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It is a given of the 2026 midterms that a wave of still-uncertain magnitude is likely because of Donald Trump’s historic unpopularity. What gets less attention is how much the Senate races themselves — like who is running and whether an election is even being held — have been shaped very directly by his actions. Ohio, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Iowa all, amazingly, fall into this bucket.

With the pro-fascist wing of Senate Republicans threatening not to seat Mary Peltola if she’s elected to the Senate, I wanted to give you a short primer of how all this works, not just in Peltola’s case but in the larger terrain of GOP denialism.

First, the House and Senate are fundamentally different. The senate is a “continuing body”; so Republicans are in some position to refuse to seat Peltola. The House on the other hand reverts to what we might call a parliamentary state of nature every two years. When the House reconvenes in January, there won’t be a Republican majority and Mike Johnson will not be Speaker. Everyone shows up with their state certifications in hand and it’s the clerk of the House who examines those credentials on a ministerial basis. Then everyone votes on who the Speaker will be. That’s why we had that drama with Kevin McCarthy a few years ago.

I think we’ve seen all that can happen in the bizarre continuation of the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, which of course actually ended a few months ago. But given what’s happened over the last 72 hours, I guess, who am I kidding? Stevens did a new round of interviews last night, including one on CNN with Anderson Cooper. It was a further train wreck in the weeklong run of pile-ups. It was a classic case of why, in a high-stress news environment, you shouldn’t go on TV if you don’t know what you want to say. Stevens appeared to be figuring out or trying to come up with an explanation for her actions in real time on live TV. At one point she seemed to suggest she might end up voting for Abdul El-Sayed after all, though it was so disjointed that it’s hard to know just what she was trying to say. It’s for this reason that both her erstwhile friends and her current friends have been begging her to just stop talking.

First, let me remind you: be sure to join us tomorrow night starting at 8:00 p.m. ET for our TPM’s YouTube livestream coverage of the election night results. It’ll be me, TPM Publisher Joe Ragazzo and different members of the TPM team will cycle through over the course of the evening, discussing different races, sharing color commentary, answering your questions in real time, etc.

As you’ve likely seen, a final round of NYT/Siena polls came out last night and they point to the bottom falling out for the GOP in key Senate races across the country. As Kate Riga and I have discussed in numerous TPM Show episodes, the NYT/Siena poll is a high quality poll which for a variety of not terribly good reasons (largely the Times’ megaphone, but also getting closer than others in a few key cycles) has influence and impact far greater than any other poll. I saw an apt comment from Nate Silver this morning, essentially, the polls no longer say this is close. The polls, collectively, say Democrats will win the senate. They could be wrong. But what they’re saying is no longer ambiguous or too close to call.

From what I can tell, the details on Haley Stevens’s last 36 hours, which I reported earlier this afternoon, have now been confirmed, re-reported by the Post and other publications. Appreciate the congrats. I think the best bet is that we, political obsessives, are overestimating how much this whole drama will affect the outcome in either direction. But if it has any effect, I think there’s a decent chance it will actually redound to Abdul El-Sayed’s benefit. One of the things that’s been hard to miss over the course of the day is the sheer intensity of the denunciations of Stevens from the highest ranks of the Democratic Party, including many of her one-time supporters. That has many sources — but one of the biggest is that, as I reported earlier, she told many of these people, person to person, last night that she was absolutely still going to vote for El-Sayed. So they feel personally very burned.

Let me share a few quick thoughts about former Democratic Senate primary candidate Haley Stevens. As you’ve likely seen, Stevens showed up this morning at a Black church in Detroit with Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Let me say first that my best guess is that Abdul El-Sayed is going to win this race and that all this final-days drama with Stevens won’t end up to have mattered. I will also say that I can’t remember a spectacle quite like this, or any defeated Democratic primary candidate crashing out like this, in 30-plus years of observing Democratic politics very, very closely.

On Friday I said that while to that point I’d questioned Stevens’ judgment, wisdom and decision-making, I was now questioning her sanity. That was only slightly tongue-in-cheek. And even less so now. There’s a level of erratic, boffo behavior here that is even more than appears on the surface. From a mix of watching the morning shows and my own reporting, I can tell you that as recently as last night Stevens told multiple Democratic power players that she was still going to vote for Abdul El-Sayed. Last night. As I’m writing this, in addition to the church appearance, I’ve just seen that she is now officially endorsing Mike Rogers. She seems to be blaming that to some degree on that fact that she was disinvited from today’s Democratic unity rally. But whatever you think of Stevens and El-Sayed, her statement in advance of that rally made disinviting her unavoidable. She quite literally forced it.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the 53-year-old Democratic senator who was seen as a likely 2028 candidate, has suffered a stroke, according to his staff. “The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” his chief of staff said in a statement.

Lot goin’ on. So let me just briefly flag this.

Remember the grifter war between Trumpers Ric Grenell and Alina Mildon (née Habba) over whether money back-channelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo made its way to the Kennedy Center, then named after Donald Trump? Soon after the initial story hit, another story revealed that Mildon had got a cool $50 million to work for (read: secure a pardon for) a Venezuelan billionaire. (He got the pardon.) All of these actions emerge out of the general divvying up of the spoils of Venezuela which Mildon, her new husband/nepo-oligarch Turhan Mildon and Grenell were involved in. (There’s no proving it, but I basically guarantee you that Grenell knew about the $50 million and got it leaked to the Times as retaliation.)

Now, I frequently joke about how in Term Two MAGA, it’s fine to be corrupt. But you’ve got to kick some of the sweetness up to the boss, just like Jimmy Conway had to kick some money up to Paulie after the Lufthansa heist in “Goodfellas.” I frequently struggle to understand, keep up with, just how true these things are. Yesterday, the Times returned to this story and well … here’s what they say happened.

From the Times (emphasis added)…

I was at the gym this afternoon when a press conference came on with the U.S. Attorney in Alaska floridly introducing a criminal investigation into this “Dan Sullivan” issue. One of my colleagues just noted that to do this, U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman “unrecused” himself from this case. “Unrecusal” is not a thing. He recused himself because he’s trying to get a judgeship from Alaska’s Republican senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski. I note this simply for the comedic nature of this spectacle. This investigation is itself a corrupt abuse of power on three or four different grounds at once.

Let me share some thoughts on this.

I’ve heard a number of people say they’re “troubled” or “disturbed” or unhappy that this happened. All I can say is that I would really recommend that you toughen up because you simply won’t make it through the next few years, even under the best circumstances. There is no crime here and no possibility of a crime here. This is trolling. At worst, it’s a dirty trick. If it is a dirty trick, it is a special kind since it has been out in the open and has been a staple of Alaska political news for the better part of a year. Election officials in Alaska already took note of the possibility of confusion and added the word “incumbent” after Sen. Dan S. Sullivan’s name on the ballot, as well as “registered Republican” to make certain that no one can be confused as to who is who. State authorities are the only ones permitted to judge this question and arrive at a solution to it, if it requires one. They already have.