The Washington Spectator

In this YouTube portrait produced by Freedom Watch Media, Mark Medish dissects Trump’s plan to undermine the midterms and summarizes the vulnerabilities of our elections system. Medish is co-author of “It’s the Power, Stupid”, the article he wrote with Joel McCleary for The Washington Spectator that forms the basis for this video.

For our series Conversations on the State of Democracy, I sat down with Robert Reich near the Berkeley campus where he has spent a portion of his career. Reich was the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Cabinet, served in the Ford administration and was an economic advisor on Obama’s transition.

The principle [of emergency power] lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. —Justice Robert H. Jackson, dissenting in Korematsu v. United States (1944) The president will do it. The predicate is being laid perfectly” [referring to President Trump’s possible plan to declare a national security emergency around the 2026 midterm elections].

Gasoline prices are rising again, adding to voter concerns about the cost of living. Yet in the Philadelphia region, a new company, Freedom Fuel, is suddenly selling gasoline substantially below its competitors at more than two dozen stations. President Trump has personally promoted Freedom Fuel, and the White House has presented it as evidence that his energy policies are working.

Last October, I wrote in The Washington Spectator that the Trump administration was constructing an integrated system to constrain voting and criminalize political opposition. Claims of election fraud, domestic terrorism, foreign financing and organized political violence were being used broadly to recast the lawful administration of elections, political fundraising, protest against government abuses, and resistance by public officials as either threats to national security or actual crimes.

On April 2, 2025, so-called “Liberation Day”, President Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and put high tariffs on US imports. His base tariff was 10%, but most countries faced higher rates, including 20% for the European Union, and over 40% for Cambodia and Vietnam. Trump has claimed repeatedly that he loves tariffs. Two things can explain this. They let him act like a tough guy, inflicting economic pain on other nations, including long-time US allies.

The recent decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court have only reaffirmed that John Roberts, the Chief Justice, has been assiduously laying the groundwork for two fundamental changes in the American system of self-government that would have been unimaginable during the first 250 years of U.S. history: first, a massive expansion of the powers of the presidency, and second, as if that weren’t bad enough, a judicial push enabling a shift toward autocracy.

The recent decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court have only reaffirmed that John Roberts,...

All of a sudden, during a single week in early June, a Marine sergeant turned oyster farmer named Graham Cunningham Platner, Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine, became the most famous veteran in America. Or, if you prefer, the most infamous. Vets running for elected office have always occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of American voters of both parties. An October 2025 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of American voters have a strong belief in their leadership skills.

Trump produced this latest one through an unprecedented legal maneuver: suing his own government over disclosure of his tax returns, then settling the case through his former criminal defense lawyer, now Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The legality of that settlement is now under active judicial review, even as Trump appears to be backing away from the fund after unusually strong political opposition, including from Republicans in Congress.