 Polls When Donald Trump left office four years ago, his approval rating on economic issues was higher than his approval rating overall. That’s flipped in CNN’s first polling for the second term; 45% approve of the president, down a bit since January, but more than the percentage that like how he’s handling economy. One-third of “conservatives” and one-fifth of Republicans say they disapprove of how Trump is using tariffs, his weakest level of base support on any issue in this poll. The twist here is that immigration, historically a problematic issue for Trump, is now his greatest strength, with 16% of Democrats and 19% of all voters who disapprove of Trump saying they support how he’s handling. Starting with their decision not to whip against the Laken Riley Act, and allow a rump of Senate Democrats to pass it, the opposition simply hasn’t engaged on that issue the way it has on the economy. In 2017-2020, Trump spent his political capital from economic growth on immigration; in 2025, he’s spending his political capital from the closed border on short-term economic pain.  The Apr. 1 election for Wisconsin’s supreme court swing seat is on track to smash spending records set during the last court race, two years ago. Most of the new money — including more than $8 million from Elon Musk and his PACs — is going to TV ads that paint Crawford as a soft-on-crime liberal, and Schimel as a sabertoothed anti-abortion zealot. The impact so far? Pretty soft. Schimel, who served as the state’s elected attorney general until 2019, is better known than Crawford, but neither has much crossover appeal. Crawford is best-liked among voters who say they’re certain to vote, and underwater with voters who say they’re “less than certain” to. The GOP strategy, with the help of mail from Musk’s America PAC, has been to reach Trump voters who turned up in 2024 but typically skip these off-year elections.  When power changes hands in Washington, so do the talking points about government shutdowns. Republicans have endless clips of Democrats warning not to risk government funding; Democrats have confidence that voters always blame the president’s party for a mess in Washington. The electorate captured in this poll has cooled on Trump since the inauguration (down to a 42% approval rating), is largely negative about Elon Musk (37% favorable), and is not inclined to blame Democrats if the government’s funding runs out — though if it does, it would be because Democrats don’t vote for the funding. As in 2019, when the new Democratic House was sworn in during a shutdown, just a fifth of independents say their party would be responsible for it. Chuck Schumer’s party is less worried about the electoral impact, more worried about what would happen during a freeze. Ads V-Pac: Victors, Not Victims/YouTube- V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims, “Endorsed.” The president’s name appears four times in this debut ad from Vivek Ramaswamy’s PAC, reminding voters that he has Donald Trump’s endorsement for governor. An image of the two politicians embracing is from New Hampshire — the rally where Ramaswamy, who endorsed Trump as soon as his own race ended, campaigned against Nikki Haley. The rest is about Ohio, and the candidate’s promise to make it a “state of excellence” by improving everything, though it doesn’t get into the details from Ramaswamy’s speeches and rallies.
- Schimel for Justice, “Tell Me.” Before they started tying Brad Schimel to Elon Musk’s donations, Democrats pummeled the GOP-backed state supreme court candidate over abortion and rape kits. Those issues are rooted in Schimel’s time as attorney general, and his current campaign; the Republican’s rebuttals have focused on the rest of his legal career and his advocacy for crime victims. Here, using only her first name, a woman who credits Schimel for getting a conviction after her sister was murdered more than a decade ago: “Brad would kneel next to my mom and hold her hands, and you’re going to tell me that’s a person who doesn’t care about victims?”
- Winsome for Governor, “Spanberger Betrayed Us at the Border.” The first video from Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears since rebooting her campaign and drawing a primary challenger avoids the Democrats’ best issue — federal workforce layoffs — to focus on the GOP’s strengths. That means immigration, and a clip of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger saying she opposes a border wall after a series of clips about illegal immigrants committing crime. Footage of CNN’s Manu Raju saying that Spanberger as “seen to the left of Joe Biden” is actually from 2023, when Spanberger joined most Democrats in voting against a reversal of DC’s criminal justice reforms, and Biden undermined them in signing it after signaling that he wouldn’t. Here, the clip is in a montage of proof that the Democrat is actually quite left-wing.
Scooped!I thought I knew which Democrats were looking at a presidential bid right now — fewer than eight years ago, many more than four years ago. But I didn’t know as much as Jonathan Martin. In Rahm Emanuel’s many post-election interviews, speeches, and TV hits, he saw a politician “already road-testing the first outlines of a stump speech,” one whose friends assumed he was serious about it. We disagree about the hole Emanuel might fill — he’s not the only Democrat trying to craft a winning, coherent position on transgender issues — but Martin changed the 2028 conversation by noticing this. Next - 18 days until Wisconsin’s state supreme court election
- 235 days until off-year elections
- 598 days until the 2026 midterm elections
David RecommendsHow much you enjoy To the End, a documentary about the Sunrise Movement and its four-year battle for green infrastructure spending, might depend on when you watch it. It was screened at festivals right after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, a triumph for the young activists who were about to abandon hope. I saw it last week, after the Trump administration had halted or frozen billions of dollars in green spending — canceling it twice as fast if the spending was earmarked for disadvantaged groups. DOGE’s buzzsaws have turned this into a fascinating period piece, a close study of how ambitious the left got in Trump’s first term. And it explains why the same energy isn’t there now. |