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President Donald Trump and his top officials keep insulting Canada as they wage their unprovoked trade war against the country. From renaming Lake Ontario as "Lake America" to joking that Canada is "America's 51st state," the Trump administration has assumed that Canada would bend the knee to the United States — and a new report indicates that their actual response is not at all what they expected.

"[Flavio Volpe, the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association of Canada] said that auto parts makers were not intimidated," reported The New York Times' Ian Austen on Monday. "He said that last year, when the Trump administration proposed collecting tariffs on Canadian auto parts, “they understood that it would shut down the auto industry in a week.”

He added: “Ultimately, I think they will back off that. But if they don’t, they can have at it.”

Earlier in the article, Austen reported about Prime Minister Mark Carney that he "made clear last week that he was in no hurry to return to negotiations and was focused instead on diversifying Canada’s trade and expanding its domestic economy." In fact, Austen added that "with an insulted and angry nation solidly behind him, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada is charging ahead in a bitter trade war with the United States, risking a further fraying of what once was one of the world’s closest friendships."

Importantly for him politically — and unlike Trump — polls that show Carney has his nation overwhelmingly behind him.

"Canadian officials have suggested that many of the targeted American items come from states where voters supported Mr. Trump, though some political analysts question how much pressure that will actually put on the White House," Austen reported. "The list also includes items with little significance for the Canadian economy, including the metal bands that attach erasers to pencils, migratory bird identification bands and fish egg incubators."

He added, "Polls show that Canadians strongly back Mr. Carney’s decision to end trade talks with Washington last month and hit back with tariffs on about $20 billion in American products entering Canada. But there is also concern over what might happen next. Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened another round of American tariffs if Canada follows through on its plan."

Austen also ticked off various new ways that Trump and his administration have insulted the Canadian people as they proceed with their trade war.

"Last week, Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, rejected that framing, arguing that Canada is too small an economic power to battle the United States," Austen reported. "'I don’t think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who’s 13 times larger than you are,' Mr. Bessent said on CNBC."

In an interview with Trump's daughter-in-law, RNC chair Lara Trump, Bessent also said about Canada that "this little yippy dog that used to just bark away and for a long time a 110-pound German shepherd was ignoring the Dachshund and then one day she had enough."

Austen continued that Trump "said that he might 'end all trade with Canada' and other countries that have trade surpluses with the United States. Mr. Trump has frequently made dramatic threats during trade negotiations that have gone unrealized, such as floating the idea of a 100 percent tariff on Canadian goods in January.

Separately, the U.S. commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said Mr. Carney had shut down the talks to gain 'political leverage' at home, not because of what the U.S. side had offered."

Canada is doing more than accepting America's challenge. Ontario Premiere Doug Ford recently urged Carney to target imports from states that have supported him and on which he still politically relies including "Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Texas and Wisconsin." Speaking with AlterNet, Dr. Richard D. Wolff — professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – broke down exactly why Canada is doing this.

"I am not surprised that our government is surprised," Wolff wrote. "Our government is busy strong-arming people around the world in every way that it can, militarily, economically, politically, and discovering time after time to their amazement, if you take them seriously, that the folks are going to resist. And that's what's going to happen."

Drawing a connection between the US-Canada trade war and the US-Iran war, Wolff noted that "Israel and the United States thought they could bomb Iran June 2025, and that was a 12-day war because they couldn't get them to bend over and surrender. So they went to work, tried it again February 28th of this year. And they're not doing it. And so now you discover, gee, the people of Canada being threatened in this way and that way by the tariffs are not bending and are putting pressure on their leaders to find a way other than capitulation."

Wolff emphasized that Carney is reflecting the will of the people who was elected to serve.

"It's not just Mr. Carney, he is the expression of something that he knows as a politician is now a very popular view in Canada," Wolff explained. "He's not going to be held to blame because this or that difficulty happens. If he can show, as he often can, that the United States' hostility, tariff policy number one, is the root cause, then he gets a pass. The kind of anger that might often be addressed to a politician won't be, because they correctly perceive that the problem is something else. And so they appeal to the politician when he comes up with solutions or attempted solution to keep workers' needs in mind."

Canada is not the only longtime American ally that is tired of the United States' ongoing tariff strategy.

"Europe has now, having been for the last 75 years, the junior partner of the United States," Wolff told AlterNet. "That was the situation that came out of World War II. Europe, empire over, new empire, the Americans, and the Europeans can come along for the ride, but they're the junior partner. Well, they've now been attacked with tariffs too, and they're very upset and they're very angry and they're not about to make deals with the United States anywhere like they used to, because of that reaction. And now it'll be a struggle between them and Mr. Trump over how this gets worked out. But it is, I can assure you, this whole attack, counterattack is shaking up every corner of European politics."

Speaking with AlterNet in August, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton pointed out that Trump's tariffs on Canada are not only alienating Canadians. They are also worsening the inflation problem Trump inherited.

"Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on our largest trading partner, Canada, which will further increase inflation," Dr. Robert J. Shapiro said.

Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) is the Republican lawmaker who was missing for four months while he was institutionalized for mental health concerns. As he fights for his political career, his popularity appears to have faltered to the point that he's relying on his own staff and his father to promote him.

Each member of Congress is allocated funds to send messages to their constituents with a few restrictions on timing and what information it can contain. It's referred to as "franking privileges," and it was typically for pieces of mail. In the digital era, ads on social media can also be purchased. The House Committee on Ethics has the ad submissions on its website, including recent Facebook ads submitted by Kean's office.

One ad that promotes his "thousands in tax relief" features him on a public street talking to three people, but those people are his congressional staffers.

On the left is Renee Trabert. She currently serves as Kean’s special projects coordinator and was formerly the state Senate chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile. Facebook photos confirm she's the woman on the left.

The woman to the right of Kean is Kristen Doran, Kean’s director of operations, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her photo there matches the woman's face in the ad as well.

The man on the far right is only partially visible, but based on photos from his Instagram account, he appears to be J.D. Bryden, Kean’s district deputy director. A photo of him from Sept. 16, 2025, shows him wearing the same sweater that appears in the ad. The sweater appears again on May 9 and Nov. 1, 2025. A photo of him from the back can also be used for comparison.

Kean claims he "restored the SALT deduction for middle class families," in the ad. SALT stands for "state and local tax." Kean specifically proposed the "SALT Deductibility Act," which aimed to completely repeal the SALT cap, was proposed by Kean in 2026. It never passed. The only edits made to the SALT came from the GOP's budget bill in 2025, known as the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill." The cap was changed from $10,000 to $40,000. For the next few years, it will increase by 1 percent, before it stops being increased in 2029, the Tax Policy Center explained.

While Kean was away, his father came to his defense, telling NJ.com, “He hasn’t been able to do his full job to any degree for some months."

"He has seen more than one doctor, and he’s under a doctor’s care,” Kean Sr. said in a phone interview. “All the doctors say he’s gonna be fine. But it’s gonna take some time. They want to be in charge. They want to say when he does this and when he does that."

Speaking to CNN, Kean's father said it “took a real illness to knock him out,” but it “won’t linger."

“It’s not some kind of disease that’s going to incapacitate him in the future,” the former governor told the network about his son. “The consensus is that he will be 100 percent OK."

It was after he returned that he revealed the illness was crippling depression. He spoke out about mental health from the House floor when he returned, saying, "This is not a partisan issue. It touches every community, every family and every corner of this country. If sharing my story encourages even one person to seek help, if it gives one family the courage to have a difficult conversation or reminds one person that recovery is possible, then this moment will have been worthwhile."

The same bill that Kean touts for reducing state and local taxes, also significantly cut Medicaid spending across the board by $1 trillion over ten years. Medicaid is the largest payer for behavioral health services in the United States, said the Milbank Memorial Fund.

In a recent ad for his son, Kean Sr. said he was "proud" of him.

"He cares about people. That’s why he worked to protect Medicare and Medicaid for every New Jersey senior, child, disabled person," the ad claims.

Some political analysts are calling the race a toss-up "or giving a slight edge to moderate Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot with a similar resume to that of Gov. Mikie Sherrill," NJ Spotlight reported Monday.

Last month, Politico said that Kean's efforts relying on his political name "appears to be backfiring."

Just before his return, Kean's polling showed his "favorability is upside down—50 percent of likely voters view him unfavorably, compared to just 32 percent favorably," said InsiderNJ.com, citing numbers from Z to A Research on behalf of 314 Action Fund.

President Donald Trump, despite promising to create manufacturing jobs, is presiding over an economy marked by weak job gains in manufacturing sectors and widespread layoffs. Now experts are writing Labor Day editorials to explain how ordinary Americans can strike back and reclaim economic agency — and do so by exploiting weaknesses in Trump's own approach.

"On Labor Day 2026, the outlook for workers can seem grim," wrote Terri Gerstein (the director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service) and Gaby Goldstein (the founder and president of State Futures) in the New Republic on Monday. "The Trump administration is rolling back workplace protections, and corporations act as though they have a free pass to do whatever they want."

Yet despite these problems, Gerstein and Goldstein argued there is a reason for "optimism."

"The federal government isn’t the only game in town," The New Republic wrote. "Union approval sits near a half-century high—roughly seven in ten Americans—worker organizing is climbing, and state and local governments are moving on workers’ rights with real dynamism."

They pointed out that on the state level, labor organizers are effectively passing and implementing laws guaranteeing worker protection, good workplace conditions and criminal prosecution against wage theft. On some occasions they are even creating workplace rights bureaus. From there, they advocate for Americans across these states to work together.

"For all this motion, a new ingredient should also be stirred in: cross-state coordination," Gerstein and Goldstein said. "Conservatives have long understood that states acting together, through the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, and its allies, can move markets and set national agendas. Progressives should be just as ambitious: sharing rosters of labor violators so a scofflaw barred in one state can’t win contracts in the next, coordinating multi-state cases, and even synchronizing the “drop dates” on which state labor bills are introduced."

While blue states are more friendly to these initiatives than red states, even Trumpy and purple areas of America are seeing progress on workers' rights issues.

"State legislators have made some minor inroads even in more challenging terrain: Utah and New Hampshire both curbed non-competes for certain health care workers this year," Gerstein and Goldstein added. "And there are still more glimmers of hope: Many city and state leaders in worker-hostile states keep fighting mightily for working people. Consider recent action in deep-red Texas: Just last month, Houston’s mayor signed an executive order raising the minimum wage at the city’s airports to $20 per hour, from its prior rate of $15. And Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, last year passed a worksite safety policy for its construction contractors, with inspections and real consequences for violations."

Writing for The Hill, Gerstein elaborated on how Trump's administration has created conditions that necessitate this increased union activism.

"Sadly, the Trump administration is taking a bat to workers’ rights, reducing wage theft enforcement, shrinking the Department of Labor and weakening the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces workers’ right to unionize," Gerstein wrote for The Hill. "With Washington hostile and the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority averse to working people, that leaves cities and states."

"Here’s a new one: a deceptively simple, under-the-radar idea that requires no legislation and costs almost nothing," Gerstein continued. "State and local governments can help people unionize by simply helping to organize workers. Specifically, they can host meetups between workers and local unions, and they can teach the public about unions."

Earlier on Monday, The Conversation also ran a piece elaborating on the "bleak" conditions facing American workers as Trump continues to gut labor protections.

"For America’s unionized workforce, the overall state of the economy is bleak," The Conversation wrote. "Threats from AI and robotics abound. Pledges by U.S. and international corporations to invest in new plants remain largely pledges. The roughly 400,000 federal job cuts during President Donald Trump’s second term have disrupted lives. Many of these jobs were previously represented by labor unions."

Republicans are starting to panic, as President Donald Trump continues to detonate any efforts by candidates to address the affordability crisis hitting the country.

The Financial Times cited Republican strategist Kevin Madden, a senior partner at the consulting firm Penta Group, who lamented that lawmakers go back to their districts and talk about issues that matter most to voters, only for Trump to blow up all that good work, the Daily Beast reported on Monday.

“Members are going back to their districts each week, confronting concerns about affordability and inflation, and you have Trump openly dismissing those affordability concerns,” Madden said. “That has to change.”

Trump’s deepening unpopularity is on track to drag the party toward major losses in the midterm elections by alienating independent voters and depressing discouraged MAGA turnout. The GOP is already expected to struggle in November, as the president's party in power has historically lost seats in midterms. Now, as Republicans continue to get dragged down by Trump, Democrats look poised to win the House and Senate back.

Millions of Americans are worried about the rising energy costs (both home and fuel), inflation, tariffs driving up costs and wages that aren't keeping up with any of it. Meanwhile, Trump is calling the fears of voters a hoax while trying to pretend everything he's done has been amazing.

Things only got worse when Trump began insulting his own rural voters as "backwards and poor" for not supporting A.I. data centers.

In a post to Truth Social, Trump wrote, “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame."

Trump's attempt to change the tide came too late, however. Communities in red states are going so far as to recall their local leaders who approved data centers.

A recent Gallup poll found that 63 percent of Republicans opposed building an AI data center in their local area, compared with 75 percent of Democrats. Among Republicans, 39 percent were strongly opposed.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), usually a Trump ally, sarcastically responded to Trump's remark by saying, “I guess I’m backwards and poor.”

The most recent example comes from his six-month war in Iran, which has driven up gas prices. But when asked about it lately, Trump called it nothing more than "small potatoes." Meanwhile, the price of potatoes has increased slightly since Dec. 2025, Mirco Trends shows.

Even Republican lawmakers were furious with Trump's claim, “It’s not a big thing.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), perhaps one of the most endangered lawmakers in Congress, distanced himself from Trump's claim.

“Any time you are at war or in a military escalation, it is certainly not small potatoes,” he told CNN’s "State of the Union" on Sunday. “It is serious. I think we all recognize that.”

As Trump and his administration head to Dallas, Texas, for a midterm election convention, dozens of lawmakers are staying away. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), for example, wants nothing to do with the event. He told Politico in November he's worried about what the president might say.

On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that the GOP is so worried about empty seats that they're desperately sending out text messages giving away free tickets. The Republican National Committee said that elected Republicans and candidates must pay $25,000 to attend the event. That cost gets them 2 tickets, hotel room "access" in the NRCC block, and two spots at the chairman's welcome reception; it does not include the hotel rooms themselves, Axios reported last week.

Now, the Beast reported, they can't even give tickets away.

Alaska is so Republican that a Democrat hasn't carried the state in a presidential election since Lyndon B. Johnson's victory over GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964. Yet according to polls, Alaska's 2026 U.S. Senate race is surprisingly close — with incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan slightly ahead in some and Democratic nominee Mary Peltola slightly ahead in others. And if a statewide victory really is in play for Democrats in Alaska, according to Bloomberg News' Ronald Brownstein, it's a bad sign for the GOP in the midterms.

"Democrat Mary Peltola has many things breaking her way in her bid to unseat Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in Alaska," Brownstein explains in a Bloomberg opinion column. "But Sullivan has one big thing working for him. Whether that's enough will likely determine whether he wins reelection — while also offering clues about the fate of other red-state Republican senators this year. Alaska is vast, sparsely populated and reliably Republican in federal races. Since entering the union in 1959, the state has elected only four Democrats to the Senate, and just one since 1980. But Alaska also has a quirky side."

Brownstein adds, "Although twice as many voters are registered as Republicans than as Democrats, more than half are unaffiliated. That can produce unexpected outcomes, as in 2022, when Peltola won a special election to succeed longtime Republican Rep. Don Young, who died in office. Peltola went on to win a full term that November."

One of the main issues Sullivan is attacking Peltola on, Brownstein notes, is oil. Peltola is on the record as a supporter of drilling for oil in her state, but in a debate, Sullivan, according to Brownstein, is arguing that "electing her would tip Senate control to Democrats hostile to Alaskan drilling."

"Peltola emphasized her personal commitment to oil development — including convincing former President Joe Biden to approve a massive ConocoPhillips project in Willow, Alaska," Brownstein observes. "But mostly, she seemed unsure how to respond. She never offered a clear rebuttal to his central claim — that electing her would inexorably 'empower' Senate liberals out of touch with Alaska. Sullivan tethered that argument to oil development. But versions of it, connected to different local concerns, are also available to Republican Senate candidates facing tough races in other red-leaning states, including Ohio, Iowa, Texas and North Carolina."

Brownstein continues, "Raising alarms about a Democratic-controlled Senate probably won't save all those GOP candidates. But inflaming the doubts red-state voters hold about the national Democratic Party may be the best chance for Senate Republicans to avoid the worst in a year that has already chilled their prospects far beyond Alaska."

A shocking and historic legal battle is unfolding as advocacy groups, former judges and veteran Justice Department lawyers on both sides of the political aisle mobilize against President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the nation’s elections.

The Guardian reported Monday that voting advocates warn of a secret danger as Trump rushes through major federal changes to disrupt the 2026 midterms.

One federal judge in Massachusetts found that implementing Trump’s order could threaten to disenfranchise millions of Americans who vote by mail. She also said the administration had offered no evidence of widespread mail-voting fraud to justify the rushed policy.

An unexpected source of resistance is the coalition itself. Former conservative and liberal judges, Democratic attorneys general, civil-rights lawyers and former Justice Department officials are banding together in an unprecedented alliance. Democracy Defenders Fund leaders told The Guardian that bipartisan credibility is essential as they challenge what they describe as unconstitutional efforts to seize voting data, impose federal election rules and intimidate election officials.

One of those is J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge and "conservative stalwart," as the report described.

Speaking to the "Legal AF" podcast, Luttig said that the courts have been the branch that stepped up to provide a check on Trump's power.

"So today, the only people who can save America are the lower federal court judges of the United States, and they are determined to do so simply by honoring their oath in every one of these cases," he said.

Luttig added, "It is only the Supreme Court of the United States that is standing in the way of the American people saving their country."

Though the three branches of government were designed to be a "check and balance" on each other, it has been those courts, not Congress, that have become the barrier to the administration's attempt to hack the election. The legal veterans say they are prepared to use every available constitutional tool to protect voting rights, and they're optimistic.

Trump's executive order isn't merely illegal; its very logic is challenged in the court filings.

An election expert quoted in a court declaration explained that if 60 seconds is spent on verifying each piece of mail, "it would take about 4.9 years of continuous scanning to verify the whole mailing. If it only took a second to scan each mailpiece, it would take like 30 days. Even if it took only one tenth of a second to scan each mailpiece, it would take a little over 72 hours."

In Los Angeles County, California, every mail-in ballot has to be checked for signature matches. Trump spent days complaining that the longer things took, the more likely it was "BIG cheating."

The legal experts highlight the confusion the ordeal would cause if the entire system were changed weeks before an election. North Carolina, for example, has already begun sending out mail ballots.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown (D) cited the recent ruling: “As the court said, states’ compliance with this illegal order would be ‘practically impossible’ before the November elections given the unprecedented demands it would put on state and local elections officials. The chaos that would cause is exactly what Trump wants. That’s why we continue to fight for a fair and properly administered election.”

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee, who are both Republicans, were incensed when the Justice Department sent officials to watch their primary elections, recalled veteran reporter Kerry Drake in an op-ed for WyoFile last week.

"If Department of Justice attorneys blatantly march into the reddest, most pro-Trump state in the nation and demand to interview voters and inspect voting machines in violation of Wyoming’s state election laws, what do you think will happen in both red and blue states during the Nov. 3 midterm elections?" Drake asked.

Gordon went viral at the time, comparing the hijinks to states being forced to fight off federal government overreach.

“I feel very strongly about federal government coming in and taking our guns. I don’t like that. And I don’t like federal government coming in and taking our votes either," the governor said.

Still, the administration is going to the Supreme Court to get a sign-off.

Anna Baldwin, director of voting rights litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, doesn't believe it will be successful.

She told The Guardian, “The DOJ’s slapdash effort at getting the Supreme Court’s blessing to turn the USPS into a gatekeeper for mail would be a farce if it didn’t put our fundamental right to vote in the crosshairs. Given the importance of what is at stake, the DOJ’s continued efforts are nothing more than an attempt to foist chaos on the electoral process. But they will fail.”