barbara mcquade

President Donald Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempts to silence Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.) are a threat to free speech in America, according to a retired lieutenant colonel.

“The defense secretary first targeted Kelly because he was one of the Senate Democrats who recorded a video reminding service members that they can disobey unlawful orders, and Hegseth declared that he was reducing Kelly’s rank and military pension,” wrote Lt. Col. Rachel E. VanLandingham (ret.) for MS NOW on Sunday. “However, Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily enjoined the Pentagon from doing so.”

Despite Leon’s rejection of Trump’s and Hegseth’s efforts, VanLandingham described how “alarmingly, Hegseth’s new attempt to mute his nemesis Kelly is part of the Pentagon’s larger effort to muzzle all of us military retirees, especially those with legislative power.” Citing Hegseth’s recent statement that Kelly was “blabbing on TV” about a supposedly “classified” Pentagon briefing and vowing that the Defense Department will “review” whether he violated “his oath… again?” VanLandingham contextualized this statement as part of the same censorious reasoning used in Trump’s appeal of Leon’s ruling.

“During its appeal of Judge Leon’s ruling, which came days before the defense secretary posted about Kelly on X, the government shockingly argued that all military retirees have to essentially give up some of our free speech rights in order to retain the benefits we earned during long and honorable careers on active duty,” VanLandingham wrote. “Furthermore, the government argued that Kelly, instead of his speech being given even more protection due to his oversight role as a senator, should have fewer speech rights because his impact on the military could be greater.”

She added, “This is quite dangerous. If the Pentagon can shut down a sitting senator, then it can shut down all of us.”

She also noted the irony of Hegseth accusing Kelly of being careless with classified information, given his own central role last year in the so-called “Signal Gate” scandal.

“The ‘Signal Gate’ defense secretary, whose own inspector general found that he mishandled classified information, should not be insinuating that Kelly’s public comments, such as ‘we’ve expended a lot of munitions,’ violated any oath Kelly made, whether as a military officer or his Senate oath of office (senators do not take secrecy oaths, nor do they have security clearances),” VanLandingham wrote. “But Hegseth continues to reveal himself as a Pentagon chief more concerned with picking frivolous fights with a military-seasoned senator than making the case to the American people for war in Iran.”

She added, “Clearly, the Trump administration, and Hegseth in particular, does not want its military narratives challenged by anyone who has the most credibility and experience to do so.”

Kelly himself speculated last week that Trump and Hegseth are targeting him because they do not want veterans, who are well-versed in military strategy, to point out the problems in how he is waging America’s war against Iran.

“I think it comes down to the fact that he doesn't want to be held accountable,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) told MS NOW’s Jake Tapper. “They've expended an enormous amount of munitions, and I think the only investigation we need — the one we need right now — is: after 15,000 strikes, all we got out of this is 13 dead Americans. We have the Strait of Hormuz closed, gas prices in Arizona are $4.80 a gallon and seem to be heading up.”

Kelly concluded, “And we have a Secretary of Defense who is not only ill-prepared, unprepared, and unqualified for this job — he doesn't want to be held accountable for the actions.”

In yet another sign that President Donald Trump is losing support from many in his own base, a three-time Trump voter called C-SPAN on Saturday to say that he regretted voting for a man he described as America’s “worst” president.

“It’s hard for me to say this,” the caller, who only identified himself as Thomas from Hawaii, explained. “I wanted to believe Trump was the real deal for a long time.”

Thomas added that, although he had doubts because of Trump’s controversial business history, he set aside those reservations and voted for him anyway.

“Now I regret my support for him and I should’ve known better,” Thomas explained. Describing Trump as “a con man, a liar” and someone who does not “keep his promises,” Thomas added that “he’s in office all for himself and he doesn’t even try to hide his corruption anymore.”

“He’s the worst president we’ve ever had and he’s the most corrupt president we’ve ever had,” Thomas concluded. “I know it’s hard, it took me a while to be able to say that. Very difficult when you commit yourself to believing in somebody.”

While Thomas is not alone among Trump supporters who are struggling economically because of the president’s tariffs and war against Iran, others who have spoken to the press acknowledge that his policies have hurt them but insist that they were still right to vote for him.

“In a February earnings call, John Deere, the world’s largest maker of farm equipment, said it absorbed $600m in tariff-related costs in 2025 and expected that to double this year,” The Economist reported earlier this month. “Dave Peters, a semi-retired corn farmer near Harlan, Iowa, reckons farmers now need four times as many acres to make the same profit. Watching his son and granddaughter ride a tractor across his field, he reflects on how much it takes to get a farm going: ‘It’s costing half a million just out the door.’”

Peters was not alone.

“Preston Jimmerson, a cotton and pecan farmer in Georgia, reckons chemicals account for about 30% of his input costs,” The Economist added. “He plans to cut back by 15%, but fears this will hurt yields. ‘Taking the fertiliser away from a crop is like taking oxygen from a human,’ he says.”

Yet despite their reservations, The Economist added that Trump’s rural supporters continue to support him, even as rising gas, fertilizer and food prices are making it harder for them to get by. Many believe Trump will offer them a bailout to help them in their economic situations.

Similarly, in an NPR report last week, Mississippi Delta corn grower Sledge Taylor — a self-described lifelong Trump supporter — complained that his policies are pushing farmers “to the brink” despite his $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program, which Taylor described as inadequate to help farmers.

“If somebody took $100 out of my pocket and then turned around and gave me $20 back, patted me on the back and said they were my friend, I'm not really sure I would agree," Taylor argued.

In theory, American public officials are supposed to uphold the law, but the editor-in-chief of a legal news website argued on Sunday that President Donald Trump has made breaking the law pay — that is, at least, if you support him.

“[Trump] was suing them for $10 billion for an agent that leaked his tax returns a few years back,” The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell told Lawfare’s Ben Wittes on Sunday. “And this was an incredible thing, because it meant that taxpayers would be on the hook for $10 billion, and the DOJ would be deciding on it. It would basically be like Trump is on both sides of the equation — right? He's putting pressure on the DOJ, and Trump was the person making the claim. Insane. Insane.”

Yet Longwell added that, as a way to skirt a judge who wanted both sides to give her until May 20 to review the legality of having a sitting president order his own Justice Department and IRS to pay him billions of dollars, Trump is reportedly considering a settlement of $1.7 billion to go to people he claims were victims of weaponization of the government — specifically, the terrorists who attempted a coup on January 6, 2021.

“The important thing to keep in mind is that there is nothing normal or okay or non-corrupt about any of this,” Wittes told Longwell. “This is infinite self-dealing. And it's worth winding the clock back a little to the beginning of the administration.”

Wittes added that one of Trump’s first acts as president was to pardon 1,500 felons, including many who had tried to help him overturn the 2020 presidential election and others who helped him politically in different ways.

“In the last several weeks, there has been an additional layer, which is starting to pay people off,” Wittes added. “And this, I think, started with Mike Flynn and Carter Page, both of whom got very big settlements. In Flynn's case, it's quite amazing — it's a case that he pled guilty to, but then was of course pardoned out of — and he sues the government and now gets a million-dollar payment. And so I think you have to see this in the context of that larger pattern of creating impunity for your friends, up to and including the shock troops who will do riots for you.”

Longwell added that “many of them have now gone on to commit additional crimes — many of them sex crimes or sexual assault crimes.” Wittes confirmed this, then added that “it looks bad for me to be demanding a $10 billion payout to myself, so what I'm going to do instead is create a pool with which to give money to the shock troops. And rather than have a $1 million settlement for Mike Flynn and a $1 million settlement for Carter Page at a time — because each one of those produces news stories that are ugly — I'm just going to have a large pool of government money to dish out to friends. And even while I prosecute political enemies, be they James Comey or Kilmar Abrego García or Letitia James, I'm going to have a pot of money to reward friends. And I'm only going to take the political hit for doing it once, because the amounts of money will be smaller, because these are not big names — they're just January 6th perps.”

Trump has promised that, if he receives the settlement, he will either give it to charity or to these supposed victims of government aggression, although he admits that at least some of the $1.7 billion will go to institutions directly connected with the president. He has promised not to pocket any of it, but has provided no documents to ensure this does not happen.

Trump’s lawsuit is based on the fact that a contractor working with the IRS leaked his tax returns in 2019, which showed he had paid very little in federal income taxes and suffered a string of undisclosed financial failures. Additionally, Trump sued the government for $230 million for the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate to find the documents he illegally took with him after his presidency ended, as well as for the investigation into his ties to Russia.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the conservative majority’s opinions in two of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in recent years: 1) Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—overruling Roe v. Wade; and 2) Louisiana v. Callais—neutering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both cases, Alito recited and relied on asserted “facts” that did not exist.

Alito Rewrote History to Ban Abortion

Ohio State University Prof. Treva Lindsey observed, “From the nation’s founding through the early 1800s, pre-quickening abortions—that is, abortions before a pregnant person feels fetal movement—were fairly common and even advertised.”

But Alito claimed incorrectly in Dobbs that “no common-law case or authority... remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy” and, in the United States specifically, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”

Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan called Alito “embarrassingly” wrong. There was no such “unbroken tradition,” and historical evidence undermined his claim. But the conservative majority got its desired outcome.

Roberts Began the Assault on the Voting Rights Act

In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority began undermining the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. Prior to that decision, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal approval before making changes to election rules—a process known as preclearance. The state or locality had to prove that any changes would not disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities.

Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.

Roberts argued that the elections of 2008 and 2012—when there was no difference in voter participation rates between Black and white voters (i.e., no “turnout gap”)—meant that the Voting Rights Act had done its job and preclearance could be suspended.

Even at the time, Roberts’ reasoning was suspect. The elections of 2008 and 2012 were anomalies—not the end of the turnout gap—because Barack Obama’s candidacy had driven up Black turnout.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted another flaw in Roberts’ logic: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Justice Ginsburg was correct, and now democracy is getting wet. A 2024 study concluded:

The formerly covered states [subject to preclearance] have large nonwhite populations and large turnout gaps, leading to some of the largest statewide turnout distortions in the nation. Put differently, a decade after Shelby County, the turnout gap continues to have a disproportionate impact in precisely the parts of the country that were once covered due to their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices.

Stated simply, “[S]ince 2013, the racial turnout gap around the nation has exploded.”

Alito Finished the Job

Justice Alito ignored the exploding turnout gap in striking the fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2026. For decades previously, the court had ruled repeatedly that a state could not undermine minority voters’ power to choose their desired candidates by drawing legislative districts that dispersed such voters across majority-white districts. Instead, states had to create “majority-minority” districts, thereby assuring minority representation in statehouses and Congress.

In its amicus brief to the court in the Callais case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored the trend after 2013 and argued that majority-minority districts were no longer necessary because “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Shelby County, 570 U.S. at 547-548.” To emphasize the point, the DOJ observed, “Since 2004, black voters have turned out at higher rates than white voters in two of five presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.

Alito parroted the DOJ’s sophistry: “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

As election experts have observed, Alito’s claim that Black and white turnout reached parity in 2 of the 5 most recent presidential elections “represents egregious cherry-picking. [H]e was not referring to recent elections, but to those in 2008 and 2012—the years that Barack Obama ran for president. In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows exactly the opposite. The indisputable fact is the racial turnout gap is widening, and the Roberts Court is partially responsible [because of its Shelby County decision].”

Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.

Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.

President Donald Trump and his administration are urging Americans to turn to Christianity to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, and part of that involves submitting public prayers to his so-called Freedom 250 prayer wall. Yet according to a recent report, the prayers reveal that American Christian nationalists do not feel there is much to celebrate… but they remain steadfastly loyal to Trump’s agenda.

“Many of the prayers are deeply personal,” wrote Religion News’ Karen E. Park. “For example: ‘I am believing God for a new vehicle, furniture and beds for our place. Thank you.’ –Texas, May 13. Or ‘Pray for daughter in law to get help for bipolar schizophrenia. . .My heart aches, I know God is in control.’ — California, May 12. Another person says they are going through a ‘bad divorce,’ but knows ‘God is my lawyer and he will make things right.’”

These prayers, which show Americans dealing with problems exacerbated by poverty — affordability issues involving health care, transportation, housing and legal services — are juxtaposed with faith in Trump’s Christian Nationalist agenda.

“But in Prayer Wall sections dedicated to ‘Country’ and ‘Military,’ the devotional language of Christian nationalism emerges clearly,” Park reported. “Here is one example from Missouri, May 11: ‘Lord Jesus, King Jesus dawn our nation from the festering pit we have fallen into the past decades. Destroy our enemies physical and spiritual. Allow us to be the city on the hill you desired us to be. Allow us to discipline ourselves and other nations for your glory alone. We love you and rededicate ourselves now in your holy mighty name Jesus, Amen.’”

On another occasion, someone prayed, “Lord Jesus please hear our cries for this nation and the world. You and only You can truly fight this battle we are in. This spitiritual [sic] battle against evil. I pray for our leaders to seek You in all they do, trust You and Your plans for this nation. That You would protect them and their families as they believe and trust in You. I pray Psalm 91 over this nation, especially verse 11: ‘For He will give His angels orders concerning you, to protect you in all your ways.'”

As Park observed, the hundreds and hundreds of prayers show an America caught between the pain of deteriorating quality of life in Trump’s America and their ongoing loyalty to the president and his agenda.

“The fusion of the theological and the political has long been part of American religious life. Historians have noted the persistence of providential language in American politics from the Puritans onward — the belief that the U.S. possesses a unique divine mission and stands in a covenantal relationship with God,” Park wrote. “But the prayers collected on the Freedom 250 site reveal how intensely devotional that language remains for many Americans. The nation is imagined as more than a political entity, but as a spiritual project whose fortunes rise and fall according to both divine favor and satanic power.”

He added, “The language of spiritual warfare appears repeatedly on the prayer wall, across all categories. Participants pray against ‘darkness,’ ‘evil forces’ and enemies ‘physical and spiritual,’ as well as attacks on Christianity itself. In many cases, the boundaries between political opponents, cultural change, demonic influence and national decline are impossible to separate.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey discovered that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not identify as Christian nationalists. While only 10 percent identify as Christian nationalists, 31 percent who Christian nationalism and 59 percent have no opinion on it. Similarly only 13 percent want the separation between church and state weakened while 54 percent support it and 32 percent have no opinion. Overall, it does not appear Trump’s push for more Christianity in government has been effective.

“It hasn’t resulted in major shifts in the landscape,” Public Religion Research Institute’s president and founder Robert P. Jones explained. “In other words, they’re not pulling people into that worldview. They’re basically just appealing to a small subset of Americans who already hold those views and who just happen to be their political base.”

President Donald Trump’s presidency is so weird, it is causing ripple effects that is making America as a whole much more weird.

Beginning with an anecdote about right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson claiming to have been physically attacked in his bed by a demon and FEMA Office of Response and Recovery head Gregg Phillips, The New York Times went on to describe how Trump has created a culture that brings out the downright weirdness in American life.

“The backdrop of all this is the peculiar atmosphere of contemporary public life — claustrophobic, faintly hallucinatory, where what we know as real feels like sand shifting under our feet,” wrote The New York Times’ Katya Ungerman on Sunday. “The first lady, Melania Trump, walks a humanoid robot down a White House red carpet and later tells the audience to imagine a future humanoid educator named ‘Plato.’ A former intelligence official testifies under oath that the United States has been secretly retrieving and reverse-engineering crashed U.F.O.s for decades, and that nonhuman ‘biologics’ have been recovered.”

Ungerman added, “Demonic vexation, teleportation, increased interest in religious practice — those phenomena are all signs that life feels, to many, increasingly charged with unseen forces. You might say it has been re-enchanted. There’s a widespread feeling that the material explanation is no longer sufficient; that something uncanny, maybe even numinous, is diffused into the texture of ordinary American life.”

A recent survey by Pew discovered that three out of ten Americans in 2024 consulted astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. More Americans than ever use alternative medicinal practices like energy healing during pregnancy.

“In 1917, the sociologist Max Weber argued that a long process of rationalization, culminating in modernity, was eliminating ‘mysterious incalculable forces’ from the world,” Ungerman explained. “Science would explain; technology would master; and magic would disappear. For a brief stretch of modern history, he seemed right: The enduring human instinct to believe in the otherworldly declined as empiricism, common evidentiary standards and, for the shortest period of all, mass media produced a rough consensus about what was real. Now we seem to be sliding back.”

Ungerman attributed this change to people being overwhelmed by the information available to them in the era of digital technology, AI making it easier for people to doctor evidence and people losing faith in institutions like governments, churches, businesses and established scientists.

“In a Rolling Stone article about A.I.-induced spiritual crises, the writer Miles Klee spoke to an unnamed source whose partner had messaged extensively with ChatGPT,” Ungerman wrote, describing a piece about a serial stalker and supporter of the so-called “manosphere” who ultimately pleaded guilty to 11 counts of various stalking-related charges. “Eventually, the partner came [to] believe he was God. He had an ecstatic experience with a product that has a stake in keeping him engaged; his story might have ended differently inside a spiritual community, where someone could have told him to slow down.”

He added, “The world we’re moving into will look more like the one before the modern era than like the one we grew up in. It will be saturated with the supernatural. Everyone will believe in something. The question is in what.”

There are signs, though, that Americans are rejecting the “weird” fixations of Trump and his movement. Earlier this month Semafor journalists Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett reported that "Trump is still facing questions from within the GOP about how determined he is to keep control of Congress, as he seeks longer-term, legacy-defining foreign policy achievements amid declining approval ratings."

Even though most Americans are opposed to Trump’s primary focuses, including building a White House ballroom and promoting AI, a Republican insider told Semafor that Trump is “clearly not” motivated about winning the midterms and said “his mission goes so far beyond one election cycle or one midterm.”

President Donald Trump may have just sold out one of America’s most stalwart allies, according to a recent report.

“Some close advisers to President Trump fear the biggest substantive result of the China summit is heightened danger that Chinese President Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan in the next five years, potentially choking off the chips used to power AI to U.S. companies,” Axios reported on Sunday. A presidential adviser added that Trump, who reportedly enjoyed the pageantry showered on him by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, has been persuaded by Xi to see China as America’s equal rather than a rival — and to therefore give it wider latitude.

Xi is "trying to move China to a new position where he's saying: 'We're not a rising power. We're your equal. And Taiwan is mine,’” the adviser reported. "This trip signaled a much higher likelihood that Taiwan will be on the table in the next five years.”

The adviser argued that this could damage the American economy, adding that "there's no way we can be ready economically — the chips supply chain won't be anywhere close to self-sufficiency. For CEOs, and really the economy as a whole, there's no more pressing issue than the supply chain for chips."

Despite these criticisms, Trump was praised from several CEOs for his wars against Venezuela and Iran, who argue that he is opening up their markets, and believe that his negotiations with China will achieve similar results.

This is not the first report to indicate that Trump’s meeting with China led to him being manipulated by the Chinese government. Derek Grossman, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the China-Global South Project, pointed to American policy in Southeast Asia and its flailing war against Iran as evidence of this.

Per the former, he observed that China has sent prominent state representatives including Xi to visit Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia and Vietnam, while Trump only made a single visit to Malaysia in his second term while Secretary of State Marco Rubio failed to visit any of them.

“Why does this matter?” Grossman said. “Because showing up in Southeast Asia is more than half the battle when it comes to waging and winning the competition for influence. Washington, thus far, has shown relative disinterest in sustained high-level engagement, undermining its ability to compete with China. Without routine engagement, Southeast Asian countries become uneasy about U.S. commitments and tend to look elsewhere — such as to China — to fulfill their needs.”

Fortune’s Steve H. Hanke made a similar argument earlier this month.

“While Washington raises walls, Beijing is opening doors,” Hanke argued. “On May 1, Chinese tariffs on imports from all 53 African countries with which China holds diplomatic relations plunged to zero. Europeans now enter China visa-free. India’s Modi government is fast-tracking minority Chinese investment in seven strategic sectors. China’s DeepSeek AI went open source, giving the world’s developers free access to a frontier Chinese AI model. While Washington is tightening export controls on America’s AI enterprise, China is open for business.”

President Donald Trump is struggling to keep House Republicans in line on key policy items, according to a recent report.

“House GOP leaders, for instance, are moving forward with an amended, bipartisan version of a Senate-passed housing bill this week, despite pressure from Trump to take up the Senate measure with no changes,” The Hill’s Sudiksha Kochi wrote on Sunday.

“Moderates have also balked at the administration’s proposal to provide $1 billion in security funding for a new White House ballroom and other Secret Service priorities, warning they would be reluctant to support an immigration enforcement funding package with such a provision attached to it.”

House Republicans are also standing up to Trump on issues like the president’s demand for a “clean” 18-month extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless spying powers, with the House Freedom Caucus insisting on a warrant requirement and a permanent ban on a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Similarly Speaker Mike Johnson also delayed placing a Senate-passed bipartisan bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for multiple weeks, despite White House pressure, because he wanted a budget blueprint for an unrelated bill.

“We are a separate branch of government,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) explained to The Hill. “We should have different opinions and … we have a different process, and we have to bring together a lot of different minds to come up with a solution.”

A member of the House Freedom Caucus, which is far-right, expressed a similar view.

"He’s making the right decisions, and I think Americans appreciate that,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) “Now, is it close on votes? I mean, when you’ve got one body that has a one or two-seat majority, yeah, you have to get almost total unanimous votes, which is hard to get. So no, he’s not losing influence.”

Norman continued, “There are 435 members. 100 senators. You’re going to have some differences of opinion. That’s a good thing. That’s how democracy works.”

Despite Trump’s ongoing struggles with members of his own party in the House, many of their constituents remain loyal to the president. Speaking with Reuters earlier this month, Trump supporter Tonyah Bruyette described her inability to pay for groceries by saying that “we're putting it in the tank rather than on our table." Yet she still claimed that Trump “hears us” and “is fighting for us.” Similarly Trump supporter Lexys Siebrands told Reuters regarding the Iran war that “something was going to happen eventually, whether it was Iran doing something to us or us doing it to them."

She added, “It's just where we are with this war. People just have to give it time." When asked if she would ever stop supporting Trump, she replied “No. I’m all on board.”

“A recent Economist/YouGov poll suggests such troubles are now commonplace,” wrote The Economist earlier this month, describing farmers who struggle to make ends meet due to Trump’s tariff and war against Iran. “27 percent of rural respondents said it would be ‘impossible’ to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill. It would be easy to blame Mr Trump for the downturn. After all, he campaigned on promises to bring down prices and revive the heartland. But rural America does not.”

The article continued, “The president’s favourability rating is higher among rural voters than among any other group in our survey. Most still think he is doing a good job. In interview after interview with The Economist, farmers said they trust the administration—but that they need help to recoup the losses its foreign policy is causing them.”

President Donald Trump continues to politically struggle in an economy marked by rising prices caused by his Iran war — and even many of his fellow conservatives see the problem.

"Republicans could face a tsunami election in November if inflation continues to stay high" along with high gas prices explained Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has advised Mr. Trump, to The New York Times' Tony Romm and Ben Casselman on Sunday. The journalists broke down a string of bad economic news that has recently beset the administration: Consumer prices over the past month rose higher than they have in three years and outpaced workers’ wages; business costs have increased at their highest rate in four years; and consumer confidence this month fell to an all-time low.

“At the heart of matter is the war with Iran, which sent the average gallon of gasoline to about $4.52 nationally, according to AAA,” the Times explained. “That is a more than 40 percent jump from a year ago, an uptick that has cut across the global economy, affecting everything from the cost of workers’ daily commutes to the prices of goods at grocery stores.”

Despite these concerns, Trump recently told reporters that “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” This approach is worrying even some of Trump’s fellow conservatives about their party’s political prospects.

Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the Times that Trump’s attitude toward the economy has been baffling.

“I’ve been struck, even before the Iran war, with the degree to which President Trump is making the same mistakes as President Biden,” Strain explained. “We’ve had two presidents in a row who have seen consumer prices going up on their watch, who have dismissed those price increases out of hand as temporary, transitory, not real in some measure.”

He added that both President Joe Biden and Trump responded to their faltering economies with a strategy of having “politically chosen to downplay the importance of price increases in the lives of voter. There have been an astonishing number of own goals in the last year and a half.”

While Trump and his supporters defend the poor economy by arguing the suffering will be offset by his recent tax cuts, and argue that certain economic metrics remain strong, the Times reported that “that strength is being driven, at least partly, by wealthy households, which have been insulated from economic headwinds by a steadily rising stock market. Lower- and middle-income households are the ones bearing the brunt of slower wage growth and rising prices. Larger tax refunds have helped many families offset higher costs, but that effect is fading.”

Quoting Deutsche Bank economist Justin Weidner, they added that “there is a bit of a buffer from increased tax returns. The consumer has a bit of a buffer in the near term, but the longer gas prices remain high, the more precarious the situation could get.”

Indeed, even Trump’s Christian base is being harmed by Trump’s economy.

“When President Donald Trump took office for the second time,” wrote Christianity Today earlier this month, “the average tax on imported goods was 2.4 percent, according to Yale University’s Budget Lab. Since then, tariff rates have stretched as high as 28 percent. Last month, they hovered around an average effective rate of 11.8 percent. Tariff rates have fluctuated with the president’s whims. Some tariffs have targeted specific products: steel, aluminum, timber, and more recently, pharmaceuticals. Other tariffs have hit nearly all imported goods.”

Quoting Christian-inspired product producer Erica Campbell, Christianity Today added that “I think for a lot of small businesses — and I suspect most Christian businesses fall under this — we’re not working with huge, massive amounts of corporate money.”

“Look at Minnesota, if you must, look at where taxpayers have been fleeced of millions of dollars by Democrat politicians that chose to look the other way, take a look at Illinois, with their high tax rates, and their politicians that have passed out freebies to illegal aliens, and make no mistake, those same people, they have this state in their sights, and they want Wisconsin to be their next victim,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who was crowned Saturday as the party’s nominee for governor.

The warning comes after 15 years in which Republicans have controlled majorities in the state Legislature and hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts while Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the presidency. In his speech, Tiffany painted a Wisconsin in decline.

“This election is about more than politics. It’s about whether Wisconsin is going to continue down this path of decline,” he said.

The national political landscape, President Donald Trump’s sinking approval rating, a faltering economy and a less gerrymandered legislative map have Democrats dreaming of trifecta control of state government.

“The one thing I am scared about this election is the Democrats are motivated, and they truly believe we’re on the verge of a fascist day or something,” U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman said. “And because they are so motivated — you see it in the number of protests out there — we have got to match them. To be honest, we’re not matching them quite yet, but they do believe they’re on that verge of losing America, and that that is why they have so many volunteers out there, so many people who are gathering signatures. We have got to find a way to match that enthusiasm.”

State party chair Brian Schimming said Saturday that to staunch that blue wave, Republicans need to lean into “kitchen table issues.”

“Because wherever we are in this state on the big issues, the big kitchen table issues, the voters are with us,” said Schimming, who in recent weeks has faced internal efforts to oust him.

During a panel discussion of current and former Republican legislators, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the state’s residents are “feeling the economy.”

“When you look at what’s going on right now, it is affordability, it truly is,” Kurtz said. “Let’s not sugarcoat that. Everybody, at least in my district, we’re feeling the economy. So that’s where I think we, as Republicans, we have to say what we have done and what we will continue to do.”

But from the convention stage, officials such as Tiffany, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, former Gov. Scott Walker and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden, railed against alleged election fraud, undocumented immigrants, trained protesters fighting the Trump administration and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“The left never, never talks about the victims of crime from illegal immigrants,” Johnson said. “But they take those two individuals who they trained and encouraged, put themselves into harm’s way, they died, and they turned them into martyrs and use them as an excuse to defund ICE, defund CBP, refuse to fund DHS, and put all of America, or continue to keep America at risk.”

Repeatedly, speakers highlighted their focus on eliminating protections for transgender people and preventing trans people of all ages from receiving gender-affirming care.

“Are you ready for a governor that calls moms moms not inseminated persons? Are you ready for a governor that’s going to protect girls’ sports?” Tiffany said in the opening line of his speech.

Throughout the day, party officials sought to paint Wisconsin Democrats as “radicals” who want to turn the country socialist.

“The Democrat candidates leave the answer simple: the government should provide,” said Schoemann, who briefly ran in the Republican primary for governor but dropped out after Trump endorsed Tiffany. “They want a government that provides your groceries, your education, your health care, your child care. Should I keep going?”

Speakers bashed the Democratic vision for a government that can solve people’s problems — labeling Wisconsin Democrats such as Attorney General Josh Kaul and state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) as socialists. State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), who has been leading the polls in the Democratic primary for governor and actually is a Democratic Socialist, was also a frequent target.

Speakers also often criticized Democratic proposals to raise income taxes on the state’s millionaires, billionaires and corporations to offset rising property taxes.

In his often meandering 30-minute speech, Johnson argued that if Democrats win back a majority in the U.S. Senate this fall, they’ll use that power to end the Senate filibuster rule to “turn America into a one-party nation.”

So, he said, to preempt that effort, Republicans should end the filibuster this summer in order to pass the SAVE Act instituting much stricter rules on voting.

“We better end it first, so we can save this nation,” he said. “If we were to end it, we wouldn’t be doing it to turn this into a one-party Republican party nation. No, we would do it to preserve this nation, to preserve voter integrity, so that no matter who wins we have the confidence that that’s a legitimate result.”