Interesting read from Heather Cox Richardson this morning:
September 18, 2026 (Friday)
According to the American Automobile Association, diesel hit its highest recorded average price today at just above $6.44 per gallon. Diesel moves most of the consumer goods in the United States. Iran’s news agency reported today that a political advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader said Iran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are removed from power.
As the conflict drags on with no coherent U.S. strategy, J.P. Morgan wrote yesterday, “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.” Today Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia has told European refiners that they will not be receiving crude oil next month because of the shutdown of the East-West pipeline.
John Stoehr of The Editorial Board noted that the economic pain of this moment appears to be turning the media against Trump. He called attention to a hard-hitting piece in the Washington Post yesterday by Evan Halper, Rachel Chason, and Joyce Sohyun Lee warning of “huge jumps in the prices of gasoline and diesel…despite the Trump administration’s assurances.”
Trump responded to this shift in coverage this afternoon by announcing he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
Trump’s anger at the press was probably fed today by three scoops.
Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported that this spring, the U.S. military set out to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East after an intelligence report said it was carrying components for a nuclear weapons program. After preparing to board the ship and sending up planes, officials realized that the report had been generated by AI. It was, a source told the reporters, “entirely false.” But it almost “started a war.”
Audrey Decker and Mark Satter of Politico reported that a shipment of F-35 fighter jet parts headed from Australia to the U.S. for repairs this summer was diverted to Hong Kong and disappeared, raising the possibility that China could have accessed key components of a highly classified U.S. weapons system.
Noah Robertson, Tara Copp, Warren P. Strobel, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post reported today that at least four more U.S. service members have died in the Middle East during the Iran war than the Department of Defense has announced. Three military contractors have also died since the combat began.
Trump’s fury at MS NOW might have come from Joe Scarborough, who noted on Morning Joe this morning that the latest Fox News poll showed that people trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle inflation and prices, by 15 points: 55% to 40%. In 2022, the advantage went to Republicans by 49% to 40%. Scarborough noted that Republicans are beginning to break from Trump.
All of these crises—the price crisis, caused by the oil crisis, caused by the Iran crisis, which has created a military crisis while the country is staggering under a deportation crisis—appear finally to be making some Republicans rethink their support for Trump and his policies.
On Monday, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal reported that although Republican lawmakers are celebrating Trump’s tariffs in public, they are privately seeking exemptions from tariffs for manufacturers in their own state. “Tariffs for thee, exemptions for me,” the board wrote in a piece detailing the efforts of Senator Katie Britt of Alabama to stop tariffs in private while praising them in public.
The board explained that this lie shows “why blunderbuss trade wars are an economic mistake, along with how tariffs deepen the D.C. swamp.” Big companies can push their interests through a senator, it noted, but “who speaks for the little guy being walloped?”
In The New Republic, Greg Sargent reported that Trump’s super PAC, called MAGA Inc., has just begun to pour $100 million into the midterms. Sargent notes that they are spending that money in at least 17 districts that Trump won in 2024 by more than five points, including six districts he won by ten points or more. “If those are in danger, then a lot of other seats that are considered similarly safe for Republicans must be on the chopping block,” Larry Sabato, the founder of the nonpartisan political analysis and handicapping newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told Sargent.
Social media user Thomas Long suggested that their investments showed that Republicans had written off districts they had won in 2024 by five points or less and are trying to protect those in the 5- to 15-point range. Sargent agreed, posting: “Very possible that what I'm reporting here is the beginning of Rs starting to write off the Trump +3, +4, +5 districts and now starting to put money into the Trump +8, +9, +10, +12 districts to save those.”
In Kansas, prominent Trump ally Kris Kobach, who is running for reelection as the state’s attorney general, said he has no plans to ask Trump for an endorsement before the midterm elections. “I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. Tim Carpenter of News From the States reports that while Trump carried Kansas by 57.1% of the vote in 2024, an August YouGov/Economist poll showed his job performance rating at –17 in the state.
In Florida, Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a former broadcast journalist and Trump supporter, spoke to the camera in an ad designed to look like she was challenging Trump directly. “Mr. President,” she said, “some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, fifty percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record.” Blaming his advisors rather than Trump, she warned: “Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today…. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty,” she said. “I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land."
Like Salazar, other Republicans are advancing the idea that the problem with the Republican Party these days is a poisonous MAGA element from which they are trying to distance themselves. In Texas the need to create that distance became imperative when Bo French, the Republican candidate to head the Texas Railroad Commission that oversees the oil and gas industry, posted a racist attack on University of Texas football fans. His comments threaten to sour Hispanic voters even further on Republican candidates.
On Wednesday, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who was primaried out of his seat by Trump-backed challenger Ken Paxton, posted a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat.” The op-ed was written by Karl Rove, Republican strategist and senior advisor to President George W. Bush. Rove wrote that the raw racism, religious bigotry, and sexism coming from French has driven him to support French’s Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal, for railroad commissioner.
Rove warned that the racists, "misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots…are diminishing the Republican Party.” “I’ll have no part of it,” he wrote. The Republican Party’s “stables need a cleaning,” he wrote. “This is a good place to start.”
In a second repost of the op-ed, Cornyn quoted: “The GOP’s stables need a cleaning. This is a good place to start.”
On Wednesday, right-wing political blogger Erick Erickson warned of a “group of white guys” who have “subtly inserted themselves into conservative institutions and church organizations,” and “even surround the Vice President of the United States.” “To varying degrees, they embrace white nationalism, antisemitism, and even Nazi sympathies,” he wrote. “Some of them believe the United States is at a tipping point, and they want to push it over the edge and rebuild it in their image.”
Erickson, too, called out Bo French. He also called out Charles Haywood, whose fortune has enabled him to shape boards and institutions, and right-wing broadcaster Nick Fuentes, who is radicalizing young men and urging them to infiltrate the Republican Party. Erickson warned that they are moving into extremism from different directions and that “the institutions of the right are absorbing both without resistance.”
Notably, though, neither Rove, nor Cornyn, nor Erickson called for French to drop out of the race.
In a marked change from usual political divisions, in contests across the country Republican leaders have endorsed Democrats. Megan Cartwright of Newsweek reported that in Texas, more than twenty current and former Republican officials, as well as other party leaders, have endorsed Democrat James Talarico for the U.S. Senate over Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton. One of those endorsing Talarico is Lionel Sosa, who advised President George W. Bush’s campaign.
Republican former senator Jeff Flake of Arizona had endorsed Georgia Democratic senator Jon Ossoff for reelection.
In Kansas, former two-time Republican governor Bill Graves has endorsed Democrat Adam Hamilton for U.S. Senate over sitting Republican senator Roger Marshall.
In Montana, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, Marc Racicot, has endorsed Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidate Sam Forstag.
In Florida, Democratic candidate for governor David Jolly, who was once a Republican member of Congress, has picked up support from a group called “Republicans for Jolly.” The group includes a man who ran for the Republican nomination to run against Jolly.
In the All-In Podcast this week, Vice President J.D. Vance asked voters to “Give us another chance.” Perhaps recognizing that his framing was not one that would inspire confidence, he corrected himself: “Or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.”
The clip of him asking voters for another chance made the rounds in the media. When MS NOW’s Morning Joe showed it, the producers continued the clip to include his second point. He said: “And the second argument I'd make is, even if you don't agree with us on every issue, the other party is consumed by craziness.” At that point, the panel burst out laughing.
The clip continued: “They're consumed by people who want to steal everything, who want to give the country over to illegal aliens and criminals.”
Host Joe Scarborough, who was once a Republican member of Congress himself, apparently couldn’t stand it. “Who want to steal everything?” he echoed. “You work for a guy who has made more trades in the stock market than every member of the House and Senate combined. You work for a guy whose family has made billions and billions of dollars off of so-called public service. We could go down the list, but we don't have over three hours. It’s such a disingenuous thing for you to say.
“And make things better? JD,...you know, I know I wake up early, and sometimes I forget things, but I think it was you in ’24, promising us: ‘Oh, if you’ll only vote for Donald Trump, we'll end those forever wars. He won't take us to war with Iran, but Kamala will.’ Right? Promised that. No more wars, no more stupidity, no more inflation. The Ukraine war would end on the first day.”