by Steve Benen | Oct 1, 2026 | 2026 election, elections, Maddowblog, White House
Donald Trump has never taken advantage of the Insurrection Act, although the president has talked about it quite a bit throughout his political career. A year ago this month, during a Fox News interview, the Republican went so far as to say, “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. … and that’s unquestioned power.”
Earlier this year, he also said of the Insurrection Act, “It does make life a lot easier. You don’t through the court system.”
So when Time magazine spoke with the president for a lengthy, newly published interview, it included a question about that unsettling possibility: “Would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms unless there’s widespread violence in the streets?”
“I don’t rule anything out or in,” Trump replied. “We’ll see. You mean the Insurrection Act?”
When Time clarified that it was, in fact, referring to the Insurrection Act, the president added, “No, I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”
At that point, Trump changed the subject, talked about crime rates, and lied about how many undocumented immigrants entered the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The exchange came roughly a month after Trump spoke to a far-right conspiracy theorist, who pitched the president on the idea of unilaterally declaring a national security emergency for the midterm elections — even in the absence of an actual national security emergency — at which point Trump could theoretically impose wildly unnecessary voting restrictions on Americans by fiat and without congressional approval.
“Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said in response to
by Sharon Zhang | Sep 29, 2026 | 2026 election, Chuck Grassley, Iowa, Mitch McConnell, News, Republicans, Senate
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the oldest member of the Senate, has said that he worries Iowa may elect a Democratic governor because that person would pick his replacement if he dies while in office, amid renewed attention on fitness-related concerns due to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Kentucky) prolonged absence from the Senate. “At 93 years of age, I don’t know how many more groups of…
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by Sharon Zhang | Sep 29, 2026 | 2026 election, AI, big tech, China, data centers, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, News
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has dismissed popular concerns among the American public over Big Tech’s hastened buildout of data centers across the U.S. as nothing more than propaganda pushed by the Chinese government. In an interview on AI with Fox Business on Monday, Johnson was asked how he plans to fight back against Democrats seizing on opposition to data centers to attack…
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by Sharon Zhang | Sep 28, 2026 | 2026 election, Department of Defense, Donald Trump, Iran, News, Pentagon, Strait of Hormuz
Eight U.S. Marines were reportedly wounded in an Iranian strike in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this month, a new report says as the Trump administration has rejected Iran’s offer for a new ceasefire deal. U.S. sources told NBC that a cruise missile hit the vessel the Marines were working on on September 14, leading to smoke inhalation and potential traumatic brain injuries, as some of them…
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by Dion Nissenbaum | Sep 28, 2026 | 2026 election, 2026 Elections, 2026 midterms, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Disenfranchisement, elections, midterms, News, SAVE database, Supreme Court, Texas, Trump Administration, Voting Rights
The Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for election officials to resume using a federal immigration status verification system to check voter rolls for potential noncitizens — a significant victory for President Donald Trump’s administration, but one that’s likely to have little impact on the November midterm elections. The unsigned opinion hit pause on a lower court’s ruling from June…
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by Steve Benen | Sep 28, 2026 | 2026 election, elections, Maddowblog, White House
Plenty of Republican officials and candidates have recently overhauled their websites to remove references and images of Donald Trump, but when Rep. Byron Donalds did the same thing, it was a harsh reminder of how just how far the president had fallen.
The Florida congressman, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has been a sycophantic, election-denying Trump loyalist and surrogate in recent years, tying his fortunes directly to his unapologetic embrace of the president. But as Donalds’ gubernatorial campaign in the Sunshine State reaches the homestretch, he and his team nevertheless thought it would be a good idea to start scrubbing his website.
The changes were hardly subtle. The campaign website used to be filled with references to the incumbent president. The Miami Herald reported, “A button to ‘Chip in to Support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds’ was at the top of the homepage. ‘TRUMP-ENDORSED Proven Conservative Fighter. BYRON DONALDS’ was the page’s main text. A yellow banner reading ‘ENDORSED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP!’ marked the middle of the homepage and a prominent section quoting Trump’s 2025 endorsement said ‘RUN, BYRON, RUN!’”
Recently, all of these Trump references have been removed, as was a photo of Donalds and his wife, Erika Donalds, posing with Trump.
The president doesn’t appear to be taking it well. On Saturday, Trump responded to the edits to Donalds’ campaign site with a lengthy, 459-word tirade on his social media platform. It read in part:
Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and Campaign materials. … The story started with the Woke and
