The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Pollsters have rediscovered Latinos, which means the political class has remembered they exist again. After helping shove Trump back into the White House in 2024, Latino voters are now drifting back toward Democrats by about 30 points, according to the Times/Siena poll. So much for the triumphant MAGA talking point about a permanent "multiracial working-class coalition" built on yelling "open borders" into a Fox camera.

The article politely frames this as a normal electoral swing, not as millions of people watching Trump’s second-term clown car of corruption, grift, and creeping authoritarianism and deciding, actually, no thanks. Democrats haven’t clawed back to their old margins, but they’ve apparently done just enough basic governance and not-openly-racist politics to become the lesser evil again in key House and Senate races across Arizona, Texas, Florida, and beyond.

Meanwhile, the Times lovingly details its poll methodology—hundreds of thousands of calls, careful weighting, margins of error—because in 2026, we need laboratory-grade precision to confirm the shocking revelation that people don’t enjoy being treated as a monolithic prop while Trump world tries to deport their relatives and gut their healthcare. The big story isn’t that Latinos are “swing voters”; it’s that they keep having to swing between parties that alternately neglect them, exploit them, or threaten them, while the Trump administration tests just how much democratic backsliding a country can take.

Vivek Ramaswamy, current frontrunner for "most desperate man in Ohio," is running an ad starring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother — a woman who stayed married to a man indicted for raping Acton when she was a child and then went on the lam with him. The ad has Mom calling her daughter a liar and hinting she’s mentally unstable, because nothing says "ready to lead" like weaponizing the testimony of the person who lost custody after a grand jury indictment involving your opponent’s childhood rape case.

Even Ohio Republicans like Gov. Mike DeWine are backing away from this toxic sludge, but Trump and Vice President JD Vance are hugging it like a golden idol. Trump called the ad "a disgrace" in the sense that he thinks it’s great, insisting that an abuser-protecting mother is the "best reference" on Acton’s character. Ramaswamy, whose campaign is apparently powered by shame fumes, is proudly doubling down, claiming it’s all fair game while Acton calmly lays out the actual facts of her abuse, homelessness, and the stepfather who became a fugitive from justice.

Barack Obama flew into Ohio to say the quiet part out loud: this is what happens when Trumpism finishes chewing through every last shred of decency. He torched the White House for two years of "chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence" while Trump obsesses over turning the People’s House into a gold-plated Cheesecake Factory annex, complete with new ballroom and helipad. Obama’s pitch was simple: you may be stuck with Trump for now, but you don’t have to keep electing the spineless enablers who think a child rape case is just another fun angle for a campaign hit.

Acton, standing next to Obama, spelled it out for Ramaswamy: exploiting her childhood trauma "to save his stumbling campaign" crossed a line no one running for office should ever approach. But in Trump’s GOP, the cruelty is the brand and the only real disqualifier is basic human empathy. Decency still matters to voters; it’s just clearly been written out of the party platform.

Missouri Republicans took one look at voters overturning their near-total abortion ban in 2024 and said: absolutely not, democracy. So they cooked up a new "Amendment 3" for 2026 that does the exact opposite of the old Amendment 3—this time re-banning abortion in the state constitution and tossing in a bonus ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which is already illegal. Why pass one rights-stripping law when you can run a two-for-one hate special?

Doctors like OB-GYN Jennifer Smith are back on doorsteps in their white coats, trying to explain to confused voters that they now have to vote no on Amendment 3 to preserve the yes they already won on Amendment 3. Meanwhile, Missouri’s maternal mortality is sky-high, OB-GYN residency applications cratered after the trigger ban, and patients are driving for hours in medical crisis because Republicans like Josh Hawley and his anti-abortion crusader wife Erin would rather posture about "life" than keep actual pregnant people alive. The legislature-initiated amendment is less a policy proposal and more a middle finger to the concept of popular sovereignty.

To sell this rerun ban, the GOP slapped "protect the children" language on the ballot, pretending they’re bravely stopping gender-affirming care that’s already banned by a 2023 law. It’s not about policy; it’s about using trans kids as marketing copy for forced birth. Missouri became the first trigger-ban state where voters clawed back abortion rights—and now the party of "local control" is trying to overwrite that vote by jamming abortion and trans healthcare into one big punitive culture-war casserole and hoping confusion does what persuasion can’t.

America’s long experiment with democracy has entered the fine, but what if we just stop counting certain people phase. After President Donald Trump openly urged red states to cook the maps for maximum GOP advantage, the Supreme Court helpfully followed up in April with Louisiana v. Callais, taking a weed whacker to what was left of the Voting Rights Act and greenlighting the elimination of majority-Black districts across the country. The result: Republicans systematically diluting Black political power, especially in the South, and calling it “election integrity,” because “minority rule by design” doesn’t poll as well.

Not content with rigging the maps, Trump is also pushing legislation to restrict voting access while standing at the presidential bully pulpit shrieking about imaginary “widespread voter fraud.” The same guy who tried to overturn an election now floats using the executive branch to “oversee” this one, which is like putting Rudy Giuliani in charge of a breathalyzer. Sen. Adam Schiff says Democrats are scrambling to protect elections, LaTosha Brown is fighting to keep Black communities from being erased off the political map, and Heritage Foundation’s Ken Cuccinelli is there to explain why all of this is actually just “transparency.” The 2026 midterms: come for the ballots, stay for the slow-motion constitutional arson.

Ohio GOP Rep. Max Miller — former Trump aide, heir to a real estate fortune, and apparently part-time stuffed animal hostage taker — is somehow still on the ballot despite a stack of allegations that reads like a CPS training scenario. Court filings say his ex-wife Emily Moreno accused him of throwing boiling water at her, holding a gun to her head, shoving her against a wall, and possibly injuring their toddler, whose collarbone bruise pattern allegedly resembled a handprint. Child abuse investigators ultimately labeled the case "unsubstantiated," which in American politics now seems to mean "excellent House Republican material."

His former father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno, calls him unfit for office and in need of "serious psychological help" — and then adds the detail that Miller allegedly withheld his granddaughter’s beloved blue bunny for 48 hours. Multiple times. From a crying toddler. As a power move. Miller says it’s all lies; texts say otherwise. Naturally, the Trump White House alumni club sprang into action: Trump calls Miller a "good guy," the White House urges Republicans not to pressure him to drop out, and Speaker Mike Johnson shrugs that "people have domestic disputes" as if this is a sitcom misunderstanding and not a police file.

Into this toxic spill walks Democrat Brian Poindexter, a rebar guy and councilman whose big scandal is being a dorky "girl dad" who plays Fortnite with his daughters and shows up for family dinner. His campaign ad features his kids clowning on his dance moves and thanking him for being present, while Miller’s greatest hits involve depositions, gym-hopping, and allegations of violence. The race, once "likely Republican" in a district Trump won easily, is now a toss-up because even in Ohio, there’s only so much alleged bunny-torturing domestic chaos voters can be asked to swallow for the team.

So the contrast is now: Poindexter, the steelworker dad with a garage campaign and three daughters roasting him on camera, versus Miller, the Trumpist incumbent whose party leadership has decided that alleged abuse, a broken toddler collarbone, and a hostage plush toy situation are all just part of the modern Republican family values package. The GOP keeps telling us "candidate quality" doesn’t matter. Ohio’s 7th is about to test just how low that bar can sink before voters finally trip over it.