THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

Lindsey Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine last night when he called President Trump to talk with him—about the trip, about one of the president’s key legislative priorities, about the days ahead. The two spoke often on their cellphones, a reminder of how their relationship had warmed in the decade since Trump, in a fit of pique after Graham called him a “jackass,” read the South Carolina senator’s personal cellphone number aloud at a campaign event.“He was full of vim and vigor,” Trump recalled on CNN this morning. “He was tired. He said, ‘I’m tired because it’s a long trip.’ But other than that, he was fine.” Not long after the call, as a result of what his office said was “a brief and sudden illness,” Graham was dead.Trump at 3:21 a.m. posted on social media that Graham was “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.” By morning, the flags were lowered to half-staff at the White House, the political jockeying for his replacement had begun in South Carolina, and Trump and his aides were openly mourning the loss of a close personal friend and ardent political ally.Graham had told Trump last night that in the morning he was going to appear on NBC’s Meet the Press for what would have been his 64th time. Trump joined instead. “He’s a tough one to lose. He was great. He was unique in every way, actually,” he said. Trump recounted his reaction when a Graham staffer passed along the news at about 1 in the morning: “I said, ‘I just can’t believe it. He was like a member of the family to me.’ It’s very tough, actually.”Graham’s death has thrown into question the path forward on a number of Trump priorities, including a new reconciliation bill—which could contain portions of his SAVE America Act on voting—as well as the looming confirmation battle over attorney-general nominee Todd Blanche. Trump’s relations with GOP senators have been rocky, to say the least, and Graham was a crucial conciliator who often mediated between the White House and Capitol Hill. The absence of Senator Mitch McConnell, who was hospitalized last month with no indication of when he might return, further narrows the margins for Senate Republicans.McConnell’s illness and Graham’s death represent twin blows for the pro-Ukrainian wing of the party, which had been heartened by Trump’s recent show of support… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a message that, coming from a Democratic House candidate in the year 2026, sounded almost provocative. “There’s nothing wrong with being masculine,” Poindexter told me. It’s okay, he said, to be “a manly man.”Poindexter’s own manliness credentials are fully in order. The 46-year-old started working in a machine shop as a teenager and spent years hauling furniture across the country before finding stability as a union ironworker. He drives a Ram Big Horn pickup truck and built, with his buddy turned campaign manager, a shed in his backyard. Now Poindexter is running for Congress, trying to flip a Republican-held seat in Ohio with a pitch aimed at a constituency that has abandoned the Democratic Party over the past two decades: men.In 2024, Kamala Harris won just 43 percent of the male vote against President Trump and an even lower portion—39 percent—of white men, according to exit polls. A Democratic presidential nominee hasn’t captured a plurality of men since Barack Obama in 2008, and even then, Obama edged out John McCain among men by only a single point. The party-wide reckoning that Trump’s win spawned has centered in part on why Democrats lost working-class men whose life experiences resemble Poindexter’s—and how the party can win them back. In Poindexter’s view, Democrats’ struggles with men like him owe less to policy than to culture. “It’s all vibes,” he said. “The Democrats have catered too much to, you know, the softer side,” he said. “We should be well-rounded people. We should be tough when we need to be. We should be soft when we need to be.”Critiques such as Poindexter’s have gelled into a consensus over the past two years, repeated ad nauseam by starchy senators and governors with an eye toward running for president in 2028. Closing the gender gap now seems to be an official electoral strategy for Democrats. A couple of months ago, I got a call from a party operative who pitched a story on the Democrats’ effort to “win back the manosphere.” The operative ran through a list of a half dozen candidates in key House districts who “are engaging culturally in male spaces”—a bit of gobbledygook that I took to mean “manly men,” or perhaps “guy’s guys,” but that also reflects the sort of anthropological distance that points to the… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Mitch McConnell has not been seen in public in almost a month. The senator from Kentucky and former majority leader was hospitalized on June 14, and his staff has declined to elaborate, instead recycling the same statement: “The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.” Speculation, theories, and questions have filled the void this week, prompting McConnell’s allies to share that they had recently spoken with him. But they’ve faced a deluge of doubts themselves. Yesterday, the Kentucky governor sent a formal letter requesting a health update from the senator, while President Trump told reporters he had “no idea” how McConnell was doing.McConnell is hardly the first member of Congress to go MIA. Representative Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, a Republican running for reelection in a highly competitive district, disappeared for nearly four months this year and missed 142 House roll-call votes before resurfacing in late June. Kean explained that he had been receiving treatment for depression. In 2024, then-Representative Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican and former chair of the House Appropriations Committee, was absent from Congress for months before The Dallas Express reported that she was living in “a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused.” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who died in 2023, remained in office as her health rapidly deteriorated and her staff downplayed her condition.Although a seat in Congress comes with baseline expectations of being on the job when the House or Senate is in session, there are no formal rules governing disclosure of medical conditions for lawmakers and no official procedures for declaring a member medically incapacitated and removing them. The norm on the Hill is to fiercely shield and protect the private lives of legislators—especially on matters as sensitive as mental or physical health. But in recent years, with Congress ruled by shifting and often thin majorities, it quickly becomes obvious when someone is missing, especially for key votes. And then the theories spread on social media.[Read: Mitch McConnell and the president he calls ‘despicable’]McConnell’s absence has prompted a flood of memes, some involving Ouija boards, AI-generated Mitch-zombies, Weekend at Bernie’s–inspired scenes, and reports of the kid from The Sixth Sense having reached the senator. The leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker challenged McConnell to… [TheTopNews] Read More.

The Nazi tattoo wasn’t bad enough to force Graham Platner to abandon his Senate bid, his defenders argued earlier this year. Any young Marine, under the powerful influence of alcohol and immaturity, might see a skull and crossbones and think: Badass. The now-deleted Reddit posts mocking rural white people, insulting cops, and making light of assault? Well, chalk that up to the same. Extramarital sexting is not ideal, of course, but then there was Platner’s wife assuring us that the couple had healed. And never mind the allegations of volatile behavior from a couple of past girlfriends; one of them is a Republican activist.But when Politico reported on Monday that a woman had accused Platner of rape, even his most steadfast supporters began to call for his exit. And tonight, the oysterman finally gave in: “For the movement to continue, it can’t be me. For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” he said in a video posted to social media. But Platner added to the problems facing Democrats as he exited the race. He fervently denied the sexual-assault allegations—and seemed to imply that the party establishment was somehow responsible. “We did it the right way. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change,” he said. “And now they are not going to let us have it.”Democrats were never going to win easily in Maine, where for nearly 30 years the electorally sturdy Susan Collins has hung on to her Senate seat. But pile up all of Platner’s baggage, and defeating her might have been an especially difficult project. Now Democrats have a chance to replace Platner with a new candidate—someone who is, perhaps, less encumbered—and redouble their efforts to flip Collins’s seat.But each silver lining has its corresponding cumulonimbus, and in this case, it’s that Platner has assembled a powerful grassroots coalition in Maine that may or may not be transferable. It depends on whom the party replaces him with—and how. “They may get a mulligan,” the political analyst Charlie Cook, who lives in Maine, told us. “That doesn’t mean they’ll hit it well.”The implosion of Platner’s candidacy—first bit by bit and then all at once—has Democrats nationwide throwing up their hands in exasperation. The party must flip at least four GOP-held Senate seats in November to capture the majority, and this particular seat has long been considered the party’s most important,… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction contractor and father of three, was a “man of routine,” according to his sons. He woke up at 5 a.m. every day, ate a big breakfast prepared by his wife, and left home at sunrise to build houses in the Houston area. Salgado Araujo came across the border from Mexico as a teenager and had been working without legal status for 35 years. Yesterday he left in his work van to pick up his brother and two other men en route to a job. A team of ICE officers, traveling in two unmarked SUVs, was looking for one of the men. Exactly what happened next is unclear.As the officers attempted to stop the van, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Salgado Araujo ignored their commands and smashed into their vehicles. An officer drew his weapon and shot Salgado Araujo in the stomach. A video posted to social media showed a man face down in the street and moaning in pain, with his hands behind his back and two officers over him. Salgado Araujo died at a Houston hospital hours later.DHS, in a brief statement, said that Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”The killing was the first fatal shooting by ICE officers since the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7. (Another protester, Alex Pretti, was killed by border agents two weeks later.) This time, Trump-administration officials did not rush to blame the dead for acts of “domestic terrorism,” as they did following the Good and Pretti shootings. They have announced an internal DHS investigation into the ICE officer’s actions, as well as an FBI probe to determine whether Salgado Araujo committed assault before he was shot.Senior ICE officials I spoke with said they have received few details about what happened. The ICE officer who shot Salgado Araujo was a veteran with more than two decades’ experience, a senior ICE official told me. DHS did not respond to questions about the officer’s identity.Immigration advocates and Democratic officials in Houston said today that they don’t believe DHS’s claims, and some groups are offering a cash reward for video footage. “Remember Minneapolis? Remember Renee Good? Has ICE learned nothing from that experience?”… [TheTopNews] Read More.