Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Donald Trump privately told embattled Ohio Congressman Max Miller that he’s likely to lose his re-election bid over the domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife, even as Trump publicly refuses to condemn him. The president is also publicly airing his frustration with oil companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil over high gas prices, even though energy analysts say those companies have very little control over prices at the pump. Despite Ohio being one of Trump’s most reliable strongholds, the state is now a genuine midterm battleground thanks to Max Miller’s scandal, Jon Husted’s lackluster Senate campaign, and a governor’s race now locked in a dead heat. And MAGA influencers are now calling for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s head after he admitted that immigration can actually be good for the economy.
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Trump Privately Told Republican Accused of Domestic Violence He May Lose Reelection
The details of a private phone call between Donald Trump and Republican Congressman Max Miller of Ohio recently leaked.
Miller is the two-term Republican congressman who used to work as a staffer in Trump’s first administration. Now he’s accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, who is the daughter of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio.
Emily Moreno accused her former husband of pointing a gun at her head, throwing her against a wall and pouring hot water on her. She also said Miller may have fractured their two-year-old daughter’s collarbone. Miller continues to deny all of the allegations.
But voters back home aren’t buying it. Some constituents have started calling him a predator. Now, Axios is reporting that Trump apparently called Miller on Monday to give him his blunt assessment of his reelection chances.
Trump reportedly told Miller that things “aren’t looking good” for him. He said he was hearing from people that Miller wasn’t going to win in November. This is pretty serious, given that Trump has publicly endorsed him and said yesterday that he believes Miller is a “good person” and that the families involved should “figure it out” in private.
Miller apparently told Trump he’s staying in the race, claiming his own campaign’s internal polling shows he’s still competitive. This is despite the New York Times reporting that Miller is now just one point ahead of Democrat Brian Poindexter in a district Trump carried by double digits just two years ago.
Senator Moreno had mostly stayed quiet about his own former son-in-law’s scandal, reportedly at the request of his daughter. But over the weekend, Miller broadcasted a twenty-minute livestream accusing his ex-wife of having mental health issues and lying during their custody dispute.
Bernie Moreno responded to Miller’s tirade by calling on him to get professional help, adding that Miller is a danger to his daughter and that he holds his breath every minute his granddaughter is in Miller’s presence. The senator also said his former son-in-law fails any basic standard of character required for elected office and should no longer serve in Congress.
That’s pretty damning coming from a sitting Republican senator, particularly about a Republican congressman who has Trump’s endorsement.
Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 precisely because "let the family figure it out" had been the American default for two centuries, and it left women dead. So when a president says an abuse allegation belongs behind closed doors, he isn't being discreet, he's proposing we go back.
Trump Rages at Oil Companies for High Gas Prices Just Months Before Midterms
Gas prices have jumped back up to more than $4 per gallon nationally, with some states like California well $5. That’s probably the most closely watched metric heading into the midterms, and Trump knows it.
So on Monday, Trump blasted Chevron CEO Mike Wirth for not crediting the White House for the oil industry’s profits. Trump argued that without his administration’s help, the oil industry and the country itself would be, in his words, dead.
The president then demanded oil companies drop their retail prices immediately. He told reporters in the Oval Office that Chevron and ExxonMobil are making “too much money” off of high gas prices and that they should give some of it back to the public.
That seems like a strange position for a self-described free enterprise guy to take. And energy analysts are adding that Trump doesn’t appear to understand that oil company CEOs aren’t in charge of gas prices.
Patrick De Haan, who is the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told Newsweek that oil companies actually have far less control over prices at the pump than most people assume. Crude oil prices are set by the global market, and no single American company has control over it. Disruptions from Trump’s war with Iran, decisions by OPEC and attacks on Russian oil refineries all determine what drivers pay when they fill their tanks.
De Haan pointed out that gas stations typically run on razor-thin margins, and usually make more money from selling drinks and snacks than they do from gasoline. He added that oil market is a lot like the computer chip market: when a product becomes scarce, manufacturers see their profits jump because of supply and demand, not because of intentional price gouging.
Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, made a similar assessment. He said the oil industry is cyclical, with profits rising and falling depending on external circumstances, like the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That has nothing to do with decisions being made in Chevron’s boardroom.
Regardless of who’s actually responsible, none of it is pleasing to voters. A July poll by the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos found hat 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s economic performance. 66 percent also say groceries have become unaffordable. A Harris Poll found 95 percent of Americans believe the country is in the midst of an affordability crisis. And only 19 percent of voters in a recent Quinnipiac poll think the economy is actually improving.
Ida Tarbell spent two years documenting how Standard Oil set its prices, and that reporting helped drive the antitrust case that broke the company apart in 1911. That's what it looks like when a government treats concentrated economic power as a problem to solve rather than a headline to ride, and yelling at CEOs while leaving their pricing power completely untouched isn't populism, it's theater.
Republicans’ Grip on Ohio Rapidly Slipping Away
Republicans have long thought the former swing state of Ohio was locked down as a solidly red GOP stronghold. That’s no longer the case.
Ohio was largely responsible for Trump’s political comeback after he lost the 2020 election. Vice President JD Vance got a national platform after winning Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate election. In 2024, Trump won the state by 11 points, which is the largest margin for any winning presidential candidate in the Buckeye State in 40 years.
But now, Republican strategists are bracing for a very dicey November. One national GOP strategist told Axios that the combination of GOP voter depression, the Iran war and Max Miller’s abuse allegations all spell trouble for the party in a big way.
Some Ohio Republicans are privately hoping that Miller will drop out of the race so state Senator Jane Timken can take his place on the ballot. But Miller only has until tomorrow to withdraw, and right now he’s staying put.
The state’s marquee U.S. Senate contest isn’t looking much better for Republicans. Incumbent Jon Husted is reportedly in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent, former Senator Sherrod Brown, who’s been out-raising Husted by a nearly three-to-one margin. His campaign has made Husted the face of increasingly unpopular data center development across the state.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is also neck-and-neck with Democrat Amy Acton in the Ohio gubernatorial election. Ramaswamy, who is a billionaire, is struggling to connect with the state’s working-class voters and has faced backlash from his own party’s base over his public support for AI data centers. He was even recently heckled while stumping at a libertarian conference
Some Republicans worry Ohio could also be a preview of what’s coming in other blue-collar Midwestern and Rust Belt states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all of which have competitive statewide races on the ballot this fall.
The Framers gave the House two-year terms for exactly this reason, because Article One, Section Two was built so no officeholder could outlast the public's patience by more than a couple of years. A state isn't a possession that gets banked, it's a verdict that gets rendered all over again every other November.
MAGA Rages at Markwayne Mullin After He Says Immigration Is Good for the Economy
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently spoke at a bipartisan governors meeting in Oklahoma, and ended up saying something pretty revealing about what’s really behind MAGA’s disdain for immigration.
Mullin talked about the need for permanent reforms to the visa process, particularly in the agriculture sector, where seasonal labor rules don’t match up with work that’s now mostly year-round. He notably pointed out that the claim that immigrants steal jobs from Americans isn’t true across every industry, and argued immigrant labor is necessary to fill gaps where Americans simply aren’t filling positions.
That remark prompted outrage from MAGA influencers. Tomi Lahren accused Mullin of trying to appease liberals. Laura Loomer demanded Trump fire him. Both Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec told Politico that MAGA wants a DHS secretary who will prioritize deportations over everything else.
This is despite Mullin’s own agency not slowing down on deportations at all. Immigrant detention numbers just hit a new high, while arrests have surged nationwide. Deportation figures are climbing ever higher by the day, and nothing about ICE enforcement has changed.
All of the outrage wasn’t about policy, but about Mullin mildly suggesting that immigration reform may actually help the economy. But that idea threatens MAGA’s entire ideological foundation, which is built on the claim that young American men are struggling because immigrants took their jobs, rather than because of deliberate policy choices from Washington Republicans.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman observed that the sharp drop in immigration hasn’t produced a notable increase in new jobs for native-born American workers one bit. In fact, job creation has actually stalled, while the employment rate for native-born American adults is lower now than before Trump’s mass deportation campaign began in 2025. Additionally, data shows that mass deportations have cost American jobs in local economies without raising wages for workers.
This isn’t the first time a Trump administration official has made this claim. Last June, Trump himself admitted deportations were costly for both the agriculture and hospitality industries before Stephen Miller urged him to walk back those remarks. But the truth keeps leaking out, whether officials intended for that to happen or not.
The Supreme Court saw through this kind of thing back in 1886, when San Francisco insisted its laundry ordinance was about fire safety and the justices in Yick Wo v. Hopkins found it was aimed at Chinese immigrants instead. The stated reason rarely survives contact with the enforcement record, and Mullin's mistake wasn't a policy error, it was saying the quiet part with a microphone on.
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Here are some stories you may have missed:
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ICE Pored Through Social Media to Crack Down on Online Critics. A new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been systematically using grand jury subpoenas and administrative subpoenas to uncover the names of people criticizing ICE online. According to the report, ICE has tracked down hundreds of Americans and forced them to sign documents acknowledging that their criticism of the agency may constitute a crime. The agency combed through dozens of social media sites including Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn and others to track down critics.
Todd Blanche’s Confirmation Sent to Full Senate After Judiciary Committee Vote. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday voted to officially confirm Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney — and leave his fate in the hands of the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. Given Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) ongoing absence, Republicans can only afford two defections if they hope to officially confirm Blanche. As deputy attorney general, Blanche oversaw the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files, which was widely criticized for exposing victims’ identifying information while protecting the names of Epstein’s co-conspirators.
