deaths

President Donald Trump's stranglehold on the Republican Party is asserting itself in one GOP primary after another, with a long list of Republican incumbents he opposed losing to Trump-back challengers — including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), at least five Indiana state lawmakers and, most recently, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Massie, Cassidy and Cornyn won't be going to the general election, and many Republicans are afraid of doing anything that might offend Trump. But according to scholar/author Michael A. Cohen, who publishes the "Truth and Consequences" column on Substack, Trump is showing signs of the thing that he fears the most: weakness.

During a late May appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," Cohen (not to be confused with Trump's former personal attorney and fixer) argued that as a "malignant narcissist," the U.S. president is terrified of showing any signs of weakness or vulnerability.

When host Greg Sargent noted that Trump is "obviously deteriorating" both physically and mentally, he got no argument from Cohen.

"I mean, there's no question about it: You've seen a significant deterioration," Cohen told Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist. "I think one of the problems with Trump is that he's always been somebody who has never appeared to be the most coherent individual in the world. Certainly not the healthiest person in the world, either physically or mentally. But it does seem as though he's gotten significantly worse. And as he's gotten worse, the arguments that the White House is using to defend him against legitimate questions about this are even more ridiculous."

Cohen continued, "I'm sure you saw this, but when he fell asleep at an Oval Office event, the White House tweeted out that he was just blinking when they caught him with his eyes closed. Like, are we that stupid? I mean, maybe some people are that stupid in this country. But I think most Americans are not that dumb. And they realize the man's falling asleep at public events."

According to Cohen, one thing that "narcissists" like Trump "cannot accept ever" is "being seen as weak" — and when he's falling asleep at meetings, it flies in the face of the larger-than-life image he wants to project.

"He has to seem strong — not just strong, by the way, the strongest person," Cohen told Sargent. "Not just healthy — he's the healthiest person. What Trump has done is surround himself with all of these people who, basically, their only job is to stroke his ego.… And the political fallout, the ridicule that it leads to of Trump, is almost a secondary consideration for them. Because what matters to these people is keeping the boss happy, because the boss helps them keep their jobs. It is a ridiculous situation. It is like the emperor has no clothes come to life. That's what we’re basically seeing here."

Cohen emphasized that when it comes to Trump, hardcore MAGA Republicans are much different from independents and swing voters.

Cohen told Sargent, "Within the Republican Party, he still has this hold. But outside the Republican Party, that hold has disappeared completely. Among independents, his numbers are just atrocious. And I think you see this gap between the people who love Trump, which is a very small minority of the country at this point, and those who loathe Trump, which is a majority of the country."

As the US and Iran try to come to terms on a peace deal to end their months-long war, US President Donald Trump this week has introduced a new demand – that other countries in the Middle East sign on to his Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel.

When the Republican primary for Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race was decided in a Tuesday, May 26 runoff, it wasn't even close: Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) lost to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by roughly 27 percent, the New York Times reported. Bloomberg News' Steven Dennis has a major takeaway on the primary's outcome: extremely low voter turnout.

Dennis points to the turnout in Starr County, Texas, which is in the southern part of the state in the Rio Grande Valley, as a prime example.

The Bloomberg reporter, on X, noted, "There are 66000 people who live in Starr County. John Cornyn got 24 votes."

According to Daniel Nichanian, founder and editor of Bolts Magazine, Starr wasn't the only South Texas county where voter turnout was really low.

On X, Nichanian posted, "Truly low turnout in some counties in South Texas. In Starr County, Trump got roughly 9,500 votes in 2024. 90 votes counted in the GOP runoff today. In Webb County, Trump got roughly 33,300 votes in 2024. Roughly 2,300 voters today."

According to figures cited by Nichanian, the Webb County turnout in the May 26 runoff was a fraction of the Webb County turnout in the United States' 2024 presidential race.

Webb County's largest city is Laredo on the U.S./Mexico border.

Democratic strategist and insider Rachel Murphy Azzara had her own takeaway on the May 26 turnout, emphasizing that the most hardcore MAGA voters were the ones who showed up.

Azzara, on X, observed, "A couple takeaways: Cornyn's turnout operation fell short and only the most activist MAGA base bothered to vote."

Now that Paxton, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, is officially the nominee, he enters the general election and is going up against the Democratic nominee: centrist Texas State Rep. James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian. And some well-known conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and veteran Washington Post columnist George Will, believe the Senate seat is in play for Democrats.

Although Democrats perform well in Texas' large urban centers like Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, they haven't won a statewide race in the Lone Star State since 1994. But Paxton is a very controversial and divisive figure, even among conservatives — and Thune, during the Senate primary, warned fellow Republicans that Talarico would have a much harder time competing against Cornyn than he would against Paxton. Now, Paxton is officially the Republican that Talarico will be competing with in the general election, and GOP strategists are warning that their party will have to spend a lot money trying to defeat Talarico.

President Donald Trump has, at best, a "fuzzy" respect and understanding of international borders, two experts warned in a new piece from the New York Times, and the results of that are dragging the world into a new world order that looks a lot like the old one, and it is one that will be paid for "in blood."

Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein are political science professors at William and Mary College and the University of California Irvine, respectively, and together, they also co-wrote the book, "The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future." On Wednesday morning, they published an op-ed for the Times highlighting a recent comment from Trump and the vast implications it speaks to.

When pressed about whether or not the map of Iran would look the same after his war came to an end, Trump said, “That I can’t tell you. Probably not.”

"In an administration that frequently confuses swagger with strategy, this remark was nonetheless extraordinary," Hanson and Kopstein wrote. "Iran is one of the largest countries in the world. Redrawing its borders might unleash political, ethnic and religious conflict that could destabilize the entire region. This is only one example of a much larger pattern: Mr. Trump’s notion of international borders is, in a word, fuzzy."

This sort of disregard for borders and the global system they underpin can also be seen in Trump's blatantly imperialistic desire to annex countries as territories for the U.S. As Hanson and Kopstein highlighted, since returning to office, Trump has threatened to "take back" the Panama Canal, insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland and nearly obliterated relations with Canada after repeatedly insisting that it should become the 51st state.

"Where is all this going? The president has embraced an openly imperial approach to foreign policy, one that regards treaties as provisional, allies as obstacles and military power as a personal instrument of rule," the pair continued. "While commentators have noted the 'neo-royalist' cast of Mr. Trump’s worldview, his patrimonial understanding of geopolitics threatens something even more basic: the clearly defined international boundaries that are the very foundation of state sovereignty in the modern world. For someone who talks endlessly about borders, Mr. Trump has a porous idea of what they are. The result of this thinking will be a world of fuzzy borders, leading to a cacophony of territorial claims by rival states across the globe."

Borders, they explained, can "feel natural, even inevitable" to a modern person, but that kind of "stability is a historical anomaly," a shift from prior to the 20th Century, when they were "vague, shifting and endlessly contested." "Fuzzy border" and territorial disputes were at the heart of both World Wars, and in their bloody wakes, the world has put in considerable work to keep them steady, well-defined and respected. Now, Trump threatens to undo a lot of that progress.

"A system of fuzzy borders, in which powerful states treat territory as negotiable and sovereignty as conditional, is not a viable alternative to the liberal world order," Hanson and Kopstein concluded. "It would mean the re-emergence of a much older political logic in which power, not law, determines the boundaries of political community. The great powers of the 21st century — the United States, China and Russia — may each be tempted by this patrimonial vision of international affairs. But the price of returning to that world would not be paid in prestige or rhetoric, but in blood."

The Internet is full of conspiracy theorists who, knowing the stigma associated with the “conspiracy theorist” label, try to conceal their tendencies by seeming reasonable. Yet a new study reveals a simple tell that these conspiracy theorists have — and it may not be what you think.

“Exploratory linguistic analyses revealed that conspiracism was associated with greater use of conspiracy-related vocabulary (e.g., deception, government), a disproportionate use of sophisticated words, and increased syntactic complexity,” explained the authors of a recent article in the scientific journal PLOS One. “These results suggest that conspiracism may emerge more readily at the lexical level rather than through fully structured narratives. We discuss potential methodological and theoretical factors contributing to these unexpected results, including the roles of context, perceived relevance, motivation, and collective social dynamics. We also consider the possibility that conspiracism may not directly translate into conspiratorial narratives.”

In other words, conspiracy theorists like to gussy up their arguments with ornate language and seemingly-sophisticated forms of analysis, all of which serve to conceal from the public whether their ideas are provably connected to demonstrable facts.

“If so, we recommend comparative research on online vs offline conspiratorial writing to clarify whether conspiracy theories emerge spontaneously from genuine beliefs or are constructed strategically, detached from genuinely held beliefs,” PLOS One concluded.

To learn this, the study authors asked participants to watch an apocalyptic thriller, Leave the World Behind, which is notable for its ambiguous ending. When the nearly 400 study participants were asked to write essays interpreting the movie’s vague information, the scholars — using AI to break down the statistics — found that conspiracy theorists use complex language to make their ideas seem more credible. The use of this language, and the fact that it is consistently untethered to any kind of concrete evidence, is the tell.

“We were surprised that conspiratorial narratives did not emerge as we had predicted,” Alessandro Miani, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the study’s lead author, told PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan. “We preregistered the hypothesis that people higher in conspiracism would ‘fill the gaps’ of an ambiguous film with conspiratorial interpretations, and we ran two studies with two different conspiracy-belief scales. In both, the expected link between conspiracism and conspiratorial narrative content simply wasn’t there.”

This is not the first study to determine how cognitive processes influence people believing or not believing in conspiracy theories. In February 2024, The Conversation released a breakdown of numerous studies that traced individual thinking styles to one’s propensity to believe in conspiracy theories.

“Research shows that our thinking style can be predictive of susceptibility to conspiracy theories,” The Conversation explained. “The dual processing theory of cognitive style suggests that we have two routes which we can use to process information.”

The Conversation added, “One route is the fast, intuitive route which leans more on personal experiences and gut feelings. The other route is a slower, more analytical route which instead relies on elaborative and detailed processing of information.” Overall “what you tend to see is that people who are not necessarily smarter but who favour the more effortful, analytical thinking style are more resistant to conspiracy beliefs. For example, a British 2014 study found that those who scored highly for questions such as ‘I enjoy problems that require hard thinking’ were less likely to accept conspiracy beliefs.”

The article added, “It also found those who were less likely to engage in effortful thinking styles and more likely to use intuitive thinking showed a higher belief in conspiracy theories.”

After many consistent poll results over the course of months it does not look like President Donald Trump is crawling out of the hole of hate voters have put him in before the November midterms, which is too bad for Trump’s party.

“President Donald Trump’s approval rating is essentially where it was a month ago — and a month before that, and a month before that,” writes G. Elliot Morris, pointing out that Trump’s rating “is the second-worst reading we’ve recorded since we began tracking the question a year ago.”

You could call that stable, at least — if Trump’s net approval on prices and inflation hadn’t fallen to a new record low of -47. And it really doesn’t help that “inflation” happens to be the issue voters say they care about most.

“He cannot dig himself out of a hole with the average American if he continues to marginalize them on their core priorities,” said Morris. “The issue voters care most about — the one they say is the single most important problem facing the country today — is also the one where the president is most unpopular.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are trampling Republicans on the generic ballot with both registered voters and “all U.S. adults.”

But what makes things even sweeter for Dems is the fact that they lead on all but four issues — and none of those remaining four issues are passionate priorities, according to surveys. This includes immigration, deportations, border security and crime, all of which have fallen to the wayside with Americans as new worries over inflation and gas prices keep swamping household budgets.

Democrats have led the generic ballot in every poll conducted since May 2025, and their margin has only grown in recent months.

And woe unto House and Senate Republicans with a track record like that.

“Aside from approval, other indicators are also flashing red,” said Morris. “The country is very dissatisfied, with the vast majority saying major political and economic changes are needed. The president is underwater on almost every issue, and if you ask voters who they trust more to handle their personal most important issue, they say the opposition party by a growing 13-point margin. … When a president is this unpopular this close to a midterm, his party usually loses badly. Bush, at this same approval level in May 2006, saw his party lose 30 House seats and the majority later that year.”

“If our May numbers are anywhere close to where things stand in the fall, Republicans should be preparing for significant losses, up and down the ballot,” said Morris.

Some Republicans fretting about the upcoming midterms on social media could not seem to squeeze into a comfortable position Tuesday night after incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) lost his seat to Republican challenger Ken Paxton.

MAGA faithful delighted in the news, with right-wing pundits like Nick Sorter crowing victory Tuesday night after results rolled in.

“HEY THUNE: Texas is sending a MESSAGE to you. You could’ve avoided this ENTIRE PRIMARY and KEPT John Cornyn if you would’ve just passed the SAVE America Act,” Sorter said on X. “You snubbed us, thinking you could just BUY elections. YOU WERE WRONG. Voters are REBUKING you.”

“The day of the RINO is over and the RINO's who are still in the Senate better take notice,” yowled MAGA influencer Bill Mitchell on X.

“Go against President Trump and his America First agenda at your own peril,” said another. “The old Republican Party is dead. The voters are fully behind Trump, and opposing him is now a career-ender. Just ask John Cornyn, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, and the rest of the never Trump losers who got primaried, booed off stage, or exiled into political oblivion.”

“Paxton will face Democrat James Talarico in November, win that election, and begin representing Texas come January in the senate,” said right-wing radio host Clay Travis on X.

But other, less jingoistic conservatives appeared to twitch their fingers at the news.

“Dems will be happy to get Paxton with all his baggage,” said former Fox News sportswriter Robert Lusetich under Travis’ X post.

“Paxton will win easily after Democrats spend over $100 million convincing themselves Talarico has a chance,” Travis posted directly beneath Lusetich — but Lusetich was unconvinced.

“But think of the ads that $100m buys, Clay! 2023 impeachment by his own party in the Texas House + long-running securities fraud indictments + federal whistle-blower investigations + Trump lackey,” insisted Lusetich. “Key though is 15-20 percent of GOP in Texas are Bush Republicans & they're staying home.”

Talarico himself was already courting bitter Cornyn voters on the night of his defeat, announcing on X: “I want to thank Senator John Cornyn for his years representing our state. We don’t agree on everything, but we both still believe in public service. To Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.”

Dem strategists and influencers, meanwhile, were already out in force and thrilled with the news, with one declaring on X: “Congrats Ken Paxton for handing the Senate to Democrats in 2026.

Another X Dem suggested: “Dems need to just run clips of Paxton being insane over and over and over again.”

President Donald Trump may believe himself to be dying and is acting without regard to his popularity for that reason.

That, at least, is the theory promulgated by commentators Wajahat Ali and Allison Gill in a Tuesday post on their Substack called The Left Hook.

“Trump is decaying, both in body and popularity,” Ali and Gill wrote. “The nearly 80-year-old vulgarian is a diminished man with historically low favorability ratings. He has dragged the GOP down with him. His actions are more reflective of a paranoid, weak King who knows his end is near and is desperately trying to sandbag against the vengeful wave that is about to topple his kingdom.”

They pointed out that, thanks to Trump’s plummeting approval ratings, Republican lawmakers like Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) are more comfortable standing up to the president on key issues. More broadly, South Carolina Republicans have defied Trump in his attempt to gerrymander their state, grand juries are defying Trump’s politically-motivated prosecutions and federal Republicans are refusing to go along with Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund to “subsidise the retirement of violent insurrectionists.” Perhaps most notably, “Trump voters are fleeing after he betrayed his promise of bringing down costs, releasing the Epstein Files, and ending forever wars.”

In a video accompanying their text article, the two pundits elaborated on their analysis. Ali pointed out that Trump has entirely erased the advantages he held in the 2024 election among Hispanic voters and young voters, and has even started to lose support among his base of white voters.

“MAGA is still loyal — it's a cult, it's a shrinking cult, folks,” Ali said. “And it goes to the point of what's happened in the past two to three months. I think he's betrayed them on three core promises. He promised, ‘Vote for me, inflation will go down.’ His dumbass, with the self-inflicted wound of his trade wars and his Iran war situation, has made everything go up.”

He added, “Speaking of the Iran war — second betrayal: no more forever wars. Apparently we're just having wars left and right. And then the third one was, ‘I'm going to show you that liberals are part of the deep state — they're raping everyone, I'm going to release the Epstein files.’ Oh, guess who's mentioned more in the Epstein files? Him.”

Ali then focused on an issue that has not received as much attention in terms of Trump’s declining popularity, namely, his ongoing support of unregulated AI.

“I'll also say to that point — on the AI issue — I have seen in the past two months a bipartisan, growing rage against AI and AI data centers,” Ali said. “People really feel this, and I think we're seeing that play out in the candidates people are selecting in more local races. Even in rural America, they hate these data centers.”

In their text article, Ali and Gill argued that Trump is avoiding these realities by surrounding himself with an inner circle that does not challenge him, but that he cannot will these political problems away.

“Since sychophants surround Trump, he is insulated from reality and can ‘blink’ his way through the chaos,” Ali and Gill said. “However, we can clearly see the Emperor has no clothes and is suffering from swollen cankles and massive bruises on his palms. Trump just went to Walter Reed Hospital for the third physical of his second term, but don’t worry, he’s SUPER healthy, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

They continued by writing that although Trump wants to distract America from his controversies by having a UFC match near the White House, they concluded that “we truly live in the dumbest country, but the majority is finally, finally waking up.”

Ali and Gill are not alone in saying that those who still support Trump are acting like they are in a cult. In February, former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), who used to avidly support Trump, explained that those who still do so reveal themselves to be cult-like.

“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Yet despite his belligerence toward Denmark, Venezuela and Iran, these people overwhelmingly still back him.

“And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?” Walsh argued. “What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”

He continued, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”

President Donald Trump will leave power of his own accord if one thing happens, argues a longtime political expert — and that one thing is very much in the American people’s control.

“We’re looking to achieve a staggering, breathtaking, comprehensive, and total defeat of Trumpism. I think we can do that,” longtime Democratic strategist James Carville told Politicon on Tuesday. “But it requires all of us pushing in the same direction.”

Carville argued that, instead of rejecting the claim of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” the president’s opponents should embrace that label because it will help motivate them to vote for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections.

“And you who are joining me on this podcast, you have it, and I’m proud of you, and you should be proud of yourself,” Carville continued. He then said that “better things are coming” precisely because he anticipates Democrats retaking at least the House of Representatives during the elections, which will allow them to hold Trump accountable. When they do so, Carville predicted, Trump will ultimately want to quit.

“And I think better things are coming because I think if he has still got his wits about him—and I hope he does—he’ll get the f--k out of there and leave, because his life is gonna be so godd--n miserable, he won’t know what to do," Carville argued.

Experts share Carville’s assessment. Speaking to AlterNet, one political polling expert anticipated that Democrats are poised to retake at least the lower chamber of Congress despite Republican redistricting efforts.

"We think Democrats are still favored to win the House, even though Republicans have helped themselves through redistricting," Kyle Kondik, Managing Editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told AlterNet. "The national environment just seems like it'll be enough to push Democrats to the majority."

Carville has repeatedly called for Americans to unite behind the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections as a way of reining in Trump, who he characterizes as an unhinged and anti-democratic president.

“You’re gonna win the presidency in 2028 and it’s a pretty good chance you control both the House and Senate,” Carville said in September, arguing about the GOP that “every time they get into power, they try to cut taxes for rich people and cut healthcare access to middle class people. They’ve done what you thought they were going to do.”

He concluded, “They can call that bill anything they want, it was still the most negatively viewed piece of domestic legislation in this century I think.”

President Donald Trump’s 11^th hour endorsement against incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn seems to have paid off in Texas as Trump’s champion Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton swamped Cornyn in the Senate primary, according to CNN and MS NOW projections.

Trump routinely targets Republicans he finds too independent by fielding or supporting more Trumpy candidates in primaries. More recently, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, became the latest victim of Trump's effort to back primary challengers for his perceived enemies within the GOP.

But Paxton is nothing if not a flawed candidate, according to critics. He is an adulterer who attempted to overthrow the 2020 election and who was nearly impeached by his own Republican senate. Sixteen Texas attorneys signed a 31-page complaint against Paxton, demanding he be disbarred for legal offenses.

Still, it will be Paxton, not Cornyn, who will face off against Democrat James Talarico, a state lawmaker, this November.

Both Cornyn and Paxton were found to be trailing hypothetical head-to-heads against Talarico last month in a Texas Public Opinion Research poll of 1,865 voters. That poll showed Talarico with a three-percentage point lead over Cornyn, 44-to-41 percent. But he leads Attorney General Ken Paxton by a wider, five percentage point margin, 46-to-41 percent, according to the poll.

Talarico leads Paxton with Black voters by +56, Latino voters +27 and college-educated voters +14. Nine percent of surveyed respondents remain undecided. Independents break for Talarico against Paxton 53 percent to 28 percent.

Democrats winning a major statewide election in Texas has long been seen as unlikely, but according to a new breakdown from The Atlantic, Trump's recent "casual betrayal" of an endorsement has given the party its best chance at an upset in decades.

“Trump may have cemented a set of very difficult circumstances for his party,” reported the Atlantic. “If Paxton wins on Tuesday, Democrats will probably be better positioned to win statewide in Texas than they’ve been in the past 40 years."

Critics complain that Trump’s endorsement means Republican financiers will have to invest more heavily to beat Talarico, which means less money helping vulnerable Republicans in other states, when Texas should have been an easy win.

Trump's vendetta against Republicans who defy him represents a significant shift in party dynamics.

Since his return to the White House, Trump has systematically targeted GOP lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal, orchestrating primary challenges against sitting senators and representatives. Notable victims include Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary after voting to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who challenged Trump on government spending and the Epstein files. Trump has also threatened Senators Rand Paul and Lauren Boebert for supporting Massie.

These purges extend beyond symbolic gestures—Trump has mobilized campaign resources and Super PAC funding to ensure defeats, effectively establishing a loyalty test within the party that prioritizes personal allegiance over policy positions or constituent service.

President Donald Trump is forcing the Republican Party into a politically perilous position in advance of the upcoming midterm elections — and they are now relying on a gamble that traces back to former President Richard Nixon’s administration.

“Even as Congress abandoned plans to pass an immigration-spending package before Memorial Day, as Republicans revolted against the Trump administration’s pursuit of a $1.776 billion settlement fund for his allies, key House Republicans were discussing a sprint toward a third bill under the so-called budget reconciliation process that would advance by the end of next month,” reported Bloomberg's Zach C. Cohen on Tuesday. Cohen pointed out that Republican lawmakers want to pass three reconciliation bills, something that has not happened since Nixon accomplished this more than half a century ago.

“It’s a tantalizing tool for a party trying to defend majorities in the House and Senate while the high cost of living dominates voters’ economic anxieties,” Cohen explained. “But just because House Speaker Mike Johnson and top deputies have been huddling for weeks to find a constellation of policies that could get near-universal support, that doesn’t mean anything will become law, even with passage being completely within Republicans’ control.”

Yet this will be difficult because Republicans can only afford to lose two votes on any given day with full attendance to pass anything unless Democrats defect, which is unlikely. Considering that Trump has alienated many Republican lawmakers, from House members like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) to Senators like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Yet the issue is even deeper than this.

“The kinds of policies that help incumbent Republicans fend off primary challengers in heavily red districts don’t necessarily work with the general electorate in the purple ones, and vice versa,” Cohen wrote. “Deep cuts to social services could make headroom for what couldn’t fit within the deficit caps last year, but at a political cost that lawmakers may not be willing to bear. Enacting or even passing that bill out of one chamber before the August recess may give Republican campaigns enough time to sell to voters that they’ve taken action on whatever’s included, though Democrats would have their fair share of criticism that would be hitting screens and mailboxes as well.”

The result is that “absent a fiscal cliff like Republicans had hanging over their heads last year, it’s hard to get members to agree to acquiesce to the parts of the bill they don’t like.”

He concluded that “you can take at their word that there are corners of the Republican conference that fear what the ballooning national debt—roughly the size of the US’s gross domestic product—will do to the country’s ability to pay for the rest of its expenses that are crowded out by interest on bond payments, risking a potential catastrophic default on the national debt. But addressing the deficit has always been seen as an issue that requires bipartisan support.”

In short, “It’s difficult to find about $2 trillion in savings annually without considering both spending cuts and tax increases, which neither party has the political fortitude (or support) to shoulder alone. So Republicans are trying to tackle the most intractable problems of our day with the narrowest of majorities.”

The GOP is determined to pass this legislation to distract from Trump’s unpopular $1.8 billion slush fund for his supporters and $1 billion ballroom. The consensus among Republican lawmakers is that those issues will be politically toxic for them in the upcoming midterm elections, despite their recent efforts to gerrymander in key states to their advantage.

“We think Democrats are still favored to win the House, even though Republicans have helped themselves through redistricting,” managing editor Kyle Kondik of the political analysis publication Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told AlterNet. “The national environment just seems like it'll be enough to push Democrats to the majority.”