Voters say Republicans are the more corrupt party by fourteen points. Government corruption is now the second most important issue in the country, behind only the cost of living. It has more than doubled as a top-issue pick since Trump was elected.
And yet, Democrats still seem nervous about running on it.
The nervousness comes from somewhere real. Corruption polls as an elite concern. Protecting democracy didn’t seem to work last time around. Prices are what people feel. Run on the thing people feel.
I think that’s wrong and very short-sighted. Jon Ossoff has been making the case all year — “either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.” James Talarico is running on it in Texas and beating an indicted attorney general. Abdul El-Sayed ran on it in Michigan and beat $30 million of AIPAC money. And Mary Peltola launched her campaign against Dan Sullivan in January, vowing to lower costs and “expose political corruption in Washington,” in a state Trump won by thirteen points, where she’s now running even.
Corruption isn’t an alternative to kitchen-table issues. You paid roughly $1,100 in tariffs the Supreme Court ruled illegal. Apple got $2.2 billion of that money back. Walmart got $2.4 billion. You got nothing. Trump’s net worth has nearly tripled since he took office, while your grocery bill keeps going up. Jared Kushner has collected over $110 million in fees from the Saudi government while negotiating a peace deal with Iran. Meanwhile, you can’t afford gas.
This matters because beating Donald Trump is not the goal. We need to root out what he’s installed. And as his approval rating plummets, his successors will start to distance themselves from him. Corruption will keep them tethered to his failed administration.
Marco Rubio, jailing a sixteen-year-old for what his grandmother did in 1979. Pete Hegseth, who told Congress this war cost $25 billion when his own department knew it was three times that. Todd Blanche, who signed his boss’s family a tax amnesty with his own signature and is now the Attorney General of the United States. Kristi Noem, who ran a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign starring herself, and awarded no-bid contracts to firms tied to her own advisors. RFK Jr., taking millions in book advances while running the agency the books are about, after charging $100,000 to license the “Make America Healthy Again” name he now uses as federal policy.
All of them need to be defined by the most corrupt administration in our country’s history.
Economic issues are important. The corruption is the story. We need to tell this story.
Here’s what else you need to know
Xi got the red carpet. Trump met Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews — the first time a president has greeted an arriving leader there in 64 years — showed him the new helipad, noted that Xi “likes granite,” and extended the trade truce only to January 10, with no deal on AI, Taiwan, or trade.
A Trump judge said the press ban was unconstitutional. The White House ignored him. Judge Timothy Kelly ordered CNN, MS NOW, and Politico’s access restored for 14 days; hours later the Secret Service turned a Politico reporter away at the gate. The “misinformation” the White House cited turned out to be JD Vance, quoted on background at a briefing the White House itself arranged.
Musk’s $1 million ad blitz is built on claims that don’t survive a search. America PAC is running ads in five states accusing Democratic Senate candidates of positions they’ve publicly rejected — and attacking Troy Jackson in Maine for wanting government healthcare, eight years after Musk tweeted that health care “should be taken care of by govt/taxpayers” and called himself a socialist “of sorts.”
Forty days out, Democrats are favored in both chambers. Nate Silver’s model gives them an 88.9% chance in the House and 64.2% in the Senate, with a generic-ballot lead wider than the one that produced a 40-seat wave in 2018 — though a single NYT/Siena poll showing Collins up three in Maine was taken before ProPublica’s bribery story broke.
DoorDash paid $131.5 million for wage theft. New York City extracted the largest worker settlement in its history from a company that admitted “we screwed up.”
The midterms are 40 days away.
Sources
The polling — NYT/Siena (Sept. 8–13); NBC News (Sept. 11–15); Echelon Insights via Puck
The candidates — Ossoff via The New Republic; El-Sayed and AIPAC spending via The Intercept; Peltola’s launch via Axios and PBS/AP
The tariff refunds — Fortune; Morning Brew; Newsweek; household cost estimates from the Tax Foundation and Yale Budget Lab
Trump’s wealth — Forbes, via Nasdaq and The Daily Beast
Kushner — Popular Information
Rubio — The Nation; The Bulwark; CBS News; Newsweek
Hegseth — Popular Information; casualty database removals via CBS News and AP
Noem — CNN, from invoices obtained by Sens. Welch and Blumenthal; Fox 9