U.S. Government & governance September 2026-

Times/Siena Poll Data
U.S. Government & Governance –
primaries, midterms & special elections 2026

Regime Change and Corruption with Anne Applebaum (video)
Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum
…a clarifying and thoughtful conversation with historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, built around her September 14 Atlantic article, MAGA Is Making the World Safe for Corruption.
What does it mean to say the United States is undergoing a genuine regime change, and what does that change look like when it is exported abroad?
Tim opened by asking whether the article was really describing regime change at home, with a state refreshed by elections and guided by some notion of national interest giving way to overlapping oligarchical and ideological clans. Anne described a coalition of actors who have never before controlled the federal government: those bent on destroying the administrative state, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and tech and crypto oligarchs. While they have different agendas, they share one project, which she called a revolution.
…some high-level themes that emerged during the conversation:
Extraction as the organizing idea. Tim argued that these clans treat the U.S. as a zone of extraction, and that the same logic naturally extends to every other country. Anne agreed, noting that for oil, gas, mining, crypto, and tech interests, foreign states are simply obstacles: the EU as a regulator, Brazil as a government that might restrict a social media platform. Anne also pointed out that foreign policy is increasingly run by businessmen with personal ties to Trump rather than by diplomats bound by ethics rules.
Canada as a case study. Anne laid out a coordinated pattern when it comes to the U.S. government’s posture toward Canada: constant demeaning of Canadian sovereignty, MAGA influencers whose business model runs on outrage, open encouragement of Alberta separatism, and punitive tariffs that make little sense for Americans. She likened the two-track approach, normal diplomacy alongside support for movements that undermine a country’s sovereignty, to Bolshevik foreign policy. …
Ian Bremmer: The Last Trump Election
No matter what US President Donald Trump says or does in response to the results of this November’s midterms, he will have faced his final popular vote. There will be further damage done to public confidence in American democratic institutions, but the institutions themselves will hold.
(Project Syndicate) … Now Trump faces his final popular vote. His name won’t appear on the ballot this November, but the results of the midterm elections for Congress are nearly always considered a referendum on the incumbent president and his performance, and that’s especially true when his party holds majorities in both legislative houses.
… Has Trump lost interest in protecting Republican majorities? Democrats will almost certainly win control of the House of Representatives, giving the opposition some power over government spending and an opportunity to launch official investigations into the president and his administration. They could even impeach him a third time. The Senate is a much closer call, but the opposition might still win a majority there, too, undermining Trump’s ability to confirm senior officials, judges, and new Supreme Court justices.
But it is these odds that explain why Trump seems to be shrugging at his party’s endangered majorities: he knows he has little chance of success. Once the November votes are counted, the president will refuse to accept the outcome. He will send immigration police to man the polls. He will contest the close races, challenge the integrity of voting machines and election workers (particularly in majority Democratic states), and claim that shadowy foreign agents helped the opposition win. He will also claim that Republicans would have won big had they simply done all that he demanded.

4 November
Pete Hegseth may take fall for Republicans’ midterm losses, despite Trump support
JD Vance calls Iran war into question as Thomas Massie files eight articles of impeachment
(The Guardian) Democrats have promised to investigate Hegseth and his handling of the Pentagon, and aides say that could include everything from his handling of the Iran war to his purges of top military officers, including the chair of the joint chiefs of staff.
He could also face ‌scrutiny over his Ukraine policy and US military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in Latin American waters, which some Democrats say could amount to war crimes.
Adam Smith, the Democratic representative who is expected to lead the House armed services committee next year, promised vigorous oversight on everything from the Iran war to what he called the erosion of the “apolitical foundation of the armed forces”.

26 October
Senate guessing game
Axios Hill Leaders
• If the chamber splits 50/50, leaders will have to start negotiating their power-sharing agreement.
Zoom in: Four states could leave the majority in limbo.
• Alaska: Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) is trying to fend off former Rep. Mary Peltola (D). Alaska election results have taken weeks to finalize because of the vast state’s transportation challenges, mail ballots and ranked-choice tabulation.
• Maine’s ranked-choice voting could lengthen the vote tallying if neither Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) nor Democratic nominee Troy Jackson gets more than 50% in the first round.
• Kansas’ three-day grace period for mail-in ballots could delay results in the race between Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). It is far closer than expected.
• In Texas, a dragged-out recount could be coming. A candidate can request one if the margin is less than 10% of the winner’s vote total — which is likely to happen between state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and state Rep. James Talarico (D).
The clock: Congress currently plans to leave for the holidays on Dec. 18.
• But if Republicans lose both the House and Senate, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) wants senators to stay in town through the holidays (yes, Thanksgiving and Christmas) to work on a massive GOP reconciliation package they can pass without Democratic support.

20 October
What a Democratic Congress would mean for Trump and the GOP
GZERO Staff
Could a Democrat sweep of the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms actally help President Trump? If Democrats win back control of Congress, they’d have a bigger check on the president’s agenda, but couldn’t necessarily stop him from pushing it forward. So far, most of Trump’s policy decisions have been made through executive authority, so a Democratic control of Congress isn’t likely to change much. So what can voters expect if Dems win back both chambers?
Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Republican Strategist Liam Donovan join Ian Bremmer on GZERO World for a look at how a blue wave in the 2026 midterms could reshape Washington and set the stage for 2028. If Dems outperform on election night, it could counterintutiively hurt the party. A Democratic Congress would give Trump a convenient scapegoat, something he lacks right now. A big win could also mean Democrats simply dig into fighting Trump instead of finding a message that appeals to voters in 2028. Meanwhile, Republicans face their own questions about the party’s future. Would a major midterm defeat finally force a reckoning with Trump’s influence, or has MAGA full[y] cemented itself as the new GOP identity?

12 October
Russia deal, execution plans and deportations tell a defining tale about Trump and power
(CNN) Donald Trump is trying to make America more like him.
But voters will soon get to deliver a verdict on the president’s efforts to redefine how the government he leads wields power at home and abroad.
Three flashpoints illustrate how his coercive and transactional instincts are changing the character of the country and how the rest of the world sees us.
Ever since World War II, America has nurtured democracy. But by allowing Russia to supply markets with diesel, Trump will reward a ruthless authoritarian, President Vladimir Putin, who is killing scores of Ukrainian civilians as he aims to crush their independence.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the death by firing squad of the Fort Hood mass shooter meanwhile risks putting the United States in the category of Iran, the Taliban and Hamas in carrying out public executions.
And the shooting by federal agents in New York last week of a citizen of the Dominican Republic while a 5-year-old was in the car was the government’s latest flex of violent force in public in an intensifying deportation crackdown.
Each event sparked a political backlash, and each raises questions about the unconstrained use of presidential authority and how eroded legal and behavioral standards will ultimately sit with the national conscience.
But each also directly flows from the personality of a president who made no secret of his intentions when he was twice chosen by voters in democratic elections and who represents the views of tens of millions of citizens.
The midterm elections are being dominated by high prices for food and housing, a backlash against AI data centers, and public fury over the Iran war.
But the election also marks 10 years since Trump first won power, and it will serve indirectly as an accounting of his attempts to define 21st century national greatness through a prism of his truculent and idiosyncratic values.
Growing concerns about the Russia diesel deal, a potentially livestreamed execution and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity may hint at Trump’s eroded political clout nearly halfway through his second term.
And the shift of the electoral calendar to a presidential cycle in a few weeks will begin a debate on whether Trump’s redefinition of American exceptionalism is an aberration or whether it will linger in his image when he’s left office.

9 October
Wall Street and Big Tech’s blue wave nightmare: Elizabeth Warren working with Republicans
Warren is likely to chair the Senate Banking Committee if Democrats take back the Senate.
(Politico) If she becomes chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would have a powerful position to help shape Congressional policy debates through the 2028 presidential campaign.
For years, Warren has partnered with GOP lawmakers — including Vice President JD Vance — to take on heavyweights including banks, cryptocurrency firms, insurers and the Federal Reserve. Now, she is gearing up to use the Banking gavel to try to find broader bipartisan common ground.
According to people close to Warren and industry lobbyists, Warren as Banking Committee chair is expected to try to recruit Republicans in a crackdown on artificial intelligence — specifically restrictions on chip giant Nvidia’s exports to China, a push where she’s already working with Indiana GOP Sen. Jim Banks. She is also poised to pursue a potential follow-up to this year’s sweeping bipartisan housing law that sought to boost supply and rein in private equity’s role in the market.

4 October
Trump gives spy chief new title: AI czar
Jay Clayton, the former SEC chair and current director of national intelligence, will be one of Trump’s leaders on AI.
(Politico) Clayton’s selection signals Trump wants to chart a middle path on AI regulation, upholding his broadly laissez-faire approach to AI oversight while showing his administration is alert to its destabilizing potential.
Joining Clayton in leading the [Super Intelligence Force] will be FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor. The quartet will report directly to Trump and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Trump’s opponents are planning efforts to reverse his changes to presidency
As the midterms approach, Democrats are working to ensure his aggressive approach to executive power doesn’t outlast him.
(WaPo) Democratic House members are writing bills to rein in a president’s emergency powers. Lawyers are strategizing about how to insulate the Justice Department from presidential influence. A House measure would block a president from unilaterally remodeling the White House. Ethicists are writing rules to prevent a future first family from self-dealing.
Throughout Washington and beyond, President Donald Trump’s opponents are scrambling to ensure that after he leaves office, the changes he has imposed on the presidency, and the country, will fade with him.
Whether they succeed could determine whether Trump’s aggressive exercise of executive powers will be limited to a finite stretch of U.S. history or will instead become a model for every president to come.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Maryland), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said that Trump’s uses of presidential power can and must be reversed — but doing so will take decades.
… Administration officials argue that Trump has changed the country forever and followed established procedures for everything he has done….
But Trump’s critics say that in the scale, sweep and sheer aggressiveness of his actions — from demolishing the East Wing of the White House to pursuing legal actions against political opponents — Trump has pushed executive authority far beyond any previous modern president.
With a possible recapture of Congress just one month away, Democrats’ efforts to limit the staying power of those changes are heating up.
… Several lawmakers are crafting bills to curtail a president’s ability to declare emergencies, which Trump has used in novel ways, declaring about a dozen emergencies to justify policies as varied as imposing tariffs, accelerating deportations and deploying the National Guard.  …
The Partnership for Public Service, which trains government employees and advocates for ways to improve the public workforce, has crafted proposals to strengthen civil service protections, making it harder for future presidents to fire employees en masse as Trump and his ally Elon Musk did. Congress, for example, could strengthen rules requiring that hiring and firing must be based on merit and due process — and then confront an administration that violates those rules.
Would-be reformers argue that periods of excess in U.S. history often prompt waves of reform. … If there is anything that gives would-be reformers hope, it is the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard M. Nixon.
Nixon, like Trump, stretched presidential authority in ways that challenged the law and the Constitution. After his 1974 resignation, a previously quiescent Congress roared back to action, as lawmakers rushed to make sure Watergate could not happen again. Congress passed bills restricting a president’s ability to misuse private data, spy on Americans, misspend campaign cash, declare emergencies, control spending and more.
Some critics envision a post-Trump America swept up in a similar reform fever, with lawmakers scrambling to score political points amid widespread public revulsion over Trump’s self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.

29 September
At White House, Trump Asks A.I. Titans to Police Themselves
President Trump’s meetings with tech leaders produced some voluntary safeguards and a commitment to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” the term that Mr. Trump prefers.
(NYT) President Trump summoned the world’s most powerful technology executives to the White House on Tuesday, and praised the assembled billionaires as “very brilliant” minds who wanted to make the world a better place through job creation, the construction of data centers and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence.
As president, Mr. Trump faces questions about whether A.I. should be regulated, and particularly whether restrictions should be put in place to protect humans from technology that has learned to outmaneuver existing safeguards.
But in the end, convening all of those billions and all of that brain power did not result in a commitment to formal regulation. Instead, they signed a voluntary agreement to adopt safety policies that include risk reviews, auditing and evaluations of systems by third parties. They also agreed to adopt Mr. Trump’s preferred rebranding of A.I.: “super intelligence.” …

Trump touts America.gov, but its government-sourced AI answers undercut many of his statements
(AP) — The Trump administration has lauded its revamped website America.gov as a way to simplify Americans’ access to information and services scattered across a plethora of agency sites, but President Donald Trump probably won’t like some of the answers his new site says are sourced from government information.
Asking the site — which says it’s sourced via artificial intelligence from “official government sources” — questions about who won the 2020 election or about the name of the federal department that operates out of the Pentagon yields answers contrary to those Trump himself frequently proclaims.
As Trump was still speaking at Tuesday’s launch event, however, the site began modifying its answers. Asked again about the 2020 election, it replied that it couldn’t answer “political questions,” a response it also gave to inquiries about whether Trump had been impeached or convicted of felony charges.

25-29 September
Dems eye extra leverage
(Axios newsletter) Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is eyeing the year-end appropriations process to force Senate Republicans and the White House to accept new restrictions on the Office of Management and Budget’s use of “pocket rescissions.”
Why it matters: Congress needs to reach a bipartisan agreement to fund the government before Dec. 11, when a short-term stopgap expires.
Senate appropriators in both parties are furious over OMB’s Friday night notification that it will cancel $810 million that Congress and Trump agreed to spend in fiscal 2026.
For Democrats, OMB’s decision to use pocket rescissions for a second time was entirely predictable — and is fresh evidence that Congress needs to put clear guardrails around their use.
What they’re saying: “I have been saying throughout all of our appropriations process, throughout all the CR negotiations, we have to have language in there about rescissions,” Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters today.
“I have been told ‘no’ time and time again.”
Trump Proposes $810 Million in Education and Health Cuts, Defying Congress
The attempted clawback represents the second time in as many years that the White House has sought to cancel funding approved by lawmakers.
(NYT) The White House on Friday night informed Congress that it intended to cancel about $810 million that lawmakers had approved for education and health-related programs, its latest attempt to use a legally untested power to unilaterally rescind spending without the approval of lawmakers.
The 12-page notification, sent to lawmakers and viewed by The New York Times, builds on a $4.9 billion clawback of funds that lawmakers approved for foreign aid programs that the Trump administration set in motion last year.
Both times, the administration waited so late in the fiscal year to make the request that lawmakers would not have time to reject it before the funding expired.
The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, before the 45-day period when Congress is required to consider a rescission request from the White House. Republicans could bring the matter to a vote sooner, but House lawmakers are set to be campaigning until the midterm elections in November.
The rescissions appear to target pots of funding that have the weakest constituencies on Capitol Hill, including $25 million of $52 million appropriated for migrant students.
They would also affect $27 million for health research under the Department of Health and Human Services.

6 September
Iran war likely to drag on for another six months, ex-US defense secretary warns
Leon Panetta tells Guardian US is risking ‘forever war’ and says Pentagon ‘turmoil’ sending message of weakness
… Panetta spoke to the Guardian days after the US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, abruptly resigned, departing amid the conflict, following reports of tensions with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, over a series of firings.
US service members “are going to war at a time when there’s tremendous turmoil at the Pentagon, in the command structure, which really creates a sense that there’s nobody in charge”, Panetta, who served as defense secretary from 2011 to 2013, added. “And I just think that, whether it’s Iran, or whether it’s our adversaries, they’re now looking at the United States, and see weakness in terms of our ability to be able to really implement our military capability of defending our country.”
He said: “My biggest concern right now is we live in a very dangerous world, with the primary threats coming from China, from Russia, from North Korea, and from terrorism, and yes, from Iran as well. But what I’m concerned about is that we’re sending a message of weakness to our primary adversaries.

4 September
Hegseth Has Turned the Army Into a Rudderless Ship
Adniral (Ret’d) James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and vice chairman at Carlyle.
(Bloomberg) The sudden departure of Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, following months of tension with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is a serious blow to American security. Worse, his resignation follows the forcing out of several top Army generals, including Chief of Staff Randy George, Vice Chief James Mingus and the highly regarded combat commander of US Army Europe, Chris Donahue.
The leadership of the US Army is being eviscerated right in the middle of a war with Iran.
… There was a troubling report this week that Christopher LaNeve, the vice chief, ordered an Army unit in Europe to stop specializing in drone warfare.
… Hegseth may have individual reasons for the departures of so many senior leaders across the services — he has also forced out the chief of naval operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, among many others. And he has sapped morale by denying the advancements of younger officers who had been selected for promotion to one-star admiral or general.
But this latest damage to a major department in the middle of combat operations is stunning. Clearly, Hegseth needs to nominate a stable team of new Army leaders, get them confirmed by Congress and give them steady support. He simply cannot try to run the massive department himself — that is too heavy a lift for a secretary of defense even in peacetime.
20 August
Army will shut down a unit in Europe focused on learning drone warfare

3 September
When a nightmare scenario becomes the most likely scenario
Things are now officially bad for Republicans. It’s just a matter of degree.
(Charlie Cook Politics) With 64 days before Election Day (although the first mail-in ballots will go out in a matter of days), Republicans should brace themselves: The three most plausible outcomes are that it will be bad, really bad, or truly horrible. Conversely, a Democrat should at least briefly consider that the good fortune they may have in November will come compliments of the president, not as a result of much that they have done.