U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. There is little evidence that his Republicans will buck the trend that the party occupying the White House loses seats, Debra Thompson writes.Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press
Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for JOBFlocks.
Buckle up, friends. The American midterm elections are two months away, and they are already shaping up to be a dumpster fire.
President Donald Trump is facing an uphill battle on many fronts. Unchecked inflation, the spiking oil price caused by the U.S.’s war with Iran, mounting uncertainty about what Mr. Trump will next unleash on a volatile global economy and the consequences of global tariffs – including the idiotic trade war he started with Canada – are being felt acutely by middle-class Americans. Meanwhile, soaring government debt offers little reason for optimism that anything will improve soon.
Mr. Trump, of course, has called the affordability crisis “fake,” claiming he is “bringing prices way down.”
The mismatch between the administration’s messaging and Americans’ lived realities is becoming increasingly stark. MAGA’s cultural agenda is in full swing: attacks on DEI, environmentalism, science and universities, along with severe cuts to social benefits for millions of Americans. But when it comes to the cost of basic necessities, many Americans have yet to see material payoffs from the President’s self-proclaimed art of the deal.
So Mr. Trump has become deeply unpopular, with a recent net-approval rating of -26. That’s also true in the crucial swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but then swung to Mr. Trump in 2024. Republicans will likely lose ground in, and maybe control of, the House and the Senate in November. There is little evidence that the Republicans will buck the trend that the party occupying the White House loses seats.
Hardball stand with Trump sets Canada apart from all the trading partners that acquiesced
The President’s response? Apparently, to bribe, cheat and steal.
At last week’s Republican National Convention in Dallas, there were no candidates or voting – not really much of a convention at all, so much as a platform for talking heads basking in the rancorous applause of the most hardcore in the MAGA base. Mr. Trump did, however, find time to offer a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to every adult citizen after the election, but only if the Republicans keep their House and Senate majorities.
Call me old-fashioned, but this sounds an awful lot like a bribe, which is expressly prohibited by federal election law. And it could cost the United States upward of US$1-trillion.
Meanwhile, America’s voting infrastructure has been under assault. Most notable was Mr. Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in ballots, which were used by nearly a third of voters in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 general election. The administration attempted to require states to upload a list of eligible voters to a U.S. Postal Service online portal that doesn’t yet exist; states that failed to do so would be denied service for election mail entirely. A USPS whistleblower alleged in August that the mail-in ballot verification process could have resulted in the rejection of an entire batch if “even one bar code on one single ballot” failed to scan properly. Fortunately, on Monday evening, the Supreme Court rejected the government’s appeal of a federal judge’s decision to block this move.
In addition, after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last April, there has been a frenzy of Congressional district redrawings. Missouri, for instance, is in the midst of legal chaos over its attempt to use a gerrymandered congressional map that favours Republicans, which the Supreme Court blocked last week.
Michael Bociurkiw: Zelensky has more than one front line to hold
Voter intimidation cannot be ruled out, either. Democrats and civil rights organizations have warned for months that the Trump administration could send ICE agents to polling sites across the country. Last week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed that while ICE would not target polling locations, they could be present “if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant.”
And of course, there’s the question of whether the election results will be contested should Republicans lose, as they were when Mr. Trump lost in 2020. The President has also refused to rule out declaring a national security emergency to force his elections law through.
Democracy, of course, is not just about elections; it is legitimized or eroded by what happens after them. And at the core of centuries of democratic theory and practice is a simple principle: those who lose must give up power. Mr. Trump, however, has often implied that his electoral losses could only be the result of rampant election fraud.
Then again, it’s unclear if Mr. Trump actually cares about the midterms. Mr. Trump has allegedly said that he’s proud that Republicans don’t do as well without him. Elections appear to be just another opportunity to feed his insatiable narcissism, and the legislature an inconvenient obstacle between him and unfettered power.
That, perhaps, is the most troubling conclusion of all.