Poll Taxing

“President Donald Trump is worried that Attorney General Pam Bondi is moving too slowly to prosecute his political adversaries on fake charges. Trump has good reason to be concerned. He is carrying out his project to consolidate authoritarian power against the trend of declining public support for his administration and himself.” David Frum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump Might Be Losing His Race Against Time. “The MAGA project in many ways resembles one of former businessman Donald Trump’s dangerously leveraged real-estate deals. A comparatively small number of fanatics are heart-and-soul committed. Through them, Trump controls the Republican apparatus and the right-wing media world, which allows him to do things like gerrymander states where he is in trouble (50 percent of Texans now disapprove of Trump, while only 43 percent approve) or wield the enforcement powers of the Federal Communications Commission to silence on-air critics. But overleveraged structures are susceptible to external shocks and internal mistakes.” (This is somewhat hopeful. But Trump’s race is not only against time. It’s against the Americans who see things a different way. And that movement needs a clear, strong, unifying leader to harness its power, or time won’t be on our side.)

+ G. Elliott Morris: A lot of powerful people just don’t realize how unpopular Trump is. “The president’s entire domestic policy agenda is underwater, too — especially on the economy and inflation, the two issues that won him the 2024 election.”