The New Republic and Greg Sargent explain “How Trump Accidentally Handed Dems Their Big Win in Virginia. The “vote yes” campaign featured Trump in all of its closing ads in areas where it ran up huge numbers. Voters know who started this war,” and write:

“Trump, of course, urged Texas Republicans last summer to gerrymander to help the GOP hold the House, then pressed other red states to follow suit. That prompted Democrats to retaliate in blue states. Trump initiated this arms race. So by declaring the Virginia initiative “not good,” he inadvertently confirmed the actual Trump-GOP position: Republicans should be permitted to rig elections to their maximum benefit, and Democrats should roll over and accept it…It’s fitting that Trump laid this bare so clearly. Because as it turns out, Trump is perhaps the primary reason that the referendum passed

In the “vote yes” campaign’s final days, 100 percent of the ads that aired in Northern Virginia markets heavily emphasized or featured very prominent imagery of Trump, a source familiar with ad buy information tells me. “Trump’s mug was all over the communications that voters were receiving, specifically among the lion’s share of the voters we needed,” the source says. “Trump’s name and face were plastered all over the mess he made.”…It was largely Northern Virginia that put the referendum—which passed by a narrow three points—over the top. The most heavily populated areas there—Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Arlington, Alexandria—all voted for it by big to enormous margins, contributing nearly 600,000 of the “yes” side’s total of nearly 1.6 million votes.” More here.

In his opinion essay, “‘Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’,” Thomas B. Edsall writes at The New York Times: “The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp…It runs the gamut from public and private institutions to core democratic customs and traditions, from the legal system to universities, from innocent targets of fraud to those duped into believing vaccines do more harm than good…Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct congressional approval. A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone…“Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.”…There are the fraud victims who will never get court-ordered restitution because Trump pardoned the guilty. In a June 2025 report, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found that “Trump’s pardons cheat victims out of an astounding $1.3 billion in restitution and fines, allowing fraudsters, tax evaders, drug traffickers to keep ill-gotten gains.” More here.

“When Rahm Emanuel says his party has “lost the plot,” he is not offering a passing observation. He is advancing a political argument — one that could shape the 2028 presidential race and a Democratic Party searching for its footing,” David J. Butler writes in “Can Democrats Reconnect With the Center?” in the Jewish Times. “Emanuel has spent recent months in early primary states delivering a blunt message: Democrats, in his view, have drifted from the instincts that once made them broadly competitive. Coming from a former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, the critique carries weight — and reflects a concern that is no longer his alone…Over the past decade, the Democratic Party has taken a noticeable turn — driven by events that demanded response, but also by choices that reshaped its public face. The shock of 2016 pushed Democrats into a more confrontational posture. The protests following George Floyd’s killing accelerated debates over race and policing, elevating slogans and policy ideas that quickly became political markers. Questions of immigration language, gender identity and school curricula moved from the margins to the center of public debate. During the pandemic, school closures and disputes over public health authority widened tensions with many parents and working families…“Defund the police,” whatever its intent, was heard by many as indifference to public safety. Terms like “Latinx,” embraced by activists and institutions, often felt imposed rather than organic. School debates over curriculum and parental involvement became proxies for broader anxieties about who sets norms and values. Immigration rhetoric, at times, was interpreted not as compassion but as a lack of seriousness about borders…Emanuel’s critique goes directly to that tension. Successful Democratic leaders, he argues, anchored themselves in shared, middle-class priorities: economic stability, safe neighborhoods, reliable schools and institutions that work. That grounding made change intelligible.”

Butler continues, “Today, the party is often seen as placing cultural positioning alongside — or above — those fundamentals. The result is not necessarily policy extremism. It is something subtler, and politically just as damaging: cultural distance…Suburban voters who are comfortable with Democratic economic policies sometimes recoil at perceived cultural overreach or instability. Even when Democrats win, they often do so more narrowly than expected — suggesting a gap between what the party offers and how it is received. These tensions extend beyond domestic policy. On issues like Israel, Democrats are also navigating a widening gap between traditional party positions and the views of a younger, more activist base — another sign of a coalition under strain…But a party that seeks to govern nationally cannot operate only in the vocabulary of its most engaged activists. It must also speak to voters outside those circles, in language that feels grounded and shared — and that reflects the priorities voters themselves consistently elevate…Emanuel is one of several voices making that case. Governors have begun emphasizing public safety alongside reform. Mayors have recalibrated their approach to policing. Party strategists are urging candidates to focus less on ideological signaling and more on economic clarity, competence and order. A quiet reassessment appears to be underway…This is what “coming home” might mean — not retreat, but rebalancing. Advancing equity and opportunity requires more than conviction. It requires connection. It requires a politics that does not assume agreement, but works to build it…Whether that shift takes hold remains uncertain. The Democratic coalition is broad, and many within it see the past decade’s changes as essential progress. Still, the central question is difficult to avoid: Can a party govern nationally if it drifts too far from how most voters understand their lives?…Democrats have faced this kind of moment before. Their most successful periods have not come from choosing between principle and pragmatism, but from aligning the two…If Emanuel and others are right, the task is not to turn back, but to recover that balance — to meet voters where they are and make it easier for them not just to agree, but to come along.”

Kyle Kondik weighs in on the Virginia redistricting election at The Center for Politics, and cautions: “There is still legal action concerning whether Democrats in the state legislature followed the proper procedure in presenting this constitutional amendment to voters—the Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to proceed, but the legal fight is not yet decided. So it is possible that the map could still end up being reversed, although doing so after the voters decided it for themselves would be a political bombshell, whatever the legal realities. Michael Martz of the Richmond Times-Dispatch recently wrote a good explainer of the legal fight…There is also a political dimension to the court proceedings. In Virginia, the seven members of the state Supreme Court are appointed to 12-year terms by a majority vote of each chamber of the state legislature. Two of the current justices, D. Arthur Kelsey and Stephen R. McCullough, are approaching the end of their terms: Kelsey’s expires in early 2027, and McCullough’s in 2028. Both were last appointed back in the mid-2010s, when Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature. It may be that the now-Democratic legislature would not reappoint these justices anyway (if they want reappointment), but one could especially imagine them having a hard time getting reappointed if they ruled against the gerrymandering referendum…If the court does rule against the new Virginia map and reverts to the old one, we will unwind these changes. In that event, VA-2 would still represent a prime Democratic offensive target, and Wittman’s VA-1 would probably still be on the board too (we had it rated as Likely Republican, but we could imagine it being Leans Republican or even Toss-up depending on the political environment). So the new Virginia map didn’t really change the race for the House—Democrats were favored before it, and they are favored after it—but it does make the Democrats’ path to the majority easier.” More here.

At New York I took a look at practical constraints that may cap Democratic gains in November.

Republicans face high odds in their effort to preserve a governing trifecta in Washington in November’s midterm elections. They have a fragile majority in the House — just three seats when all current vacancies are filled. Only twice since World War II has the president’s party made House gains in a midterm, and in both cases (1998 and 2002), the president was popular at a level Donald Trump has never once reached in his long career. His perpetually underwater job-approval rating has been sliding since the fall of 2025, and while his MAGA base remains loyal, the swing voters responsible for his narrow reelection win in 2024 appear to be deserting him at a steady pace. His Iran war is unpopular and is exacerbating perhaps his greatest vulnerability: his broken 2024 promises to lower prices. The congressional GOP is in disarray; its proudest achievement, last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is unpopular too. And most of what Republicans aim to do via party-line steamrolling the rest of this year (e.g., insulating ICE from reforms and massively boosting defense spending) won’t be popular either.

Trump could yet bring his Iran war to a non-disastrous conclusion and draw some lucky breaks on the economy, but all in all, there’s no discernible path to the kind of midterm upset he wants. He’s tried to tilt the U.S. House playing field via an unprecedented mid-decade national gerrymandering push, but Democrats (and some Republicans) have battled him to what is looking like a draw. Meanwhile, Democrats are overperforming in just about every off-year or special election. The most relevant question is no longer “Will the GOP lose?” but “How much will it lose?” A year ago, it was widely assumed that the four-seat Republican advantage (53 seats plus J.D. Vance’s tie-breaking vote) in the Senate was invulnerable in 2026. Now the prediction markets favor a Democratic takeover there as well (55 percent to 45 percent at both Polymarket and Kalshi).

Is a historic debacle in store for the GOP?

Maybe, but probably not. There are two major factors that limit the damage Trump and his party can do to themselves in November: a limited landscape of competitive contests and the closely related partisan polarization of the electorate.

While a Democratic conquest of the Senate is no longer at all far-fetched, the GOP still has a big geographical advantage. Again, Democrats need to flip four net seats to gain control. Of the seven contests deemed competitive by the authoritative Cook Political Report (either toss-ups or contests that lean in either direction), five are in states carried by Trump in 2024 (Alaska, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio). One of the toss-up seats, in Maine, is occupied by a long-term GOP incumbent, Susan Collins, who has regularly overperformed for her party. She is, in fact, the last senator to win reelection as her party’s presidential candidate lost her state. And even as two well-known Democrats fight for the chance to take her down, Collins enjoys many opportunities to distance herself from Trump (whom she has never endorsed) and her party in the Senate, where it’s understood she is to be given “free votes” wherever possible.

Democrats would have to win all seven competitive races to flip the Senate. That’s why they have hoped to expand the battleground by making three races in deeper-red territory competitive. In Texas, a fractious and expensive battle between incumbent Republican John Cornyn and ultra-MAGA state attorney general Ken Paxton has given Democrats some hope that their own nominee, James Talarico, can spring the upset in November. But the fact remains that no Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas in 32 years. Trump carried the Lone Star State by 13 percent in 2024, and this year’s GOP ticket is headed by Republican governor Greg Abbott, who is expected to win without breaking a sweat. Trump also won by 13 percent in Iowa, where the GOP is united behind Representative Ashley Hinson for the Senate seat of Republican Joni Ernst, who might have been vulnerable had she not retired. And Trump won Nebraska in 2024 by 20 percent, where Democrats are backing independent candidate Dan Osborn, who threw a scare into Senator Deb Fischer in 2024. Osborn is credible, but his opponent, incumbent senator and former governor Pete Ricketts, looks a lot stronger than Fischer.

So Democrats would need a sweep of the closer races or an upset in a deep-red state to win the Senate.

While Democratic House gains seem near certain, and Democratic control after November very likely, it’s doubtful, despite Trump’s weakness, that Republicans will lose anything like the net 40 seats they did in 2018, during Trump’s first term. That year, the GOP was overexposed; 23 House Republican incumbents were running in districts Hillary Clinton had carried in 2016; only 12 House Democrats were in Trump-carried districts. Entering the current midterm cycle, only three House Republicans were running in districts carried by Kamala Harris in 2024, as compared to 16 Democrats running in Trump-carried districts (yes, gerrymandering is increasing both numbers but in roughly equal measures). Democrats also don’t have the polling edge they did eight years ago, at least not yet. In 2018, they won the national House popular vote by 9 percent. Their current lead on average generic congressional ballot polls is 5.6 percent at both Silver Bulletin and RealClearPolitics.

More generally, the House battleground is smaller this year. On the brink of the 2018 midterms, Cook Political Report showed 71 competitive races. At present, Cook shows just 34, and in those, Democrats are defending 16 seats. It’s hard to build a landslide out of such slim pickings, particularly since (per Cook) there are 185 House districts that are currently “solid” (meaning safe) Republican in this election.

Underlying these shrunken battlefields is a second major reality limiting Republican losses: partisan polarization. For all of Trump’s loss of support since his narrow 2024 victory, the MAGA base remains solidly in his camp. For example, in an April 13 Economist-YouGov poll showing Trump with a very poor overall job-approval rating of 38 percent, 86 percent of self-identified Republicans and 95 percent of self-identified MAGA supporters gave his performance in office a thumbs-up. Similarly, in an April 15 Quinnipiac poll of registered voters that also gave Trump an overall job-approval rating of 38 percent, 73 percent of self-identified Republicans said they “strongly approve” of the president’s performance. For all the talk of MAGA influencers dissenting from this or that recent Trump policy or action, dissatisfaction with him has not reached his electoral base, and that places a pretty firm ceiling on GOP midterm losses.

Make no mistake: Republicans are cruising for a bruising in November, and Trump’s hold on the federal government will almost certainly be broken. A Democratic House is very likely, and a Democratic Senate is a strong possibility. But while there will probably be a blue wave, it probably won’t be a tsunami. That will leave Trump as a diminished but still very dangerous lame duck.

Fredreka Schouten reports that “Virginia voters approve a map giving Democrats a chance at four more House seats, CNN projects” at CNN Politics:

Virginia voters approved a map that gives Democrats the chance to net as many as four US House seats, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, in a major boost to the party’s effort to win House control in the midterms.

The map set to go into effect represents one of the most extreme political gerrymanders of the 2026 election cycle, giving Democrats an electoral advantage in 10 of the state’s 11 House districts. Currently, Democrats control six of those seats.

…Supporters of the map, led by national figures such as former President Barack Obama and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, cast the change as necessary to serve as a check on President Donald Trump and Republican policies during his final two years in the White House. Trump launched the ongoing mid-decade redistricting battle last year when he pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their maps for GOP advantage.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and several former Virginia Republican officials, including former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, campaigned against Democrats’ redistricting actions in the state, as Republicans worked hard to mobilize conservatives in rural areas to oppose the map. Trump dialed into a call Monday night to mobilize opponents and posted Tuesday morning on his social media network: “VIRGINIA, VOTE ‘NO’ TO SAVE YOUR COUNTRY!”

“Virginia just kicked Donald Trump’s ass,” Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, one the leaders of the pro-map effort, told CNN Tuesday night. “We have rejected him in every state election where he has been anywhere close to the ballot.”

Scott argued Trump’s 11th-hour move to rally voters helped Democrats’ cause in the end. “All he did was wake Virginians up and let them understand the threat that he is.”

…Despite Democrats’ victory, Virginia voters may not have the last word on redistricting.

Next week, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature is slated to meet in a special session called by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis to consider new US House maps. Republicans have not yet released a specific plan, but some have indicated an interest in targeting as many as five seats now held by Democrats.

More Here.

Beth Howard explains “How working-class white Southerners can help defeat MAGA: Rural whites can be fierce fighters for economic and racial justice — if they are welcomed by progressives” at Salon: “There’s a big misconception that poor white people are Donald Trump’s base. There’s so many images of “hillbillies,” “rednecks,” “white trash” and “trailer trash” used in the media to portray racism in this country, to make the case that poor white people in the South hold all of the racism in the entire nation. Many liberals like to say we are too ignorant and stupid to vote for candidates and issues that relieve our suffering. But during our work in rural North Georgia in the 2020 elections, we saw gains for the Democratic ticket in the poor white communities where Showing Up for Racial Justice, the antiracist organization I work for, called and knocked for the general and runoff elections, because we talked to them. We engaged people who are often ignored, abandoned and scapegoated around issues that matter to them, and they cast a vote against MAGA and for all working-class people…We had doors slammed in our faces, people who were tired of election talk, but we also had conversations with people who were proudly already with us and were excited we had knocked on their doors. All of these conversations, along with our partners’ work across the state, added up to Joe Biden making gains in Georgia in majority-white counties among whites without college degrees. Our collective work increased the voter turnout of the white Democratic voters who were the least likely to vote by 20%. By our calculations, In the runoff election for the Senate, which pitted Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock against Republican Kelly Loeffler, and Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican David Perdue, rural voters and white voters with less education — a common but classist metric for the working class — turned out at higher rates for Democrats than they had in the presidential election. These were the people we called and the doors we knocked on.” More here.

“Vice President JD Vance’s support among lower‑income Republican voters has weakened significantly in recent months, according to a new poll,” Sam Stevenson writes in “JD Vance’s Support Tumbles Among Working Class Republicans” at Newsweek. “Surveys conducted by YouGov show that between January and April, Vance’s support among Republicans earning under $50,000 fell, mirroring a broader dip in his overall backing…Working‑class Republicans have long been central to Republican coalition‑building. A drop in support within this group raises questions about whether enthusiasm for Vance is softening as voters reassess potential 2028 contenders…In a YouGov survey conducted between January 9 and 14, 2026, 41 percent of respondents said they would ideally choose Vance for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination…Support was even stronger among voters with family incomes under $50,000, where he captured 45 percent… The question was posed to Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party. The poll surveyed 2,250 U.S. adult citizens and had a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points, adjusted for weighting…A follow-up YouGov survey, conducted between April 8 and 13, showed that Vance’s overall support had dropped to 36 percent…Among respondents earning under $50,000, Vance’s backing slipped to 37 percent. That represents an eight‑point decline among lower‑income Republican‑leaning voters and a five‑point drop overall…In the April poll, 13 percent of respondents chose both Donald Trump Jr. and Marco Rubio as their ideal choices; followed by Ron DeSantis on six percent; Mike Pence, Ted Cruz and Robert F Kennedy Jr. on two percent; and Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Glenn Youngkin on one percent each…”

In “2028 candidates will face a new kind of economic anger. Polls show cratering optimism as working-class voters try to prepare for the seismic changes ahead,” Connor Diamond-Yauman writes at Fast Company: “Election after election, Democratic strategist James Carville’s maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid!” has held true. But in coming political campaigns, candidates will encounter an especially virulent strain of economic anxiety—driven by artificial intelligence—that is proliferating among lower-wage, working Americans… AI’s advances are directly intersecting with Americans’ economic security. Candidates across parties, states, and offices will have to adapt to this new reality, quickly… New data show why. As AI reshapes the labor market and impacts individual economic prospects, these voters view it in increasingly dire terms. Merit America, the workforce development nonprofit that we co-lead, recently commissioned a national survey of more than 3,000 low-income Americans. The goal was to gauge their feelings about economic mobility, affordability, and AI…The upshot? Lower-wage Americans—those earning under $50,000 per year—hold a dim view of the rapid technological and economic change reshaping society. These voters not only feel unprepared, they feel that preparation is beyond their reach. And they do not believe that government or tech leaders are looking out for their interests…Seventy percent say they are not on track to achieve the American Dream, and 84% report delaying major milestones like buying a home or starting a family. A majority, 56%, believe they will have to change careers because of AI. But two-thirds also believe that higher education—the traditional path to a more stable career—fails to offer a good return on investment… If they had the power to do so, 70% say they would prefer to halt the development of any AI tools with the potential to eliminate jobs.” More here.

From “AARP Warns Americans On Major Social Security Problem” by Jeffrey Quiggle at The Street: “Retired Americans collecting Social Security benefits often anticipate the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in their monthly paychecks, which is designed to ensure their benefits don’t lose value as prices for everyday items rise due to inflation…In my reporting on this and other personal finance topics over the years, I’ve found that these adjustments are of vital concern to Social Security recipients as they budget for expenses…Immediately prior to 2026, AARP (the nonprofit organization that advocates for Americans over 50) made a prediction about the 2.8% increase that was on its way for the new year…And because of economic developments four months into 2026, that forecast is more than a little relevant…“The COLA’s impact on beneficiaries’ purchasing power will depend largely on inflation trends in 2026,” wrote AARP. “If inflation cools, the 2.8 percent benefit increase could provide retirees with a modest financial cushion.”…“But if prices continue to climb, the COLA may leave beneficiaries struggling to manage their expenses.”…On April 10, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the March Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, which measures inflation…“In March, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 0.9 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.3 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted,” BLS wrote…At present, with inflation rising, the 2026 2.8% Social Security COLA appears to be worth less than hoped…That is shaping up to be a major problem for Social Security recipients.” Given the high voter turnout rate for seniors, that is sure to be a major political issue as well. More here.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of major works of political analysis and non-resident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, is cross-posted from the Wall St. Journal, via A.E.I.:

“Noam Scheiber, a veteran labor reporter at the New York Times, wants you to believe in the college-educated working class. Many college-educated Americans, he contends, wind up in working-class retail and service-sector jobs that don’t use their education or in professional jobs that have become more “proletarianized” and therefore more working class. That claim is more supportable than the thesis Mr. Scheiber draws from it, namely the college-educated working class is becoming a dynamic force for progressive social change.

In “Mutiny,” Mr. Scheiber makes his case by telling a series of interwoven stories about Americans who’ve found themselves part of the college-educated working class. The stories range from workers at Starbucks, Apple stores and Amazon warehouses to aspiring screenwriters, videogame designers and adjunct professors. All are dissatisfied and all wind up involved with unions.

These stories are well told—Mr. Scheiber is a fine writer—and the precarity of these young workers’ lives is vividly evoked. It’s hard to graduate and find that your painfully acquired credentials don’t translate into anything like the job you were aiming for. Instead you’re at the whim of corporate overlords. Joining a union, or helping to create one, channels your disappointment into something concrete and potentially beneficial.

One graduate-turned-unionizer is Teddy Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman, who graduated from a prestigious liberal-arts college (Grinnell) in 2014, was awarded a highly competitive Watson Fellowship after college, traveled the world (“studying the intersection between disability activist groups and the performing arts”) and came back to pursue a career in the theater. He was a theater and English major at Grinnell and widely considered a star; his mentor at the college thought he’d become an artistic director of a theater or perhaps a theater professor.

It was not to be. After a lengthy attempt to make it in the theater in Chicago, he gave up and landed at Starbucks. He found the work boring, subject to arbitrary management dictates and not satisfactorily remunerative. He found meaning in forming a union. There he had success—Mr. Scheiber connects Mr. Hoffman’s story to that of overall unionization efforts at Starbucks.

So are graduates pouring out of elite colleges, joining the college-educated working class and responding with a thunderous “Union Yes”? For the most part, no. There will be some stories like Mr. Hoffman’s, but they are not representative. Coincidentally, my daughter also went to Grinnell and graduated in the same class as Mr. Hoffman. In her experience, and that of her friends, his trajectory is atypical.

That is not to say that a certain percentage of college graduates, from elite colleges and otherwise, don’t wind up in situations similar to Mr. Hoffman’s. Mr. Scheiber relates the story of Chaya Barrett, who graduated from Towson University in Maryland and aspired to a career in tech and marketing. The best she could do was work at an Apple store, where seemingly capricious management demands and scheduling took all the fun out of being a “Genius,” as Apple calls staff, and hardly paid the bills. She also went the unionization route.

Sydney Mitchel wanted to be a screenwriter and graduated from the dramatic writing department of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She had some initial success getting writing jobs in Hollywood, pulling down $180,000 one year and on track to earn more than $300,000 with a new promotion. But Covid-19 and structural changes in the Hollywood production system derailed her career, and soon she was running out of money. She became active in the writers’ union.

One can sympathize with the urge of these young, educated workers to rebel against their situations. The problem lies in assessing the political and cultural valence of this subset of college graduates. Mr. Scheiber believes these “mutinying” college grads’ rebellion contributes to a burgeoning movement against contemporary capitalism that could unite the college-educated and non-college-educated working class.

I’m not so sure. These college graduates are an idiosyncratic subset of college grads who wind up in frustrating working-class situations and translate their frustrations into union activities. This is not common. The private-sector unionization rate in the U.S. is still less than 6%, which incidentally is about the percentage of Starbucks stores now unionized. And even those that are unionized have a hard time getting contracts.

Frustrated career aspirations and economic dissatisfaction are common among college graduates, perhaps unusually so today. But a four-year college degree still pays off as an investment, on average, both in terms of annual and lifetime earnings, if slightly less so than at its peak in the 1990s. Moreover, there are clear differences between the prospects of those who graduate with STEM degrees and those with humanities degrees, who are likely to be especially frustrated if they want to live in expensive blue-state metros.

Also, who knows how many young college graduates translate their frustrations into political orientations other than the socialist ones so evident in Mr. Scheiber’s book? After all, 46% of white college graduate men under 45 voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Mr. Scheiber’s “working class” college graduates carry a lot of cultural baggage that will limit their ability to unite with the traditional non-college-educated working class. The views of the former are way to the left of the latter. Two of the most widely publicized activities of the Starbucks union related to gay-pride flags and Gaza—not exactly standard working-class issues.

Mr. Scheiber’s book is useful as a guide to unionization activities among recent college graduates. But it does not make a convincing case that the college-educated working class is a harbinger of broader social change. Maybe your next latte at Starbucks will be drawn by the new Walter Reuther or John L. Lewis. But I doubt it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Year-Long Slide in the Numbers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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