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The hosts of "Morning Joe" cracked up on Friday, laughing at President Donald Trump's willingness to throw his attorney general nominee "overboard" once two Republicans said they refused to sign off.

Formerly Trump's personal lawyer, Todd Blanche has been serving as the acting attorney general since Pam Bondi left the office. There was a willingness to approve Blanche among Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but one sticking point remained: a nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund dreamed up by the president.

On Thursday, two U.S. Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee said that someone at the White House is stopping Blanche from agreeing to putting the cancellation of the fund in writing.

The terms Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wants guarantee that the fund will not be started. A federal judge requested a signed agreement in court, and Blanche refused twice to sign such a pledge. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is also bothered by the idea that Trump and his family would be above the law, due to a provision in the contract saying that neither he nor his children could ever be audited by the IRS "forever."

"Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski read the news about the IRS ban on audits as Joe Scarborough cracked up laughing.

"Donald Trump is saying, 'I will throw my attorney general nominee overboard if my family and I can't get immunity from the IRS,' the likes of which nobody else in America has," said Scarborough. "So, what he's saying is we want to live — the Trump family wants to live by separate rules regarding the IRS than any other family in America, any other family on the planet. And he's willing to not have an attorney general, to do that. I mean, this is something."

He added that the matter isn't only unpopular with Democrats, but with Republicans too.

Reporter Jonathan Lemire said it's the issue that lawmakers are angrier about than the fund. Trump, he said, "made clear what his priorities are. He prioritizes the fund and the IRS protections over installing Todd Blanche as permanent attorney general."

Blanche could remain in his acting role indefinitely, as he was already approved by the U.S. Senate as the deputy attorney general. As Trump discovered in his first term, having "actings" in the top spots gives him more freedom to hire and fire as he sees fit. There have not been serious consequences to Trump's use of "acting" secretaries in the first or second terms.

Lemire noted that Trump's solution to the matter was to simply say he'd reappoint Blanche after Cornyn and Tillis are gone.

"But problem with that plan, of course, is we have no idea what the Senate's going to look like come January," he explained. "The Republicans may have a smaller margin or perhaps be in the minority."

Cornyn also made it clear on X Thursday that he and Tillis are not the only two who have issues with Blanche over the contract between Trump and the government.

Calling it "self-dealing" and "corruption," Scarborough said he's "never seen anything like it in my life. This is one politician saying, "My family and I are going to get protected status, are going to get immunity from IRS audits now and in the future."

Axios reporter Marc Caputo said that both the Senate and White House realize they have "a broken relationship." Trump grows increasingly angry because the Senate won't do what he demands over the SAVE America Act, the filibuster and other matters.

President Donald Trump has been after the ABC network as part of his ongoing feuds with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and the co-hosts of "The View." Now, it appears Trump's own vainglorious boasts have put the whole thing in jeopardy.

Chatting with Greg Sargent for his morning podcast for The New Republic, law school professor Leah Litman walked through why Trump has completely undermined his own case.

Sargent explained that Trump's own social media posts have become exhibits in ABC's case, which argues that he's using the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to go after his political foes. Leading the FCC is who Sargent called Trump's "slavishly devoted accomplice," Brendan Carr.

"This captures something really essential about Trump's open corruption and whether our institutions are capable of constraining it," said Sargent.

Litman said that it's all part of Trump's inability to hear bad news about himself and that often it inspires him to threaten to remove FCC licenses from affiliates. In other incidents, Trump has threatened to weaponize the FCC for investigations into the networks that he doesn't like.

The largest example came when Trump tried to get Kimmel kicked off the air, only for ABC parent company Disney to lose anywhere from $3.5 billion to $4.99 billion in market value as well as nearly 3 million subscribers, Fox Business reported at the time. Kimmel later joked that the same tactic couldn't be used for Stephen Colbert because so few people use the Paramount subscription service.

"If they don't rent licenses, that's the end of the company," Litman explained.

ABC's response to the Trump administration filing is "scathing," said Sargent, reading a line from the court filing.

"The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the administration's view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price," the filing says.

Litman said it's a clear message from the administration: "to stand down, do our bidding or face the penalty." It's being seen across the board to universities, James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Jack Smith and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The part that Sargent found the most amusing is that ABC cites one of Trump's own social media posts to allege they're being targeted for political purposes.

"Why is it that ABC and NBC Fake News, two of the worst and most biased networks, aren't paying millions of dollars a year in license fees? They should lose their licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans," Trump said.

Litman said arguments like ABC's have been effective in the past, but the larger question is whether the Supreme Court will be willing to get involved.

"Right now I think there's a disparity in lower courts saying, 'The president said what he said. We can't ignore that.' And the Supreme Court saying, 'No, actually we can and we will and we'll just pretend it didn't happen," Litman said.

A former CIA director who, for criticizing President Donald Trump, has been threatened with imprisonment and faces an actual prosecutor has a message for America: The nation is in danger by how our intelligence is being politicized

“This administration is redirecting counterterrorism professionals not to go against those terrorist groups and the ones that really worry us, but to go against undocumented workers,” former CIA Director John O. Brennan told MS NOW’s Michael Steele on Thursday. “The government sees these phantom violent groups on the left, like Antifa, whatever. And so there's a neutering of capability, but also a misdirecting of a lot of the capabilities that still exist, not against the threats and the areas that we really need to be concerned about, but toward other politically motivated directions.”

He added, “I know, that's such an important point because it levels up for me, Director Brennan. One of the things that this country continues to fail at, and that is recognizing the homegrown variety of domestic terrorism that has plagued this country since the Civil War. One of the things this report points out is how the Trump administration has broadened the designation of terrorist organizations to include gangs and cartels, as well as designating Antifa, which isn't a structured organization. It's an idea. They're anti-fascists, right? Anti-fascism as a domestic terrorism organization. How does this undermine our national security at the expense of Trump's political goals? Because you're going again after political opponents, as opposed to going after real domestic homegrown terrorism, which we've experienced here in the United States.”

Brennan went on to point out that there are neo-Nazi groups in the United States and elsewhere, such as Germany, that Trump refuses to confront, even as he targets leftists. In order to prosecute his political enemies, left-wing groups and undocumented immigrants, Trump is ignoring terrorists — both right-wing and others — that actually endanger American lives.

“We want to stop these terrorist activities upstream, not when somebody is ready to set off a bomb, but to see them when they're starting to gain the financing and put together the capabilities, to make the contacts and relationships, to start to plot and plan,” Brennan told Steele. “These are the things that, again, federal, state and local officials are supposed to be doing, as opposed to going after these politically motivated objectives that really make this country less safe.”

Brennan is not alone among CIA veterans to call out Trump’s politicization of intelligence as a threat to America’s national security. Former CIA analyst Julia Curlee said the same thing for Lawfare in a Monday article.

“In 2025, I watched from inside the White House and at the CIA as the intelligence community came under assault: senior officers fired in public, clearances revoked for dissent, decade-old assessments denounced by the CIA director in the press,” Curlee wrote. “Earlier this month, the campaign reached the raw intelligence itself, as the White House declassified selected reporting to sustain election interference claims that the intelligence community’s own finished analysis would not support.”

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A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan effectively danced a jig on the grave of deceased South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, slashing the senator’s bloody career of killing American soldiers and rampant war mongering.

“His death has made America and the world a safer place,” wrote Cato Institute fellow Doug Bandow in the American Conservative. “Indeed, freed from Graham’s stream of malign and belligerent whispers, perhaps President [Donald] Trump will return to his campaign commitment to put America first and end Washington’s string of reckless and endless wars.”

Graham, he said, “constantly sacrificed American interests to win the favor of an unsavory mix of foreign agents, democratic hacks, clever manipulators, and brutal dictators. Unfortunately, he was an unusually effective warmonger. After the death of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2018, Graham succeeded him as the informal leader of Washington’s notorious bipartisan war party, ever ready to send Americans overseas to fight wars for special interests and other nations.”

Graham “was never happier than when plotting another crusade for Americans to fight,” said Bandow. “His bloodlust was on constant display. He was most ebullient when palling around with foreign leaders responsible for the deaths of thousands, or better yet, tens of thousands of foreigners, usually civilians.”

The senator, he said was happy “sacrificing so many young Americans to bring ‘democracy’ to Central Asia,” but he also wanted to turn even more of them into “permanent colonial overseers.” He backed the Saudi leader's “horrid war in Yemen, murderous aggression launched to turn that nation into a de facto royal colony,” and he eventually “reclaimed his membership in the “MbS fan club” after the leader’s grotesque murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A onetime Air Force JAG officer who “never came close to combat,” Bandow said Graham “smoothly shifted to permanent groveling — intentionally, knowingly, convincingly, shamelessly — once Trump took power.” The senator practically “cried tears of joy” when Trump attacked Iran, “rather than tears of sadness when Americans were killed in that unnecessary war,” which was as Bandow describes it, “his most malign role.”

“Such a legacy,” howls Bandow. “His last major foreign policy initiative was to push an illegal, immoral war of aggression. Some consequences: Americans killed, U.S. bases devastated, American wealth wasted, Gulf partners damaged, oil markets wrecked, and a shaken global economy. For all that trouble, Iran’s power over the energy trade has been enhanced and its need for nuclear weapons has been made plain. Heckuva job, Lindsey!”

Bandow said Graham’s “passing is a personal tragedy [but] his departure from the halls of power should be welcomed.”

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright may have lied to Congress about the role politics played in cancelling energy grants to Democratic states, according to a CNN supercut that aired Friday.

CNN’s Victor Blackwell rolled the tape after lawyers for the Trump administration admitted in a July 15 court filing that “the inclusion of grants in the October notice was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient state, i.e., whether the recipients location was in a blue state or a non blue state.”

“But that is not what the energy secretary said to Congress a few months ago,” Blackwell noted.

The host then played a clip of Wright speaking with the House Appropriations Committee. In that April 15 meeting, Wright insisted “our project review process did not take into account any politics in the evaluation of these projects.”

Rep. Rosa Delauro (D-CT) took immediate issue with Wright’s claim during that hearing, telling the energy secretary “the district court this January found that this violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law.”

Republican strategist Melik Abdul was quick to condemn the Trump administration for politicizing aid.

“This is just unacceptable,” Abdul said. “And I think the White House knows this. I was actually surprised that it's something that they owned up to. I guess maybe they didn't have a choice since it was in court, they really didn't have a choice. But this is something that no one should support at all.”

Abdul went on to shame the administration for “doing it for political reasons and admitting you're doing it for political reasons.”

“I just don't know how you can defend it,” Abdul added.

Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams agreed, noting that while the Trump administration “had no choice” but to admit to the political nature of their grant decisions “because they were in court … they are [also] shameless about their behavior.”

“And I think you've seen the president in the White House just acting with impunity on things like this, thinking that it's politically popular with their base and that they can string things out in the courts long enough and just to make it go away,” Williams added.

The former federal prosecutor noted if Democrats take the House of Representatives in the fall, “this is precisely the kind of thing that would get congressional oversight in the form of hearings or letters or investigations or whatever else.”

“I also think just the big one that dogs the Trump administration and so many things is process,” Williams added. "Did they properly follow the process that the law lays out in canceling grants? And they can be sued over that as well. And so we have not seen the end of this story in the courts. But like so many other things, the political question, as much as it's a legal one.”

President Donald Trump’s economic policies have frequently been attacked by conservatives, who target his decidedly un-conservative stances on issues like tariffs. Now a conservative website published an article singling out how Trump and congressional Republicans are abandoning perhaps the cornerstone of right-wing economic philosophy — responsible spending.

“Stop me if you've heard this one before: Republicans are on the verge of finally fixing our out-of-control budget deficits,” wrote The Bulwark’s Catherine Rampell on Thursday. “But first they need to get just one more unfunded spending binge out of their system—and then (they swear) they’ll get around to that purge.”

She added, “This is the story we’ve been hearing from supposed fiscal hawks in the GOP about why they have repeatedly voted to jam costly budget bills through the fast-track process known as ‘reconciliation.’ Once a rarely used procedural tactic, reconciliation allows a budget bill to get through with only a simple-majority vote. In recent years, the majority party has typically pulled the reconciliation trick at most once per Congress, when it’s trying to expedite some big, splashy, high-priority measure or a must-pass budget bill; in this Congress, however, Republicans are trying to do it a record four times.”

Rampell then listed how Republicans have passed two reconciliation bills since the start of Trump’s second term, legislation that respectively added $4 trillion in deficits over a decade and $70 billion in new spending.

“We are today on reconciliation 3.0,” Rampell said. “Still no spending cuts, or other forms of deficit reduction.1 And yet again, the Republican fiscal hawks in the House said they were unhappy. Some, like Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), demanded pay-fors as a condition for their votes. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) declared the budget resolution ‘DOA,’ saying that there was ‘no path’ to passage without some sort of offsets.”

Yet despite their poor track record in holding to their promises for fiscal rectitude, Rampell noted that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise promised “we’re right now looking at a reconciliation 4.0 to do the things that are left out of this one.” Although Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) expressed reservations about the new bill, saying that “obviously our country is having a problem with deficit spending, so it should be offset,” Rampell sarcastically said “we’ll see how long this professed commitment to fiscal discipline lasts.”

She also pointed out that Trump and his allies instead slash programs that help vulnerable communities and are liked by liberals, even though doing so does not reduce deficits at all.

“But it is just a fig leaf: When you hear that Trumpers are slashing funds for the Smithsonian, Community Development Financial Institutions, USAID, medical research grants, and so on, you might think they are substantially slimming down budgets,” Rampell argued. “In reality, while these cuts will devastate the individual programs themselves, the dollars in question represent pocket change in the grand scheme of federal spending and tax-cut costs. But Trump and GOP lawmakers can still claim to be ‘saving money’ when questioned about their unfunded tax cuts, wars, deportation machine, and farmer bailouts.”

A truly awkward moment unfolded on Thursday night during a panel discussion between Democrat Karen Finney and Republican Scott Jennings on Kaitlan Collins' CNN show.

Jennings, who worked previously for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was quick to boast that he'd spoken to his old boss for "20 minutes" to check on him after an incident landed the senator in an ambulance in early June.

“I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky. He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes ... about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the TR Presidential Library and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible,” Jennings wrote on X at the time.

That same day, CNN host Kasie Hunt asked Jennings to call McConnell live on the show, but he refused.

While the senator has produced two photos as a kind of "proof-of-life," he hasn't been seen in videos or even a call-in to a Fox News show.

Collins asked Jennings whether he'd spoken to McConnell since the call in early July and Jennings confessed he had not but said he was in regular contact with the Senate staff.

“Scott, can I ask you, because you actually were invoked the other night on the show about your former boss, Senator Mitch McConnell. Have you spoken to him recently on the phone?” asked Collins.

“Uh, no, I haven’t spoken to him,” Jennings said. “I talked to him early on. And I’m in touch with his office, but I haven’t spoken to him recently.”

Finney held up her cell phone and asked whether they should FaceTime him live on air.

“We could – should we – do we want to FaceTime him?” Finney asked to dead air. “No? Ok.”

There was an awkward silence as Jennings stared blankly at the cameras for several blinks.

“Okay," Collins jumped in.

"On that note, Scott Jennings, Karen Finney, thank you both for being here," she continued before going to commercial.

McConnell has been in George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C. "recovering" from what he said was a "fall."

In the 9-1-1 call revealed weeks after the incident, someone from McConnell's home on Capitol Hill said that he was in “cardiac arrest” and that CPR was being administered until EMS arrived. That detail sparked a series of bizarre incidents that left folks scratching their heads.

According to McConnell, he suffered a fall severe enough to knock him unconscious. However, he said that he didn't have a concussion or break any bones.

The most recent photo produced by the senator's office shows him sitting in a hospital chair with his wife beside him. The statement said that McConnell was keeping up with physical therapy but isn't ready to return home yet.

The CNN incident happened as "MISSING" fliers popped up on Capitol Hill asking if anyone had seen McConnell.

One of the hometown reporters who's covered McConnell for decades said that the senator is likely "just being a little cranky and pugnacious here in the twilight of his career."

President Donald Trump’s interim AG Todd Blanche appears to have given up the ghost on hiding information that could potentially out cohorts of convicted Jeffrey Epstein.

Reporter Katie Phang recently grabbed a huge win against Blanche and his crusade to keep the Epstein files under wraps. After months of stalling by the Trump administration and ignoring the letter of a new law demanding the release of the sex-trafficker’s files, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan demanded insight on Trump’s longtime friendship. Sullivan sided with former MS NOW show host Phang in her lawsuit demanding the Trump administration adhere to the Epstein Transparency Act.

Phang predicted on Wednesday that Blanche -- Trump's former personal defense attorney -- would “try to get an appeal” to stall the release of the redacted information, but she acknowledged that this would be “very difficult” because Judge Sullivan already had denied on two occasions Blanche's attempts to get a stay or a delay in having to comply.

But instead, Blanche handed over the unredacted information to Sullivan to review, possibly for release to the public.

Defendant Todd Blanche, in his official capacity as Acting Attorney General of the United States … respectfully submits the Notice of Compliance with the Order of this Court dated July 25, 2026, requiring Defendants submit certain documentation to the Court for in camera review.”

Blanche — and critics on social media — also noted that Blanche submitted hard copy documents to the court’s chambers via hand deliver at 2:28 PM on July 30 — within close proximity to the day’s deadline.”

MS NOW senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin noted on X that of the 10 documents at issue, the DOJ does not identify the redacted information as pertaining to a victim or law enforcement personnel; instead, it says it is just “PII, or personally identifiable information.”

Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein spans decades, with the two meeting in the 1980s at Mar-a-Lago and socializing frequently in New York and Palm Beach. Multiple women have described witnessing Trump and Epstein together at parties and events during the 1990s.

After Epstein's 2008 conviction, Trump publicly distanced himself, claiming he barely knew him.

However, Trump's DOJ has resisted transparency regarding their relationship and potential knowledge of Epstein's crimes. The forced release of Epstein documents could expose communications, financial records, or witness accounts implicating Trump or his associates. Legal experts argue the Epstein Transparency Act mandates public disclosure, and Judge Sullivan's rulings suggest courts will ultimately compel release regardless of administration resistance, potentially revealing uncomfortable details about Trump's decades-long association.

President Donald Trump is well-known to have assembled a fundraising juggernaut, one so big that Republicans worry it is siphoning off money he could use to win the midterms. Yet a recent report reveals that, in addition to raising money for political purposes, Trump has a so-called “princess of darkness” who explicitly talks to these donors so they can give Trump money for his pet projects in return for White House access.

“Meredith O’Rourke, nicknamed ‘princess of darkness,’” is a major power player in Washington under Trump, reported The Wall Street Journal's Josh Dawsey, Dana Mattioli, Annie Linskey and Emily Glazer on Thursday.

“Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much,” the journalists added. “He often asks her to make much larger financial requests than she was planning—for some donors the ask is $5 million, for others it is $50 million. And the president gives her names to call, often including people who have recently met with him, according to people with knowledge of the calls. “

They then listed the donors who give this money to Trump.

“SoftBank donated $50 million toward Trump’s presidential library,” they wrote. “Apple cut a check for around $25 million toward his White House ballroom project, while Microsoft gave around $10 million and Amazon chipped in around $5 million, according to people familiar with the contributions. Meta Platforms recently gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, people familiar said, on top of a multimillion donation to the ballroom and a prior $22 million payment to the planned presidential library.”

In return for their money, these donors are given unprecedented and lengthy access to the president.

“The president is often solicitous and warm at these fundraisers, asking each CEO to introduce themself,” the Journal explained. “There are regular guests, such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Last year, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and his wife personally contributed $25 million to Trump’s super PAC.”

They continued, “Trump has surprised donors at how long he will stay and talk. Within 24 hours of launching the war in Iran, he attended a lengthy $1 million-a-plate fundraiser in Florida. Many expected he would cancel, and the event was interrupted at one point for him to learn that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed. After that, Trump listened to a range of corporate concerns and even engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth with Verizon’s CEO about what kind of cable was best.”

Speaking with AlterNet earlier in July, historian Thom Hartmann described this type of corporate access as corrupt, and agreed with this journalist when he compared it to President Grover Cleveland’s 1894 warning about large corporations creating a “communism of pelf.”

“He talked about how we now see trusts and combinations that have arisen,” Hartmann explained. “I'm paraphrasing terribly here, but from memory, that have arisen and threaten to crush the average person — you know, corporations, which should be the carefully constrained servants of the people, have become their masters, and the average person is thus under the iron heel of these corporations.

Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, an economist who was a top adviser to President Bill Clinton, described this as “crony capitalism.”

“Trump operates with a form of crony capitalism,” Shapiro told AlterNet in July. “The people who get US contracts, the people who get preferences on tariffs, are those who have influence with him. It ranges from the absurd — where the guy who did the coating for the swimming pool gets a no-bid contract to do the reflecting pool — to all the other no-bid contracts. That's all crony capitalism. And certainly, opening this up could create more opportunities for that.”

President Donald Trump has betrayed a number of Senate Republicans by endorsing their primary rivals. His political victims include Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. In so doing, he aimed to replace those lawmakers with alternatives he views as more loyal. Yet as one political journalist pointed out, he has also liberated these same lawmakers to defy Trump with impunity now that they no longer face reelection.

This, he added, is why the first two men on that list helped tank Trump’s nomination of acting attorney general Todd Blanche to permanently assume his post.

“After Trump fired former AG Pam Bondi, Blanche—who had already been confirmed as deputy attorney general after serving as Trump’s personal defense attorney—stepped into the role in an acting capacity,” wrote Slate's Patrick Reis on Thursday. “He proceeded to even further facilitate Trump’s use of the Justice Department as a branch of the White House dedicated to punishing the president’s political opponents.”

He added, “That fealty was enough for Trump to nominate Blanche to the position permanently. In days gone by, that would have been a done deal: Republicans control the upper chamber responsible for advice and consent on Trump’s nominees and are far from fond of saying no to the president.”

Cornyn and Tillis reportedly objected to Blanche’s role in creating a $1.776 slush fund for his political supporters as well as a guaranteed protection from future IRS audits. When Blanche refused to swear in writing that the self-dealing agreement is no longer in effect, Cornyn and Tillis blanched on confirming him.

“Trump ended both Cornyn’s and Tillis’ political careers earlier this year by refusing to back them in their primaries,” Reis wrote. “(Cornyn lost to the mega-MAGA challenger Ken Paxton, Tillis just said To hell with this and retired.) Now that they have no careers to lose, Cornyn and Tillis suddenly find themselves more willing to defy the president.”

It is likely that Trump plans on simply renominating Blanche for the full-time job next year, when he hopes to retain control of the Senate and have Cornyn and Tillis replaced with more compliant substitutes.

“That plan could backfire, however, if Republicans lose the Senate in the midterms, or even if they see their margin get slimmer,” Reis pointed out. He added that voters can interpret this as meaning that “our Justice Department, which is supposed to have some modicum of independence from the White House, will continue to be run by someone who sees his job as satisfying Trump’s every whim,” since Blanche will retain his position in its acting capacity.

“And, as my colleague Jim Newell pointed out a few weeks ago, Trump’s ultimate leverage in getting Blanche confirmed is the threat to pick someone even worse,” Reis said. “Our Senate, on the other hand, is showing signs of becoming slightly less supine, though so far those are limited to Republicans with nothing left to lose.”