Now that some Senate Republicans say they’ll stage a floor fight to block Mary Peltola from being seated should she win on Tuesday, we are compelled to try to figure out: how would that work?
A bipartisan group of senators urged the Commerce Department to rescind its proposed rule that would exclude most noncitizens from the census population count used for determining congressional representation, according to a copy of a letter, shared with TPM, that the senators sent to Commerce and Census Bureau officials.
Being a MAGA influencer just isn’t what it used to be.
When the Trump administration returned to power nearly two years ago, the influencers swaggered into Washington, D.C. with unrelenting hubris. The inauguration gave us a window into just how decisive they’d been in the previous election. The late Charlie Kirk “got a better seat than every member of Congress,” according to The Daily Beast. Jake Paul and his brother Logan took selfies with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, one of many Big Tech Trump allies who donated to his inaugural fund to secure access to the administration. Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson mingled with government leaders and titans of industry.
A congressional candidate in Texas with “Nazi-ish” politics. A congressional candidate in Arizona who “stole valor” and then blamed his grandchildren. A demon-hunting gubernatorial candidate in Colorado who refuses to say precisely how many people he’s killed, and the congressional candidate dubbed the “goth groypette” rallying beside him. Another congressional candidate in Florida who called for nuking Gaza. A state senate candidate in Florida who marched with Nazis in Charlottesville. And the nominee for a North Carolina state senate seat who called into a local news station during an armed standoff with police.
TPM decided to put together a short list of some of this election year’s most extreme, toxic, bizarre, and scandal-plagued candidates. It can not be emphasized enough that this is not a comprehensive list — the disturbing and absurd stories of these midterms could fill a book.
It’s just a reminder of how unhinged American politics has become — and of the stories you maybe didn’t see on your timelines during an incessant, crowded news cycle.
Before GOP-led redistricting last year, Texas’ 32nd Congressional District was reliably blue. Now, with redrawn boundaries stretching from Dallas to more conservative areas east, voters are poised to send a Republican to Washington who describes his own beliefs as “Nazi-ish.”
Jace Yarbough, a lawyer and Air Force reservist, won a crowded GOP primary in March after an endorsement from Trump, along with donations — the Guardian uncovered — from rich, far-right donors including billionaire Peter Thiel (currently touring the world lecturing about the “antichrist”) and Charles Haywood, the founder of a secretive, neo-fascist fraternal order who has expressed a desire to be a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” in “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government.”
At a candidate forum hosted by the far-right Dallas Express, held a month before the primary, Yarbough articulated a white nationalist worldview, arguing for overturning the Hart-Celler Act, the 1965 law that put an end to race-based immigration quotas, and lamenting the “hordes of Islamic immigrants coming and attempting to set up Sharia law here in the United States.” Then he struck a defiant tone, refusing to apologize for maybe being a little sympathetic to Nazism.
“The kind of good government that I want to offer, that you and I agree with, they call it bigoted and backward and oppressive and Nazi-ish,” he said, before adding: “I am past trying to placate that in any way, shape or form.”
This Mr. Smith didn’t even want to go to Washington. The GOP nominee for Michigan’s competitive 8th district, including parts of Flint and Saginaw, had suspended his campaign in July, endorsing one of his opponents in a three-way primary. But when voters went to the ballot box, they declined to pick the Trump-endorsed candidate, Amir Hassan, voting overwhelmingly for Smith instead. (Local GOP leaders speculated MAGA voters passed over Hassan because of his Arabic name.)
Smith, a retired General Motors engineer, suddenly found himself running a closely-watched general election, with a series of bizarre, extreme social media posts he made falling under media scrutiny. In since-deleted posts from accounts belonging to his salsa company, JarHead Salsa, Smith shared memes that called for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be executed via the electric chair, and for the Dept. of Education to be abolished “to protect our children from evil,” suggesting kids were being indoctrinated into being queer, The Detroit News reported.
Smith attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally that turned into the insurrection, TPM was first to reveal, but did not go inside the Capitol building. Posting from the JarHeadSalsa account, he responded to a tweet claiming the Jan. 6 insurrection wasn’t an insurrection at all, but “deep state set up” coordinated by the FBI.
“I agree,” he wrote.
This midterm election cycle has been marked by GOP candidates embracing the most extreme, explicit, ugly anti-Muslim bigotry. (Mother Jones has a good, urgent piece about just how bad it’s gotten.) But even in a political party rife with such bigotry, one figure stands out for the intensity of his Islamophobia: Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.).
“We need more Islamophobia, not less,” the congressman wrote on X once. “Fear of islam is rational.”
Fine, who won a special election in Florida’s 6th Congressional District last year, is expected to win the solidly red swath of Florida’s Space Coast on Tuesday despite years of statements dehumanizing Muslims. The self-described “Hebrew Hammer” has called Muslim Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “Muslim terrorists.” Earlier this year on X, Fine wrote: “If they force us to make a choice, the decision between dogs and Muslims isn’t a difficult one for us.” And once, talking about “mainstream Muslims,” Fine asserted: “I don’t know how you make peace with those who seek your destruction, I think you destroy them first.”
His rhetoric about Palestinians is arguably genocidal. Fine has posted hashtags on X that include “BombsAway” and “StarveAway” when discussing Palestinians. Once, when an account on X sent him a photo of a dead Palestinian child, asking how he slept at night, Fine responded: “Quite well, actually! Thanks for the pic!”
Once, when asked about Gaza on Fox News, Fine stated: “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture and it needs to be defeated.”
Asked on CNN to clarify if he was really calling to nuke Gaza, Fine said no — not because he had a problem with potentially killing millions of Palestinians — but because the radioactive “fallout would drift into Israel.”
We’ll let these paragraphs from a Washington Post investigation speak for themselves:
David Flippo, a Republican congressional candidate in Nevada, inflated his military record multiple times in recent years by falsely claiming he received a Bronze Star “for valor” during his two-decade Air Force career.
Flippo received a Bronze Star in 2004 for his service, but not the Bronze Star with valor, a much rarer distinction that recognizes heroism in direct combat with an enemy. Experts on military awards say such exaggerations are tantamount to lying. The Flippo campaign acknowledged the misrepresentations but downplayed them as “honest mistakes” by staff members.
Although initially blaming his campaign staff for the purported confusion over his service in Iraq, this excuse was hard to believe when Nevada News & Views later reported that Flippo had been spotted on the campaign trail — on multiple occasions, over the last three years — wearing a baseball cap with symbols indicating he’d won… a Bronze Star with valor.
Asked by Mother Jones about the hat, Flippo took the novel approach of … blaming his grandchildren, saying they’d affixed the two “V” symbol patches on his hat. “First the staff, now it’s the grandkids’ fault,” MJ reporter Noah Lanard observed recently on a podcast, adding: “kudos to his grandkids, because they’re pinned in a very orderly way and perfectly, so they did a great job with their decorations.”
Flippo is running in a reliably red district. But the “stolen valor” story — along with other assorted scandals — has pollsters eyeing the district for a potential Democratic upset.
Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, has variously claimed to be the “world’s fastest gun disarmer,” a “7th degree black belt in Cajun Karate Keichu,” a “high-risk humanitarian” who has “rescued” 45,000 children from captivity and sex-trafficking, and a Christian preacher with the ability to cast out demons, a ritual he claims he can perform not only in person, but over the phone. He has, he once said, met Satan in person.
Disturbingly, Marx has also claimed to have grown up with an abusive stepfather who made him behead a cat when he was three years old and then, four years later in Mississippi, forced him to pull the trigger of a gun, killing a man. (Although Marx claimed to have later alerted authorities, the local sheriff’s office denied having reports of a murder around that time.)
Perhaps the most alarming moment of Marx’s campaign came during a rare, sit-down interview he granted to Kyle Clark, a news anchor in Denver. “Your claim that your abusive stepfather forced you to kill a man when you were seven years old — is that the only person you ever killed?”
The question was followed by an agonizingly long pause. “Well I would say, as a child, yes,” Marx eventually responded. “Without question. But I’ve been in other situations, possibly people or persons died as a result of me defending myself…”
“Do you think you killed people as an adult?”
“Does it matter?” Marx said.
Marx has since refused to say precisely how many people he has killed, although he once claimed — while working as a civilian — called in a military airstrike that killed 70 ISIS fighters.
Brandon Herrera, the Republican nominee for the 23rd Congressional District in Texas, goes by the moniker “The AK Guy” on YouTube, where he’s a popular “gunfluencer” with millions of followers. Videos on his channel show him using a Nazi submachine gun he calls the “original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper,” before he goose-steps to a song that was sung by German Nazis.
He is a Second Amendment fundamentalist, or a gun rights absolutist, once unleashing a torrent of vulgar language at Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action. “Just because you let somebody creampie you doesn’t mean I have to give a shit about your political opinions,” he said to Watts in a video, adding: “The fact that you kept your cum trophy doesn’t make you any less wrong about the dumb shit that you say.”
“A guy like me could have never run had we not had a President Trump,” Herrera told TPM in March. “There’s a lot of things that he would say that a Republican candidate could not have said 10, 12, 15 years ago.”
“We don’t have to pretend to be something we’re not,” he added.
If elected, Herrera would be poised to represent a district in West Texas that abuts El Paso, where a white supremacist mass shooter killed 23 Hispanic people inside a Walmart with one of Herrera’s favorite guns, the AR-15, and Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old former student walked into an elementary school and committed one of the worst school shootings in history, taking 77 minutes to execute 19 children and two teachers at close range.
“The whole police department is chasing me with guns drawn. This should be fun,” read a post on X earlier this month from Jonathan Miller, the Libertarian candidate for a state Senate seat in North Carolina. “I’ve got six shots and the high ground. I hope they don’t find me, but if they do it’s going to be a hell of a show.”
Miller wasn’t just shitposting. That morning, police had performed a welfare check at his apartment complex in Cary, North Carolina, responding to some alarming posts Miller had made on X threatening self-harm. When the officer arrived, Miller ran into the woods, beginning an hours-long police chase. At various points Miller called into WRAL, the local NBC-affiliate news show, to give updates. “They have been chasing me since this morning. They’re not very good at it,” he said. “They really probably should get some more training on tracking somebody down.”
Miller, who will be on the ballot Tuesday, was eventually located by police and detained without incident. “He was in a dark place,” the local police chief told WRAL. “Felt like he was on his last leg.”
Republican Kelley Dennison has very little chance of upsetting Rep. Joe Neguse, the Democratic incumbent, in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District. The massage therapist and self described “goth baddie,” however, has already earned a dubious distinction, according to the Bulwark’s Will Sommer, becoming the “first groyperish candidate to win a federal nomination.”
“Groyper,” of course, refers to fans and supporters of white supremacist Nick Fuentes’ “America First” movement — which has been making inroads into GOP politics for years. Dennison has earned the moniker “goth groypette” for a series of online posts in which she seemed to embrace Fuentes’ movement. As Sommer describes:
Dennison has not formally identified as a groyper, and she didn’t respond to a request for comment. But her online campaign work leans heavily into groyper symbolism. In July, she reposted a reference to the “It’s okay to be white” meme on Facebook. The next month, she even posted a meme version of herself imagined as the groyper toad, along with a caption about being “America First”—a slogan Fuentes himself frequently uses.
The “goth groypette” has not campaigned that much. A photo on her campaign site purporting to show Dennison talking to supporters appears to be AI-generated. She has, however, nevertheless been embraced by GOP leaders in the state, appearing at least one real-life campaign event, rallying alongside another GOP candidate appearing on this list: demon-hunter Victor Marx.
TPM readers are likely well-aware of Marshall Rawson, the Republican nominee for a seat in a Florida state House of Representatives. Last month we exposed parts of Rawson’s involvement with a white supremacist group called League of the South, including his attendance at the deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
We asked 28 GOP officials in the state if they denounced Rawson’s white supremacy — including his calls to execute gay people — but came up empty. Even after our reporting was featured this past weekend on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, nary a Republican figure has spoken out against his candidacy. Rawson, running in a deep red district, will likely be a legislator in Tallahassee next year.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani knows what they’re saying about his grocery plan.
Conservative media outlets and right-wing commentators have, for more than a year, been practically apoplectic about Mamdani’s push to open five municipal stores to sell discounted food. Local Republicans have responded to the initiative by comparing Mamdani to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Last year, as Mamdani made the plan a central plank of his campaign, Fox Business published a dramatic piece featuring interviews with “descendants of socialism” from Eastern Europe and Cuba suggesting Mamdani’s agenda was reminiscent of the “vivid memories,” “tales of woe” and “scars” they experienced.
Now, the plan is underway. The first store is set to open its doors by the end of next year, and Mamdani is thoroughly unmoved by the backlash. In a conversation with TPM last week, the mayor dug into the details of his grocery store plan and brushed off the critics.
“If I listen to that commentary every day, I would become afraid of my own shadow,” Mamdani said with a laugh. “And I think, for too long, we have allowed the right to dictate the entirety of the discussion. And we have limited ourselves to a response to a landscape that they have created.”
As he sat in the Governor’s Room of City Hall, Mamdani emphasized his words by tapping his hand against the large conference table. It’s a gesture that would go unnoticed if it were not for his signature silver rings gently rapping against the wood. The sound served as periodic punctuation as he expressed his frustration with the limitations of Democratic politics as usual and his enthusiasm for the city-run stores.
“It is time for us to ask ourselves, what is our party for?” he asked. “And to me, the answer has to be the working class. It’s the only majority in this country. And then what can we do to materially change the lives of those working class New Yorkers or Americans?”
Those are the people who inspired Mamdani’s groceries initiative. The mayor explained that he settled on the idea during his campaign last year based on conversations with city residents.
“If you ask New Yorkers, .. what are the costs that you’re reckoning with as part of the skyrocketing cost of living crisis in our city? … What is pushing you to reconsider if you should be living in this city? … Again and again, you hear about housing, childcare, groceries,” Mamdani said. “We’d hear about public transit, we’d hear about other things, but groceries would always be up there.”
Data shows it’s gotten far more expensive to eat in New York City. A report released by the state comptroller last year showed food prices in the metropolitan area were up over 25 percent since 2019. And as Mamdani and his advisers looked at ways to confront the issue, they became adamant new approaches were needed.
“When everyone is telling you that prices are too high, the common refrain is therefore we should subsidize the private market further,” said Mamdani. “And yet, what we’ve seen is that we’ve explored those kinds of strategies here in New York City. They have not had a substantial impact on the cost of groceries.”
The plan is rooted in a very New York “tradition.” Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, a progressive New Deal Republican who steered the city through the Great Depression, opened public markets that gave street vendors support and space for their businesses. That vision has continued with Essex Market, a warren of shops and restaurants on the Lower East Side that the city has operated since the 1990s.
Mamdani describes La Guardia as “an inspiration each and every day.” One of New York’s five new grocery stores is being constructed at La Marqueta in East Harlem’s El Barrio, a site that was home to one of the original 1930’s markets. More recently, a similar public grocery store initiative has begun in Atlanta.
Despite the histrionics — including dire warnings from Fox News and right-wing think tankers that Mamdani’s stores could cause widespread food shortages — the actual plan is fairly limited in its scope. There will just be five stores (one in each of New York City’s boroughs). In addition to La Marqueta, another is planned for a city-owned site at Hunts Point in The Bronx. That store, which has been dubbed The Peninsula, is slated to be the first to open towards the end of next year. The other three locations, which will be in Brooklyn, Queens, and on Staten Island, have not been identified yet. Mamdani has pledged to open all of them by the end of his term in 2029.
Inside the stores, a slate of items that Mamdani’s team has dubbed a “core basket” will be offered at a 30 percent discount that will be adjusted monthly and pegged to the market rate. This includes produce, meat, seafood, dairy, and a selection of pantry staples. Other items will be on sale at standard prices. The city estimates this will save customers roughly $90 per month.
Those market rate costs for the majority of goods in the grocery stores are hardly in line with the visions of Havana spun by the right. The “government-run” moniker conservatives have slapped on the project is also an exaggeration. Mamdani’s grocery stores are actually a public-private partnership. The New York City Economic Development Corporation currently has proposals out looking to rent privately owned sites for the final three stores. They also have accepted bids from experienced operators to run all of the venues.
Some of the criticism of the plan has been based on its potential cost to taxpayers. The city initially invested $70 million to cover construction and real estate expenditures associated with the five sites. According to officials, with solicitations for sites and operators ongoing, the final annual cost of the program is not clear. However, they are confident having the spaces paid for will be sufficient incentive to enable the store operators to offer the “core basket.” If necessary, the city may also provide further subsidy beyond covering real estate capital costs to ensure operators can stock the discounted items. Furthermore, they expect the NYCEDC’s competitive bidding process will help identify companies who can keep the stores’ overhead low.
In the interview with TPM, Mamdani insisted the plan will be “sustainable.” And, thus far, the mayor has a track record of managing the costs of his ambitious programs. This year, Mamdani, who inherited an approximately $12 billion deficit when he took office in January, balanced the city budget. While much has been made of the fact that the feat required some help from the governor’s mansion and a delay in pension payments that will need to be dealt with down the road, Mamdani made up nearly half the difference by finding new revenue through taxes on the wealthy and cost-saving measures like cutting unnecessary overtime.
Joseph Hernandez, the Republican candidate for state comptroller, has been one of the more vocal critics of Mamdani’s municipal grocery stores. He’s unveiled estimates claiming the plan could cost $200 million. There are some issues with that figure. Along with the initial $70 million in construction costs and an estimated $106 million in projected operating costs, Hernandez’s tab includes a supposed $30 million that he says will be lost by other businesses from competing with the stores.
“We can absolutely afford it,” Mamdani said with a laugh. “We are a city budget that has significantly north of $100 billion on an annual level — and we already spend about $850 million in programs that seek to address food insecurity, ranging from our school system to funding food pantries.”
“What we’re talking about here is a drop in the bucket of what the city already spends,” he added. “But one that will be felt by every single New Yorker who goes to these stores.”
Mamdani further argued that those who raise questions about the price of social programs “prefer not to see the cost today” of the underlying issues those initiatives seek to address.
“We are dealing with the costs of food insecurity every single day. We’re sitting down to talk in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and yet one in four New Yorkers are in poverty,” Mamdani said. “It is not tenable, it is not acceptable.”
For the mayor, the situation calls for a different kind of politics. He described himself as “unwilling” to simply point at the problem “and then hope that somebody comes up with a solution.”
“This is a city of innovation. It’s a city of imagination. It’s time we bring those kinds of ethos to our politics as well,” Mamdani declared.
The idea that the new stores will hurt other businesses has been one of the more persistent arguments from critics of the plan. A group of minority-owned bodegas and supermarkets has even sued to stop the initiative. Yet Mamdani argues his stores are fundamentally different, particularly from bodegas which typically offer ‘round-the-clock service and core items that won’t be available in the municipal shops.
“The biggest things that drive revenue for bodegas are tobacco, lottery tickets, and alcohol. We’re not selling those,” Mamdani explained. “Our goal here is not to compete with fundamental parts of New York City.”
Mamdani, who noted there are thriving bodegas in the immediate vicinity of the existing public Essex Market, also framed it as fairly simple math.
“We’re speaking about a city that has north of 10,000 bodegas, north of a thousand different grocery operators. We’re talking about five city-run grocery stores,” he said emphatically as his ring tapped against the wooden table.
As they select locations for the stores, city officials are looking for neighborhoods where there isn’t much competition. They are aiming for locations with insufficient grocery store options as well as a high rate of residents accessing public benefits. Though the goal is to ensure the discounted food will be easily accessible for lower income New Yorkers, the stores will be available to anyone who wants to shop at them.
“These are stores for everyone,” Mamdani said.
In building out his vision for the municipal grocery stores, Mamdani named his chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church, who he calls his “left hand,” as a key force behind the project. He also pointed to Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, the highest ranking City Hall official with the stores in their portfolio, and NYCEDC Executive Vice President Jamie Horton as being among the key officials overseeing the plan.
Speaking to TPM, Horton said one key aspect of the program for Mamdani is ensuring that the stores will be a “pleasant experience” without “stigma.” The solicitations for operators and sites specify the visual language and design elements that will be part of creating an elevated environment inside the shops.
“It’s really important that this is an example of public excellence, that the public sector can deliver a high quality experience. It’s also about providing a service … that treats folks with dignity, that this isn’t a handout for folks, it’s that the government is delivering for its people,” Horton said.
Overall, Mamdani said a core goal of the project is making a real change in the environment for city residents.
“I am tired of the fact that politics has increasingly become an act of describing working peoples’ struggles as opposed to putting forward what you will do about those struggles,” he said, before asking, “How are you going to deliver them a different reality?”
That ethos and desire to take concrete steps to address cost of living has been the central plank of Mamdani’s platform. As he ran for office last year, the grocery stores were one of the highest profile parts of his campaign along with a partial rent freeze and a plan for fast, free city buses. Mamdani delivered on the rent freeze for certain stabilized units in June. While the plan for free buses has run into legislative opposition, in July, Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a road map to speed up service.
At every turn, Mamdani’s various proposals have faced backlash and questions about costs. The criticism has been amplified by Mamdani’s membership in the Democratic Socialists of America. All of this has, for better or worse, made Mamdani a national figure who has received both positive attention and ire from President Donald Trump. Last June, after Mamdani won the Democratic primary en route to City Hall, Trump took to social media and blasted him as “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” Less than five months later, after Mamdani was victorious in the general election, the two had a warm meeting in the Oval Office where the president heaped praise on the new mayor.
“I met with a man who’s a very rational person. I met with a man who wants to see — really wants to see — New York be great again,” Trump said, adding, “I’ll be cheering for him.”
Along with the rhetoric, Trump’s allies have also played their part in the opposition to Mamdani’s grocery plan. One of the legal complaints from store owners was filed with the America First Policy Institute, a right wing dark money group chaired by Larry Kudlow, the former director of the National Economic Council in the Trump White House.
Mamdani smiled broadly as he offered some choice words for Kudlow.
“Larry must love paying a lot of money for eggs,” Mamdani said, adding, “There will always be opposition wherever there is innovation and wherever there is imagination. And we welcome it. We are fully confident in the legality of this program and even more so than the legality, the urgent necessity of it.”
While the mayor clearly has his critics, Mamdani and the swirl of national buzz around his rise helped turn “affordability” into one of the major talking points of this election cycle. And, in New York, the most recent polling shows his popularity has surged to nearly 70 percent favorability.
Mamdani believes his fellow Democrats need to be less preoccupied with their detractors.
“I think you simply have to prepare and expect for this kind of backlash. What it is, is a backlash to any kind of change. And if you want to avoid backlash, then all you will do is just steward the status quo. And that is exactly what has gotten us to this point,” he said. “It is critically important that we stop the act of constructing an ever-lowering ceiling on our ideas.”
For Mamdani, his grocery stores epitomize this ambitious, unafraid vision and approach.
“That is what is so exciting to me,” he said. “Politics so often is something that has to be translated to someone who lives outside of the political world. There is no translation required about cheaper groceries. You understand it when you’re checking out.”
“For too long, politicians have had things to say and they haven’t had anything to do,” he added. “And it’s time to make this city an example of what we can do for people.”
After months of haphazard and destructive efforts to slash the federal workforce, the Trump administration is seeking to grow it again — with help from conservative influencers. Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Scott Kupor has embarked on a nationwide tour of college campuses and right-wing media broadcasts with the aim of “reshaping America’s workforce,” appearing alongside the likes of influencer Benny Johnson and Charlie Kirk Show host Andrew Kolvet to tout the benefits of a career in public service.
When the members of the 120th Congress take their seats come January, they will quickly have a chance to oppose — or let stand — the unprecedented changes and dramatic proposals from President Donald Trump’s administration at the Census Bureau. Those changes, if enacted, will have an enormously consequential impact on how political power is distributed in the U.S., and could grant greater representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College to Republican-voting states. That’s by design.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Every election cycle, as the national narrative swirls ceaselessly around federal races, I think about a ceramic bowl in Richmond, Virginia.
Consider this nightmare midterms scenario: Democrats whomp Republicans in the House of Representatives, as polling currently suggests they will.
But the race for Senate control is closer.
As counting in early November grinds on, it becomes clear that control of the Senate hinges on a few thousand votes in a single Senate race. Those votes are all that separates Congress from a 50/50 Senate in which Vice President JD Vance presides as a tiebreaker vote and a 51/49 Democrat majority.
What then? A given Senate candidate could refuse to concede, tapping into fraud allegations. Anyone who remembers 2020 will recall the baseless MAGA world conspiracy theories Trump allies boosted to try to delay the certification of that election. The same plan could lead to a lengthy fight over certifying key Senate races, with a Trumpified DOJ doing what it was prevented from doing in 2020: throwing its weight into the process, setting up a slow-moving fight over control of the body hinging around just one closely decided race. With a pre-emptive lawsuit targeting Alaska, the DOJ has shown its ready to go.
Each state has its own process for certification, governing how it canvasses and formalizes a given senator’s win in the state. The process covers disputes, including how officials are to respond to lawsuits, and which officials, in the end, have the authority to certify an election. In some states, these positions have been taken over by 2020 election deniers. In others, state legislatures have passed laws making it easier to file mass voter challenges. Activists have used these laws to challenge thousands of voters and ballots, raising concerns that those disqualified might exceed the margin of a victory or loss. Similarly, some states have cooperated with the DOJ in its effort to obtain each state’s voter roll, raising the prospect that the DOJ itself might challenge the vote. .
Once the outcome of a state’s election reaches the Senate, it has a series of procedures laid out to govern disputes. But, unlike the states, they’re not laid out in statute: the Senate largely decides these things through norms that have calcified over the centuries. States send their certificates of election to the vice president — so, JD Vance — and the Senate Rules Committee plays a role in deciding disputed elections.
Below, we break down the certification protocol in each state where Senate races are expected to be tight. We look at how states canvass the vote, making sure ballots are in and properly counted. We look at the process for certification. We look at who can challenge voters individually or en masse, and who can challenge state officials decisions. We look at what it takes to trigger a recount, and how that recount works.
We hope this helps you wrap your head around how things might unfold should Trump and his allies attempt to interfere, overturn or otherwise challenge election results next week.
Who’s in charge?
When experts fret about Republicans trying to overturn a 2026 election, they usually point to Texas. If Democrat James Talarico wins the Senate race, it’ll likely be by a very small margin, and the current attorney general, Ken Paxton (R) — not exactly known for his integrity — is Talarico’s Republican opponent. One of Paxton’s claims to fame is leading a (quickly tossed) lawsuit to challenge battleground state election certifications in 2020.
Certification-wise, local authorities (usually county commissioners) meet to conduct the canvass no later than 14 days after Election Day. No later than 24 hours after the local canvass, the county clerk must deliver the certified results — and a separate slate of certified returns for the gubernatorial race — to the secretary of state. For statewide races except the gubernatorial, the governor then conducts the state canvass and certification at a time set by the secretary of state — no earlier than 18 days after and no later than 33 days after Election Day. For the governor’s race, the results are canvassed by the state legislature and certified by the speaker of the House.
Completing the canvass, certification and recount processes are all mandatory duties of election officials, and can be enforced with a mandamus action in state court.
Still uneasy? You’re not alone. Since his attempted 2020 ratfuckery, Paxton has tried to get ballots tossed in Houston, lawfare Beto O’Rourke out of running in 2026 and indict the Travis County clerk. In addition, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals prevented him from expanding his power to prosecute election crimes, he helped get the recalcitrant judges ousted and replaced with those who acceded to him (He still hasn’t tested those powers, though, and many experts think they’d still be found to be unconstitutional.). He could also seek a court order to seize ballots, though they’d remain in the custody of the court.
Paxton’s office gives him unusual power to challenge the election, and he’s shown a willingness to cry (unsubstantiated) fraud and go after election officials before. But courts have proven adept at turning back his brand of lawsuits before, and experts generally express confidence that they’ll hold again.
Who can challenge?
In Texas, an automatic recount is only triggered in the case of a tie. The losing candidate in a race decided by a plurality vote may petition for a recount if the margin is less than 10% of the votes received by the winning candidate. The request must be submitted by 5 p.m. on the third business day after the initial canvass is complete, and begun either no later than the seventh day after the petition was approved or the day after all ballots have been delivered to the proper authorities (whichever is later).
A registered voter can challenge the qualifications of another voter in the same county by sworn statement. it is a felony to include intentionally misleading information, and the statement must be predicated on personal, first-hand information. There would then be a noticed hearing before the registrar.
Who’s in charge?
Alaska certifies its elections via a state review board, based in Juneau. The official who actually certifies the result, however, is the director of the state’s Division of Elections, an agency housed within the office of the Lieutenant Governor. This time around, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom will oversee the process alongside Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, a Republican, who tried in 2023 to remove the state from a non-partisan voter roll maintenance system. As you may have guessed, Beecher found a reason to try: election denial conspiracy theories about the system, the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC. Beecher’s efforts ultimately failed – Alaska stayed in ERIC.
Who can challenge?
The state pays for a recount if the margin is 0.5 percent or less; appeals after a recount go to the state Supreme Court. Contesting an election over fraud allegations works differently: in that case, a candidate has to prove, in state court, fraud large enough to change the result. There’s no process under Alaska law that allows for mass challenges to votes. Instead, individual election officials and poll watchers can challenge voters that they believe to be unqualified.
Elections Director Beecher’s aggressive effort to purge the state’s voter rolls before the midterms has resulted in controversy that’s reached from the state to Washington. After the state DMV sent a list of 3,000 people who might not be eligible to vote, Beecher removed them all. More than 600 people were wrongly removed, she later told state lawmakers. Beecher also gave the DOJ an unredacted version of the state’s voter rolls last year, prompting as-yet-unrealized concerns that the DOJ may use the information to try to block people from voting.
Trump has already ordered the feds to try to interfere in the state’s certification. In October, the DOJ sued to block the state from certifying its election if Mary Peltola wins; the lawsuit is widely expected to go nowhere, though it signals that the DOJ is ready to try to intervene.
Who’s in charge?
A State Board of Canvassers certifies the race. In Kansas, it’s composed of Governor Laura Kelly (D), Secretary of State Scott Schwab (R), and the state Attorney General, Kris Kobach (R), a staunch trump ally and longtime proponent of restrictions on who can vote.
Who can challenge?
Recounts are available under state law if the margin if 0.5 percent or less; a candidate projected to lose funds their own if the margin is larger.
The state doesn’t allow mass challenges to voter eligibility or votes themselves. The duty falls instead on individual election judges.
For Kansas, the risk of mass disenfranchisement mostly comes through attempts to remove large groups of voters from the state’s election lists. This has developed most dramatically through the debate this year over the “SAVE Kansas Act.” Enacted over Gov. Kelly’s veto, the law bars nonprofits from conducting online voter registration drives, a cop to one strain of voter fraud conspiracy theory that blossomed after the 2020 election. It also checks the state’s voter rolls against DMV data and immigration status via the federal SAVE database, while removing people who don’t vote for four years and fail to respond to a notice. The law’s passage has prompted concerns from the ACLU that it could result in naturalized citizens being removed from voter rolls along with other categories of people.
Who’s in charge?
County boards of elections begin the official canvas 4 days after Election Day. Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) then certifies the results.
Ohio’s Republican leadership, particularly LaRose, routinely engage in what we’d call old-school voter suppression: making it harder to pass citizen-initiated ballot referenda, changing the composition of the state Supreme Court when it thwarted Republican gerrymanders, etc. Not having been a true battleground state (until maybe this year), the election denialism stuff has been more on the margins. LaRose referred more than 1,000 cases of alleged voter fraud to the Trump DOJ last year, and willingly handed over the state’s voter rolls complete with sensitive and private information. There is an ongoing lawsuit in Ohio over new proof of citizenship requirements for voters who register at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Ohio is also one of at least 16 states that handed over its voter rolls to the Trump administration.
Gov. Mike DeWine (R) is a pre-Trump, establishment Republican, while LaRose has become progressively more MAGA, particularly for his failed Senate bid to take on Sherrod Brown this year (he is now running for state auditor instead). Legislators have ensured that the state Supreme Court is now solidly right-wing.
Who can challenge?
In Ohio, an automatic recount is triggered if the margin is less than or equal to .25%, and it must be completed within 10 days of being ordered. Any candidate that receives votes can request a recount within 5 days of the results being declared, but takes on the financial burden (except if the recount changes the election outcome/if any precinct changes by 4% or more, the requester is refunded the cost of recounting that precinct). Candidates can request partial recounts.
Only precinct election officials — poll workers — in Ohio can challenge a voter on Election Day. Even if the voter is found to be ineligible by a majority of precinct officials, she still casts a provisional ballot.
Who’s in charge?
Iowa’s federal and statewide elections are partially overseen by Governor Kim Reynolds, a close Trump ally and election denier who holds an automatic position on the state canvassing board. In addition to the governor, the elected officials involved in certification include the secretary of state, the state auditor, the treasurer and the agriculture secretary. Reynolds refused to acknowledge Trump’s 2020 loss and said people believed the election was “not valid.”One Democrat, State Auditor Rob Sand, sits on the body, as do other Republicans who have not promoted the Big Lie.
Who can challenge?
Iowa law allows a candidate to contest an election based on a number of factors, including allegations of fraud by election officials, that illegal votes accepted, or that legal votes rejected at the polls. A candidate for governor has 30 days to contest the results. Governors’ race challenges are decided by a joint committee established by the state legislature.
Voters in Iowa are allowed to challenge the validity of another’s voter registration before and on Election Day (even at the polling place) based on several factors including allegations of noncitizenship or falsified registration address. Zealous state residents have taken advantage of the ability. In Linn County, four people were behind 495 voter challenges filed in 2026 as of late August.
Iowa is one of at least 16 states that acquiesced to the Trump DOJ’s’s demand for sensitive voter data, meaning the DOJ already has information on the state’s voter roll, which Republican Secretary of State Paul D. Pate turned over when asked. Paul, however, has has actively worked to debunk disinformation and election conspiracy theories.
Who’s in charge?
Michigan’s elections are governed by a board that must be bipartisan by law, the members of which are appointed by the governor with input from the state Senate. The board’s Republican chair has publicly lamented that conspiracy theories about the security of U.S. elections “are going to ruin democracy,” and affirmed that President Trump lost the 2020 election in Michigan.
Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson acts as chief election officer.
Michigan has a super-decentralized system of election administration that relies on more than 1,600 county, city and township-level election officials who manage elections and ballot counting.
Who can challenge?
Candidates for office can request a recount if they believe administrative error or election fraud interfered with the results of their election under Michigan state law. If two of four members from opposite parties on the state board of canvassers, which certifies statewide and federal elections, suspects fraud in an election, the issue is referred to the state attorney general.
Any registered voter of a specific jurisdiction can challenge the registration of another in that same jurisdiction via sworn statement, but people who submit challenges “indiscriminately and without good cause” could face misdemeanor charges, per state law.
Who’s in charge?
Trump’s infamous and unsuccessful pressure campaign against now-outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2020 highlights how important a single person can be to upholding democracy in the state. It’s pretty unclear whether the Republican Secretary of State candidate running to replace Raffensperger would stand up to Trump in the event he tries to steal another election. Further down the chain, county-level boards have become a battleground over election certification, with some being infiltrated by members of organized election denialist efforts. A superior court judge and an appeals court have ruled that county election boards must certify elections under deadlines imposed in Georgia state law. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2024 that at least 19 members of Georgia election boards across nine counties had rejected certifying elections since 2020. Challenges are decided by the state’s courts.
Three of the five members of the Georgia State Election Board, along with the board’s executive director, are also election deniers. While that board doesn’t certify elections, it enacts and enforces election rules. Before the 2024 election, the board approved new rules that gave it greater authority to delay certification.
Who can challenge?
A candidate or voter who cast a ballot can challenge the outcome of that election under Georgia law. Elections can be contested on suspicion of fraud or error. Challengers have five days after an election is certified to file their challenge with the county Superior Court and a select judge will preside over the contest. Georgia election law is complex. A candidate can request a recount up to two days after an election is certified when the vote margin is no greater than 0.5% and to be completed within 17 days of the recount request. For elections suspected of fraud that use a paper ballot, county superintendents, political parties or candidates can request a recount. For elections that use electronic voting, superintendents, candidates, and groups of at least three voters within the county can request recounts. Requests can also be made by a candidate directly to the Secretary of State, and are conducted at the Secretary of State’s discretion. Such recounts must be conducted prior to the legal deadline for election certification. Further litigation of alleged election fraud is decided by the Superior Court, and appeals referred directly to the Georgia Supreme Court.
One person can challenge voter eligibility an unlimited number of times in their own county before or on Election Day based on things like citizenship status, residence, and felony convictions. In Chatham County, one person challenged the eligibility of almost 900 people.
Who’s in charge?
In Minnesota, a panel of senior officials certify the vote via a State Canvassing Board. The body is composed of the Secretary of State, two justices of the state supreme court, and two lower level district judges. Certification is rendered conditional if a lawsuit is filed contesting the results.
Who can challenge?
Recounts aren’t automatic; candidates can request one, with the state paying, if the margin is within 0.25 percent.
State law blocks the kind of mass challenges that other states allow. Instead, individual petitions have to be filed challenging a voter’s registration. More challenges can take place at polling precincts. There, Minnesota residents can file forms challenging voters — the dispute is decided by an election judge.
The state has successfully fended off the DOJ’s attempt to gain access to its full, unredacted list of voter data. Its win over the administration in court marked the DOJ’s 23rd straight loss on that count. Some concerns persist. A recent lawsuit alleged that DHS managed to obtain much of the data, and is sharing it within the federal government in violation of the law.
Who’s in charge?
North Carolina “state law has long established that officials have a mandatory, nondiscretionary duty to certify elections,” according to a recent report by several nonprofits focused on election law.
In North Carolina, the secretary of state does not oversee the state’s elections. Instead the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) is the state agency charged with the administration of the elections process and compliance.
The NCSBE is an independent state agency that works in conjunction with the state’s 100 county boards of elections. The board is currently made up of five board members — three Republicans and two Democrats. Potential members are nominated by the state party chairs and the state auditor appoints the members from those list of nominees. That state board is not allowed to have more than three people affiliated with the same party.
The State Board of Elections must meet by the Tuesday three weeks after Election Day — Nov. 24, 2026 — to complete the canvass for nonlocal elections and “authenticate the count in every ballot item in the county by determining that the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly,” according to North Carolina legislation. If for some reason, the state board has not received the county canvasses by Nov. 24, “the State Board may adjourn for not more than 10 days to secure the missing abstracts.”
Six days after the completion of the canvass — if there are no pending election protests — the state board must issue a certificate of election and provide a copy to the secretary of state.
Who can challenge?
But following Election Day there may be election protests. For a statewide election, the state board must order a mandatory recount if a candidate requests it and the difference between the votes are not more than half a percent of the votes or 10,000 votes (whichever is less). A request for a mandatory state recount must be made in writing to the state board by noon on the second business day after the county canvass.
North Carolina also allows private individuals to challenge another person’s eligibility to vote. But state law presumes a voter’s eligibility and the burden is on the challenger to prove the voter is ineligible. Any challenges to a voter’s registration or absentee ballot has to be made in writing and signed under penalty of perjury by a voter registered in that county.
If there are election protests, the certificate of election must be issued 10 days after the state board’s final decision on an election protest — “unless the state board orders a new election or the Superior Court of Wake County orders a stay of the certification pending an appeal of the protest.”
Who’s in charge?
After all absentee ballots have been processed and after the polls are closed, election officials — under supervision of the moderator — immediately begin counting the votes. After the tabulation of votes is completed, and the results are announced by the moderator, the town or ward clerk will prepare the election return and submit the election return form to the Secretary of State David Scanlan. Once the secretary of state receives all the returns, he will review and total the votes and declare the winners of the election.
Following that — after the time for any recount or appeal has expired or when all candidates waived, in writing, a recount or appeal — Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) will issue certificates of election to members of the United States Congress, according to the state law. And the secretary of state will issue certificates of election to state senators, state representatives and county officers.
Who can challenge?
A voter voting in any state election may be challenged by any other voter registered in the town or ward in which the election is held, an election official, a challenger appointed by a political committee or a challenger appointed by the attorney general, according to state legislature.
The challenger has to submit a written challenge to the official presiding over the polling place in question. The official then determines whether the challenge is well grounded. The state statute requires a signed affidavit under oath and that the challenger in question has to have personal knowledge or another basis for probable cause for the challenge. The challenge cannot rest solely on a vague suspicion. Before making a decision, the official has to give the challenged voter an opportunity to push back on the allegations.
If the official “determines that it is more likely than not that the challenge is well grounded,” the official does not receive the voter’s ballot, according to state law. If the challenge is not well grounded, the voter must be allowed to vote. If the voter disagrees with the official’s decision they can seek immediate review in the New Hampshire Superior Court.
Under New Hampshire law, any candidate in a state general election may request a recount if the vote difference between them and the winning candidate is less than 20% of the total ballots cast. The request has to be made in writing to the secretary of state by the Friday after Election Day.
Who’s in charge?
In South Carolina, the Board of State Canvassers certifies the election. The members of the State Election Commission (SEC) serve as the state board of canvassers after elections to certify election returns, to declare candidates elected and to hear protests and appeals. The SEC has five commission members. At least one has to be a member of the majority political party and at least one has to be a member of the largest minority political party represented in the general assembly.
The Board of State Canvassers must convene within 10 days of Election Day — Nov. 12 — to canvass votes, certify results and order any necessary recounts. The board can continue to meet on a day-to-day basis for up to 15 days to complete their responsibilities — including declaring which candidates have been elected and the certified vote totals, according to the state legislature. The certified results are then delivered to the secretary of state.
Who can challenge?
An eligible voter or qualified watcher may challenge the eligibility of a voter if they suspect they are not qualified to vote. If the challenge is coming from an individual, they must direct their challenge to an election manager. The manager then presents the challenge to the voter in question.
The election manager has to explain the qualifications for voting and can question the individual about their eligibility. But if the voter maintains they are qualified while the challenge stands, the voter must be allowed to cast a provisional ballot. That ballot will be handled separately and cannot be included in the initial count of regular ballots. The ballot will be turned over to the board of voter registration and elections or the election authority that has supervision of the election to be reviewed at the legally scheduled meeting. If no one provides evidence to support the challenge, the ballot will be counted. If evidence is presented, it will be reviewed and a final decision on the ballot will be made by the authority.
A voter eligibility challenge must happen before the voter in question deposits a paper ballot or casts their vote on a voting machine. For absentee ballots, challenges must be made before the return envelopes are opened and the ballot envelopes are removed.
Separately, a recount is generally required when the difference between two candidates is no more than 1% of the total votes cast for that office — unless the candidates waive the recount.
The board of state canvassers can also act “in an appellate judicial capacity” if election disputes arise. Any election dispute or protest has to be submitted in writing to the board before the deadline, which is noon five days following the canvassing of the votes.
The board, in its judicial capacity, can hold hearings where candidates, alongside legal counsel, may present evidence, examine and cross-examine witnesses. The board then decides on the issue at hand by a majority vote and certifies the election results.
Those decisions can usually be appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court with a priority consideration.
Who’s in charge?
Following the completion of the canvass by the county canvassing board, an abstract of votes for all officers should be delivered to the current Secretary of State Robert Evnen, according to Nebraska statute.
Evnen has previously pushed back against allegations of election fraud and irregularities during the 2020 election. In an interview, Evnan even said he sees “no justification” for a full, forensic audit or a hand recount of the 2020 election results in Nebraska.
A state board of state canvassers — made up of the governor, secretary of state, auditor of public accounts, state treasurer and attorney general — then meet on the fourth Monday after the election to canvass the votes cast. The board can continue to meet until all returns are received and all votes are tabulated. The board’s job is to use abstracts they received from counties to determine which of the candidates has been elected.
This group, made up entirely of Republicans, does not under state law have the ability to question the results.
“The duty of the board of state canvassers to canvass the votes is ministerial in nature,” according to the Nebraska statute.
Within 40 days after Election Day, the secretary of state has to prepare and deliver a certificate of election to the “person who meets the constitutional and statutory requirements of office and whom the board of state canvassers or Legislature has declared to have received the highest vote for such office or position in the statewide primary or general election,” according to the Nebraska statute.
The certificate has to be signed by the governor and countersigned by the secretary of state.
Who can challenge?
In Nebraska, an election inspector, judge, clerk or any registered voter can challenge a person’s eligibility to vote even if they are registered to vote. A challenge, essentially, triggers a formal process. Once a challenge is made, the voter in question — in the presence of an inspector or a judge of election — has to write their name, address and signature under an oath that reads: “I do solemnly swear that I will fully and truly answer all such questions put to me related to my place of residence and qualifications as a registered voter at this election.”
The challenged voter will then have to answer questions from an election official about their residence as well as qualifications to vote in that election. The official may ask additional questions to assess eligibility. If the voter complies and meets the eligibility standards — including age and citizenship — they must be allowed to vote.
A candidate who was not elected can request a recount if the margin of defeat falls within the threshold established by the statue. The written request has to be submitted no later than the third day after the county canvassing board or state canvassing board concludes its canvass.
Who’s in charge?
Certification in Maine is straightforward: Within two business days after the election, the county clerks file an attested copy of the election returns with the secretary of state’s office. Within 20 days after the election, the secretary of state compiles and certifies the returns, and gives them to the governor.
Who can challenge?
There are no automatic or partial recounts in the state, and a candidate has to request a recount within 5 business days of the election. If the margin is up to 1% of the total votes or fewer than 1,000 votes, whichever is less, the state pays. If the gap is bigger than that, the requester has to pay in full (unless the recount changes the result). Any candidate running can initiate a recount.
A voter or election official can also challenge the qualifications of another voter in the same municipality. The ballot in question is marked, and a hearing is held after the election to confirm the challenged voter’s qualifications.
The primary players in Maine’s certification and recount processes are Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Governor Janet Mills, both Democrats. The state, like many of its blue peers, was sued by the Trump Justice Department to compel the release of its voter rolls. That case was dismissed quickly by a federal district court judge, who called the government’s arguments “half-hearted.”
Correction: This post misstated a detail of Ken Paxton’s campaign against state judges who opposed him and has been updated. TPM regrets the error.
In August, the storied right-wing influencer-activist-provocateur James O’Keefe launched his latest stunt. Wearing a crude imitation of Islamic garb, he and another influencer, Cam Higby, rolled into a series of Minneapolis voting precincts on primary day.
It was all part of a plan to show the world how Minnesota’s voting system had become vulnerable and ripe for exploitation. To do it, they would pose as different people; they would tell the state officials running Minnesota elections that they were not who they were.
Jon Rosenthal got an unexpected text from a friend earlier this year: Karl Rove, the GOP strategist that George W. Bush affectionately deemed “turd blossom,” had endorsed him for Texas Railroad Commissioner.
Rosenthal was shocked to hear it, telling TPM that the possibility had been outside his “universe of thought.” But things are weird these days for Rosenthal, and for anyone following his bid to become the first Democrat in decades to sit on the Texas Railroad Commission.
This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Donald Trump fancied himself an expert on television long before parlaying his titan-of-industry image, forged by “The Apprentice,” into politics. But his “reality-TV presidency” — complete with cliffhangers, confrontations, and eliminations — increasingly resembles a once-popular show in its later seasons, resorting to gimmicks as it scrambles to sustain an audience.
As someone who chronicled Trump’s primetime success and absorbed his claims (invariably false) about titanic ratings long after “The Apprentice” slipped off its lofty perch, there’s an odd familiarity to the desperate push toward the 2026 midterms. Trump’s shtick mirrors the tricks and traps of an aging reality show, from poorly vetted, swing-for-the-fences casting decisions to escalating levels of violence and risk, to, finally, lavish cash giveaways. (The main difference, actually, is that TV shows have to make good on their payout promises.)
In just the last few weeks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans for a live-streamed execution, only to see the president retreat from the idea, despite his initial endorsement of it; Trump chose Katie Zacharia as his press secretary with scant due diligence before firing her after a half-Scaramucci; and the president touted a variety of prize incentives to voters, including a $5,000 pledge to all adults — but only if the election results go his way — and to-be-determined cash awards to whistleblowers to advance his anti-fraud obsession.
Based on the polling, nothing really appears to be moving the needle. Among students of television, that really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since once a “show” enters this phase, there’s often not much that can be done to stave off the inevitable decline, as fickle viewers begin looking for something new, gravitating toward the next big thing.
Trump remains fond of pointing out when women are beautiful as an act of nose-thumbing rebellion against “woke” culture, but his recent gushing about the appearance of various men, and their bodies, has become a new source of fascination, as well as a gift to late-night comics. But it all fits the pattern of Trump as the producer of his own show, where he’s invariably the hero surrounded by enemies on all sides. Within that aura of showmanship, Trump also views himself as a casting genius uniquely able to identify star power, underscored by his repeated references going back years to “central casting.”
Although “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett was the ostensible mastermind behind “The Apprentice,” Trump clearly felt like he internalized the tools of the trade. But these recent examples underscore the challenges of such sleight of hand, as well as how trying to bend an existing format can blow up in one’s face.
To those who might see the reality-TV analogy as strained, remember how Trump got here. The way “The Apprentice” carefully crafted Trump’s persona through creative editing, which was necessary to make sense of his behavior, is a story that’s been told and retold, primarily via confessionals and apologies from former staffers and the NBC marketing guru who helped launch the series.
Bill Pruitt, an early “Apprentice” producer, acknowledged in a 2024 Slate piece that he and his colleagues “played fast and loose with the facts,” creating “the myth” of Trump, beginning with the glittering boardroom built to stand in for the rundown space in his real-life offices.
Nor should it come as a shock that Trump harbors an inflated sense of his reality-TV acumen. Another producer, Jonathon Braun, recalled how Trump would make out-of-left-field choices about who to fire, forcing the producers to retrofit the entire episode to justify his chosen outcome. “Our job then was to reverse engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron,” Braun told New York Times reporters Russ Beuttner and Susanne Craig for their book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.”
John Miller, the now-retired NBC executive, titled his 2024 essay/mea culpa “We Created a Monster: Trump Was a TV Fantasy Invented for ‘The Apprentice.’” As he told me in an interview in 2025, the qualities that Trump prized above all else were “loyalty and being telegenic,” adding, “Experience and competence are well down that list.” He also observed that Trump was both “manipulative,” and “extraordinarily easy to manipulate.”
Trump is gambling on a different, more serious playing field, but the inherent strategy is the same. For a president who sees himself as the ultimate showman, breathing life into a tiring act has notably led to some very rare backpedaling.
Zacharia offered a textbook illustration of those priorities, having effusively praised Trump on television — another attractive mouthpiece on the surface, appointed without evidence of the customary concerns about her qualifications or resume.
Such corner-cutting can be perilous, and again, reality TV provides ample precedent. Take “The Bachelorette,” which picked Frankie Taylor Paul for the last edition despite questions about off-screen issues, then wound up having to shelve the entire season after TMZ posted video pertaining to a 2023 domestic-assault allegation.
Television producers regularly talk about “raising the stakes,” and stoking conflict or the perceived threat of violence is a go-to means of seeking to juice ratings. That might explain Hegseth’s tough-guy talk about a live-streamed execution, before the collective disgust over what the Daily Kos called a government-sponsored “snuff film” prompted the White House to back down.
Still, as critic Matthew Gilbert pointed out, televised executions seem less far-fetched than when “Network” satirized them 50 years ago. While daredevil televised stunts are as old as Evel Knievel, the possibility of seeing someone die — live! — has become another threshold for standing out amid a sea of content, such as “Free Solo” free climber Alex Honnold’s January special scaling a Taiwan skyscraper live on Netflix.
A less bloodthirsty gambit involves simply throwing extra prize money around, as “Survivor” did by doubling the potential payout for its 50th edition. Like physical altercations and tossed wine glasses, that usually feels like an exercise prone to yielding diminishing returns, to be pursued after exhausting most other options.
Students of television, of course, will tell you that once a show enters this part of its lifecycle, there’s not much that can stave off the inevitable declines. Hit shows usually blaze hot, then fade, even if they endure for a long time like “Survivor,” like “The Apprentice” a Burnett production, or “Dancing With the Stars.” That explains why something like “The Bachelor” franchise would roll the dice by selecting a bachelorette that ended up costing ABC and parent Disney millions in unused (so far, anyway) episodes.
Trump is gambling on a different, more serious playing field, but the inherent strategy is the same. For a president who sees himself as the ultimate showman, breathing life into a tiring act has notably led to some very rare backpedaling. And despite how effective the maestros at “The Apprentice” were in stitching together a better Trump, facing an angry electorate, he might be confronting his limits, finally, in terms of shaping reality.
There’s a lot to pay attention to this year. With Democrats putting up seemingly fantastical numbers in the polls, the map is expanded in ways that no one thought possible a year ago. Is Texas in play? Is Kansas? Looming over it is Trump’s cult of personality, and the lie that any election in which he or his allies run, they win.
This list is an attempt to pinpoint races that tell the story of where America is at this November, explain why, from TPM’s perspective, these races matter, and look ahead to the conversation we’ll be having in coming months.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism.
What to know:
Michelle Tafoya (R) has been doing well in polls in recent months, showing her within a few points of Peggy Flanagan (D) in what is normally a solidly blue state. That’s inspired the Trump administration to pull out all the stops to put its finger on the scale, rebooting the racial panic it tried to stoke last winter over the state’s Somali population. The capstone of that effort is the administration’s legal gambit to deport Rep. Ilhan Omar (D). It seems unlikely that this is going to land well in a state still recovering from this year’s federal invasion, which claimed the lives of two U.S. citizens. If Flanagan wins, as it still seems she will, Minnesota could end up as a prime candidate for Trump to target with his expected election interference.
What do the polls say?
It’s close.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Voting rights.
What to know:
There were few congressional districts in Texas that went untouched by the legislature’s late-2025 redistricting bonanza, carried out, at Trump’s behest, in a mid-cycle gerrymandering bid to help Republicans hold the House regardless of voters’ wishes. Texas Republicans were the first to answer Trump’s call, and the party salivated over the boon they could extract from the giant state. Now, however, it appears that the Texas GOP may have overplayed its hand. In two heavily redrawn districts along the border, Texas’ 28th and 34th, Democrats stand a real chance. After all of Republicans’ work, Cook Political Report rates one, the 28th, represented by Vicente Gonzalez (D), as a “toss-up,” and another, the 34th, represented by Henry Cuellar (D), as “leans Democrat.” GOP spending patterns show that they are not taking the other three — the 9th, the 32nd and the 35th — for granted either. In order to create those five, theoretically pro-GOP districts, many other districts had to give up some Republican votes, ironically turning much of the state into a battleground where Democrats, in the right cycle, could snatch back some seats .
What do the polls say?
As usual with House races, there aren’t many public polls. But following the Republican money suggests that they are getting uneasy here.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Separation of powers, expanding Democrats’ map.
What to know:
Sen. Susan Collins (R) has been Democrats’ white whale for multiple cycles now, a talented politician who has defied political gravity and hung on in a state that’s only getting bluer. When Democrats’ first choice, Graham Platner, imploded after he was accused of sexual assault, they desperately grappled around for a replacement, landing on former state Senate leader Troy Jackson (D), who put together a lightning-fast nomination campaign. Jackson has not quite made up for lost time, with his truncated campaign and lack of Platner’s charisma keeping this race tight enough to make Democrats nervous.
He’ll hope to get a boost from ballot mate Hannah Pingree (D), who seems comfortably bound for the governor’s mansion.
What do the polls say?
Recent polls have given Jackson a small edge, but it’s a nail-biter.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism.
What to know:
Even in today’s Republican Party, it’s rare that you have someone who attended the Charlottesville white supremacist rally run for a state House seat. But Marshall Rawson (R) is one such candidate. Rawson activism with a neo-Confederate group called League of the South has been known for a decade, but it didn’t emerge until after he won his primary that he had attended the biggest white supremacist rally in a generation, at which participants famously chanted “Jews will not replace us.” TPM broke the story of Rawson’s attendance in September.
What do the polls say?
The Florida House district is extremely Republican, and Rawson will likely win.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism, election denial.
What to know:
This race is one of several that will determine control of the Senate. But it also features perhaps the most extreme candidate running for the chamber this cycle, Mike Collins (R), who not only is slavishly loyal to president Trump, but has joked about killing immigrants, retweeted a video of white university students making monkey sounds at a Black woman, and cheered the January 2026 FBI raid on Fulton County’s election office with a since-deleted post on X: “Go get ‘em Kash.” Given this, it may not be surprising that he has constantly been asked to explain why so many white nationalist and anitsemitic figures have turned up in his campaign, congressional office, and family. What has been surprising, though, is his complete inability to answer for it. In recent debates, Collins has fumbled through questions about these connections, and refused to concede Trump lost the 2020 election.
What do the polls say?
Collins’ opponent, incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), is ahead.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Expanding Democrats’ map.
What to know:
There was a time when Ohio picked the president. That broke down in 2020 when Trump won the state by 8 points despite losing reelection. It has trended increasingly red in recent years, raising the question of whether a Democrat can still win statewide. If one can, the conventional wisdom goes, it is Sherrod Brown (D) in 2026. His opponent, Jon Husted (R), has struggled to distance himself from the many data centers he brought to Ohio during his time as lieutenant governor, and that the public now adamantly opposes. If Democrats can’t pick up this seat with an optimal candidate in an optimal cycle, it’s hard to see when they ever would.
Elsewhere on the Ohio ballot, the contest for governor between former state health department director Amy Acton (D) and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R) is also competitive. Ramaswamy has struggled throughout his campaign to connect with voters and to hit baseballs. Some polls have Acton up by as many as nine points. The race is wrapping up on a particularly nasty note, with an attack ad featuring Acton’s mother — long estranged from the candidate after she stayed with the man who sexually abused Acton when she was a child — to paint Acton as a liar. The Ramaswamy campaign doubled down amid the ensuing outrage, calling Acton a “serial fabulist.”
What do the polls say?
Acton is running a tick ahead of Ramaswamy, but both that race and the Senate one are extremely close, the Democrats having a slight edge.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism, voting rights, election denial.
What to know:
The secretary of state’s office may have gone without much attention before the Trump era, but no longer. The official who oversees elections in key states is in the cross-hairs of those who believe the myths that election was stolen in 2020, and that widespread fraud and non-citizen voting continues to help Democrats. In Arizona and New Mexico, two election denial activists are themselves on the ballot, running for the role. In Georgia, the Republican candidate has reportedly said there were “irregularities” in the 2020 election but has stopped short of claiming Trump won. That candidate, Tim Fleming (R), has also repeated false claims about mail-in ballots being used to commit voter fraud and has been evasive about whether he would be ready to do as his would-be predecessor, Brad Raffensperger (R), did and stand up to Trump. Fleming did tout that he has voted for the president six times during a debate in May. When you have a Republican administration that has shown it is hellbent on seizing the constitutional right to administer elections from states, it’s pretty crucial to have people who are not election deniers serving in those roles in the lead up to 2028.
What do the polls say?
Too little polling to say anything conclusive.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Expanding Democrats’ map.
What to know:
Though everyone is surprised that a Democrat may be on the cusp of winning a Senate election in Kansas, the party has experienced electoral success in the state before — and relatively recently. Current, term-limited Gov. Laura Kelly (D) won in 2018 and again in 2022, riding, the first time, the backlash to Trump and, the second time, the backlash to Dobbs. Now, Democrats could strike gold again with popular Methodist minister Adam Hamilton (D), who is up against the uniquely unlikeable and scandal-hobbled incumbent senator, Roger Marshall (R). This is the kind of race where Democrats will need everything to go right, but they at least have secured themselves a candidate compelling enough to put the state into play, and possibly to give Democrats a blueprint for other deep red state races. Elsewhere on the ballot, polling shows a competitive gubernatorial contest between state senators Ty Masterson (R) and Cindy Holscher (D).
What do the polls say?
Hamilton v. Marshall is as close as can be. Holscher is running a few points behind Masterson.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism, voting rights, election denial.
What to know:
Tom Tiffany (R) is a weird character, and Wisconsin is important. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) announced last summer that he would not seek a third term in office, creating an open race for governor in Wisconsin for the first time since 2010. Tiffany, a member of Congress, has done nothing to engender confidence that he would support free and fair elections in the state. The main problem with the Trump-backed Tiffany is the extent to which he threw his weight behind overturning the results of the 2020 election. Tiffany didn’t just vote against certifying President Biden (D) as the winner of the election in Arizona and Pennsylvania (he vowed to do the same for Wisconsin but that vote was interrupted by the mob of Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol), he also joined a Ken Paxton (R)-led effort to throw out Wisconsin’s election results after Trump lost. His election denialism continues to this day, too — in June he embraced the FBI’s investigation into the 2020 election in Wisconsin.
But Tiffany is no exception to the trend that’s emerged in recent weeks, as Republicans try to distance themselves from the deeply unpopular president who is not on the ballot but wants voters to pretend he is. In September, Tiffany’s campaign conceded “Joe Biden won” when asked about the 2020 results. Even then, his campaign still involuntarily offered to “cooperate with law enforcement on investigations” into Wisconsin elections.
What do the polls say?
Close, but Crowley seems slightly ahead.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism.
What to know:
Viktor Marx (R) is a unique character well-suited to our unique political moment. Over his years as a Christian nationalist leader, author, and self-described “high risk missionary,” the Republican Party nominee for governor in Colorado has boasted of having personally rescued thousands of people from conflict zones and of attaining multiple black belts in various martial arts. His impressive resume is not limited to the earthly realms, however: he has also, in his telling, battled demons and faced down Satan himself, biographical details TPM has covered with interest. Critics have questioned Marx’s claims. He’s likely to lose to the Democratic nominee, Phil Weiser, potentially dragging fellow Colorado Republicans down with him.
What do the polls say?
Marx is almost certainly going to lose.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism, election denial.
What to know:
This is a weird one. The Republican candidate Tom Smith won his nomination by accident, likely due to racism. (Smith actually dropped out of the race in July and a different Republican, a Navy veteran and former law enforcement officer, had earned Trump’s endorsement in the primary. The Trump-backed candidate’s name was Amir Hassan, and, well, as one GOP strategist put it to Politico in August, the “GOP base was reluctant to support a dude named Amir Hassan.” Hence, Michigan voters elected the white-bread sounding Tom Smith, who was no longer running.) TPM later learned and was first to report that Smith attended protests in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 and live-tweeted the whole experience from “Jar Head Salsa,” a Twitter account for the food company he runs with his son.
What do the polls say?
There aren’t many polls of this race, but things are not looking good for Tom. For starters, Kristen McDonald Rivet (D) has wildly out-raised him. As of the beginning of this month, the Democrat had raised about $5 million in donations and contributions to her campaign. Tom’s raised about $250,000.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Voting rights, abortion.
What to know:
You may recall one of the few bright spots to come out of the 2024 elections was the passage of an amendment that enshrined the “right to reproductive freedom” in the Missouri Constitution. The measure passed 52% to 48% and protected abortion in a state led by politicians who would outlaw it if given the chance. Now, the Missouri General Assembly is asking voters to repeal that same constitutional amendment that they voted into law just two years ago. Amendment 3 would ban abortion in Missouri with exceptions only for medical emergencies, fetal anomaly, rape and incest. The measure would also ban gender-affirming care for minors. Missouri Republicans are gambling that some mixture of low turnout and confusing ballot language will help them thwart the clearly articulated desire of their constituents.
That perversion of democracy will sit alongside its triumph, as Missouri voters will also get the chance to vote up or down a maximal Republican gerrymander, despite state officials’ best efforts. The legislature passed the map last year, gerrymandering Black and Democratic voters in the Kansas City area out of electoral power, then tried to shield the new map from the state’s referendum voting process. They failed, due mostly to the still-normal Missouri Supreme Court — which, as we predicted, those same politicians are now looking to dismantle and MAGA-fy.
What do the polls say?
There’s limited polling of these measures.
Why is this race especially important to TPM?
Extremism.
What to know:
Paul LePage (R) is an old school TPM character: He was Trump before Trump, he often jokes. A trailblazer on the hard right, he denounced immigrants as “the enemy” and labeled one political opponent a “socialist cocksucker” a full decade ago. He looms large in Maine, where he served as governor from 2011 to 2019. The district in which he is now running — Maine’s 2nd — covers a huge portion of the state, the largely unpopulated north. Republicans often win it, though for the last several years it’s been held by Jared Golden (D), a conservative Democrat who is retiring. Matt Dunlap (D), a much more mainstream Democrat, is running against LePage to replace Golden. It’s been conventional wisdom that Dunlap is too progressive for this district, though a big enough blue wave could net the seat anyway. Recent polls show Dunlap ahead. Cook Political Report rates it “lean Republican.”
What do the polls say?
Dunlap seems to have a slight lead.
Josh Kovensky, Hunter Walker and Christopher Mathias contributed reporting.
This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
The Overton window on expanding — or packing or unpacking — the Supreme Court is now wide enough that it’s worth revisiting one inevitable part of the conversation: FDR’s Court-packing proposal in 1937. Misconceptions about the events abound in popular discussions.
Here’s the short version of the story you’ve probably heard: In 1935 and early 1936, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court handed down several decisions whose doctrines threatened important parts of FDR’s New Deal economic policies. After his overwhelming reelection in November 1936, he decided to pack the Supreme Court with six new justices, using the excuse that the sitting justices over the age of 75 weren’t able to handle the Court’s work effectively. Announced in January 1937, the Court-packing plan came as a surprise to political Washington, and immediately met strong resistance. FDR slogged on but the plan suffered several severe blows, including a letter from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes endorsed by liberal justice Louis Brandeis saying that the Court was completely up to date with its work. Other developments undercut the urgency for the president and his allies, including a decision favoring New Deal economic policies in March 1937 in which swing justice Owen Roberts cast the deciding vote and the retirement in May of conservative justice Willis Van Devanter. When the plan was formally interred in a mid-summer Senate vote, a New York journalist called Roberts’s vote the “switch in time that saved the nine,” and the phrase — and Roberts’s vote — have come to dominate today’s understanding of the episode.
That version isn’t completely inaccurate and it isn’t a caricature, but it does contain some misconceptions, the most important of which is probably the focus on the captivating “switch in time” phrase. If we think that the story of the Court packing plan has some lessons for us today, it’s important to clear up these misconceptions. Historians have written books about the events surrounding the Court-packing plan and this essay won’t be able to explore all the ins-and-outs of a complicated set of events. Even more, the story has many moving parts, most of which are connected to others, so you can pick pretty much any place to start.
Yes and no. After one important decision in May 1935 going against the New Deal, FDR held a press conference and said that the Court wanted to take the country back to the horse-and-buggy days. Almost from the start of his first term FDR groused about the possibility that the Supreme Court would stand in the way of what he thought were programs needed to recover from the economic crisis the nation faced. Ideas about “doing something” about the Court floated around Washington starting in 1933, leaked from the administration to favored reporters and discussed at Georgetown dinner parties.
Still, FDR hadn’t directly targeted the Supreme Court during his 1936 reelection campaign. Instead, he regularly attacked the American Liberty League, an advocacy organization founded and funded by wealthy opponents of the New Deal. The League produced a series of pamphlets designed as templates for legal briefs laying out the constitutional arguments against a host of New Deal programs. When FDR went after the League, he was really taking on reactionary legal arguments he feared the Supreme Court would adopt. So, in the guise of the American Liberty League, the Supreme Court was part of the 1936 presidential campaign.
Supreme Court reform of some sort was in the air after FDR’s massive victory in November 1936. The development of the Court-packing plan was a closely held secret within the administration. The content of the announcement on February 5, 1937, was something of a surprise. But no one was surprised that FDR wanted to move some sort of Court reform through Congress.
No, but maybe yes. On June 1, 1936, the Supreme Court held a New York statute setting a minimum wage for women workers unconstitutional by a vote of 5-4, with Justice Roberts in the majority. Then, on March 29, 1937, the Court held an essentially identical Washington state statute constitutionally permissible by a vote of 5-4, with Roberts in the majority. Coming less than two months after the Court-packing plan’s announcement, Roberts’s “new position” is the switch in time.
It’s been known for decades, though, that Roberts actually cast his deciding vote in mid-December 1936, before the Court-packing plan was announced. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone was absent because he was recovering from a near-fatal illness. The justices divided four-to-four, with Roberts voting to uphold the Washington statute. Stone’s vote was necessary for the new majority but everyone knew that he’d vote to uphold the Washington statute (he’d joined the dissent in the New York case). The case was essentially over when the Court took its initial vote. The formal vote was delayed until February 6, 1937, the day after the Court-packing plan was announced. Justice Felix Frankfurter later reported that Roberts came up with a lame explanation for his switch, saying that New York’s lawyers hadn’t explicitly asked the Supreme Court to overrule a controlling precedent but Washington’s lawyers did. (The excuse was lame because New York’s lawyers had indeed asked the Court to overrule the precedent, though in a short and somewhat cryptic paragraph.) Whatever the reason, it didn’t come “in time” — that is, it didn’t come as a response to the February 5, 1937, unveiling of the Court-packing plan.
Remember, though, that Court reform was in the air. Maybe Roberts was picking up what we’d now call “vibes” about a threat to the Court, and maybe the lameness of his explanation was just a cover story for a change induced by the general atmosphere of threats to the Court as an institution.
No. Vote counters knew that the House of Representatives would accept the plan. All the action was in the Senate, where there was fierce opposition from conservative Republicans and some Democrats, and unease among other Democrats.
An adept politician, FDR held an ace in his hand, and everyone knew it. He promised one of the seats on an expanded Supreme Court to Senate majority leader Joseph Robinson of Arkansas. Robinson found the offer irresistible. He called in all the chits he had with his colleagues, putting together a potential majority for the plan one vote at a time. Political observers at the time weren’t sure what the outcome would be but they were inclined to think that Robinson could pull off a victory for FDR.
The final vote was scheduled for mid-July in an exceptionally hot (and un-airconditioned) Washington. Robinson held a meeting–social gathering where he continued to lobby wavering colleagues. The combination of heat and stress gave Robinson a fatal heart attack. The possibility of a majority for the Court-packing plan in the Senate always depended on personal ties between Robinson and other senators, and, with his passing on, the plan failed.
Yes, yes, and maybe no. FDR lost the battle over expanding the Court but reached his main war goal — having a Court that wouldn’t completely obstruct his favored programs. As with almost all successful military campaigns, the path to the goal wasn’t straight. The war wasn’t over on March 29 when the nation learned that Roberts had voted to uphold Washington’s minimum wage law. FDR’s legal team worried that Roberts wasn’t going to be a reliable ally going forward — and indeed he wasn’t: a careful modern statistical study shows that Roberts reverted to his conservatism within a year.
The war wasn’t over on May 18, either, the day Justice Willis Van Devanter announced his intention to retire even though the retirement seemingly gave FDR the opportunity to replace a conservative with a reliable supporter of the New Deal.
Van Devanter had wanted to leave the Court for years, mostly so that he could take care of his medically compromised wife. The obstacle was financial. Van Devanter was something of a penny-pincher, once complaining that he had been overcharged five cents for a package of seeds. With some reason, he worried that his financial condition would deteriorate if he left the Court. As the statutes stood at the beginning of 1937, lower court judges could either retire from the bench and continue to receive their judicial salaries or they could resign and take their pensions. The rules for Supreme Court justices were different. They had to resign, not retire — they could take their pensions, but not their salaries. And that mattered because judicial salaries for retired lower court judges couldn’t be reduced, but judicial pensions for them and for Supreme Court justices could be — and they were, as part of the austerity programs Herbert Hoover and FDR pursued at the Great Depression’s outset. That was what worried Van Devanter, because the statutes didn’t give him the retirement option. He would have to resign and be at the mercy of congressional decisions about judicial pensions.
Hatton Sumners, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, had long thought that treating Supreme Court justices worse than lower court judges was silly. Some lawyers worried that “retirement” required that the judge be available to serve as needed — something now known as “senior status” — and that the Constitution didn’t allow that for Supreme Court justices. Sumners disagreed. In 1936 he introduced a bill to eliminate the difference. It failed. The next year, with Supreme Court reform on the table, he tried again. With some misgivings, and aware of the important role Sumners would play in shepherding the Court-packing plan through the House, FDR’s lawyers decided that Sumners’s bill wouldn’t undermine support for Court-packing. The House passed the bill on February 10, the Senate on February 26, and FDR signed it on March 1, whereupon Van Devanter decided to leave the Court.
Why wasn’t the ability to appoint a justice enough to get FDR to abandon the politically costly Court-packing campaign? The answer: Senator Joe Robinson, to whom FDR has promised a court seat. Despite that promise, Robinson wasn’t a full-throated New Dealer and FDR’s lawyers worried that he might end up as unreliable as they feared Roberts would be. FDR took his time filling the vacancy Van Devanter created, with the excuse that Robinson was still needed to push the Court-packing plan through the Senate. A month after Robinson died, FDR nominated Senator Hugo Black to the Court, giving him a reasonably solid five-to-four majority. The next year conservative Justice George Sutherland, who like Van Devanter had wanted to leave the Court for several years, retired, and FDR nominated Solicitor General Stanley Reed to succeed him.
By then the war really was over. The Supreme Court didn’t invalidate any major New Deal programs after 1937, although it did sometimes interpret major statutes — especially the National Labor Relations Act — in ways less friendly to labor than FDR’s labor allies would have liked. Democrats suffered severe losses in the 1938 midterm elections, mostly because the nation was in a severe economic recession induced by FDR’s too-rapid return to the orthodoxy of balanced budgets — but maybe the Court-packing episode made it easier for some voters to abandon the Democratic Party.
In the even longer sweep, the conservative war against legal liberalism continued. Liberals liked to describe a “New Deal settlement” that coupled judicial deference to legislatures on matters of economic policy with judicial activism on civil rights and civil liberties. Recent scholarship has made the case that conservatives never really accepted the so-called settlement, making some tactical concessions while biding their time — which came toward the end of the 20th century.
Maybe yes, but a lot depends on how you describe the precedent. Focus on the politics of Court size and the answer is that the 1937 episode might have created what the British call a constitutional “convention” against changing the size of the Supreme Court simply to affect predicted outcomes — but that kind of convention can itself be changed when politicians think that it stands in the way of getting something important done. And focus on the politics of the federal courts more generally and the answer is that changing their powers to advance partisan goals is standard practice.
The Court’s size has been fixed at nine since 1869. Before that the Court grew to accommodate national growth — a “good government” reason for changing its size. Sometimes the timing of expansion was affected by partisan concerns. And in the decade of the Civil War, Congress expanded the Court, shrank it, and expanded it again mostly for partisan reasons but with some real “good government” explanation as well.
FDR’s Court-packing plan was packaged in “good government” terms — too many of the Court’s justices were old and unable to keep up a work pace adequate to needs. That was a fig-leaf covering the partisan motivation and FDR and his allies quickly abandoned it. The fig-leaf that’s offered in today’s discussions is “thirteen circuits, thirteen justices,” but no one really thinks that there’s a strong good-government reason for having one justice for each circuit. The Court-packing plan’s failure might be understood as establishing a convention against changing the Court’s size unless there’s a real “good government” reason for doing so.
Unwritten constitutional conventions like that are always up for grabs. One problem is distinguishing between practices that persist because no one cares enough to challenge them and practices that persist because people think they ought to follow them. The complicated politics that account for the failure of FDR’s Court-packing plan — Robinson’s death, Roberts’s change in vote, Sumners’s bill and Van Devanter’s retirement — weaken the case for saying that 1937 shows that there’s a convention against changing the Court’s size to affect predicted outcomes. Since then, the issue of the Court’s size didn’t matter enough for anyone to try to do something about it — until now. So maybe having a Court with nine members results from a practice rather than a convention.
Even more, conventions can be fragile — certainly they’re not as robust as provisions written into the constitutional text. A scholar writing in 1925 offered an example. From Washington’s presidency to the early 20th century American presidents stayed on American soil (broadly defined, it turns out). U.S. presidents stayed on the U.S. side of the Mexican border when they met their Mexican counterparts on the bridge connecting El Paso and Juarez. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson reluctantly declined an invitation to England to celebrate the anniversary of the treaty ending the war of 1812. Within five years he went to Versailles, and the convention disappeared.
The picture is much more clear when we look at the politics of the federal courts generally. Congress has adjusted their powers for good government reasons, of course, but it also has routinely tinkered with the federal courts to change predicted outcomes. When Congress feared that the national courts would rule against workers seeking compensation for injuries, it shunted those cases to state courts. When Congress feared that state courts would treat Blacks badly, they allowed the cases to be shifted into the federal courts. The list goes on and on. Seen in that light, changing the Court’s size is just another example of treating the federal courts as one of the many tools politicians can use to achieve their goals.
One of the first things graduate students in history are told is that they should be wary about drawing lessons from the foreign country that is the past. If lessons are to be drawn, though, they should be drawn on the basis of as full an understanding as possible of what really happened — an understanding informed by the story I’ve told, and of course by the even more complete story that can be found in the historical record.
Bernadette Greene-Placentia would like you to know the story of her rape is not an “October Surprise.”
She did not conspire with the media to publish the graphic details of her sexual assault on the same day early voting ballots were sent out to voters in Arizona. Her harrowing account of being bludgeoned and violated by two men in the middle of the night in a suburban parking lot is not a “hoax” she concocted to win over voters’ sympathies. Her fragmented memories of the attack, and her initial reluctance to go to authorities, are not evidence of an elaborate lie, nor of a nefarious Democratic plot to wrest control of Congress, as some right-wing influencers have suggested. It was hard enough coming forward to say she was raped, she told TPM. Now she has to contend with all these men, with millions of followers online, loudly asserting that maybe she wasn’t. She can’t help but remember that these men publicly trying to poke holes in her story have mothers. “Is this really how you were raised?” she wants to ask them.
Most American households were not eagerly awaiting a set of tax data that was supposed to come out from the Internal Revenue Service in July. Now the data is missing, with little explanation — and that’s attracting growing attention.
In Rough Edges, Mike Rothschild writes about fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
People love a grand conspiracy. The bigger the scheme is, the more people get drawn into it. And the more details and players that are involved, the more believable it seemingly becomes. After all, who would go to the trouble of making up something so complicated? It must be true.
And nobody loves a conspiracy more than President Trump. He and his inner circle especially seem to have fallen in love with what has literally been dubbed “The Grand Conspiracy.” It’s a hopelessly complex, entirely unevidenced theory claiming that a high-ranking group of political figures have been plotting in the shadows for years to stop Donald Trump from making America great again through investigations, indictments and impeachments. It has all the hallmarks of the type of grandiose schemes that Trump supporters especially fall for: countless players, sprawling plots, intricate secrets, and a total lack of evidence that it actually took place.
Despite lacking cogent answers to foundational questions such as “what it is” and “who is doing it,” revenge for the Grand Conspiracy has been a driving force in the administration, prompting an investigation that has trundled along over the last year and a half, involving dozens of officials looking for some reason to indict the president’s enemies.
And there are many, many enemies. They include a greatest hits of Trump’s obsessions and grievances, from former special counsel Jack Smith to minor players like former FBI agent Peter Strzok, and even former President Barack Obama himself. According to Grand Conspiracy believers, they are all powerful Deep State figures who supposedly worked together in a single, years-long scheme to destroy Trump and undo the will of the people.
Precisely what these conspirators have actually done remains unclear — even, seemingly, to the prosecutors themselves, who, per the Wall Street Journal, complained to the Justice Department that they weren’t getting much guidance from the local U.S. attorney. The probe is now being run out of Washington, where it continues to baffle those assigned to move it forward.
In the last few weeks, there have been a host of indications that DOJ efforts to prosecute these figures — and tie them all together into one grand scheme — are falling apart. And, as the Grand Conspiracy prosecution flails at DOJ, the claims also aren’t doing much in the court of public opinion, where Republicans are looking for anything they can find to shore up their crumbling midterm prospects.
This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Significant polling errors most often result when late-deciding voters break differently from historical patterns. That’s likely to happen this year, and not in a way that favors Republicans.
Start with the observation that the current midterm environment is utterly unlike any in recent history. The CNN average of recent polls pegs the proportion of voters who disapprove of Trump at 65 percent, and a recent You/Gov Economist poll found that of those who disapprove, 84 percent of them disapprove of him “strongly.” We’ve had no recent midterm cycle in which most American voters strongly disapprove of the president.
If we look at the distribution of Trump disapprovers, the implications for Republicans become even more ominous. Let’s say that Trump’s most loyal MAGA voters make up 30 percent of the electorate and assume, plausibly, that most of them associate largely with Americans of similar views. Since this group is largely devoid of Trump disapprovers, the upshot is that an overwhelming majority of voters not in this group — some 70 percent of the electorate — are Trump disapprovers. And since there are also almost no undecided voters among Trump loyalists, the portion of the electorate that describes itself as “undecided” also must consist almost entirely of Trump disapprovers.
To see how this may matter, consider the observation that most of us are more heavily influenced than we realize by the behavior and beliefs of peers. (This was the core premise of my 2019 book, Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work.) As decades of careful studies have shown, peer behavior strongly influences almost everything we do and think — what we eat, how much we exercise, whether and how much we smoke and drink, how much we weigh, and which candidates we support.
Now imagine the decision facing an undecided voter. She’s almost surely not a Trump loyalist, and virtually all of her close friends and relatives are likely to disapprove of Trump, a majority of them strongly. They’re unhappy about gas prices, the cost of groceries, corruption, the war in Iran, the behavior of ICE, and more. Herself a likely Trump disapprover, she’s almost surely unhappy about many of these things as well. Late deciders in past elections often tended to break toward candidates who share their political identity. If this year’s late decider is a conservative, that would predict she’d vote Republican. But given everything we know about human behavior, casting that vote would be difficult in the current environment. It would mean bucking the views of almost everyone she knows and cares about.
How much might all this matter? A recent generic ballot poll estimated that 8 percent of likely voters remain undecided. If these voters would have split 4D-4R in a normal midterm environment, a 6D-2R split in today’s climate would hardly seem unlikely. And that four percentage point swing would almost surely be more than enough to erase any pro-R polling bias from other sources.
But there’s more. Peer influences shape not only the decision about whom to vote for but also the decision about whether to vote at all. This influence will of course cause current polling averages to further understate Democratic strength.
In a recent interview with MS NOW host Jen Psaki, former Obama adviser David Plouffe was understandably reluctant even to discuss the possibility that current polls might be understating Democratic strength. Acknowledging this possibility could of course encourage some people to slack off, thinking the prize already in hand.
But understating Democratic prospects also entails risk. As we’ve seen, Republican seats are vulnerable in many areas that earlier Democrats would never have thought to contest. There’s reason to believe that the playing field may yet warrant further expansion.
The Trump administration has flailed at each of its major priorities. That includes, so far, its attempt to instill effective authoritarian rule: the Alien Enemies Act removals, the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the occupations of Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and others — they’re all marred by the same incompetence.
The buffoonery on display would be funny were it not so dangerous: it’s left lives ruined, and people killed. In the case of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), it’s threatening to strip naturalized citizens of basic constitutional rights.
This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Donald Trump’s ability to jail millions of people without even a bond hearing depends on what the Supreme Court thinks about one man’s case.
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