In “Billionaire Trump’s Secret Trading Spree Alarms Wall Street,” Laura Eposito writes at Daily Beast: “Donald Trump’s Wall Street side hustle is starting to look like a full-time job…During the first three months of 2026, the billionaire president pocketed tens of millions of dollars through 3,700 investment trades involving companies with direct ties to his administration…“This is an insane amount of trades,” Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, told Bloomberg, which first obtained the 79-year-old president’s financial disclosures…Overall, Trump disclosed at least $220 million in financial transactions earlier this year, including trades in securities tied to major U.S. companies…“I’m baffled,” said Eric Diton, president at The Wealth Alliance, an investment advisory firm, told Bloomberg. “In the 40-plus years of my time on Wall Street, this is an unusual amount of trading by any standards.”…Trump’s frequent trading doesn’t bode well in the eyes of Americans. Eighty-eight percent of Americans oppose public officials trading stocks while in office, according to polls. What’s more, presidents are expected to avoid any appearance of benefiting personally from inside knowledge or government decisions, making Trump’s transactions especially damning…Still, that hasn’t stopped him from buying at least $1 million worth of stock in companies including Nvidia Corp., Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., Boeing Co., and Costco Wholesale Corp….The ethical concerns surrounding those dealings are extensive. Nvidia, the chipmaking giant, struck a deal with the White House last year to manufacture AI infrastructure in the United States. The president also remains close to Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, who accompanied him to Beijing last week for his summit with President Xi Jinping.”

If you have wondered, particularly in the wake of Sen. Bill Cassidy’s recent defeat in the Louisiana GOP primary, about the power of political endorsements, check out “Poll: Why some endorsements might hurt more than help” by Jessica Piper, who writes at Politico: “To test the relative power of various endorsements in the current political environment, Public First ran an experiment in a survey last month. Respondents were asked to select between two candidates in a House race, both of whom were described as being backed by a special interest group, supported by Trump or opposed by Trump. Specific groups were not named, but a brief description of their advocacy was given. For example, one candidate might be described as “backed by Donald Trump” while the other is “backed by a campaign group advocating for increased abortion access…Trump has splattered endorsements across much of the country this year. On Saturday, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) lost his primary after Trump endorsed one of his opponents, Rep. Julia Letlow. The president’s endorsement will again be put to the test on Tuesday, where he endorsed Ed Gallrein over Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)…When voters who supported Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 were told that Trump backed a candidate, they were 55 percent less likely to support that candidate…The much larger effect size among Harris voters outweighs the boost among Trump supporters. As a result, across all voters, a Trump endorsement was more detrimental than helpful — a warning sign for the president’s potential involvement as Republicans look to hold on to the House and Senate this fall…The results of The POLITICO Poll fit with existing research finding that endorsements generate reactions from both people who agree and disagree, and thus sometimes do more harm than good.” I would add that party endorsements for lower level offices can be influential. I certainly rely on them for judgeships and local contests that I was too lazy to properly research.

Another kind of endorsement I have been wondering about is that which comes from a spouse. It can be put in terms of “Do husbands vote like their wives?” or more often the reverse, “Do wives tend to vote like their husbands?” I refer you to a wonky 12-year old article, which shares confident conclusions based on data, rather than share the actual data, “How husbands and wives vote” by Marte Strom at ScienceDirect. The Abstract says “This article uses economic theories of voting behavior and household decision making to analyze the role of own and spouse earnings in determining political voting behavior. The main predictions from these models is that earnings is one of the factors that has an impact on political preferences and in households who share resources, voting behavior will be influenced more by the most representative labor income in the family. I investigate empirically the importance of individual vs household income, and find that the importance of individual income on voting behavior is contingent on employment. On average women earn less than their husband and vote according to their husbands income. If the wife is the maximum earner of the household or works fulltime, she votes more according to her own earnings.” Of course, most of the time people marry within their socio-economic strata, which sets up the phenomenon. You may have seen a recent celebrity meme in which readers are reminded that you vote in private and there is nothing wrong with voting differently than a spouse. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see more of that in future elections.

From “Estimating the GOP Edge from Redistricting: A State-by-State Accounting, with Caveats” by Kyle Kondik at the Center for Politics: “Although several states are still in flux, we may be nearing the end of 2026’s redistricting saga…As tempting as it may be to do so, it won’t be possible to do a precise accounting of redistricting’s effects until after the November election…Assuming Republicans successfully add an extra seat apiece in Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and that all of the current redraws remain in place, our best guess is a Republican gain in the high single digits from redistricting, with the potential for that to grow or shrink based on the actual results in several key races…We haven’t yet given an overall seat-by-seat assessment of the impact of redistricting. But with the process potentially winding down, at least for 2026, we thought we’d offer some back-of-the-envelope math now, which we’ll keep updating as changes are formalized for 2026 and any legal action is resolved…Unfortunately, those looking for precise clarity on redistricting’s effect are going to have to wait until after the election, as it will take analysis to determine whether certain close results might have gone the other way had there been no changes to the maps. For instance, let’s say, hypothetically, that Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9) loses by 1 point this fall in what we currently rate as a Toss-up race. Her district got 4 points redder at the presidential level in redistricting, so we’ll probably be able to say that she likely would have won without redistricting…What follows is a state by state assessment of redistricting. We are using our ratings as a guide here. If a race is rated something other than a Toss-up in our ratings, we counted it as a redistricting-related gain or loss. If a race was rated as a Toss-up, we included it as part of a range. Even by doing this, there is uncertainty built in—for instance, we call North Carolina R +1 below because the new Republican map there targets Rep. Don Davis (D, NC-1). But we only rate that race Leans Republican, meaning that we think there’s a chance Davis could hang on. So North Carolina could end up being a wash in redistricting…So there are still a number of moving pieces here, but the endgame is a Republican advantage of some size. As we wrote in our last issue, this is a redistricting deficit that we favor Democrats to overcome, but it’s also enough of a Republican edge that it could allow them to save their House majority under the right circumstances.” More here.