Breaking: For First Time in Decade, Dems Pull Ahead on This Issue

Mike Johnson sends the House home to dodge the Epstein vote, a judge stops Trump’s mail-ballot takeover as ballots hit the mail, and birthright citizenship survives another swing

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The Economy Just Flipped for the First Time in a Decade

Let’s start with the number that should have led every Sunday show and didn’t.

For the last month, registered voters in the Reuters poll have said the Democratic Party has better ideas for the economy than the Republican Party. That’s the first time Democrats have led on economic issues in about a decade.

The economy was Trump’s whole pitch. Cheaper eggs, cheaper gas, and a booming stock market. It’s the reason a chunk of working-class voters gave him a second look in 2024.

Today, 71 percent of Americans, including four in ten Republicans, disapprove of how he’s handling the cost of living. Gas has jumped from under three dollars a gallon to over four since he attacked Iran. Tariffs have become a sales tax on everything.

Just 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance. That’s the third straight Reuters poll stuck at 33, the lowest of his political career. A University of Massachusetts poll had him at 32, with 54 percent saying they strongly disapprove.

The enthusiasm gap is what keeps Republican strategists awake. Forty-six percent of Democrats say they’re very enthusiastic about voting in November, whereas only 31 percent of Republicans say the same. Independents prefer Democrats 36 to 22.

Presidential approval is the single best predictor of midterm outcomes. A president at 33 percent with an economy voters blame him for is the setup for a wave. Democrats lead the generic ballot by six to eight points, which is roughly where things stood in 2018 before they picked up 41 House seats.

Republicans are also fleeing Trump’s own convention. Politico surveyed 70-plus House Republicans, and 45 said they’ll skip the midterm convention next week. They’re being asked to pay $25,000+ to attend, and one member said, “I didn’t want to go anyways. That made it easier.”

The billionaire press will tell you it’s close. The people who actually matter are saying something else.

Mike Johnson Sent the House Home Rather Than Face Epstein Vote

Here’s a story you didn’t see much of, because the outlets that could have covered it have owners who’d rather you didn’t.

After the month-long August break, the House came back and worked three and a half days. (Yes, three and a half days.)

That was enough for Speaker Mike Johnson. Once the government was funded through December, he canceled the final two weeks of September. The chamber won’t reconvene until mid-November, after the election.

Johnson said on Tuesday he didn’t intend to cancel any business. By Thursday, he’d canceled all of it.

Why? On Monday, Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna launched a second discharge petition for the Epstein files. The Justice Department is still withholding more than three million files a year after Trump signed the first bill into law.

The petition already has more than 100 signatures. It needs 218. Every Democrat plus a handful of Republicans gets it there.

Johnson knows that; thus, he locked the doors.

“I think he’s afraid of discharge petitions, of continuing war in Iran, the million other examples of screwing up by the administration,” Rep. Veronica Escobar told Raw Story. “And he is afraid of his own conference.”

If the House flips, that petition gets a vote in the lame duck. Johnson bought himself ten weeks. That’s all.

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A Judge Stopped Trump’s Mail-Ballot Grab as the Ballots Went Out

Now to the courts, where two judges did the job Congress won’t.

On Friday, a federal judge in Boston blocked Trump’s bid to have the Postal Service take control of mail-in voting for the midterms. North Carolina was set to start sending ballots that very day.

The rule, finalized less than 70 days before the election, would have forced states to run their ballot envelopes through a federal review system and a “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” run by Trump’s postmaster. Judge Indira Talwani wasn’t having it. She found the rule likely unconstitutional and wrote that the administration’s own record included no evidence of fraudulent mail voting to justify the rush.

If the rule went into effect, she said it would result in the disenfranchisement of “millions of United States citizens.”

Talwani refused to pause her ruling while the administration appeals. The Justice Department already sprinted to the Supreme Court. That’s where this fight goes next.

Birthright Citizenship Survives Again

Trump lost birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court this summer, 6-3. So he issued a smaller version of the same order in August and tried again.

On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked that one too. Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that the new order is “almost certainly unconstitutional” for the simple reason that the Supreme Court already decided the children in question are citizens at birth.

The White House called her an “activist judge.” But her ruling derives from a Court with three Trump appointees on it. This was the second time she’s had to block the same policy. It won’t be the last, and every time, the same answer comes back.

This Week Told Us Something

I’ve spent twenty years watching power try to trick the people. This week showed that it isn’t working. Voters are moving on the economy, judges are holding the line on the vote, and the only tool the Speaker has left is turning off the lights.

That’s not strength; it’s Republicans running scared.

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I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, thanks for fighting, and we’ll see you tomorrow.