In today’s edition … Trump takes on the First Amendment — again … You tell us about the absent House … but first …
Republicans have one clear advantage this November
On Friday, I reported with my colleague Theodoric Meyer on how Democratic candidates, operatives and elected officials — a group often more worried than confident — are growing increasingly confident that this November’s midterms could be very good for the party.
Their reasons are many, from President Donald Trump’s slumping approval rating to rising gas prices that show no sign of abating to battleground polls that show Democratic candidates with clear leads.
But Republicans point to a powerful weapon they wield: money.
In fact, Republicans’ fundraising advantage remains undiminished, especially among committees and super PACs, and the party has taken full advantage of the recent Supreme Court decision that made it easier for certain groups to coordinate spending with campaigns.
My colleague Praveena Somasundaram has a great piece on just how much money Trump and Republicans plan to spend in the coming weeks.
The key question for Republicans, however, is whether that money will be enough to stave off what could be a wave election for Democrats.
Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the GOP’s aggressive ad spending this month was putting Democrats on the defensive.
“Republicans are turning our historic financial advantage into an early airwave offensive across the country,” he said.
Let’s take a look at the details of this Republican advantage:
- The National Republican Senatorial Committee, despite a widening Democratic Senate map that has Democrats viable in red states like Iowa, Texas and Alaska, plans to spend $46.5 million in eight states, Axios reported. That’s a significant haul that could shore up a few Republican candidates facing this difficult environment.
- In total, Republicans are set to spend around $140 million more on ads than Democrats are in the nine most competitive Senate races in the final weeks of the campaign, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The disparity is especially yawning in the Senate contest in Texas, where Republicans have reserved $39.6 million in ads and Democrats have reserved just $5.1 million.
- On the House side, House Republicans’ campaign arm plans to run coordinated ads in 39 districts, with the committee reserving more than $24 million. House Democrats’ campaign committee, by comparison, plans to run coordinated ads in 14 districts.
- Money from MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, is helping Republicans in key House races. The group has spent or reserved more than $75 million in House contests, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
- The cash disparity between the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee — a consistent issue for Democrats — remains so. At the end of July, the Democratic committee had about $16 million of cash on hand — with $17.9 million in debts — compared to the Republican National Committee’s $130 million in cash and no debt.
Some of this money is forcing Democrats to respond. After attack ads from Republican groups hit candidates like Joanna Mendoza in Arizona, Randy Villegas in California and Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, all three campaigns ran ads specifically hitting back at the attack ads. Find them here, here and here.
“We’re stuck in another unnecessary war and inflation is making everything worse, but my opponent won’t talk about all that. He’d rather lie about my record,” Kaptur says in a straight-to-camera ad.
Democrats aren’t entirely without help. In addition to a number of candidates outraising their Democratic opponents, a spokesperson for House Majority PAC (HMP), Democrats’ outside group focused on House races, said they have already publicly reserved over $200 million for broadcast television over the last six weeks leading up to Election Day. The group has so far run ads or sent mail in 29 districts.
“Republicans are spending millions to defend districts deep into Trump territory, and HMP is going to spend whatever it takes to build the largest possible Democratic Majority,” said CJ Warnke, the group’s spokesperson.
So all of that money certainly matters, but it also needs to be seen in the context of the atmosphere it is being spent in.
Poll after poll is showing Trump and Republicans in a bleak political environment, largely of the president’s own making. Just look at this new polling from NBC News: A majority of voters (55 percent) said they think Trump’s policies have hurt the economy, 56 percent disapprove of Trump’s job performance and 42 percent of voters said they are less likely to support a candidate who backs Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
My colleagues Natalie Allison and Isaac Arnsdorf also reported over the weekend that Trump himself is, at least privately, acknowledging his decisions on the Iran war “have contributed to the especially poor political environment his party faces.”
And while money matters, plenty of elections show it’s not a cure-all. Look at 2016: Trump was massively outspent — his campaign raised $333,127,164 compared to Hillary Clinton’s $563,756,928 — and won the election. The same happened in 2024, when Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a staggering $1.1 billion but lost to Trump, who raised $463,662,725 but benefited from considerable outside spending.
What has been striking is how Republicans have more recently acknowledged the difficult environment. Beyond the party’s Iowa Senate candidate not campaigning alongside Vice President JD Vance and a congressional candidate who once cheered Trump airing ads that hit the president’s immigration record, more established Republican lawmakers have acknowledged how upset people are with the current economic moment.
“We always look for ways to put more money in people’s pockets,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said on “Meet the Press.” “And I hear it in Wyoming all the time — at the grocery store, at the gas station — people are paying more and we need to do more.”
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Our picks
- How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation, from David Nakamura and Adam Taylor.
- Trump heads into a week of diplomacy, hampered by a lack of allies, from Michael Birnbaum.
- Trump and sons invest heavily in AI economy as he resists calls for slowdown, from Cat Zakrzewski and Shira Ovide.
- She cheered a teen protest against ICE. Police charged her with a crime, from John Woodrow Cox.
What we’re watching
One would think that with an ongoing war and the midterms mere weeks away, the president would be focused on more pressing topics than barring journalists from the White House.
But one would, well, be wrong.
Trump on Friday said he would block MS NOW, CNN and Politico from White House grounds, a plan he backed up on Saturday when the outlets said their journalists were denied access to the White House grounds and that their press passes were confiscated.
Trump’s orders have set off a debate about the First Amendment.
“The First Amendment extends to White House grounds as strongly if not more than pretty much anywhere,” Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told colleagues Amber Phillips, Scott Nover and Victoria Craw. “It’s the people’s house; it’s the center of government.”
This is certainly not Trump’s first attempt to bar outlets from covering him. He targeted the Associated Press at the start of his second term. His administration at the Pentagon has curtailed media access. In his first term, he tried to bar CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House, but a judge blocked the move.
But the timing is striking. Trump had an undoubtedly bad week, from a Fed rate hike that contributed to higher mortgage costs to growing fears about the midterms to a failed ICE nominee. So the move to bar these journalists may have been an attempt to change the subject.
In your local paper
Missouri Independent: Officials in Missouri are waiting for a final ruling on their congressional map, which Republicans have attempted to gerrymander. Voters have already started receiving mail-in ballots, adding more uncertainty.
Iowa Capital Dispatch: When will the Iran war end? Initially, the conflict was said to be mere weeks. But now that the war has reached its seventh month, Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) is predicting it could last another six months.
From you
Many of you aren’t happy that Congress is already out of session. In fact, we didn’t receive a single email validating House Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision.
“Mike Johnson’s decision to have the House leave early to avoid several important, and for the administration, inconvenient votes is feckless and wrong. They should have a defined minimum number of days to be in session,” wrote Carol Bonkosky.
“I do care,” wrote Rich Kubnkel. “The GOP forcing the congress leaving early just means that they are not doing the job they were elected to be doing! Politicians should NOT be given time to ‘campaign’ as that is not their job! Their JOB is doing things for the country, getting elected should be a workaround to their actual job.”
“You know the saying, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going?’ Well, in the Republican-led House, when the going gets tough, they just leave town,” Mary Ciriello added.
The only response we got that wasn’t outright anger came from those who said Congress is irrelevant.
“It doesn’t matter at all if the House will not be in session until after the elections,” wrote Ellen Seminario. “Donald Trump has made Congress pretty much irrelevant. He does what he wants by Executive order and the Republican majorities of both houses refuse to challenge him on anything.”
Send a reply
I want to know what you think about Trump’s barring certain outlets from the White House. If you support the president, what do you think of this decision? For those of you who do not support the president, what is the right response from Democrats? And should the next Democratic president do the same to other outlets? Former president Barack Obama, in response, described the reaction as “unimaginable” if he tried to do the same to Fox News. Let me and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
Thanks for reading. You can follow me on X at @merica.
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