Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell. I spent
Saturday night at my son’s school auction, and the conversations coalesced around familiar topics: Parents traded stories about the status of their government or government-adjacent jobs. Some attested that they had been laid off twice, most recently on Friday. Others have been furloughed, and plenty were holding their breath. Bad timing for a Beltway school fundraiser.
This morning I joined Meet the Press to talk tariffs (what else?) with my intrepid co-panelists,
Lanhee Chen of the Hoover Institution, Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, and NBC’s Garrett Haake. I was also on The Powers That Be podcast earlier this week discussing A.O.C.’s next moves with Schumer on his back foot. Listen here and
here.
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In tonight’s issue,
I dig into how the political fortunes of Republicans and Democrats seem to have shifted overnight following Donald Trump’s 401(k)-battering “Liberation Day” announcement—and just one day after the G.O.P received discouraging election signals in Florida and Wisconsin. Trump’s economic self-immolation aside, Democrats have started to show some signs of life, too.
But first, a few notes from around town…
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- Johnson
and his discontents: Senate Republicans sent the House another version of their budget framework—the bill that will eventually bundle an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, hundreds of billions (potentially more than $1 trillion) in budget cuts, and a $5 trillion increase to the debt limit. The more fiscally conservative House Republican faction is threatening to oppose the framework because it actually requires far fewer than $2 trillion in spending cuts. “I can’t
support House passage of the Senate changes to our budget resolution until I see the actual spending and deficit reduction plans to enact President Trump’s America First agenda,” Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, wrote on social media.
On Saturday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to quell dissent with a letter to his colleagues noting that the Senate version makes “NO CHANGES” (his all caps, not mine) to the House plan. The point was
to remind his colleagues that this is just a “kickoff” to the process, and to warn them not to sink the measure at this early stage. I suspect Trump will have to get heavily involved again in order to muscle Republicans into line. And, after a lot of complaining and outspoken demands, my guess is that they absolutely will fall into line. Despite some grumblings, Republicans on the Hill still mostly tremble at the sound of Trump clearing his throat. So they’re not going to take a stand
over a budget framework. They could change it yet again and send it back to the Senate, but that would waste a lot of precious time.
- Open for business?: Of course, before Johnson can do anything else on the floor this week—docket items include not only passing the latest budget framework, but also the G.O.P. bill to require proof of citizenship to vote, and a measure to end the nationwide injunctions temporarily halting Trump’s agenda—the
speaker would need to break his stalemate with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna over proxy voting for new moms. It seems like he’s gotten that part nipped.
Johnson, who has been adamantly against proxy voting, announced a deal with Luna during a call with members today. Luna won’t force a vote on her bill to allow new moms to vote remotely for 12 weeks in exchange for Johnson making accommodations for more resources for new moms, according to a person briefed on the deal. A new mom
who misses votes will also have a way to officially register how they would have voted, a confusing process called vote pairing, a person familiar said, first reported by Punchbowl.
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After the thrill of Trump’s first two months in office, a torrent of tariffs and a big loss
in Wisconsin are giving Republican lawmakers a glimpse of the grim midterm battles ahead. “It’s starting to feel a lot like 2018 with a backlash to Trumpism,” says a Republican pollster. “The Trump honeymoon collapsed with the stock market.”
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It’s been a rough week for Republicans in Washington. Just when they were really feeling their oats—cheering
Trump’s executive orders, getting dozens of Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act, celebrating Chuck Schumer’s capitulation on government funding, and envisioning beachfront property in Greenland—along came the president with his most distasteful loyalty test yet. Trump’s imposition of global tariffs not only cratered markets, erased trillions of dollars in wealth, freaked out consumers, and angered key allies. It has also made things a bit awkward for
Republicans, who now have to explain to their constituents why more expensive products, combined with the plunging value of their retirement accounts, will actually—well, theoretically—be good in the long run.
It’s quite a reversal from just three weeks ago, when the leaderless, rudderless Democrats were divided over strategy, pointing fingers at each other, and wallowing in uncertainty. First there was Signalgate, an amateur hour blunder that shifted the media narrative to the
administration’s perceived incompetence and put the White House on defense. Then there was the trifecta of two Florida special elections where Republicans significantly underperformed their 2024 margins and a Wisconsin Supreme Court election where Democrats won by an alarming margin, despite (or perhaps because of) Elon Musk’s personal and financial intervention in the race. Now, with Trump’s economic shock to global trade, it’s the Republicans contemplating an electoral
wipeout. The midterm shellackings of 2018, when Republicans lost 40 House seats, and in 2010, when Democrats lost 63 seats, are top of mind.
The potential to lose one or both chambers in 2026 came up with nearly every Republican I spoke with this week. “Nerves are raw,” said a source who helps to elect House Republicans. “It’s starting to feel a lot like 2018, with a backlash to Trumpism and Trump governance,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who does a lot of work
for non-MAGA Republican clients. “The Trump honeymoon collapsed with the stock market.”
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Trump himself has always been uniquely impervious to bad press, in part because his popularity trends within
such a narrow band. The president may yet reverse course on tariffs (wishful thinking, perhaps…) or at least open the door to mitigating their impact. Nevertheless, there was a sense on Capitol Hill this week that “Liberation Day” and its aftershocks may be remembered as the most significant moment of Trump’s second term—akin to Joe Biden’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, in August 2021, an episode from which his popularity never recovered, as the narrative of a weak and
ineffectual president started to take hold.
Democrats suffered only modest losses during the 2022 midterms, in part because Afghanistan was a foreign policy blunder that lawmakers didn’t have to defend. House Republicans, however, expect to be asked constantly about the state of Trump’s trade war, and why they signed over authority to the White House to decree the largest tax increase in decades. A source who works closely with House Republicans told me that members are “getting
nervous”—particularly those in swing districts with the sort of higher-income, college-educated voters who check their 401(k)s over their morning smoothies and take notice when JPMorgan Chase raises its 2025 recession odds to 60 percent. The party needs markets to settle and strengthen in the next 60 days, I’m told, if lawmakers want to be competitive in 2026. If not, don’t be surprised to see Republicans start to head for the exits, retiring or cashing out to the private sector rather than face
a devastating loss. “You can do all you want with trade and the border, but if we don’t have a growing economy next year, we’ll lose the House,” John McLaughlin, one of Trump’s longtime pollsters, told me.
Yes, yes, these are easy predictions to make: The party that controls the White House has lost seats in practically every midterm in modern times. But the recent 2018 and 2010 midterms were notable because of how big the swings were. If worsening economic
conditions suggest that 2026 is shaping up to be another wave election, expect Republicans to begin speaking up about their disagreements with Trump, seeking daylight they can explain to voters. Most are staying silent, for now, hoping against hope that the tariffs are just a negotiating tactic and will start to be rolled back in coming days. But small pockets of Republicans are starting to express their concerns over tariffs.
On his podcast this week, Senator Ted Cruz
called Trump’s import taxes “the biggest tax increase we have seen in a long, long, long time.” Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and Rand Paul joined Democrats this week in voting for a resolution to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada. Seven Republican senators—Collins, Murkowski, McConnell, Jerry Moran, Todd Young, Thom Tillis, and co-sponsor Chuck
Grassley have backed a bill that would require Congress to ratify any tariffs after 60 days. They only need six more Republicans to join all Democrats, and the willingness of a Senate leader to bring it up for a vote.
Meanwhile, in the House, Rep. Don Bacon—one of the most vulnerable House Republicans every election cycle—is introducing a similar bill to check the president’s powers on tariffs. Notably, just last month, Bacon voted to change House rules to make
it more difficult to challenge the president’s use of national emergencies to impose tariffs. The mood in those swing districts is changing fast.
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While Republicans test their appetite for dissent—whether it’s on issues like tariffs, deportations without
due process, or impeaching federal judges—Democrats will be looking for opportunities to push any wedge issues to the fore. Schumer’s entire strategy at the moment is to chip away at Trump’s approval ratings, thereby forcing Republicans in Congress to either distance themselves from the president or take the electoral hit with their constituents. Trump may not need Schumer’s help with that if the economic situation deteriorates further.
It’s incumbent on Democrats, however, to help the
process along. Cory Booker, the always hopeful former Stanford tight end, gave Democrats a much-needed psychological boost when he delivered his record-breaking, 25-plus hour speech on the Senate floor. The party also drew optimism from this Saturday’s “Hands Off” protests, which convened hundreds of thousands of people across dozens of cities.
In the coming weeks, Democrats will tie Trump’s tariffs to the budget bill as a tax break for billionaires. (Extending the 2017
Trump tax cuts will lower rates for most taxpayers, but benefit the wealthy the most.) In the shadow of Liberation Day, Trump’s allies say it’s become even more crucial to extend the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year. But the tariffs could complicate the legislative task at hand by reviving fears of increased inflation and an economic recession. Even worse, some fear that when a version of the tax extension eventually passes, the hoped-for economic boost may
fizzle—especially if the market has already priced those lower rates in. “If we pass the tax bill, and we have the uncertainties with tariffs, then you’re not going to get the same immediate response,” Sen. Tillis, who is up for reelection in the purplish state of North Carolina, told me. “The capital is still going to wait on the sidelines to figure out the other side of the ledger.”
One unexpected silver lining of the past week, I’m hearing, is that Republicans are breathing easier
after all the money Musk spent on the Wisconsin race appeared to backfire. The New York Times, among others, reported this week that Musk is likely to step back from his current role in the White House in the coming weeks, after he completes his 130-day contract as a “special government employee.” But even if he continues to be a major force in Republican politics, making good on his threat to spend millions of dollars on defeating Republicans who don’t fully back Trump’s agenda, his
failure to launch in Wisconsin was a reassuring data point for some Republicans. As one G.O.P. source told me, lawmakers who are charting their own political survival odds are relieved that Musk can’t simply parachute into state elections and buy a seat.
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