Elections Past...

Who would have thought that a primary election in Louisiana was a really big deal? But turns out it is. Politico's headline "Bill Cassidy's fall is a warning sign for other Trump enemies" hits the nail on the head. And if Trump defeats Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) tomorrow (see below), Trump's conversion of the Republican Party to the Trumpublican Party will be complete.

In the event you took off the weekend to do something fun (i.e., a 2-day vacation from politics), Louisiana held partisan primaries on Saturday. Since 1975, Louisiana has held jungle primaries, but the legislature decided to go back to partisan primaries starting this year. In the race for the Republican nomination for the Senate, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA), who has Donald Trump's endorsement, got 45%, Trumpy state Treasurer John Fleming got 28%, and Cassidy got 25%. Letlow and Fleming will meet in a runoff on June 27. Farmer Jamie Davis came in first in the Democratic primary with 47%, but the second and third place candidates are separated by only 284 votes, so there could be a recount to see which one makes the runoff. It doesn't actually matter though, since Letlow is already busy planning how she will decorate her Senate office.

In Trump's eyes, Cassidy's mortal sin was voting to convict him in 2021 after his second impeachment. Cassidy made it worse when he asked nasty questions of Robert Kennedy Jr. during Kennedy's confirmation hearing. Cassidy, a physician, ultimately voted for Kennedy's confirmation (against his better judgment), but Trump not only demands total loyalty in everyone's actions, he insists that they pretend they really mean it as well. Grudgingly supporting him is almost as bad as not supporting him. Cassidy had a massive war chest, but that wasn't enough against Trump's endorsement.

In the long run, Trump will get the last laugh. But maybe not in the medium run. Cassidy will remain a member of the Senate until Jan. 3, 2027, along with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whom Trump also forced into retirement, clearing the way for Democrat Roy Cooper to probably become the next senator from North Carolina. Both Cassidy and Tillis are now free agents who don't have to worry about appeasing the President anymore. Neither does Sen. Addison Mitchell McTurtle (R-KY), who is retiring for health reasons. On specific bills, they may be able to lasso Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to vote with them against Trump, because Collins is in the fight of her life this year and needs to show Maine independents that she is not Trump's puppet. Also, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are not likely to be cowed by Cassidy's defeat. Both are up in 2028. Paul is very stubborn and Trump can't defeat Murkowski in the 2028 Republican primary because there won't be one. Alaska has gone over to an open primary followed by a top-four ranked choice general election, so Democrats and independents will ultimately decide her fate. Most of them will rank her second, after the Democratic candidate.

Cassidy, it should be noted, ran a terrible campaign. His campaign materials generally made a point of identifying him as Doctor Bill Cassidy, and not Senator Bill Cassidy. The obvious subtext there is "I'm a guy who knows public health, and makes that my priority." But, as he showed with his RFK Jr. vote, that is clearly not true. So, for non-MAGA voters, the "Doctor" bit just underscores what a phony he is. And for MAGA voters, it underscores that even if Cassidy supported Trump, he didn't really mean it. That was a spectacularly bad choice of messaging. And the proof is in the pudding. Despite wide name recognition and vast amounts of money at his disposal, he didn't even make it to the runoff, much less the general election. He is the first sitting senator to be primaried in 14 years (i.e., since Dick Lugar got primaried by Richard Mourdock in Indiana in 2012). Clearly, the Senator is not related to (fictional cowboy) Hopalong Cassidy, since Hopalong always won HIS battles.

Meanwhile, Trump is definitely feeling his oats. He called Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) weak-minded and invited people to challenge her in her primary. She has been one of his strongest supporters as long as she has been in Congress. But she broke with him on one issue: the Epstein files, which her constituents want released. Now she is persona non grata. Republicans need to learn that being with Trump 99% of the time or 99.9% of the time or 99.99% of the time doesn't hack it. The only number that works is 100%. And 100% with enthusiasm, at that. (V)

...And Elections Future

There are primary elections in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania tomorrow, but one of them dwarfs all the others: the Republican primary in KY-04. It contains Cincinnati suburbs on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River as well as rural areas to the east and west. The incumbent is Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a Trump critic and big fan of getting all the Epstein files out there. Trump hates Massie more than he hates any Democrat and absolutely wants to take him down. Trump hates Massie even more than he hates Bill Cassidy, and that is a whole lot of hate, since Cassidy's "sin" was to try to kick Trump out of office. Trump's allies have dumped so much money into this race it has become the most expensive House primary in history, with $26 million spent.

Trump recruited former Navy SEAL and local farmer Ed Gallrein, endorsed him, and helped him. Massie is well known and well liked in the district, but will that be enough to withstand the Trump onslaught? If Gallrein wins, especially after Cassidy's defeat Saturday, no Republican who opposes Trump is safe (except maybe senators not up until 2030, and maybe not even them). The entire House and Senate Republican caucuses will sit down in front of Trump and beg like well-trained dogs. He will be unstoppable. The country will be doomed. On the other hand, if Massie wins, especially if he wins big, some Republicans may actually go look to see if they can find where they put their spines. For the record, Kentucky primaries are closed, so non-Republicans who want to poke Trump in the eye can't vote for Massie, unless they happened to re-register in time. Nope, the Representative will have to survive largely based on the votes of actual Republicans.

If Trump defeats both Cassidy and Massie, the conversion of the GOP from the center-right political party of Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and two Bushes into a cult of personality that would make Chairman Mao blush will be complete. That may continue until after the midterms, at which point Trump officially becomes a lame duck. Then what? After Mao died in 1976, China was plunged into chaos. Will that happen to the Republican Party when Trump leaves office? Or maybe even in 2028? Will there be a power struggle between the Trumpists (led by J.D. Vance), the pretend Trumpists (led by Marco Rubio), the non-Trumpists (led by Gov. Brian Kemp, R-GA) and maybe other groups? We certainly don't know. But we do know that when Mao died, there was a huge power struggle. The "gang of four," which supported Mao, was arrested and imprisoned, and the ultimate winner of the struggle, Deng Xiaoping, quietly, but firmly, erased everything Mao stood for and wanted. The problem with cults is that they generally last only as long as the leader lasts (with the Kims in North Korea and the Duvaliers in Haiti being among the rare exceptions).

Also up in Kentucky is the seat of Mitch McConnell, who is finally going gentle into that good night. The main Republicans running are Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), Trump's favorite, and AG Daniel Cameron, who is Black. On the Democratic side it is former state Rep. Charles Booker, Marine Corps vet Amy McGrath (who ran before and lost) and a bunch of minor players. The smart money says Barr will beat Booker in the general election.

The Alabama election is a mess since the state just got the green light from the Supreme Court to redraw the map at the last minute to eliminate one or both majority-minority districts. The voters don't understand what is going on and we are not sure candidates do either. Nor do the judges. On Friday there will be a hearing about the map.

In Georgia, a key race is the one for the Republican Senate nomination. Running are Reps. Buddy Carter (R-GA) and Mike Collins (R-GA). Also in the mix is Derek Dooley, a football coach who lives in Tennessee. Dooley has the support of Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA). Polls have Collins solidly ahead, but there will probably be a runoff. The winner will face Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). This will be a knock-down, drag-out battle, with the Republicans throwing everything they have at Ossoff. Well, OK, maybe that is what will happen. If Ossoff looks to be unbeatable, then the GOP might redirect its resources elsewhere, since it has much territory to defend, and Georgia is just a "bonus" that won't matter if the Republicans can hold on to the seats they already have.

The open Republican primary in GA-11 is interesting. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) is retiring and his former chief of staff, Rob Adkerson, wants his former boss' job. So does Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore. Other candidates include a county chair, Chris Mora, and a neurosurgeon, John Cowan. Trump hasn't endorsed in the race. It's R+12, so whichever Republican makes it to the general will succeed Loudermilk.

At the state level, the gubernatorial race is a humdinger and early turnout has been enormous (see below for more).

Georgia also has three state Supreme Court justices up for reelection. In the past, nobody cared much about these races, but after the blowout in Wisconsin, this one is very much in the news. Nominally, Georgia Supreme Court justices are nonpartisan, but nobody believes that anymore. They are just politicians who wear robes at work. Most states have a seven-justice Supreme Court, but Georgia has a nine-justice court. Here is the current composition.

Name	Age	Started	Term ends	Appointed by	Law school
Nels Peterson (Chief Justice)	47	January 1, 2017	2030	Nathan Deal (R)	Harvard
Sarah Hawkins Warren (Presiding Justice)	44	September 17, 2018	2026	Nathan Deal (R)	Duke
Charlie Bethel	50	October 2, 2018	2026	Nathan Deal (R)	Georgia
John Ellington	65	December 19, 2018	2030	Elected	Georgia
Carla Wong McMillian	52	April 10, 2020	2028	Brian Kemp (R)	Georgia
Shawn Ellen LaGrua	63 or 64	January 7, 2021	2028	Brian Kemp (R)	Georgia State
Verda Colvin	60	July 29, 2021	2028	Brian Kemp (R)	Georgia
Andrew Pinson	39-40	July 20, 2022	2030	Brian Kemp (R)	Georgia
Benjamin Land	58	July 24, 2025	2026	Brian Kemp (R)	Georgia

All but John Ellington are Republican appointees. Ellington was elected and appears to be nonpartisan. The Court is thus 8-0-1 for the Republicans. Three Republican appointees are up tomorrow: Sarah Warren, Charlie Bethel and Ben Land. Warren and Bethel have opponents. Land is unopposed. If there is a blue wave and two Democrats are elected, that will change the Court to 6-2-1. That won't flip any results, but in 2028, three more Republican appointees are up. Tomorrow's races are not primaries for a November election. The winners will be seated immediately. Justices serve 6-year terms.

Warren is being challenged by Jen Jordan, a former Democratic state senator. Bethel, a former Republican state senator, is being challenged by Miracle Rankin, the former president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys. Despite the official nonpartisan nature of the elections, groups aligned with the Democrats and Republicans are pouring money into the races. The political nature of the races is further emphasized by the fact that all the candidates except Land have campaign managers.

There isn't much to see in Idaho—just which Republican will win each office. Oregon is the mirror image of its neighbor. Gov. Tina Kotek (D-OR) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) are running for reelection and it barely matters who the Republicans nominate in both races. They will be crushed.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is a shoo-in for another term and there is no race for the Senate. However, there is a battle in the Democratic primary in PA-07. This is an R+1 district covering Bethlehem and Allentown and represented in the House by Rep. Ryan MacKenzie (R-PA). Nevertheless, Democrats smell blood in the water, and four of them have filed: president of the Firefighters Union Bob Brooks, former DoJ prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, former Senate staffer Carol Obando-Derstine and progressive Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure. Republicans have been not-so-secretly helping McClure, whom they see as the weakest candidate.

Also of interest is the Pennsylvania General Assembly, where the Republicans have a 27-23 majority in the Senate and the Democrats have a 102-99 majority in the House, with two vacancies, both in red districts. There are 27 districts with a contested Democratic primary and 25 districts with a contested Republican primary. In the others, the incumbent has not drawn any challengers. There are eight open seats in the House, four with a Democrat and four with a Republican. There are no open seats in the Senate. This means either or both chambers could flip in November.

Next week we have a biggie: the runoff between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ken Paxton. That could determine control of the next Senate. (V)

Democrats Are Worried Bottoms Will End up on Top

Georgia Democrats see a once-in-a-generation chance to win the governorship of the Peach State. Brian Kemp is term limited and they have seven primary candidates from which the voters can choose. Only, many Democrats don't like the one with a huge lead in the polls. That would be former judge, mayor of Atlanta and White House adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Many Democratic strategists are worried about how she ran Atlanta during the pandemic and how that could be an albatross around her neck in the general election. They expect that if Bottoms gets the nomination, Republicans will make the entire campaign about some of the unpopular things she did as mayor and also the increase in crime during the pandemic. One long-time Democratic strategist said: "The Republicans will eat her for lunch. The Republicans are begging us to nominate her." The strategist also felt that if Bottoms is the gubernatorial nominee, that could hurt the entire ticket, including Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who is running for a second term. On the other hand, her campaign spokesman pointed out that Bottoms brought nine Fortune 500 companies to Atlanta and left the city with a $180 million budget surplus.

This could be the Democrats' last shot at all the levers of power. Kemp is planning to redraw all the congressional and state legislative districts for 2028, which could lock Democrats out of power for years to come.

The polling shows that three of the other contenders are in a statistical tie for second place, 30 points behind Bottoms. They are former DeKalb County Executive Michael Thurmond, progressive state Sen. Jason Esteves and moderate Republican-turned-Democrat Geoff Duncan. If the three of them and the other minor candidates can hold Bottoms below 50%, there will be a runoff. In that case, if all the anti-Bottoms voters go for the non-Bottoms candidate, she could be defeated. If Bottoms advances past the primary and wins the general, it would be historic: the first Black woman elected governor of a state anywhere in the country. However, nonwhite women have been elected as governor, namely, Nikki Haley (South Carolina, 2010), Susana Martinez (New Mexico, 2010), and Michelle Lujan Grisham (New Mexico, 2018). Haley is an Indian-American; Martinez and Grisham are Latinas.

On the Republican side, billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson is polling at 28%, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R-GA) is at 25% and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is third at 14%. Jackson is not without his own problems. He is 71 and healthcare executives are only slightly more popular than used-car dealers. The way he got to be on top in the polling is that he has already spent $50 million of his own money and plans to spend plenty more. But in the general election, attacking a healthcare executive when people are fuming about the cost of healthcare could be like shooting fish in a barrel. Also, Jones has Donald Trump's endorsement, which is always helpful in Republican primaries.

The Democrats may be crying a bit too early. Polls have Bottoms solidly beating both Jackson and Jones by 6 points and (barely) beating Raffensperger by 2 points. Despite Bottoms' problems with what happened when she was mayor (including riots after the killing of George Floyd), against a hated healthcare executive, she might have a decent shot, despite the massive ad blitz Jackson would unleash against her. We think that Bottoms vs. Jones could go either way. (V)

The Day the Music Died

Future historians may record May 14, 2026, as the day the leader of the United States, the greatest superpower in the history of the world, acknowledged that the country was declining (because of Joe Biden) and its geopolitical rival, China, was ascending and was now at least equal to the U.S. That is all Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted from his meeting with Donald Trump and he got it. Advantage Xi.

From 1945 to 2026, the U.S. ran the world. Yes, Russia was there, too, but was always basically a gas station with nuclear weapons. Its GDP is roughly $2.7 trillion vs. $20.9 trillion for China and $32.4 trillion for the U.S. China hasn't yet reached full parity with the U.S. economically, but in many ways, such as the hundreds of "dark factories" (fully automated factories with no people there so there's no need for lights), China is ahead of the U.S. How did America's decline happen so fast? Future historians will have to write this up, but here is a very rough first cut:

• About 66 million years ago, the southeast was covered by a shallow sea.
• When sea levels dropped, left behind was deep rich black soil, the Black Belt, ideal for growing cotton.
• The 19th century industrial revolution in England created an unlimited demand for cotton.
• Cotton production is difficult and labor intensive, so Southern states used enslaved people to do the hard work.
• When the enslaved people were freed, white Americans in the South resented them.
• They also hated brown-skinned immigrants.
• In 2024, they re-elected a totally corrupt president who promised to send the immigrants back home.
• Geopolitics was way above aforementioned president's pay grade and he just let China run rampant, unimpeded.

How's that for a summary in eight bullet points? OK, we left some details for future historians, but you get the idea. The meeting with Xi was a disaster for Trump from the get-go. For China, Taiwan was the main issue of the summit, since it sees the island as a breakaway province of China that it wants back. When reporters asked Trump if he discussed Taiwan with Xi, all he had to say was "China is beautiful." Here is a photo of a humiliated Trump and a blasé Xi:

Xi is 5'10"; Trump claims to be 6'3". Maybe Trump forgot to bring the lifts in his shoes or maybe he loaned them to another lift user, his sometimes-buddy Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).

At the end of the meeting, the nominal author of the ghostwritten The Art of the Deal had no major deals to announce. Yes, China "promised" to buy some more Boeing airplanes and U.S. soybeans, but nothing that would slow China's advance in the South China Sea or anywhere else. Not even a trade deal of "AI chips for rare earths." Trump seemed to think he was the U.S. Trade Representative and his job was making business deals. Actually, that is Jamieson Greer's job.

Trump talked about a "G2"—the two great nations, America and China, leaving out the rest of the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.). Xi, a much better diplomat than Trump, did not use the term because he is hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month and doesn't want to rub it in Putin's face that Russia's GDP puts it between Italy and Brazil, barely in the top ten worldwide. Here are the "G2" leaders at the little negotiating table. Quick quiz: Which one looks confident and in charge and which one looks dejected and hopeless (answer below)?

What Xi did talk about is the Thucydides Trap, in which a rising power threatens an established power, which leads to war. Trump didn't appear to understand that Xi knows Western history better than he does.

After Trump arrived home, he headed directly to a safe space: Fox. There he said he and Xi "settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn't have been able to solve." However, he didn't mention any solutions or even points of agreement. Among topics where there weren't any agreements are Iran, Taiwan, trade, rare earths and human rights. In short, Trump is a classic bully. He is tough when confronting much weaker opponents, like Venezuela and Cuba (and also Bill Cassidy), but when faced with an opponent roughly equal in power, like China, he cowers under the table like a frightened child. The message to the world should be that if you stand up to Trump, you get a free TACO.

Answer to the quiz above: The one on the left is dejected. The one on the right is confident. He knows he is the boss. (V)

Trump Doubles Down on Dismissing Affordability

Donald Trump is probably spending too much effort going after his "enemies" like Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie, and not enough effort paying attention to what his base wants. People outside Louisiana don't care about Cassidy's fate and people outside KY-04 don't even know who Massie is. Everyone else cares about affordability. It is the new key word politicians have to learn to talk about. In the right way. Just before going to China, a reporter asked Trump "To what extent are Americans' financial situation motivating you to make a deal?" Trump said: "Not even a little bit." Bad answer. Watch:

Then he goes on to say that all that matters is Iran not getting a nuclear weapon. But in the Democrats' ads this fall, only the first 9 seconds will be shown, ending with his answering the question with "Not even a little bit." For effect, the ads could repeat the "Not even a little bit" part a couple of times. The pitch could be "Democrats care about you. Republicans don't care about you, not even a little bit."

That was bad enough. On Friday, Trump doubled down and again said: "I don't think about Americans' financial situations. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon." That was so off-key that even Fox covered the story. This is political malpractice and will be the interview that launched 1,000 ads. He could have said: "On the domestic front, my top priority is affordability. In foreign affairs, we can't let Iran get a nuclear weapon." Many previous presidents could walk and chew gum at the same time. This one apparently can't. This has to be a golden opportunity for the Democrats—to use those 9 seconds to pound on an issue the voters care a lot about. It is one thing to say: "There is not much any president can do about the economy." It is something quite different to say "I don't care about your financial situation." Bill Clinton famously said: "I feel your pain." Trump doesn't even recognize that millions of voters are in pain. (V)

Ballroom Beaten in Byrd Bath

Republicans are working on a new reconciliation bill to fund ICE. However, the temptation is always there to turn every bill into a Christmas tree and hang shiny ornaments from it. This time, they are trying to sneak in $1 billion for a room which Donald Trump wants to use to hold his balls. Even in the Senate, $1 billion is noticeable. However, reconciliation bills may not contain items that are not primarily about the budget. The way this works is that Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, gives the bill what is known as a "Byrd bath" to see if any non-budget items are lurking in there. She did that and discovered the $1 billion is for what is essentially a real estate project, not primarily budgetary, and is not allowed. Senate rules are so complicated that MacDonough has a staff of 6 people who try to help her understand them.

The parliamentarian's ruling is not binding. The full Senate could vote to overrule her, but Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) understands that once the Senate starts overruling MacDonough, who is widely respected among the senators for being honest and fair, the next time the Democrats have the trifecta, they will put Medicare for All, Voting Rights, abortion, and many other pet items in their first reconciliation bill, let her say that is not allowed, then overrule her. Thune doesn't want that.

What will Thune do now? He could try to tweak the bill to somehow get MacDonough to approve it. That won't be easy, but if he can't convince her, it is going to put him on a collision course with Trump. The Donald wants the taxpayers to pay for his ballroom so he can keep the $400 million various friendly billionaires "donated" to the ballroom project.

Another potential problem is that even a reconciliation bill needs 51 votes in the Senate. One could imagine that Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy are in no mood for helping Trump with his vanity project now. Rand Paul is a budget hawk and may also refuse to get on board. If Susan Collins votes for it, Graham Platner is going to hang it around her neck. Maybe Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) will save Trump's bacon.

If Trump has to surrender the $400 million in donations he got to pay for the actual construction, he is going to be in a foul mood for a long time. Also, if the ballroom is paid for by private donations, it may be much easier (legally) for a subsequent president to have it demolished than if it is government property (although Trump simply ordered the East Wing to be demolished, even though it was government property). (V)

The Epstein Files Are Now Available Incarnate

What with Donald Trump trying to defeat Thomas Massie tomorrow on account of Massie co-sponsoring "The Epstein Files Transparency Act," there could hardly be a better time for an exhibition of the Epstein files. Indeed, in a TriBeCa gallery in lower Manhattan at 101 Reade St, very close to where Epstein was found dead in his cell in 2019, there is an exhibition of the printed files. Here it is:

The files have been printed and bound in 2 inch-thick books. There are 3,437 books. They weigh 8 tons. And these are just the files that have been released. Many people suspect there are other files that have not been released. The project is called the "Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room" because Trump's name appears thousands of times in the files.

One of the project's backers, David Garrett, said: "When I'm looking at my phone and I see a cat video, an ICE raid, my aunt's birthday cake, and evidence of the worst crime in 250 years of American history, and it's all kind of in the same feed, it all sort of takes the same weight. You lose context." The exhibition also contains small artificial candles dedicated to the survivors. There is also a bulletin board where visitors can post comments. One of the survivors, Danielle Bensky, said she was moved by the exhibition. Garrett said the exhibition cost in the low six figures. (V)

Poor Kevin

Well, not literally. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh was an executive director of M & A at Morgan Stanley and has a net worth of over $135 million, and probably closer to $200 million, although this is a pittance compared to his wife's $2 billion (she is the granddaughter of Estée Lauder). He is by far the richest Fed chairman ever, and has a lot of skin in the game. For 10 years his dream has been to be Fed chairman. But now he made it, and it is a poisoned apple.

Donald Trump rammed Warsh's nomination through for one and only one reason: to get interest rates down, because that is good for the real estate business. Unfortunately, inflation is shooting up, and if Warsh lowers interest rates, inflation will skyrocket, the market will tank, and Poor Kevin's investments will lose a lot of their value. He knows that. Catherine Rampell summed up his situation by saying: Warsh is very, very cooked. Here is Warsh's problem in the form of a graph:

The graph above shows the market yield on new 30-year treasuries at the initial auction and the fixed interest rate. Interest rates are not legally required to track the market, but if the Fed says "NO!" to the market, bad things happen. So, in practice, the official interest rate tends to track the market. Right now, investors think there will be inflation ahead so they want to be adequately compensated for buying government bonds. They think that 5% would be nice.

This is why Warsh's goose is cooked. If he does what his boss orders him to do (try to lower interest rates), he will discover that he is only one vote of 12 in the Open Market Committee and Jerome Powell is another. There is a good chance that the 10 other members will listen to Powell and vote to raise rates rather than lower them, to head off ruinous inflation. This will make Warsh look weak and Trump sees weakness as fatal. If Warsh's negotiating skills are better than we think they are and he gets his way, inflation will surge, markets will tank, and Trump will be furious with Warsh. If Warsh listens to Powell and the other members and holds rates steady or raises them, Trump will also be furious with Warsh. Rampell can't think of any scenario that saves Warsh's hide.

We are not economists (although V did take Economics 101 from Paul Samuelson himself, and so knows about guns and butter), but we do know something about politics. If Warsh gives in to Trump and gets interest rates down, inflation will surge and the voters Will. Not. Like. It. If you are not sure about this, send Joe Biden an e-mail and ask him. Inflation raises corporate costs, forcing companies to raise prices, which reduces sales and profits, driving the stock market down. Trump definitely does not like it when the stock market is collapsing. If Warsh defies Trump and raises interest rates, inflation may be tamed, but it could cause a recession. In 1991, after winning the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush hit the other Bush line (89% approval). In 1992, there was a recession and he lost reelection to an unknown small-state governor nobody had ever heard of. Voters don't like recessions either. It is the job of the Fed chairman to navigate these difficult waters to avoid both inflation and recession. Being constantly afraid of being indicted by the DoJ on some bogus charge because the president is furious doesn't make the job any easier. (V)

The FiveThirtyEight Archives Have Gone Poof

Nate Silver created the FiveThirtyEight blog in 2008 to analyze politics using mathematical models to predict elections. He became quite well known and in 2010 moved over to The New York Times on a 3-year contract. When that ran out in 2013, Silver and his team moved to The Walt Disney company's ESPN division. In 2018, Disney moved the site to its ABC News division. It was shut down in March 2025 (for unexplained reasons), but all the archived posts remained online.

At least, they remained online for a while. All of a sudden, on Friday, all the archives are gone. When ABC News was asked why they were removed, it refused to answer.

Silver didn't take the deletion well. He blasted the ABC bosses as a "bunch of a-holes." His 538 colleague Nathaniel Rakich said: "ABC News has now taken all FiveThirtyEight articles completely offline. They now redirect to abcnews dot com/politics. A needless erasure of thousands of pages of knowledge." Silver tried to buy FiveThirtyEight back from ABC but the company refused.

It is hard to imagine the disk space for storing the posting was an issue. We don't know how much space they took up, but our entire content for the election year 2024, including postings, graphs, data, everything, was 800 MB. A modern 4-TB disk costs about $150, so 4 GBs of storage is 15¢ and 800 MB is 3¢. We suspect the archives were not killed because ABC couldn't afford the storage and we doubt FiveThirtyEight's content was more than pennies/year in storage costs. While there still was traffic to the site by reporters looking for historical data, we very much doubt the load on ABC's server was the problem.

It was very likely political. In April 2023, ABC fired Silver and later replaced him with G. Elliott Morris, another political statistician. Morris said that he and teammates fought with ABC to get it to keep the archives, but he lost that fight. It cost ABC virtually nothing to maintain a valuable historical record and the people involved argued strongly for keeping it (i.e., it wasn't removed due to some clerical error). We don't know what really happened.

So time for some wild, unfounded conspiracy theories. Well, conspiracy questions. Who might want to erase some detailed election history? We have no idea. And why would ABC, that bastion of support for the First Amendment, give in to pressure to do the erasing? They're not trying to merge with anyone right now. So it is a real mystery.

Now us. Every front page we have ever posted since May 24, 2004, is still online. If you go to our index page, which you can find near the bottom of the Data galore page listed on the menu to the left of the map, you will find links to the site roughly every quarter we published. We were often dark between elections in the past, which is why there are gaps. To find a specific page, click on the closest date on the index page then edit the URL in the address bar. For example, today's URL is:

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Senate/Maps/May18.html

To go to, say, June 2, 2018, edit that to

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2018/Senate/Maps/Jun02.html

The file name is always three letters for the month, two digits for the date, and then .html . For presidential cycles, replace "Senate" with "Pres". In the distant past, there were not postings every day and the URL format was different. For example, Senate pages before 2013 had "dates" like "May18-s" to distinguish Senate pages from presidential pages. Remember, like so many software projects, this one was hacked together in a few days on a lark. (V) didn't expect it to last until August 2004, let alone until 2026. He also didn't expect to be getting 600,000 visitors a day in Nov. 2004, more traffic than CNN. The COBOL programmers in 1965 thought that there was no ambiguity in listing some employee's birthdate as 04-06-20 in a corporate record since they didn't expect the program to last until 2020. A lot of software just grows like Topsy.

Another way to navigate the site is to use the three links "2022 2018 2014" at the bottom of the legend box to the right of the map. If there was a page then, the link will go to it. In many cases for 2014, there is no page, but if you try the day after or the day after that, there could be a page.

Unlike Nate Silver, we have never sold out. A while back, HuffPost tried to convince us to move over to its site. We felt that we couldn't guarantee our editorial independence if we were a small cog in a big machine, so we politely declined. (V)

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---The Votemaster and Zenger