And some of the people in his circle are embracing that maximalist ethos when it comes to their visage, surgeons tell Axios.
What they’re saying: Washington is typically an understated town regarding plastic surgery; people want to look good, but don’t want it to be obvious they’ve had work done, says area plastic surgeon Troy Pittman, who works with a lot of Trump insiders.
But that’s no longer the case since Team Trump 2.0 rolled into town: “[Now] we’re seeing people who want to look like they had something done,” he says.
And while old-school Beltway-ers tend to be hush-hush about their tune-ups, the “Palm Beach crowd” is all-systems-go, says Pittman, whose MAGA-verse clients will often chat procedures and trade doctor recs.
Fillers are big with this crew — especially lips, says Pittman, as are Botox and Dysport.
The intrigue: D.C. plastic surgeon Anita Kulkarni has had to turn down an influx of newly arrived political insiders asking for “a more done look, like that Mar-a-Lago face.”
The aesthetic didn’t fit her practice’s typical understated vibe, and these people wanted extra fillers and injections on top of already treated faces, which can be dangerous, she says.
It’s a situation Kulkarni calls “filler blindness.” If you add more and more product to your face and are surrounded by people who do the same, “you lose sight of anatomic normalcy.”
It isn’t just the women:
Speaking of the men, they’re looking for procedures to appear “younger” and “more virile and masculine,” says Pittman, in line with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rhetoric surrounding military fitness and appearances.
A felon whose sentence President Trump commuted in the final hours of his first term was sentenced to 27 months in prison on Monday after being accused of a range of criminal conduct — including physical and sexual assault — since Mr. Trump freed him.
The sentencing of the man, Jonathan Braun, who had a long history of violence and in 2011 pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, demonstrates how Mr. Trump’s handling of pardons and commutations has allowed some convicts to return to criminality.
Mr. Braun’s family used a connection to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to obtain the commutation in January 2021. He is at least the eighth convict to whom Mr. Trump granted clemency during his first term who has since been charged with a crime. Several others pardoned more recently after being convicted of offenses committed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have also run into trouble with the law.
Trump is murdering poverty stricken fishermen every single day claiming that they are unlawful combatants against the United States. This guy, however, is a convicted trafficker and a rapist but he was buddies with Jared and Ivanka so he’s all good.
“The deference and servility to Ms. Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch,’” according to a letter to Trump from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
In August, Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein prey sexually on children and young women, had an unusualinterview with the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who once was Trump’s personal defense attorney. She told Blanche she never saw Trump behaving inappropriately.
After the interview, she was transferred from a low security prison in Florida to a minimum security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not explained the transfer, which MSNBC and other outlets reported deviated from a policy that generally forbids sex offenders from serving in prison camps.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not explained the transfer, which MSNBC and other outlets reported deviated from a policy that generally forbids sex offenders from serving in prison camps. Days after her arrival, she said in emails to friends and relatives that she was much happier at the less restrictive facility.
Now Judiciary Democrats say they have obtained documents and whistleblower information that Maxwell is receiving special favors at the prison camp — benefits unavailable to other inmates.
Raskin’s letter said Maxwell has received customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy. Raskin said Maxwell was also afforded private meetings with visitors arranged by the warden, complete with snacks. The guests were allowed to bring computers, which Raskin described as “an unprecedented action” that risked Maxwell having “unmonitored communications with the outside world.”
When the phone lines went down for other inmates at the camp, Raskin said, Maxwell had friends and relatives call prison employees, who then could help her speak to them. “These luxuries and amenities … mark Ms. Maxwell more as a guest at a Trump hotel than a federal prisoner and child sex offender,” Raskin wrote.
Sexual offenders are never allowed to be in such prisons but Maxwell is. And these favors are unprecedented. Apparently when anyone complains they are retaliated against.
I wonder how all this came about?
She’s reportedly working on her commutation. What are the odds that she gets it?
Trump: "We're gonna issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people of about $2,000, and we're gonna use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt."
Hassett: "We understand that people feel like there's an affordability problem, but we're closing the gap fast. And with these policies and potentially rebate checks, we might close the whole gap really really fast."
Gosh, I sure hope he doesn’t sign those checks with an auto pen…
I guess they aren’t worried about inflation actually spiking from this massive stimulus… but whatever. We’re living in the world of make-believe now.
By the way, the Congress has to pass this giveaway. I guess they probably will because the Democrats will be afraid to stop him from handing out the “stimi checks.”
Grocery prices. Gas prices. Prescription drug prices. Overall prices. Over just three days, Trump made false claims about all of them.
Trump was discussing the issue of “affordability” after Democrats won state and local elections Tuesday in part by campaigning on the cost of living. He argued that this theme was “a con job by the Democrats” given how successful he said he has been in lowering prices.
But Trump repeatedly used inaccurate statistics and assertions to make his case that Democrats were dishonest. Here is a fact check.
Prices are up during this Trump presidency
Over and over, Trump claimed overall prices have fallen since he returned to office in late January.
“Every price is down,” he said Thursday. “Everything is way down,” he said at another Thursday event. “Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they’re down substantially,” he said Friday, adding, “Everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden. And the prices are way down.”
None of that is true.
Prices are up during this administration. Average prices were 1.7% higher in September than they were in January, according to the most recent figures from the federal Consumer Price Index, and 3% higher than they were in September 2024. There has been inflation every month of the term, and far more products have gotten costlier than cheaper.
Inflation has accelerated to 3%
Trump claimed Friday: “We have almost no inflation. We’re down now to 2%.” He said at the same event: “Inflation is almost nonexistent.”
Those claims are slightly more accurate than Trump’s late-October claims that “we don’t have any inflation” and that “we’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.” But the new claims are still wrong.
Inflation not only very much continues to exist but has been accelerating since the spring. As of September, the year-over-year inflation rate had increased for five consecutive months.
The September rate, 3%, was the same as the rate in January, the month Trump returned to the White House. Inflation of 3% is simply not inflation of 2%. (Core inflation, which omits volatile food and energy prices, was also 3% in September.) And this “2%” claim wasn’t a one-time slip by Trump; he claimed in late October, “We’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.”
Grocery prices have increased, not decreased
Trump claimed on both Wednesday and Thursday that “groceries are way down.” But grocery prices are actually up. Average grocery prices rose 1.4% between January and September, Consumer Price Index figures show, and they rose 2.7% between September 2024 and September 2025. The 0.6% increase in average grocery prices from July 2025 to August 2025, meanwhile, was the biggest month-to-month spike in three years – and it was followed by a 0.3% increase from August to September.
Read on for the particulars about the following:
It isn’t just beef. Dozens of grocery products have gotten more expensive
Prescription drug prices can’t come down ‘1,200%’
Gas prices aren’t the lowest in two decades and aren’t close to $2 per gallon
Biden-era inflation was high, but Trump didn’t inherit the worst ever
Oil and gas prices are down, but not household energy prices
Everything he is telling his ecstatic cult members is a lie.Do they believe him? Yeah, mostly. But nobody else does.
It would be nice to know their reasoning on this so we could feel confident that they’ve decided that marriage equality isn’t on the chopping block, but this is good news nonetheless:
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a call to overturn its landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Davis had been trying to get the court to overturn a lower-court order for her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple denied a marriage license.
Her lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices has called for erasing the same-sex marriage ruling. Thomas was among four dissenting justices in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are the other dissenters who are on the court today.
Roberts has been silent on the subject since he wrote a dissenting opinion in the case. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but he said recently he was not advocating that it be overturned. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court in 2015, has said that there are times when the court should correct mistakes and overturn decisions, as it did in the 2022 case that ended a constitutional right to abortion.
Barrett has indicated that gay marriage might be an exception because people have come to depend on it when creating families. So that’s nice.
I still would not rest entirely easy on this. A lot depends on what happens in the next few years. If the authoritarian Christian Nationalists solidify their power and they are able to impose their culture war beliefs on the rest of us, this will almost certainly be on the chopping block. For now they’re concentrating on transgender hatred.
There are many takes on the shutdown out there and I honestly don’t have much to add. Tom’s piece below hits most of the highlights.
I felt that the Democrats were winning the shutdown because Trump was obviously rattled and his numbers were cratering. It certainly seemed worth it to me to keep him on the ropes. He’s unstable and the GOP is starting to fracture. Press the (rare) advantage. But what do I know?
As Nate Silver( who cannot be considered any kind of liberal) wrote:
Late last month, Trump’s numbers began to plummet, with his net approval rating falling from −7.5 on Oct. 17 to −13 three weeks later. It wasn’t a huge shift in absolute terms. But Trump has had a high popularity floor and a low ceiling. It was something real enough to contribute to Democrats absolutely crushing Republicans in a series of elections last Tuesday in New Jersey, Virginia and other states. Meanwhile, Trump was starting to feud with Congressional Republicans, urging them to “nuke” the filibuster when leadership was reluctant to do so.
[…]
What happened in late October? There are a handful of plausible explanations, but I think the evidence is reasonably clear. On Oct. 18, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned voters that food stamps — more formally known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP — would run out of funding at the end of the month. This program is a huge deal, affecting roughly 42 million Americans. Although Rollins tried to blame Democrats, voters didn’t buy that at all — not when the Trump has been fighting court orders to continue to fund the program, and holding Great Gatsby-themed dinners at Mar-a-Lago.
Google searches tell the story here. Since the shutdown began, searches for terms related to the Affordable Care Act — Democrats’ ostensible rationale for withholding votes — has never been more than a blip on the radar. Conversely, searches related to SNAP benefits increased roughly tenfold over their baseline beginning in late October:
There have been other stories in the news, but none of them had the staying power of SNAP. The No Kings protests were a big deal — and the timing lines up interestingly with the drop in Trump’s numbers — but only for 48 hours. Some pundits have tried to pin the blame for Trump’s approval declineon the destruction of the East Wing for the construction of a new White House ballroom, but searches for the White House were also a short-lived story with a much lower peak than either SNAP or No Kings. Meanwhile, as the FAA has announced a reduction in flights, searches related to flight delays have increased considerably in relative terms. But they remain modest relative to other news stories and postdate Trump’s approval decline anyway.
The increase in food-stamp-related searches has been far more persistent, as you might expect for a program that affects so many families.
I suspect that had the Dems held fast for another week or two, the airline issues would have hit hard too. And people were blaming Trump and the Republicans. It may have gotten so bad that they relented on the ACA subsidies (which they are adamantly against because they think they have a chance to finally break Obamacare.) Instead, they will get a reprieve.
I know it’s difficult to go along with a plan that creates suffering for people. But really, what isn’t creating suffering right now? The culture under these sadists becomes more cruel every day, even brutal. It is to Republicans’ great advantage that they simply don’t care about that and their followers live in such an insulated media bubble that they have no understanding of the facts of the dynamics of their suffering. But people were starting to pay attention. Now we’ll be on to the next shiny object as usual.
Let’s just hope that the Democrats can at least take credit for getting the SNAP benefits extended through 2026. I haven’t seen much evidence today so far that they are doing that.
We can’t go back and undo the capitulation, but we can make sure Republicans pay a price for jacking up the cost of health care. Yell at any Democrat you want this week — I get why people are furious. I’m furious.
Now we need every American to know that Donald Trump and the Republicans are the ones who raised their premiums.
If we do that, they may have won the shutdown battle, but they will have lost the war.
They are going to try to end Obamacare and replace it with nonsense. But they’ll have to end the filibuster to do it because I can’t imagine even the Sell-out 8 going along with the GOP’s daft plan to send the subsidy money directly to people so they can pay their premiums directly to the insurance companies. It makes no sense, of course. Their out-of-pocket will be the same. But they are obviously convinced that people will be so dazzled at the thought of receiving cash that they’ll love Trump and the Republicans even more and won’t notice.
But then they don’t even really understand how insurance works. Here’s a Senator who is also a doctor:
Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without saying you don’t understand risk pools https://t.co/TcMNjAUQKP
It seems odd that a medical doctor wouldn’t know what “insurance” means but then he’s a Republican so …
Anyway, this battle over Obamacare isn’t over. Mike Johnson made it very clear that he would not allow a vote to come to the floor and it’s hard to see him doing that now. But the pain of these rising subsidies is going to hit tens of millions of people very soon and these officials will all be hearing from their constituents — most people who are on the program are on red states. And don’t forget that they stripped Medicaid as well, which won’t fully go into effect until after the mid-terms but it’s already being anticipated in many state budgets.
The suffering will be massive and the economy will take yet another hit. You don’t essentially seize huge amounts of money from individuals, families and an entire economic sector like health care and expect that it won’t have huge economic consequences.
The ride just got a lot bumpier and they ain’t done yet.
There are many reasons why Democrats won landslide victories in Tuesday’s off-year elections, not the least of which is that the party out of power usually wins in such circumstances. None of the polls showed Republicans poised to produce an upset. But none predicted that Democrats would receive such huge margins, or that the party would win down ballot in places where Republicans have long dominated. In other words, it was a much better result than Democrats had even hoped — and a much worse outcome for the GOP.
You could see how bad it was by observing President Donald Trump’s drawn features and low energy appearances throughout the week. He even seemed to doze off at one point in the middle of a presentation by Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs Medicare and Medicaid, in the Oval Office. For some time now, Trump has appeared to be living in a bubble, convinced of his invincibility and so sure of his own instincts and impulses that he hasn’t been paying attention to what’s really happening.
So far, his second term has been a chaotic mess. Trump pursues revenge against his enemies and gives favors to his friends, and in every possible instance he creates opportunities for his family to profit. To the extent that he’s focused on the actual job of being president, it has mostly been on foreign policy, where he’s enjoying the pageantry and flattery he receives from foreign leaders; his immigration crackdown, which thrills his hardcore base; and his precious tariff regime. But as Tuesday’s election results show, all of that comes with a big political price.
Trump’s forays into foreign policy have been embarrassing at best. The good news for him is that, except for the Israel-Gaza peace deal — which he has himself portrayed as an opportunity to ethnically cleanse Gaza in order to build a resort — nobody is paying much attention. They are consumed with the other two issues which form the basis of the resistance to his agenda, as well as the electoral losses the GOP just suffered.
Voters are appalled by his authoritarian immigration agenda, particularly the Hispanic community, which had been trending more Republican for the last few cycles but is now showing signs of swinging sharply to Democrats. This is a big problem for the GOP. Republicans were so sure they had permanently captured the Latino vote that they began racially profiling and brutalizing immigrants in the streets of American cities — and believing Latinos would still turn out for GOP candidates. They gerrymandered five seats in Texas under that assumption, and now they might end up losing them, as well as other seats they weakened in the process.
Mostly, though, the American people are upset about the economy — specifically inflation and affordability, which every Democrat elected on Tuesday ran on in one way or another. Trump promised to fix the economy on day one, and clearly that has not happened. Voters are beginning to blame the president and his tariffs for making it worse.
His first reaction on the morning after the election was to blame the GOP losses on the shutdown — after he had pretty much ignored the issue since the government closed on Oct. 1. Then he demanded that the Senate nuke the filibuster to pass the rest of his unpopular agenda. Republican senators had been resistant to the so-called “nuclear option” before the elections, and after the party’s shocking losses they came back with a hard no.
Trump did have an unusual moment of clarity. “They have this new word called ‘affordability’ and [Republicans] don’t talk about it enough,” he said. “Democrats did.”
This was progress for the president; he seemed ready to admit that people were not happy with the economy. But that coherence only lasted a day. By Thursday, Trump was saying, “I don’t want to hear about affordability,” after a misleading Walmart statement said that Thanksgiving meals would be less expensive this year than last. (The company replaced brand name goods with lower quality options, while leaving out the pie, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, onions, cornbread and whipped cream. It’s a real bargain.)
Trump was on a roll from there, claiming that only the price of beef had gone up, disputing that any cost increases add up to much and defending his decision to withhold Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. “Our country has to remain very liquid because problems, catastrophes, wars — it could be anything,” he said. “We have to remain liquid. We can’t give everything away.” (The U.S. controls its own currency.)
But the president got some other bad news. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to his emergency use of tariffs, and most of the justices — even those appointed by the president himself — didn’t seem convinced. Trump, seeming to recognize a defeat could be in the offing, said that he’ll “have to develop a game two plan” and let it slip that average Americans “might be paying something.”
He tried to pivot to a national security argument, but it was so fatuous that it’s hard to believe anyone would buy it. “Look, I’m ending wars because of these tariffs,” he said. “Americans would have to fight in some of these wars.”
On Thursday, Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a firm that tracks workplace reductions, released a comprehensive report showing that layoffs surged to recessionary levels in October. The company calculated that 1.1 million jobs have been lost so far in 2025, resulting in the worst October for layoffs since 2003. With inflation still stubborn and people smarting from the higher prices induced by Trump’s tariffs, the economy is on shaky ground. And that’s before skyrocketing health care premiums and electricity prices start hitting this month.
Trump is set to have a serious crisis on his hands, and it doesn’t appear he has the slightest idea what to do about it, except what he usually does: Double down and blame someone else.
This week’s election results have shown Republican officials that voters are paying attention to what’s happening in Washington, D.C. — and they don’t like what they see. The gadflies and Trump fans who only come out to vote for him have not been converted to loyal party members, and many of the non-white and younger voters who gave him an edge in 2024 are fleeing to the Democrats.
The result? Trump has been pushed into early lame duck status.
He promised to lower prices and instead they are going up. He promised a thriving economy and the job market appears to be cratering. He vowed to deport gang members and criminals, and instead it’s his federal agents who are marauding through the streets. When asked if he thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have gone too far, Trump said they haven’t gone far enough, reiterating his commitment to a violently anti-immigrant program. There is no reason to believe he has any intention of changing course.
The president might get lucky; he has before. Maybe all of this will calm down, and by next November it will be morning in America. Republicans, though, would be foolish to count on that happening. Trump is causing massive trauma across this country and people are angry about it.
The sooner Republicans wake up and treat him like the rabid lame duck he is, the better off they — and the country — will be. The only question is whether they can muster the courage to do it.
President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon applies only to federal crimes, and none of the dozens of Trump allies named in the proclamation were ever charged federally over the bid to subvert the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It doesn’t impact state charges, though state prosecutions stemming from the 2020 election have hit a dead end or are just limping along.
Dozens? But wait! There’s more:
Among those also pardoned were Sidney Powell, an attorney who promoted baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election, John Eastman, another lawyer who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who championed Trump’s efforts to challenge his election loss. Also named were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump and were charged in state cases accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Biden’s victory in those states.
Department of Justice’s Pardon Attorney, Ed Martin., posted the full list (4 pages) to FKA Twitter. Trump did not pardon himself … yet. Not until, if he lasts that long, he’s leaving office in January 2029.
Martin replies, “We are working on it!” CNN reports that Martin is working behind the scenes on a habeas petition that Peters filed in March. He’s “urged a federal judge to free her from state prison while she appeals her conviction. That matter is still pending, but a decision is expected this year.”
Peters was sentenced on October 2 on Colorado charges a Trump pardon cannot touch:
Former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for her role in a 2021 security breach in the elections office she was supposed to oversee.
Peters will spend the next six weeks to six months in the Mesa County Detention Facility before being transferred to the Colorado Department of Corrections, where she will serve her nine-year prison sentence.
The state judge in her case told Peters, “You are no hero…. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.” That makes her a hero in Trump’s mind. Birds of a feather and all.
The Historic Entrance of Mammoth Cave. NPS Photo/ Deb Spillman.
Takes on the Senate shutdown vote Sunday night are flowing like champagne at one of Donald Trump’s Gatsby parties. A handful of moderate Senate Democrats reached an agreement with Senate Majority Leader John Thune that moves Congress toward ending the longest government shutdown in history: 40 days through Sunday.
In a test vote that is the first in a series of required procedural maneuvers, the Senate voted 60-40 to move toward passing compromise legislation to fund the government and hold a later vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire Jan. 1. Final passage could be several days away if Democrats object and delay the process.
The agreement does not guarantee the health care subsidies will be extended, as Democrats have demanded for almost six weeks. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York voted against moving ahead with the package, along with all but eight of his Democratic colleagues.
Search on the word “cave” for a sense of the betrayal felt over seven Democrats and one independent surrendering their key demand for an extension of Obamacare subsidies. The issue has massive public support.
The bloc includes three former governors: Jeanne Shaheen (D) of New Hampshire, Angus King (I) of Maine and Maggie Hassan (D) of New Hampshire. They agreed “to vote to advance three bipartisan annual spending bills and extend the rest of government funding until late January in exchange for a mid-December vote on extending the health care tax credits.” That is, they settled for the promise of a vote to extend the subsidies that will likely fail. If it takes place at all. This is Shaheen 10 days ago: “This fight is about ensuring that we are not going to see 20 million Americans have their health insurance become unaffordable.”
The other five are Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
The agreement opened the way for a Senate vote in which eight Democratic defectors voted to break the filibuster and to clear the first hurdle to reopening the government after nearly six weeks. Their move will offer relief to millions of Americans whose lives have been severely disrupted by the shutdown.
But the compromise was opposed by some key party leaders and is already igniting a firestorm of protests from progressives who accuse their more moderate colleagues of disastrously backing down, handing President Donald Trump a victory and turning their backs on millions of Americans who can’t afford spiking health care premiums.
Mehdi Hasan rages at Zeteo, “Is there a more feckless, spineless opposition party anywhere in the democratic world?”
Brian Beutler: “Even if little happens in the next two and a half months, caving in a fight you’re winning after the public gave you a big shot in the arm to keep fighting… well, it’s a bell that can’t be unrung. If March was the product of poor morale and low self-confidence, this is throwing a fight.”
Now I’ve recently mentioned glass-half-empty progressives for whom every victory is incomplete, every bill is half a loaf, and every compromise a betrayal. Josh Marshall is not among them. So, not to add to your black-and-blue Monday, Marshall offers a counterintuitive perspective on this “deal to basically settle for nothing.” He sees a glass “two-thirds or maybe even three-quarters full.” No, really:
There was a legitimate party rebellion after the March debacle. Democratic voters demanded fight. When the time came Democrats fought. They held out for 40 days, the longest shutdown standoff in history. They put health care at the center of the national political conversation and inflicted a lot of damage on Trump. At forty days they could no longer hold their caucus together. And we got this.
That’s a sea change in how the congressional party functions. And that’s a big deal. Many people see it as some kind of epic disaster and are making all the standard threats about not voting or not contributing or whatever. That’s just not what I see. It’s a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn’t go far enough. Yet.
There will be the usual calls to primary those from safe, blue states, etc., but Marshall is not as interested in the individual players as the broader dynamic. He sees this as Democrats developing muscle memory for fights yet to come. Even Scrooge learned from his glimpse of future Christmases.
So, Marshall concludes:
… don’t tell me nothing has changed or that this is some cataclysmic disaster. It’s not. This accomplished a lot. It demonstrated that Democrats can go to the mat when the public is behind them and not pay a political price. It dramatically damaged Donald Trump. It cued up the central arguments of the 2026 campaign. It just didn’t go far enough. The ball was fumbled at the end. So we need to demand more.
Additionally, Marshall notes, the December vote (if it happens) will make crystal clear that Republicans mean to launch Americans’ health care premiums into the stratosphere or completely eliminate government help while Democrats own the issue of affordability. If this deal only extends government funding through January, Democrats get a rematch. By that time, the eight spelunkers will have heard more than they care to from constituents.
A word on “affordability.” The term still feels like an abstraction to me, too impersonal, and one Democrats ought to lose. People are worried about the cost of living, the cost of groceries, their everyday struggles, etc. And they are struggling. Affordability in six syllables doesn’t speak to what they are feeling. People who talk to me out on the street respond strongly to six simple words: YOUR LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD. They feel seen.
I feel too despondent to go deep in the fact that eight Dems caved and broke the filibuster on the shutdown. Supposedly they got some kind of gentleman’s agreement that the Republicans would allow a vote on the ACA in December. Whoopie.
I think this is probably a reasonable take on the whole thing, which shows it wasn’t a total rout. But they were the ones who made the subsidies their primary demand and they didn’t get it.
The CR is good until January so the Congress will have their precious holidays. We know how important that is. And that’s assuming the House and Trump agree to any of this.
The Trump roller coaster is getting wilder. We didn’t even get a full week of feeling like we have a chance to push back the fascist tide before our own leadership surrendered again. But that’s the way it goes in this era. Trump’s probably on the upswing again and God knows what hell he’s going to inflict on us.
The message from the off-year election is plain. Run with ideas for lowering the cost of living and putting a stop to Trump. It’s not complicated. From Ipsos:
Note that even Republicans are upset about that issue. Yet Trump running around saying that everything is fabulous and he’s fixed all the problems and everyone is happy.
A big component of Mamdani’s appeal was his specific and targeted policies, as well as messaging, around making life more affordable for New Yorkers. The polling shows that Americans are drawn towards those policies. Even policies that are generally considered “progressive” are backed by a majority of independents. The bottom line is that real people are worried about real things—groceries, rent, daily costs, and so on. Without answers, you lose voters.
Regrets, they’ve had a few:
Their conclusion:
Since Donald Trump entered politics, Republicans have historically struggled in elections where his name is not on the ballot. They must figure out a way turn out the low-turnout voters that Trump attracted and win back the gains Trump made among young and non-white voters. In elections where turnout is higher, this might be easier. But it may still be an uphill battle given Americans’ pessimistic views on the economy. Republicans’ short-term success will likely hinge on economic conditions improving – and whether the public gives Republicans credit.
On the other hand, Democrats have made “countering Trump” a big aspect of their appeal. Exit polls show that dissatisfaction with Trump was a key driver in Democratic turnout in this year’s elections. Democrats may be able to count on negative partisanship in 2026, but beyond, Democrats will need to create an identity of their own in a post-Trump political landscape. A populist economic platform aimed at affordability may be one step on the way there.
Yep. But I would also guess the GOP is going to be stuck with their MAGA extremists for at least another presidential cycle and they will prove to be a thorn in any candidates side if they try to distance themselves from it. So Democrats will have to run against Trump’s record to make sure people understand that the Republicans aren’t reverting to sanity any time soon.
