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As the weight of political gravity crashes into him with ruthless strength, a former first-term Donald Trump staffer wrote for MS NOW that the "washed-up" president is officially slouching into his "Fat Elvis" period.

Matthew Bartlett previously worked in the Department of State during Trump's first term in the White House, before abandoning ship as part of the staff exodus that followed the January 6 attack on the Capitol. These days, he works as a political analyst for MS NOW, offering insights and pointed criticisms of his former boss.

In his latest piece for the outlet, Bartlett wrote that, as Trump comes to the end of a decade in politics, he is more washed-up and tired than ever, and primed for a wipeout in Tuesday's midterm elections. He also compared his former boss to "Fat Elvis," a term for the infamous late period of Elvis Presley's life in which the legendary singer and former heartthrob put on a noticeable amount of weight and struggled with his public performances, all leading up to his eventual death.

"After a decade of Donald Trump on the political scene, he is entering his 'Fat Elvis' phase: tired, old, overweight, awful-sounding, embarrassing-looking," Bartlett wrote. "There are suspicious minds even among the MAGA base. He is caught in a trap, can’t walk out and many don’t believe a word he’s saying."

He added further: "A presidency in decline is no way to run a country, much less a midterm election campaign. His numbers, like his second term, are unrecoverable. There are no successes to point to, no actionable agenda to promise. In desperation, the president has resorted to Santa-like promises of new business openings, oil pipelines and cash bonuses that are unlikely to ever materialize. But what may have worked in 2024 does not work in 2026, and voters don’t believe in Santa anymore."

Bartlett further predicted that the last two years are almost certain to be "politically torturous," as the Trump administration grapples with new Democratic majorities in the House and possibly the Senate as well, casting doubt on how much either side will ever be able to get done. During this period, as always happens when the going gets tough for Trump, Bartlett added that the president is likely to get much "worse."

"He orders bogus prosecutions. He picks fights with allies, and sides with dictators while he starts a war that he can’t win, can’t end and may escalate again. And the only time he is upset about corruption is when he doesn’t benefit from it," Bartlett wrote.

He later concluded: "The midterms may be coming to an end, and the Trump presidency may be too, but the next two years will give rise to what is next for America. Trump will still be in office and will still have the power to inflict damage and sow chaos in our nation. Yet through Trump’s twilight, the process of choosing the next president will allow Americans the chance to define and maybe defy the future. And the sun always rises on the horizon."

On the evening of Oct. 11, just weeks before the 2026 midterm elections, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop airing taxpayer-funded television advertisements praising President Donald Trump.

Yet two of the ads continued running past the court’s deadline, including during broadcasts of “60 Minutes” and “ABC World News Tonight.”

The commercials in question aired in violation of a decades-old congressional prohibition against using federal money for unauthorized publicity and propaganda. Yet Republican congressional leaders did little to stop the president’s ad spending. That left outside organizations and a political candidate to challenge them in federal court.

The episode illustrates a larger development in Trump’s second presidency. Across disputes involving federal spending, government agencies and military operations, the administration has asserted authority that is either restricted by law or that the legislative branch has reserved for itself.

But responsibility for enforcing those limits is increasingly falling to organizations, institutions and individuals outside of the legislative branch.

As a scholar of the American presidency and deliberative democracy, I pay close attention to how the nation’s chief executive exercises power and communicates with the public.

When presidents are allowed to break rules and disregard democratic norms without consequence, I worry that citizens will grow cynical and lose faith in the idea of self-government.

As this happens, citizens may come to see the law as something that applies selectively, depending on who holds power, and lose confidence in the institutions responsible for holding their leaders accountable.

They may also begin to accept the absence of accountability as a normal feature of political life, weakening the public expectations on which democratic government depends.

Speaker Mike Johnson, left, leader of House Republicans, with President Donald Trump. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Practical immunity

Congress is not the only branch of government demurring from holding the president accountable.

In July 2024, the Supreme Court provided presidents sweeping protection from criminal prosecution for actions taken in office under the “core constitutional powers” of the position.

In “Trump v. United States,” the court held that former presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for actions taken under powers the Constitution gives exclusively to the president. Along with this “absolute immunity,” the justices also granted “at least presumptive immunity” for other official acts.

In their decision, the court’s conservative majority extended the meaning of official conduct to the “outer perimeter” of presidential responsibilities and prohibited courts from examining a president’s motives when determining whether an act was official.

The ruling only addressed criminal liability and did not curtail Congress’ constitutional authority to investigate presidential conduct, control federal spending, enact statutory restrictions and, in serious cases, pursue impeachment.

Yet the Republican majority in Congress has largely declined to exercise these powers against Trump, in areas ranging from declaring war to spending money.

Their acquiescence is helping create a new form of official protection, which I call “practical immunity.” In using this term, I am borrowing from the work of scholars who study abuse in the American penal system.

Those thinkers argue that legal obstacles, institutional hesitation and political incentives sometimes make it difficult to hold public officials accountable, even when the law suggests there has been illegal conduct.

That is what appears to be increasingly happening now with Congress, the courts and the president.

When Congress stops defending its laws

The television ads case illustrates the conundrum of practical immunity.

In opposing the temporary restraining order, the Trump administration’s attorneys did not contest the argument asserted by the plaintiffs – Common Cause and two unions – that the expenditures violated federal appropriations law. Instead, they said the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. They also argued that the case was moot because the advertising campaign was ending.

Those arguments failed in court. Yet the administration’s defense demonstrated how elusive enforcing a law can be when Congress fails to assert its constitutionally granted role, even when the underlying legal restriction is clear. To win, a plaintiff must establish a concrete injury and persuade a judge to intervene. While this happens, the disputed conduct often continues.

An ABC News story on the political ads praising President Donald Trump, who used taxpayer money to air the ads.

In this case, the president went on spending public money in violation of the law. The GOP-led Congress, meanwhile, remained silent, even though its own role was being usurped.

Another boundary that Trump has repeatedly tested is the so-called “power of the purse”, which is among the legislative branch’s most important constitutional responsibilities. Presidents may spend federal money only for purposes Congress has authorized. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 protects lawmakers’ decisions against presidential efforts to ignore congressional appropriations.

In September 2026, Trump’s administration canceled more than US$800 million in congressionally approved spending for immigrant services, climate change and civil rights for minority groups. The cancellation was done through a maneuver known as a pocket rescission. The administration timed its action to make it difficult for Congress to consider or stop the rescission. The Government Accountability Office – an independent agency that examines how taxpayer dollars are spent – said tactics like these violate federal law.

When this happened, a few members of Congress tried to intervene and stop the rescission, but the Republican majority blocked their efforts.

The collapse of institutional rivalry

The separation of powers divides authority among the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government to prevent too much power from becoming concentrated in any one place.

The architects of the Constitution anticipated that officials in different branches would compete to preserve their authority. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison argued that maintaining the balance established by the separation of powers depended on the ambitions of public officials coming into conflict. Members of Congress could be expected to resist presidential encroachments because those encroachments diminished their own power.

Fierce partisanship has complicated this arrangement.

Legal scholars Daryl Levinson and Richard Pildes have shown how political competition mostly now happens inside and between parties, rather than among branches of government. When one party controls Congress and the presidency, legislators may become more invested in advancing their party’s agenda than they are in defending their institution’s constitutional authority.

Trump’s influence over Republican voters intensifies these incentives. Lawmakers who oppose him risk public ridicule, primary challenges and diminished political support. Defending congressional authority may therefore carry greater immediate – and personal – political costs than allowing presidential power to expand.

The result is a political system in which a president can act in ways that may violate federal law, undermine democratic norms and encroach on Congress’ constitutional authority.

Madison’s constitutional design assumed that public officials would defend the powers entrusted to them. The danger to the American constitutional system emerging in Trump’s second term is that congressional leaders have begun to regard those powers as expendable, allowing the president to exercise authority under conditions of practical immunity. He faces little fear of meaningful institutional consequences.

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s not enough for the Democrats to win the midterms. Whether they take back one or both chambers of Congress, their overriding objective must be to cripple the remainder of Donald Trump's presidency and dismantle the MAGA movement he leads. Holding Trump and his key enablers to account for their lawlessness and corruption will be the standard for success. Without accountability, there will be no justice and no end to the growing threat of fascism in America.

Of all the accountability tools that will be available should the Democrats prevail on November 3, impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful. Both are implicitly on the midterm ballot, and while neither is a magic bullet for checking Trumpism, they can and must be deployed far more aggressively and urgently than in the past.The road ahead won’t be easy, but the party may never get another opportunity.

Impeachment

The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, has made it all but impossible to hold Trump accountable through ordinary criminal prosecutions. As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has noted, Roberts’ opinion contains language that “suggests the president cannot even be investigated for his official actions,” much less indicted.

But the immunity ruling in no way undermines Congress’ impeachment powers. Even Trump’s lead lawyer in the case—D. John Sauer, now the administration’s solicitor general—acknowledged the broad scope of the impeachment power, contending that the Constitution’s Impeachment Judgment Clause (Article I, Section 3, Clause 7) requires that a president be impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate before being prosecuted criminally. Although the court rejected Sauer’s prerequisite argument, it recognized, consistent with the views of the Founders, that impeachment is a political process separate and apart from criminal prosecutions.

As Trump’s lawlessness and corruption have become more brazen and unrestrained, appeals for a third impeachment are mounting. In early October, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a series of editorials and op-eds calling on Congress to act in response to the president’s unconstitutional military operations in Iran and elsewhere; his attacks on judges, journalists, law firms, and political opponents; his threats to execute members of Congress; his reckless deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; his inhumane mass deportations and detentions; his assault on birthright citizenship; and his use of the presidency for base self-enrichment, among myriad other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

As Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein put it in their contribution to the Inquirer series, “Trump has turned the Constitution into a museum piece and claimed the infinite unchecked power of a dictator.” In their view, the “doubting Thomases who dismiss” a third impeachment are turning a blind eye to Trump’s “litany” of derelictions.

Even if conviction in the Senate is unlikely, the process itself has enormous value. Writing for LawFare in 2021 at the outset of Trump’s second impeachment trial, Princeton University political science professor Keith Whittington explained:

[R]emoval and disqualification are not the sole purposes of the impeachment clause. The impeachment process is a “grand inquest” in the sense that it is congressional oversight on steroids. The impeachment power gives the first, most democratic branch of the government the ability to scrutinize the actions of individuals in the other branches of government and call them to account for their actions… What’s more, the impeachment process serves as a warning to future officeholders.

There is also no reason for the Democrats to limit impeachment proceedings to the president. The vice president and all civil officers of the United States, including the justices of the Supreme Court, will all be fair game. Aware of his exposure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly eyeing a Senate seat in Tennessee, hoping that if Marsha Blackburn becomes the state’s next governor, she will appoint him to fill her vacant seat, as senators are not considered civil officers of the US.

Many Trump aides are also reportedly seeking pardons to protect themselves from future federal criminal charges. Trump has expressed a willingness to comply, but the Constitution is very clear that the pardon power does not extend to cases of impeachment.

With the midterm elections behind them and an electoral base demanding action, we could see not one but multiple impeachment inquiries in the House—and, later, trials in the Senate—aimed at airing the facts of the Trump administration’s malfeasance for all the world to see, and serving as a catalyst for legislation to prevent another Trump-like tyrant from rising in the future.

Court Reform

John Roberts and his Republican confederates have issued a blistering succession of reactionary majority opinions, not only on presidential immunity, but also on voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, gun control, abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance, the use of dark money in politics, and equality for LGBTQ+ people, to cite just a few of the worst.

Reversing the tide and restoring our rights will require court reform. And while the most far-reaching reforms—such as more justices and term limits—will have to wait until the election of a Democratic president, a new Democratic Senate majority will be able to immediately block the confirmation of any pending or future Trump judicial nominees.

Clarence Thomas, 78, and Samuel Alito, 76, are the Supreme Court’s oldest members. Both are far beyond their salad days, and Alito has said that he is considering retirement before Trump leaves office. If either or both step aside while the Republicans hold the Senate, Trump will undoubtedly replace them with younger and possibly even more extreme jurists, such as James Ho of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, or the obsequious Florida US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who killed the Mar-a-Lago documents case. If the Democrats retake the upper chamber, the two senior justices will likely hang on as long as they can, but neither will outlast the term of the next Democratic president, who can replace them with liberals.

The outlook for the lower federal courts, where the vast majority of cases are decided, is even more favorable. A Democratic Senate majority should mean the end to new Trump judges anywhere in the country.

Where We Come In

Nothing is certain in politics, and it is entirely possible that the Democrats, once back in the majority, will try to mend fences with their MAGA adversaries in a futile attempt to restore the status quo ante Trump.

This is where we come in.

Voting is essential, but it cannot be the end of our political engagement. After the midterms, and throughout the run-up to 2028, we will need to keep the pressure on. We cannot allow the Democrats to chicken out, as they have so often in the past. There can be no more Biden nice guys, and no more Merrick Garlands. We have seen that movie before, and it isn’t worth a sequel.

Ever since President Donald Trump made it clear he would rig the 2026 midterms if he could not win them legitimately, American voters have felt jittery — all the more so after he offered a $1 million bounty to anyone who uncovered voter fraud.

"As polls show the Republican majority in Congress in peril, Mr. Trump has ramped up his baseless attacks, even dangling a $1 million reward to tipsters who help secure a voting-fraud conviction," wrote The New York Times' Beth Reinhard and Kevin Williams on Sunday. "Some voters are nervous about what he might do next."

Tiffany Hall, a 56-year-old Black physician from Ohio, told the Times that "I am very concerned that the election will be disrupted in ways that will affect the margins,”

Jeanne Russell, a 77-year-old Black retiree and registered Democrat from Maine, predicted to Reinhard and Williams that “I’m kind of foreseeing that there will be some dirty tricks," although she was hopeful that election officials could stave them off.

Esther Bowling, 43, and also of Ohio, argued that elections might be stolen by those who did furnish voter IDs.

“If you are an American citizen you should have to show a photo ID to vote,” Bowling told the Times.

Speaking to AlterNet in June, Common Cause Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation Dan Vicuña argued that the Trump administration may ultimately violate the law. He said that this could happen through methods ranging from voter purges and creating voter ID requirements to using law enforcement to interfere with the vote.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected. Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

The economy is almost always the main issue at the top of mind for American voters, and according to a new piece from The New Republic, President Donald Trump might have inadvertently helped usher in a "new economic era" as he destroys the GOP's ability to leverage that issue to maintain power.

As New Republic staff writer Monica Potts explained in a Sunday morning piece, Republicans have, "for decades," been more trusted on the economy with voters than Democrats. However, that streak appears to be coming to a crashing halt in the 2026 midterms, as polling indicates that voters now trust Democrats more on the issue, signaling a "seismic change" in the American political landscape that runs much deeper than simple headlines about gas prices.

"For decades, voters have trusted the GOP to keep the gross domestic product growing based on one misleading idea: They know that the GOP is the party of business, so they just assume surely the pro-business party is better for the economy," Potts wrote. "But voters are turning away from that, and the reason why could mark a seismic change in American politics: Now, they aren’t so sure that what’s good for businesses is good for them. They’re looking for candidates with not just answers but different kinds of answers than they’ve heard before. If Democrats win next Tuesday and actually deliver next year, it could usher in a new era of policy that finally closes the door on the neoliberalism that has dominated for nearly half a century."

Potts further attributed the notion "that what’s good for the private sector is good for working people" predominantly to the Reagan-era GOP, though noted that it generally has "deep roots" within the party. That was the era that coined the idea of "trickle-down economics," the idea that enriching the wealthy would allow them to pass more money down to the rest of us, which has stuck in the collective understanding of the economy despite having been disproven many times.

"Many voters still think the government causes inflation and is massively inefficient compared to the venerated private sector. They voted for Donald Trump because they believed he was a businessman who could turn things around," Potts added. "Today, as corporations continue to rake in record-high profits and billionaires are sending rockets to the moon, the idea that working people’s fates are tied to theirs is less sellable. Voters appear to be ready to turn back to the kinds of economic policies that FDR enacted, in which the government actually makes life better for workers across the income scale. They’re increasingly willing to tax the wealthy in order to do it and are listening to Democratic candidates who promise a renewed sense of government responsibility to provide."

She later concluded: "In sum, people are furious at corporations, and they no longer see their well-being tied to what boardrooms want. That creates a new opportunity to tell a story about the role the government can play in making the economy fair and providing the basics—like housing and health care—that people need for a good life. The key is that Democrats can’t just win on that message. They’ll actually have to deliver next year. But if they do, 2026 could stand as one of the most consequential midterm elections in modern history: the year when voters stopped buying the argument that what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street."

President Donald Trump has made it clear he is determined to build an arch in tribute to himself in Washington DC, despite widespread opposition from veterans groups, historic conservationists, constitutional scholars and others who worry the structure would disrespect Arlington Cemetery, destroy historic landmarks and overstep the president's legal authority.

Now, an Ivy League expert in city planning is lending credibility to some of those concerns, calling out the hollow pointlessness of Trump's "triumphal" structure.

"One issue with the so-called Arc d’Trump is its proposed location at Memorial Circle, just over the Potomac and on axis with the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Washington is a city of vistas and sightlines; few are more sacred than this one," wrote Thomas J. Campanella, professor of city planning at Cornell University, for The New York Times. "It was to protect this visual axis that landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke, then-chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt not to build the Pentagon at Arlington Farms, where it would have obliterated the backdrop of tiered headstones and Arlington House. The War Department was furious, but had to concede. The Pentagon was built instead well out of the way. But today’s so-called War Department may have revenge of a sort: The Arc d’Trump could be the first in history designed to also serve as a military installation, an aerie for snipers and drones."

Campanella added, "But the real issue is that of purpose. What exactly is Mr. Trump’s behemoth meant to celebrate? Our abnegation as a force for good in the world? Our bitter internal divisions? Will it be another desperate display of might by a state in decline, an India Gate on the Potomac? Will it be mostly made in China? In the end, of course, it will be a taxpayer-funded monument to the vainglory of our outer-borough emperor, Donald Trump. After all, the English word trump — and thus “triumphal” — is derivative of the French word triomphe."

Last week, The Washington Post elaborated on the controversy surrounding the proposed monument.

"The lawsuit is the latest attempt to stop the 250-foot-tall arch, which Trump hopes to build near Arlington National Cemetery and says will commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday," the Post's report detailed. "The administration would like to begin construction as soon as next week. The two jurisdictions are asking a federal judge to halt the plan and argue that they have 'indisputable standing' to bring their lawsuit because the towering arch would have tangible, negative effects on the region — an argument that distinguishes their lawsuit from others that have tried to stop Trump’s construction projects."

The Post has also reported that "over the course of a year, the shadow of the triumphal arch would touch burial sites in Arlington National Cemetery on 284 days. It would briefly cover [John F.] Kennedy’s eternal flame on 18 days, and it would shade the former president’s memorial on 50. It would darken the Military Women’s Memorial on 109 days."

They continued, "The shadow would move across the graves of veterans and their next of kin from the Vietnam War, Korean War, World War II, World War I, Spanish-American War and Civil War, the model shows. It would dim the headstones of formerly enslaved people. In total, The Post found that it would pass over more than 75,000 graves. On most days, by the time the cemetery opens at 8 a.m., the shadow would recede from the grounds. It would linger past that time on 26 days, the model shows."

President Donald Trump and his Justice Department should be "ashamed" of their latest effort to exact revenge on a perceived enemy, with one conservative former lawyer writing for The New York Times that their legal filing is a "bad joke" that ought to get the team behind it "sanctioned."

David French is a former attorney and Times columnist who previously worked as a staff writer for the conservative National Review. He has been critical of Trump since he entered politics during the 2016 presidential race, and continues to write critically of his administration, particularly with regard to his abuse of the legal system to target his enemies.

In his latest column on Sunday morning, French wrote that the Trump DOJ is coming off of "a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month," with the worst moment of its dire October coming early on, when it attempted for the third time to indict former FBI Director James Comey. French said this latest filing, accusing Comey of leaking information to the Times in 2016, is "more specious" than the prior attempts to go after him criminally, and broke down why in detail.

"To be clear, an information isn’t an indictment. It can’t actually start Comey’s case," French explained. "The Fifth Amendment says: 'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.' Instead, it’s a unilateral filing by prosecutors that has the effect of sometimes tolling (that is to say, stopping) the statute of limitations. It can only actually start a federal felony prosecution if the defendant waives his right to indictment by grand jury, which Comey has not done."

He added: "In fact, the Department of Justice admits that it filed the information for the purpose of tolling the statute of limitations. It was filed on the very day that the 10 year statute of limitations was set to expire. In effect, they’re hoping it can serve as a place holder that keeps the case alive until a grand jury finally indicts. But there’s a problem — a big problem. While some federal criminal statutes allow the department to toll the statute of limitations with an information, this one does not. As Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in National Review, the relevant statute requires an indictment within 10 years. It makes no reference to an information."

Summing up the situation, French pulled no punches.

"In other words, this legal filing is a bad joke," he argued. "The lawyers who brought it should be ashamed of themselves, and they should be sanctioned by the court."

French also noted that the first-term Trump DOJ previously looked into this situation with Comey twice, in 2017 and 2019, declining to bring charges each time. What is different now, he explained, is that Attorney General Todd Blanche is now in charge at the DOJ, and is willing to chase down any lead that might potentially help him fulfill Trump's whims.

President Donald Trump and his administration like to talk about the importance of being manly, but as Trump supporters continue to part ways with the Catholic Church because of papal criticisms of American policy, experts on Pope Leo XIV argued on Sunday that the Vatican contains more authentic masculinity than the White House.

"Toughness is a cardinal virtue in the MAGA movement, where it signals an in-your-face masculinity and a readiness to use force — and even cruelty — to conquer perceived enemies," wrote Daniel Burke and Scott Detrow for The New York Times on Sunday. They wrote a book, "American Pope," about Pope Leo XIV.

"At times, this quality has become intertwined with Christianity, as when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in March recited a prayer at the Pentagon for God to 'break the teeth of the ungodly," they continued. They added, "Pope Leo XIV, who has clashed with the Trump administration over the war in Iran and immigration policy, hardly fits this mold of “high T” Christianity. He’s calm and reserved, and often seeks compromise over conflict. But it would be a mistake to misjudge Leo as soft. He’s actually the tough guy here."

From there, they described Pope Leo's career as a missionary and leader of the Augustinian order, as well as his upcoming rigorous trips to Argentina, Peru and Uruguay despite currently recovering from cancer surgery. He also recently undertook a courageous trip to a violent area of Nigeria.

"As pope, he seems a bit more careful about his personal safety (the Swiss Guard helps)," the two biographers continued. "But he remains as determined as ever. In a hot-mic moment at the Apostolic Palace last year, Queen Rania of Jordan turned to Pope Leo and asked with concern, “Your Holiness, do you think it is safe to go to Lebanon?'"

They added: "'Well, we’re going,' he replied with a tight smile. The trip, which included a stop in Turkey, went off safely, despite war in the region. Leo has shown the same resolve during his bout with lung cancer. He announced the diagnosis himself from the Apostolic Palace, revealing a transparency — and vulnerability — rarely, if ever, seen from modern popes."

As one example of the Pope's toughness, they told a story about his recent surgery.

"On the second day after his operation, his surgeon found him arranging chairs in the hospital’s chapel," they wrote. "'Holy Father, we can do that,' his surgeon told him. 'It doesn’t matter,' Leo replied. 'I can do it, so I will.'"

Earlier in October, a journalist who runs a Substack that focuses on Pope Leo XIV also argued that Trump has managed to turn Pope Leo XIV into a freedom fighter analogous to Pope John Paul II during the Cold War.

The new pope has responded to Trump by recognizing that "the danger to human dignity wears a red hat and speaks the language of the right. Just as God raised up John Paul II behind the Iron Curtain to stand up to communism, God has raised up a pope from the Americas, from inside the walls of MAGA authoritarianism, to stand up to it," wrote Christopher Hale, who authors a Substack on Pope Leo XIV.

The pope's opposition to Trump has even cost the president politically.

"With the midterms approaching, the first American pope’s defiant opposition to Trump is coming into view as contributing to Trump’s status as a flailing lame-duck," Juan Williams, a longtime political analyst for Fox News, wrote in June. "Pope Leo is clear in saying Trump is out of step with Christianity’s core teachings: concern for the poor, skepticism of the rich, embrace of the refugees, and love for thy neighbor. These teachings are diametrically opposed to Trump starting war with Iran."

The Founding Fathers of the United States were warned about the potential for rampant, corrupt abuses of the pardon powers, and now, one veteran political reporter argued for The Guardian that President Donald Trump is the grim end result of them ignoring that warning.

Writing for the outlet on Sunday morning, James Rosen, an award-winning and long-tenured former political and Pentagon correspondent, predicted that historians will one day rank Trump's "utter abuse" of his pardon authorities at the top of the "shameful list" of his second-term corruption. So far, these abuses have ranged from his unprecedented mass pardon of January 6 participants on his first day back in the White House, to the "astonishing" recent reports about his "robust pardons market in which friends or relatives of criminals offer to pay millions for presidential clemency."

As Rosen explained further, these rampant abuses were foreseen 239 years ago by George Mason, a Founding Father often credited with his critical influence over the Bill of Rights. During the constitutional convention of 1787, Mason warned his fellow framers about the dangers he saw in the pardon powers they were planning to give the presidency.

"At the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Mason cautioned the new country’s most powerful men – among them George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton – against the dangers of giving future American presidents too much power," Rosen explained. "The risk was greatest, he told other delegates, in the absolute pardon power then being enshrined in our supreme law. Mason spoke out strongly against granting a president 'power of pardoning because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself.'"

He added further: "Washington, who would become the newborn nation’s first president in 19 months, presided as Mason addressed his peers. It was as if he had a crystal ball displaying Trump’s cynical visage... Mason spoke on 15 September 1787, two days before the convention concluded. Perhaps they were too hot and exhausted to focus, but the delegates voted against limiting presidents’ pardon power. Even when Mason begged them at least to put treason beyond the pardon realm, they deferred."

“It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy and destroy the republic," Mason warned.

Mason added later, during the Virginia Ratifying Convention: "The president of the United States has the unrestrained power of granting pardons for treason, which may be sometimes exercised to screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt."

Mason's efforts were doomed, Rosen explained, due to the insistence of future President James Madison that any president who issued pardons for treason could be met with impeachment and removal, a possibility that has seemed laughable during Trump's second term, given the overwhelmingly deferential GOP Congress that he has governed with.

An unprecedented surge in Black voter turnout across the American South is fundamentally reshaping the 2026 midterm political landscape. This massive, highly localized mobilization is defying traditional non-presidential voting patterns and threatening to turn what was expected to be a standard midterm election cycle into a "Blue Tsunami" for Democrats, breaking open what were previously considered safe Republican strongholds.

According to extensive reporting by POLITICO Magazine, the catalyst for this dramatic shift stems from deep-seated voter frustration with President Donald Trump's return to power. Specifically, African American voters and community leaders have been galvanized by two major actions: the White House-led effort to aggressively dilute minority-heavy voting districts to benefit the GOP, and the Supreme Court’s subsequent gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Former President Bill Clinton noted that these historically discriminated-against groups possess an "uncanny feel detector," interpreting the recent redistricting pushes as a direct, punitive attempt to strip them of their hard-won political representation.

The visual evidence of this resistance is sweeping across states like Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. High-profile Democratic figures—such as Jon Ossoff in Georgia—are drawing massive, multi-generational crowds in traditionally deep-red territory. In places like Tyler and Texarkana, Texas, voters explicitly linked their motivation to memories of the Civil Rights era, noting that modern legislative efforts look exactly like classic voter suppression. Local officials and community organizers have admitted that communities intentionally "camouflaged" their quiet organizing to avoid defensive GOP counter-maneuvers, opting to let Republicans believe Black voters were simply apathetic until it was too late to counteract the wave.

The early and absentee voting data indicates that this hidden wave is now fully exposed, creating a structural panic for conservative campaigns. Republican strategists are facing a "dire scenario" as early data reveals that Black Southerners are voting at a rate outpacing the overall electorate. GOP candidate vulnerabilities have been severely compounded by a souring national political environment, underwhelming conservative campaigns, and a slight bleeding of support among moderate white voters. While kitchen-table issues like the cost of living remain a primary driver for all demographics, working-class Black communities feel uniquely targeted by the administration's healthcare cuts, inflation, tariffs, and foreign policy strains.

Ultimately, this historic turnout has expanded the competitive playing field to an unprecedented degree. If these turnout trends hold through Election Day, they could completely break the Republican party's electoral lock on massive Sun Belt prizes like Texas and Florida, fundamentally upending the balance of power in Washington.