“Got to be Better and Bear Down” | Alex Tuch After Loss to Colorado

A political expert issued a dark warning on Monday as the country prepares for the November midterms.

President Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to meddle in the 2026 midterms. He has called on the Postal Service to create a national voter database and send mail-in ballots only to people on that list, a move that the courts have upheld thus far. He has also repeatedly called on Republicans to pass the SAVE American Act, a bill that would rewrite the way U.S. elections are conducted.

David Rothkopf, a political analyst and columnist for The Daily Beast, argued during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" that Trump has weakened America's election security infrastructure and plans to use that to his advantage in the midterms.

“Buckle up, everybody,” Rothkopf warned. “The next 90 days are going to be a weird and wild ride.”

One looming issue for the midterms is that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on an appeal the Trump administration filed regarding new rules it set for mail-in ballots. Experts have speculated that the Court could rule on it using the so-called shadow docket, an emergency procedure that allows the court to issue a ruling without explaining its rationale.

Rothkopf noted that the efforts are all part of Trump's continued efforts to stay in power, which appear to be failing.

“Donald Trump is drowning in failure,” Rothkopf said. “Nothing he says or does is working anymore. And so he’s got to try these wild schemes to distract from it, to get attention, to hope it disrupts something.”

President Donald Trump conceded Thursday he may pull his own attorney general nominee rather than give two outgoing Republican senators what they are demanding.

Trump made the admission on Truth Social after the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's nomination Wednesday night. The vote was canceled when it became clear two Republicans would block it.

Those two senators — Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) — are leaving Congress at the end of the year.

"Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. "He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time."

"I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office," Trump wrote.

Trump also attacked both senators directly, calling them men "whose political careers have been ended by my action" — a reference to his decision not to endorse them. He added that "both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland," invoking former Attorney General Merrick Garland, a name Republicans cite as a symbol of Democratic overreach.

On Capitol Hill Thursday morning, Cornyn told reporters the situation had taken a turn for the worse. Asked whether Blanche could be confirmed before the August recess, he said the odds were against it.

"It's looking doubtful," Cornyn told reporters, according to NBC News congressional reporter Laura Weiss.

Cornyn said talks with Blanche had been "very constructive" and that he believed a deal was close Tuesday night. But by Thursday morning, something had shifted.

"Other people intervening," he said. He told NBC News congressional correspondent Julie Tsirkin he did not know whether the president himself was standing in the way.

At the heart of the standoff is a settlement Trump's Department of Justice reached with the Internal Revenue Service. The deal granted Trump and his family immunity from tax audits and created a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who said they had been targeted by the government for political reasons.

The fund was later abandoned, but Cornyn wants that abandonment in writing — and wants the audit immunity narrowed so it does not cover future tax filings, according to MS NOW.

"All I want them to do is to confirm what he said in his sworn testimony before the Judiciary Committee, with regard not only to the weaponization fund, but also who is protected from future audits and what agencies of the federal government are bound by the release," Cornyn told reporters, according to CBS News.

The Department of Justice, Cornyn said, had not delivered. "They've simply refused to cooperate," he said, according to The Hill.

As of Thursday morning, Cornyn said he was waiting on a DOJ response to his latest offer and had no meetings or calls scheduled with the White House or the Department of Justice.