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Time Magazine
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
How Trump's Release of MLK Files May Backfire
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. More than a half-century after his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to stoke suspicion—both of his death and of the United States' professed moral footing. With zero warning, President Donald Trump's administration last Monday released almost a quarter-million pages of documents related to the civil rights icon's 1968 assassination over the objections of most of the King family. The effort was a nakedly crass attempt at orchestrating a distraction to the President's own political troubles surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was also, sadly, continuing a craven tradition that began during King's life of political figures exploiting his moral authority—and ambiguities—for their own means. Scholars so far have found little new in the just-released documents. Much of them appear inscrutable—as they seemed to be written in a code only FBI insiders could decipher. Notably absent from the trove were FBI wiretaps of King. Those are under seal until 2027. Yet the fear among those who follow in King's footsteps is that the files include potentially embarrassing or unseemly details of King's private life. Such revelations stand to do more than possibly diminish King's legacy. They have implications for the U.S. on the foreign stage. In life and now in death, King is an unrivaled symbol of U.S. hypocrisy. Americans' uneven history with civil rights has long been a drag on their government's power to cajole allies and rivals alike to a shared goal. It's why President Harry Trump in 1947 became the first President to speak to the NAACP. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on a humid June Sunday, he made clear he understood the early Cold War would be shaped by how Americans' treated their neighbors. 'It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights,' Truman said. He then made clear, wrapping his 12-minute speech, that he was speaking with purpose: 'When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans.' For the stretch between the end of World War II and the time Vietnam became the dominant story around the world, civil rights in the United States was a popular talking point that foreign diplomats would turn to as a rejoinder. The State Department archives from that era are packed with briefing memos advising how to respond to the one-liner popularized by Moscow and its satellite states: 'But you lynch Negros.' One April 1950 discussion outline for the State Department recognized the challenge bluntly: 'No American problem receives more wide-spread attention, especially in dependent areas, than our treatment of racial minorities, particularly the Negro. Discussion of this problem cannot be evaded, and only by full publicity to improvements in this field can the United States position be put in fair perspective before the bar of world opinion and communist propaganda be discredited.' So potent were the foreign policy worries over race that the Truman administration specifically cited America's 'image problem' in an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the NAACP's Brown v. Board of Education. The best propaganda doesn't require fudging. Few know this better than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to repurpose Cold War tropes. During a 2018 interview with Fox News, when asked about human rights issues in Russia, Putin responded with a tour of 20th Century U.S. history. 'Haven't Presidents been killed in the United States? Have you forgotten about—well, has Kennedy been killed in Russia or in the United States? Or Mr. King?' he said, adding, 'All of us have our own set of domestic problems.' Efforts to undermine King's platform are not new, and are often aimed at sanitizing his message, which in his later years included an economic- and social-justice agenda that drew the ire of the U.S. government. But the prospect of generating scandalous headlines around King in 2025 would do more than distract—it stands to provide new and useful propaganda to America's enemies. Perhaps the bigger lesson from Trump's latest gambit is this: King remains a global giant that stops the world in its tracks when he speaks, even if against his wishes or without his consent. It was this way when he pushed for civil rights and voting rights, and later against the war in Vietnam and against systemic inequalities. It was this way at the time of his assassination in Memphis, where he was offering support to striking sanitation workers. And it continues to be that way, as the Trump administration, backed into a corner, has little qualms with potentially undermining King's legacy. Indeed, even King's daughter noted the mismatch of releasing hundreds of thousands of potentially embarrassing files on her father in this charged moment. Bernice King posted a black-and-white photo of her father, looking peeved, with the taunting caption: 'Now, do the Epstein files.' Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Time Magazine
7 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
A Joe Rogan-Backed Democrat: James Talarico Draws National Attention
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Over the weekend, a lot of institutional Washington suddenly and enthusiastically discovered James Talarico, a seminary student and member of the Texas state House. The find came during an impressive outing for the 36-year-old Democrat on Joe Rogan's podcast in which the aspiring preacher espoused the same brand of sharp sound bytes that has earned him almost a million TikTok followers. Over more than two hours, Talarico explained to Rogan why a Texas law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms is 'un-Christian,' the coming political fights won't be about Left or Right but rather the top and the bottom of society, and how both parties get it wrong when they treat politicians like Messianic figures. 'James Talarico, you need to run for President,' Rogan said. 'We need someone who is actually a good person.' Still, Talarico's sudden place in the imagination of D.C.'s elites is not entirely unwarranted. He is seen as a dark-horse candidate to challenge Sen. John Cornyn's already dicey re-election bid in Texas, where a scandal-soaked Attorney General Ken Paxton may plausibly land a Trump endorsement for his primary challenge. Paxton is ahead in polling and is better-liked among Texas' MAGA base, but Cornyn, who's held his seat since 2002 and is still a power center in the Upper Chamber, is seen as a stronger candidate in the general election. Their fight to the March primary is already getting ugly, as Paxton's wife has recently filed for divorce 'on biblical grounds,' which Cornyn cited to The Washington Post as news that 'is going to tell a lot of people that there was more fire there where there was smoke.' Talarico might have some steps between his desk in Austin and the Resolute Desk, to be sure. Few have seen an ascent that clear-cut, although Barack Obama went from the Illinois state Senate to a national ticket in a harried four years. And the excitement the Texan is drawing might say more about the anemic state of the Democratic Party than Talarico's national prospects. There is a deep reservoir of talent on the Democratic side in the Lone Star State, many of whom are champing at the bit to face a potentially bruised GOP nominee at the top of the 2026 ticket. Former Rep. Colin Allred, who lost a bid for Senate last year against incumbent Ted Cruz, said he is racing next year for the seat against Cornyn. Rep. Joaquin Castro, too, is in the mix for the race. And former Rep. Beto O'Rourke on Sunday said he was undecided on running for the Democratic nomination himself; he unsuccessfully ran for Senator in 2018, President in 2020, and Governor in 2022. 'I'm very optimistic about Democrats' opportunity in 2026,' O'Rourke said on CNN's 'State of the Union.' Still, let's zoom out for a minute. For close to two decades, we've been just one election away from Texas turning blue. The last time a Democrat won statewide in Texas was 1994—a year before Windows 95 hit the market. Texas is in a record dry spell, and there's no point pretending otherwise. O'Rourke is high-water mark in recent memory, and he captured 48% of the vote in his 2018 campaign. He raised $80 million and impressed even those of us who went to Texas that October with plans to slag him. And, to his credit, Cornyn is a far less divisive figure than O'Rourke's rival in 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz. To his credit, Talarico sounds a whole lot different than the partisan Democrats or Republicans here in Washington. 'I think we need to start listening to Democrats who are in red and purple areas. There is something about living in a red state that makes you different from a national Democrat who lives in a blue city on the coast. I think we learn how to talk with people outside of our party in a more effective way, because it's a matter of political survival out here,' Talarico told Rogan. 'I can't pass anything in the Texas Legislature without getting Republican support, so I've had to find ways to build relationships and build bridges across partisan divides as a Texas Democrat.' Keep in mind, he is making these comments as national Democrats are weighing their own post-2024 reckoning. According to reporting over the weekend from The New York Times, their autopsy of the Joe Biden-turned-Kamala Harris Democratic ticket last year will avoid any real accounting for Biden's decision to run or any real choices Harris made. Instead, the focus of the still-being-written report is on outside allied groups' choices, a move that kind of avoids the point and spares the party and real accountability. Talarico might be able to put some distance between himself and national Democrats without too much effort. His studies of theology are not natural fits in the secular Democratic identity of late. His fluency on digital platforms may mesh neatly with a relatively younger cohort of Democrats who finally seem to be meeting voters where they are on social platforms while the Old Guard clings to a playbook from the 1990s rooted in buying television ads and postcards. And Talarico is so far outside the splash zone of partisan Washington that he might just be able to stand unstained by the ugliness of this town. Still, that so many Democrats spent the weekend obsessing over a relatively unknown figure in Austin, who represents about 200,000 people in a deep-blue district, shows the extent of their desperation. They failed to stop Trump's hugely unpopular tax- and spending-cuts package. They are heading into an August recess with an unhappy base and little to show for a completely shut-out-of-power reality. The midterms should be ripe for Democratic gains but the party has no one at the helm calling the shots. And there won't be a viable leader until Democrats pick a presidential nominee for 2028. Given the uncertainty drifting toward that moment, Talarico is just as plausible as anyone—blessed by a podcaster who helped Trump win the White House and the manosphere last year. It's long odds, but Democrats don't exactly have a guide to firmer ground in the offing. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Time Magazine
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
The Revolt Over the Epstein Files Is Snowballing
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Here's the thing about conspiracy theories: once they take hold, there's no turning back. And when you layer over them a political ideology and make Donald Trump the lead pitchman, they metastasize at a pace beyond control. Trump has openly flirted with nearly every major conspiracy theory of the last half century, and championed one of the most reckless through his insistence without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Add to those doozies this latest from the Trumpist legions: that the MAGAverse is being denied the truth about how registered sex-offender billionaire Jeffrey Epstein lived and died after years of a promised epiphany if only Trump were given back control of state secrets. Like so much else that grew into a headache for Trump, this started with his chase of a quick headline without thinking through how it might end. The Epstein saga has become a snowball racing down Mount MAGA that the President has lost the capacity to stop. In the snowball's immediate path? Some of the highest profile members of his administration, all of whom have gone quiet on what they had previously characterized as a dangerous conspiracy that needed to be brought to light. But there are signs that this MAGA kerfuffle may be different from the ones before it. The cleft in the MAGA Movement is pronounced. Trump's base may not so easily move on to the next culture war battle or shiny conspiracy theory. This could reverberate into next year's midterm election and beyond, potentially shaping the second half of Trump's term. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is warned that as many as 10% of Trump supporters may defect over feeling short-changed, perhaps costing House Republicans a dozen seats next November. In a sign that this is eclipsing almost everything else, even those eyeing a 2028 campaign are taking the bait and weighing in. 'Release the Epstein files and let the chips fall where they may. This is why people don't trust government,' former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley posted on X. 'You can never go wrong with being transparent. Redact victims' names but release the rest.' And Charlie Kirk, who leads the populist Turning Point USA powerhouse with younger MAGA activists and has churned plenty of content out of the Epstein saga, has abruptly adopted a nothing-to-see-here approach and said he was done talking about it. Let's rewind the tape. Epstein was at the center of a network of super-rich and -priveledged people rumored to exploit young women and girls as part of a sex-trafficking scheme that was said to include a whole host of bold-faced names. Trump, who counted Epstein as a friend for over a decade, fed suspicion about the former Mar-a-Lago regular at campaign rallies and in online posts. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida on two state felony charges, paid restitution to three dozen victims, and registered as a sex offender. A decade later, Epstein pleaded not guilty in New York to multiple charges, including sex trafficking. Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell; officials ruled it a suicide, yet many Trump fans were convinced he was murdered to protect the hyper-connected insiders who might have been implicated should Epstein turn on his former pals. After all, there is a missing minute of video on the footage of his door the night he is said to have killed himself. (Epstein's former girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy. She was accused of helping Epstein recruit and abuse minors. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.) For years, Trump hinted there was an Epstein client list. Weeks into Trump's second term, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced it was on her desk, and MAGA influencers were handed binders of documents that they waved for cameras. (Those binders carried no real bombshells, just documents that were already mostly out there.) But last week, Bondi and her fellow Trumpers Kash Patel and Dan Bongino—the director and deputy director at the FBI—released a statement saying no further disclosures about Epstein was in the offing: 'It is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,' the organizations said in a joint statement. The memo went off like a bomb within the President's political base. Trump's biggest boosters were unswayed by his contention that the findings were penned by former President Barack Obama, who left office in early 2017, and 'Crooked Hillary' Clinton, who has held no government job since 2013. Trump bristled during a Cabinet meeting last week when Bondi was asked about the so-called Epstein files, saying no one was really interested in that old chestnut. He then unfurled an unhinged social media rant, essentially telling his supporters to back the heck off. Trump understands the power of the rumble—and the unpredictable nature of sparked kindling. Over a decade ago, he fed the wrong and racist trope that Obama was not born in the United States and thus an illegitimate President. He promised to release the files linked to John F. Kennedy's assassination, along with those of his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He promised to release the files on 9/11, which he famously claimed without factual basis included Muslims dancing in the streets and on roofs in metro New York that day. He similarly suggested someone needs to audit Fort Knox for missing gold. Trump now faces this ugly reality: he promised the goods, and either the goods don't exist or they are potentially embarrassing to him or his buddies. Either way, it has triggered his conspiracy-addled allies in a way we did not see in his first term. Fellow agitator Laura Loomer—a conspiracy theorist who accompanied Trump to Ground Zero on the 9/11 anniversary last year—has been calling for Bondi to get the boot if she can't pony-up proof of l'affair Epstein. In the interim, Loomer proposed taking it off her desk and passing it to a special counsel. Another influencer, Benny Johnson, suggested that Trump's law-and-order team haul former President Bill Clinton in for questioning. And Bongino, who spent years peddling Epstein innuendo and out-nuendo alike, was so palpably angry that he and Bondi clashed in the West Wing and he skipped work on Friday while contemplating leaving a job he has openly hated. For their part, Democrats are cautiously capitalizing on the opposition party's disarray. On Monday night, they forced a vote on the House Rules Committee on requiring the release of the Epstein files, leading the Committee's Republicans to be the ones to block it to avoid overriding Trump. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Monday he may get behind efforts to force the White House or Justice Department to provide a fuller accounting of what it knows about Epstein, saying either they lied about having the goods before or are lying about it now. For now, Democrats seem happy to help this snowball of a crisis keep rolling and allow it to distract Trump from a moment when he should be taking a victory lap on major domestic legislation. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Time Magazine
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Susan Collins Was Facing a Tough Re-Election Even Before Voting Against Trump's ‘One Big Beautiful Bill'
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. When someone crosses Donald Trump, the retribution tends to come fast and fierce. But when Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted last week against his One Big Beautiful Bill, a tax- and safety net-cuts behemoth, the President was atypically silent. That may be the biggest indicator of just how much danger Collins is in as she faces re-election in Maine in 2026. Collins' opposition was not enough to kill the giant domestic bill that may be the lone legislative lift of the 119th Congress. She was the 50th nay, which forced Vice President J.D. Vance's to provide a tie breaking 51st vote. Collins is seldom the deciding factor; she did not sink Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and voted for all but one of Trump's second-term Cabinet picks, while also voting against Kash Patel's nomination to lead the FBI. Her protest votes are as strategic as they are symbolic; FiveThirtyEight found she voted with Trump 67% of the time during his first term. Plus, on an early test vote on this bill, she let it proceed as she continued, unsuccessfully, to negotiate for carve-outs for rural hospitals. Collins is the lone Senator up for re-election next year in a state that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Democrats have yet to settle on a favored candidate to become the nominee although all eyes are on Maine Gov. Janet Mills, the tough-minded former prosecutor who stared down Trump at the White House and refused to comply with his administration's anti-transgender athlete orders. State Democrats have other options at the ready if the 77-year-old Mills passes and are primed either way to make Collins own the Trump record, especially her votes for his Supreme Court nominees in his first term. While she was re-elected after those votes, the Justices have since overturned a half-century of precedent on abortion rights in Roe. Republicans in Washington, meanwhile, have seemingly endless patience with Collins and understand her savvy. Her tangles with Trump have been largely performative, not predictive. She is no John McCain, who with a single thumbs-down signal thwarted Trump's first-term effort to repeal Obamacare. Cynics say that Collins shows independence only when it doesn't really make a difference; no one on her side of the aisle really unloaded on her after the vote against the latest package. Most had her back, saying they understood her choice. Collins, a powerful player and chair of the all-important Appropriations panel, is not terribly difficult to understand, politically speaking. She has never won re-election by less than 8 points despite her home state's fickle politics. The last time the state's majority vote went for a Republican presidential candidate was in 1988, also the last year a Democrat won a Senate race in the state. But her net approval rating sank 12 percentage points—more than any other Senator's numbers—between the first and second quarters of this year, according to Morning Consult. Her disapproval number stood at 51%, up from a 44% average in the January-March window. And she is definitely viewed less warmly than when she was at a comparable point ahead of her 2020 bid. In 2019, 52% of Mainers had a favorable impression of Collins, according to Morning Consult polling. Today, the number is 42%. This suggests she's going to have a trickier time than when she was at the comparable point ahead of her last campaign. In 2019, ahead of her 2020 bid, her net positive numbers were 13 points. Today she's at a net negative of 9 points, according to the same pollsters. That means roughly 1-in-5 Maine voters have changed their minds about Collins in a state where her last victory was secured by less than 9 points. Collins' allies, meanwhile, offer a different read, noting that she enjoyed a net positive of 2 points in September of last year, and that has moved to a net positive of 4 points last month, according to an independent survey from Pan Atlantic Research. As a practical matter, about 34,000 Mainers stand to lose health coverage as the bill was drafted. Two solar projects in the state were put on hold even before the bill passed. Hospitals were already bracing for shifting services. Collins' no vote, in a rational world, made sense for her constituents. But that may not help her. Among voters in Maine, a majority—including a majority of Republicans—says she does not deserve to be re-elected, according to polling from neighboring University of New Hampshire. A striking 71% of all Maine voters say this should be her last term, and 57% of Republicans agree, according to a survey taken in April. That's a simply brutal number. Flipping ahead a few pages in the same UNH binder, things get even worse. Their survey finds Collins with a favorability number of just 12%, landing a 58% unfavorable number. Among Republicans, the gap is a 19% positive to a 43% negative. The University of New Hampshire Survey Center found the bill was deeply unpopular, according to a June poll. A 58% majority did not want to see the bill pass, including 72% of independent voters. Still, Democrats are realistic about what they face. While Collins has just $3 million in her account, she raised almost $31 million for her 2020 bid and won her 2014 campaign with less than $6 million in spending to notch 67% of the vote. Senate Republicans' campaign committee is, first and foremost, an incumbent-retention operation and will have her back. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are going to be defending tricky seats in Georgia, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan, and Colorado. They would need a net pick-up run of four seats to take a majority, and the path to that would require upsets in Trump-backing states like Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, and Texas, plus holding every seat that is currently blue. So Collins is facing some pretty lousy poll numbers and is going to be dogged by her no vote that had no real upside. The vote against Trump is not going to be the salve that cures her dour numbers. She defied Republicans but is not going to get any love from Democrats. She's going to be hounded by a bill she did not support. Plus, the headwinds are historic—and that's before Trump decides whether he will launch his own revenge.
Time Magazine
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Susan Collins' Re-Election Prospects Dim
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. When someone crosses Donald Trump, the retribution tends to come fast and fierce. But when Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted last week against his One Big Beautiful Bill, a tax- and safety net-cuts behemoth, the President was atypically silent. That may be the biggest indicator of just how much danger Collins is in as she faces re-election in Maine in 2026. Collins' opposition was not enough to kill the giant domestic bill that may be the lone legislative lift of the 119th Congress. She was the 50th nay, which forced Vice President J.D. Vance's to provide a tie breaking 51st vote. Collins is seldom the deciding factor; she did not sink Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and voted for all but one of Trump's second-term Cabinet picks. Her protest votes are as strategic as they are symbolic; FiveThirtyEight found she voted with Trump 67% of the time during his first term. Plus, on an early test vote on this bill, she let it proceed as she continued, unsuccessfully, to negotiate for carve-outs for rural hospitals. Collins is the lone Senator up for re-election next year in a state that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Democrats have yet to settle on a favored candidate to become the nominee although all eyes are on Maine Gov. Janet Mills, the tough-minded former prosecutor who stared down Trump at the White House and refused to comply with his administration's anti-transgender athlete orders. State Democrats have other options at the ready if the 77-year-old Mills passes and are primed either way to make Collins own the Trump record, especially her votes for his Supreme Court nominees in his first term. While she was re-elected after those votes, the Justices have since overturned a half-century of precedent on abortion rights in Roe. Republicans in Washington, meanwhile, have seemingly endless patience with Collins and understand her savvy. Her tangles with Trump have been largely performative, not predictive. She is no John McCain, who with a single thumbs-down signal thwarted Trump's first-term effort to repeal Obamacare. Cynics say that Collins shows independence only when it doesn't really make a difference; no one on her side of the aisle really unloaded on her after the vote against the latest package. Most had her back, saying they understood her choice. Collins, a powerful player and chair of the all-important Appropriations panel, is not terribly difficult to understand, politically speaking. She has never won re-election by less than 8 points despite her home state's fickle politics. The last time the state's majority vote went for a Republican presidential candidate was in 1988, also the last year a Democrat won a Senate race in the state. But her net approval rating sank 12 percentage points—more than any other Senator's numbers—between the first and second quarters of this year, according to Morning Consult. Her disapproval number stood at 51%, up from a 44% average in the January-March window. And she is definitely viewed less warmly than when she was at a comparable point ahead of her 2020 bid. In 2019, 52% of Mainers had a favorable impression of Collins, according to Morning Consult polling. Today, the number is 42%. This suggests she's going to have a trickier time than when she was at the comparable point ahead of her last campaign. In 2019, ahead of her 2020 bid, her net positive numbers were 13 points. Today she's at a net negative of 9 points, according to the same pollsters. That means roughly 1-in-5 Maine voters have changed their minds about Collins in a state where her last victory was secured by less than 9 points. As a practical matter, about 34,000 Mainers stand to lose health coverage as the bill was drafted. Her effort to secure $50 billion in earmarks for rural hospitals expected to be hit particularly hard by the legislation failed. Two solar projects in the state were put on hold even before the bill passed. Hospitals were already bracing for shifting services. Collins' no vote, in a rational world, made sense for her constituents. But that may not help her. Among voters in Maine, a majority—including a majority of Republicans—says she does not deserve to be re-elected, according to polling from neighboring University of New Hampshire. A striking 71% of all Maine voters say this should be her last term, and 57% of Republicans agree, according to a survey taken in April. That's a simply brutal number. Flipping ahead a few pages in the same UNH binder, things get even worse. Their survey finds Collins with a favorability number of just 12%, landing a 58% unfavorable number. Among Republicans, the gap is a 19% positive to a 43% negative. The University of New Hampshire Survey Center found the bill was deeply unpopular, according to a June poll. A 58% majority did not want to see the bill pass, including 72% of independent voters. Still, Democrats are realistic about what they face. While Collins has just $3 million in her account, she raised almost $31 million for her 2020 bid and won her 2014 campaign with less than $6 million in spending to notch 67% of the vote. Senate Republicans' campaign committee is, first and foremost, an incumbent-retention operation and will have her back. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are going to be defending tricky seats in Georgia, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan, and Colorado. They would need a net pick-up run of four seats to take a majority, and the path to that would require upsets in Trump-backing states like Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, and Texas, plus holding every seat that is currently blue. So Collins is facing some pretty lousy poll numbers and is going to be dogged by her no vote that had no real upside. The vote against Trump is not going to be the salve that cures her dour numbers. She defied Republicans but is not going to get any love from Democrats. She's going to be hounded by a bill she did not support. Plus, the headwinds are historic—and that's before Trump decides whether he will launch his own revenge. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
