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods, Gray said, “The divide on animals right now is feeling less like left versus right and more like people versus special interests. And the more that Democrats don’t respond to that, and side with the special interests, and take for granted that they have the animal people behind them, I think the more it’s going to hurt them.”

Of course, this intersectional approach to animal protection is not guaranteed. MAGA is already attempting to instantiate a very different form of animal politics—what The Atlantic’s Daniel Engber has labeled “Animal Nationalism,” in reference to traditional twentieth-century fascist politics that elevated a subset of animals alongside a subset of supposedly superior human beings.

While conservative groups like Wilberforce are deeply committed to reducing the suffering of all nonhuman animals, for many on the right, it’s clear that some animals are worthy of concern—the cats and dogs in JD Vance’s hateful libel against Haitian immigrants; the bald eagles and whales that have been dishonestly instrumentalized to further right-wing attacks on wind farms—while the vast majority of living beings are imperiled by MAGA’s program of xenophobic cruelty, corporate corruption, and planetary arson. Rather than allow compassion for animals to become another tool in the right’s system of hierarchical politics, the left has the ability—and, indeed, a duty—to elevate a moral framework for animal rights that objects to violence against humans and nonhumans alike on universal grounds.

Fundamentally, any project that aims to decrease needless suffering—which has always been an essential goal of the left—is simply and glaringly incomplete if it does not recognize the vast suffering that humans needlessly inflict on nonhuman animals. Living beings that are capable of joy and pain, affection and sadness, deserve moral recognition. And addressing their immiseration is not at odds with fighting an authoritarian oligarchy that exploits us all. Indeed, not doing so poses serious political risks.

It would be an ethical and tactical blunder to let MAGA uncontestedly lay claim to the compassion that so many feel toward animals. But there is still time to change course. As Marceau put it, “The best-case scenario is that this movement on the right awakens the left to the idea that animal welfare and animal protection ought to matter. To me, that’s the true ideal, because there’s an alignment there that actually makes sense.”

Turning coal mines into solar farms sounds so smart, it’s almost hard to believe that it’s happening in the United States under President Trump. But late last month, construction began in Texas on a 1.2 gigawatt solar farm that will be one of the largest clean energy projects in the country and the biggest solar project built on a brownfield site in North America. It will start producing power a year from now, and will also include 1.6. gigawatt-hours of battery storage.

This $1.7 billion project is groundbreaking, as is another one forthcoming in the same state: The world’s largest carbon removal plant will open at the end of the year.

There are caveats in both cases. The surface coal mine and adjacent coal-fired power plant in Bremond, which sits between Dallas and Houston, will continue operating alongside the new solar farm. And many environmental experts are skeptical of carbon removal as a realistic solution to the climate crisis.

But there’s no doubting this much: Texas is a national leader in renewable energy, and has been so for decades. It’s first in wind power—by a long shot—and second in solar power generation, behind only California. It generates enough power from solar to power the equivalent of half the homes in the state.

In its enthusiasm for wind power, Texas, which Trump won even more convincingly in 2024 than he did in 2016 and 2020, couldn’t be more at odds with the president. He has had a weird vendetta against wind power ever since the early 2010s, when a wind farm was built near one of his golf courses in Scotland—ruining the view, in his opinion. He claims that all renewable energy is part of the Democrats’ “Green New Scam,” and he’s wildly exaggerated the impact of wind turbines on whales and birds.

Now, in his second term, Trump has ramped up his war on wind power. His Defense Department invented completely bogus national security concerns to justify delaying more than 150 onshore wind farms (a federal judge last week ordered the administration to lift the freeze). The administration, with appalling disregard for our futures and our tax dollars, is also paying companies billions of dollars to abandon wind farm projects, which if built would have, according to a Senate investigation, powered millions of homes and created tens of thousands of jobs (not to mention averted huge quantities of carbon emissions).  

Texas is not following suit. It may be Trump country, but it’s also Green Energy country—a paradox that has a fascinating history.

Texas, being an extremely sunny and windy place, has an ideal natural landscape for renewables. Midland is famous for oil wealth, but in the early twentieth century it was known as “Windmill City,” as nearly every house had a windmill in its yard. But natural resources alone don’t explain everything. People must make decisions and lead, and at the end of the twentieth century one of those people was a Midland native, Republican governor, and future president.

Like his father, George W. Bush was a market-based environmentalist. He didn’t support renewable energy out of concerns over air pollution or global warming, but because he saw how much money there was to be made in the industry. “I didn’t use climate change to get the state of Texas to go forward,” Michael Osborne, who co-founded the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association, told the Houston Chronicle last year. “I used the green that Republicans relate to.” 

Bush signed a bipartisan bill that broke up the local electricity monopolies and mandated that the state install more renewable energy. Under his successor, the far more conservative Rick Perry, the wind boom really took off. In 2005, Republican legislators set 20-year goals for renewable energy—and blew past them by 2010. Since then, wind energy in Texas has more than quadrupled.

In the Trump era, some Republicans in the state legislature have tried to mess with Texas’s green energy sector. Last year, they attempted to limit the development of renewable projects, but failed. This year, they proposed a quota to protect fossil fuels, as the renewables share of the state’s future electricity generation reaches 70 percent. But in Texas, 60 percent of Republican voters support renewables, and not even the oil and gas industry opposes them; after all, that industry uses renewables to power its own operations—to save money.

This is not to say that Texas is a climate policy paradise. It simply is following the Bush template: monetizing all the state’s abundant natural resources. Texas isn’t forcing the phase-out of coal or other fossil fuels, instead pursuing an “all of the above” energy policy, and they’ve been welcoming to data centers. But this approach has strengthened the argument that all new forms of energy are welcome, with the result that renewables don’t have serious opposition, even in a state that normally loves a culture war.

No serious opposition, that is, except from the Trump administration, which has delayed 54 wind projects in Texas as part of its national freeze. The president’s war on wind has been criticized by conservative Texans, who see his moves as interfering in the free market—and with their values and economic interests. Former GOP state Representative John Davis, a Trump voter who has seven wind turbines on his ranch, told the Chronicle that wind energy was a “conservative idea” and that he was frustrated with Republicans who have abandoned it: “Their own voters are rural Texans, and it’s hurting their own voting base.”

Renewable energy makes practical sense in rural places all over the country, where people are struggling with high energy bills yet have abundant access to sun and wind. If Republicans nationally continue to back Trump’s weird vendetta against wind it could hurt them in Texas but also in other conservative rural states. After all, the state that produces the second-most wind energy is Iowa, a famously important state in the presidential election calendar. And solar farms and battery storage on coal mines are not even unique to Texas, as similar projects are underway in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Louisiana.

Trump will never come around on wind. His mind is made up. But even red states whose Republican leaders have gone full MAGA can see the economic upside to renewables, and the profit motive is steadily proving more powerful than a dumb culture war. The voters, politicians, and businesspeople of Texas have understood this for many years, and it’s only a matter of time before their ideological brethren across the South and Midwest follow suit.

It was heartening to see a couple of polls come out recently showing that for the first time in a long time, Americans trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on the economy. It’s insane that this can come as a surprise, and that these two parties are even running as close to one another as they are is absurd. Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter.

For decades now, the Republican Party has built it electoral success on myths and lies. Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it. I wouldn’t say that, for a range of ideological reasons, but I’m a liberal. I’m ready to admit, however, that your average person would say that about him.

But that’s a long, long time ago now. You have to be in your fifties at least to have any memory of it. But the last three Republican presidents—Bush, Bush, and Trump—have been disasters. The first Bush oversaw a double-dip recession and a massive savings and loan scandal that looted the treasury. The second Bush started a costly and tragic war based on lies and nearly brought the global economy to its knees. Trump, you know about—corruption, fascism, and staggering incompetence.

That’s four decades of failure. In fact, it goes back much farther. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my friend Simon Rosenberg, who has for years paid careful attention to the performance of the economy under Democratic and Republican administrations. In this email, he had a chart showing that going all the way back to FDR, monthly job growth has averaged 176,000 under Democratic presidents, and 59,000 under Republican ones. Trump’s average over both terms, because of the job loss during the pandemic, is actually in the red, -7,000. In his current term, Trump averages 44,000 a month. Joe Biden, you wonder? He averaged 336,000.

There’s so much more. Returning now to the post-Reagan era: From 1989 to 2026, we’ve had Democratic presidents for 20 years and Republicans for 17.4 years. Care to hazard a guess as to the number of jobs created under Democrats vs. Republicans?

Answer: It’s 49.8 million versus 1.9 million. That isn’t a typo. Fifty million to two, basically. Democratic presidents have also done far better than Republicans on median household incomes, GDP rates, the Dow Jones index, and even deficit reduction. Dramatically so on deficit reduction.

So why do people usually believe the Republicans are better for the economy? Three reasons.

First, the GOP benefits from being the party of big business, which just leads people to assume that they must have a better handle on profits and loss (they certainly do on the latter). People see that nearly every Wall Streeter and corporate honcho is a Republican, and they take their cues from that.

Second, the Republicans and their media propagandists are extremely skilled at reinforcing the above lazy misperceptions. When a Republican is president, they find the one piece of good economic news and flog it endlessly. When it’s a Democrat, they do the opposite, as Fox News and Fox Business did over and over with BLS’s downward jobs revisions during Biden’s last year in office. Downward revisions are fairly common, but you can bet the Fox outlets aren’t talking about them much these days.

Third and I think most important, the Democrats do an awful job of talking about all this. To begin with, I’m not even sure most of them know just how wide the divergence on the economy is. I remember talking to a group of Democratic House members a few years ago. I started rattling off some of these statistics, and several of them grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and began scribbling them down. I could tell by the looks on their faces that this was news to them. That’s just indefensible—a total failure of the national party and congressional leadership.

Democrats and their consultants seem to have this belief that they shouldn’t bother attacking the perceived strengths of Republicans. I remember talking with a Biden aide (this was when Biden was still planning on seeking reelection) who said the perception of Trump as a successful businessman was hardwired and unshakeable.

I wouldn’t doubt that every poll and focus group said that. But that doesn’t mean the right line of attack and a pile of cash can’t change that. If you’re old enough to remember 2004, you remember what “Swift-boating” was. In July, the country saw John Kerry as a war hero. Three months and $22.4 million later, half the country thought he was a traitor or a coward or a little of both.

This is a lesson the GOP takes to heart: They went right at his strength, and they changed perceptions of him. When done right, it works. Democrats need to get this. And of course, they were lying about Kerry. And it still worked. But the Democrats just have to tell the truth.

In the current case, Democrats haven’t really done much to drive Trump’s approval down. They haven’t had to. Here, observable reality is doing a lot of the work. But between now and November 2028, it will be up to the Democrats to finish the job.

They have to start telling the country the actual story of the American economy over the last four decades—that every Republican president has left a mess that the Democrat had to try his best to clean up, and that every Democrat has left the country better off economically than he found it, usually far, far better. They should make sure every American knows the numbers 49.8 million and 1.9 million. I’ve only ever heard one prominent Democrat refer to these numbers in a high-profile speech: Bill Clinton, in his speech at the Democratic convention in Charlotte in 2012. It should be mandatory for every speaker at the next convention to mention this.

And by the way, another GOP strength they have to go after directly—this idea that the GOP is the pro-military party. Tell that to the mothers of the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine if what’s happening on that carrier had happened under President Kamala Harris? First of all, it wouldn’t have, because whatever her good and bad points, she would not have been stupid enough to start this stupid war because Benjamin Netanyahu put stupid ideas in her head. But if somehow it had, Jim Jordan would be screaming about impeachment, and Fox News programming would consist of little else (as things stand, Fox has covered the story somewhat, but at least one anchor recently ripped into those whiny sailors).

Add to that Trump’s utterly baffling announcement last week ordering the Navy to revert to old, steam-powered catapult systems on some carriers. (Where does he come up with some of this stuff?) Experts say these systems are badly outdated, less effective than the electronic systems currently in use, and will cost billions of dollars to install. To give credit where it’s due, I did like what Democratic Senator Mark Kelly had to say on this one: “He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”

So: no, no, and no. A businessman can’t magically fix things in Washington. One day, maybe one will, but not this one. He’s a conman and always has been. The Republican Party is not good for the economy. They screw it up every time. And the Republican Party is not pro-military. The last two Republican presidents have started completely unnecessary wars, gambling with the lives of service members. The next Democratic presidential nominee—moderate, socialist, man, woman, whatever—better say these things bluntly and repeatedly. And every Democrat needs to join them.

At a rally the other day, Donald Trump handed Democrats the perfect soundbite. “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline,” Trump seethed, “just remember” it’s to deprive Iran of a nuclear weapon. He said higher prices are “okay,” and that “I will never apologize.” Trump’s angry, sneering tone on the words “tiny little bit more” projected deep contempt for all who dare object to hardship imposed on them by his needless war, and the moment produced harsh media coverage. Separately, Trump curtly brushed off concerns among military families over long deployments and bad conditions on the U.S.S. Lincoln, leading to more harsh coverage. We talked about all this with MS NOW’s Steve Benen, author of an interesting piece on Trump’s refusal to ever admit error. We discuss how Trump’s lifelong penchant for faking expertise is catching up with him, how Democrats can exploit this new self-own, and why political conditions suddenly resemble those that brought down George W. Bush in his second term. Listen to this episode here.

Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture. Adam Hamilton is a 62-year-old white man who has written dozens of books on theology and leads the largest church in a deeply red state—and he is a Democrat. In fact, he may be his party’s best shot in decades…

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A cartoon by Jack Ohman. Related | Trump’s airplane switcheroo proves he’s a selfish coward…

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The revisions have scrubbed or softened accounts of violence, slavery, activism and lived experiences, raising questions about whose stories the government considers worth telling. By Jessica Kutz for The 19th Jenny McBurney, a librarian specializing in government publications, was in Washington, D.C., in June when she heard the news that the Department of Interior…

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Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions. Republican lawmakers this week continued on their anti-Anthony Fauci crusade, selectively releasing text messages he sent during the COVID-19 pandemic to falsely accuse him of causing miscarriages.

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Terrible GOP Senate nominees are making Republicans go blue…

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By Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio, for KFF Erica Carter is passionate about her job, and she has seven acres of flowers and vegetables to show for it. Carter’s specialty is reeling in grants to support students in the Omaha Nation school district, where she is a finance manager. One paid for the garden that sits next to the district’s campus. Another allowed the school system…

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Since Abdul El-Sayed’s win earlier this month to become the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s US Senate seat, the right has ramped up its attacks on him, condemning his past comments as evidence of him being a “terrorist” and “radical Islamist” or a “jihadist sympathizer” who is “infiltrating from within”. But it has also targeted El-Sayed’s family—including his wife, Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist, and his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, a writer and assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

The same week as El-Sayed’s victory, President Trump posted a photo of himself and First Lady Melania Trump in formal attire next to a photo of the Senate nominee and his wife, who is wearing a hijab. “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s [sic],” the post reads. 

More recently, media outlets like Fox News and the New York Post have dug into Abdelhadi’s past, citing her arrest last fall on a felony charge for allegedly spitting on an Illinois state trooper during a protest outside Broadview ICE Detention Center in Chicago next to a mugshot, remarks on Israel and Palestine, and criticism of American holidays like July 4th and Thanksgiving.

Socialist Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's half sister is revealed to be a radical University of Chicago professor who was arrested last fall on felony charges for allegedly spitting on an Illinois state trooper during anti-ICE riots outside a detention facility in suburban… pic.twitter.com/kKU2oeEsmx

— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) August 14, 2026

“Abdul loves his sister and also disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use,” Sophie Pollock, a spokesperson for the El-Sayed campaign, told Fox News in response to its story on Abdelhadi’s arrest. “But Abdul is the one on the ballot and his record of public service and his platform is what matters to voters here in Michigan.”

El-Sayed had already addressed much of the right’s criticisms—and increasing concern from establishment Democrats—previously, distancing himself from his past support for the “defund the police” movement along with other progressives candidates looking to come across as more presentable in the lead-up to the midterms. 

But for the many on the right, backing down from past progressive rhetoric once, or even many times, will never be enough. It is those same folks on the right who dictate what is considered unacceptable and, in response, what many Democrats may worry is too radical or “woke” for potential voters leaning more toward the center.

Conservatives co-opted “woke” and its discourse. Democrats don’t have to fall in line with them. 

Just when you thought Donald Trump’s idiotic war with Iran couldn’t get any more infuriating. Reports have emerged that military munitions have dwindled to the point where battle plans have had to be altered, allegedly enraging the president, who desperately wants to find an exit out of his mess. Despite various officials leaking the troubling situation to the press, the White House and…

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Just five days shy of his 23rd birthday, Jamaican track and field star Usain Bolt broke the world record in the 100-meter dash at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on August 16, 2009. The iconic sprinter posted a time of 9.58 seconds, making him the fastest human being ever recorded. Bolt broke the record he set the year before at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

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This story originally ran Aug. 20, 2023. Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With 170 stories (and counting) covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack, I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new. As racist right-wing governing bodies attempt to erase…

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A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Trump’s approval rating plummets near George W.

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

From disappearing manatees to bleached coral reefs, gender-changing turtles and oyster beds destroyed by hurricanes, no other state’s marine life faces the magnitude of climate-related challenges that Florida’s does.

Now, wildlife authorities are attempting to bring some cohesion to tackling the diverse slate of issues by borrowing from a playbook that has already proved successful on land.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), and its charitable arm, the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida (FWFF), have announced the creation of an ambitious “coastal corridor,” an interconnected chain of ocean-based projects and enhancements designed to preserve and nourish vulnerable marine creatures.

It replicates to a significant degree the state’s wildlife corridor, an 18 million-acre project established in 2021 to provide a safe, contiguous habitat spanning much of Florida where rare or threatened land-based species including birds, reptiles, panthers, and bears can flourish.

“If you had to list what sets Florida apart and makes it such an iconic place…our coast is our treasure.”

Featuring projects including habitat restoration, fisheries enhancement, and improved public access and coastal resilience along Florida’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the project aims to create a connected network of artificial reefs, oyster beds, seagrass and mangroves on which marine life can thrive.

“The goal is to protect and connect all these important habitats for fish and wildlife,” said Nick Wiley, the former head of FWC who was appointed in April as executive director of FWFF. “Everyone has seen how successful the wildlife corridor initiative has been, rallying everybody around the mission. The wildlife species needed these travel lanes and corridors across the state, but it also highlighted how private landowners contribute to federal, state and county public lands and how all that fits together.”

“Our board members were really inspired by that, looking at our coast, our fisheries and the coastal communities, and from the beaches, estuaries, all the way out into the deeper water,” Wiley said.

The coastal corridor is designed to not only protect Florida’s precious marine legacy, but also the economic riches of its waters. Recreational fishing alone brings in $14 billion a year and provides 120,000 jobs, the foundation said. Another $3.1 billion and 39,000 jobs come from creating and maintaining artificial reefs.

Additionally, more than 2 million out-of-state anglers visit Florida each year, renting charter boats and plowing plenty of dollars into hotels and restaurants.

“If you had to list what sets Florida apart and makes it such an iconic place for people to go and enjoy the outdoors, and the water and the fish and everything, our coast is our treasure,” Wiley said. “But we hadn’t really looked at it as a connected corridor all the way around the coastline. It’s like the wildlife corridor’s sister on the coast that shows how you connect our estuaries all the way out through the grass flats into the deeper water.”

“We already have a lot of partners from local government, nonprofit, federal government, and state that are doing a lot of great work to protect our coastlines and provide habitat for fisheries, but it’s like here and there, scattered along the coastline,” he added. “This pulls us all together under one great umbrella to inspire and provide a vision that we can all celebrate and leverage, and identify where we need to do better, make improvements, where we need to restore places and where we need to add habitat, from coral reefs all the way up to the grass flats.”

FWC and FWFF leaders are partnering with local governments, scientists, reef builders, conservation organizations and coastal communities. One early project, planned for next month, is a collaboration with Collier county to lay a sizable new artificial reef about 13 miles from shore in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I see more excitement and opportunity on this one than anything I’ve touched.”

Mike Norberg, a marine biologist with decades of experience in artificial reefs, who is also the coastal corridor’s project director, said a chain of prefabricated concrete structures would be lowered on to the seabed, and would mimic natural reefs to attract fish.

“There’s a number of benefits for artificial reefs,” he said. “It removes pressure from natural reefs, which obviously have a lot of ongoing challenges, especially in south Florida, and also creates habitats in areas where none might have existed.

“In parts of the coastal waters, it’s largely just sand sea floor and not a ton of natural reefs, especially when you look in the northern Gulf or northeastern side of Florida. So it’s a win-win both for the ecosystem as well as recreational access opportunities, whether that’s fishing and diving or just going out and sightseeing and having fun.”

Norberg said strategic reef deployments were a priority for the first year, with other projects under way in Okaloosa county in the Panhandle, and Duvall county on the northern Atlantic coast.

Future plans, he said, include exploring coastal restoration projects to help address beach erosion, the loss of coastal mangroves that protect against storm surge during tropical events and the reduction in natural food stocks that sustain declining species, such as seagrass for manatees.

“We’ve got a number of different projects that are in various stages of development in different parts of the state,” he said. “We’re looking at various oyster bed restoration opportunities and how that can help tie in to this network of connected habitats, living shorelines. That’s a huge thing, one that helps improve coastal resiliency from a community perspective.”

“It also provides habitat for juvenile fish and adult fish to spend their time within an estuary before they move offshore. So there really is this opportunity to tie both inshore to offshore habitats and use that as a tool for marine resource management.”

To Wiley, the creation of the coastal corridor represents what he says is a peak of his decades-long career in wildlife conservation in Florida.

“I see more excitement and opportunity on this one than anything I’ve touched,” he said. “It speaks to me so well in my heart about bringing people together to do great things for Florida’s environment and Florida’s coast, and I just see so much potential and opportunity for everybody to come in and be a part of it.”

“As we’ve seen on the wildlife corridor, it will bring a deeper, richer identity to the state that will enrich and enhance the value of Florida for people that live here, and the people that want to come visit.”

One of Ronald Reagan’s most famous lines, referring to disarray in his White House, was, “Sometimes the right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.” More appropriately for the Trump White House: “Sometimes the far-right hand doesn’t know what the radical lunatic right-wing hand is doing.”

In fall 2017, less than a year into President Trump’s first term, I wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled “American Kakistocracy.” As I wrote then, “Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past century or more, and most highly informed people had never heard it before (but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).” They should pay attention now.

Bad as the first Trump term was, it was nothing compared to this one. And the key components of the anti-science, anti-government nihilism, combined with willful ignorance about the consequences of their actions, and the interrelationship across policy areas, is about to play out big time starting next year, with health care and policy on the front lines. Three components of horrible policies across disparate areas will interact to engender a catastrophe in an already stressed health ecosystem.

One is the insane anti-vaccination conspiracy theories brought into full focus by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his cohort in the Trump administration, all amplified by Trump himself. The measles outbreak, the emergence of tetanus cases, the attacks on the flu and Covid-19 vaccines, and the evisceration of food safety programs leading to outbreaks of norovirus, cyclospora, e-coli, and listeria, have begun to put more stress on the system, with increased costs, more hospital burdens, and likely more trouble ahead when flu season begins and new Covid strains emerge. Not only that, many undocumented immigrants have been working in meat processing plants—some estimates have been as many as 200,000. The massive deportation policy has left many of those plants with fewer workers to do the same volume of processing, and often a form of self-regulation by the industry for the safety of their products.

Add to that the soon-to-be forced removal and deportation of Haitians, among others losing Temporary Protected Status. Over 100,000 Haitians have been employed in the healthcare sector, many taking care of seniors in nursing homes and via home health care, others working hospitals as orderlies, nurses, or other jobs. It will be a significant blow when those jobs are vacated.

Now comes the biggest problem. When the Republican Congress enacted Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025, it included massive cuts in the Medicaid program, totaling around $1 trillion over 10 years—but made sure to postpone them until 2027, conveniently after the midterm elections. The cuts focused on adding onerous work and paperwork requirements, all designed to force recipients off the rolls, and will remove somewhere between 10 and 15 million people from the program, leaving them without any health coverage. That is in addition to the millions losing coverage or facing huge premium increases with the erasure of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. But the impact will go far beyond those directly losing their health insurance. Medicaid money does not go to Medicaid recipients. It goes to the providers. The loss of a major chunk of the money going out to them will have big reverberations.

The American health care system, unlike in most advanced countries, was jerry-built, a combination of public and private entities, and state and federal involvement. But the public and private are not separate. They are like the organs in the human body—if one declines or fails, it has huge impact on the others. And these cuts are going to reverberate in many catastrophic ways.

Start with hospitals, most of which already face major financial strain, and not just in rural areas. There have been major consolidations as those strains have increased; hospitals have had to be creative, to say the least, in finding the revenue to stay solvent. Independent, community-based hospitals have declined precipitously, and the market has shifted to giant, integrated health systems, with major involvement by both private equity firms and large corporations like health insurers and pharmacy giants buying physician groups and integrating vertically and horizontally. Significant revenue, especially via the emergency rooms, comes from Medicaid.

Cut that revenue, and some hospitals will close, in both urban and rural areas. For those that remain, the burden in the ERs will increase their costs and strain their staffs. The law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to anyone in health crisis coming to their ERs, whether they can pay or not. Poor people and the undocumented will either go to the ER and not be able to pay, or will defer any treatment, including drugs they need, and that will mean more emergencies, more deaths, more burden on the broader system.

The loss in revenue may cause many hospitals to reduce staff, adding to the burden on nurses and doctors who remain. For many, their staffs will already be burdened when the deportations take full effect. And reduced staffs will also put more hospital patients in jeopardy if there are fewer nurses and doctors to watch over them and care for them. Of course, to maintain revenue, hospitals will find ways to charge more for their paying patients, so those cost burdens for them and their insurers will go up as well.

Next, turn to nursing homes. Almost two-thirds of those elderly and disabled people living in nursing homes have their care paid for by Medicaid. They have all reduced their assets to a negligible level to qualify for Medicaid coverage, enabling them to be in these facilities instead of in their children’s homes or in precarious situations living on their own.

Nearly all nursing homes rely heavily on that Medicaid revenue. Lose it, and many elderly and disabled will be out on their ears. Their families will take them in—but there is a double whammy here. The subsidies that exist for home health care, including by family members, are going to be slashed as well, leaving families with their own terrible dilemmas, worsened when trained and trusted Haitians depart.

As for the nursing homes, some will close; others will cut staff and staff pay. The ratio of residents to staff will decline, meaning residents unable to secure help when they need it for such vital tasks as getting medications when they require them, getting help going to the bathroom, getting help in bed to prevent bedsores or worse, having responsive care during a health trauma or emergency. More unqualified staff could mean more abuse of the residents.

There will be more effects seen throughout the country, for everyone who is a part of our intertwined health care system, from those working in it to those using it. No wonder Republicans made sure none of the Medicaid cuts would happen before voters experienced the impact. It turns out that kakistocracy is not just a funny word, but a reality with horrific consequences.