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Tonight, a federal judge is ruling that Donald Trump’s Justice Department illegally fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. New donor data shows Republicans pulled in less than 20 percent of all small-dollar donations to congressional campaigns, which one election forecaster referred to as “apocalyptic.” Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is having an exceptionally hard time booking venues for campaign events amid growing backlash over an ad featuring his opponent’s estranged mother. And a new survey from CNBC shows the coalition that helped elect Donald Trump to a second term in the White House has almost completely fallen apart ahead of next week’s midterms.
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A federal judge in New York ruled Monday that Donald Trump’s Justice Department broke the law when it fired Maurene Comey. She spent roughly a decade as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, working on cases against Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and she earned consistent praise from the department along the way.
None of that mattered in July of 2025, when the DOJ showed her the door. Her lawsuit argued the real reason was her last name. Her father is one of Trump’s most prominent critics, and the Justice Department has indicted him twice. The first case got tossed, and the second, still pending, accuses him of threatening the president with a photo of seashells posted on social media.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman — an appointee of former President Barack Obama — wrote that the department “invented a new and expansive theory of executive power” to justify the firing, and that it violated her constitutional right to due process. Several other federal prosecutors and former FBI agents have filed similar lawsuits claiming they were fired for political reasons.
The ruling awards Comey back pay and lets her return to the Southern District of New York if she wants. Her attorneys called it a victory belonging “to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law.” The DOJ says it’ll appeal, and Judge Furman still hasn’t ruled on her First Amendment claim.
One particular number should have Republican strategists losing sleep, according to one prominent election expert. Between January of 2025 through September, GOP congressional candidates collected just 19.1 percent of donations under $200, according to a new county-level map from the election data site VoteHub. Democrats raised $588.7 million in small gifts, while Republicans raised just $140 million.
Election forecaster G. Elliott Morris, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, called that haul “apocalyptic” in a post to his official X account. His research has found that in-state individual contributions are a strong predictor of election results, and a far stronger one than PAC spending.
Texas is a perfect example. Democratic state Rep. James Talarico raised $75.3 million in small donations for his Senate race, while Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton managed $5.37 million. That’s even with the Senate Leadership Fund spending more than $124 million on pro-Paxton ads, and a recent University of Houston poll has Talarico up 48 percent to 46 percent. In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff raised $66.1 million in small donations, compared to $2.72 million for Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
VoteHub did caution that money isn’t the clearest signal of how November turns out. Still, checks of $2,500 or more made up 37% of Republican money, compared with 25% for Democrats. Pollster Rich Baris wrote on X that Republicans went from Trump’s small-dollar army to “the ‘apocalyptic’ Party of Billionaires’ Donations in less than two years.”
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In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is having significant difficulty finding places to host his campaign events just days before the election.
Two restaurants — Elliot’s Wood Fired Kitchen and The Old Dog Ale House & Brewer — have officially reneged on hosting Ohio GOP events featuring Ramaswamy, and a party event set for Tuesday now lists its location as “to be announced.” One anonymous Ohio Republican told Zeteo they’ve been “getting calls that people don’t want him there,” and venues that did host him over the weekend got flooded with one-star Google reviews.
The backlash stems from Ramaswamy’s ad attacking his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. It features Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, accusing her daughter of lying about how she was raised. The ad omits some important context: Arthur lost custody of her children after her husband, Cledith “Bud” Arthur, was arrested for raping Acton when she was just 12 years old. He skipped bail and left town with Acton’s mother, who stayed married to him. The alleged child predator remained a fugitive from the law until he died.
Every living Ohio governor from both parties has rebuked the ad, and former Republican Gov. Mike DeWine urged the campaign to pull it. Ramaswamy, Trump and JD Vance keep defending it anyway. Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said the “desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core.”
Finally, the coalition that carried Donald Trump back into the White House is rapidly falling apart, according to the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey.
Trump won in 2024 by pulling unusual numbers of Latino and young voters away from Democrats. Since the start of his second term, his net approval among Latino voters has dropped from -22 to -38, and among 18- to 34-year-olds it’s fallen from -28 to -53. Black voters went from -55 to -67, and among all registered voters he’s sunk from -7 to -19.
His own base is cooling off too. Net approval among self-described Trump voters slid from +85 to +65, and in the South it flipped from +2 to -20. Republicans still give him 82% approval, but their interest in the election runs 10 points behind Democrats.
The economy is driving much of this. Trump’s economic disapproval hit 65%, the highest CNBC has recorded for any president going back to Barack Obama, and his net economic approval sank to -31 after the Iran war began. Frustration has also grown over inflation and ICE officers shooting Americans.
44 percent of voters said their biggest worry about Republican control of Congress is Trump operating beyond his constitutional power. The survey found a 7-point preference for Democratic control, up 3 points since July, and in close races, the party that turns out its voters will have the edge.
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