Midterm elections typically go poorly for an incumbent president’s party. But the 2026 election delivered the kind of resounding rebuke that feels more like a reckoning. Across America, a blue wave has crested deep into red territory, washing through many of President Trump’s formerly safe spaces, endangering his preferred candidates and putting his presidency—and his broader MAGA coalition—at risk of a historic collapse.
If there was any question over whether the concept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is still operative in Washington’s hyper-partisan political environment, the answer may be found in the budding coalition of progressives and MAGA-friendly activists who have united in recent days to speak out against artificial intelligence. Which is how Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon found themselves speaking on the same stage today.
Politicians have no shortage of ideas about how to rein in AI: a 100 percent federal tax rate on data-center incentives, a pause on all development of advanced AI, new standards to block AI agents from going rogue, a halt to the construction of data centers altogether.
The flurry of proposals has been impossible to miss, with both Democrats and Republicans proclaiming that something must be done to avert a disaster foretold by AI insiders.
This story was updated on August 5, 2026, at 7:29 p.m. ET
he Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made the customary call for unity after a hard-fought primary against a fellow Democrat. “Always magnanimity in victory,” he told a packed crowd of supporters, adding that “however much we might disagree with our Democratic opponent, there is so much more that unites us than divides us.”
But just minutes earlier, one of his most famous endorsers was pushing a much different message.
Earlier this year, President Trump claimed a new area of expertise: election law. “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject,” Trump wrote on social media, and found an “irrefutable one” that he would soon present.
The middle-aged man in a giraffe costume removed his sunglasses and told the crowd that he was breaking character in order to deliver an earnest message about the most effective way to counteract President Trump. “We do not fight absurdity with valor,” Rob Potylo, a comedian and political activist also known as Robby Roadmaster, said last night as Trump was delivering his State of the Union address. “We fight absurdity with more absurdity!” He then turned around and began to twerk.
During the previous government shutdown, President Trump reveled in the chance to fire federal workers, expand his executive authority, and steer taxpayer dollars toward his allies and away from his perceived political enemies. After a record-setting 43 days of gridlock—during which Trump pursued those goals with varying degrees of success—several Democrats abandoned their quest to force Republicans to negotiate a health-care deal, and voted to end the shutdown.
The state and local officials meeting with Tom Homan, who was put in charge of the federal immigration operation in Minnesota this week, have generally agreed that their encounters have been cordial and productive, a welcome change from the militaristic approach taken by his predecessor.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was already irritated by what he describes as “unnecessarily contentious” questions from the team vetting him to be Kamala Harris’s running mate when a senior aide made one final inquiry: “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?”
The question came from President Biden’s former White House counsel Dana Remus, who was a key member of Harris’s vice-presidential search team.
President Donald Trump can hardly conceal his disgust for the word affordability, referring to its ascendance in America’s political lexicon as a “hoax,” a “con job,” and a “fake narrative” perpetuated by Democrats. But there’s one sign that he’s treating it like a very real political vulnerability: The former reality-television host is trying to give people cash.
Catalina Jaramillo is beginning to envision what her life in South Florida will look like without the financial help that allows her to afford health insurance, medication, and treatment for a series of ailments. Jaramillo has been insured through the Affordable Care Act since being diagnosed with acute kidney disease in 2022, when she was 39. Expanded subsidies help her afford the coverage—and they will expire at the end of the year unless Congress extends them.
The longest-ever government shutdown ended on November 12, but Deairra Tracey is still scared.
The disabled mother of three from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, had to visit food banks and skip meals so that her children could eat after the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program abruptly stopped paying out benefits on November 1.
In the hours before Democrats’ electoral victories Tuesday night, the end of the government shutdown seemed near. Several Democratic senators had spent the day quietly discussing a potential bipartisan settlement. Republican leaders had expressed confidence that once the “radical left” activists had their say at the polls, moderate lawmakers would have enough political cover to cave and reopen the government.
On the first day of every month, Ethel Ingram goes to the grocery store with $171 in federally funded food stamps and a nearly impossible mission: Buy enough food for the next 30 days. She usually fails. A couple of weeks into most months, she’s forced to pursue another goal: visiting enough food banks to stock her refrigerator until the month ends and her account reloads. But this month, the government shutdown cut off food assistance to her and millions of others.
As far as government shutdowns go, this one has so far lacked the round-the-clock chaos of its predecessors. There have been no dramatic late-night clashes on the floors of Congress, no steep stock-market plunges driven by panicked investors, no prime-time presidential addresses from the Oval Office. Even the running clocks on cable-news chyrons have disappeared.
Thirty-four days into the previous government shutdown, in 2019, reporters asked President Donald Trump if he had a message for the thousands of federal employees who were about to miss another paycheck. “I love them. I respect them. I really appreciate the great job they’re doing,” he said at the time.
Washington, D.C., more than any other city in the country, presents President Donald Trump with the opportunity to meddle in the minutiae of municipal governance. Even in the capital, though, his powers are far from limitless. And the chasm between Trump’s sweeping plan to “clean up” D.C.