A new era of New York City’s politics began yesterday with the inauguration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, sworn in by avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, no less. It marks an historic transformation on a number of fronts: Mamdani is the first Muslim Mayor of New York; first Asian-American Mayor of NYC; first Ugandan-born Mayor of the Big Apple; and, more significantly, the first NYC mayor who is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Estimates of the number of Democratic Socialist of America members in the U.S. are north of 90,000, and are going to grow at a quickening pace in the months and perhaps years ahead. The group does provide the most vigorous left-leaning voice among Democratic voters. If you want to read more about Mamdani’s policies, check out the current issue of Jacobin, which features articles on “Municipal Socialism.”

Mamdani’s ardent embrace of Democratic Socialism sets eyes rolling among centrist Democrats, who believe, probably correctly, that the Democratic Socialist dog will not hunt statewide anywhere in the U.S.  No matter, say the Democratic Socialists, we will be delighted to run America’s largest cities. And they have a good start in the most populated American city, which has more people than most states.

Mayor Mamdani has an extremely ambitious agenda, which reportedly includes free bus service, public ownership of utilities, a city-owned supermarket in every Burough, a $30 per hour minimum wage, universal child care, affordable housing and a big hike in taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Not a lot of low-hanging fruit on that tree. If he achieves half of his agenda, expect his popularity to soar.  If Mayor Mamdani fails to achieve any of these goals in his first year, his popularity will likely tank.

“Under-promise and over-deliver” says a motto pasted on many a cubicle wall. Mayor Mamdani has arguably taken a pretty big risk in staking out his agenda in such specifics. But he has done pretty good so far without heeding advice to the contrary. It is often noted, however, that Democrats in recent times are long on promise and short on deliverables, which is one reason why its party approval statistics are lagging. Mamdani has to produce to remain credible. If he does, his bright future in American politics is assured – and with it the prospects for Democratic Socialism.

Happy New Year! Welcome to Republican health care, in which “A KFF analysis last month found that people who buy insurance from the marketplace, and receive financial assistance, would see their premiums rise by about 114% on average, from $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026,” Mary Kekatos writes at ABC News in her article, “ACA subsidies that lower monthly insurance premiums for millions of Americans set to expire: About 22 million Americans are currently receiving enhanced premium tax credits.” Further, “Eligibility for the subsidies can be determined by factors such as household income and geographic location…The subsidies were part of the original ACA passed during the Obama administration and were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase the amount of financial assistance to those who were already eligible and to expand eligibility to more people…and many are preparing to see their premiums soar in 2026.” In November, “the Senate reached a bipartisan deal to end the shutdown — that deal did not include any of the Democratic demands on health care.” What begins today is Republican health care in its purest form. Kekatos adds that “Sources told ABC News that Republican leadership promised to allow a vote on a bill of Democrats’ choosing related to the ACA in December, but a pair of competing health care-related bills failed to advance in the [GOP-controlled] Senate earlier this month. “The ACA tax credits expire at midnight,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) wrote in a post on X Wednesday morning. “Millions will see their premiums skyrocket because Republicans refused to act. You deserve better, and Democrats will keep fighting to lower costs.”

In “‘Trump’s Economic Policies Did This’: US Business Bankruptcies Surge to 15-Year High: At least 717 US companies filed for bankruptcy through November 2025—the highest figure recorded since the aftermath of the Great Recession,” Jake Johnson writes at Common Dreams: “Businesses in the United States have filed for bankruptcy this year at a level not seen since 2010 as President Donald Trump’s tariff regime has jacked up costs for companies in manufacturing and other major sectors…Citing data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, the Washington Postreported over the weekend that at least 717 US companies filed for bankruptcy through November 2025, the highest figure recorded since the aftermath of the Great Recession and a 14% increase compared to the same period last year…“Companies cited inflation and interest rates among the factors contributing to their financial challenges, as well as Trump administration trade policies that have disrupted supply chains and pushed up costs,” the Post noted. “But in a shift from previous years, the rise in filings is most apparent among industrials—companies tied to manufacturing, construction, and transportation. The sector has been hit hard by President Donald Trump’s ever-fluid tariff policies—which he’s long insisted would revive American manufacturing.”…Recent data shows that the US has lost 49,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump’s return to office…The bankruptcy figures add to the growing pile of evidence showing that Trump’s tariffs and broader policy agenda have harmed the US economy—weakening job growth, driving the unemployment rate up to the highest level since the Covid-19 pandemic, and worsening the nation’s cost-of-living crisis.”

Some insights from “Why Does Trump Get Away With It?” by Thomas B. Edsall at The New York Times: “How does Trump get away with doing things, repeatedly, that would have been disastrous for previous presidents — Republican and Democratic?…Neither the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush nor the Democratic administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would have survived intact if they and their families had started a multibillion-dollar business supported by foreign interests similar to the Trump Organization’s cryptocurrency operations or issued pardon after pardon to drug dealers, campaign contributors and political supporters on the scale Trump has engaged in.”  Edsall cites a number of reasons for Trump’s “stew of corruption,” including “The news media, which has become polarized into pro- and anti-Trump camps, effectively gutting its role as an enforcer of accountability…The liabilities of the opposition. Democratic overreach — encapsulated in the term “wokeness” — has severely damaged the party’s moral credibility, making it harder to criticize Trump productively…Structural frailty. American democracy and the Constitution are not equipped to deal in an effective and timely manner with a president who aggressively and willfully tramples the law…The Supreme Court’s conservative majority. The court has, with some recent exceptions, failed to fulfill its role as enforcer of restraints. The majority’s support of the unitary executive theory, combined with such rulings as Trump v. United States, has effectively approved presidential criminality…A supine Republican Party. Republican majorities in the House and Senate have abandoned all semblance of institutional and constitutional integrity, passively allowing Trump to wrest away their powers over taxing and spending, turning Congress into a collection of sycophants.”

One more little bite of good electoral news from “Democrat wins Iowa state Senate race, blocking GOP from regaining supermajority” by Julia Mueller  at The Hill: “Democrat Renee Hardman won a special election for state Senate in Iowa on Tuesday, preventing Republicans from regaining a supermajority in the chamber, Decision Desk HQ projects…Hardman, the West Des Moines mayor pro tempore, defeated Republican Lucas Loftin to fill the seat that has been vacant since state Sen. Claire Celsi (D) died in October…Her victory denies Republicans a two-thirds majority in the upper chamber, which would have given them the power to override a governor’s veto, call for special sessions and approve a governor’s appointees on a party-line vote… With Hardman’s win, Iowa Democrats are closing out the year strong. Back in January, Democrat Mike Zimmer flipped an Iowa state Senate district that had overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024. And in August, Democrat Catelin Drey flipped another open state Senate seat, breaking the GOP supermajority…Her win is also the last in a string of notable victories for the party nationwide. Democrats most recently saw success in a special election for a state Senate seat in Kentucky. Prior to that, the party overperformed in a special election in Tennessee. And Democrats had a better-than-expected election in November, when they overwhelmingly won the governors’ mansions in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayor’s office in New York City, and a number of other notable downballot races…DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “With the last special election of the year now decided, one thing is clear: 2025 was the year of Democratic victories and overperformance, and Democrats are on track for big midterm elections.”

At Newsweek, Andrew Stanton assesses “Democrats’ Chances of Flipping the House From Republicans in 2026,” and writes: “Democrats are favored to retake control of the U.S. House of Representativesheading into 2026—but the size of their possible majority remains an open question, according to recent polling…Redistricting could also play a role in the outcome of the House. Republicans in Texas redrew their map to create more conservative-leaning seats, kicking off a redistricting arms race. California retaliated, creating more seats with a Democratic lean. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have also redrawn their states to create a map more favorable to Republicans. Utah, meanwhile, was ordered to create a new Democratic-leaning district based around Salt Lake City…A recent poll from YouGov and The Economist showed Democrats up about three points among registered voters (43 to 40 percent). It surveyed 1,424 registered voters from December 20-22 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points…However, an AtlasIntel poll was more favorable to Democrats. It showed Democrats up about 16 points (54 to 38 percent), surveying 2,315 adults from December 15-19. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points…A Fabrizio Ward poll showed Democrats leading by seven points on the generic ballot (45 to 38 percent). It surveyed 1,000 registered voters from December 15-17 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points…Meanwhile, a Quantus Insights poll showed a closer race—giving Democrats only a two-point lead (43 to 41 percent). It surveyed 1,000 registered voters from December 15-16 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points…There are five Democratic-held seats considered toss-ups—those held by Representative Adam Gray of California; Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico; Laura Gillen of New York; Greg Landsman of Ohio; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state…Twelve GOP-held seats are viewed as toss-ups. Those include the seats held by retiring Representative David Schweikert of Arizona; Juan Ciscomani of Arizona; David Valadao of California; Darrell Issa of California; Gabe Evans of Colorado; Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa; Tom Barrett of Michigan; Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey; Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania; Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; Jen Kiggans of Virginia; and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.”

“Most Americans now connect the worsening climate crisis with their cost of living pressures, with clear majorities also disagreeing with moves by the Trump administration to gut climate research and halt windfarms, new polling has found,” Oliver Milman writes at The Guardian. “About 65% of registered voters in the US think that global heating is affecting the cost of living, according to the polling by Yale University…Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves, exacerbated by the climate crisis, are taking a toll on food production, with recent spikes in the cost of coffee and chocolate blamed by experts, at least in part, on global heating…Meanwhile, many Americans have faced rising home electricity costs and steep increases in home insurance premiums, with both of these areas also influenced by the climate crisis and the Trump administration’s decision to choke off solar and wind power, often the cheapest source of energy…There has also been a broad backlash in many communities against new datacenters, which have been championed by the administration and the tech industry for advancing artificial intelligence but attacked by critics for causing planet-heating emissions and raising power bills…The US, unlike most other industrialized countries, remains highly polarized in its consideration of the climate crisis. While the Yale poll found that 59% of voters would prefer to back a candidate who supports action on climate, this number is skewed by the overwhelming majority of Democrats who want this.” More here.

From “Americans Hate AI. Which Party Will Benefit?” by Calder McHugh at Politico: ” It’s become a common occurrence: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer posts a light-hearted video on social media. She’s Christmas shopping, or she’s talking about her Michigan accent or she’s touting her administration’s accomplishments. And immediately, the comments start rolling in, all demanding the same thing: Say no to data centers in the state. Stop construction. “All I want for Christmas is legislation banning data centers in Michigan.”…National figures in the party are beginning to notice the anger. What began on the ground with widespread protests against the facilities that provide infrastructure for the growth of artificial intelligence is finding its way into new plans, memos and rhetoric as the Democratic Party thinks about how to win in 2026 and 2028…It’s an argument that began in the progressive wing but is increasingly finding purchase across the party: Be proudly, loudly, without reservations, anti-AI. It’s not enough, these pollsters, consultants and elected officials say, to caution, minimally regulate and signal a friendly stance toward tech companies building AI. There is a massive, growing opportunity for Democrats to tap into rising anxiety, fear and anger about the havoc AI could wreak in people’s lives, they say, on issues from energy affordability to large-scale job losses, and channel it toward a populist movement — and not doing it, or not doing it strongly enough, will hurt the party…“The contrast is so obvious. On one side there’s the billionaires, and on the other side there’s everyone else,” said Lakshya Jain, the co-founder of the polling firm Split Ticket and the head of political data at the publication The Argument. “I think [Democrats] should be bolder. A lot of tech companies have a lot of power, and they have a lot of capital and economic influence. But politically speaking, you can go a lot harder on economic populism. The public wants to see something bold on costs.” More here.

In “Warning signs for Trump as approval hits new low among working-class Americans,” Durva More writes at msn.com: “The U.S. President Donald Trump is facing new warning signs as his approval rating among working-class Americans has fallen to very low levels. The drop comes as many voters continue to struggle with high prices and everyday costs, which may hurt Trump’s party in future elections. A new YouGov/Economist poll shows that only 31 percent of Americans earning $50,000 or less approve of Trump’s job as president…In the same income group, 65 percent disapprove, while 4 percent said they were unsure. Newsweek said it contacted the White House by email to ask for a response to the poll results. Working-class voters narrowly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, based on exit polls. This support was a big shift, as working-class voters had moved away from Republicans in recent years…Democrats are using the high cost of living to get more support from voters. Some Republicans fear these money problems could hurt their party in the next midterm elections. A YouGov/Economist poll asked about 1,600 adults between December 20 and 22, with a small margin of error. Trump’s net approval rating among working-class Americans is now -34 points. This is worse than the November poll, when his net rating among this group was -28 points…In the latest survey, only 29 percent of people earning under $50,000 said the country is going in the “right direction.” At the same time, 61 percent of lower earners said the U.S. is on the “wrong track.” Higher-income Americans were slightly more positive about the country’s direction. Among those earning over $100,000, 40 percent felt optimistic about the country. In that same higher-income group, 51 percent felt pessimistic and 9 percent were unsure…On jobs and the economy, only 32 percent of working-class respondents approved of Trump’s handling. Meanwhile, 58 percent disapproved, including 48 percent who disapproved strongly, as noted by Newsweek report. These results match other recent signs of growing economic worry across the country. The Conference Board said overall consumer confidence has fallen for five months in a row. The confidence index is now at its lowest level since April.” More here.

In “What a Real DNC “Autopsy” of the 2024 Election Would Say,” Perry Bacon interviews Monica Potts at The New Republic. An excerpt: “Bacon: So what I want to talk about today is something that’s not in the news, but is embedded in the news all the time, which is this idea of the Democrats and the working class, or the working class in general. And this idea that the working class is who you have to win—that the Democrats have lost the working class. I want to come at that, and that gets into affordability and autopsies, and we’ll come back to those things in a bit. But let me start with this: I find it frustrating, and probably misleading, when working class has become synonymous with people who did not get a four-year college degree. Talk about why working class and not having a bachelor’s degree maybe should not be synonymous terms…Potts: Yeah, so the first thing to understand is the vast majority of people who are talking about the working class in their writing and their commentary are using it as a synonym for those who don’t have college degrees. So they’re not talking about a certain slice of the income—a certain income level necessarily. They’re talking just about people who don’t have college degrees, and they’re also treating it as a majority of the U.S. because it is true that a majority of people now, in this day and age, do go to college—although I think that’s slipping—but they don’t always finish. Only about a third—a little more than a third now—of American adults have college degrees…a little more than a third of the American public has a bachelor’s degree. The reason—the argument that people make about why these two things are synonymous—is that generally it’s true that people with a bachelor’s degree make more than people without one, but it’s not true all across the board. And it’s really not true when you zoom out and you look at different kinds of communities in the United States.”

Potts continues, “So if you live in one of the populous areas on the coasts, it’s definitely true that people who have college degrees or advanced degrees are much more likely to have higher incomes, but it’s just not true across a lot of rural America, which is where Trump wins—which is part of the reason that we talk about the working class these days is because of the rural-urban divide. Because in those areas, just generally, college attainment is much lower. And so you have people who maybe started a business or entered a trade after high school who, by the time that they’re in their thirties and forties, are making pretty good middle-class salaries…there’s another idea of working class, another definition that is much more socioeconomic, that means usually slightly below a middle-class salary. It means a certain kind of blue-collar job or a certain kind of job that doesn’t have the kind of security that we think of people with college degrees having in their jobs. It usually means physical labor of some sort. And so I think when people say working class, they often think in their minds—or they see in their minds—this kind of person who’s struggling economically…I personally think that saying working class kind of evokes this kind of blue-collar laborer who is struggling and is just trying to feed his family and wants to take a vacation every year… But it usually evokes a male head of household, and they’re mad because they don’t have the economic opportunities that their parents did when they just worked in a factory after college. And so the phrase working class evokes that, and it just doesn’t describe our reality right now.” More here.

Here’s an excerpt from E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s responses to a question by Robert Siegel in “The Trump Economy and America’s Bad Mood” in the New York Times: “E.J., you have written about Donald Trump losing what you call the reasonable majority. Is there a reasonable majority?…Dionne: I think there is a reasonable majority in the country. One of the reasons I use that phrase is because a lot of people out there who voted for Trump were not part of the MAGA base, were not “fooled” by Donald Trump…They were people who were mad about the cost of living and, in some cases, angry about immigration, particularly what was happening at the southern border. They weren’t necessarily sold on Trump…Most of those people have taken a look at what has happened in the last year and they have just moved away. They’ve said: This is not what we voted for…He ignores the primary issue that pushed him their way, which is the cost of living — and a billionaire regularly mocking affordability and, by the way, surrounding himself with billionaires, is not someone who’s going to appeal to that constituency…Some of the polls, Gallup, AP-NORC, have him down at 36 percent, and that up to a quarter of his own voters, if the high measures are right, have moved away from him…The last couple of months feel like that Afghanistan moment for Joe Biden. If you remember, after the chaos in Afghanistan, Biden never recovered from the sharp drop in the polls he had then.” More here.

At The Dispatch, Charles Hilu addresses a question of growing interest, “Will Congressional Republicans Stay Compliant in 2026?,” and writes: “Even for a president known for his disregard for norms and scathing attacks on his enemies, it was a bridge too far…After news broke last week that acclaimed film director Rob Reiner and his wife had been stabbed to death in their home, President Donald Trump reacted in a way that was unsurprising only in the degree of its callousness. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the death of Reiner, a longtime Democratic activist and strong critic of the president, was “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”…There’s not much congressional Republicans can do about a distasteful comment from the White House other than condemn it. But Trump’s actions in his second term have repeatedly tested the limits of Republicans in Congress, pushing the bounds of executive authority and  contradicting the professed beliefs of large swaths of the caucus. In response, Republicans have offered varying degrees of pushback, sometimes putting up no resistance at all and at other times expressing concern but not giving substantive opposition. Only on rare occasions have Republicans in Congress told Trump “no” or moved to block his actions…This deference to Trump is unsurprising, given that the president has not been afraid to threaten dissenting members of his party with a primary challenge. In the 2022 cycle, Trump-backed challengers succeeded in ousting multiple Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted to impeach the president following the January 6 Capitol riot. After Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against advancing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump publicly declared that he would meet with primary candidates, and Tillis soon announced his retirement. Most recently, Trump has announced his intentions to back challengers to GOP members of the Indiana state Senate who voted against the state’s push to give Republicans a more favorable congressional map…Despite that history, congressional Republicans in recent months have shown more of a willingness to criticize Trump and buck his wishes—a trend that has coincided with a decline in his job approval ratings. Nevertheless, the country has yet to see the congressional GOP take a stand against Trump on an issue that is especially high-profile or of serious importance to his agenda as Republicans have worked to leverage their governing trifecta.”

In “Republican Conundrum: Working-Class Base, Plutocratic Agenda,” Harold Meyerson writes at The American Prospect: “The anxiety among Republican elected officials is palpable, as well it should be…In the House, a number of their representatives from swing districts, confronted with the prospect of their constituents losing their health insurance on January 1, are still trying to craft some kind of legislation that both preserves government health insurance programs (required if they’re to be re-elected) and diminishes government health insurance programs (required to accord with basic Republican ideology). That this can’t be done merely confirms the Republican inability, after a decade and a half, to craft an alternative to the Affordable Care Act…A separate discharge petition, which reached the required number of 218 signatures via the backing of all House Democrats and a smattering of Republicans, compelled a House vote, also last Thursday, on a measure to restore the collective-bargaining rights of roughly one million federal employees, which President Trump had abolished by executive order, despite the ongoing contracts the government had with the workers’ unions. The measure passed by a 231-to-195-vote margin, with 20 House Republicans joining all House Democrats in the majority…Trump had justified the withdrawal of those rights by stating that unionization could impede work related to national security. No one actually believed that the workers who mop the floors in federal office buildings—the very kind of workers who lost their bargaining rights due to Trump’s orders—engage in work that would compromise national security if it’s unionized; indeed, workers at agencies that actually are related to national security, like the CIA, have always been expressly forbidden from unionizing.” More here.

Every country is unique. But what happens in the U.K. is of more than casual interest to American political analysts, when it comes to figuring out trends among working class voters. So, check out “English voters scatter from the center, strengthening extremes” by Mark Sappenfield, who writes at the Christian Science Monitor: “Britain is perched on the precipice of historic political upheaval. Half of Britons want “radical change,” according to a November poll by Ipsos. In its “Shattered Britain” study, opinion research firm More in Common says many British voters have reached a “roll the dice” moment. For a nation where the traditional political order – dominated by the Conservatives and Labour – has had the constancy of the cliffs of Dover, everything appears chaotically uncertain…For now, the Labour government retains a large majority in Parliament, thanks to its 2024 landslide election victory. But the speed of the party’s collapse in the polls is unprecedented, political scientists say. Its support among voters now sits at 18%, Ipsos finds…The biggest winner so far has been the far-right Reform UK Party, which is polling at 33%. But the story of England’s political transformation goes deeper. For the first time ever, five parties are polling at over 10%, with a sixth trying to elbow its way in. It speaks to a crumbling of the old order as voting blocs that have held firm for generations fracture into new configurations, desperately seeking change…The picture is broadly similar across the United Kingdom, but England’s political dynamics are distinct from those of the U.K.’s other nations, due to its lack of separatist parties such as Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Scottish National Party. Moreover, the rise of English nationalism points to a uniquely English element of these political trends…Similarly, Britain’s challenges are similar to those seen across Europe: a stagnant economy, rising stress on social services, and growing public debt. But Britain has a unique added variable: Brexit, which took effect just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to wreak havoc on the world economy. Combine that with a puzzling and persisting drop in worker productivity, and the country has never recovered…Previous Conservative governments responded with cuts and austerity. The 2024 election was more a resounding rejection of that path than a true win for Labour, political experts argue. Now, Labour is largely treading water hoping for economic growth – which hasn’t come – and adopting tough anti-immigrant policies to try to attract centrist voters…But that appears to be part of the problem. Is Labour is trying to win over voters who are disappearing?”

From “Pushing Democrats to move beyond resistance: Rural Americans — and a Rural New Deal — could be the key to a new wave of economic populism” by Christopher D. Cook at Salon: “Although Donald Trump won a whopping 63% of rural American voters in the 2024 presidential election — up from 60% in 2020 — his approval ratings in the countryside are plunging amid the economic chaos and uncertainty caused by his tariffs, rising food prices and other concerns. Farmers are suffering huge losses even as their costs keep rising, and farm bankruptcies have increased by 56% from 2024…Working-class Americans, another key source of Trump’s presidency, are struggling under the weight of soaring costs, layoffs and manufacturing job losses, and his evisceration of worker protections. Unemployment keeps rising, now at its highest since September 2021 amid the Covid-19 meltdown. Rural coal miners, many of whom voted for Trump, protested the president recently for failing to enforce black lung protections even as more (and increasingly younger) miners die from the disease. Many rural Trump voters have expressed buyer’s remorse over the Department of Government Efficiency gutting protections for public lands, parks, wildlife and other conservation enforcement…Could these working-class and rural Americans be the key to toppling Trump’s reign of destruction — and delivering economic justice and equity? Could a movement of progressive populists, independents and rural communities go “beyond resistance” and help spur a new wave of economic populism?…there is surging evidence that voters are restless and hankering for mold-busting politics offering bold populist messages and discarding the party establishment’s dreary attachment to corporate power and the status quo…At the “Beyond Resistance” launch, Dustin Guastella, research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics, urged for a meaningful reconnection with rural and working-class America. “A lot of union and working-class voters who’ve drifted toward Trump won’t be won back by a message of resistance and how evil Trump is,” he said. Rural and working-class voters “want a better economic system that values the work they do.”

“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday he remains confident that Congress will extend expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits despite persistent opposition from Republican,” Jacob Wendler reports in “Hakeem Jeffries says Obamacare subsidy extension ‘will pass with a bipartisan majority‘” at Politico. “In a Sunday morning interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week,” Jeffries dismissed Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s remarks that a clean three-year extension of the credits would be dead on arrival in the Senate, saying Thune “is not serious about protecting the health care of the American people.”…“It will pass, with a bipartisan majority, and then that will put the pressure on John Thune and Senate Republicans to actually do the right thing by the American people: pass a straightforward extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits so we can keep health care affordable for tens of millions of Americans who deserve to be able to go see a doctor when they need one,” Jeffries said…“As Democrats, we’re promising to focus relentlessly on driving down the high cost of living, to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, and to fix our broken health care system, which Republicans have been damaging in an extraordinary way throughout the year, including by enacting the largest cut to Medicaid in American history,” he said.”

In “Not Left vs. Center, but the People vs. the Powerful: The flawed study ‘Deciding to Win’ may help Democrats get back to fighting for the forgotten middle class again,” top expert on the politics of social class, Stanley B. Greenberg writes at The American Prospect: “We are digesting a wave of studies on why Democrats lost in 2024 and what they should do now. Deciding to Win, by Simon Bazelon, Lauren Harper Pope, and Liam Kerr, argues that Democrats must move to the center to succeed. It’s getting a lot of attention; after all, its findings seemed to be endorsed by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and my partner, James Carville…So, is the answer to eschew the left, to moderate and move to the center?…The study’s authors are right that Democrats have to address their losses with moderate voters, eschew the elite’s identity politics in favor of economic issues, and address fundamental doubts on crime, immigration, gender identity, and American exceptionalism…But they divide the political world crudely into a bad camp on the “left” and a good one composed of “moderates” and centrists. Their ideological blinders block out results favorable to progressives. Their failure to take account of Donald Trump polarizing our politics leads the authors to misread why Democrats and their strong partisans are prioritizing certain issues. And they just ignore the finding that the most effective candidate is running as an economic populist and battling the wealthy…Most important, they diagnose the Democrats’ deep problems without any clear ideas on how to fix them. Grabbing the top-testing items in a table or looking at case studies of candidates who ran ahead of other Democrats is unserious.” More here.

In “Ex-Trump voters swung hard to Democrats over costs in NJ & VA, new research shows,” Elena Schneider writes at Politico: “Donald Trump voters who backed Democrats in two key governor’s races last month did so because of their alarm over cost-of-living issues, according to the results from focus groups conducted for Democrats and obtained by POLITICO — the latest sign that a flagging economy will be a problem for the GOP heading into the midterms, if Democrats can keep their focus on it…Post-election research of Trump or third-party 2024 voters who flipped to Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia last month found that economic concerns were top of mind for these voters. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) made cost-of-living the centerpiece of their campaign messaging, and it helped propel them to double-digit victories…The findings credited Spanberger and Sherrill’s victory for staying “laser-focused” on the economy “while avoiding partisan finger-pointing,” while these swing voters felt “disillusioned by Republican leadership on costs.”…The four focus groups were commissioned by the centrist Center Aisle Coalition, founded by former Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), and conducted by Impact Research. Democratic pollster Molly Murphy, who conducted the focus groups, briefed some House Democratic members on its findings Tuesday, according to one person who attended and a second person who was briefed on them, both granted anonymity to describe private meetings…The research mirrors a raft of recent public polling, showing voters’ deepening concerns about the cost-of-living. Nearly half of Americans said everyday costs, like utility bills and groceries, are difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent in November, its highest level in more than four years, the Labor Department said Tuesday.”

But don’t get too optimistic, because “The MAGA Crack-Up Is Overrated. MAGA Is Here to Stay,” Bryn Tannehill argues at The New Republic. Among her observations: “There is an emerging conventional wisdom that MAGA is eating itself alive with internecine warfare between various politicians, pundits, thought leaders. People also point to the diminution of Trump as a tired, spent force as a reason for celebration. They want hope in a time when there seems like none, and this jockeying for the crown even as the king falls asleep in his chair while his minions fawn over his vitality and vigor seems to offer it…Some will point to Republican politicians bucking Trump as a reason to believe that the whole circus tent is about to collapse…There are Trump’s health concerns, and the obvious vying by Cabinet members like JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio to be seen as the natural successor to the president in the MAGA movement…However, this does not mean that MAGA is disintegrating. What defines MAGA is still there, and won’t go away for the foreseeable future. If you reduce the equation to the simplest terms, you have the Trump voters who pay attention to the chaos and those who don’t. No matter how you slice it, neither group is going to suddenly start voting for Democrats, regardless of which monkey wins the poo-flinging contest…Trump’s greatest political ability was to get low information, low propensity voters out to vote for him…Trump’s biggest vulnerability is the economy, because that will affect at least some of his voters. If his successors can keep sentiment about the economy at arm’s length (Not my fault, I wasn’t president, I’ll do it differently and fix everything), while tapping into the same nativist and transphobic sentiments that propelled Trump to a second term, Democrats will face a nasty surprise as the low information, low propensity voters once more turn out in droves for the Republican nominee in 2028.”

Tom Nichols cuts to the chase at The Atlantic and provides  a clear-eyed summation of Trump’s rant to the nation last night. In “This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like,” Nichols writes: “The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps…When a president asks for network time, it’s usually to announce something important. But tonight, Donald Trump did not give anything like a normal speech or address. He was clearly working from a prepared text, but it sounded like one he’d written—or dictated angrily—himself, because it was full of bizarre howlers that even Trump’s second-rate speech-writing shop would probably have avoided, such as his assertion that inflation when he took office was the worst it had been in 48 years. (Why did he pick 1977 as a benchmark? Who knows. But he’s wrong.) He read the speech quickly, his voice rising in frustration as he hurled one lie after another into the camera…We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job. For 20 minutes, he vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness. Economic concerns? Shut up, you fools, the economy is doing fine. (And if it isn’t, it’s not his fault—it’s Joe Biden’s.)” Read more here.

Lee Ann Anderson explains why “Why Florida is ground zero for coming ObamaCare storm” at The Hill: “Florida will be hit harder than any other state if ObamaCare subsidies expire at the end of the year, which is looking increasingly likely as Republicans in Congress struggle to unite behind a plan to extend the tax credits…More than 1.5 million Floridians could lose health care as monthly payments skyrocket. Average premium costs could shoot up by 132 percent, or by $521 annually, for Floridians who currently receive enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, according to the Center for American Progress… Florida leads the country in the number of individuals enrolled in an Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace plan, with 1 out of 5 Floridians, or 4.7 million people, benefiting from subsidized health insurance, according to KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health policy…The Sunshine State’s relatively large number of small-business owners and hospitality workers account for the particularly high reliance on ACA plans, said Erica Li, a health policy analyst at Florida Policy Institute…“We’re going to see, unfortunately, a rise in the amount of people who are uninsured. And that’s unfortunate, because even if a person is young and chooses to forgo health insurance because they may be healthier, you never know if you’ll have an accident or diagnosis that will require health care coverage and continual care,” Li said.” More here.

From “Barack Obama tells House Democrats that party should focus on the midterms, not ideological divides” by Oren Oppenheimer at abcnews.go.com: “Former President Barack Obama told House Democrats at an event on Sunday in Los Angeles that as they focus on trying to win control of the House of Representatives, they should not get caught up in ideological differences within the party and can “sort through” them later, according to excerpts of his comments provided to ABC News…Ideological arguments within the Democratic Party between its progressive and moderate wings came into sharp focus during 2025’s key elections — particularly in New York City, as Democrats debated over the candidacy of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. This past year, Obama campaigned on the ground for the Democratic Party’s Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial candidates and spoke with Mamdani ahead of Election Day…The party has also been divided over how to handle government funding and the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Eight Senators who caucus with Democrats voted in November to end a government shutdown without an extension of the subsidies, sparking criticism from other Democrats who felt they should not have voted to reopen the government without an extension. House Democrats have since shown a largely united front, signing onto a discharge petition led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to force a vote on extending the subsidies for three years…Obama told the lawmakers to “focus” on winning back the Republican-controlled House in the 2026 midterm elections, indicating that after that the party could work more through those ideological divisions…”Because I promise, when that gets done, we have enormous talent, and we are then going to be in a position, as the next presidential campaign ramps up, to sort through some of the differences,” Obama said, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by ABC News.”

An excerpt from “Trump is betting his presidency on AI. Can he sell it?” by Ben Smith at Semafor: “The great mystery of the Trump administration is: When did he decide to become the AI president?…Trump barely mentioned AI on the campaign trail. His deepest engagement on the subject seems to have been, believe it or not, a lucid 2024 conversation with the YouTuber Logan Paul. Trump mused about the “dangerous” capacity of deepfakes to start a nuclear war, but concluded that AI is “going to happen — and if it’s going to happen, we have to take the lead over China.”…“We have to be very careful with it,” he said…That was pretty much it. The real campaign was immigration, prices, culture wars…And yet, the day after his second inauguration, Trump stood in the Roosevelt Room with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for a $500 billion investment announcement. The single most consequential decision of his presidency may turn out to be putting the full weight of the American state behind the AI hyperscalers and working overtime to block state and federal efforts to restrain them. David Sacks, his AI czar, has emerged as a central, effective Washington figure…It’s still early days, and the political battle over AI is just being joined. Recent history has shown that, to the frustration of labor unions and consumer advocates, voters tend to side with what they see as technological progress and generally like the consumer tech products they use. Older voters and women tend in recent polling to be more hostile to AI; some younger voters, especially men, tend to be excited about it…A vast middle sees both sides. It is waiting to be persuaded.”

“The last time a Democrat was elected as mayor of Miami, Bill Clinton was president,” John Nichols writes in “Trump Is Dragging Republicans to Crushing Defeat After Crushing Defeat: The president is deeply unpopular, his policies are failing, and Republicans are losing—everywhere.” at The Nation. “Over the ensuing decades, Miami became such a consistently Republican town that outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez—who was reelected in 2021 with almost 80 percent of the vote—briefly sought the party’s 2024 presidential nomination…But on Tuesday, Miami voters replaced Suarez with Democrat Eileen Higgins,a Peace Corps alumnus, former foreign service officer in Latin America, and Miami-Dade County commissioner with a track record of championing affordable housing, mass transit expansion, and environmental initiatives…It wasn’t even close. Higgins won 59.5 percent of the vote, to just 40.5 percent for Republican Emilio González, a former Miami city manager who served as President George W. Bush’s director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and also as director of WesternHemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council…Running with ardent support from President Trump—who declared before the vote, “Miami’s Mayor Race is Tuesday. It is a big and important race!!! Vote for Republican Gonzalez”—as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Senator Rick Scott, González had all the pieces in place for a win. But he couldn’t overcome the fundamental reality of 2025…Americans are now so soured on Trump (whose economic mismanagement, chaotic governance, and authoritarian overreach have dropped his approval rating as low as 36 percent in a late-November Gallup survey) and the GOP brand that they are turning out anywhere and everywhere to vote for Democrats…That was the case in Miami, a city with a large Latino population that not long ago was seen as an emerging base for the Republicans. Now CNN data analyst Harry Enten notes,“Latinos have shifted heavily against Trump (with a drop of 36 points in net approval).”…In a broader sense, says Enten, “Trump’s absolute kryptonite to the GOP in big cities.”…But this is about much more than big cities…Democrats are breaking through all over, showing strength even in Republican regions where maps are gerrymandered to favor the GOP…Last week’s returns from a Tennessee special election for an open US House seat show that Democrat Aftyn Behn’s strong run produced a 13-point shift away from the GOP in a normally safe Republican district. A 13-point shift nationally in 2026—or anything akin to that level of movement—would flip dozens of Republican House seats and give Democrats clear control of the chamber for the last two years of Trump’s presidency.”

New York Times essayist Thomas B. Edsall explains “Why the ‘Affordability Hoax’ Is a Trap for Trump,” and writes; “For President Trump, the affordability crisis is a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats. For the customer checking out at Costco or Walmart, it’s a rising grocery bill threatening already fragile household finances…I originally set out to try to put a dollar figure on how much the median family has lost this year as a result of Trump’s tax and spending policies, his tariffs and immigration restrictions and their effects on growth, inflation, wages, taxes and wealth…This is no easy task, with multiple variables in play, each of which can worsen or lessen the cumulative effects…Nonetheless, when I put it all together for the median household, I came up with an estimated net loss of $2,250 in 2025 spending power…The median household income after taxes was $72,330 in 2024, according to the census. The $2,250 amounts to a 3.1 percent loss in spending power, more than enough to persuade quite a few voters that the economy under Trump has gone sour, an assessment confirmed by poll after poll. This disenchantment has begun to spread to Trump’s own voters…To reach this estimate, I combined the calculations of the costs and benefits of major Trump policies by the Yale Budget Lab; the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution; the Federal Reserve; the American Enterprise Institute; and the Penn Wharton Budget Model. I also contacted economists and public policy experts from these and other institutions.”

Edsall continues, “As I dug into the research, something far more important than the specific dollar estimate of an average family’s loss emerged: Trump’s economic policies have put the nation on a long-term path of decline, in terms of gross domestic product, employment, capital investment and wage growth…Jonathan Haskel, a professor of economics at Imperial College Business School in London, and Matthew J. Slaughter, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, drew similar conclusions in their Foreign Affairs article “America’s Brexit Phase: Trump’s Tariffs and the Price of Economic Uncertainty,” which appeared in June:

Unless Washington changes course fast, the United States will suffer many of the same consequences that the United Kingdom did in the aftermath of Brexit. If Washington continues to embrace “strategic uncertainty,” the United States, too, will likely face years of stagnating investment, sluggish growth in its economic output, and flat or even falling standards of living.

The biggest lesson of Brexit, Haskel and Slaughter concluded, “is that policy uncertainty can chill business investment, growth in productivity, and incomes — quickly, lastingly, and painfully. The supporters of Trump’s ‘strategic uncertainty’ approach have been forewarned.”

Edsall adds, “The Yale Budget Lab calculated the combined financial costs and benefits of two signature Trump policies, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on taxes and spending and his substantial tariff increases. It found that the net effect of the tax cuts with the higher costs from tariffs leaves a family in the middle of the income distribution roughly $480 poorer…Those with incomes in the bottom three deciles lose the most — $2,160, $1,320 and $1,060 — according to the Yale Budget Lab’s calculations — while those in the top three deciles are the only winners, at $170, $830 and $9,670…That’s just for starters. The lab’s analysis pointed to adverse impacts on economic growth and employment:

Tariffs slow real gross domestic product growth by 0.5 percentage points in 2025 and 0.4 percentage points 2026. In the long run, the U.S. economy is persistently 0.3 percent smaller, the equivalent of $90 billion annually in 2024 dollars.

The unemployment rate rises 0.3 percentage points by the end of 2025 and by 0.6 percentage points by the end of 2026. Payroll employment is about 460,000 lower by the end of 2025.

On the plus side, the Yale Budget Lab calculated that as a result of the tariffs, “U.S. manufacturing output expands by 2.9 percent,” but it cautioned that “these gains are more than crowded out by other sectors: construction output contracts by 4.1 percent and agriculture declines by 1.4 percent.”

Edsall concludes, “As 2025 comes to a close, the damage the models predict is starting to become reality…Last Thursday, for example, The Wall Street Journal reported in “This Year’s Layoff Tally Nears 1.2 Million, Highest Since Pandemic” that from “January through November, firms have laid out plans to cut 1.17 million posts. That’s the highest year-to-date level since 2020.”…Equally foreboding, Paul Krugman, in “MAGA’s Affordability Crisis Will Soon Get Worse,” which was published last week on his Substack, cited the looming prospect of a sharp rise in fees for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act…Without congressional action, which appears very unlikely at the moment, Krugman presented data showing that premiums for those with coverage in Florida under the Affordable Care Act, to give one example, would more than double, to $2,200 from $899 a month for a married couple 40 years old and earning $130,000 with two children. For a 64-year-old couple making $90,000, monthly premiums would rise to $3,176 from $637, or to $38,112 from $7,644 a year…These developments have prompted growing numbers of elected Republicans, along with White House aides and advisers, to pressure Trump to recognize and acknowledge publicly Americans’ deepening concerns over jobs, inflation and affordability…For Trump to accede to these pressures would, however, require him to admit that his grandiose claims about how his policies would produce a bountiful explosion of prosperity were wrong…He is not going to do that.”

Monica Potts interviewed Kentucky Governor Andy Beshaar and shares insights gained in “How Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear Thinks Democrats Can Win Rural America” at The New Republic. A taste: “M.P.: One of the things that I thought that President Joe Biden was underappreciated about was that he did make a big effort to bring new plants, especially to red states, and to reform American industrial policy through the Inflation Reduction Act. He did talk a lot about the day-to-day economic concerns that people had. He walked with unions, and he tried to reach out to workers. Why do you feel like that message wasn’t convincing, even when Vice President Kamala Harris took it up in her race in 2024?A.B.: Well, I think two things. First, as Democrats, we got to get dirt on our boots, and we’ve got to show up in the areas where our policies are creating new jobs, new opportunities, more accessible health care, safer infrastructure, better schools. The signing in the Rose Garden isn’t real anymore. A signing of a bill in Frankfort [Kentucky’s capital] doesn’t directly impact people on that day. So we’ve got to be there at the announcement, at the groundbreaking. And you know, people make fun of it, [but] the most important one is the ribbon cutting. Why? Because the jobs are there, because the future is better for families. We’ve got to make sure that people in rural America see Democrats and see the results of the policies that we’re pushing for…The second piece, though, is we’ve got to do things faster. The Biden administration passed a lot of good legislation that has spurred a lot of economic development in my state, but the Democrats need to admit that there are times when we are over-regulated, and we’ve created so many rules that some programs that we believe are essential for the American people simply take too long. American people don’t see and feel now the Internet for All program. It’s been three years, and we don’t have a single inch of fiber in the ground. So if you’re a Democrat or a Republican and you believe that the internet is essential, then we should be able to develop a program that gets it out much, much faster.” More here.

Alex Samuels explains “What Tennessee’s special election tells us about 2026” at Daily Kos: “Historically, special elections can act as bellwethers. In the 2017-18 cycle, Democrats beat benchmarks in special elections by about 11 points before winning the House popular vote by almost 9 points in the 2018 midterm elections. Tennessee’s 7th mirrors that pattern: a sizable swing leftward in a previously safe district, signaling early momentum for Democrats as they look to 2026…The results cut both ways: a warning light for Republicans and a welcome bit of reassurance for Democrats. Districts that once seemed comfortably red are showing some slippage, and even places that backed Trump by big numbers may be more competitive than they look on paper…As the 2026 midterms approach, Tennessee’s 7th offers a blueprint of the political terrain ahead—high stakes, energized voters, and an electorate increasingly willing to defy expectations.” Also, Samuels notes, “It’s not just Latino voters drifting from Trump. Even parts of his MAGA base are wincing after he accused several Democratic lawmakers of sedition and suggested they should be put to death. A new poll from The Economist/YouGov found only 60% of Trump’s 2024 voters support his comments, while 29% disapprove—unusually large dissent for a group that rarely opposes him. It’s an early sign that even his most loyal supporters have limits. And the trigger was hardly radical: A brief video from six Democratic lawmakers noting that “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”

From “Trump Is Coming for Veterans’ Disability Benefits” by Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early at The American Prospect: “On October 29, a disabled Navy veteran and blogger named Theresa Aldrich, who keeps other former service members informed about developments at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), tuned in to what seemed to be a routine session of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (SVAC). The hearinghad an innocuous title, “Putting Veterans First,” and SVAC members invited a panel of witnesses to discuss the question “Is the Current VA Disability System Keeping Its Promise?”…Instead, Aldrich discovered, it was a Republican response to a four-part series in The Washington Post, which accused veterans of bilking the taxpayer out of billions of dollars. Little of the ensuing discussion focused on any needed improvements in the VA disability system, as opposed to just echoing the sensational claims of the Post—that there is an epidemic of veterans defrauding the disability system. All of this, she warned her readers, would “set the stage to cut benefits for 6.9 million veterans.”…As the Prospect has reported in detail, over the past decade, Republicans in Congress have been fighting—and too often winning—on their first front, namely the campaign to privatize the VA-run Veterans Health Administration (VHA)…Until now, however, the veterans disability system—operated by the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA)—has been a sacred cow for politicians of all stripes on Capitol Hill. If anything has united Republicans and Democrats, it has been that combat veterans and other former service members who sustained injuries or illnesses while serving in uniform deserve compensation. Alas, no longer.” More here.

In “Health care fight heads to fever pitch,” Jared Gans writes at The Hill: “The battle over the extension of critical health care subsidies may come to a head this week as time is running out before prices are set to spike for millions of Americans…Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) plans to force a vote this week on his own proposal for a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the month. He has said he expects every Democrat to support it…But the legislation will fail without support from at least 13 Senate Republicans to reach the required 60-vote threshold to advance…Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is also expected to introduce House GOP leadership’s own health care proposal, with the goal of receiving a vote before the end of the year. The details of the plan aren’t clear, but Republican leaders have signaled it will focus on alternative health care affordability provisions to the subsidies…GOP leadership has for months been stuck between moderates looking to extend the subsidies in some form and staunch conservatives who want them to end, arguing that the ACA has failed to lower health care costs. That battle is reaching a key moment this week, The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Emily Brooks report…Republican and Democratic moderates have been working together to try to put forward a plan that would extend the subsidies with some reforms, like establishing an income cap and eliminating plans without premiums.” Read more here.

Joey Garrison shares “Key takeaways as Democrats overperform in Tennessee special election” at USA Today: “Van Epps, a combat veteran and former state government official, defeated Behn, a liberal Democratic state representative by 9 percentage points, 54%-45%, in a Middle Tennessee district Trump carried by 22 points in the 2024 presidential election. He will replace retired Rep. Mark Green, R-Tennessee…That amounts to a sizable 13-point swing in Democrats’ direction, continuing a pattern of Democratic overperformance in special elections this year…In five other special elections to fill U.S. House vacancies this year, Democrats overperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris‘ 2024 election performance by 17 points (Arizona’s District 7), 23 points (Florida’s District 1), 16 points (Florida’s District 6), 28 points (Texas’s District 18), and 17 points (Virginia’s District 11)…Republicans have publicly downplayed the shift in Tennessee, arguing the outcome wasn’t as close as some polls suggested. But the larger trend is a troubling sign for Republicans as they look to hold on to their current 219-213 House majority in 2026…At the same time, Democrats are growing more convinced a double-digit swing in the electorate nationally can put into play a Democratic takeover of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 seat majority…Republican efforts to nationalize the race paid off in Tennessee’s deeply conservative District 7, but the same formula is unlikely to work in a swing district where Trump is less popular. Trump’s approval rating has dropped nationally to a second-term low 36%, according to a Gallup poll released Nov. 28.” More here.

“The share of Americans who say they follow the news all or most of the time has decreased since 2016, according to nearly a decade’s worth of Pew Research Center surveys,” Naomi Forman-Ketz reports at Pew Research. “This shift comes amid changes in the platforms people use for news and declining trust in news organizations,” … As of August 2025, 36% of U.S. adults say they follow the news all or most of the time. That is down from 51% in 2016, the first time we asked this question…In turn, growing shares of Americans say they follow the news less closely.