#midterms

#midterms

President Donald Trump declared victory over the country's cost-of-living woes on Tuesday, telling the crowd at an event in Georgia, I've won affordability. Trump delivered remarks at a steel fabricator in Rome, Georgia, where he touted his economic record and a historically high stock market. After listing some of his second term achievments, the president claimed to have won the battle for affordability, a word Democrats had made the centerpiece of last year's elections and the upcoming midterms.

The past month has seen a barrage of election subversion stories that, taken individually, were alarming, but viewed together reveal a deeply disturbing new playbook emanating from the Trump administration ahead of the midterms. On this week's Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick talked with election law gladiator Marc Elias, chair of Elias Law Group and founder of Democracy Docket. Their discussion, edited and condensed for clarity here, highlights a very clear pattern when it comes to Trump and voting: a project that seeks to normalize violence and to test drive the shattering of how elections are typically run. The work of the coming nine months? Keep a close eye on the encroaching lawlessness, don't normalize election subversion, and organize now to protect your friends and neighbors.

Well, I'll tell you what. If I were his advisers, his political advisers, the people who actually go out and poll and do these things, I would be cringing watching this whole day unfold, because this was an exercise in denial. You know what his plus, plus, plus, plus, plus [is]? That's people looking at their bills. That's how they feel. You cannot jawbone people into feeling what their life experience is telling them isn't true.

In the past week, Trump's attacks on Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) have thrown the retired Navy Captain and former astronaut into the political discourse in a whole new way. While Kelly has long been a rising star on the Democrats' bench, this is his first sustained tussle with Trump. With Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth now trying to court-martial Kelly, the fight appears far from over, and given the actual contents of the clip, Kelly looks likely to prevail.

Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator and current treasurer of the Republican National Committee, has been elected to serve as the RNC's new chairman. At Friday's RNC summer meeting in downtown Atlanta, Gruters was unanimously elected by members to replace Michael Whatley, who is running with President Trump's endorsement for the open U.S. Senate race in North Carolina.

"Call your representative. Demand they release the Epstein files," says the ad, while hitting House Republicans for going on August recess without having cast a floor vote to release more Epstein details.