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In a politically polarized American electorate, it can be hard to find bipartisan consensus on many issues. Ahead of the US midterm elections, however, there is one thing almost everyone can agree on: concern about government corruption.

While attempting to cement conservative political power, President Donald Trump's Supreme Court appears to have exposed him to major electoral peril, but as a prominent Democratic activist wrote for MS NOW, this backlash must be the start of a much larger battle.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority and three justices appointed by Trump, issued a ruling that effectively gutted the remaining power of the Voting Rights Act, allowing GOP-led states to create racially discriminatory district maps to try and further entrench Republican power in Congress. As early voting data has poured in for the midterms, however, this move seems to have backfired in the immediate term, with Black voters, particularly in the South, turning out in massive, record-breaking numbers, seemingly inspired to push back against efforts to diminish the power of their votes.

Writing for MS NOW on Sunday, Stacey Abrams, the prominent voting rights activist and one-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate, suggested that this trend poses a question about the continuing fight against voter suppression: "If Black voters show up en masse, do the barriers placed before them matter?"

"Participation does not erase discrimination," Abrams explained. "A voter can cast a ballot and still have her community divided among districts designed to weaken its influence. A neighborhood can turn out in extraordinary numbers and still be denied a fair opportunity to elect someone who will answer to its needs at the local, state and federal levels. They may start with Congress, but the effects reach deep into where we live."

She added later: "After Election Day, we must sustain the organizations that defend voters between campaigns. We must keep showing up when districts are drawn, and election rules are debated. We must demand that legislators at the state and federal levels enshrine strong, enforceable protections against racial discrimination in voting, ones that look at actual effect rather than explicit intent. We all have a stake in this, and thus the responsibilities belong to all of us. Black communities should not be expected to rescue American democracy while bearing the greatest burden of its failures. The donors, institutions and neighbors who celebrate Black turnout must also invest in the work that makes equal participation possible."

Abrams further warned that, under the Trump administration's "authoritarian" project, no state will be safe from voter suppression campaigns, even ones with Democratic leadership and that are not located in the South. She also warned that this agenda will not stop at targeting Black voters, as "Latino and AAPI and Native American voters are also in their crosshairs."

The midterm political landscape was rocked this weekend after failed Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens broke rank to endorse the race's Republican nominee, and as one prominent New York Times columnist explained, exposed a dire warning about self-serving political aspirants in the process.

Stevens, the Democratic U.S. Representative for Michigan's 11th District, lost the Democratic nomination for her state's Senate seat earlier this year to Abdul El-Sayed, who polling now suggests has a slight edge over Republican nominee Mike Rogers. Despite previously claiming that she would support El-Sayed's candidacy, Stevens had, in recent days, seemed to have become less committed to the idea, before ultimately announcing her endorsement of Rogers on Sunday, just two days out from election day.

Stevens dispute with El-Sayed largely seemed to stem from his critical posture towards Israel, and her break from supporting him appeared to come in response to a controversial ad for his candidacy released by a third-party outfit, which El-Sayed has since disavowed.

Discussing the messy incident on his official YouTube channel, liberal Times columnist Jamelle Bouie offered his take on the psychology underpinning Stevens' decision, arguing that she had exposed how little she truly stands for anything besides her own political advancement.

"Stevens doesn't really seem like she believes anything," Bouie said. "It just seems like she felt that she was entitled to the seat, entitled to the nomination, felt that that was the obvious next step for her and really took it hard; could not reconcile her defeat with her image of where she thought she would be. I think also there's a bit of just bigotry: she can't believe that she lost to a Muslim man, to an Arab Muslim man, and is still full of pique about that."

Returning to that idea later in the video, Bouie argued further that Stevens was now a "cautionary tale" to voters about the dangers of political actors who are not truly devoted to anything but themselves.

"To my mind this is a great example of the problem with candidates who don't seem to really believe anything, who seem only to be running to advance their careers, and who are unable to make themselves subordinate to a larger cause," Bouie said. "Stevens clearly thought that this whole story was about her, and now that it isn't, she is lashing out in a way to make it about her. The story may end up being about her, but in as much as it becomes a cautionary tale about people like Haley Stevens, and I think at a time when Democrats were trying to make their final push, trying to build unity, this actually might be the thing that did it, because now everyone is united in a simple message, which is that Haley Stevens sucks."

Donald Trump has done more than perhaps any other president to seize power and concentrate it in the Executive Branch, and as a new piece from The i Paper, Americans will not be able to trust future presidents to undo this damage.

Jon Sopel is a veteran journalist who previously served as the North America editor for the BBC. Writing for The i Paper on Sunday, he argued that "Trump's scheming" might very well have altered the structure of power in the U.S. government "forever," and outlined his case for why Americans should not bet on even a future Democratic president reversing the damage.

"If the Democrats do well in the midterm elections – as they are forecast to do – that might change things a bit," Sopel wrote. "Some of the more egregious behaviour of Trump and those around him will probably be curtailed because of the investigative powers that congressional committees will now have. There will be more oversight, and an increasing sense that the President is a lame duck with his powers on the wane. Maybe, just maybe that will encourage Republicans to regain some moral backbone – but that is far from certain."

He added: "Yet the president and the presidency has never been more powerful. Academics call it the unitary executive theory. And which new president coming to the Oval Office is going to say, 'I think I ought to have less power?' Sure, a new Democrat president could rule in a much more traditional way, obeying the norms that went before Trump. But he won’t have to. He might just enjoy flexing his muscles in just the same way that the present incumbent has."

A new president, even one ideologically opposed to the MAGA agenda, is far from guaranteed to roll back Trump's excesses, with Sopel highlighting the potential for them to continue running U.S. foreign policy without input from Congress, continue treating the DOJ as their personal law firm and continue to keep Trump's historic tariffs in place.

Even if a Democrat inclined to roll back these things enters the White House in 2029, Sopel argued that "there are structural shifts that are much more long lasting" which Trump has also inflicted on the country.

"The most notable is the Supreme Court," Sopel wrote. "With its six-three conservative majority, it will continue to be a massive influence on all America’s hot-button issues: abortion, guns, voting rights. And a ruling it made in the [tail] end of the Biden administration on presidential immunity and power will be felt long after Trump leaves office. In effect, the Supreme Court ruled that in the conduct of his duties the president can claim widespread immunity from prosecution. And you can be sure there will be pre-emptive pardons issued to his family before he leaves office to shield them from investigation, just as Biden did – disreputably in my opinion – with his son, Hunter, before he left the White House."

He concluded: "America’s democracy has rarely been tested, twisted and warped in the ways it has across Trump’s two terms in office. On January 6, 2021, when the mob ran amok it was one man, the vice president, Mike Pence, refusing to do his boss’s bidding that saved the US from a full-blown constitutional crisis. Would you bet on that happening again?"

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has made some "uncontrollable enemies" with his political purges in the military, according to a new report — and this may ultimately incentivize President Donald Trump to let go of his controversial cabinet official.

"Two of the officials asserted that Hegseth could work across party lines, depending on how aggressive Democrats were in their investigations," reported The Washington Post's Noah Robertson and Dan Lamothe on Sunday. "Still, several others predicted that his critics, both in Congress and in the Pentagon, could feel more emboldened to oppose him if Democrats take power."

"“Pete has made so many enemies — and uncontrollable enemies,” one person familiar said," according to Robertson and Lamothe.

Earlier in the same article, they noted that the same congressional Republicans who have otherwise toed the line for Trump have found themselves instead drawing the line when it comes to Hegseth.

"With limited exception, Republican lawmakers have declined to stand in Hegseth’s way while he has purged dozens of senior military leaders he’s deemed disloyal, waged an eight-month war in Iran without the consent of Congress and pursued an unprecedented campaign against the illicit drug trade," the Post wrote.

It added, "Democrats would give Hegseth far less room for maneuver once the next Congress convenes in January. Already, some are threatening to investigate and try to remove him from office if they reclaim a majority."

The journalists continued, "Some officials in the administration and in Congress have mused recently that Hegseth may leave the Pentagon if Republicans lose heavily in the midterms — either to avoid congressional scrutiny or to pursue potential political ambitions. It’s possible, too, that the president could remove Hegseth if voters punish the GOP over the Iran war, though Trump has said he stands by him."

When Hegseth then announced he would livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan, Republican lawmakers felt the need to make their voices heard.

The two also brought up how Hegseth has presidential ambitions for 2028, and he has indeed been accused of abusing his office by stumping for Republican candidates. Foreign policy experts also accuse him of not doing his job well because he has been so focused on politics.

“History will brand the U.S. failure to ensure Ukraine’s victory and prevent Taiwan’s fall as the time when America fell from greatness and her ‘cunning’ but miscalculating enemies plunged the world into a new global conflict,” Joseph Bosco, who served as China country director under the Secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006, wrote for The Hill in February.

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."