But that's

not how he's governing.

He's also been given the space by socialists to not say, I am going to dismantle the police.

I don't believe he said during the campaign, I said defund the police.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to keep Tish James on.

So the more anarchist wing of this movement that want to dismantle the critical way, the society we have, a white supremacist society that was built over the centuries to be like, he doesn't do that.

as you have to make more compromises as you're doing less of the exciting stuff that's fun to talk about meetings and more of like well should we increase the you know the budget for sewers by 2.1 percent this year 2.3 percent do you lose the passion of the people who are helping you get elected or are they now well positioned to go on to greater heights

And I kind of wondered, the 2026 midterms here, really the third of the Trump era, if you had to kind of give a term or name to these elections, 2022 was post-January 6th, post-Dobbs, what would be the kind of name you give it? The thing that was the overriding issue, concern, dynamic in play?

I would almost say it's post-MAGA because one of my premises in the coverage is that MAGA has won on so many of its causes that it is trying to reorder itself to a new political environment.

It's not working as well.

And so I wrote about this this week that a lot of red state Democrats have been running ads where they say, my opponents – say that I want boys and girls sports, but I do not, and in various ways, do a different language.

And the thing I found from talking to candidates and looking what was happening, why that's more effective this year than it was two years ago, four years ago, is because Republicans just completely won.

There are no NCAA swimmers who transition and are swimming in women's team because the Trump administration through its executive order in January 2025, convinced the NCAA to stop doing that.

You know, Penn revoked Leah Thomas's medals, et cetera.

But how important is this bubbling up AI backlash, from your perspective, in the shape of these races?

What did you mean by tech in that headline?

Well, that's a good first way to ask because tech is becoming a synecdoche for everything people don't like about the future that they – let's say the future they're living in.

I'll stick to that.

I feel that there is a sense of dread about things moving more quickly that there was not before.

The basis for this is just – it's not so much the essays about it.

There are always essays about it.

But polling, you can go back to polling in the 90s and the 2000s and find people – overjoyed at the thought of traveling with smartphones or especially overjoyed at their kids going to schools with screens and laptops, etc.

But I'm wondering if there's a way where taking Elon's money is the same thing as taking APAC money.

More from our conversation with David Weigel with Semafor.

Alaska has a top four primary system, so ev- every candidate, no matter what party, is on the same ballot, and the top four advance to, uh, the next round of the election.

That's been good for Peltola in the past.

Uh, and, and, and most of the campaigning in the last couple weeks has been chicanery, basically.

Uh, Republicans spending to elevate another Democrat.

Y- people might have heard about another, another person named Dan Sullivan who's not the senator getting onto the ballot, which Republicans think is, is a bit of foul play against their candidate.

So, uh, m- the expectation is that Peltola and Sullivan will get the most votes.

Back to David Weigel, Semafor politics reporter in a C-SPAN interview.

Do you think that it seems like the Democratic primary voters are sort of done worrying about electability and they're just focusing on, I mean, I saw it in Michigan, focusing on these candidates that, that, that best express who they are, what they're going through, um, or what happens in the few remaining primaries?

Well, you set it up in the introduction.

It, the electorate is changing.

Every four years, every two years, there are different people voting.

Uh, they are younger.

They've had different life experience.

If you're looking at races in Wisconsin tomorrow, Francesca Hong, who has risen to the, the, the top of the polls in the race for governor, has a biography that I think would've been prohibitive for a candidate 20 years ago, in a different generation.

Oh, yeah.

Uh, and I mean, is that new? That strikes me as new.

Not entirely new.

Uh, the change over time, uh, it has, has been surprising to some people because Jewish Americans are not single-issue Israel voters.

The most pro-Israel voters in the United States are, uh, evangelical Christians.

This has been true for quite some time.

Was this true in 1949 or 1967 when Israel was being born and when it was in, at risk of being destroyed? No, that was not true.

But a- think of the, think of a 40-year-old or 50-year-old Jewish voter in America.

it, it looks like she's slightly underpriced, I'd say, uh, given the way the party is moving.

Protect yourself now at aura.com/safety.

Not entirely new.

Uh, the change over time, uh, has, has been surprising to some people because Jewish Americans are not single-issue Israel voters.

The most pro-Israel voters in the United States are, uh, evangelical Christians.

This has been true for quite some time.

Was this true in 1949 or 1967 when Israel was being born and when it was in, at risk of being destroyed? No, that was not true.

But a- think of the, think of a 40-year-old or 50-year-old Jewish voter in America.

Protect yourself now at aura.com/safety.

Are the Democrats looking better to take the, the House and the Senate, or, or is Trump gonna keep 'em?

Overall, polling and expectations are that Democrats, uh, are gonna, are going to win the House, that the s- they're going to gain seats in the Senate.

What happens in elections, like, and I'm not trying to not answer the question, it's just [laughs] that having covered these for 20 years, um, in many midterms it's close through the summer, uh, and then after Labor Day it breaks in one direction.

Uh, and so what Democrats are hoping is that there are stuff that's not competitive right now that becomes competitive.

Now, the, the caveat on that, one is that, you know, no man steps in the same river twice, that the same thing does not happen every election.

That's bad analysis.

But the other is that the, the, the, the legal and campaign financing regime that has been put into place in the last few years is very good for Republicans.

In my view, we must move forward toward a Medicare for all single payer program.

Mm-hmm

... a political contradiction for, for his side, is it not? No, definitely.

It, it, it, it is...

You heard it from, uh, from David D- Dan just now.

Uh, it's incoherent, that there are people in the administration who think if, if the, if the goal is getting the biggest number of non-citizens out of the country, there are ways to do that that don't make good TV.

And, and they don't bel- [laughs] and there are some people in the administration who want to do it that way.

Uh, you can...

[laughs]

Mm.

House Republicans are trying to pass whatever they can through their budget appropriations process, which requires, uh, just 50 Republican senators and the vice president to say yes to something.

They can lose three votes.

Uh, and Graham is already being replaced by, uh, the late senator is being replaced by his sister.

So de- Republicans have, uh, f- 52 votes on the floor.

The McConnell being out doesn't affect the schedule that much.

Now, there are committee votes, a- and there's going to be a committee hearing yesterday for, uh, the president's attorney general nominee, where absence can affect things.

Right

David, is the evolution of progressive media part of the story here too?

It's a big part.

Thank you for bringing it up, because a commonality that I think has not been explored between the Tea Party and what we're talking about is conservative media was very strong in 2008.

It was very willing, ready to fill the gap left by George Bush losing.

Remember, the key figure at the beginning of the Tea Party was Rex Limbaugh.

He was the spokesman almost for Republicans.

The key network promoting Tea Party events was Fox News.

How so?

And the ironic thing with his race is he won rural, ex-urban, white parts of the state and got demolished in the progressive areas and in the ethnic areas and in the Black areas.

Yeah, that-- And you could tell on election night, uh, talking to the campaigns, they knew Raja was in trouble early on because some of the first counties that are reporting are more rural, outside the city, places where, uh, Stratton did not have the money to put a go on the air, even with the super PAC, and he wasn't doing that great.

You, you know, like rural Illinois outside of East St. Louis, he was, he was tied there, losing, losing to Stratton in parts of that.

Any place where there was a college, any sort of, any place with a lot of, uh, state workers, he was getting crushed.

So he, uh...

Stratton, and I talked to her ad makers for something else I'm writing.

Stratton ran this very smart campaign where she, her first ad was a bunch of, uh, people saying, "F Trump, vote Juliana," but they said the word, the letters after F, the three letters after F.

The one who was more pro-AI won.

Where do you see a break in that, Dan?

You do see the beginnings of this with let's imagine there are people who are apprehended for some other offense.

Let's say it's one of these people that the DOJ is throwing the book at who attack a desert dealership.

You're not allowed to burn down a dealership.

You're not allowed to blow somebody's car up.

However, you are usually processed in American court if you do that in America.

Let's say one of those people was sent to seek out.

I mean, Democratic leadership, Democrat, Democratic Party sort of writ large in Congress.