iran war

With Democrats poised to take over Congress after enormous midterm wins, a civil war has broken out over the party's incoming leaders in the House and Senate, and now, some D.C. insiders have revealed the latter fight is not as doomed as it seems.

As things currently stand, Sen. Chuck Schumer is poised to once again become the party's Senate Majority Leader, while Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is likely to become House Speaker after being anointed by Nancy Pelosi as her successor. Each man has faced severe pushback from voters and more progressive members of their caucus, who believe that their lack of fight in the face of President Donald Trump's abuses over the last two years makes them unfit for leadership.

Schumer, in particular, has faced a pushback campaign from 50501 and Indivisible, the groups that organized the recent "No Kings" protests nationwide. The groups have opposed Schumer's leadership within the Democratic Party since the first months of the second Trump administration, when he opted to vote in favor of the GOP's stopgap funding bill, a move widely condemned as capitulation to Trump.

The groups have thrown their weight behind Sen. Chris Van Hollen for the role, with the Maryland lawmaker having won considerable acclaim from the Democratic base for his efforts to stand up to Trump's mass deportation agenda. Van Hollen, however, recently claimed that he is not interested in the role, with many observers noting that the senator is more interested in a 2028 presidential bid. Taking on Senate or House leadership roles is often detrimental to such ambitions, given that they become lightning rods for criticism about everything people dislike about a party.

Nonetheless, Van Hollen has said that he also opposes continuing with Schumer as majority leader, and several prominent members of the party, including Michigan Senator-Elect Abdul El-Sayed, have said that they would support Van Hollen in the role.

Some affiliated with 50501 and Indivisible, however, now believe that Van Hollen is still a viable candidate to oust and replace Schumer. Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, took to BlueSky on Sunday to share his "intel" on why Van Hollen is still in play.

"I've spent days talking to DC insiders," Levin wrote. "Schumer does not yet have the votes. His strategy is to make it seem like an inevitability - it ain't. But who else? This is where I've shifted.... It's Chris Van Hollen. And I think people are misreading the signals. Senate speak is a language. CVH has said he's not 'focused on it' or he's 'kicking the tires' for a presidential run instead. But he was also the first to oppose a Schumer coronation. That's Senate speak for: lets see how this develops. In short, my read is that CVH is draftable and could win. What changed things? The overwhelming public opposition to a Schumer coronation flooding congress. Senators are back tomorrow. Please keep up the pressure!!! Love on CVH is nice, but call your own senators. They're the ones with a vote!"

Responding to Levin's take, Hunter Dunn, the national press coordinator for 50501, said that he has heard from sources close to the matter that Van Hollen is more open to the idea than he is letting on.

"Ezra, per usual, Knows Ball," Dunn posted. "Chris Van Hollen is the most viable replacement candidate available, and has been… let’s just say, I’m hearing things that imply he’s more willing than the mainstream narrative suggests."

President Donald Trump's toxic leadership led to a historic wipeout for the GOP in last week's midterms, and according to one prominent New York Times columnist, there was proof that such a brutal swing was coming a year ago.

As the results continue to trickle in, Democrats are expected to end the midterms with a staggering 56 Senate seats and around 260 House seats, having handily won majorities in each chamber before Election Night wrapped up. This blue wave — widely touted as a "blue tsunami" — now represents the worst midterm performance for the GOP since 1974, the first election cycle after the Watergate scandal.

In the latest of his series of videos interpreting last week's results, liberal Times columnist Jamelle Bouie tried to articulate a timeline of events for what led to the public souring on Trump after he came to the White House with a popular-vote win and an approval rating above water. As he argued, the turn did not begin with the high-profile scandals at the start of 2026, as many pundits have argued, but back in 2025.

He backed this up by noting that Trump suffered a "steady deterioration" of his approval ratings right from the start of his second term.

"Although people do not express it in these terms, I think what that represents is a reaction to the president's authoritarian designs. One of the first big pivot points in public opinion was the attempt to rendition Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT in El Salvador, that weird gulag prison place. The administration touted their renditions of immigrants to CECOT. It was a big part of their public-facing message.

He continued: And the public did not like it. Did not like it so much that the Supreme Court, full of people happy to grant discretion to the president when it comes to the use of immigration authority, refused to let the administration ship people to that prison. What you see throughout, with every single gambit, with every single attempt to consolidate some kind of authoritarian regime in this country, is the public recoiling. They recoiled at the National Guard deployments. They recoiled at the aggressive use of ICE and Customs and Border Protection. They recoiled at the attacks on universities. They recoiled at the ugliness of the assault on civil society. They recoiled at Elon Musk and DOGE in that effort to destroy the federal bureaucracy."

In the face of this unrelenting tide of ugly stories, voters went to the polls in the 2025 off-year elections and handed Republicans decisive defeats in places like New Jersey, Virginia and New York City. As Bouie noted, the margins for those Democratic victories align closely with the popular vote margin they just posted in the midterms, signalling that Trump's fate was already sealed last November.

"It's one thing after another, one thing piling up after another that is driving the president's decline," Bouie continued. "Such that by last November in the Virginia and New Jersey statewide races, you saw 12, 13, 14-point swings toward the Democrats. Swings that replicated themselves all across the country in other places where there were special elections. At the time, I thought those swings were indicative of something happening below the surface, of a public that had grown truly tired of the president. Others were skeptical. But what's clear is that I was right. What's clear is that that was the case, that those swings were harbingers of things to come."

Many have argued, including Vice President JD Vance, that the Iran war was the single overriding issue that led to the GOP's defeat on Tuesday. Bouie argued, instead, that the war was instead the issue that made it impossible for Trump to turn things around with voters to any meaningful degree.

President Donald Trump will become more dangerous than ever as the "tragedy" of his presidency reaches its conclusion, one psychologist told The Daily Beast, as he will be looking for more and more ways to unleash "fury" and "destruction" on the country.

Dr. John Gartner is a veteran clinical psychologist and author who previously worked as an assistant professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University. He has also made frequent appearances on The Daily Beast Podcast over the years, often putting forward the argument that Trump's extensive media appearances over the years have made it easy to track his physical and mental decline.

During his latest appearance on the show this weekend, host Joanna Coles pressed Gartner about what he sees coming from the president after his historic rebuke from voters in the midterms, and while not eager to rain on the parade of anyone celebrating, he warned that the defeat is about to make him more dangerous than ever.

"Hell hath no fury like a malignant narcissist scorned," Gartner said. "I think we're now in the third act of the tragedy, and I think we're in more danger now than we've ever been. Look, he's going to act out in ways that are destructive to show his power and dominance, right? And to gain the sadistic sense of pleasure that he gets from destruction."

Gartner continued, offering a grim and vulgar analogy for the way he currently views Trump's dangerous psyche.

"You know, I have an analogy, and I really want to give a trigger warning. I'm not saying that in any kind of ironic way," he continued. "I mean, for anyone who's been a victim of domestic violence, you might want to turn off the sound for a few minutes. But I feel like we're at the stage where a woman who's been abused goes, 'Oh, thank God I kicked him out of the house. I have a restraining order. I'm finally safe. And that's often the time when the really destructive abusers say, 'Okay, now I'm going to kill the b——.' I think that he is that guy and we are the b——, and he doesn't care if he kills us all, you know?"

Gartner also brought up the final order that Adolph Hitler issued right before taking his own life, often referred to as his "Nero Decree," in which he demanded that all of Germany's ports, farms, factories and ships be destroyed. When told that such an order would mean the deaths of every German, Hitler said, "Good."

"He said, 'Good,' because all the good ones are dead already," Gartner said. "In other words, he literally wanted to kill every single German, take every single German life down with him. That's how a malignant narcissist thinks."

Despite the rage and despair they showed on-camera as Republicans suffered a historic wipeout in the midterms, one Fox News pundit says her colleagues act completely differently behind the scenes.

Jessica Tarlov is an on-air personality and pundit for Fox News, noted as one of the conservative network's vanishingly few liberal voices. Because of this, she frequently calls out and butts heads with her colleagues, taking them to task for their efforts to paint a rosy picture of conservative policies and leadership, particularly in the era of President Donald Trump.

This weekend, Tarlov appeared at Crooked Con, an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by the liberal media and activism organization, Crooked Media. During one of the event's panels, she sat for an interview with outspoken political YouTube creator and author Brian Tyler Cohen, who asked her what the vibe was like with her Fox News colleagues once they were off-camera.

"Totally fine. They don't care," Tarlov said. "I've talked to you about this. We're obsessed with politics. It's a reflection of our souls, right? It's our morals. It's our values... They don't feel the same way about it. They can compartmentalize these things. They can think about, oh, you know, another election will happen. There can be some degree of self-soothing, which I think you saw a bit of in the election night coverage, but in general, their lives have carried on like usual."

Cohen suggested that the lack of concern might be a result of the "asymmetry" between conservative and liberal leadership, as, in his words, "the most extreme policy" Democrats might try to push forward would be to give everyone healthcare. Tarlov countered that it is more likely that her conservative colleagues feel fine for the time being because Trump remains president.

"Donald Trump's also still sitting there in the Oval Office and has said, 'Just call me Mr. Veto,'" Tarlov said, referencing Trump's pledge to block much of what Democrats might try to pass until 2029. "So I'm not sure that there's this feeling that that much more will happen. I will say, though, to your point like, oh, what could happen when we're in office? If you talk to people who run small businesses, for instance, they would say that there are probably going to be a lot more regulations in place than if there's a Republican president... they definitely feel that there is a threat to American life with liberal governance. They just don't see this election as meaning that there's going to be liberal governance."

Attorney General Todd Blanche has been accused of pushing the law to its limits for his boss, President Donald Trump, from facilitating a $1.776 billion slush fund for his cronies to helping him conceal files related to Trump's close friend, the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Now Blanche has a warning: If Democrats come after him, he may prosecute them.

"Attorney General Todd Blanche refused Sunday to rule out prosecuting Democratic lawmakers who say they'll investigate Trump officials, a day after President Trump ordered the Justice Department to probe lawmakers," reported Axios' Andrew Pantazi on Sunday. He added that it matters because "the confrontation threatens a constitutional crisis over the separation of powers: Trump is ordering prosecutors to go after lawmakers in a potential effort to hamper Congress' power to hold the executive branch accountable."

He continued, "Driving the news: In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump accused Democrats of threatening administration officials and Republican donors with investigations and impeachment. 'This is extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable for this,' Trump wrote."

In this context, Blanche was asked about Trump's resentment toward lawmakers who investigate him.

"Asked whether DOJ would investigate Democratic lawmakers, Blanche did not identify a criminal statute or confirm that an investigation had begun," Axios said. "Asked whether lawmakers could face imprisonment, Blanche said it depended on what crimes they had committed. On Fox News, he said the possibility of criminal charges depended on what Democrats had said. The White House and Justice Department have not responded to requests for comment."

Democrats are not alone in accusing Trump and Blanche of corruption. Conservative columnist David French explicitly blamed Blanche for much of the Justice Department's abuses of power earlier this month.

"I’m stopping because of space, not because that’s the end of the outrages," French wrote when discussing the corruption. "In case after case after case, the Department of Justice is targeting Trump opponents, making frivolous arguments and engaging in vindictive, meritless prosecutions."

He added, "I blame Trump, but I also blame Blanche. He doesn’t understand his own job. We all know that Trump has an extreme view of executive power that renders him a virtual elected monarch. His administration’s actions extend well beyond conventional “unitary executive theory,” which puts a premium on presidential control over the executive branch. He treats the law as his plaything, deciding on his own whim which laws will be enforced and which ones will not."

Mary Trump, the niece of President Donald Trump, exposed another of her many family "horror stories," this time sharing a "bizarre childhood memory" which revealed her grandfather's "unsettling obsession and a disturbing glimpse into family dynamics."

The younger Trump, daughter of the president's late older brother, is among the few members of their extended family who have been outspoken in criticizing his political career, emerging as a major voice across various forms of anti-Trump media. A professional psychologist, she has often argued that her uncle has become the man he is due to the warped upbringing her received from his parents, Fred Trump Sr. and Mary Anne MacLeod-Trump.

In one of her latest YouTube videos, released as part of her "Trump Family Horror Stories" series, Mary Trump shared an anecdote about an unnerving childhood interaction she had with her grandfather, which she now sees as an insight into the family's broader dysfunction.

Fred Trump Sr., she explained, exercised tight control over all aspects of his life, and as a result, always seemed to be in a good mood, despite her belief that he was an unquestionable sociopath with a tendency to belittle anyone he saw as weaker than himself. In addition to all of that, he also had some "weird, weird obsessions" that could be "inappropriate."

"When I was a kid, like a young kid, like eight, nine or something, he would bring out his wallet and slide out a wallet-sized picture and show it to me," she explained. "Now, what's so wrong with that? Well, it actually happened to be a picture of a half-naked woman. Yes... and by 'woman,' I mean somebody who could not have been much more than 18 years old. And he did this, I think... to kind of get a rise out of me. He thought it was really funny that he was showing his granddaughter, and at the time I was the youngest grandchild and the only granddaughter, a picture of a very heavily made-up woman who was holding up her breasts."

Sometimes when her grandfather did this, she added, he would also call over Donald Trump to show him as well, to which he would "leer and snicker" at the photo.

Another obsession Fred Trump had was with her hair, making it something much more focused on herself, given that he might have shown that photo to a lot of other people. Growing up, Mary Trump explained that she had "very thick and very blonde hair," while her grandfather had started going bald at an oddly young age. During their many interactions during the family's many dinners, after having very perfunctory chats about school, she claimed that her grandfather would always ask if he could "buy" her hair, often after taking out a billfold full of $100 bills.

"I know that this was in large part because my grandfather literally had nothing else to say to me," she continued. "And I guess maybe it felt like a way we were bonding. Like I don't know, at least I was getting some kind of attention. He was interested in something about me. But of course, it was creepy and objectifying, because it was pretty clear that the only worth I had to him was my friggin' hair... So, every single time I would say some version of one or the other of these two things, I'd either say very reasonably, I believe, 'I don't think it works that way, Grandpa.' I was a smart kid. Or, 'Sorry, Grandpa, I need to hang on to it,' because much like him, I didn't want to be bald either. So, that is a very brief but telling story of what I really meant to my grandfather. And it turns out that the only thing he really wanted from me was the one thing I couldn't give him."

President Donald Trump spent much of his second term slashing funds to foreign aid programs like USAID, which exist primarily to provide food, medicine and other humanitarian relief to developing countries. Now Trump is breaking new ground in letting people starve, at least according to a new report.

"For the first time since the 1980s, the U.S. government, faced with this kind of disaster, has done nothing and apparently plans to continue doing nothing," reported The Atlantic's Hana Kiros on Sunday.

Describing how famine has spread in Somalia in large part due to America pausing humanitarian relief there, Kiros wrote that "the Trump administration has said that it paused funding because in January, the Somali government, while in the process of redeveloping a port area, had destroyed a warehouse that contained 83 tons of fortified foods partly paid for by the United States. (The World Food Program’s second in command, Carl Skau, told me that the organization ultimately recovered all of the food.) "

Kiros added, "'The Trump Administration maintains a firm zero tolerance policy for waste, theft, or diversion of U.S. resources,' a State Department spokesperson told me in an email. But the decision may have been in the works weeks before that demolition. In November of last year, the State Department was considering distributing foreign assistance to Somalia, according to an internal document that I reviewed. A plan was drawn up, then, abruptly, on December 1, a senior State Department leader informed people who had worked on it that they should instead prepare for no funds to be sent at all, according to the document.'"

While no official explanation was provided, at least at first, it later came out that Trump administration officials believed Somali immigrants were more likely to commit welfare fraud.

"Whether Trump will ever decide to resume aid to Somalia is uncertain," Kiros wrote. "(The State Department declined to say.) In 1985, Peter McPherson, the head of USAID under Reagan and the architect of FEWS Net, brought photos of skeletal Ethiopian children to the Oval Office, which led Reagan to famously declare 'a hungry child knows no politics' and help the country through a famine, despite its Marxist dictator. McPherson told me that he believes Trump will be moved to reconsider helping Somalia when similar pictures appear on the nightly news. 'Of course, by then, many people will have died,' he said."

Speaking with AlterNet in July, one medical expert testified from her on-the-ground experience that the president's cuts to foreign aid have led to deaths on the ground.

"Elon Musk, singularly, as head of DOGE at the beginning of this administration, through his cuts has led to the deaths of millions," Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told AlterNet at the time. "He was the executor of really dismantling USAID — essentially, the work to help the world's poorest children has been decimated by the world's richest man."

Gandhi continued, "I have a project in South Africa, and I can stand absolutely firsthand witness since he also executed the cuts to South Africa — meaning on February 7th, the Trump administration put out an executive order that said we will give no assistance to South Africa because of their 'egregious actions,' like supporting the ICC [International Criminal Court] case against Israel, or they think South Africa is committing a white genocide – all of that means that there's no funding going toward South Africa, even his home country. And I have seen firsthand the effects on deaths, on advanced HIV, people dying of tuberculosis, not able to get HIV medications or preventative medications. Elon Musk is singularly responsible for the deaths of millions."

President Donald Trump's tariffs have become such a political liability that many experts believe they played a direct role in the devastating rebuke Republicans suffered during the 2026 midterm elections. Now that Democrats are poised to reclaim power, a new report reveals that they are targeting Trump's tariffs through these tactics.

"How Democrats can do this once they assume the majority in both chambers could take different forms, Erica York, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, told The Hill," reported The Hill's Max Rego and Mallory Wilson on Sunday.

"It could be really narrow and just say, ‘These particular tariffs that the president has imposed, we want to … overrule those or … remove those from the books,' she said of potential legislation," York added. “It could be more expansive and say, ‘This authority in general shouldn’t sit with the president, and so we want to bring that back to Congress and not let any president do any tariff under this type of authority.’”

Arun Venkataraman, an international trade lawyer with Covington & Burling LLP, argued Democrats could achieve substantive results if they focus on “specific tariff actions" rather than if they try "to do a broadside against underlying” authorities.

Venkataraman added, “I don’t think we’re going to see them out of the gate on day one completely try to revise all of the U.S. trade laws. I think that perhaps the more focused and strategic approach is to address particular tariffs, and then be able to get Republican support for some of that.”

Speaking to AlterNet after the midterm results, a former economist for President Bill Clinton — Dr. Robert J. Shapiro — argued that the Democratic Party is now going to be the party of low tariffs.

"The party has shifted fundamentally on tariffs, and they're doing so because of the effects of the tariffs and because the tariffs are a signature Trump policy," Shapiro told AlterNet. "Look, the most direct and easy-to-understand step the Democrats can take to address prices is to repeal all the tariffs in the first week. All the Trump tariffs, just repeal them. You pass a law, let him veto it, and then let's see whether you can get enough Republicans in the Senate to support it."

The Trump White House disputes this negative characterization of his tariffs.

“Putting a stop to American workers, farmers, and businesses being ripped off by lopsided trade agreements has been a key foundation of President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement since he first came down the escalator," White House spokesman Matthew Middleton told AlterNet last week. "President Trump will never waver from putting Americans and America First, whether in trade negotiations or through an economic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. This administration has already secured almost 20 fair trade deals and trillions in manufacturing investments, and will continue to push for deals that deliver even more job growth, wage increases, and opportunities for hardworking Americans."

First Lady Melania Trump has made the bizarre decision to double down on her most infamous second-term grift with Amazon, and as The Daily Beast explained, she and the company will almost certainly now be in the investigative crosshairs of Democrats in Congress.

Earlier this week, Jeff Bezos's Amazon announced a new two-part documentary series about the first lady, dubbed Melania: The Series, which will purportedly follow her exploits since her husband's second inauguration and will premiere on the company's Prime Video streaming service later this month. The series appears to be a continuation of the documentary feature, Melania, that the company released in theaters to weak box office and catastrophic reviews earlier this year.

The mere existence of that film sparked allegations that Amazon was attempting to bribe the Trump family to get in their good graces, considering that it paid $40 million to make it and an extra $30 million to market it, a completely unheard-of amount of money for a documentary. Now, despite Democrats signaling their intention to investigate companies that capitulated to the Trump administration and bribed them, the company is full steam ahead on continuing to line the first lady's pockets.

This baffling decision from both parties was the subject of discussion and mockery on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, where host Joanna Coles echoed the theory from Trump biographer Michael Wolff that Melania Trump has only bothered to show up in public recently in order to create new content for a new documentary project.

"I think there's a lot of profound questions there," Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty told Coles. "The most puzzling thing about this, I have to say, is Amazon have given her — already she has taken $10.7 million from Amazon and had to declare it in her husband's filings... her production company got $28 million. The $ 10.7 million went right into the Melania Bank account."

He added further that with Democrats ready to probe "every bit of grift" from the Trump family, there is no way that these Amazon projects do not come under heavy scrutiny.

"There's already a serious amount of money going to Melania. There was no scrutiny," Dougherty said. "The Republicans weren't doing any oversight. And that's another aspect of this election. People said, 'Hold on, your job is to hold people accountable, to be a check and a balance on power.' Now, we have Democrats who are determined. They have already said some of the targets for subpoenas. Those targets already include Donald Trump Jr. because of his extraordinary business dealings. There is no way that they are not going to go after Amazon, Jeff Bezos and Trump for this, I'm going to say, 'extraordinary' documentary. We've got questions. We've all got questions."

President Donald Trump's two election victories were largely powered by the so-called "manosphere," a group of right-wing men who insist they are aggrieved for being male and wish to reassert supposedly traditional masculinity. Yet according to a new report, many of these men are seeking to maximize their physical excellence by following a fitness guru who is plagued with scandals.

"He was also accused by former employees and CrossFit athletes in a New York Times exposé of creating a culture of 'routine and rampant sexual harassment,'" reported The Guardian's Edward Helmore on Sunday. "[Greg] Glassman denied such conduct. A spokesperson said the negative accounts were 'a collective effort to devalue the company and buy it for scraps.' He linked racism and the Black Lives Matter movement to the pandemic, tweeting 'It’s FLOYD-19.” He once said on a Zoom call: 'I do not mourn George Floyd.'"

Helmore added, "Stories about profligate spending on private jets, restaurants, alcohol, Mariachi bands and stays at the Four Seasons emerged; Glassman explained he was not the CEO of a publicly traded company caught with his hand in the till. 'The till was mine,' he said. 'I owned 100 per cent of the company.'"

Helmore then spoke with Calum Marsh, author of "The Glass Box" and himself a former regular user of CrossFit.

“CrossFit pursued and cultivated an affinity by naming workouts over fallen service members and plastering its website with images of people in the military, guys jumping out of helicopters and doing pull-ups on the end of a tank," Marsh told Helmore.

Helmore continued that "the association, though never formalized, stuck, and can still be seen today in Trump administration figures, including defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who made physical fitness a military priority and his own physical training, a centerpiece of his command."

Helmore continued, "Robert F Kennedy Jr also has prioritized viral fitness challenges and high-intensity workouts that mirror CrossFit, along with displays of his own physique. Hegseth and Kennedy launched the online “Pete and Bobby Challenge” as part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) platform."

“There’s a big premium paid to being perceived as being manly and rugged, and that totally ties into the early Bush-era, CrossFit style,” Marsh told Helmore.

Ross Morales Rocketto, political consultant and founder of the 2024 political group White Dudes for Harris, warned a podcaster in July that Trump is actually losing support among men, a group that fled Republicanism in droves in the 2026 midterm elections.

“Donald Trump went from 50 percent approval in this country, that means he had some independents on his side; then he went down to 40 percent, which basically meant any independents he had, those people are gone,” Rocketto said at the time. “They're bailing. He's losing some concerned conservatives. Then you go from 40 to 30 percent and you're literally losing millions of your followers. It means you are losing millions upon millions of your followers, and a lot of them are dudes. They're just guys that kind of got recruited into the movement. They felt like it was cool to back Donald Trump since it was provocative. They don't pay attention to politics. They're like, ‘I don't know. Everyone hates him. Could be kind of cool to see this come back into office.’” Yet he added that because of Trump’s various unpopular domestic and foreign policies, “now they're not happy with what they are seeing. Do you think this is a significant pickup moment? And what might we look for in the numbers at the midterms to see whether folks have really started to bail and gone to the other side?”

Marsh has previously written about the intersection between fitness and politics in 2025, when he covered the alleged right-wing associations of the Pilates fitness movement for The New York Times.

Writing about MaryBeth Monaco-Vavrik, a 24-year-old barre instructor and fitness influencer living in Washington, D.C., Marsh described an Instagram video she posted in which she argued that "pilates is great for your core strength, and for people who are suffering from connective-tissue weakness, etc., but how do we separate that from the fact that its marketing is extremely exclusionary? It’s extremely whitewashed. It’s based on wealth. It’s based on thinness.”

President Donald Trump's political supporters have long been described as cult-like, from their willingness to change their ideology based on Trump's whims to their reflexive distrust of established experts. In light of the Republican leader's politically devastating losses in the 2026 midterm elections, these same true believers are now angry at every voter who did not stand by their man, at least according to a recent in-depth study.

"Last week we assembled a focus group of Republicans who voted for President Trump in both 2020 and 2024, and who, except for some local elections, voted straight-ticket Republican in this year’s midterms," wrote polling expert Sarah Longwell in The Bulwark on Sunday.

"In my conversation with these voters, one thing became abundantly clear in their cacophony of cope: They were not blaming Trump," Longwell added. "Instead, they were blaming the GOP candidates on the ticket for being terrible. They were blaming social media for pushing Trump Derangement Syndrome. And they were blaming their fellow Americans, who they insisted were just too brainwashed and emotional to just hold their noses and vote for the terrible candidates that Republicans offered them."
Longwell proceeded to include relevant examples.

"A lot of the blue wave in Georgia resulted from “irrational thinking,” James, 56, from Georgia, said, by “people who voted for Trump last time, but maybe are not Republicans in general,"" Longwell wrote. "He found these swing voters’ decisions understandable, but unwise: I think maybe they were so frustrated either because of their situation or because they heard in the media they should be frustrated, and so they just voted for the other guy or the other gal. And if any of them think that the Democrat-led Congress is gonna help with affordability, they’re completely irrational."

Longwell continued, "Contempt for opposing voters—whose decisions always seem to be made by emotion or by “the media”—was a common feature of this group. But even amid this wallowing, some of the focus-group participants still acknowledged that the country was in a bad place, and that was pulling people away from the GOP. “I’ve kind of worked through several stages of grief as to what’s going on in Texas,” said Gayle, 75, from Texas. “But I think it’s a perfect storm. I think honest, working-class Texans voted their pocketbook.” But the sympathy just about ended there. More often than not, these voters were appalled that their fellow voters could back Democrats—and suspected they simply weren’t educated in all the ways those Democrats were evil."

She went on, "Here is Gayle again: Even if there were other issues for me, it wouldn’t matter. I’m not gonna vote for a party that’s gonna kill babies. So I think there are people that may not have the understanding of life, and they’re not core-value voters, and so I think they voted their pocketbook.3And here’s Anthony, 58, from Pennsylvania: We had Republicans voting Democrat. People vote, and they don’t vote their core issues. There’s some ideas that Democrats have that are good ideas, but I’ll never vote for a Democrat. . . . One of my big issues is pro-life, you know what I mean? And they’re pro-choice. I can’t vote for a pro-choice candidate, you know?"

Longwell pointed out that, even though Democrats are scorned to not look down on Trump voters, Trump voters do the same thing toward Democrats.

"Cathy, 65, from Texas, wrote the following," Longwell recalled. ""TDS affected a lot of voters, especially women. It seems that the younger generation is fairly swayed by social media, which is a scary trend. They don’t question what they see/read like my generation does. They are not skeptical yet. As far as Texas, many did NOT vote for Paxton. I held my nose and voted for him. But those that did not vote for Paxton, were basically a vote for Talafreako, just like when Perot ran for president.""

Longwell, added, "Note that Cathy here also expressed her displeasure with the Republican choice she was offered. And her dissatisfaction extended beyond Paxton: "As far as Hinojosa, look at Texas and the Hispanic vote, she was able to garner a lot just based on her name. And Abbott did not campaign as much as he probably should have.""

Speaking with AlterNet in August, University of Bristol cognitive scientist Dr. Stephan Lewandowksy argued that one can understand supporters of President Donald Trump by understanding their psychology as analogous to that of internet trolls.

"We know that trolls take pleasure in trolling, which means getting other people upset," Lewandowsky told AlterNet. "And I think that's what we're observing here — this is basically trolling behavior. So would these people score high on the dark triad? I would think yes, but I don't know of any data that's done a personality profile specifically of MAGA voters. We do have it for trolls, though — I have data on that. People have published research on it, and the similarities are just overwhelming. So I'd be very surprised if these were well-adjusted, nice people."