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President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a meeting with cryptocurrency executives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 19, 2026.
(Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images/TCA)
Has Donald Trump lost his golden touch?
Aug 22, 2026
On Tuesday night, Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, revealed somewhat awkwardly that she is entirely unprepared to be a U.S. senator.
At a South Carolina debate, she was asked a perfectly reasonable and straightforward question: “Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?” And, “If so, why?”
She sheepishly responded, “I’m just going to be honest here — I’m not on national security. I’m not that informed on national security, but I do support the military.”
That response — admitting there’s an entire and extremely important category of public policy and governing responsibility that she just doesn’t know — would be humiliating for any Senate candidate, but it was worse considering her brother’s personal interest and commitment to it.
It was also another reminder that President Trump, who has lent considerable support to her candidacy, doesn’t care about qualifications, expertise, or even electability when he backs candidates for public office. All that matters is loyalty.
This is not news. Whether it was his ill-fated support of scandal-ridden Senate candidates Herschel Walker and Roy Moore in 2022 and 2017 respectively, or of current scandal-ridden candidates Ken Paxton and Max Miller, Trump has endorsed some truly awful candidates, often betting that his word alone would be enough to push them across the finish line.
Walker and Moore excluded, he’s had a lot of success, to be sure, and in many cases his support was in fact what propelled otherwise lackluster or problematic candidates to victory. But this primary season has seen a mixed bag for Trump, begging the question of whether his golden touch has lost some of its shine — especially as his approval sinks to an abysmal 32%.
A string of recent losses show voters aren’t entirely sold on Trump’s vision for the next two years.
This week, scandal-ridden Rep. Cory Mills lost his primary in Florida, as did Catalina Lauf.
Megan Degenfelder lost her bid for governor in Wyoming, while election-denier Mike Lindell lost his primary for governor in Minnesota by 11 points.
Earlier this month, Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates in Iowa and Georgia also lost, as did his first pick for governor of South Carolina.
Altogether, 10 Trump-endorsed candidates have lost their primaries, which are as many losses as Trump saw in 2018, 2020, and 2024 combined. One more loss and he’ll tie his worst record for endorsements, in 2022.
With the fight over the majority at stake, it seems an odd year to be so capricious and reckless with his influence, but capricious and reckless he’s been.
In Texas, Trump endorsed Paxton, whose 20-year record of scandals, including a felony securities fraud indictment and an impeachment by his own party, baffles the mind when the well-liked incumbent John Cornyn was also on the ballot.
In Ohio, Miller has been accused by his ex-wife and father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno, of spousal and child abuse, and yet Trump has not demanded he step down. The White House even reportedly pressured Ohio Republicans to lay off Miller.
In the hotly-watched races where Trump’s picks have lost, it means Republican primary voters in red states like Iowa, Florida, and Wyoming — in other words, Trump’s base — are either tuning Trump out or proactively voting against his candidates. Both scenarios are bad for Republicans, especially in the cases where his more controversial candidates, like Paxton and Miller, have to run in a general election.
We know Trump’s lost massive support among independents, young voters, Hispanics, and other coalitions from 2024. But if he can’t turn his base out for his candidates as reliably as he once did, well add it to the pile of reasons Democrats feel pretty good about these midterms — and hope he keeps backing all the bad contenders he wants.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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Photo by Berke Citak on Unsplash
Walling In, Walling Out
Aug 21, 2026
In the 1980s, comedian Steven Wright had a bit about Smokey the Bear. When we were kids, we must’ve seen the old PSA a thousand times. “Only you can prevent forest fires.” As Wright recalls Smokey’s warning, he points at himself with a questioning look as if to say, “Me?”
That bit came to mind the other day when I saw the post of a friend from high school that started out by saying, “If you weren’t sure, this is censorship. You know, what you like to accuse President DJT of…”
Me?
Jennifer and I are still in touch. We talk occasionally. We see each other at all the reunions. And we were in a close enough circle of friends that we get together outside of the larger gatherings.
Having posted this on her public social media page, Jen wasn’t necessarily addressing me directly. But it does raise some questions. Namely, who exactly is she calling out? Is she responding to someone she's actually had this conversation with, or is she under the impression that this is the homogeneous position of all those who don't align with her political affinities?
Also, why did this platform serve this post at the top of my feed on an otherwise serene Saturday morning? Perhaps “good fences make good neighbors,” but this one went up without my consent, placing me on a side I didn’t choose.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down…
My lifelong friend went on. She had a list of grievances partly against the “MSM,” but mostly against unnamed masses who don’t share her thinking.
To be fair, Jennifer touched upon a smattering of issues, any of which we could discuss, such as whether a broadcast network should air a sitting president’s address to the American people, how long it took for many outlets to cover President Biden’s health concerns, and the failures of his administration to secure the southern border.
But the combative nature of her post had me thinking less about the merits of the scattershot of issues she brought up and more about why she’s yelling. Like, is she okay?
Candidly, I’m uninterested in the potpourri of complaints my old friend touched upon. But I am curious about who Jennifer thinks she’s reaching, whether she believes these sorts of protestations are accomplishing anything, and if so, what.
I’m also curious and somewhat concerned about one of the people who commented on this thread, who I also know. Jill is someone I went to Hebrew School with for many years—from the time that we were in 1st grade through my Bar Mitzvah and her Bat Mitzvah. We even attended Hebrew High School together, a program my father implemented for our synagogue. Jill’s comment was, “They’re afraid of the truth.”
They? Who are “they”? The “MSM”? The unnamed masses our mutual friend is yelling at? Anyone who didn’t vote for Trump? Or me?
Jenny and Jill seem to be on the same page. Or at least on the same channel. It’s not one that I’m on except as part of my work to see how certain partisans are framing news events, which stories get covered, and what’s not even making it into their programming.
We are, however, in the same virtual room. I just wonder how a conversation like this might go if we were all in the same actual room together.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
Walls and fences aren't the trouble. The trouble is that we’ve reached a point where calling out to our neighbor beyond the hill can feel like a trespass, or even a danger.
At the dawn of this century, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone was prophetic. First published in June of 2000, the book deals with social capital: “…connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.” Twenty years later, in the anniversary edition, he poses the founding question again:
Were more and more Americans indeed bowling—as well as worshipping, picnicking, politicking, and engaging in countless other “social” activities—alone (or not at all)? If so, why? And what could it mean for a nation that supposedly counted community and collective action as founding virtues?
Look, I can identify with gravitational pulls toward isolation. Last week, I decided to go to a local sports bar to catch one of the semi-final World Cup matches. I figured it’d be good to be among others taking in all the excitement. Maybe get a taste of that collective effervescence. But the moment I spotted their lunch special on the menu and put in my order for a “crispy coup” (their spelling, not mine) with a side of tots (don’t judge me), I was longing for the comfort of my own chair, my own TV that I could watch at my own preferred volume, without any obstructions to my view, and the A/C dialed in to the exact temperature of my preferred comfort.
Yet being among neighbors at a sports bar, coincidentally called The Local, is a healthier choice. Much the same way that getting a side salad would have been a healthier choice than those tots. By mid-afternoon, there was a coup underway in my gut, another price paid for that fried chicken and those fried potatoes. At least that bill came due the same day. There are also costs for denying our human need to connect with others.
My friend Liz Joyner, the founder and president of the Village Square, has an expression: “It’s hard to hate somebody up close.”
Growing up, Jill and I were two of the many kids running the halls of that place every week, with classrooms marked Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, Daled, Hay, in our Hebrew School with Morah Baum and Shabbos services with Rabbi Klein. The tattooed numbers on the arms of the alta bubbes and zaides reminded us who we are and what we have endured. There was a “we.”
Beyond the synagogue, Jennifer and I were part of efforts with a number of our other high school buddies to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, along with all kinds of other formal and informal gatherings that always seemed to end up at the Manalapan Diner on Route 9 when Jenny would let me have her coleslaw.
Yeah, it’s hard to hate somebody up close. Especially when they let you have their coleslaw.
These days, we’re not running into each other at the diner. We’re just seeing a post here and there. Posts that mostly serve as presentations, but not necessarily connections. “Here’s my kid who just graduated summa cum something or other.” “Ain’t my dog cute?” “Happy birthday to the most brilliant, beautiful, blah blah blah…” Or on occasion, “Hey you! You’re what’s wrong with this country.” Followed by some version of, “Yeah, they are.”
Sure, I could pick up the phone. Or hop on a Zoom. I could even make a trip back East and grab a coffee with my old high school pal. But if every time you saw something of theirs, it made you feel like you were getting yelled at, would you?
Then again, maybe I will go back East and just invite her out to go bowling. I’d bet the Lucky Strike Cafe at Howell Lanes still has some great coleslaw.
Corey Nathan hosts Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other and writes about faith and civic life on Substack. He came to Christian faith from an observant Jewish upbringing.
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Why are so many American elections uncontested? Richard Neal’s long tenure in Congress highlights a broader problem involving money, ballot access, parties and candidate recruitment.
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America Has an Uncontested Elections Problem
Aug 21, 2026
Richard Neal, the congressman representing Massachusetts’ 1st district, is concluding his 19th congressional term this year. In many ways, Neal is a typical long-tenured congressperson. However, Congressman Neal is distinguished by having been elected to Congress uncontested more times than anyone in post-civil rights American history.
Neal owes his long tenure in part to the uncompetitive elections in western Massachusetts where so-called “silent elections” are common. Some would be challengers may be put off by the fact that he has won seven of his eight contested congressional races by more than 20 points. More often than not, Neal has been uncontested in the Democratic primary as well, however, this year he has competition in both the primary and general election.
Jeromie Whalen, a local high school teacher, is challenging Neal for the Democratic nomination in the district, and Nadia Milleron, a lawyer, activist, and political independent, will face the winner. When I spoke with Whalen in February, six months into his campaign against Neal, he relayed a series of frustrations around Neal’s lack of transparency, excessive PAC use, and failure to support progressive causes. To Whalen, Neal epitomizes everything wrong with the Democratic Party. “We've drifted farther and farther from the party that I grew up with and I knew and I loved.”
Per the Pew Research Center, 75% of Americans share Whalen’s frustration with America’s federal government. This country has plenty of people with strong opinions, and yet it is lacking candidates.
In 2024, 22 congressional races were uncontested. At the state level, they are even more common, with 40% of all state legislator elections being uncontested in 2024, part of an upward trend. Including local elections, 70% of all races in America’s 2024 elections had only one candidate on the ballot. Silent elections have been trending up internationally too, including in Austria, Italy, and Japan. The problem is particularly severe in Japan, where 40% of mayoral elections were uncontested in 2023. However, this rate is still far behind America, where 71% of mayors were elected uncontested in 2024. Canada, a country with which America shares many similarities, has had only one “win by acclamation” at the provincial level this century and none at the federal level.
The most basic reason for our abundance of silent elections is that America holds so many elections—500k elected positions at the state and local level. Most attract little attention and few candidates. In 2024, city council members and commissioners were uncontested in 70% of races. Niche positions like treasurers, clerks, and judges are uncontested in 90% of races. In 2024, 10,000 elections had no candidates appearing on the ballot at all, primarily in city legislature, school board, and judge elections.
The problem isn’t just the number of elected positions, but also that many come with responsibilities that exceed compensation. Most school board positions come with little or no pay. City council members earn $31k on average. Low pay can be workable if elected positions are done concurrently with another job, but they often can’t be due to the workload required and/or the inflexibility of a potential candidate’s primary employer.
Though little discussed, many elections advocates recognize the problem and hope to fix it. Last spring, I spoke with Jen Johansen, an elections advocate. She relayed to me that candidate support mechanisms outside of political parties are rare in American politics. That means many candidates rely on party support to run their campaign. However, party leaders are reluctant to provide money and resources to candidates they expect to lose—as is the case in Massachusetts’ 1st district, where the Republican Party has participated in fewer than half the congressional elections this century.
In races they expect to win, party leaders discourage multiple candidates from running. This means that candidates not favored by their party are asked to “wait their turn” and support more senior (or better-connected) candidates instead. The turn system and culture of backroom dealing have massively influenced Western Massachusetts, where, in 1988, Ed Boland—a long-time Massachusetts congressman—gave Richard Neal advance notice of his planned retirement, allowing Neal to ready funds and resources before anyone knew he would retire. Thanks to this, Neal went unchallenged in the primary and faced only a Marxist third-party candidate in the general election.
I also spoke with Rob Booth, an elections advocate who works for GoodParty. “People don’t lack opinions or views,” he told me. “They lack a clear on-ramp or credible plan.”
Researchers have found that higher fundraising expectations lead to fewer candidates running for office. These expectations also warp the behavior of candidates who do run. Whalen told me that early in his campaign, a political consultant friend told him he needed to spend days “sitting in a room and calling random people and begging for money." That wasn’t the campaign Whalen wanted to run, and so he didn’t. Consequently, with two weeks to go until the September 1st primary, Whalen’s campaign has spent just $300k, well short of Neal’s 2.1 million—and the 2.1 million Alex Morse, Neal’s last primary challenger, spent in 2020. Not all candidates share Whalen’s willingness to run at such a financial disadvantage; without strong funding, many candidates simply don’t run.
Ballot access is another barrier that can kill campaigns. In most places, ballot access is determined by some combination of filling forms, paying fees, and proving eligibility, but in some places these tasks are particularly onerous. For example, in Georgia, candidates must pay $5220 to run for the US House of Representatives. Non-party affiliated candidates must also collect signatures from 5% of eligible voters in a district. For state house districts, that is typically ~5000 signatures, and for US house districts, typically ~25,000. Georgia’s rules are strict enough that in 2021, a judge declared them unconstitutional. However, this decision was overturned by a federal appeals court the following year.
Even in states with relaxed signature requirements, candidates sometimes have to ensure their signatures include sufficient representation from across their district and that each signer is eligible to sign. “Petition drives can be a place where a lot of campaigns die,” Booth tells me.
No single factor is to blame for the epidemic of silent elections in America. However, the sheer number of elections, the challenges of holding elected office, the power of the two-party system, the need to raise money, and the logistical challenges of running have together brought far too many American elections to a standstill.
Rafael Gonzalez is an MPP student at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Before graduate school, he worked for Boston Consulting Group, the World Food Programme, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has previously been published by Public Seminar for an article on industrial agriculture.
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America’s housing affordability crisis is rooted in a severe shortage of homes, restrictive zoning and rising costs. Can Congress’s new housing law fix the foundation?
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America’s Housing Crisis Needs More Than Simple Repairs
Aug 21, 2026
My wife and I recently moved into a charming Victorian house built in 1879, when Rutherford B. Hayes was president. Despite nearly a century and a half of wear, it remains a beautiful home. But living in it has taught me an important lesson: there’s a world of difference between a house that looks sound and one that is structurally sound.
The floors slope noticeably from room to room. Windows stick on humid days. Doors don’t always close quite right. None of these problems is catastrophic. They are reminders that beneath the attractive exterior, a house this old carries structural issues that no amount of fresh paint can conceal.
I’m reminded of that distinction between cosmetic repairs and structural ones as I think about Congress’s recently enacted bipartisan housing law.
It represents a genuine effort to address one of America’s most pressing economic challenges, and lawmakers deserve credit for working across party lines. It also couldn’t have come at a better time. America’s housing affordability crisis has reached historic proportions.
According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, a record 43.5 million households spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing in 2024, while 21.6 million spent more than half their income simply to keep a roof over their heads. The burden reaches well into the middle class: 49 percent of renters earning between $45,000 and $75,000 a year were cost-burdened. Meanwhile, the median single-family home price reached five times the median household income in 2024, compared with roughly three times income during much of the 1990s.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act attacks the problem from several directions. It seeks to streamline some reviews and permitting, encourages local governments to reconsider barriers to new housing, expands support for manufactured and modular housing and housing finance, and restricts additional single-family-home purchases by large institutional investors. These aren’t trivial changes. Some could make it easier and cheaper to build housing.
But zoning illustrates the limits of even well-intentioned federal action. Congress can encourage communities to permit duplexes, apartments, accessory dwelling units, and greater density, but most land-use decisions remain state and local responsibilities. Indeed, the new law itself prevents federal officials from using its zoning provisions to preempt local zoning or land-use policy. Washington can provide incentives. It cannot simply rewrite thousands of local zoning codes.
The law therefore improves pieces of the system without fundamentally restructuring it. The nation’s housing system is decentralized by design, while the housing shortage has become a national problem. The result is a familiar pattern in American policymaking: filling in the visible cracks while leaving the foundation largely untouched.
The Foundation Is Still Cracking
The housing affordability crisis wasn’t created overnight, nor was it caused by a single policy. It is the product of decades of underbuilding, restrictive zoning, cumbersome approval processes, rising construction costs, shortages of skilled labor, and persistent local opposition to higher-density development.
Freddie Mac estimates that the United States remains 3.7 million housing units short of what is needed to meet long-term demand. Its researchers identify inadequate supply as a root cause of deteriorating affordability: when too few homes are available, buyers and renters bid up the price of those that are.
Consider, for example, a middle-class couple in Seattle. She is a public school teacher; he is an EMT. Together, they earn a solid, steady income and have done everything previous generations were told to do: work hard, save diligently, and plan for the future. Yet homeownership remains beyond their reach as housing prices have climbed faster than their savings and mortgage rates have remained high.
Their predicament is hardly unusual. The National Association of Realtors reported in 2025 that first-time buyers accounted for just 21 percent of home purchases, the lowest share since it began keeping records in 1981. The median first-time buyer was 40 years old, another record.
These are the foundation problems. No single federal law, however well intentioned, can solve them. Yet unless they are confronted, broadly affordable housing will remain out of reach for millions of Americans.
Why Congress Patches Instead of Rebuilds
The structural problems in housing are politically difficult precisely because they involve trade-offs. Local zoning reform can mean denser neighborhoods, smaller lots, more apartments, and changes that existing homeowners may resist. Faster permitting can reduce opportunities for public input. Expanding supply can provoke opposition from residents concerned about congestion or changes in neighborhood character.
Congress therefore gravitates toward measures that are easier to enact and defend. Incremental reforms can attract bipartisan support while avoiding direct confrontation with organized local interests. They allow lawmakers to claim progress without forcing them to absorb all the political costs of structural change.
But congressional timidity is only part of the explanation. Federalism matters. Some of the most consequential decisions affecting housing supply are simply not Washington’s to make. That does not absolve Congress of responsibility. It means that repairing the foundation requires coordinated action from federal, state, and local governments.
Housing is hardly unique in this respect. It exposes a recurring weakness of American policymaking: large national problems often require action across a fragmented political system that is much better at dividing authority than coordinating it.
Fixing the Foundation
Living in an old house has taught me that there is nothing wrong with making modest repairs. Sometimes a patched wall or repaired window is exactly what is needed. But eventually, if the foundation is shifting, someone has to do the harder work.
Congress’s new housing law may be a useful repair, and its bipartisan passage is certainly preferable to the paralysis we have come to expect from Washington. But simply passing a law is a remarkably low standard for success. Americans struggling to buy or rent a home don’t need another bipartisan victory lap. They need policies equal to the scale of the problem.
Filling the cracks may make the house look better. It won’t keep the foundation from shifting.
Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.
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