Morning all. In Sunday’s six months in post here’s how I summarized where I think we are now:
1 - Trump is doing incredible harm to the country and we must continue to act with great urgency to mitigate the damage and win back power
2 - We should not concede that his extremist government is producing “wins” - they should only be considered “wins” if they are good for the country and the American people. And by this definition America and all of us are losing, badly. America is clearly not winning under Trump.
3 - Simply, the country is not buying what Trump is selling. He and his agenda have been rejected - quickly, comprehensively - by the American people. He is a very weakened and diminished figure with no clear way to revive is flagging project and two potentially very ugly events ahead - the doubling and tripling of his destructive tariffs on August 1st; and months debating and passing a fiscal year 2026 budget that is loaded up with deeply unpopular things.
A new poll this morning from the influential data guy G. Elliott Morris confirms just how much the country has rejected Trump and his early agenda:
Trump’s approval is a terrible 42%-57% (-15). In line with all the public, independent polls we saw last week. Remarkable harmony in current data.
Dems lead in the generic ballot for Congress 47%-43% (+4). While this is good, and shows we lead, we still have work to do here.
More bad news for Trump on his agenda, on everything from inflation to immigration to the big ugly:
Note the findings about the ICE funding in the big ugly. Big target of opportunity for us in the coming months, and again it is just stunning given their info superiority how they have lost almost every major argument with the public about their agenda:
The question in front of all of us now is what is Trump going to do to try to improve his standing? What does he do over next few months? What I see now looks far more like peril than promise for his flagging political project, as he has three potentially deeply damaging events hurtling at him: 1) The escalating Epstein scandal 2) his August 1st tariff escalation 3) the passage of his fiscal year 2026 budget which is going to be loaded with incredibly unpopular things from onerous tariffs to ICE escalation to cuts to NIH to exploding deficits to the end of this year’s ACA subsidy cuts.
In the Capital this morning the chatter is all about the House canceling their votes this week - the last week of session until September - due to the fear of allowing debate over Trump’s disappearing the Epstein files. While this is still an evolving issue as I write this morning the top four stories in Politico, for example, are all about Epstein right now. Here’s the top story:
This thing ain’t going away, and it is a serious problem for Trump.
The House meltdown is also slowing down the annual appropriations process that is already way, way behind. From Punchbowl this am, Congress is woefully behind on spending:
This week is shaping up to be a bust in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein situation has frozen the chamber. Much more on this below.
For now, we’re going to talk about another mess Republicans have on their hands – FY2026 government funding.
With the August recess around the corner, the appropriations process is badly behind schedule. The House has approved a paltry two spending bills, both on a mostly party-line vote. By this time in 2024, the House had cleared five bills.
The Senate is spending all of this week — maybe longer — passing the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs bill. It’s usually one of the easiest of the 12 annual spending packages, but there’s no guarantee it’ll pass this year. The first procedural vote is today.
GOP congressional leaders and the White House made the decision early this year to focus on reconciliation and One Big Beautiful Bill. This took all their time and attention through July 4, pushing appropriations to the back burner.
Then Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune pivoted to passing a $9 billion rescissions package despite Democratic warnings that this could sink any potential spending deal. Republicans went ahead anyway, and the White House promised more rescissions packages to come, further angering Democrats.
So now, with just 70 days until government agencies run out of money, a CR is pretty much guaranteed. A shutdown is a real possibility, although no one wants to take the blame for causing it.
The leaders. The Republican leadership has no choice but to be optimistic in these types of situations. But their demeanor is telling.
Johnson, who came into the speakership saying he wouldn’t govern by CRs, said he’s “optimistic” because the House Appropriations Committee will have passed 10 of the 12 bills by the end of this week.
But when we reminded him that only two were approved by the full House heading into the August recess, Johnson downplayed it.
“Everyone is still in a good favorable mood about it,” Johnson said, before saying, “I’ll take that.”
Thune — who promised to put funding bills on the floor during his leadership race last year — acknowledged Monday that passing all 12 bills as the basis for a government funding deal probably isn’t going to happen.
“It’d be great if we could. But it would take a high level of cooperation. So we’ll see,” Thune told us.
So, yes, now the Rs are behind and struggling to pass the annual budget, one that is going to contain far uglier stuff than even the wildly unpopular big ugly. This is shaping up to be a process that is far more likely to further drive their numbers down then provide them a respite from Trump’s big swoon.
This brings us to the ongoing, never-ending, illegal and unconstitutional tariff shitshow. Unable to strike a single trade deal by his tariff deadline two weeks ago, rather than abandoning these impulsive and reckless tariffs, Trump went - how should we say it? - fucking crazy and announced he was going to DOUBLE and TRIPLE his global tariffs by next Friday, August 1st. The damage a dramatic escalation of these tariffs would cause to our economy and the economies of the world would be extraordinary, but if he chickens (TACOs) out he will look weak, pathetic and clownish (again) to Americans and global leaders. There is no good outcome for him here.
So, Epstein - bad. FY2026 budget process - bad. Tariffs, let’s look at this Strength in Numbers chart again. Prices/inflation 33%-61%!!!!!! I mean holy shit! Tariffs - really, really bad.
The Washington Post has a story this am about the House Dems now leaning hard into the tariff debate, Democrats use tariffs to turn inflation on Trump (gift link):
Donald Trump ran for a second term by pledging to combat rising prices, a sign that he understood the primary issue for most voters was a rising cost of living. “Starting on day one,” he would often say, “we will end inflation … to bring down the prices of all goods.”
Six months into his administration, his enthusiasm for tariffs is clashing with the political messaging that vaulted him back to the White House.
Our colleagues Abha Bhattarai and Andrew Ackerman reported this month that inflation began to tick up in June, “a sign that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are beginning to push up costs of appliances, furniture, clothing and other everyday goods across the economy.”
It’s a trend that Democrats are keenly aware of and prepared to use as one of their chief attacks against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.
“On tariffs, it’s prices,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told us on Monday. “It’s the prices of everyday goods that people are buying.”
“Tariffs are attacks on everyday goods that families are buying,” said DelBene, who helps coordinate messaging among Democratic House candidates. “And the number one issue across the country is lowering costs.”
Trump’s administration has been working to strike trade deals since he announced a sweeping tariff regime in April, dubbing it “Liberation Day.” In July, as the deadline his administration set for trade deals loomed, he signed an executive order extending it to Aug. 1. He then issued letters threatening trading partners, including the European Union, Canada and Brazil, stating that if they do not strike deals by then, their tariffs will increase.
That August deadline is now approaching, and the Trump administration’s messaging has been notably inconsistent.
While Trump said in July that the Aug. 1 deadline was “firm but not 100 percent firm,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS over the weekend that Aug. 1 was a “hard deadline.”
“On Aug. 1, the new tariff rates will come up,” he said.
Yesterday morning, however, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was far less strict.
“We are more concerned with high-quality deals than getting these deals done by Aug. 1,” he told CNBC, adding that the county’s trading partners were told their tariff rates “could” go up to the initial rates Trump pitched in April. “We are proceeding at pace with the negotiations but are not going to rush for the sake of doing deals.”
Asked about this messaging inconsistency, a White House spokesperson directed us to Trump’s social media post this month that said “there will be no change” and “No extensions will be granted” to his Aug. 1 deadline.
All of this, DelBene said, has created a scenario in which Trump’s policy is hurting not only voters at their grocery store, but also the grocery store company itself.
“It’s ongoing uncertainty,” the congresswoman said. “So, say he does do on Aug. 1 whatever he says he’s going to do. Who’s to say he’s not going to back off on Aug. 2 and say, well, no, it’s not going to go into place, only part of it, or I changed it? We’ve seen it every time he’s said anything. He changes his mind. It’s the constant change that is just as damaging.”
Trump is clearly now in both physical and political decline. How does he makes things better? Epstein, tariffs, the big ugly on steroids. It’s hard to see now, and its why we need to keep working as hard as we can, peeps. As hard as we can……
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Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you, and a fight it surely is - Simon
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