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Trump's Ultimate Cure for an Unpopular Budget Bill -- The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-07-07-trumps-ultimate-cure-for-unpopular-budget-bill/Robert Kuttner
Republicans are worried that voters will punish them in 2026. What if voters can’t?
Trump and congressional Republicans took a big risk by including some seriously unpopular measures in the just-signed budget bill. Many of them, notably cuts in food assistance and health care, and the effects of health care cuts on small rural hospitals, will hit red states especially hard.
The press has been filled with stories about the jeopardy this poses for Republican legislators who face re-election in 2026. These alarmist stories presume a relatively free and fair election. Can we assume that will occur?
Progressives have comforted themselves by pointing out that most of the swing House seats are in blue or purple states where Trumpers are not in control of the election machinery. But lately, the Trump Justice Department has begun an effort to intimidate state election officials nationwide.
The New York Times recently reported that senior DOJ officials, presumably in concert with the White House, have directed department lawyers “to examine the ways in which a hypothetical failure by state or local officials to follow security standards for electronic voting could be charged as a crime, appearing to assume a kind of criminally negligent mismanagement of election systems.”
. . .
The press has been filled with stories about the jeopardy this poses for Republican legislators who face re-election in 2026. These alarmist stories presume a relatively free and fair election. Can we assume that will occur?
Progressives have comforted themselves by pointing out that most of the swing House seats are in blue or purple states where Trumpers are not in control of the election machinery. But lately, the Trump Justice Department has begun an effort to intimidate state election officials nationwide.
The New York Times recently reported that senior DOJ officials, presumably in concert with the White House, have directed department lawyers “to examine the ways in which a hypothetical failure by state or local officials to follow security standards for electronic voting could be charged as a crime, appearing to assume a kind of criminally negligent mismanagement of election systems.”
. . .