Morning all. Lots of states turning on early in-person voting this week:
**Monday, Oct. 19 - **Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, South Carolina, Texas
**Tuesday, Oct. 20 - **Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, Wisconsin
**Wednesday, Oct. 21 - **West Virginia
**Thursday, Oct. 22 - **Delaware, Maryland
**Saturday, Oct. 24 - **Michigan, New Jersey, New York
With 15 days to go Trump is fighting for his political life as he frenetically campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, and Georgia this week. As Punchbowl News notes this morning when Trump campaigns he often travels to the reddest parts of the state - not the swing, contested areas. That way he isn’t harming House Republicans in competitive races.
Politico is featuring two stories this morning with wild reporting from freaking out Republicans:
Let’s check out a few excerpts from these two Politico stories (here, here):
Republicans are playing whack-a-mole with President Donald Trump in the final two weeks of the midterms.
GOP candidates are desperate to stick to tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump accounts for children and the president’s work to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Instead, in the midterms’ final stretch, Trump and his administration have forced Republicans on the trail to respond to live streaming the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter, his taxpayer-funded political ads promoting his achievements and an announced deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to bring down diesel costs. His latest move, exempting Russia from a new sanctions law sponsored by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, even provoked mild criticism on Saturday from South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham, the late senator’s sister who is running for re-election.
He’s also attacking Republicans: Rep. María Elvira Salazar for her ad targeting his immigration policies; Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for holding up a daylight saving time bill and, on Thursday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, whose political career Trump effectively ended, as well as veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove, for hurting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign.
The deluge has left many Republicans rudderless as they stare down the prospect of losing Senate seats in Republican strongholds like Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Texas, and feeling increasingly despondent about their chances of keeping the House……….
“He has constantly been distracted,” said one GOP operative working on multiple midterm races, “and not focused on what the voters care about. It’s insane.”
………
A slew of troubling internal GOP polling in recent weeks set off a new level of panic across House GOP leadership, political operations and individual campaigns. It didn’t just reveal a harsh environment for the party in power on par with typical midterms, but potentially catastrophic scenarios in formerly safe red seats across the country. Even top House Republicans expect to lose the House majority at this point.
A growing group of Hill Republicans argue the blame rests with Trump, and his decisions to get the U.S. into an open-ended war with Iran that has driven up fuel prices, while enacting a slew of tariffs and other policy moves that have riled farmers………
“No one in the world expected that the Senate would need as much money as they did,” said one national GOP operative working on multiple competitive House races. “All of this money that was expected to go to the House, for the most part, is now being wasted on the Senate because they fucked up so bad.”
Additional Trumpian “distractions” in the home stretch of the campaign include savage internal regime infighting spilling out into the press, the firings of Kimberly Guilfoyle and his ridiculous Press Secretary, his unhinged attempt to turn a popular public park adjacent to The National Mall into a luxury golf course:
And a dramatic and dangerous escalation of his efforts to help Putin defeat Ukraine. Here’s a new editorial from the Wall Street Journal:
From the editorial:
Meanwhile, the evidence compounds that Mr. Trump wants Ukraine to surrender on Mr. Putin’s terms. He’s dropped sanctions on Russian sales of diesel oil, a $4.5 billion windfall for Russian energy companies. He’s threatened to cut off U.S. intelligence to Kyiv. And the Trump Administration still hasn’t come clean on who ordered speed limits on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service that has compromised Ukraine air defenses and strikes on Russian positions in occupied Ukraine.
Reuters reported Friday that the order to throttle Starshield “came from inside the White House.” Mr. Trump said Friday “I don’t know if it was anybody because it wasn’t me and I don’t think it was Elon” Musk, the SpaceX CEO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that some restrictions on Starshield were still in place, so someone is ordering it.
Congress is preoccupied with the Nov. 3 election, but Mr. Trump may not appreciate the anger he’s courting if he keeps aiding Mr. Putin. When the election is over there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.
The venerable conservative publication the National Review has called for Congress to launch a formal “investigation” into Trump’s relationship with Putin. Just read this passage from their editorial that implicitly accuses Trump of treason, Congress Must Investigate Trump’s Aid and Comfort to Putin:
Republicans and Democrats, together, should regard this week’s developments as the last straw.
There’s serious competition, but the Soviet Union could claim the title of modern history’s most monstrous regime. It killed tens of millions and enslaved hundreds of millions more. In the post–World War II era, it emerged as the mortal enemy of the United States in the Twilight Struggle that lasted four decades — during which nuclear war was barely averted in 1962 and the Kremlin sponsored proxy wars against our nation and our allies, killing thousands of Americans. As President Ronald Reagan declaimed, the Soviets were “the evil empire.” His Cold War solution was simple — “We win, they lose” — because peaceful coexistence with an enemy committed to our destruction was too precarious a prospect.
Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent, is a born and bred devotee of the Soviet system. He solidified his despotic status by orchestrating a series of bombings inside Russia as a pretext to crushing Chechnya. We’re now well into his third decade as Russia’s murderous dictator. He openly regards the 1991 fall of the USSR — America’s foe in modernity’s greatest triumph for liberty — as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century.” Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine, like his war of aggression and conquest in Georgia (swaths of which he has occupied for nearly two decades), is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy.
And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.
The #2 Republican in the Senate agrees:
The other investigation we need is one that starts in the states. The vast election protection efforts we’ve set up in the states should challenge the large social media platforms to prove and commit under oath that they are not tipping the scales for Trump and the Rs right now (see here for my full Bluesky thread):
So if you are inclined there are two sets of calls you can make today:
Call you Senators and House Member and demand they stop Trump from giving Ukraine to Putin
If you have a Dem governor, AG, Secretary of State, or state legislature call them and demand they open up an immediate investigation into the social media platforms support of the global right, including here in America
Brent crude starts the day at $108 a barrel, up from $60 a barrel earlier this year:
In that Washington Post poll we reviewed yesterday only 61% of Republicans said they want their party leaders to follow Trump. 37% said they should seek a new direction. This is a very, very high number that is likely to grow if Rs get wiped out in the midterms. Through their terrible governance, unprecedented corruption, and ongoing betrayal of the West and our democracy, Trump and MAGA are losing their grip on the country, and the Republican Party too.
Which is why, my friends, it’s time to go….
Two things you can do today in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:
Become an
Early Vote Championin your networks, communities, and organizations.Sign up to become a
Democracy Protectortoo. Our next trainings are Wednesday at 8pm ET and Saturday at 2pm.
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