Panicking Trump has finally realised the jeopardy his presidency is in
By: James Ball (The i Paper via MSN)
What's even more stunning is that President Trump refusing to sign or veto the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act will allow it to become law on July 7. Trump is deliberately denying himself a win. And a Trump veto would turn into another loyalty test. Theoretically there are enough votes to override Trump's veto which would be a high profile loss.
Trump has painted himself into a no-win corner trying to game the mid-term elections to retain Republican control of Congress.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
June 30, 2026 -- Donald Trump has, for the moment, almost total control over America’s political institutions. He lives in the White House, Republican-appointed justices fill six of the nine seats on the Supreme Court – three of them filled by Trump himself – and Republicans are in the majority in both the House and the Senate.
Despite this, the US President has managed to pass very little legislation through Congress. His second term has been a flurry of activity, but almost all of that has been through Executive Orders – which could be overturned immediately if a Democrat won in 2028.
So, when Congress finally passed a popular housing bill, supported by the Trump White House, this month, it should have been a major accomplishment for the President, even if it had passed with broad support from Democrats, too.
This was a genuinely major bit of legislation, tackling a crisis that matters to millions of Americans.
But on the day Trump was due to sign the bill into law in an Oval Office ceremony, the President abruptly changed his mind. He wouldn’t let the bill become law unless Congress also passed a law introducing nationwide restrictions on voting, mandating voter ID and even trying to ban postal voting nationwide.
Trump appears to be in a belated panic about the impact of the fast-approaching November mid-term elections, which Republicans are widely expected to lose, not least because of the President’s plummeting approval ratings, which are at an all-time low. Trump is dragging other Republicans down with him. Almost every forecast has Republicans losing the House, and there is an outside chance Democrats take the Senate as well.
If Democrats take the House, they will control all its committees and can use them to launch investigations into the Trump administration – subpoenaing documents, calling witnesses, and much more. If they take the Senate, they can block almost any senior appointment Trump tries to make, including to the judiciary and Supreme Court.
For months, Republicans have tried to alert Trump to the importance of the mid-terms, in a bid to get him to care about an election in which his name doesn’t appear on the ballot. The President has seemed almost aggressively indifferent to what voters care about. He has pursued an unpopular war against Iran and claimed he “couldn’t care less” about rising costs of living linked to the conflict, even saying he “loves the inflation”. At times, he has been almost militantly unwilling to play the game.
But finally, Trump seems to be awake to the risks of the mid-terms. However, rather than trying to play the game by giving voters what they want – action to tackle the cost of living, such as the housing bill he just refused to sign – he is trying to win the game by changing its rules.
On one level, this appears to be a draconian and alarming power grab, an executive trying to cling to all levels of power by rewriting the rules. On another, it is bleakly comedic, because Trump doesn’t seem to be very good at it – at least so far.
Trump has tried to issue a flurry of executive orders demanding various changes. However, in the US, managing elections is the responsibility of state authorities, not the federal government. This means courts have been striking down these executive orders left and right, leading Trump to realise he needs to actually pass legislation.
Characteristically, though, the President hasn’t bothered to listen to Republicans as to what changes might actually help them win.
Earlier this year the Supreme Court handed Republicans a huge victory – to the detriment of Black Americans – by throwing out post-Reconstruction rules banning racial gerrymandering. Red states have been able to redistrict to reduce the power of Black voters, to benefit the Republican Party. That is a real win for those trying to game the system.
Trump, though, is hyper-fixated on the idea that postal votes are how Democrats “cheat” at elections to beat him – something the President has said so often that he appears to have convinced himself it is true. In reality, the evidence shows Republicans, who tend to be older than Democrats, are more likely to vote by post. Trump is desperately trying to pass rules that would actually harm his own side.
The danger with the Trump administration is always outrage fatigue: they test the limits of the constitution, of US laws, and of public decency in so many ways that it is hard to keep up with it all, let alone to care about it all. Given that casting a vote is the fundamental democratic right upon which all the others depend, trying to interfere with it is a gross violation of what a president should do. But what else is new?
More telling, though, is what Trump’s efforts to secure the mid-terms tell us about the man himself. He cares enough about the elections (despite his name not being on the ballot) to try to change the rules to win them – but not enough to change his behaviour and just give voters what they want.
Yet again, the American public will be the ones paying the price for Trump’s chaotic decisions.
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The redistricting scheme may backfire, too. The gerrymandering, of mathematical necessity, must introduce urban and suburban influences into Republican districts thereby shrinking the safe margin to hold Republican control. President Trump backed candidates winning primaries further tests the thinner margins in the new districts. The result may be formerly safe districts becoming more competitive.
On top of that, the Senate cannot be gerrymandered.
Donald Trump is forcing the Republican Party to make a big gamble that will not benefit the party. Republicans are going to be stuck with Trump no matter the outcome of the mid-term elections. And Republicans have two more years to suffer that burden.
They knew this was going to happen but their cowardice has put them in this situation and I don't feel sorry for them in the least.
I've been wrong before but the midterms look like the GOP is going to get crushed, and they know it.
The bigger the defeat for the republicans the better for America.
100 percent spot on.
Trump is mentally erratic and the worst of it is just beginning.
The right is making their election strategy obvious
There are 100,000 registered DSA members with less than 40 elected to any offices nationwide and FOX Entertainment and it's sycophants are having a meltdown over 3 primary wins in New York.
There are only 150 Green Party people elected to any offices nationwide.
Together they represent a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the Democrats nationwide.
the sky is not falling any faster that when George Santos was elected.
In my opinion and observation , Trump is a lame duck , and just now figuring that out , my other opinion of him is he could fuck up a wet dream , but i dont mention that because some would end up complaining he even supposedly has wet dreams .
Trump is salvaging statues and monuments to Confederate leaders and others who defended slavery including some little known Founding Fathers.
Trump boasted about installing the monument to Ceasar Rodney in his Freedom Plaza as part of the 250 celebration. This one was removed from Wilmington DE in 2020 and put in storage.
He complained that the angry mob of the left is vandalizing our history
while the NPS at his direction is whitewashing the dark side of our history of slavery removing all such references at all national Parks including George Washingtons Philadelphia home
Trump boasts of installing slaveholder statue in Freedom Plaza ahead of July 4
Obviously, for Trump, slaveholders were "very fine people".