Of all the unpredictable sagas of 2026, the U.S. Senate race in Texas is hard to beat, as I continued to explain at New York:

To the operatives and elected officials battling to save the GOP’s Senate majority in November, the emerge of a bitter Senate primary in the red state of Texas has been a nasty surprise. But MAGA militant and attorney general Ken Paxton’s challenge to four-term incumbent John Cornyn in Texas has evolved from a scare into a deadly threat, reflecting a major turn to the far right in the Lone Star GOP. Cornyn is a standard-brand conservative politician by national standards. Deep in the heart of Texas, however, he’s perceived as a RINO by many ideological warriors, and Paxton is their champion. But Senate Republicans will go to great lengths to protect their incumbents, aside from the fact that Paxton (not just an extremist but also a sexual and financial scandal magnet of the highest order) is deemed a lot more vulnerable to a general-election upset by Democratic nominee James Talarico that could be disastrous for the GOP.

So Senate Republicans have thrown a ton of money into saving Cornyn, who managed to edge Paxton in the March 3 primary. But thanks to a third candidate in the race, the incumbent must now cope with a May 26 runoff. Typically, GOP runoffs in Texas are low-turnout affairs that give a big advantage to the more ideologically inclined candidates, a phenomenon that could be exacerbated this year by proximity to the Memorial Day weekend. All this explains why the Senate GOP is deeply worried about Cornyn and has begged on bended knee for the closest thing to divine intervention: a Cornyn endorsement by Donald Trump.

And the day after the primary, it looked like they might get their wish, as Trump promised to “soon” endorse a candidate and then demand that the unlucky rival drop out. There was some immediate gamesmanship by the candidates as Paxton offered to drop out if Cornyn’s Senate buddies passed Trump’s SAVE America Act abomination, and then Cornyn flip-flopped to back the destruction of the Senate filibuster needed to accomplish that goal. Since then, we’ve heard crickets from the White House about the Texas race, and now Cornyn’s friends have pretty much given up on getting the Boss’s assistance, as Burgess Everett reported:

“Seems like Senate Republicans don’t think Trump will endorse Cornyn at this point.

“Sen. Daines at Semafor World Economy: ‘I think the best case scenario right now is for the president to stay neutral.’

“‘I’d be surprised if the president will weigh in on that race. And staying neutral, frankly, would be a good thing at the moment.'”

Senator Steve Daines is very close to the Senate leadership and to the president. His comment suggests that if Trump is going to endorse anyone in Texas, it could be Paxton. If that’s true, then at a minimum Trump is throwing Cornyn to the right-wing wolves of the runoff electorate, and one day when he’s feeling especially ornery, he might just tell Texans to finish him off.

This situation has to be agony, not just for Cornyn, but for GOP donors and strategists too. Nobody wants to throw good money after bad, particularly to help Cornyn (whose attacks on Paxton have been nasty and personal in the extreme) make his potential vanquisher even weaker in a close general election that could be decisive for Senate control. It’s probably significant that the announcement last week of massive new investments by the Senate Leadership Fund into an array of 2026 races did not include anything for Texas. As it happens, Talarico just wowed the political world by raising $27 million in the first three months of the year. National Republicans don’t want to spend one fortune trying to save Cornyn and then another trying to save Paxton in a red state where they should be able to win without spending anything at all.

Maybe the incumbent can save himself without help from Trump or Senate Republicans. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Cornyn is famously a very dignified-looking man, the epitome of the respected senior statesman. Maybe the administration can find him a nice diplomatic or Cabinet position and let the MAGA movement of Texas devote itself to a scorched-earth war on Talarico without further unpleasantness on the Republican side of the barricades.

Bernadette B. Tixon reports that “Trump’s net approval among white working-class voters turns negative for the first time” at msn.com:

“For the first time since Donald Trump returned to the White House, his net approval rating among white working-class voters has turned negative, according to a CNN/SSRS poll conducted between 26 and 30 March 2026. The survey recorded 49 per cent of white working-class voters approving of Trump’s performance, against 50 per cent who disapproved — a net rating of minus one. It is the first time that the figure has dipped below zero in his second term.

The pace of the reversal is equally notable. As recently as mid-February, CNN/SSRS polling had Trump at 54 per cent approval and 46 per cent disapproval among this group — a net positive of eight points — a cushion that evaporated in under six weeks.

A Year-Long Slide in the Numbers

The March result did not emerge in isolation. In late February 2025, two CNN polls showed Trump at 63-37 and 61-38 among white working-class voters. By July 2025, the split had narrowed to 54-45. By January 2026, it stood at 52-47 — still positive, but shrinking — before crossing into negative territory by late March.

Fox News polling pointed in the same direction. Among white non-college men specifically, a Fox News survey in March 2025 showed Trump at 58 per cent approval against 41 per cent disapproval. By March 2026, that had shifted to 48 per cent approval and 52 per cent disapproval — a swing of 21 net points over twelve months. The trajectory is consistent across different polling organisations, which makes it harder to dismiss as a single-outlet anomaly.

CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten has been among the most direct in his assessment. Drawing on CNN exit poll data, his own polling aggregate, and Pew Research Center figures, Enten described what he called a ’23-point switch’ — from Trump winning working-class voters by 14 points over Kamala Harris in 2024, to a current net approval of negative nine. ‘He is absolutely collapsing with the group of voters that helped put him into the White House,’ Enten said.

Like other Democrats in California, I’ve been watching the slow-moving governor’s race with some anxiety. Now that the implosion of Eric Swalwell’s campaign has shaken things up, I offered some analysis and advice at New York about how to avoid calamity.

While governor of California is one of the biggest jobs in America, for months the 2026 election has looked like a real snoozer. Now it’s suddenly turned into a huge mess for Democrats. This week, Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race and resigned from his U.S. House seat following credible rape and sexual-misconduct allegations. Since Swalwell was the leading Democrat in the race, his exit has revived fears that the November general election will feature two Republicans competing for the governorship of this very blue state.

Two general-election spots are up for grabs in the nonpartisan primary that concludes on June 2. Prior to Swalwell’s exit, RealClearPolitics polling averages showed four other candidates with support in the low to mid-teens. After Swalwell, Tom Steyer and Katie Porter led among Democrats. The top Republicans are Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton.

Trump’s recent Hilton endorsement seemed to ensure that he’d win the GOP vote, ironically ending the threat of a GOP “lockout” in November. But with Swalwell’s voters up for grabs, that threat has reemerged. Multiple low-polling Democrats now see a path to victory. This includes former state attorney general Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and San Jose mayor Matt Mahan, who are all from the moderate wing of the party, like Swalwell. Mail ballots are set to go out to every California voter in early May. So there’s little time for Democratic power brokers to maneuver to prevent an all-GOP November race.

The obvious big dog among these potential power brokers is term-limited California governor Gavin Newsom. The incumbent has refused to get involved up until now. But it will surely damage his career if he doesn’t do everything within his power to avoid handing the keys to the governor’s office to a MAGA Republican next January. So California’s worried Democrats are turning their lonely eyes to Newsom for a way out of their quandary.

Whom might he bless with his support? According to CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, Newsom originally wanted the man he appointed to the U.S. Senate to replace Kamala Harris, Alex Padilla, to run for governor this year. He also appeared to be fine with some of his former operatives helping Swalwell. With those two options off the table, the governor may see the rest of the field as far less than ideal, says CNN:

“Newsom worries that Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor, would be too all over the place on positions and management to effectively run the state. He worries that Katie Porter, the former congresswoman, would drive business out. He has had a contentious personal relationship with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. He ran against former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa eight years ago, and the strain between them is still there. He has reservations about how former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, appointed by former Gov. Jerry Brown to be state attorney general after Harris was elected a US senator in 2016, handled that job.”

There’s been some vague social-media chatter about a write-in campaign for Kamala Harris. She probably would have cleared the field, avoiding this whole mess, had she decided to run. But she doesn’t seem to want the job. Plus adding another candidate at the last minute could further fracture the Democratic field and improve the odds of a GOP lockout. So Newsom and other California Democratic leaders need to decide whether to come together and simulate enthusiasm for one of the existing candidates or just hope for the best. Two very recent polls are highly relevant. A one-day SUSA poll conducted mostly before Swalwell’s implosion that shows the heavy-spending Steyer pulling away from the Democratic field: He has 21 percent, Steve Hilton has 18 percent, and nobody else is in double digits. If that’s actually the way the wind is blowing (and he did just get an endorsement from the California Teachers Association that originally went to Swalwell), Steyer may be on the brink of putting the race away. But an entirely post-Swalwell Emerson poll shows a more modest Steyer boom (he’s in second place at 14 percent), along with a sudden surge into relevance for Becerra (who has doubled his support to 10 percent, tied with Porter). The Emerson poll suggests a GOP lockout is definitely a threat, with Hilton leading the entire field at 17 percent and Bianco tied with Steyer for second place.

If Newsom or others decide on a favorite, the odds are good that support for any candidate is shallow and potentially fungible. California’s powers and principalities probably have a few days to make an assessment and then a move. The gubernatorial gig is an awesome responsibility, given the Golden State’s size, diversity, and many problems. For Democrats, the possibility that Donald Trump could spend his last two years in office gloating about one of his minions wrecking everything Newsom did in Sacramento is a problem they really need to solve.

It’s been a hard cheese week for right-wing kleptocracies, as Harold Meyerson explains at The American Prospect: “By any empirically based metric, this has been a lousy week for the global right. Hungarian voters overwhelmingly repudiated their Christian nationalist kleptocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Here at home, Donald Trump took ownership of the Strait of Hormuz blockade, ensuring the continued rise of oil and gas prices at a time when the foremost concern of American voters is the unaffordability of life’s essentials…Sensing he’d left something undone, Trump also accused the pope of being “soft on crime” (hey, it worked against Michael Dukakis; why not the pope?). And just in case he still retained the support of those right-wing Catholics who’d railed against Francis and were holding their tongues against Leo, not to mention the Protestant evangelicals who’ve never quite made their peace with Catholics, he then decided to post an image on Truth Social that depicted himself as Christ the Healer…The 1960s comic Mort Sahl would always interject a line into his act: “Is there anyone I haven’t offended?” Sahl never offered that line up, however, as a political strategy…Trump’s supporters are disproportionately evangelical Protestants, so attacking the pope merely harked back to the classic evangelical fear of satanic popery (the main reason, along with that hardy perennial of antisemitism, that the U.S. banned immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe from 1924 through 1965). But equating himself with Jesus was a bridge too far even for many evangelicals. Trump was compelled to take down that Truth Social post, though if he now looks at it at all askance, I suspect it’s because he realizes he should have identified himself with God the Father, who was made of sterner stuff than his Son, who was way softer on crime (“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”) than Leo, or, for that matter, Dukakis…”

Meyerson continues, “In looking at the defeat of Orbán, there are enough parallels with the current state of American politics to make Republicans even more nervous than they already are. For one thing, discontent with the stagnating Hungarian economy was widespread, and heightened by voters’ awareness that Orbán had redistributed the nation’s wealth both upward and to his cronies, whom he’d turned into oligarchs. There are some parallels to this here at home. Trump’s cultivation of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and their ilk, and the deals he’s cut with Silicon Valley billionaires to support a rapid and unregulated expansion of their AI ventures (wildly unpopular with the public at large, fearful of jobless futures and data centers in their backyards), from which, he surely hopes, his family will get a cut—all this is in sync with the kleptocratic policies of Orbán and, for that matter, Orbán’s other great champion, Vladimir Putin…Indeed, the course of Christian nationalist nations compels us to wonder if there’s a causal link between Christian nationalism, illiberal democracy, and kleptocracy. Christian nationalism elevates a particular segment of the population, which at some point tends to claim both spiritual and material rewards. Illiberal democracy—the suppression of rival or unbiased media, the attack on other sources of knowledge (universities) and power (courts, unions)—creates a “get out of jail free card” mentality among the leader’s favorites. The defenders of Christian nationalism and illiberalism have yet to explain away the drift of nations pursuing those policies toward full kleptocracies…What should even more immediately alarm Republicans is the failure of the right’s campaigns, in both Hungary and the U.S., to make any plausible positive claims. Orbán understood he had to divert attention from the economy, so he ran against his opponents by alleging they’d send Hungarian boys to fight in Ukraine, and with whatever culture-war golden oldies he could play once more. Neither worked…For their part, U.S. Republicans are beginning to sense that running against the specter of “transsexuals in ladies’ rooms” may no longer be as salient as it once was. Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears campaigned across Virginia last year by linking her Democratic opponent, Abigail Spanberger, to the cause of trans rights. Spanberger won by 15 percentage points.” More here.

At Endless Urgency, Mike Nellis reports that “Trump Just Exposed Every MAGA Influencer & Politician in One Post, They’re All Bootlickers” and writes that “I appreciate the days when Donald Trump does something so ridiculous that it captures the nation’s attention. That doesn’t mean I enjoyed yesterday’s scrambling by the White House and the MAGA movement to justify and explain away Trump posting an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick. I did not. As a practicing Catholic, I was as offended by it as every other American…But the one good thing that came out of it is how much it exposes this administration—and the influencers and politicians who cling to Donald Trump in order to get access to money, power, and influence…Incidents like this cut through the white noise and force a level of attention that makes it harder to ignore the bigger problem we’re dealing with and just how deep it goes. They show who’s willing to defend it and who isn’t willing to own the disaster they’ve created…Yes, he attacked the Pope. And very few of his MAGA influencers were willing to come to the defense of tens of millions of Catholics who were offended and upset about Trump attacking their faith leader. Yes, Trump posted an image of himself as Jesus. What was most revealing was how he tried to explain it away…Trump then proceeded to take questions from the press, which were mostly focused on his attacks on the Pope and the AI-generated image. His explanation for it was, basically, “I don’t understand why the media is so offended. It’s an image of me as a doctor healing the sick”—an image of Donald Trump as a doctor healing the sick. In fact, he said he was a Red Cross worker, I believe, because we all know Red Cross workers are frequently depicted wearing flowing robes, halos, and fighting demons with glowing hands that can heal whatever ails you…It goes to show you how stupid Donald Trump thinks the American people are. That’s how dumb he thinks his own supporters are—and how highly he thinks of himself—that he can say something like that and expect it to pass without question. He knows there are people in his orbit who will immediately go sell that lie, and it’s unbelievable.” More here.

Ken Mitchell, a 24-year military veteran who served in the White House under Presidents HW Bush and Clinton, is running as a Democrat to flip VA-6, and he’s got a smart pitch: “I worked to bring telecommunications to rural Virginia, modernized Monticello, and helped rebuild contaminated water lines throughout rural VA so that we could have clean drinking water…But none of that – none of it – was as important as raising two daughters to be strong women in a society that doesn’t always make space for them…That’s why I’m running for Congress in Virginia’s 6th District on a platform of affordable housing and good paying jobs, accessible healthcare, lower costs for working families, and fighting MAGA tooth and nail. I’m fighting to make sure that our kids and grandkids inherit the same opportunities I had—and the ones I never want them denied…Congress needs more girl dads who understand what’s at stake. Will you join me and become a founding donor? We’re building this campaign from the ground up starting today, and every single dollar helps us reach more voters, knock on more doors, and share this message across the district. Let’s show Washington that rural Virginia is ready for new leadership—leadership that puts hardworking families first and fights for the futures of our children and grandchildren…With gratitude and determination…Ken Mitchell Democrat for VA-06 Proud Girl Dad & Granddad.” You want further corroboration?

Jennifer Rubin puts Trump’s “Words and Phrases” and his disastrous Iran mess in context at The Contrarian. An excerpt:

No wonder Donald Trump is melting down.

The Iran war, more than any other Trump screw-up, perfectly illustrated the central truth at the heart of his presidential bluster: “The emperor has no clothes.” With the announcement of the half-baked ceasefire, the entire world could see that Trump, who fancies himself a great dealmaker (whom critics call a conman) and a winner, turns out to be an easy mark and a loser.

Trump came oh so close to grasping the extent of his humiliation in his Truth Social post: “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways.” (One is tempted to respond: ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?’)

“Short term extortion” is a preposterous phrase to camouflage “indefinite and overwhelming leverage.” Trump’s ostensible purpose for the war (other than fantasy regime change) was to reduce Iran’s ability to project power in the regime. Now Iran can project power internationally with a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz — while also maintaining its stockpile of enriched uranium and retaining “thousands of ballistic missiles in its arsenal that it could use by retrieving launchers from underground storage areas.”

Transporting us from tragedy to farce, Trump announced that the Iranians would not get away with blockading the Strait of Hormuz — HE would do it! As ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner (D-VA) said dryly on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “How blockading the strait gets it open suddenly — I don’t get that logic.” Neither does anyone else, Senator.

Trump still does not understand — or will not admit — that if Iran refused to release the Strait of Hormuz when it was getting pummeled by U.S. and Israeli air power, it is unfathomable that it will give up control during a negotiation in which Trump is desperate to avoid resumption of fighting. (Watching inflation soar and consumer confidence tank no doubt makes him more frantic than ever to “end” the war for good.) And indeed, the marathon negotiating session over the weekend came to … nothing.

Why should Iran give up its most valuable bargaining chip? Iran surely grasps that Trump does not have the stomach for a mammoth military exercise to free the strait. If the Iranians had any doubt, Trump reassured them that he did not care if a deal was reached, since the United States had “already won.” (Translation: He will walk away with the strait in Iran’s hands.)

How did Iran wind up with all the cards (in Trump lingo, “short term extortion”)? Simple: Trump was “played,” as the New York Times illustrated in its account of how Trump plunged recklessly into a disastrous war. Unlike his predecessors, Trump got snowed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As former secretary of state John Kerry explained to Jen Psaki:

Kerry: I was part of any number of conversations with Netanyahu.

Psaki: Pitching the U.S. strike Iran?

Kerry: Yes, he wanted us to strike. He came to President Obama. He made a presentation to ask to strike. President Obama refused. President Biden refused. President Bush refused.

The only thing Trump refused was to appreciate or listen to aides who warned that Netanyahu was peddling the “farcical” (CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s description) notion that bombing Iran could expedite regime change. Whether you prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s evaluation (“Bullshit”) or Chairman of the Joints Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine’s formulation (“They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed”), Trump’s addled brain could not process that the Iranian regime’s survival — coupled with its predictable seizure of the Strait of Hormuz and success in refurbishing missiles to hit Israel and the Gulf States — would leave Iran moredangerous. Narcissism coupled with utter ignorance of history, military strategy, and the Iranian mindset set up Trump (eager to repeat his success in knocking out Nicolás Maduro and in avoiding a robust Iranian response during the 12-day war) as an eager mark for Netanyahu’s farcical sales pitch.

More here.

In “Democrats should capitalize by nominating a solid candidate,” Matt. K. Lewis of Tribune News Service shares some solid observations and advice for Democrats at Gulf Today, including: “Thanks in large part to President Donald Trump’s disastrous policies, Democrats have a decent shot at not just retaking the House, but maybe even flipping the Senate. Here’s the thing to know: Midterms are a referendum on the incumbent president. And this is especially true when the president is Donald Trump, who dominates every news cycle. He creates weather. He is, in short, always the issue. But what happens when Trump is gone? What happens when Democrats have to defend their record of leadership? What happens when the referendum is on them? Even now — as Dems appear to be surging — polling suggests that fewer than 40% of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably. That’s not exactly a mandate…Yes, voters might choose Democrats as the lesser of two evils this November, but that doesn’t mean Americans are out there buying Democratic foam fingers. Not yet, anyway. It also doesn’t mean Democrats are technically competent. As I type this, the Republican National Committee currently has a 7-to-1 money advantage over Democrats. While Dems might win in 2026 in spite of all of their problems, a false sense of security would not bode well for 2028 — and beyond…Let’s start with the premise that Democrats cannot afford to be outflanked on populism again. That already happened once, and it was not their finest hour. Economic inequality is rising, and artificial intelligence threatens to widen that gap while disrupting millions of jobs. Meanwhile, the tech billionaires (who will profit handsomely from AI) are all lining up behind MAGA. Putting these tech bros on the ballot should be a no-brainer…The path forward is not especially mysterious, but it is very difficult. In the short term, Democrats can probably ride the blue wave. But in the long term, they need a standard bearer who can synthesize economic populism with mainstream American cultural credibility. The future may rest on whether that political savior ever arrives.”

Zachary Basu has some insightful comments about “Trump’s incredible shrinking tent” at Axios: “Trump’s war on his own coalition extends far beyond the pews.

• MAGA media: Trump has lashed out at the most powerful voices in the “America First” ecosystem, disavowing erstwhile allies for their criticism of his Iran war. The fallout is tearing through the broader MAGA media world, forcing influencers who’ve spent years in lockstep to publicly pick sides.
• Podcast populists: Trump’s 2024 campaign attracted a generation of young, nontraditional Republican voters who’d never pulled a lever for the party before. The Iran war, the Epstein files and suspicious trading activity tied to Trump announcements have shattered their fleeting trust in politicians.
• Crypto enthusiasts: Trump ran as the “crypto president,” and the industry poured millions into his campaign. A cascade of controversies — including crashing prices, meme coin “rug pulls,” and new allegations of self-dealing by the Trump family’s crypto venture — has left even true believers questioning whether they were ever anything more than marks.
• Farmers: Trump’s policies are hitting his rural base from every direction — tariffs that squeezed margins, deportations that thinned the farm labor force, trade tensions with China that sent soybean prices tumbling, and now an Iran war that’s sent fuel costs soaring.
• Nonwhite voters: Trump made historic inroads with Latino and Black men in 2024 on the strength of his economic message. Deep pessimism about the U.S. economy has rapidly unraveled those gains, with Trump’s approval among Latinos cratering to 22% in February, according to a CNN poll. Read more here.

Also at Axios, Andrew Pantazi reports that “Trump’s pope spat risks feud with crucial Catholic swing voters,” and writes: “President Trump followed a Holy Week of profanity-laced threats with attacks on Pope Leo XIV and posting an AI self-portrait as a Jesus-like figure — risking alienating Catholic swing voters who backed him in 2024…Why it matters: Catholics are America’s largest swing religious vote, and Trump’s support among them was already sliding before his latest attacks on their pontiff.

• Trump won Catholics by 10–20 points in 2024, depending on the exit poll, a dramatic swing from 2020.
• Now, he has used campaign-style rhetoric to attack their pope as a political enemy.
• “I cannot think of any parallels, at least coming from Western Christian majority countries, of such pointed and public attacks on the Pope,” Andrew Chesnut, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Catholic studies chair, tells Axios.

Catch up quick: Trump’s clash with Leo has been building, but it exploded over the Holy Week.

• Trump posted a profanity-laced Easter morning threat to Iran: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had urged Americans to pray for “overwhelming violence” against enemies, even as Pope Leo used his Easter Mass to call on “those who have weapons” to “lay them down.”
• Trump then threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” in Iran. Leo called the threat “truly unacceptable.”

Driving the news: On Sunday, Trump called Leo “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.”

• Trump also targeted the conclave itself, claiming Leo was chosen only because the church “thought that would be the best way to deal with” him.
• Minutes later, Trump posted an AI image depicting himself in biblical robes healing the sick. He deleted it Monday and claimed it depicted him “as a doctor.”
• Outside the Oval Office Monday, Trump doubled down on his criticisms of Leo: “There’s nothing to apologize for. He’s wrong.”

We’ll close out today’s edition of Strategy Notes with this chart, reposted from Kyle Kondik’s latest article at the Center for Politics, and invite readers to chew on it for a while and come to their own conclusions:

Alexander Willis reports “Critics dumbfounded as Trump suffers ‘complete collapse‘ among his strongest voter group” at Rawstory, and observes:

A new CBS News poll published Sunday found that Trump has suffered an unprecedented collapse in support among what has historically been his single-strongest voter base, leaving critics stunned.

Conducted between April 8 and 10, the CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a “nationally representative sample” of 2,387 adults, and found that among white, non-college-educated voters, Trump’s support fell from 36 points in February of 2025 to minus 4, a staggering 40-point drop.

“Trump complete collapse amongst his original base: working class voters,” wrote Robert Barnes, a trial and constitutional lawyer, in a social media post on X Sunday to his nearly 370,000 followers.

ALSO READ: MAGA exodus support group soars as Trump devotees walk away: ‘One lie too many’

“This is the making of a party [realignment],” wrote Neera Tanden, a Democratic strategist and former Biden administration official, also in a social media post on X to her more than 330,000 followers.

More broadly, Americans overall disapproved of Trump’s job performance by a margin of 61%, with 39% approving. Additionally, 63% described the condition of the economy as “bad,” and 64% disapproved of Trump’s handling of the U.S. war against Iran, with 62% believing that Trump did not “have a clear plan” for the conflict.

Read more here.

And if that wasn’t bad enough news for Republicans, The Tampa Free Press reports, via msn.com, that “Trump’s approval plunges in GOP states,” and notes, “Quarterly tracking shows Trump now holds net-positive approval in only 17 states, down from 22 at the end of 2025. Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Ohio—all states he carried in 2024—flipped to net-negative ratings. Analysts link the drop to economic anxiety tied to military actions in Iran and resulting energy market volatility, with his national approval at 45% and disapproval at 52%.”

And,

“…A poll of 2024 Trump voters found 20% will not support the GOP in the midterms, and nearly 60% of Biden-to-Trump switchers are reconsidering Republican votes. The erosion is compounded by policy reversals on foreign wars and domestic spending cuts, alienating working-class supporters.”

You won’t have to google very long to find numerous similar reports from other recent polls. Could it be that former Republicans Geoff Duncan running for Georgia governor as a Democrat and George Conway running as a Democrat for a House of Reps seat (NY-12) are harbingers of an emerging trend?

Most Democrats share a sense of rage about the conduct and policies of Donald J. Trump. But just hurling insults at him isn’t enough, as I argued at New York:

There is nothing wrong with Democrats insulting or expressing rage toward the president of the United States. Donald Trump has richly earned every epithet and protest he has drawn with his distinctive combination of lawlessness, narcissism, mendacity, and cruelty. But the hard, cold reality is that rage is a poor weapon for stopping or overcoming his excesses and undermining his hold on power. It amounts to investing everything in Trump’s very own cryptocurrency of mindless resentment and vengefulness and competing with him on turf he owns like Mar-a-Lago itself.

Unfortunately we’re seeing the Trump resistance movement, fed by constant demands to “fight Trump” whether or not a particular fight can be won, descending to its barren omega point, as The Hill reported last month:

“Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who has entered the California gubernatorial race, took a stand against the Trump administration on Saturday, carrying a large sign that read ‘F— Trump’ on stage at the state Democratic convention.

“The phrase has gained steam nationally ahead of midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.

“Earlier in the week, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (D) released a campaign ad featuring several Prairie State residents, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), all saying, ‘F— Trump.'”

As it happens, Juliana Stratton posted a come-from-behind victory in the Illinois Senate primary shortly after launching that ad. And while her victory arguably owed more to massive late spending on her behalf by Governor J.B. Pritzker than to her ad F-bombing Trump, it produced some excited discussion among Democratic activists and strategists. One of the latter, Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of the highly influential Pod Save America podcast, thought Stratton’s ad made sense in the context of a blue-state primary:

“Stratton ran this ad because she needed attention. She needed something that went viral online, generated conversation, and ensured that people knew who she was and considered voting for her.

“Getting attention often means courting controversy — saying and doing edgy things that will get people talking. To get attention, you also need to be willing to piss some people off. The algorithms that distribute political news value engagement. An angry comment is worth as much as a positive one.

“Running an ad with a bunch of Illinoisans saying ‘F***  Trump’ will get people paying attention. Many more people saw the ad on social media or through news coverage than when it ran as a commercial.”

Perhaps the context helps justify Katie Porter’s F-bombing too: She’s running in a deep-blue state and has already made it clear she’s uninterested in appealing to anyone who might have voted for or sympathized with Trump.

But even if the audience for this crude expression of anti-Trump rage was entirely limited to Democrats, making that message front and center could be problematic: It will reinforce the dubious impression that more anger, more “spine,” more willingness to fight is a tangible asset Democrats can tap to thwart the 47th president and his party. The truth is that until Democrats break up the current Republican trifecta, their ability to “fight” Trump is strictly limited to what they can block via the Senate filibuster. And it takes no particular spine to do that, though reasonable differences are inevitable about how to use that one source of leverage.

If you really want to “fight Trump” or, to be blunt about it, to f*** him up, Democrats absolutely have to flip at least the House in the midterms. That means the audience for their messages will include a significant number of 2024 Trump voters, perhaps along with 2024 nonvoters who are not reliable members of the Democratic base. And for them, the f***-Trump message is useless. People did not vote for Trump in 2024 because they were discouraged by the lack of “fight” in the opposition party. People aren’t weighing a vote for or against Trump’s party based on whether they believe Democrats hate him just enough. Rage-based messaging is pure self-indulgence for Democrats at a time when they need discipline and even self-sacrifice — when they need brains more than they need spine. Even in blue states, the long-term interests of the Democratic Party suggest less empty posturing about “fighting” and a much greater investment in a post-Trump agenda, which in any event they will desperately need in 2028 when Trump will finally f*** off back home to Florida.

From “Medicare for All Is an Electoral Winner” by Jared Abbott at Jacobin:

Working-class voters already back Medicare for All. Framed like Social Security — as a benefit earned from work, not a handout — it can reach two-thirds support.

J. Miles Coleman puts “Another Big Night for Democrats: Tuesday’s Wisconsin and Georgia Results” in perspective at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “In last night’s biggest race, Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor continued Wisconsin liberals’ streak of double-digit state Supreme Court election wins. While Taylor’s win over fellow Court of Appeals Judge Maria Lazar was unsurprising, her margin was on the upper end of what we might have guessed: Taylor was elected to the state’s high court by an almost exactly 60%-40% vote…Wisconsin liberals have now expanded their majority to 5-2 on the state Supreme Court and have won 5 of the 6 most recent races by double-digit margins. This also means they appear to be structurally well-positioned to maintain that advantage in the near term: Last month, Annette Ziegler, a conservative who recently served as chief justice of the court, announced that she would not seek a third term next year, so if this dynamic continues, liberals could flip another seat and get to a 6-1 majority a year from now. Liberals will not have to defend one of their own seats until 2028, when Rebecca Dallet’s seat will be up, and the state’s presidential primary may have an outsized bearing on that race…In northwestern Georgia, we were watching the runoff to replace now-former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, GA-14), who resigned as she went from being one of the president’s biggest advocates to one of his most vocal intraparty critics. Much like a pair of Florida special elections last year, Democrats posted an impressive overperformance, but the district’s baseline partisanship was just too red—Trump carried it by 37 points—for it to actually be flippable…In last month’s jungle primary—Georgia, like Texas, uses the system that Louisiana is known for when holding special elections—Marine veteran Shawn Harris (D) led the crowded field with a little over 37%. Clay Fuller, an Air Force veteran who had Trump’s backing, finished next, with 34%. Overall, Republicans outvoted Democrats by an underwhelming 60%-40% last month—a spread that was markedly down from the presidential margin and even worse than Taylor Greene’s two most recent performances in the district (likely because of her profile as a partisan bomb thrower, her margins were usually weaker than most Republicans there)…Overall, the 25-point 2024 to 2026 swing in GA-14 represented the biggest U.S. House-level Democratic special election overperformance of Trump’s second term, with one very minor caveat. According to a spreadsheet maintained by Ethan Chen, in last year’s TX-18 jungle primary, Democrats outvoted Republicans by 48.5% in this deep blue seat, representing a 28.4% swing from the 2024 presidential race.”

In “How the Iran War Will Upend the Global Economy. The Risk Is Not Just an Energy Shock—but Also a Debt Crisis,” Henry Tugendhat writes at Foreign Affairs: “Indeed, these strikes, along with the broader energy sector disruptions that have accompanied the U.S-Israeli war in Iran, have all but guaranteed an energy supply shock that will drive up inflation globally. Additional strikes on infrastructure that is critical to energy production and distribution would exacerbate such a crisis. This dynamic—excess demand for limited resources—is a classic driver of inflation. Almost immediately after the strikes, U.S. markets began betting that the U.S. Federal Reserve would increase interest rates, its most direct tool for fighting inflation. Amid an already challenging cost-of-living crisis, the American people willsuffer consequences: rate hikes will affect borrowing costs on expenses such as car loans and mortgages, increased energy prices will drive up the price of gas and other fuels, and manufacturers of the myriad goods on which people rely will pass higher production costs on to consumers…But inflation and decisions made by the Fed to fight it matter far beyond U.S. borders, as most countries’ outstanding debts are still denominated in U.S. dollars. This is equally true for those countries that have spent the past 20 years borrowing from China. Put simply, rising U.S. interest rates will determine the debt sustainability of numerous countries. Regardless of the outcome of this war, it’s already clear that many countries will have to pay more for the energy needed to fuel their industries, power their electric grids, and sustain their transportation networks.” More here.

At Talking Points Memo, Editor Josh Marshall shares “A Few Thoughts on Trump’s Pre-Deal with Iran,” and writes, “First, just because Donald Trump is an inveterate liar, don’t assume that Iran is a reliable narrator about anything that was agreed to in this deal. (Was there a deal? We’ll get to that.) One thing both sides explicitly agree on, coming right from President Trump himself, is that the 10 point Iranian plan will serve as the basis for discussions over the next two weeks. The early accounts of what that document included focused on a lot things Iran wants, even including things it wanted before the war broke out. It doesn’t really focus on the things the U.S. notionally got into this war for. (We’ll get in a moment to what’s included in the document Iran released today.) For the U.S., this ceasefire is at best a ceasefire on the basis of a stalemate, where the fight is about a draw and both sides want to see if they can bring the fight to an end…That’s the optimistic view. The U.S. has clearly been more eager to get to the negotiating table. It’s the U.S. that wants out most. The items on that list tilt heavily toward Iran. The Iranians appear to be exercising continued control of the Strait of Hormuz even if they may allow ships to go through — “allow” being the key word.” More here.

William A. Galston explains “Why affordability will be a key issue in the 2026 midterm elections” at Brookings: “Between 1999 and 2024, health care rose from 13% to 18% as a share of GDP, an increase that has serious consequences for family budgets. While wages rose by 119% during this period, workers’ contributions to family health care insurance premiums surged by 308%, almost three times the pace of wages. This increase was not the result of employers shifting the burden of health insurance to workers; the overall cost of insurance premiums rose even faster, by 342%—more than five times as much as the economy-wide rate of inflation. Since the pandemic began, the burden on average families has accelerated: Out-of-pocket expenses per person rose by nearly one-third, from $1,239 to $1,652, in just five years…Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that health care has risen to the top of Americans’ concerns about affordability. A recent survey found that 32% of respondents were “very worried” about health care costs, compared to 24% for food and groceries, 23% for rent or mortgage payments, 22% for utilities, and 17% for gas and other transportation…Because the problems of health care in the U.S. are structural and deeply rooted, the prospects for quick relief are not bright…The affordability issue has affected President Trump’s standing as well. Most Americans believe that his priorities do not align with theirs, and they want him to focus more on the bread-and-butter challenges they face every day. Whatever the merits of the president’s claim that he inherited these challenges, Americans reject it by a margin of 2-to-1. It is Mr. Trump’s economy now, and Americans want him to do more to fix it than he has so far.” More here.