President Donald Trump is toying with a "menacing" new strategy to meddle in the midterm elections, but as one former prosecutor wrote for New York Magazine, the idea is ultimately too "dumb" to function.

Earlier this month, Trump phoned in for an interview with right-wing commentator Wayne Allyn Root. At one point in the conversation, Root suggested that Trump ought to declare a "national security emergency for elections," supposedly allowing him to forcibly implement the voting reforms that have stalled in the Senate. Trump did not outright dismiss the idea, saying only that "stranger things have happened."

Writing for New York Magazine's Intelligencer on Tuesday, former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Elie Honig warned that Trump is "not joking" about this plan and should be taken seriously.

"Trump is already hard at work laying a foundation of doubt about election security for 2026, and his history makes plain that he will never accept electoral defeat," Honig explained. "January 6 marked a historic nadir, of course, and the president’s 2020 election denialism continues, exasperatingly, to this day. When Trump lost the Iowa Republican primary in 2016, he alleged that his own party cheated and that a new election should be held because of 'fraud.' Even after he won the presidency in 2016, Trump claimed falsely that 'millions' voted illegally and that he won the popular vote in addition to the electoral count. The man has never lost an election, if you ask him, and never will."

Honig suggested that if Trump goes ahead with this "dubious if inventive" plan to meddle with the midterms, things will "get ugly," but ultimately, it is doomed to fail in court.

"First, it simply doesn’t work that way," Honig wrote. "The president cannot declare an emergency in a vacuum and then do whatever he wants. Rather, he must (1) point to a specific emergency-powers statute passed by Congress, (2) demonstrate that there is in fact an emergency, then (3) take the specific steps authorized by that emergency law. Here, of course, there are no facts to support a claim of a 2026 election emergency and there is no law giving the president emergency powers over elections. He can shout out 'Emergency!' all day long, but there’s no legal or governmental mechanism to actually do anything with it. Root has not discovered some magical workaround."

Honig suggested that Root, through his "jumbled" suggestion, was referring to Trump invoking the National Emergencies Act. This idea is inherently flawed, as this act does not give the president new powers when invoked; it merely allows them to expedite certain processes in the event of an emergency.

"Ultimately, any attempt by Trump to enact Root’s nuthouse plan would be resolved through litigation," Honig concluded. "Criticize the federal courts as you please — I’d likely concur in some part — but the judiciary has been a bulwark against Trump’s abuse of emergency powers. The Supreme Court has recently rejected the president’s invocations of emergency powers to impose global tariffs, to deploy the National Guard, and to deport people under the Alien Enemies Act... Trump’s mad quest to tamper with the 2026 midterms has already caused confusion and concern, and if he keeps down this road, it’ll wreak chaos and maybe worse than that. But it won’t work."

Conservative columnist David French has a warning for Americans who oppose President Donald Trump: The party's recent actions in Missouri foreshadow how they plan on undermining democracy in the upcoming midterm elections.

"It’s only September, and America just barely averted the first constitutional crisis of this year’s midterm elections," The New York Times columnist David French wrote on Sunday. "Hang with me here because this gets a bit complicated. Last September, the Missouri Legislature passed a redistricting bill called H.B. 1. This bill was part of the wave of mid-decade census redistricting initiated after President Trump essentially ordered the state of Texas in July to redistrict to create more Republican-majority congressional districts and diminish Democratic voting power in the state."

French then described how Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, despite being repeatedly ordered by both the US Supreme Court and the Missouri Supreme Court to implement a non-gerrymandered congressional map, was "brazen" in defying those court orders in order to push through a map that would benefit Trump's Republican Party.

"The secretary of state wrote an email directing that the new maps should still be used in November, directly defying the Missouri Supreme Court," French reported. "The court was not amused and immediately scheduled a hearing for Sept. 10 to determine whether to hold Hoskins in contempt of court."

After ultimately and begrudgingly complying with the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling, which the US Supreme Court reinforced, French wrote that Hoskins was found to have "engaged in 'contumacious conduct' (strong words in legalese that mean willfully disobedient or rebellious) — but that he’d 'purged' himself of his contempt through his belated compliance. A fraudulent election was averted, for now."

He concluded, "I wanted to walk through this situation in detail because it’s indicative of exactly how MAGA attempts to fix elections. It uses the complexity of the law (and public ignorance of the law) to obscure the utter brazenness of its defiance."

The Missouri incident is just one of many that indicate Trump is planning on stealing the 2026 midterm elections. Earlier in September, The Washington Post's Patrick Marley and Laura Meckler reported on how Trump is contemplating declaring a national emergency so he can meddle with the results.

"Since Trump returned to office last year, his backers — including Bannon and a lawyer close to Trump — have pressed the president to declare a national emergency that they say would unlock powers for him to rewrite election rules," The Post reported. "The idea resurfaced last month, when Trump appeared on a Real America’s Voice program hosted by Wayne Allyn Root. With election legislation stalled in the Senate, Root pressed Trump to declare an emergency that he said would allow him to limit mail ballots and require people to prove their citizenship to register to vote."

Trump then told Root, "Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.”

"What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, told AlterNet in June. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña concluded. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected. Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

President Donald Trump is struggling to keep Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections — and, for that reason, reports indicate he has plans to steal them even if the courts find Democrats prevailed.

"Since Trump returned to office last year, his backers — including Bannon and a lawyer close to Trump — have pressed the president to declare a national emergency that they say would unlock powers for him to rewrite election rules," The Washington Post's Patrick Marley and Laura Meckler reported on Sunday. "The idea resurfaced last month, when Trump appeared on a Real America’s Voice program hosted by Wayne Allyn Root. With election legislation stalled in the Senate, Root pressed Trump to declare an emergency that he said would allow him to limit mail ballots and require people to prove their citizenship to register to vote."

Trump replied to Root, “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.”

Even though it is likely courts would not uphold Trump abusing his emergency authority, the concern among legal authorities is that he could act in ways that impair the elections' integrity before the courts have a chance to stop him.

"On legal grounds, the theory that the president can claim power over elections by declaring an emergency is laughable, said Hofstra University law professor James Sample," the Post reported. "But Sample is treating it as deadly serious."

He added, "In the weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election, lawyers backing him came up with another theory Sample viewed as preposterous: that Vice President Mike Pence could reject some states’ electoral votes and let Trump claim victory. Pence refused, but the theory set the stage for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Constitution gives states and Congress authority over elections, not the president. A national emergency declaration triggers greater powers under federal law, Sample said, but none of them affect elections."

The journalists concluded, "The risk, he said, isn’t whether the notion would survive in court. It’s that Trump could use it to take sweeping actions while voting is ongoing and before courts can respond."

As Sample told them, “The idea is simply to do first and say, ‘So what?’ So much of Trump 2.0 is to outrun and outpace the courts.”

Indeed, the Post found that pro-Trump local politicians often make comments that suggest, through their words and actions, that they will toe the president's line on refusing to acknowledge elections unless their side wins.

"In 2022, commissioners in New Mexico’s Otero County listened as an attorney insisted they were obligated to certify that year’s midterm results," the Post reported. "This kind of motion was normally a drama-free event. But the three commissioners didn’t see it that way, and they delivered their votes in rapid succession: 'Nay,' 'Nay,' 'Nay.'"

The Post added, "Among other issues, they cited debunked conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines that had circulated in MAGA circles since Trump refused to accept his 2020 defeat."

When an attorney said they were legally required to certify the results, Commissioner Vickie Marquardt laughed and said, "So then what? They’re going to send us to the pokey?”

Speaking to AlterNet in June, Pooja Chaudhuri, Senior Counsel/Deputy Legal Director at Democracy Defenders Fund who specializes in voting rights, expressed alarm at the possibility of Trump stealing the election through a variety of tactics.

“I think there are two things to consider," Chaudhuri told AlterNet. "One is that the election is made up of voters, and so the outcome depends on people turning out to the polls and voting. The problem is ... the chilling effect on voters.”

Chaudhuri continued, “When voters hear that ICE may be deployed to the polls, that mail-in voting rules are changing close to the election, a lot of voters might say, ‘I'm just not going to go out and vote.’ That could happen in many different ways. There are vulnerable communities — people may come from mixed-status families — they're US citizens, but they might decide, "I'm not going to vote." So one aspect is the chilling effect on voters that all of these actions would have.” In addition to that factor, Chaudhuri worried that both gerrymandering and the FBI's recent seizure of Fulton County, GA, could also keep voters away from the polls.

“We're going to see consequences in terms of voters saying, ‘I don't want the FBI to get my personal ballot in the future,’” Chaudhuri concluded. “So, to sum up, I do agree that putting it all together, it does paint an ominous picture.”

President Donald Trump is once again musing about a plot to upend the midterm elections, but as one political scholar revealed to The New Republic, the legal logic behind the idea has a major flaw that means it is likely to be a dud.

During a recent interview, right-wing media personality Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to declare a national emergency as a means to implement the voter ID requirements and other reforms proposed in the SAVE America Act, which has stalled out in the Senate. In response, Trump did not outright dismiss the idea and, in fact, sounded as if he was considering it.

"Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK? I'll leave it at that," the president said.

During the Wednesday edition of The New Republic's Daily Blast podcast, host Greg Sargent talked with Rick Hasen, a legal and political scholar who specializes in election law, and pressed him about the viability of the idea that Trump could implement sweeping election reforms via national emergency. Hasen explained that, for all the presidential powers that such a declaration could unlock, it would give Trump no specific powers over elections. Elections, more generally, are also explicitly left for states to manage by the Constitution.

"So there are two reasons why declaring a national emergency doesn't make Donald Trump the election czar in this country," Hasen explained. "The first is, there's no federal statute. Of all those 50 statutes that deal with national emergencies, none prescribe any powers to the president over elections. The other reason is even more fundamental. The Constitution, the United States Constitution, does not give the president power over elections. We have a decentralized election system.”

He continued: "Most of our election rules come from states, from state legislatures passing statutes. There's a part of the Constitution — it's in Article 1, Section 4 — it says that Congress can override state rules on elections. That's when Congress, for example, requires 'motor voter'; people can register to vote at motor vehicle departments. But Congress has to do that with legislation. The president has no role to play. All that the president can do is take care to assure that the laws that Congress passes are being faithfully executed.”

Hasen also touched on Root's suggestion that this national emergency idea could work if implemented next month, as it would require both chambers of Congress to vote to undo it, and there would not be enough time before the midterms to do so. The analyst explained that, again, this notion is inherently flawed, as no such declaration can give Trump such election powers in the first place.

With the United States' 2026 midterm elections less than three months away, GOP strategists are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's weak approval ratings and the strong possibility that Democrats will retake the U.S. House of Representatives — although they are hoping that Republicans will at least hold the U.S. Senate. And CNN's Jake Tapper, in a thread posted on X, formerly Twitter, early Tuesday afternoon, August 11, warned that Trump is quite capable of doing something to interfere with the midterms.

Tapper, in his X thread, was responding to a video of Wayne Allyn Root of the pro-MAGA Real America's Voice declaring, "You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. If you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship and a limit to mail ballots."

Trump replied, "Let me just say stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at that."

Tapper tweeted, "There is zero reason to not take Trump at his word that he and his team are planning something alarming to disrupt the midterms and beyond."

The CNN host also posted, "We've been covering this for months. Maybe it would sound implausible in a pre-Jan 6 2021 world. But now that we know what's possible, warning signs are there. Just look at what we know about. Now ask yourself what we don't."

Tapper isn't the only one who is warning about the possibility of Trump finding ways to interfere with the midterms if they aren't going his way. Former CIA Director John Brennan, during a Tuesday appearance on MS NOW, commented that he "wouldn't be surprised" if Trump tried to interfere with the midterms election results. Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett, the same day, told MS NOW's Alicia Menendez that Trump is already "actively engaged in an election theft."

PBS News' Liz Landers, also weighed in on Root's comments — tweeting, "I asked the president about this back in February when we reported on a proposed executive order that was floated by his allies outside the White House to declare a national emergency regarding elections."

Chronicles Magazine's Pedro L. Gonzales, the same day on X, warned, "I don't know if he will go through with it, but Trump absolutely wants to declare a national security emergency to sabotage the midterms in favor of the GOP. And there's no reason to believe that any major conservative institution from Heritage to Claremont would oppose it. The new right has lost the plot and does not recognize limits on what can be done to, in their delusional minds, 'save' the country, even and especially if that means blowing it up."

Gonzales was referring to the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that was founded in 1979 and has taken a decidedly MAGA turn in recent years.

While the office of former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists he is merely recovering from a fall at a hospital, conspiracy theories continue abound that the continuously-absent Kentuckian seen carried away on a stretcher is actually in a much worse state.

“Cornyn says ‘we need some transparency’ from McConnell,” reported NBC News congressional correspondent Brennan Leach, referring to an interview with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). “Says he wishes McConnell had updated about his health ‘earlier.’ ‘I think it would have resolved a lot of questions.’” Cornyn also said he wants to see toxicology reports on the unexpected death of a different Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“Given where he was and the sorts of things he was advocating for, I think we just ought to resolve all those questions by seeing what the toxicology reports show," Cornyn said about Graham.

Earlier on Monday, Cornyn told NOTUS reporter Igor Bobic that he believes Trump's chief foreign policy adviser, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, disclaimed any interest from the United States in charging for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, even though Trump has reneged on that.

"I recall Secretary Rubio saying that would not be proper for any country. Am I wrong?” Cornyn said.

When it comes to Cornyn's critique of McConnell, he is not alone among prominent conservatives. A different Republican senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, offered a bold argument about what he thinks is going on with McConnell.

“I just heard from some other source that was an older photo, so I really don’t know,” Johnson told Fox News, later emphasizing that “it was a rumor. Just discount it[.] I have no idea. I just, I heard that. I just heard it. So just assume it's false.”

Speaking with conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, The Daily Wire's Michael J. Knowles admitted that he is “skeptical” about the McConnell team’s claims that he is still alive and conscious.

“I don't know if I buy the excuses[.] I'm pretty skeptical…" Knowles said. Another right-winger, anarchist podcaster Michael Malice, instead decided to joke about McConnell’s health by comparing him to former Rep. Gabrielle Gifford (D-AZ), who was left brain damaged after an assassination attempt in 2011.

“Mitch McConnell is so brain damaged that it's giving Mark Kelly an erection,” Malice said. Right-wing radio host Wayne Allyn Root by contrast humored the conspiracy theories.

“So, is Mitch McConnell photo real, or an old photo being recycled to make us think he's alive & recovering?” Root wrote. “I have no idea. But I hear many are questioning the photo. The guy has been half dead for years...blank stare...then he almost dies in his home...needs CPR...now his wife tries to convince us he's fine.”

He added, “Really? More gaslighting? And what was she doing running to China? Should have been by his bedside. Or maybe at White House with Trump. Why China? Is that who owns her?”

Perhaps to counter the right-wing conspiracy theories, Rep. Jack Kimble (R-CA) asked people to give the Kentuckian his space.

“I posted a picture yesterday from the McConnell campaign that a lot of people claimed was AI and demanded proof it was real,” Kimble said. “Fortunately, Mitch’s team was kind enough to provide proof, but this has to stop. Let the poor man recover.”

At least one prominent Democrat, former Vice President Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis, made it clear that he thinks his party should hold Republicans’ feet to the fire over McConnell, citing Kentucky’s own governor as an example.

“Kentucky Republicans have tried to take away Governor Beshear’s ability to appoint Mitch McConnell’s replacement,” Nellis wrote. “Beshear says he’s considering ignoring the state legislature and appointing a Democrat to replace McConnell anyway. He believes the law is unconstitutional, that Kentucky’s constitution gives him the authority, and that he’s prepared to test the GOP on it.”

He added, ‘This is exactly how Democrats should be fighting.”

President Donald Trump has already said that he is considering seizing ballot boxes during the 2026 midterm elections, most recently during a radio appearance with far right host Wayne Allyn Root. Even though his attempts to gain access to state voter rolls have overwhelmingly lost in court, there are still concerns that his efforts could spread chaos and sow doubt as to the legitimacy of the results if Democrats win key races.

Now a former Trump official is getting into specifics about exactly what Trump plans on doing — and who should be worried.

“If you overlay the refusers (the states that declined to hand over their voter rolls to Trump’s DOJ) with this fall’s top battleground races, then thirteen light up as high risk: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin,” wrote former Trump Homeland Security adviser Miles Taylor on Tuesday. “These states are home to some of the most important House and Senate toss-up races. Depending on how the results look after Election Day, the Fulton scheme could hypothetically be carried out in any of them.”

He added, “These thirteen are the likeliest targets, but they aren’t the only states at risk. There are battleground states that actually cooperated with the DOJ’s voter roll demands — including Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Florida, Nebraska, and North Carolina — that could be hit, too. Here the pretext would simply be flipped around: We ran the voter lists they gave us, and we found anomalies. So we have to go investigate.”

Even though Trump’s ballot box seizures are unlikely to hold up in court, Taylor added, he could still tamper with the results. Similarly, all it takes is a single magistrate judge to grant Trump access to the boxes in the first place, which is enough to create distrust in the result.

“In the end, Trump’s team doesn’t care about losing in court,” Taylor wrote. “All they care about is fighting the battle in the court of public opinion for two months — between the election on November 3, 2026, and January 3, 2027, when the next Congress is supposed to be seated. That’s long enough to diminish confidence in the results and to create enough justification for Speaker Mike Johnson to secure support from his caucus not to hand over power. Indeed, under the law, the House majority has the final say over who gets seated in the chamber.”

Taylor offered specific suggestions as to what advocates of democracy can do to stop this from happening.

“Attorneys general should consider sending public letters to the chief judges of every federal district in their states putting them on alert,” Taylor said. “The letters should ask that any warrant application having to do with ballots or election equipment be heavily scrutinized and challenged, or elevated to a district judge. These frontline judges are the last check before the FBI trucks roll in, and after what happened in Fulton County, all of them need to know that they might be served bogus claims from the FBI for seizing America’s votes.”

He added, “In the meantime, every at-risk state must have their emergency motions pre-drafted and ready to file within hours (fortunately, many already do). Secretaries of state should harden the chain of custody for ballots so an FBI seizure can’t feed on ambiguity. Local prosecutors must know their election-interference statutes front and back and be ready to prosecute lawbreaking feds (at DEFIANCE.org, we’ve helped many of them gear up to do precisely that). Finally, states should keep coordinating as a bloc, pre-bunking the ‘uncertainty’ narrative before the Trump administration decides which races it wants to contest.”

Speaking to AlterNet about this issue, Rutgers University political scientist Saladin Ambar — who specializes in the history of race in America — elucidated how the president is likely to play on racist sentiments to validate his actions with the public.

“Without any involvement of, or connection to race, Trump, I think, because of his ego, his obsessive will to power, is more than capable of finding other rationales and/or building blocks to make a ‘case for a national emergency’ to call off or delay the midterm,” Ambar told AlterNet.

He added, “What I will say is that going back, frankly, to our Declaration of Independence, which accused King George of fomenting insurrection and by that [Thomas] Jefferson was alluding to British support for some African Americans who were obviously enslaved to join the rebellion and to take up arms against the colonies at the time, going all the way back to the Declaration, presidents have and/or statesmen in America have used the fear of black uprisings, racial uprisings, riots and so forth as a pretext for declaring states of emergency for engaging in all kinds of unconstitutional acts, perhaps the greatest in the last 100 years being [Franklin Roosevelt's] removal of Japanese Americans to imprisonment camps.”

Speaking to AlterNet in June, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at the nonprofit Common Cause Dan Vicuña provided more detail about the various ways Trump could steal the midterms.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña explained to AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He concluded, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

President Donald Trump came to Las Vegas Thursday to proclaim working Nevadans are better off thanks to his policies, particularly a provision of his giant tax and spending bill that provides a tax deduction to workers earning tipped incomes.

But the Trump economy, which has been rocked by his war with Iran and its accompanying $5 a gallon gas, wasn’t impressive enough that Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo wanted to bask in it Thursday.

The vulnerable Republican governor that Nevada Democrats have dubbed Trump’s “cheerleader-in-chief” did not appear alongside him at the public event, which was held at AC Hotel in Symphony Park.

Lombardo’s campaign staff told the Nevada Current the governor would be meeting Trump separately.

In a social media post, Lombardo thanked Trump “for visiting Nevada” and “for delivering your historic promise of no tax on tips or overtime.”

The statement continued, “I look forward to meeting with President Trump during his visit, where I hope to continue our discussions on lowering costs for Nevada families, releasing more federal land for attainable housing, advancing critical solar projects, and restoring the full gaming loss deduction.”

Not appearing publicly with the president could be seen as an attempt by Lombardo to distance himself from the president claiming economic victory when the average gas price is $5 a gallon and the state’s hallmark gaming industry is grappling with a slowdown in tourism.

Nevada Democrats have long attempted to tie Lombardo to Trump’s economic policies.

Lombardo’s campaign did not respond to a request by the Current to elaborate on the decision to not appear publicly alongside the president or address how his absence in public might be interpreted.

For his part, Trump did not mention or allude to Lombardo during his remarks, which largely focused on tax policy changes made through the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Trump at one point spoke about “fake inflation” tied to fuel and oil prices.

He added, “Let’s see what happens over the next week or so. I think you’re going to be very impressed… and if you are—vote for the Republicans in the midterm!”

Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony, Clark County Commissioner April Becker, and Assemblymember Lisa Cole all appeared on stage with Trump. Republicans in attendance included Assemblymembers Danielle Gallant and Jill Dickman, Chairman of the Nevada Republican Party and fake elector Michael McDonald, and Wayne Allyn Root.

State Sen. Carrie Buck and wealthy video game composer Marty O’Donnell also attended. The pair have been endorsed by Trump in their congressional races.

Trump endorsed Lombardo for re-election back in November 2025 — a full year before Election Day.

Lombardo did appear with Trump when he last visited Nevada, in January 2025, shortly after Trump’s inauguration.

Tax deduction on tipped income

The stated purpose of Trump’s visit was to herald his “no tax on tips” policy that was enacted in his giant tax and spending bill. Announced by Trump during a June 2024 rally at Sunset Park in Las Vegas, the proposal as enacted in 2025 is actually a tax deduction of up to $25,000 from taxable income.

According to the U.S. Treasury, more than six million Americans have claimed the deduction, and the average deduction —$7,100 — was less than a third of the maximum allowed under the law.

According to IRS data, the average tax refund for all taxpayers as of the week ending April 3 was $3,462, compared to $3,116 on the same date in 2025. That’s an 11% increase, or an additional $346.

Similarly, under “no tax on Social Security,” Social Security income is still taxed, but some recipients are eligible to deduct $6,000 from their taxable income. And under “no tax on overtime,” workers may deduct up to $12,500 of overtime pay.

Tipped workers, however, are “vulnerable to other policy changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill that will offset the benefit of tips deduction,” according to the Center of American Progress (CAP).

For the majority of tipped worker occupations “30 percent of workers’ health care was covered by Medicaid or Affordable Care Act subsidies, and 15 percent of workers were in a household receiving SNAP,” the CAP report said, concluding that many tipped workers will “disproportionately suffer financial losses” due to program cuts and that the “net result is that tipped workers are unlikely to experience significant gains” from Trump’s OBBB.

However, the richest Americans make out well from Trump’s bill, which “delivers $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent while cutting more than $1.1 trillion from SNAP, Medicaid and other health programs used by the poorest Americans,” CAP said.

Iran War ‘going swimmingly’

A majority of Americans blame rising gasoline prices on Trump’s Iran war.

In Las Vegas Thursday, Trump said the war “is going swimmingly,”, and that “we can do whatever we want. And it should be ending pretty soon. It was perfect. It was perfect.”

One of the costs of the war—behind the 400 American casualties and 1,701 Iranian civilians killed (254 of which were children, according to U.S. based human rights activist group HRANA)— is gas prices.

Trump’s call for calm towards the pump prices was defended by his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who shifted blame of increased gas prices away from the war in Iran to California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a press scrum before the roundtable.

The rest of the country, Bessent said, is not feeling the same level of pain as Nevadans are due to the state being tied to the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom.”

Nevada is captive to the West Coast gasoline market, where price of gas tends to be roughly 20% higher than the rest of the country. Gas prices have spiked to more than $4 a gallon nationally, which has little if anything to do with California.

“Prices are coming down, and, I think, this summer we are going to see prices get back to normal,” Bessent said.

That assessment differs from one made by Trump’s Department of Energy. In a report earlier this month, the U.S. Energy Information Agency projected that due to the disruptions created by the Iran war, gasoline would remain high not only through the rest of this year, but into 2027.