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Browse major news stories and see what officials have said.

Tag: midterms-2026 ✕

Aug 24, 2026

Ten Weeks Before the Midterms, Hakeem Jeffries Met Privately With Jared Kushner — and Told the Left That "No One From the Trump Cartel Is Getting a Pass"

The New York Times reported on Sunday, August 23, 2026 that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had met privately with Jared Kushner in New York, in space lent by a mutual acquaintance, to look for common ground with the White House on housing, immigration and the cost of living. Kushner requested the meeting and suggested Jeffries follow up with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The reaction inside the Democratic Party was immediate and split. Members and aides questioned why the man who would be Speaker if Democrats take the House in November was sitting down with a presidential son-in-law who holds no formal position in the administration and whom House Democrats have said they intend to investigate. Jeffries answered in a video posted Monday evening and in a written statement to TIME, insisting the affordability crisis "is not a hoax" and that "no one is going to get a pass." Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) waved the meeting off on Fox News, saying Kushner is "not really directly involved" in the administration day to day. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said on Meet the Press he had no objection to the meeting itself but wanted to see something come of it. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, asked at a Monday press conference whether the meeting changed his view, kept his backing for Jeffries — and drew criticism from progressives for it. The episode is the latest flashpoint between Jeffries and his party's left flank ahead of a November election that could hand him the Speaker's gavel and, with it, the decision on whether to impeach Trump.

“In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable.”
Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) · Aug 24, 2026

Aug 23, 2026· Updated

Trump Signs an Executive Order Cutting the Childhood Vaccine Schedule and Splitting the MMR Shot Into Three, and the Republican Chairman of the Senate Health Committee Calls It "a Stupid Thing to Do"

On August 10, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans," standing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The order directs the federal government to cut the list of diseases against which all children are universally recommended to be vaccinated — reporting put the change at 17 or 18 shots down to 11 — and states that the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine "should be administered in three separate single-disease shots once such products are domestically available," with childhood immunizations given at separate medical visits "to the maximum extent feasible." It also directs federal agencies to support litigation involving parental authority and religious exemptions to school-entry requirements. Trump repeatedly tied the changes to autism, a link that decades of research have not found. The sharpest congressional criticism came from a Republican: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, posted on X the day the order was signed that "this executive order is wrong" and that "the President does not have the expertise to make these changes." Cassidy escalated on a Sunday show six days later, arguing the split MMR would turn two shots into six, six copays and six missed work days, and calling the policy "just a stupid thing to do" and "potentially tragic." Congressional Democrats — including the caucus's physician members — attacked the order as politics overriding science, with House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) saying it "lets political appointees attempt to overrule decades of peer-reviewed science." Medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, said no new evidence justified the change and warned about timing: U.S. measles cases are at a 35-year high. States pushed back too. School vaccine requirements are set at the state level and are unaffected by the order; Pennsylvania said its guidelines would not change, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker dismissed the order as "a thoughtless piece of paper," and the Governors Public Health Alliance said the order "circumvents that process and defies scientific consensus."

“Those are things that we want to make sure we study and really engage in before we make those determinations.”
Byron Donalds (R-FL) · Aug 23, 2026

Trump Calls Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie "LOSERS ALL" in a Late-Night Post — and Greene Answers That He Is the "Trojan Horse" and She Wishes She Had "Never Supported Him"

At roughly 10:30 p.m. on Friday, August 21, 2026 — hours after Republicans from cattle country spent the day attacking his decision to waive tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef — President Trump posted a long Truth Social message attacking three of the most prominent figures in the breakaway "America First" faction that has been forming against him. "Tucker Carlson just met with Lightweight 'Former' Congressman, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie 'Traitor' Greene, LOSERS ALL!" the post began. Trump wrote that Carlson's "Views" had "fallen through the floor," called him "totally irrelevant" and "a very Low I.Q. individual," said Greene had gone "from Ultra Conservative to a Liberal 'Fool'" and described her as "a highly neurotic young woman," and called Massie "a failed politician, and a real JERK." He closed by mocking the idea of the three running together: "What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!" The post referred to a gathering at Carlson's home in Maine in early August. On August 1, Greene — who resigned her Georgia House seat in January and has since left the Republican Party — posted a photograph of herself at a table with Carlson, Massie and Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March over the Iran war. Greene wrote at the time: "We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise. But he's betrayed us all." Kent later said publicly that the group was trying to build a new anti-war movement and had tried to persuade Carlson to run for president in 2028. The White House answered that gathering by calling the participants "an embarrassing collection of mostly whiny turncoats." The responses to Trump's post came the next day and were sharper than the post itself. Greene wrote that Trump's "demeanor, name calling, absurd and reckless rhetoric is unbecoming of the office of the president" and that "at this point, he's no different than an internet troll," then went further than she previously had: "now as president he's been revealed to be the Trojan horse who enforces many of the policies he claimed to be against... I'm sorry I didn't see it earlier and wish I had never supported him." Massie tied the outburst directly to the week's news — the beef backlash, the national debt crossing $40 trillion, and the Iran war — and wrote that Trump "posted this because we are the three he should have listened to." The exchange matters because it is the sharpest public break yet between a sitting president and the media-and-movement wing that carried him, eleven weeks before a midterm election in which Trump's own party is already treating the Iran war and the cost of living as liabilities. Trump himself acknowledged the electoral risk in the post, writing that the faction "could probably take a couple of points away from whatever the Republican ticket happens to be."

“Trump’s getting roasted today for his disastrous beef policy, the debt hit $40 trillion because of his "big beautiful bill," he stepped-in-it in Iran, and he’s weeks away from failing his mid-terms in November. He posted this because we are the three he should have listened to.”
Thomas Massie (R-KY) · Aug 22, 2026

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