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The last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was 1932. Yet on Friday, Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton received his second endorsement from a Republican former Kansas governor in less than a month, in his race against Republican incumbent Senator Roger Marshall.

The top Senate Republican super PAC is so concerned that Marshall could lose the race that it’s diverting funds to Kansas from North Carolina, where it’s canceled its remaining ads against Democrat Roy Cooper — basically conceding North Carolina (by the way, a Democrat hasn’t won statewide federal office in North Carolina in nearly two decades).

To say it’s not looking good for Republicans is an understatement.

Trump is an albatross around the necks of every Republican running for Congress or governor. He’s also posing problems for plenty of Republican candidates for state office.

Why?

It’s not that Americans have suddenly discovered that Trump is a despicable human being. His personality has been on national display for more than a decade.

It’s not that Trump’s hold over his MAGA base has significantly weakened. Polls show self-identified MAGAs are still firmly in his camp.

It’s not that most Americans have become angry that the major beneficiaries of Trump’s tax cuts are big corporations and the very rich, or that the burdens of his spending cuts disproportionately fall on the poor (as less nutrition assistance and Medicaid), or that his mass deportations are violent and cruel. There’s no evidence that these policies are suddenly swaying voters.

And it’s not that voters have become any more aware of Trump’s lies. He continues to say the U.S. is experiencing a “golden age” with a “roaring economy” that’s doing “better than any other country” in the world, and that any negative public perception is due to a “public relations” problem.

No, the real problem for Trump and Republicans is Americans are hurting, and they know it’s because of Trump and Republicans.

A new AP-NORC poll shows a record low 26 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while just 17 percent approve of how he’s handling the cost of living. These are comparable to George W. Bush’s ratings during the 2008 financial crisis and George H.W. Bush’s just before he was swept out of office. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 81.9 in September, its lowest since April 2014.

In Kansas, for example, Trump’s tariffs have caused China, Canada, and Mexico to retaliate by sharply cutting demand for wheat, sorghum, and soybeans. As a result, Kansas grain silos are so swollen that grain brokers have been forced to reroute human-grade grain into dog food.

At the same time, tariffs on foreign-produced aluminum and steel have driven up the prices of farm machinery and replacement parts. Trump’s decision to lift certain foreign beef import restrictions has hurt the beef sales of local cattle ranchers.

Trump’s war in Iran has choked off shipping of sulfur and phosphate in the Persian Gulf, causing nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer prices to surge by over 100 percent. The blockage has also caused diesel prices to soar, making farmers pay $200 per acre just to fuel their tractors.

These higher costs and lower crop sales have resulted in the closure of roughly 700 Kansas farms over the past year. Many remaining farmers are barely holding on.

This explains why Kansas’s former Republican governor Mike Hayden endorsed Democrat Adam Hamilton over Republican incumbent Roger Marshall in Friday’s Wichita Eagle:

“Sen. Marshall time and again has chosen to back the tariffs and the war, despite what is happening back in Kansas. Kansans need a senator willing to stand up and say this isn’t working.”

There it is, folks.

Americans can bear Trump’s awful personality. Some might succumb to his MAGA cult. They might believe many of his lies.

But they can’t abide what Trump’s policies are doing to them and their families.

Forget the rip-roaring stock market. When it comes to voting, kitchen-table economics — the financial realities average people talk about over the kitchen table, such as the prices they’re paying and the money they’re earning — are more potent than anything else.

I continue to warn against complacence. It’s still vitally important that we vote, and that we encourage everyone we know — especially those who share our values — to vote. And it’s crucially important to remain vigilant against Trump’s interference in our elections.

But with a little more than four weeks to go, I’m breathing a wee bit easier. I hope you are, too.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

President Donald Trump's blatant second-term corruption is souring him for more and more high-profile former supporters, and as one former White House official told MS NOW, there are two clear reasons why he cannot get away with it as he used to, and they are becoming a "lethal combination for him."

During the Saturday broadcast of MS NOW's Deadline: White House, host Nicole Wallace shared a clip of famed podcaster Joe Rogan expressing disgust at the ways in which Trump has enriched himself and his family, and scammed followers out of money, via his cryptocurrency ventures. This marked another sharp departure for Rogan, who voiced support for Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Wallace also welcomed Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration national security adviser, to discuss the phenomenon, and he put forward what he viewed as the two main reasons that voters could no longer stomach Trump's corruption like they managed to in his first term.

"I think part of what's going on here, Nicole, is, number one, the scale and obvious nature of this corruption is much simpler of a story to tell than some of the more bank-shot corruption of the first term," Rhodes explained. "You know, Saudis paying a lot of money to stay in Trump hotel rooms or something like that. The scale [this time] is billions of dollars, and it's pretty clear when you juice, like, a meme coin, and then it collapses in value, and you walk away with a lot of money and all the people that you convinced to invest in it walk away losing a lot of money. Well, that's an easy story to tell. So that's the first thing: the scale of it and how clear it is."

He continued: "I think the second thing that's really important here is that the economy is not good, that prices are still up. If the economy was going gangbusters for people and oil wasn't through the roof, and the price of groceries wasn't through the roof, maybe, maybe some of these people would be kind of less focused on this. But the reality is, it's that context. It's those two things together. Most people cannot afford things, and Donald Trump is getting fabulously wealthy in the process. Like, that is a lethal political combination, and that's something that, frankly, some Democrats like Jon Ossoff are making the case. But you almost don't have to. Even a Joe Rogan is doing his own research and coming to the same conclusion."

Wallace further expressed continued shock at how much disdain Trump appeared to have for his own voters, given how much he takes advantage of them. Rhodes concurred and called the trend one of the "dark truths" of Trump's political career.

"The people that they need to take advantage of are the people that most believe in them," he explained. "Whoever thinks that they're going to benefit by getting close to Trump, you know, always ends up losing in the end."

President Donald Trump seemingly divulged a GOP lawmaker's personal contact information while going after them in a social media post, and according to an MS NOW panel, this sort of "unhinged" behavior is the result of the "weird, unpredictable" obsessions of men like him.

In a series of Saturday posts to Truth Social, Trump singled out Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton for "holding up" the Sunshine Protection Act, a bill before Congress that would permanently implement Daylight Saving Time and end the practice of changing the time twice a year. Trump has put significant pressure on the GOP to get the bill passed, and despite past efforts to make the change having gone poorly, the idea remains nominally popular with most Americans.

In the process of calling out Cotton, Trump included what seemed to be his real cell phone numbers while urging Arkansas residents to contact him about the bill.

"To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself. Call Tom on his cellphone... and let him know,” Trump's post read.

During the Saturday afternoon broadcast of MS NOW's The Assignment, host Antonia Hylton pressed a panel of guests about the incident. Political comedian Jason Selvig noted that Trump similarly doxxed the late former Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2015, while journalist Paola Ramos noted that, also in 2015, he did the same to her father, longtime Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos, forcing him to get a new phone.

"Is this an unhinged thing to do? Yes, it is," Selvig said. "This, like, one of your Republicans that you want working for you while you're the president of the United States, is this going to help? I don't think that's going to help."

The panel further noted that one of Trump's rationales for permanent Daylight Saving Time would be its benefit to golfers, with Hylton noting that "it always comes back to him." Author and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb explained how this sort of dynamic, where policy decisions are driven by personal obsessions, is common among authoritarian-styled leaders.

"I have to add one thing here, which is that it has been my observation that the more autocratic a leader is, the more idiosyncratic their fixations become," Cobb said. "I mean, we all remember [Libyan Dictator Muammar] Gaddafi and his obsession with Condoleezza Rice. It's just like these weird kinds of things that pop up, and it's like, wait, what? What is this about? This is the thing, like populists with the silver standard of the 19th century, they always have these things that are kind of weird, unpredictable, and they get really worked up into a lather about them. And so now he's like, we want to get rid of daylight saving time, and we're going to get it on the agenda to do this. And if you don't, you're going to need a new cell phone."

Author and journalist Bradley Onishi added: "Well, look, this is a guy who thinks there's no accountability. So if you know, whether you're a Silicon Valley billionaire or you're an autocrat, once the guardrails come off and there's no one to hold you to account, you dig into these idiosyncrasies, idiosyncratic interests, obsessions, rather than talking about affordability, gas prices, rather than talking about how he's going to stop the war in Iran. We have a situation where it's time to dox the Arkansas senator so we can make sure golfers have more sunlight."

The D.C. insiders at Pod Save America ripped into one of the GOP candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump who is floundering the worst, lambasting him for having the "personality of a snail" and arguing that he has never had to face a competitive election.

In the latest episode of the Pod Save America podcast, hosts and former Obama administration officials Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer discussed the latest scandal surrounding Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his midterm bid for the U.S. Senate. Leaked audio of a meeting with donors seemed to show Paxton — who was carried through the GOP primary in Texas largely thanks to Trump's endorsement — explaining how the president's recent midterm convention in Dallas harmed his poll numbers, and those of just about every other GOP candidate.

"So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good," Paxton said when one donor asked if Trump was becoming a drag on GOP candidates.

Amid the conversation about those leaks, Pfeiffer, a former senior communications aide to Barack Obama, said it was " just truly unbelievable" how far Paxton has come politically, given his complete lack of "charisma." A deep well of charisma, he observed, has helped a lot of "incredibly corrupt politicians," like Trump, succeed, but with Paxton, he was stumped trying to pin down what he brought to the table.

"What does Paxton bring to the table that allows people to just go along with his corruption?" Pfeiffer asked with an air of exasperation. "He has the personality of a snail."

In response, Favreau, a former director of speechwriting for Obama, cited stories from reporters and commentators who have followed Texas politics closely.

"People who, you know, analyze Texas politics for a living and do Texas politics for a living have made the point that he has gotten as far as he has because of his corruption," Favreau explained. "And so because he has been so corrupt and gotten so much, so many people who are really wealthy in Texas politics to spend so much money getting him elected, he really hasn't had, like, a super competitive race, especially in a primary where he's had to rely on his charisma and talent for campaigning. All he's had to do is just be the guy who a bunch of, you know, wealthy special interests poured a bunch of money uh into making sure he got elected so that he could pay them back."

"Gosh, we really can't lose to this guy," Pfeiffer responded. "We cannot lose to him."

Amid his ongoing feud with CNN and other outlets, one of the network's top anchors snuck in a "subtle dig" at President Donald Trump during a recent live broadcast, per The Daily Beast.

Kaitlan Collins is a prominent host and former chief White House correspondent for CNN and has gained significant attention in recent years for Trump's particular animosity towards her. During a 2023 town hall event, in response to Collins grilling him about the classified documents he hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, Trump lashed out and called her a "nasty person."

As The Daily Beast noted in its report from Saturday, "Trump’s attacks on Collins have become even more frequent" since the start of his second term, calling her part of "Fake News CNN" in a social media post from December, and lambasting her as "always Stupid and Nasty."

Trump's anger has become even more notable amid his ongoing attempts to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from entering the White House. The president himself has repeatedly said that the ban is due to negative coverage from each outlet, while his legal team has attempted to argue in court that there is no legal requirement to allow outlets into the White House and that the targeted outlets have failed to meet certain supposed professional standards. The ban has been struck down multiple times in court, but reporters for the three outlets have continued to be denied White House access nonetheless.

As The Daily Beast highlighted, Collins appeared to take aim at Trump in a subtle manner during a recent broadcast, by way of a prominently placed mug on the anchor's desk of her program, The Source, reading: "America Needs Nasty Women."

"After the ban was overturned by one of Trump’s own judicial appointees on First Amendment grounds, the president then kicked CNN off Air Force One and bluntly antagonized Collins, singling her out for criticism and telling her she 'shouldn’t be here,'" The Daily Beast detailed further. "Time published a lengthy interview with Trump this week in which he lashed out at Collins while ranting about how the media only covers negative stories."

“So at a certain point, you say, ‘What’s the purpose of, like, this crazy Kaitlan Collins?’ She’s a very average person. She’s the most unhappy young person I’ve ever seen,“ Trump said during the interview. "If I did something spectacular by any standard, and they would write about it, they will only write badly."

President Donald Trump's "staggeringly corrupt" new push to release "slopaganda" ads is not a sign of his power, according to a new analysis from The New Republic; it is actually him realizing that if his "goose isn’t cooked yet, the pot is at least boiling."

Trump raised alarms over the past few weeks with a new wave of ads touting little more than himself and his own image, all funded by the government using tax dollars. The ads were widely condemned as illegal, given the use of government funds to create political messaging, and poorly conceived in the run-up to the midterms, given that voters are keen to punish Republicans for Trump's failures.

Digging into the situation in a new piece published Saturday, New Republic deputy editor Jason Linkins argued that these ads should not be seen as "some kind of flex, or one more scandalous abuse of the public trust" from Trump. Rather, he suggested that they exposed Trump's "desperation" in the face of impending failure.

"I also think, if anything, this fusillade of propaganda will likely backfire," Linkins wrote. "These ads haven’t generated good news for Trump; very few people outside of the administration and its obvious sycophants have tried to defend them. Moreover, the media seems resistant to give this story the 'both sides' treatment. As with Trump’s 25-minute prime-time ramble last July, the political press seems wise to what’s going on. Of that aforementioned speech, TNR editor Michael Tomasky said, the overall reaction to the president’s attempt to shine us on 'tells us that that power he had over people and institutions a year or 15 months ago has evanesced.' I think these PSAs do little else than advertise that fact."

These ads, Linkins continued, are also just another part of the gradually building storm that looks set to wipe out the GOP in the midterms. Among the other issues, he explained, is Trump's plan to hold midterm rallies in states typically considered "bastions of conservatism," exposing the "tremendous peril" that the party faces as voter revolt becomes evident all over the country. These issues, along with the president's tumbling approval ratings and leaks exposing how frustrated Republicans have become with him, are "all adding up to defeat."

"The Cook Political Report says a Democratic takeover of the House is a 'done deal' and that winning the Senate is 'very realistic,'" Linkins concluded. "The Quinnipiac generic poll of the House has Democrats opening up a 51 percent to 39 percent lead, which are bloodbath numbers. The only headwind Democrats face is that while voters seem willing to give them their vote this year, they’re not as ready to give them their affection. Still, you’d rather be the Democrats right now than the GOP, who like Vice President JD Vance, have been left begging voters for a 'second chance' without understanding that they’ve already received that second chance— and they’ve blown it."

A considerable number of voters still believe that President Donald Trump is honest, despite the mountain of evidence of his lies. And, according to one New York Times columnist, an insidious myth underlying American culture explains the problem.

In his latest "Takes" series video posted to YouTube, liberal NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie highlighted some of the recent findings from one of the outlet's focus groups, specifically, one that spoke with disaffected past Trump voters. One response, from a 50-year-old white independent named "Sebastian," was "genuinely interesting," and "so illustrative of a dynamic that is very common in voting."

"I was hoping he would learn from the first time," the respondent said. "All politicians lie and tell you what you want to hear, but I voted for him because he was something different. He spoke the truth; he spoke what was on his mind. That's what appealed the first time. I was hoping the second time around he learned something from his mistakes and learned something from, 'OK, now I know how to really fix this, and it's not going to be the same old, same old.' I felt like I was just picking the lesser of two evils. I went with the one that I was in line with more as far as economics, and was thinking that he would fix those, which doesn't seem to be the case."

Bouie made particular note of Sebastian's belief that Trump was a "truth teller," an idea that might seem "insane" to most observers. As he explained, Trump's open bigotry has done a lot to convince a certain subset of Americans that he is being honest with them.

"Trump is the definition of a guy who has a very loose relationship with anything like the truth," Bouie explained. "But this is where Trump's bigotry comes in; this is where his racism comes in."

According to Bouie, many people perceive the racist things Trump says as being true because many people perceive things that are racist as being true. "Trump's willingness to say them, and say them openly, does not code to many voters as him being a bigot. It codes to them as him being someone willing to say what is truthful about the world."

He continued: "Moreover, we have this cultural archetype of the kind of lovable bigot, even the lovable outer borough New York bigot: Archie Bunker is the most famous example of this. Tony Soprano is a version of this. This exists in our cultural landscape and makes a guy like Trump quite legible. They don't see him as someone who holds genuine racial animus. They see him as a guy who's willing to say what is on his mind, willing to say what he believes is true and he ultimately doesn't really mean it like that."

Furthermore, Bouie argued that, to these same Americans, the effort other politicians put into being "more judicious" and careful about what they say comes off as dishonest and trying to hide things, even if, he added, most politicians actually are doing their best to be as honest as they can be.

"I would say that this gets things completely a—— backwards, but it's how I believe a lot of voters approach these things," Bouie continued. "One way to think of all this is that Trump's political skill ... is that he can be many things to many people. People project onto him what they want to see and then they act accordingly, and I think what we're witnessing now is the extent to which a lot of voters, having projected something onto him that they want to see, are taken aback, shocked, appalled by the fact that that is not the reality, that that is not the truth, that the Trump that they have imagined is very different than the Trump who exists in reality."