Eric Bazail-Eimil and Robbie Gramer report that “GOP heavyweights join bipartisan bashing of Trump Qatar jet deal” at Politico, and quote criticism of the deal by leading Republicans: Senate Majority Leader John Thune; Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.); Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx); MAGA loyalist Laura Loomer; and Podcaster Ben Shapiro. The criticism is fairly mild, but presents a significant departure from rubber-stamping anything Trump does. Democrats were less hesitant to use more direct language to spell out reasons for opposing the deal. As the post authors quote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) from his post on X:  “This isn’t a good idea even if the plane was being donated to the U.S. government. But Trump GETS TO KEEP THE PLANE???”… “It’s simply a cash payment to Trump in exchange for favors. Just wildly illegal.” Also, “We don’t know what kind of bugs might be put in that aircraft,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told CNN on Tuesday. “We know that Air Force One is more than just a plane. It’s also got secure communications.” The post authors add that “modifying it to make it usable would come with a hefty price tag of hundreds of millions of dollars. According to lawmakers and former Air Force officials, the plane would need to be rebuilt to make sure it does not have any bugs hidden in its hardware and so that the military can install needed secure communications and security technologies on the plane.” the U.S. Constitution says in article I, section 9, clause 8 that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” It is clearly a good issue for demonstrating Trump’s arrogance toward the Constitution.

At The New Republic, Alex Shephard writes in “America Has Never Seen a President This Corrupt” that “…Trump isn’t visiting the Middle East to push for peace or really to do much diplomacy at all. Instead, his visit to the Persian Gulf is, one Arab official told Axios, all about “business, business and business.” Yes, Trump is seeking investment in America…But one increasingly gets the sense that it’s not America’s business that Trump is really there for: It’s his family businesses. This swing through three Gulf states, which kicked off on Monday, is the clearest and most damning instance yet of his approach to governance in his second term, where official business and personal business are fully intertwined…Trump’s trip was tainted by massive, historic corruption even before it began, when it was revealed that he would accept a “palace in the sky”—a luxury Boeing 747-8 worth $400 million—from Qatar, which he plans on using as Air Force One…Plus, the Defense Department isn’t really getting the gift: Trump has indicated he plans on transferring the jet to his presidential library foundation at the end of his term, which likely means he can keep using it after he leaves office…Trump’s businesses have extensive ties in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar (as well as nearby Azerbaijan)…Trump’s visit to the Gulf is following in the footsteps of his sons, Eric and Donald Jr. The pair have been jaunting across the region drumming up business, and in recent weeks “announced new overseas business deals involving billions of dollars, including a luxury hotel in Dubai, a high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a new golf course and villa complex in Qatar,” according to The New York Times…What is happening now is unquestionably the biggest corruption scandal in American history. There are signs that the Democrats are waking up to it. The party recently blocked a bill to regulate stablecoin, one form of cryptocurrency, and are demanding that it include requirements barring elected officials from owning or promoting stablecoin ventures. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, pledged to put a hold on all Department of Justice nominees until “we get more answers” about the Qatari jet. In the meantime, Trump will be jetting around the Middle East making deals for himself and his children—and maybe, just maybe, for the country too.

Some conclusions about “The future of racial equality” from a Pew Research Center survey of 5,097 adults, which was conducted Feb. 10-17, 2025:  “In recent years, Americans have become less optimistic about the future of racial equality for Black people. Among those who say the U.S. still has work to do in this area, 51% now say it is very or somewhat likely that Black people will eventually have equal rights with White people. This is down from 60% in September 2020…As was the case five years ago, most White adults (61%) who say the country still has work to do say it’s likely that Black people will eventually have equal rights with White people. This is much larger than the shares of Black (32%), Hispanic (50%) and Asian adults (41%) who say the same…Two-thirds of Black adults who think the country hasn’t made enough progress on racial equality say that eventual equality with White people is not too or not at all likely. About six-in-ten Asian adults (59%) and 49% of Hispanic adults say the same.” For a more in-depth look at the survey, read here.

Max Zahn reports that “Recession warnings fade after Trump rolls back tariffs” at abcnews.com, and notes that “Recession alarms blared across Wall Street in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement last month, but a recent trade agreement between the U.S. and China has dialed back many of those warnings…JPMorgan on Tuesday lowered its odds of a recession this year from 60% to below 50%, meaning the U.S. is more likely to grow in 2025 than enter a downturn. Similarly, Goldman Sachs reduced its chances of a recession this year from 45% to 35%…Stock market gains reflected such optimism. The S&P 500 soared in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-China agreement, shrugging off previous tariff-induced losses and bringing the index into positive territory for 2025.” Democrats who were counting on Trump’s approval ratings sinking to disaster-level numbers may need to reconfigure their strategy options going forward. One thing they should be doing more of, regardless of Trump’s approval ratings, economic trends and other daily news stories, is to work harder at recruiting fresh faces and new voices to run for office. The public image of Democratic stagnation is surely fueling the party’s popularity downturn. Newer and younger candidates with different perspectives can help reverse that trend.

The following article stub, from “The Persistence of Lesser-Evil Politics” by John B. Judis, author of numerous articles and books of political analysis, is cross-posted from Compact:

There have been five comprehensive surveys of public opinion in the last two weeks that attempt to assess President Donald Trump’s standing with the public at the end of his first hundred days. The polls are by The New York Times/Siena, The Washington Post/Ipsos, CBS News/YouGov, NPR/Marist, and The Economist/YouGov. Some of the results are unsurprising: Trump is in trouble with the public, but so are the Democrats. But nestled in the crosstabs are a few more noteworthy findings: Trump is losing ground among groups that have been faithfully Republican, but the Democrats continue to lose ground among groups they had relied on.

Based on the 60 questions asked by The Washington Post among ten different demographic and ideological categories, Trump’s greatest strength is among the overlapping categories of conservatives and white evangelical Protestants. A majority of these two groups (and no others) thought Trump’s economic plans would “put the United States on a stronger foundation for the long term.” They alone favored shutting down the Department of Education. Fifty-eight percent of conservatives and half of white evangelicals back ending birthright citizenship, while 49 percent of conservatives and 45 percent of white Protestant evangelicals think Trump’s tariffs will have a “positive” effect on inflation.

There were two other groups from which Trump has customarily received enthusiastic support that still appear to be on board. A majority of men without college degrees and rural voters were the only other groups that thought “Trump is in touch with most of the people in the United States.” But they weren’t willing to buy everything the president was selling. By 60 to 38 percent, white men without college degrees thought Trump’s tariff strategy would boost rather than stem inflation. Only pluralities of rural residents and men without college degrees thought that Trump’s plans would “put the United States on a stronger foundation for the long term.”

The best way to pick out Trump’s biggest detractors is to find out who opposes even White House policies that are generally popular. The New York Times survey found that 52 percent of voters back Trump deporting illegal immigrants, but in the Washington Post poll, 60 percent or more of liberals, the young, blacks, Hispanics, people with post-graduate degrees and city dwellers disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies. The same groups also disapprove by 60 percent or more of Trump’s overall performance and his closing down of federal agencies, and reject the idea that he is looking out for the interests of “average Americans.” These results are consistent with the other polls with two qualifications. Hispanics and the young are not quite at 60 percent disapproval of Trump’s policies in several of the polls, but within a few percentage points.

In the 2024 election, Trump gained support among the young, but that support seems to have dissipated. Of all the age groups, the young (18-29) are the most disapproving and by wide majorities of Trump’s handling of the presidency; according to the New York Times poll, they have the least favorable view of him, they think he has gone “too far” in making changes to the country’s political and economic system, and they think these changes are “bad for the country.”

Of white voters, disaggregated by sex and education, the most opposed to Trump are college-educated women. Since 1988, a majority of college-educated women have backed the Democratic presidential nominee, but the recent surveys suggest they are reaching new heights in their hostility toward a Republican president. Among whites, they are the only group to disapprove of Trump’s policies on curbing illegal immigration and to say that Trump’s attempt to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs has gone “too far.” In the NPR poll, 65 percent give Trump an “F” on handling the economy. (By contrast, 51 percent of college-educated men and 30 percent of men without degrees give Trump an “F.”) Sixty-nine percent of white college-educated women disapprove of his handling of foreign policy.

There are two groups that have backed Trump in the past that appear to have become critical of his second administration. A majority of seniors (aged 65 and over) backed Democratic presidential candidates in 1992, 1996 and 2000, but after that election, seniors have backed the Republican candidate every four years. In the last election, Trump edged Kamala Harris among this demographic, by 51 to 47 percent.

In the recent surveys, only the young exceeded seniors in their dislike of Trump. Seniors “strongly disapprove” of the way Trump “is handling his job as president” (Economist); they believe Trump “is tearing down the system completely” (New York Times); they “dislike” Trump  “a lot” (Economist); they are “very concerned” that Trump is reducing the size and role of government in US society (Washington Post); they believe Trump is making “major changes to how the US government works” and that these changes are “for the worse” (CBS). They like his policies on immigration, but not on the economy or on foreign policy.

The other group that may be turning on Trump is white women without college degrees.  In the 2024, Trump won these voters by a resounding 62 to 37 percent, but unlike their male counterparts, they do not appear to be in step with his administration. A majority are concerned that Trump is doing “too much” to reduce the size and role of the federal government. A plurality says that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs “help level the playing field for people who have been denied equal opportunity” (Washington Post). They are divided 47 to 47 on approval of his administration, with 41 percent “strongly” disapproving. And they disapprove of his handling of the economy, tariffs, and foreign policy (NPR).

These polls suggest that Trump’s electoral majority may be evaporating. He couldn’t have won in 2024 if he had to rely primarily on white evangelicals, self-identified conservatives, and working-class white men. His only policies that generally meet voters’ approval are his attempts to discourage illegal immigration. Some, like the reduction in funding for medical research, are opposed by all the different voting groups, including self-identified Republicans and conservatives.

Read more here.

“The Center for Labor and a Just Economy, in collaboration with the Columbia Labor Lab, commissioned a survey with over 1600 respondents that delved into the nature of union members’ relationship with the Democratic Party,” Sharon Block writes in “The Future of Labor and the Democratic Party” at Onlabor. “Our results found that unionized workers were significantly more likely to vote for Kamala Harris than their non-union counterparts. Analyses of the election results indicated that Democrats lost ground amongst some of their traditional support groups, in particular working-class Black and Latino communities. In our survey we found that more than 68% of Black union members reported voting for Harris, while 57% of Black non-union workers voted for the Vice President. Interestingly, roughly the same proportion — 24% — of Black union and non-union workers voted for Trump. The major difference was in turnout, with 7% of Black union members saying that they did not vote, compared to nearly      18% of Black non-union workers. Latino voters had a similar trend, as Harris’ support was higher amongst union members than non-union workers, but the major difference was in turnout…union members’ views on who to blame for inflation resonated much more closely with the Harris campaign’s position than the views of other workers.”

“Whether a worker was unionized,” Block continues, “did not impact how they experienced inflation, as 85% of respondents reported experiencing higher grocery prices and over 65% experienced higher gas prices. But unionized workers diverged in the way that they attributed blame for inflation: more than 48% of unionized respondents identified corporate greed as the main driver of inflation, compared to 40.5% of non-union workers…The only unions whose membership were more likely to blame the government, rather than corporate greed, for inflation were the Teamsters and members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, and interestingly these were the only unions whose membership were more likely to support Trump than Harris…Harris’ refusal to go on podcasts like Joe Rogan has been criticized as a strategic blunder and has led to calls for Democratic candidates to spend more time in more diverse media venues. But we found that younger union members were far more likely to rely on a variety of news sources than members aged 45 or older who were far more likely to rely on traditional news sources…Our research on the results of the 2024 election suggests that Democrats have much to gain from a stronger commitment to championing labor law reform to make it easier for workers to turn their desire for union representation into a reality.”

Some comments from Joan C. Williams, founding director at the Center for WorkLife Law, UC San Francisco, during her interview by Meagan Day at Jacobin:  “Democrats should be featuring people who waited six hours at Social Security offices. They should be highlighting what the Trump administration is doing to veterans — a cross-class ideal of people who exhibited toughness, self-discipline, and manliness. It’s important to get the messaging right. With regard to Medicaid cuts, the Democrats’ impulse is to say, “Look what’s happening to poor people.” That’s true, but it’s not the best way to reach the target audience. Say instead, “Medicaid cuts mean closing more rural hospitals.”…If we want to really help poor people, we need to break the elite feeling rules that mandate empathy for certain groups and scorn for others — empathy for poor people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people, but scorn for people who go to church, respect the military, and embody the basic culture of middle-status America. That’s a losing strategy that ironically puts a target on the backs of the aforementioned marginalized communities, as we are seeing…We need to stop asking “what’s the matter with Kansas?” and focus more on “what’s the matter with Cambridge?”…But we need to understand the people we’re trying to persuade: middle-status people who value traditional institutions and obsess over economic stability. Unless we rebuild relationships with them, our progressive values won’t materialize.”

In “‘Tis a Fine Old Conflict:  The Class Struggle Inside the Democratic Party, Stewart Lawrence writes at Counterpunch that Sen. Bernie “Sanders has been especially vocal in pointing out that the party’s strategy – despite its anti-Big Capital rhetoric – does not explicitly favor working class voters on such issues as expanding healthcare coverage through a “public option” or bolstering union organizing rights. And even where it does – for example – by calling for a “wealth tax” in addition to a more progressive income and higher corporate tax rate – the party, he argues, refuses to lead on these issues, hoping against hope that its public neutering of an openly working class agenda might appease moderates and swing voters, many of them Republican, who are genuinely alarmed at Trump’s excesses…Harris, despite much early fanfare, failed in the end to mobilize record numbers of Democratic base voters – but she managed to capture just 50% of wavering independents. For the Sanders/AOC faction of the party, this is strong evidence that Democrats should stop talking out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to class politics. Rally the country with a steadfast populism rooted in the unmet economic needs of the vast majority of working class and lower middle class Americans – while pointing the finger at the “billionaire class” that dominates the GOP and that continues to skew tax and regulatory policies in their favor –  and Democrats can win the White House again, their argument goes.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Trump’s first hundred days are over. There is a blizzard of polling data indicating that American voters are not happy so far with their second ride on the Trump train. On RCP, Trump’s average net approval ratings (approval minus disapproval) are -6 overall, -13 on the economy, and -21 on inflation. Sad!

Any given poll these days is full of bad political news for the Trump administration. Take the latest CBS News poll, where Trump’s approval (45 percent) is right at the RCP running average. In the poll, most think the condition of the national economy is fairly or very bad and by almost 2:1 think that the economy is getting worse rather than better. They overwhelmingly believe the Trump administration is not doing enough on “lowering the prices of goods and services” but believe the administration is doing too much on “putting tariffs on goods from other countries.” On a personal level, respondents are far more likely to think Trump’s policies are making them financially worse off rather than better off and to believe his policies are making the prices they pay for food and groceries go up rather than down. Finally, most believe Trump’s policies are working against the interests of middle-class and working-class people while working for the interests of wealthy people.

Other polls are quite consistent with these data. This presents Democrats with an obvious opportunity to make up the ground they lost in the last election and perhaps shift the political terrain decisively in their favor. But will they—can they—do this? That is possible but hardly certain or even probable. In my view, Democrats currently are at a fork in the road to their political future and how that future turns out depends on which path they choose. Down one path lies the party of restoration; down the other lies the party of change. Let me explain.

Start with the party of restoration. Democrats’ first instinct in opposing Trump administration actions has been to denounce these actions in the most flamboyant terms possible. That’s understandable; many of Trump’s action have been very unpopular, from DOGE excesses to the chaotic tariff regime, and they are the opposition party. Fair enough.

But they’re also the party that comprehensively lost the last election and has been bleeding working-class voters for years. If the solution offered to the depredations of Trump is simply to restore the Democrats to power, that is unresponsive to the messages voters have been sending. Voters didn’t and don’t like the Democrats either; they don’t trust them to govern or manage the economy well and fear the party is obsessed with issues voters either don’t care about or actively oppose. They will not forget what they didn’t like about the Biden administration and the last 10 years of the Democratic Party so easily.

Yet Democrats are acting like this isn’t a problem. They seem to believe if they just turn up the volume high enough on how terrible Trump is, all will be forgiven and voters will re-embrace the Democrats. All voters really want, they assure themselves, is a Democratic Party that will fight hard enough against Trump and his evil minions and restore the good guys to power.

This may suffice to clear the low bar of taking back the House in 2026 but it is not remotely plausible as a longer term strategy to win back working-class voters and vanquish right populism. These voters do not want to see the status quo anterestored; they hated it! But what other than restoration are Democrats really offering at this point? Not much; it’s all fight, fight, fight with the implication that putting Democrats back in power will make everything dandy.

Indeed, the hottest political competition within the Democratic Party is who can call for fighting Trump and MAGA in the most exciting way. Bernie Sanders and AOC have cornered the market on the “fighting the oligarchy” approach. More recently, JB Pritzker, the Democrats’ designated “good” billionaire, has upped the ante on the anti-fascist approach in a New Hampshire speech to enthusiastic partisans:

It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once…Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box and then punish them at the ballot box…

Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces. Today, as the blaze reaches the rafters, the pundits and politicians—whose simpering timidity served as kindle for the arsonists—urge us now not to reach for a hose.

Thank you Winston, I mean JB. Yes, you will fight them on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields, and in the streets, etc. The thought of the portly JB Pritzker leading the heroic anti-fascist fighters into the streets is nothing if not hilarious. But many Democrats treat this nonsense with the utmost seriousness. Up and down the party, calls to “Fight!” differ more in degree than kind from Pritzker’s performative rhetoric.

What all this conveniently forgets is that voters may be upset with many of the Trump administration’s bone-headed moves but they don’t like the Democrats either. Not at all. Indeed, despite all that has taken place since Trump took office, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating is still far below the Republican Party’s. And in a recent NBC poll, positive views of the Democrats hit a rock-bottom 27 percent, the lowest in the poll going back to 1990.

A recent Washington Post poll found that 70 percent of voters think the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the country today. In a poll of swing Congressional districts by the pro-Democratic Navigator group, voters felt Democrats were “more focused on helping other people than people like me”. Most voters also felt Democrats don’t respect work, don’t share their values, don’t look out for working people, don’t care about people like them, and don’t have the right priorities. Polling for the new Democratic-oriented “Working Class Project” found working-class voters preferred Republicans to Democrats on representing their values, focusing on the issues they care about, valuing hard work and being patriotic. And so it goes.

What part of “voters just aren’t that into you” don’t Democrats understand? Voters want change. Big change. No amount of fulminating about Donald Trump is going to change that. Consider these data.

In the AP/VoteCast survey of 2024 voters, 83 percent said they wanted either substantial change or a complete and total upheaval in how the country is run. In Blue Rose research from the 2024 cycle, they found that just 18 percent of voters thought preserving America’s institutions was more important than delivering change and that more voters preferred “a major change and a shock to the system from whoever becomes President” to stabilizing the system. In recent Navigator group polling, 74 percent said the country’s political and economic system needs either major change or to be torn down completely.

In this situation, you don’t want to be the party of restoration. As Navigator’s chief pollster Ian Smith put it:

Most people don’t just want a system update. If you offer them a version 1.2 of America, they won’t see a difference in their day to day life. They’d rather see and feel change.

In other words, you want to be the party of change, not the party of restoration. Can the Democrats do it? I’ve got my doubts.

To be the party of change in our current populist era, when the party’s brand is in wretched shape and views of Democratic governance are so negative, you have to actually change the party. That’s not easy. Most partisan Democrats would be perfectly happy to just restore the previous regime and forget the Trump nightmare ever happened. As far as they’re concerned, things were pretty great when they were in charge! We really haven’t moved much beyond the infamous yard sign from the 2024 campaign, “Harris Walz Obviously,” except now it’s, “The Democrats Obviously.”

It wasn’t so obvious to voters in 2024 and it’s not so obvious to voters now. The truth is that Democrats will have to work really hard to convince voters, especially working-class voters, that they embody change, not the Establishment, and are worthy of an enthusiastic vote. The last Democrat to successfully do this was Barack Obama; that was a while ago and the party is more in need of reinvention than ever.

Yet the sense of urgency in Democratic ranks is lacking. They don’t realize that they are at a fork in the road. They’re content to hoist the anti-Trump flag high and hope for the best. Continuing down that road will make them the party of restoration in a change era—and ensure that the political breakthrough they are seeking will continue to elude them.

The following article, “Rural Trump Voters Won’t Regret Their Vote Until Democrats Fight for Them” by Anthony Flaccavento and Erica Etelson, is cross-posted from The Nation:

The damage done just in the Trump administration’s first three months could fill the National Archives—assuming that department still exists. Many of those moves, including the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran gulag, have been cruel and utterly unjust. Yet public support for Trump, though declining, remains stubbornly high among rural and working-class people. Some part of that support comes from his ability to couch everything he does as retaliation against liberal elites and a blow against the “rigged system” those elites helped create—a system that has undermined the values and livelihoods of ordinary working people.

What will it take to stop Trump? It’s hard to predict how many of the people who supported Trump will turn against him because of the deportation of Garcia, student activists, and others. Those fights absolutely must continue and, we hope, will awaken more and more Americans to the dismantling of democracy. But there will always be those who are moved more by negative impacts to their daily lives. Job loss, hospital and school closures, a huge spike in the cost of essential goods—these are perennial deal-breakers that outlive the daily news cycle.

As we suggested in our February column, reacting negatively to every radical idea Trump tosses out only solidifies the left’s position as defenders of the establishment—the very system tens of millions of Americans blame for their woes. We also believe that protesting the bad stuff only gets us so far, and that a positive vision for bettering the lives of rural and working people must be front and center.

That said, when it does come to complaining loudly about the impact of Trump’s chaotic nihilism, we should focus on actions that have hurt large numbers of people, many of whom voted for Trump. We need to empathize with and acknowledge their struggles and help channel it into buyers’ remorse: “Trump has betrayed us” gets to the heart of the matter, whereas “Hands off!” smacks of a desire to restore the status quo.

To stop Trump and reverse the assault on our economy and democracy, we need to redeploy some of our outrage to highlight how Trump’s actions are actually making the rigged system worse for the folks who put him in office: farmers, small businesses, coal miners, factory and blue-collar workers, consumers struggling with high prices and debt. Until our protest routinely includes the betrayal of folks like these, we have almost no chance of building the broad resistance coalition needed to reverse the disastrous course we’re on.

With that in mind, we offer a few examples of Trump’s betrayals of rural and working-class people that we urge the left to prioritize, while also highlighting policies that will reverse those betrayals.

Farmers, a core constituency for Trump, have been among the worst hit by his actions since taking office. For midsize and larger farmers, tariffs have prompted widespread anxiety that they are being squeezed from both ends: They’re facing higher costs on inputs like Canadian potash and steel for agricultural equipment, combined with a potentially dramatic loss of markets for soybeans, pork, and other commodities.

On top of that, the dismantling of USAID amounts to nearly $2 billion in lost sales for US farmers. For smaller farmers, the termination of the Farm to School program and the Local Food Purchase Program for food banks have eliminated more than $1 billion in markets for fresh produce, while undermining the effort to provide healthy food to kids and people in need.

And for farmers of all sizes, the suspension of contractual payments to farmers who’ve undertaken conservation, soil building, renewable energy, and other improvements to their farms is devastating. At least 30,000 of these farmers, who each expended tens of thousands of dollars based on USDA commitments, now find themselves in debt, unclear whether the promised reimbursements will ever materialize.

But farmers aren’t the only rural folks getting screwed.

Workers and small-business owners are increasingly worried about their livelihoods. Even before the latest round of tariffs, small-business confidence had declined for all three months of Trump’s presidency, with just one in five small business owners saying they expect sales and business conditions to improve in the near future. That uncertainty translates to less investment and hiring on the part of existing small businesses, and fewer new business start-ups.

For workers in bigger companies, the surge in union organizing seen under the Biden administration is running into a wall of anti-worker actions from Trump. These include the firing of pro-worker members of the NLRB such as Jennifer Abruzzo, replaced by Crystal Carey, a lawyer whose firm represents notoriously anti-union Tesla and Amazon. Trump has also eliminated the $17 hourly minimum-wage requirement for federal contractors while working to completely dismantle unions representing federal workers.

Veterans, who are more likely to live in rural areas, will be hurt especially hard by the double kneecapping of Medicaid and Veterans Affairs (VA). The New York Times reports that, in addition to layoffs, the VA has been rocked by DOGE’s abrupt return-to-work policy. VA psychiatrists who have, for decades, counseled veterans remotely, now suddenly have to conduct their sessions in open cubicles that lack privacy. Many of them are quitting in protest.

Fourteen million (nearly one in five) rural adults rely on Medicaid, a program Republicans aim to cut by $880 billion(roughly 20 percent of the program) over the next decade. Already struggling rural hospitals and clinics rely on Medicaid funds to stay afloat. Over the past 10 years, nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed, leaving their patients stranded a hundred or more miles from the nearest emergency room. Most of the rural hospitals that do remain open have eliminated their maternity wards. Slashing Medicaid spending will trigger further hospital closures and strain already paltry substance abuse, mental health, and Indian health services.

And then there are the millions of consumers just struggling to make ends meet. They’ve been hit not only by continued rising prices—the inflation rate has been between 2.4 and 3 percent since Trump took office—but by the elimination of protections from junk fees from banks and credit card companies. Joined by the Republican-controlled Senate, the Trump administration is eliminating the $8 late-fee cap instituted toward the end of Biden’s term, allowing companies to once again charge exorbitant fees to people who don’t pay on time. The lower average incomes of rural and working-class people make high prices and junk banking fees all the more difficult to manage.

Donald Trump carried rural America by a 40-point margin. He promised forgotten Americans he would unrig the system, address the opioid epidemic, and restore small towns to health and prosperity. Even more than most of his predecessors, Trump has betrayed those who placed their trust in him. Reversing the tidal wave of destruction he has unleashed requires that we on the left do something we should have done a long time ago: open our doors wide to the farmers, miners, truckers, house cleaners, automakers, and working folks—white, brown, and Black—who picked him over us. We don’t just need them to regain Congress in 2026. We need them to save our country.

There’s a new and important problem facing Republicans as they seek to hammer Medicaid yet again, as I explained at New York:

In the long Paul Ryan era of Republican budget-cutting efforts (when Ryan was House Budget Committee chairman and then House Speaker), Medicaid was always on the chopping block. And when the program became a key element of Democratic efforts to expand health-care coverage in the Affordable Care Act sponsored by Republicans’ top enemy, Barack Obama, Medicaid’s status as the program tea-party Republicans wanted to kill most rose into the stratosphere. No wonder that the last time the GOP had a governing trifecta, in 2017, there was no single “big beautiful bill” to implement Trump’s entire agenda, but instead an initial drive to “repeal and replace Obamacare” along with measures to deeply and permanently cut Medicaid. Rolling back health coverage for those people was Job One.

So now that Trump has returned to office with another trifecta in Congress, an alleged mandate, and a big head of steam that has overcome every inhibition based on politics, the law, or the Constitution, you’d figure that among the massive federal cuts being pursued through every avenue imaginable, deep Medicaid cuts would be the ultimate no-brainer for Republicans. Indeed, the budgetary arithmetic of Trump’s agenda all but demands big Medicaid “savings,” which is why the House budget resolution being implemented right now calls for cuts in the neighborhood of $600–$800 billion. And it’s clear that the very powerful House Freedom Caucus, thought to be especially near and dear to the president’s heart, is rabid for big Medicaid cuts.

To be sure, the extremely narrow GOP margin in the House means that so-called “moderate” Republicans (really just Republicans in marginal districts) who are chary of big Medicaid cuts are one source of intraparty pushback on this subject. But the shocking and arguably more important dynamic is that some of Trump’s most intense MAGA backers are pushing back too. OG Trump adviser Stephen Bannon issued a warning in February, as The New Republic’s Edith Olmsted reported:

“Steve Bannon, former architect of the MAGA movement turned podcaster, warned that Republicans making cuts to Medicaid would affect members of Donald Trump’s fan club.

“On the Thursday episode of War Room, while gushing over massive government spending cuts, Bannon warned that cutting Medicaid specifically would prove unpopular among the working-class members of Trump’s base, who make up some of the 80 million people who get their health care through that program.

“’Medicaid, you got to be careful, because a lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are deeeeeead wrong,’ Bannon said. ‘Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.’”

Bannon didn’t comment on the irony that it was the hated Obamacare that extended Medicaid eligibility deep into the MAGA ranks (with voters in deep-red Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah insisting on taking advantage of it), making it a dangerous target for GOP cuts. But in any event, particularly given Trump’s occasional promises that he’d leave Medicaid alone (which didn’t keep him from supporting the deep 2017 cuts), there existed some MAGA sentiment for finding “savings” elsewhere.

The volume of this sentiment went up sharply when one of the flavor-of-the-year right-wing “influencers,” Trump buddy Laura Loomer (reportedly fresh from laying waste to the National Security Council staff) went after a conservative think-tanker who was advising HFC types on how to savage Medicaid, per Politico:

“In a social media post Monday, Loomer called Brian Blase, the president of Paragon Health Institute, a ‘RINO Saboteur’ for helping draft a letter circulated by 20 House conservatives that advocated for deep cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s domestic policy megabill.

“’In a shocking betrayal of President Donald Trump’s unwavering commitment to America’s working-class families, and his promise to protect Medicaid, [Brian Blase] … is spearheading a dangerous campaign to undermine the Republican Party’s midterm prospects,’ Loomer said on X.”

Loomer’s blast at Blase was clearly a shot across the bow of the House Freedom Caucus and other Republicans who are lusting for Medicaid cuts and/or are focused on deficit reduction as a major goal. She called Medicaid “a program critical to the heartland voters who propelled Donald Trump to his election victories” and warned that Medicaid cuts could badly damage Republicans in the 2026 midterms.

The perpetually shrewd health-care analyst Jonathan Cohn thinks MAGA ambivalence about Medicaid cuts could be a game-changer. After citing data from Trump’s own pollster showing support for Medicaid among Trump supporters, Cohn noted this could have an impact in Congress:

“Trump himself has said he is going to protect Medicaid — although, as is always the case, it’s hard to know exactly what he means, how seriously he means it, or how much thought he has even given to the matter.

“But Trump’s own uncertainty here is telling, just like the pushback to Medicaid cuts from the likes of Loomer. Together they are a sign of just how much the politics around government health care programs has changed in the last few years — and why this piece of Trump’s big, beautiful bill is proving so tough to pass.”

It wouldn’t be that surprising if there’s a thunderbolt from the White House on this subject before the House budget reconciliation bill is finalized. If there isn’t, nervous House Republicans may be forced to read his ever-changing mind.

 

At Semafor, David Weigel addresses the question, “Trump’s falling in polls. Why aren’t Democrats benefiting?,” and answers: “Democratic leaders love talking about the president’s flagging poll numbers. Their own numbers, not so much…When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got asked recently to react to a colleague who worried that the party was too focused on El Salvador, he pivoted: “Our reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest public approval rating of any president in modern American history.”…One day later, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer boasted that “Trump has the lowest 100-day approval rating since they started polling 80 years ago,” CNN’s Manu Raju turned the question back on him. Schumer’s own approval rating was 17% in CNN’s poll, much lower than Trump’s…“Polls come and go,” said Schumer. “Our party is united.”…Polls nonetheless put Democrats in a notably weak position for a party aiming to win back Congress next year. In special elections held since Trump took office, Democrats have usually beat expectations, holding their Wisconsin Supreme Court majority and winning a slew of down-ballot races. But the party’s image has not recovered from 2024, and its marks in the spring of 2017 were higher than today.”

From the conclusion of “Who’s the Greatest Grifter of Them All?” by opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall at The New York Times: “For Trump, a critical determinant of his ability to continue to profit from cryptocurrency will be the outcome of the 2026 election…If, as appears possible if not probable, Democrats retake the House next year, the likelihood is that Trump might well be impeached for a third time, and crypto would almost certainly be a centerpiece of that proceeding…The prospects that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict Trump of any impeachment charges about crypto — or anything else — are, however, slim to none, even if Democrats surprise everyone and retake the upper chamber…So what Trump can look forward to is holding office through to Jan. 20, 2029, while he and his business partners continue to come up with new digital currencies and new marketing techniques to raise their potential profits…At that point, with Trump no longer in office, the Supreme Court will once again be able to rule that any pending complaints involving foreign or domestic emoluments are moot…In other words, Trump is well on his way to becoming the greatest grifter of all time.”

Some notes and a map from Kyle Kondik’s “Notes on the State of the Senate: The Post-Kemp Battlefield” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Republicans missed out on a top recruiting target earlier this week, as Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) decided not to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA)…Georgia remains a Toss-up in our ratings even as Ossoff’s reelection path got clearer… Another place where Democrats are playing defense, Michigan, remains a Toss-up, while a couple of other open Democratic seats in Democratic-leaning states, Minnesota and New Hampshire, are developing better for Democrats than Republicans…While there have already been many key developments in the race for the Senate in 2026, history shows that key candidate decisions may still be months away in some places…Republicans remain favored to retain control of the Senate in 2026, and we are not changing any ratings in this update.” Here’s the map:

WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. probes the reasons why “Trump boomerang sinks Australia’s right wing,” and writes that “voters Down Under offered a potent lesson about the boomerang effect to Donald Trump and his MAGA faithful. The president hoped his dominance of the world stage would inspire an international swing toward the nationalist far right. Instead, Australians — angry and mystified by Trump’s tariffs — gifted their center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party trailed in the polls only a few months ago, a landslide victory few predicted…Labor’s triumph came less than a week after Canada’s voters, in an election even more clearly defined by Trump, rescued the center-left Liberal Party from the polling wilderness and ratified Mark Carney as their prime minister…Wayne Swan, president of the Labor Party and former deputy prime minister, told me that Albanese won because “the economic imperative overrode the cultural imperative.”…Yet on Thursday, another center-left leader, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, suffered a real electoral setback at the hands of the far-right Reform UK party, which took a parliamentary seat from Labor on a huge swing in a special election. Reform UK also marched across Britain in local elections that dealt serious defeats to Labor and, even more dramatically, to the traditionally center-right Conservative Party. You can bet that Trump will try to ignore the triumphs of Albanese and Carney and instead talk up Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader and a Trump ally.” In Australia, “A signal moment came when Dutton, during a debate, accused Albanese of being “weak.” Albanese shot back: “Kindness isn’t weakness.” Dionne concludes, “Trump’s tariffs can’t stop good questions from crossing borders or oceans. Importing that one would not affect our balance of payments, but it could alter the balance of decency in our politics. Voters in Australia and Canada would like us to think about it.”

It’s well-known that Donald Trump did really well in 2024 among low-information voters. As I discussed at New York, they’ve turned against him just as they turned against Joe Biden:

One of the more fascinating political trends of 2024 was the inversion of an ancient truism. In the old days, “marginal voters” — the typically younger, poorer people who are disengaged from political news and disinclined to vote without direct encouragement — leaned left. This made voter mobilization a greater priority for Democrats than for Republicans, whose older, higher-income, and better-educated supporters were more likely to vote. But that all flipped last year. Donald Trump held far greater appeal to non-college-educated voters, and to those who didn’t access or didn’t trust mainstream media information, than his Republican predecessors ever did. Thus he was able to outperform expectations in the high-turnout environment of an intensely competitive presidential election.

Democrats can console themselves that their new status as the party of high-information voters could help them in the lower-turnout environment of non-presidential elections — special and off-year elections in 2025 and the 2026 midterms, when marginal voters will be tuned out to an unusual degree. But according to public-opinion analyst G. Elliot Morris, something else is going on right now: Trump’s popularity among marginal voters is dropping like a rock:

“New polling shows that the very voters who powered Trump’s return to office are now abandoning him. And if that trend holds, it could upend assumptions about how much campaign messaging and elite discourse really matter. Because it turns out the people who don’t read the Times, don’t watch the Sunday shows, and don’t care about the policy details… still care when the economy sours and their lives get harder.”

Using data from YouGov surveys, Morris finds a “massive 33 percentage point decline in Trump’s net approval rating over the last 3 months with people who consume the least news.” That dwarfs a “14-point drop in Trump approval, from +3 to -11, among people who say they pay attention to the news ‘most of the time.’”

It stands to reason that people who haven’t been paying much attention to the media-borne clamor over Trump’s first 100 days in office — much as they didn’t pay attention to media-borne messaging during the 2024 presidential campaign — are forming their political attitudes from their own real-life experiences of the direction of the country, particularly in terms of the economic factors affecting them most immediately. That made them hostile to incumbent policymakers in 2024 and again in 2025, Morris suggests:

“These voters reacted to inflation in 2022-2023, were primed to vote for Trump because of the good economy in 2018-2019, and for the most part the little information that reached them during the 2024 campaign did little to persuade them. Ideology drove their vote less than in 2020.

“Now, with 401ks sinking, goods getting more expensive, shelves emptying, and the president saying kids should have just three dolls instead of 30, they have moved against the president again.”

Because they are largely immune from the partisan “messaging” conveyed through media outlets and are not really attached to either party, marginal voters may be more rational than their media-savvy counterparts, at least in terms of their own perceived interests. And if nothing else, their changing allegiances may be a better barometer of political trends to come. Morris goes a step further by arguing that since objective conditions are undermining approval of Trump’s stewardship of the economy, Democratic messaging can profitably focus on noneconomic issues where persuasion is more of a factor.

While the turn of marginal voters against Trump could be very bad news for Republican prospects in 2028 — assuming the economic Golden Age they keep trumpeting fails to appear – the impact between now and then is more debatable. Falling Trump approval ratings among the people least likely to show up for non-presidential elections may be the proverbial tree falling in the forest that no one hears. It will be interesting to see if the Republican Party chooses to leave them in unmobilized peace going forward or tries to get them back to the polls, even if they’ve soured on Donald Trump.

 

From “Good Jobs, Strong Families In Working-Class America” by Grant Martsolf at ifstudies.org: “The last 50 years have been difficult for many working-class Americans. Beginning in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy entered a period of rapid deindustrialization, leading to a significant decline in manufacturing jobs—jobs that had long provided reliable, well-paying employment for Americans without a college degree (a common definition of the “working class”), especially men. Economic prospects for this group have suffered considerably. Between 1979 and 2019, real wages for workers without a college degree declined by 11%, while wages for the median college graduate increased by 15 percent…The challenges facing working-class Americans extend beyond economics. They have also seen a broad erosion of key social institutions traditionally associated with a flourishing life. One institution arguably hit hardest is the family…In a new IFS/PRRUCS report, Brad Wilcox and I show that, in 1980, working-class men ages 25–54 were actually four percentage points more likely than college-educated men to be married with children at home. However, that changed rapidly over the following decades. While all men experienced significant declines in marriage and family formation, working-class men were hit especially hard. By 2021, only 34% of working-class men were married with children at home, compared to 44% of college-educated men…There are certainly many factors driving these trends, but the worsening economic prospects of working-class men are clearly among the most important. We know that marriage and work are closely linked. For example, women are more likely to be attracted to potential partners that can reasonably provide for a family—men with well-paying, stable jobs that offer benefits. Likewise, men with families are more likely to work and to pursue stable, higher-quality employment.” Read more here.

For a peek at what political leaders can do at the state level to help working-class families and gain support from them, check out “New Blue Collar Caucus Aims to Support Connecticut’s Working Class” by Karla Ciaglo at ctnewsjunkie.com. An excerpt: “HARTFORD, CT — A new coalition of legislators made its debut earlier this week as the 30-member Blue Collar Caucus held its first press conference to lay out an agenda…State representatives Kara Rochelle, D-Ansonia, and Rebecca Martinez, D-Plainville, the caucus co-chairs, outlined the group’s priorities: expanding job training, enforcing wage laws, ensuring access to affordable healthcare, protecting labor rights, advancing tax policies that prioritize the middle class, and taking legislative action to confront corporate greed…Martinez pointed to the economic hardship in her own district, where nearly one-third of households fall below the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) threshold…“No one should have to choose between rent, medicine, safety, and survival,” Martinez said. “I am committed to affordability, education, collective bargaining, and senior dignity. It’s time we put our working families first.”…The representatives, joined by labor leaders and community advocates, spotlighted a slate of bills backed by the caucus, including measures to provide healthcare support for paraeducators, combat wage theft, protect residents in manufactured homes and bills expanding child tax benefits…A key focus was Senate Bill 8, An Act Concerning Protections For Workers and Enhancements to Workers’ Rights. That bill would provide unemployment insurance benefits to striking workers…State Rep. Kate Farrar, D-West Hartford, celebrated the inclusion of a new child tax credit in the state’s revenue package — $150 per child, up to three children, with income-based phaseouts — and said she’s optimistic about the caucus’s impact moving forward…“We know that meaningful tax relief isn’t just common sense,” Farrar said. “It also addresses our broken tax code, which for too long has favored the wealthy. This puts dollars in the hands of families who need them most.”

Jake Johnson rolls it out in his Common Dreams article, “‘A Disgrace’: Trump Budget Gives $1 Trillion to Military While Slashing Programs for Working Class,” and writes: “The budget blueprint that U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled Friday would give a record $1.01 trillion to the American military for the coming fiscal year while imposing $163 billion in total cuts to housing, education, healthcare, climate, and labor programs…The proposal, released by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, was viewed by Democratic lawmakers and other critics as a clear statement of the White House’s intent to gut programs that working class Americans rely on while pursuing another round of tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and bolstering the Pentagon, a morass of waste and abuse…”President Trump has made his priorities clear as day,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “He wants to outright defund programs that help working Americans while he shovels massive tax breaks at billionaires like himself and raises taxes on middle-class Americans with his reckless tariffs…This president believes we should shred at least $163 billion in investments here at home that make all the difference for families and have been essential to America’s success—but that we should hand billionaires and the biggest corporations trillions in new tax breaks,” Murray added. “That is outrageous—and it should offend every hardworking American who wants their tax dollars to help them live a good life, not pad the pockets of billionaires.”

Gabriel Thompson says it well in “Trump Promised to Fight for Workers — Instead, He’s Undermined Them: 100 days in, the self-styled champion of the working class has delivered layoffs, trade wars and an erosion of worker protections” at Capital and Main. As Thompson explains, “Trump campaigned on fighting for the working class, and exit polls found that he won 56% of the blue-collar vote, defined as voters without a college degree, while making gains among working-class Black and Latino voters. Shortly after the election, Trump nominated Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union Republican, for labor secretary. On Inauguration Day, Trump promised his administration would “protect American workers.”…The administration has fired tens of thousands of federal workers, stripped a million more of collective bargaining rights, axed higher minimum wage requirements and gutted programs and agencies that enforce labor and safety standards and protect workers’ rights to organize…“This regime of billionaires has launched an all-out assault on working people,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which has joined the American Federation of Government Employees in lawsuits to block a number of Trump’s executive orders. “They’ve brought to a halt the very agencies that help workers negotiate strong contracts, investigate unfair labor practices and hold employers accountable.”…Trump has also hollowed out agencies and programs that protect workers from physical harm, harassment and discrimination. In April, cuts to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, which researches workplace hazards, led to a workforce reduction of more than 90%…In early April, J.P. Morgan raised the likelihood of a recession to 60% and has maintained that forecast, even after Trump suspended some tariffs.”