THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

In early April, shortly after Markwayne Mullin took over the Department of Homeland Security, he floated an idea on Fox News that wasn’t taken seriously; it sounded, in fact, like a proposal from someone very new on the job: Mullin threatened to cut federal screening of international passengers and cargo at airports in cities with “sanctuary” policies, which limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Such a move would trigger flight cancellations to airports in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major cities and force airlines to reroute to other destinations. Mullin’s proposal seemed more like a wild swing than a real plan.The new secretary is pushing forward anyway. Last Wednesday, Mullin convened a small group of airline and travel-industry executives at DHS headquarters in Washington and told them he may reduce Customs and Border Protection staffing at major airports that serve sanctuary jurisdictions. Mullin told the executives the locations could include Portland International Airport, in Oregon; New York City–area airports such as John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport; and Washington Dulles International Airport, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion who were not authorized to speak publicly. Mullin did not indicate when DHS would begin the pullback, but it would likely occur sometime after the United States finishes hosting the World Cup in July, the two people told me.Travel executives are alarmed, and have told DHS that international travelers and cargo cannot be easily routed elsewhere, these people said. The disruption would cause chaos in major U.S. airports and inflict significant economic damage beyond the cities Mullin is seeking to pressure, executives have told the department. “The message was this is a real proposal that is being considered by the administration,” one of the people with knowledge of the meeting told me, calling the potential impact on the airline industry “devastating.”When Mullin first mentioned the idea during the interview on Fox News, he described it as a creative way to pressure the cities to comply with ICE. The Trump administration wants access to city and county jails so ICE officers can take custody of potential deportees before they are released. “If they’re a sanctuary city and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport, they’re not going to enforce immigration policy—maybe we need to have a really… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Last night, Donald Trump notched the latest victory in his cross-country revenge campaign against political apostates. Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL backed by the president, soundly defeated the seven-term representative Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District. The 10-point drubbing followed the triumphs of other Trump-tapped challengers in primaries in Louisiana and Indiana, which effectively ended the careers of local legislators and a sitting U.S. senator who had angered the president.“This is basic political management of a party,” a senior White House adviser said yesterday, before the Kentucky contest. “You have to keep everybody on the reservation. Occasionally you have to shoot a hostage. The next one is Thomas Massie.” Less than two hours after polls closed, Gallrein was projected as the winner.Gallrein has an illustrious military résumé, but he has never held elected office and barely campaigned for this one, skipping every debate with Massie. What Gallrein did have was Trump’s endorsement, and that was all that mattered.This decisive outcome underscores what should already have been obvious: Even as Trump’s overall approval rating hits new lows, his hold on the Republican Party—and specifically its MAGA core—remains absolute. Contrary to months of breathless headlines, the president’s base never deserted him and continues to punish those who defy him. That’s because the MAGA movement is united, not by any particular set of ideological commitments but by commitment to a particular person.[Russell Berman: Why Thomas Massie thought he was different]Gallrein’s final online ad was just 15 seconds long, and he never said a word in it. “This is a real hero,” intoned a Trump voice-over. “Ed Gallrein has my complete and total endorsement.” In a video filmed in the Oval Office and posted on the eve of the election, Trump was more explicit about what was really at stake in this clash. “Ed Gallrein, he’s fantastic,” the president declared. “But forget that. Massie is the worst congressman in the history of our country, always voting against Republicans and good values. So get rid of Thomas Massie.” The next day, Republican voters obliged, and the Kentucky representative joined the ranks of Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia as recent casualties of Trump’s perpetual purge of the insufficiently subservient.That list of victims is long and dates back to Trump’s first term. It includes nearly all GOP members of Congress who voted to impeach the president, as well as… [TheTopNews] Read More.

For a long time, Representative Thomas Massie confidently defied an ironclad law of modern Republican politics—that to oppose President Trump was to start a ticking clock on your electoral career. “I’m not worried about losing,” he told me last spring inside the Capitol, as he explained to a group of reporters the strength of his support within his Kentucky district.Massie had already angered Trump just a few months into the president’s second term, after clashing with him during his first. Massie voted against government-funding bills, criticized the president’s tariffs, and would soon become one of the only Republicans in Congress to oppose Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the fiscally hawkish Massie deemed irresponsible. Trump lashed out at Massie and vowed to find a primary opponent to defeat his bid for an eighth term; as early as last summer, the president’s allies stood up a political-action committee to run ads attacking Massie in his district.Still, Massie refused to fall in line. Over the next several months, he condemned Trump’s military adventurism, including his unilateral attacks on Iran, and he helped lead a remarkably successful bipartisan effort to force the administration to release its trove of files on the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Massie, an iconoclast to his fans and an ineffective gadfly to his detractors, had always gone his own way in Congress. Maybe he believed he was uniquely positioned to withstand a Trump-backed barrage. Or perhaps he knew he was toast and had resolved to go down on his own terms.[Read: The ‘crazy’ plot to release the Epstein files]Either way, last night Massie met the same fate as so many of Trump’s Republican critics: He lost his primary. In the end, Massie’s campaign against Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL whom the president had personally recruited to run, wasn’t particularly close. Gallrein won by about 10 points, and Massie conceded not long after the polls closed.For months leading up to the primary, Massie had held up his race as an important test case for the Trump era: If he could criticize the president and win anyway, his victory would embolden other Republicans to speak out and vote against Trump when they felt compelled to, loosening his viselike grip on the party. As many as a dozen House Republicans, he told me last month, would then be “more liable to vote with their constituents instead of… [TheTopNews] Read More.

By 10 a.m. yesterday, the line of people wishing to dedicate America to God was more than three hours long. They came ready with prayer flags to wave the Holy Spirit into action, and shofars to scatter demonic forces. They wore T-shirts declaring the sort of Christians they were. A muscular man wore one that read Prayer Warrior. A woman in cargo shorts announced that she was an Intercessor for America. An elderly woman wore one that read I Am the Weapon.“You understand you’re not going to be able to get in with that,” a security guard told a man wheeling a huge cross toward the entrance to the National Mall, as thousands of people began spreading out across a swath of grass that many of them now considered a kind of occupied territory in a cosmic spiritual war.“We are here to bring the Earth into alignment with God,” a man named Joel Balin, who had come with a friend from Atlanta, told me. “To bring the kingdom of heaven to Earth.”The rally, called Rededicate 250, was billed as a “jubilee of prayer, praise and Thanksgiving” for “God’s presence” in American history. It was part of a series of events celebrating the nation’s anniversary put together by a Donald Trump–aligned nonprofit called Freedom 250, which is being funded by a public-private partnership that includes corporate donors such as Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir and for which Congress has allocated $150 million. Critics of the event denounced the reliance on government funds, the participation of administration officials, and the near-total lack of religious diversity as an attempt to make a certain version of Christianity a national religion. A minor protest went on outside the barricades—a small group of people holding signs supporting LGBTQ people, immigrants, and all of the other Americans they believed to be under threat from the Trump administration. They blasted metal music, and a woman with pink hair screamed into a bullhorn.The people in line paid them little mind. The event was a long-sought triumph for those who came and for millions more grassroots believers who helped elect Trump twice, embracing prophecies that God anointed him for the great spiritual battle against demonic forces that they understand to be animating current events. This idea was the work of the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic movement that began gathering momentum in the 1990s… [TheTopNews] Read More.

A little less than two years ago, Gen Z underwent a rebrand. Donald Trump had just been reelected. Exit polls suggested that young voters—especially young men—had helped deliver the Republican victory. Rather suddenly, a generation associated with climate activism and trigger warnings became known for manosphere podcasts, fiscal conservatism, and gender relations so icy that they’ve contributed to the national panic about fertility rates.But a lot has changed since 2024. Trump has begun a (thus far ineffectual) war with Iran, something he said wouldn’t happen. His administration’s handling of the Epstein files, where his name appears abundantly, has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike. He vowed to lower gas and grocery prices; instead, they keep rising. His approval ratings have hit record lows, and he’s losing favor among crucial voting blocs such as independents and Latinos. Journalists and political commentators keep speculating and debating: Will the young men who moved rightward crawl back in the other direction?[Read: The not-so-woke Generation Z]That may depend, it turns out, on whether you’re talking about young men—or even younger men. The spring 2026 Yale Youth Poll, released last month, found that a majority of respondents—and roughly 70 percent of the young adults—disapproved of Trump. Even with men under 30, the president lost ground compared with Yale’s fall 2025 poll. But the data also revealed a dividing line: Among 23-to-29-year-old men, support for Democrats increased by 14 percentage points. Among 18-to-22-year-old men, it fell by a percentage point—even while their approval of Trump declined somewhat. The women in that youngest age group, meanwhile, make up the single most liberal population: further left than the slightly older Gen Z women.                  Of course, you can splice and dice any cohort differently and come up with what’s called a “microgeneration.” But this poll echoed something I’ve heard in my reporting before: Gen Z, which encompasses people born from 1997 to 2012, splinters into an older and a younger group that tend to behave quite differently. Rachel Janfaza, who researches and writes about this age group, has referred to them as Gen Z 1.0 and 2.0. The generational researcher Meghan Grace described them to me as “Big Zs” and “Little Zs.” Whatever you call them, the split seems like a meaningful one. You might think of Little Zs as the angstier siblings to their Big Z counterparts: more divided, less trusting, and even readier to shatter the status quo.When… [TheTopNews] Read More.