by Steve Benen | Dec 30, 2025 | Maddowblog, Politics
In an interview with Politico last week, Donald Trump reflected on what he believes will be the key issue in the 2026 midterm elections. “It’ll be about pricing,” the president said.
As part of the same exchange, the Republican talked about the cost of “energy,” before getting more specific. “Electricity is down. It’s way down,” Trump said. “You know, when the gasoline goes down and when the oil and oil and gas go down, the electricity comes down naturally. But it’s all coming down. It’s all coming down. It’s coming beautifully.”
American consumers would likely be delighted if their president were telling the truth, but he’s not.
As the editorial board of The New York Times recently explained, “Electricity prices are almost 10 percent higher than they were a year earlier, according to the most recent numbers.”
The editorial conceded that multiple factors have contributed to the rising costs, but the Times’ editors added that the Republican administration’s energy policies “are not helping — and will soon make matters worse.”
A new report in The Wall Street Journal pointed in the same direction.
Most Americans are paying more for electricity — and need to prepare their wallets for further pain ahead.
Data centers are getting much of the blame lately for rising power costs, but they aren’t the only catalyst and don’t always cause increases. The reasons our bills are rising are complex and varied. Hurricanes, wildfires, state renewable-energy plans and the replacement of aging or damaged grid equipment are all playing a role.
As a candidate on the campaign trail last year, Trump seemed to recognize the political potency of this issue, which led to make some
by Steve Benen | Dec 22, 2025 | Congress, Maddowblog, Politics
In an unexpected series of events in mid-November, Congress easily approved the Epstein Files Transparency Act, giving the Justice Department just 30 days to disclose voluminous evidence related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. The intended goal was to force full transparency by Friday, December 19.
As the deadline arrived, proponents had reason to be disappointed: Donald Trump’s DOJ, facing accusations of a systemic cover-up, released a variety of documents late last week, but the disclosures were incomplete; the materials were heavily redacted; and then the Justice Department subsequently removed a handful of photos from its online collection, including one showing Trump with unidentified women.
Among the many questions on the table is what the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act intend to do next. The answer is quickly coming into focus. NBC News reported:
Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Sunday they are committed to holding Justice Department officials accountable for their failure to release all eligible Jeffrey Epstein files by Friday’s deadline, saying they’re speaking with members of Congress about holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt.
“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” the Kentucky Republican said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
While there’s some recent precedent for people facing contempt of Congress charges (see Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, for example), “inherent contempt” isn’t quite the same thing.
In theory, Khanna and Massie could try pushing a resolution to hold the attorney general in contempt of Congress, but in practice, such an effort would almost certainly end in failure: Not only would the
by Steve Benen | Dec 22, 2025 | Maddowblog, Politics
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has spent the year struggling with a lack of credibility. In fact, it’s been lost on no one that he probably shouldn’t even have his Justice Department leadership post, given that the Republican lawyer’s only relevant experience is having served as one of Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorneys.
What’s more, as 2025 progressed, Blanche didn’t exactly cover himself in glory, as his handling of the Eric Adams and Ghislaine Maxwell cases helped demonstrate.
But as Main Justice faces new accusations of a systemic cover-up regarding the Jeffrey Epstein files, the deputy AG has spent recent days trying to use his position to tamp down an intensifying controversy, which would be an easier task if Blanche were a more believable figure.
On Sunday, for example, the president’s former lawyer struggled with questions about the Justice Department removing photos from its online collection of newly released Epstein-related documents, including one showing Trump with unidentified women. Blanche’s answers about moving Maxwell, a convicted sex offender, to a minimum-security prison weren’t much better.
But there was another exchange that stood out for me. The New York Times reported:
Kristen Welker, the moderator on ‘Meet the Press,’ raised the criminal cases filed against the former F.B.I. director James Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James — charges that were dismissed last month when a judge found that the prosecutor who brought them had been unlawfully put in that job by the Trump administration.
That appointment was made, and those criminal charges were filed, after Mr. Trump forced out his own prosecutor in Virginia, Erik S. Siebert, who had concluded that the evidence did not support
by Steve Benen | Dec 18, 2025 | Maddowblog, Politics
Democrats spent much of 2025 reminding the House Republican majority of one thing: Without congressional action, tens of millions of American consumers would lose their existing ACA subsidies and face dramatic spikes in their health care coverage.
But as the year comes to an end, Speaker Mike Johnson and his GOP leadership team have decided not to act. Last week, House Republicans unveiled what they described as a “plan” to address rising costs, which was actually more of a hodgepodge of loosely connected conservative ideas than a serious, cohesive policy proposal.
On Wednesday afternoon, the chamber advanced the package on a 216-211 vote. (Every House Democrat opposed the proposal, and they were joined by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.) If Senate GOP leaders even bother to take up the legislation, which is by no means a certainty, it is very likely to be discarded.
With House members heading home until the new year, the developments practically guarantee that Republicans will allow the current insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to expire at midnight on Dec. 31. Though precise tallies vary, independent analyses show that the change will punish between 22 million and 24 million American consumers.
To hear the House speaker tell it, that’s just not that many people.
MIKE JOHNSON: Here’s the false narrative — Democrats are pretending as though this affects everybody in the country. It affects 7% of Americans, this extended subsidyCNBC: But we are talking 22 to 24 million AmericansJOHNSON: We’re going to help 100% of Americans reduce their premiums— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-12-17T14:44:34.001Z
During a Wednesday morning appearance on CNBC, the Louisiana Republican complained that Democrats are pushing a
by Steve Benen | Dec 18, 2025 | Maddowblog, Politics
When it comes to altering the White House, it’s been a busy year for Donald Trump. The incumbent president decided, for example, to pave the Rose Garden. He has taken a borderline-unhealthy interest in interior decorating, including bringing in his “gold guy” to add gold finishes to just about everything in the Oval Office.
The Republican also installed a flagpole that the president seemed awfully excited about, he boasted about “ripping” apart the tile in the bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom, he installed a mirror and bronze lettering at the entrance to the West Wing, and he turned the Oval Office study into a depot for “TRUMP 2028” merch, as if it were a cheap gift shop at a Trump-owned property.
Then his ambitions took a more destructive turn: Trump tore down the entirety of the East Wing, despite having promised not to do so, to make room for a giant ballroom vanity project.
But to fully appreciate just how ridiculous the overhaul has become, consider what Trump has done to the colonnade at the White House exterior on the south side of the mansion.
In September, the Republican installed what was billed as a “Presidential Walk of Fame,” featuring images of American presidents. Predictably, the gaudy display was turned into an exercise in juvenile political trolling: Where there was supposed to be an image of Joe Biden, there’s a framed photograph of an autopen.
This week, it got worse. NBC News reported:
The White House has installed plaques on the exterior of the building bashing President Donald Trump’s predecessors, including Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and promoting disinformation about their administrations.
The plaques were
by Steve Benen | Dec 18, 2025 | Maddowblog, Politics
The idea behind a year-end presidential address isn’t necessarily unreasonable. In late December, it stands to reason that White House officials would take a moment to pause and reflect and to take stock of the year that was, to give the public an assessment of their performance.
That is, in theory.
In practice, Donald Trump’s year-end prime-time address presented the American public with 18 minutes of combative presidential blame-shifting and excuse-making, packaged in the unsubtle desperation of a man who doesn’t seem to understand why so much of the public doesn’t appreciate his systemic failures and embarrassments.
But above all, the Republican president did what he always does: He lied uncontrollably. In fact, his speech was so littered with brazen falsehoods that it was rather easy to come up with a top 10 list.
#10: “Already, I’ve secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States.” It’d be great if that were true, but it’s not.
#9: “Our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people.” That total wasn’t even close to being true.
#8: “I was elected in a landslide.” No, he wasn’t.
#7: “The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33% compared to the Biden last year.” Is he still peddling this nonsense? Evidently, yes, though it’s still not true.
#6: Trump said the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed this year included, among other things, “no tax on Social Security.” That might sound nice, but that wasn’t actually a part of the far-right package.
#5: “When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country.” Trump says this all
