Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell, on
Trump’s 101st day in office (and my 100th day at Puck).
Tonight, a look inside the Republican thought bubble amid the ongoing drip of bad economic news. The economy, of course, is directly linked to the G.O.P.’s political fate, and 101 days into this unpredictable presidency, the party’s tolerance for Trump remains quite… high.
But first…
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Hill divided…: Republicans in the House and Senate are taking two distinct approaches to registering their internal disagreements with Trump. For the third time, House Republicans have inserted provisions into must-pass rules that make it nearly impossible to legislatively rein in the president. This week, in fact, the House passed a rule that would block members from forcing votes to investigate Trump or his administration. Earlier this year, House leadership also changed House rules to
block efforts to overturn Trump’s tariffs. “I think everything we’ve done thus far has been entirely lawful and appropriate,” Speaker Mike Johnson said of the rule changes.
The Senate, meanwhile, voted for a second time today on a measure that would have overturned Trump’s presidential power to impose tariffs. (It narrowly failed because Sens. Mitch McConnell and Sheldon Whitehouse were absent.) Unlike in the House, it’s not possible for
Senate leadership to prohibit lawmakers from forcing these sorts of votes. Previously, the Senate passed a measure that would reverse Trump’s tariffs on Canada, but it hasn’t been taken up by the House—and can’t be, unless Republicans reverse the rule they imposed on themselves to protect Trump’s expansion of presidential authority.
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- Stefanik’s
revenge: Rep. Elise Stefanik has had it with Speaker Johnson, and there are stories in two major publications to make sure Johnson knows it. Both NBC News and The New York Times reported that Stefanik, whose nomination to be U.N. ambassador was pulled because of Republicans’ slim vote margin in the House, is furious with Johnson for dragging his feet on bringing her back into leadership and failing to reinstall her on the Intelligence Committee. (It’s now been more
than a month and Trump has still not nominated a new U.N. ambassador, as I reported here last week.)
Stefanik has a meeting with Johnson this evening, and maybe a truce is on the horizon. Regardless, she’s set her sights on becoming governor of New York in 2026. It’s not clear yet that she’ll run; if she does, she’d face an uphill battle
in the blue state. But as the Times’s Annie Karni smartly points out, a loss could also be a win for Stefanik. She gets out of the House—which she seems to be so over—and will be free to accept a job in Trump’s cabinet, which, as the Times notes and I’ve also heard, is something Trump promised her after the midterms. I have no doubt that she’ll put herself in the best possible position—something she is extremely skilled at.
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Senate and House Republicans are determined to stick by the president, even as his poll
numbers dip and more Americans start to question his tariffs, deportations, executive orders, and DOGE downsizing.
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On the morning of Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, House Republicans emerged confident
from a closed-door briefing about the state of their majority—in lockstep and seemingly unconcerned about their political viability in next year’s midterms. “It looks really bad for the Democrats,” Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern, a member of House Republican leadership, told me afterward. Member after member defended the president, downplaying the sour mood of the electorate and generally making reassuring noises. “There’s a plan, and, you know, in the end, I think results will speak
for themselves,” Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Meuser told me.
It’s all part of the plan is a long-running inside joke among Republican politicos that began early in Trump’s first term, as chaos and controversy snowballed. If any Hill Republicans are in on the joke this time around, they’re giving no indication. Instead, they lined up this week to intone their versions of the “promises made, promises kept” mantra. Senator John Barrasso, the Senate’s
number two Republican, gave an enthusiastic floor speech about the depth of Trump’s accomplishments, especially regarding the southern border. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was likewise chuffed, telling reporters that, with Trump, “you have to take the long view. I think his policy decisions are the right ones, and over time, that will bear fruit.”
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After all, what else can Republicans do but hope the long view is the right view? When seven in 10 voters say
the economy is on the verge of a recession, that’s not good news for the party in power—especially when that party ran on lowering costs and improving the economy. The pileup of wreckage—the economy just contracted for the first time since Covid, the stock market oscillations are exhausting investors, and the 90-day pause is coming to a finale at the end of the quarter—casts a shadow over any short-term confidence. Voters are questioning Trump’s strategy on deportations, doubting his
enthusiastic expansion of executive authority, and growing skeptical of the downstream impacts of DOGE, according to public polling here, here, and
here. Trump can try to blame Biden for the volatile stock market, as he did today on his social media platform, but as Republican Senator John Kennedy said on my friend
Kasie Hunt’s CNN show, it’s Trump’s economy now.
While the economy will be the issue on which Republicans will be judged between now and the midterms, every Republican I talk to, on and off the Hill, insists it’s too early for the party to freak out. Anything can happen in a month under Trump, let alone a year. Plus, races aren’t even set; the parties are still recruiting candidates (although House Republican recruitment is happening much slower this cycle, one
Republican told me). But time isn’t infinite, as I was reminded by North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, one of the more vulnerable Republicans this cycle, who told me his party has approximately four months to turn things around. “We’ll know all that we need to know about the environment next year by [this] September,” Tillis said. “We’ve got to get trades, we got to get tax settled down.”
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The tax bill that Republicans are working on, and hope to pass before July 4, is at the core of their
strategy to pacify Wall Street and reassure Main Street. As difficult as it’s going to be to get all but three House Republicans on the same page with Senate Republicans, failure is not an option, Republicans have told me. If taxes go up for most Americans, Republicans will be blamed, this thinking goes, and will be staring down a midterm loss akin to the Democratic shellacking in 2010 or the blue wave in 2018.
And yet, Republicans know that doing nothing will be far worse than
even the most severe political repercussions of cutting too much from Medicaid (or not cutting enough to satisfy conservatives). So, despite all of the jockeying in private and through the media on policy and provisions over Medicaid cuts, state and local taxes and tax rates, etcetera, there’s an inevitable feeling on Capitol Hill—among both parties—that Republicans will be able to pass the legislation even if the process is protracted, painful, and divisive. If they don’t, the economy
will truly suffer, Republicans surmise.
That’s why unity is central to Republicans’ strategy, and why they will not break with Trump (with the exception of Rep. Don Bacon and a few others on specific issues) no matter how low his approval ratings get. So much for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s plan to make Trump so unpopular that his own party turns on him. Instead, members plan to stick together, even if it means they’ll go down together, one
Republican strategist told me.
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The same conventional wisdom holds that there’s no point angering the base, which demands absolute loyalty to
Trump and won’t show up at the ballot box for anyone who doesn’t back him. A second senior Republican strategist agreed. When I asked whether Trump’s polling numbers dipping into the 30s is a problem, this person seemed to reject the very premise: “His approval rating has never been good.”
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The Sixth
Stage of Democratic Grief
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In their 100-day meeting yesterday, Republicans traded data points that added up to a remarkably optimistic
picture of their electoral situation, given all the present economic headwinds. They pored over positive fundraising numbers and the House map, and concluded that this cycle will look nothing like Trump’s 2018 midterms, when Democrats won a net of 41 seats. Because of redistricting, only three Republicans—Reps. Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Mike Lawler—represent districts that Kamala Harris won, compared to 13 Democrats in districts
that Trump won. (In 2018, it’s worth noting, there were also only three Republicans in districts that Hillary Clinton won, and 31 Democrats in Trump districts.)
Democrats are also far less popular than they were heading into 2018, Republicans insist. Continuing to put on a happy face, the N.R.C.C. touted their own polling for 2026, which puts Dems one point ahead in the generic ballot of 46 battleground districts, compared to a lead of about seven points in the
RealClearPolitics polling average from this point in the 2018 cycle. (RCP’s polling average for 2026 has Dems putting up a slightly better generic-ballot showing of about two points.)
“Democrats are in the unfortunate position of having to defend the status quo, which is never popular,” one Republican operative said.
Sure, Democrats are less popular than they were in 2018, when they won back the House; and in 2020, when they won the House, Senate, and presidency; and even in 2022, when they outperformed expectations of a “red wave” midterm revolt against Biden, holding the Senate and only narrowly losing the House. But there’s a belief that they’re emerging from their
post-’24 stupor. A senior Democratic House aide told me the Democrats are on the “sixth stage of grief”—considering solutions and making meaning out of loss to move forward. They think the economy, coupled with the upcoming Republican tax and spending cut bill, will give them a huge opening. “Prices are going up, families are struggling, and they seem uninterested in listening to families in their communities,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee, called to tell me.
And whatever Democrats’ remaining challenges, Republicans are still tied to a lame-duck president who’s attempting to quickly and aggressively break the domestic and global status quo, regardless of political consequences for himself or his party. Trump isn’t worried about his poll numbers right now, a Republican close to the White House told me, because they are still higher than those of any national Democrat. (The party has no clear leader right
now.)
If it becomes abundantly clear that Republicans will lose the House, however, look for Trump to course correct. The president and his aides believe he will be impeached again if Democrats win the majority, which is something he definitely doesn’t want to go through a third time, as I’ve reported before. One member of Congress, Shri Thanedar—who is facing a primary challenger from the left—has already introduced seven articles of impeachment, and as my partner
Abby Livingston wrote earlier this week, the most risk-averse Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, didn’t reject the idea of impeachment when he was asked about it at a town hall last week.
For now, Republicans are praying that Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. If he doesn’t, there’s not much they can do about it.
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