Bad Week for Trump Economic Policy

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. 

Jeff Cox at CNBC:

U.S. growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 as the government shutdown impacted consumer spending, while a key inflation metric showed high prices are still a factor for the economy, according to data released Friday.

Gross domestic produce rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to the Commerce Department, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.

For the full year in 2025, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.2% pace, down from the 2.8% increase in 2024.

At the same time, inflation held firm in December, according to the gauge most closely watched by Fed officials.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy, rose 3% in December, according to a separate release. That matched the consensus forecast but kept the pivotal inflation measure well above the Fed’s 2% target.

 Tara Suter and Sylvan Lane at The Hill:

President Trump on Wednesday touted the decline in U.S. trade deficit ahead of official data showing a small reduction in the country’s overall balance of trade.

In a Wednesday night post on Truth Social, the president claimed credit for reducing the trade deficit — the difference between the value of U.S. imports and exports — through tariffs he imposed last year.

Trump claimed to have cut the trade deficit by 78 percent in the Truth Social post, which came less than 12 hours before the U.S. Census Bureau released the official figures.

“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” the president claimed.

But the Census Bureau data released Thursday showed the trade deficit falling by only 0.2 percent in 2025, from $903.5 billion in 2024 to $901.5 billion last year.

David J. Lynch and Rachel Siegel at WP

The U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, despite President Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate it by imposing the highest tariffs in eight decades on foreign-made products.

Thursday’s Commerce Department report represents the first full-year assessment of the president’s ambitious reordering of global trade. The persistence of the deficit in the face of steep new taxes on imports from China, the European Union and scores of other nations reflects the limits of Trump’s preferred policy tool, economists said.

 

Colbert, Talarico, Carr, and Streisand

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. 

Sometimes their efforts to silence debate can backfire, big time.

Sophie Brams at The Hill:

“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday dismissed CBS’s denial that it blocked his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) from airing as “crap.”

“They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS lawyers, who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air,” Colbert said during his show Tuesday evening.

“In fact, between the monologue I did last night, and before I did the second act talking about this issue, I had to go backstage,” he continued. “I got called backstage to get more notes from these lawyers. Something that had never, ever happened before.”

Colbert told viewers on Monday that CBS, which is owned by Paramount, said he could not have Talarico on the broadcast over concerns about the Federal Communications Commission‘s (FCC) “equal time” rule.

The “equal time” rule requires broadcast stations to provide equal opportunities to opposing political candidates but has historically exempted talk shows.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr appears to be eyeing a change to those exemptions, suggesting in new guidance that programs “motivated by partisan purposes” should have to adhere to equal time protections.

“We looked, and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career, going back to the 1960s,” Colbert said Tuesday.

In January, the FCC raised questions about such exemptions but has not issued a formal ruling. 

Muskaan Arshad at The Daily Beast:

Carr singling out Talarico has drawn more attention to him, creating something of a Streisand Effect for the 36-year-old. The Streisand Effect was coined after legendary singer Barbra Streisand sued a photographer in 2003 for $50 million after he took an aerial photo of her Malibu mansion, causing the image to go viral.

According to Google Trends statistics, nationally in the past 24 hours, James Talarico’s name has been searched 5x more than that of Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett, his competitor for Texas Senator John Cornyn’s seat, and the attention could fundamentally shift the competitive election.

According to Texas Public Opinion Research, at the end of January, Crockett and Talarico were nearly tied among Democratic Primary Voters, with Crockett’s 38 percent to Talarico’s 37 percent.

One of the largest issues holding Talarico back in polling was his lower name recognition than Crockett’s, with pollsters identifying a serious “visibility gap” between the two candidates.

Ted Johnson at Deadline:

The attention surrounding James Talarico‘s Late Show with Stephen Colbert interview has been very good for the Texas Democrat’s campaign for U.S. Senate.

He raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours after the segment was shifted from CBS broadcast to YouTube, his largest single fundraising period for the campaign.

On Monday, Colbert said that he was prohibited from featuring Talarico on his late-night show, as the FCC has issued new guidance about the appearance of political candidates on talk shows.

Instead, Colbert said that the interview would be posted on YouTube. There, the interview has drawn almost 5.2 million views, greatly exceeding the show’s average broadcast audience.

 

Governorships in 2026

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

The 2026 gubernatorial map is not great for the Democrats.

The party simultaneously hopes to hold on to power in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado, and to flip Georgia, Nevada, Iowa and Ohio. All states have a DGA staffer on loan, and the group says it has plans to expand to more states.

The majority of those states went to President Donald Trump in 2024. But the DGA says it is investing personnel in all of these races because it believes that antipathy toward Trump — who has a negative approval rating that has declined steadily in recent months — will hurt Republicans. There is also hope that crowded primaries in states such as Arizona, Georgia and Kansas could yield Republican candidates with little appeal to general-election voters.

...

At the moment, 26 governors’ seats are held by Republicans, compared with 24 by Democrats. That’s up from the decline in the wake of President Barack Obama’s time in office. Democrats controlled 28 governors’ mansions after Obama was first elected in 2008, but the number fell to 20 after the 2010 midterms. After the 2016 election, the figure was in the teens, a low point for the party. Now, the DGA hopes to recapture the majority. (Unlike Congress, there is no reward that comes with controlling a majority of governor’s seats, though it can help parties execute agendas they are unable to enact on the national level.)

Midterms and Presidential Approval

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Nate Cohn at NYT:

Historically, there’s a reasonably strong relationship between presidential approval nationwide and midterm outcomes. It’s not a perfect correlation — in 2022, for instance, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were worse than Barack Obama’s had been in 2010 (and as bad as Mr. Trump’s today), but Democrats held their own and nearly retained full control of Congress. But the relationship is good enough to say that Republicans are in trouble.

How much trouble? If the only thing you knew was Mr. Trump’s 40 percent approval rating (and the number of Republican-held seats), you might guess that Republicans would lose 30 seats in the House. And while there have been exceptions, this year’s midterms don’t look like one of them.

Take the 2022 midterms, when Republicans failed to capitalize on Mr. Biden’s unpopularity. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the persistent Republican effort to overturn the 2020 election kept voters atypically focused on the actions of the party out of power. “Democracy” and “abortion” rose as top issues; Mr. Biden, while unpopular, didn’t attract the spotlight. It was enough to give Democrats an advantage among highly engaged voters, which in many key states mitigated the usual midterm turnout disadvantage for the party in power. Democrats demonstrated their advantage with a string of impressive showings in special congressional elections before the November election.

There are still many months to go, but for now it’s hard to see a similar set of factors aiding Republicans. And it’s easy to imagine how this election could be a referendum on the president. He’s center stage, and that’s the way he likes it. The Democratic Party’s weaknesses, while real, are quite ordinary. There’s nothing that seems likely to fundamentally shift the most important issues at stake to the advantage of Republicans, as the court’s decision in Dobbs did for Democrats. And this time, the same Democratic turnout edge that hurt Republicans in 2022 will probably supercharge Democratic strength.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, this newsletter devoted a lot of energy to downplaying strong Democratic showings in special elections. I can’t offer similar reassurance to Republicans this time. For one, midterm electorates tend to have a bigger share of highly engaged voters than presidential electorates, making them much more like special electorates. If you have a clear advantage among the “special” electorate, you probably also do among the “midterm” electorate, albeit to a lesser extent. And this time, it’s clear that the Democratic strength isn’t merely a matter of turnout: There are many Republican-leaning voters backing Democrats.

Immigration Issues and the Texas Gerrymander

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Myah Ward and Megan Messerly at Politico:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

...

The meetings this month came after Democrats crushed a Republican in a special runoff election for a state senate seat in a Trump-friendly district in Tarrant County, which includes most of Fort Worth, rattling Republicans nationally. New research from the American Business Immigration Coalition and Comité de 100, first obtained by POLITICO, shows how slipping support among Latino voters could affect Republican-leaning districts in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

This study was buried in the POLITICO story. GOP could lose 6 seats (including 2 of their own!) they thought they gerrymandered Dems out of if Latinos swing 15% left https://t.co/HniLYDFYuc pic.twitter.com/Z6jtvnqDGm

— BeshearStan (@BeshearStan) February 14, 2026

ICE Barbie

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski have done significant harm to DHS. Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Parti at WSJ:

Throughout her tenure as secretary of Homeland Security, a sprawling agency charged with carrying out Trump’s central campaign promise of a mass deportation, Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom at every turn. With Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, at her side, she has staged a headline grabbing immigration crackdown while sidelining rivals and dissenters.

She’s carried out confrontational operations over the objections of longtime immigration officials who warned such flashy displays would discredit the department’s ultimate mission, according to two dozen current and former administration officials. Instead, she’s made the case that her approach would lead to more arrests as well as induce more people to leave on their own.

She has donned flak jackets on ICE raids, posed toting a large gun and recorded messages urging immigrants to self-deport. In one, she stood before a group of imprisoned men with shaved heads packed into tight rows in a notorious El Salvadoran prison. And she has done it all with an eye to her style, with TV-ready hair and makeup.

Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.

Simmering criticism over the past year for Noem’s policies and publicity moves exploded in Minneapolis, jeopardizing her grip over DHS and putting her standing with Trump on thin ice. Though some in Trump’s inner circle have tried to persuade the president to fire Noem and Lewandowski, according to administration officials, he has so far resisted, saying publicly he has no plans to dismiss her. Lawmakers from both parties have been critical, and Democrats in Congress are demanding changes to the department’s enforcement methods, threatening to withhold DHS funding.

Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more:

The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million. DHS has previously used other planes through the Coast Guard or other agencies for the secretary’s use.

 

Pushback Against Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

Mike Allen at Axios:

Look how 2026 has started for Trump, and the new pushback he faces, as synthesized by Axios' Zachary Basu:

⚖️ Retribution: A federal grand jury unanimously rejected the Justice Department's attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video they made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. It's at least the fifth time that charges against Trump's adversaries or protesters have been turned away by a grand jury. A federal judge also shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attempt to punish Navy veteran Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over his role in the video.
🚨 ICE raids: Trump's border czar Tom Homan announced an end to the 10-week ICE surge in Minneapolis yesterday. The president acknowledged his mass deportation campaign could use a "softer touch."
🪖 National Guard: Trump withdrew federalized National Guard troops from L.A., Chicago and Portland after repeated legal defeats and opposition from local leaders, dealing a blow to his efforts to crack down on crime in Democratic-run cities.
📦 Tariffs: Six House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution rescinding Trump's tariffs on Canada. The vote became possible only after a smaller group of Republicans staged a floor rebellion against GOP leadership.
🗂️ Epstein files: Trump's push to shut down MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein obsession backfired spectacularly. The Justice Department is still grappling with backlash, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voicing rare criticism over revelations that DOJ tracked what lawmakers searched while reviewing the unredacted files.
📽️ Racism: A chorus of Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), condemned Trump's reposting of a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the decision to post the video, but removed it from Trump's account, blaming a staffer. Later, the president said he "didn't make a mistake."
🇩🇰 Greenland: Trump dominated Davos last month with his threats to seize Greenland by any means necessary — only to retreat amid market turmoil, European fury, warnings from congressional Republicans, and a vague "deal" promising the U.S. greater access to the Arctic territory.
🏦 Fed: The DOJ's criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has drawn deep skepticism from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has vowed to block confirmation of Powell's successor, Kevin Warsh, unless the probe is dropped.