Democratic candidates running in red states and hoping to flip districts are warning against “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” the president’s and his supporters’ name for reflexive anti-Trump sentiment.

“Arguing about Donald Trump, somebody people voted for probably three times, isn’t going to be very conducive to getting things accomplished or reaching some common ground,” Kansas farmer and veterinarian Don Coover, challenging an incumbent GOP congressman in a deep-red district, told Bloomberg Government. Coover “said his party has to dial back the national rhetoric if it wants to compete in Trump-friendly places.”

Andrew Sneed, who is challenging a GOP incumbent congressman in a deep red Alabama district, told Bloomberg, “If we make this election about President Trump in my district and in districts like this around the country, we’re going to lose.”

Democrats hope to retake the House majority, and have targeted 25 GOP-held seats.

U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) urged Democrats to focus on the issues, such as affordability, and not on Donald Trump.

“It’s less about him than the fact that he’s not paying attention to the issue of affordability,” Suozzi told Bloomberg. “It’s not about Trump. It’s not about Trump derangement syndrome, and it’s not about his sometimes interesting behavior. It’s about policies that affect peoples’ lives.”

U.S. Rep. Laura Gillen, a vulnerable New York Democrat who is being targeted by the House GOP’s campaign arm, “said she is focused on touting her bipartisan work across the aisle, keeping Trump’s name at bay.”

“My messaging has been focused on what I am doing to try and make life more affordable,” Gillen told Bloomberg. “I ran for Congress and said I’d work with anyone from any party to get things done.”

Some warn that campaigning against Trump directly could backfire, especially should the president’s low approval numbers rebound.

Bloomberg notes that Republicans are targeting 29 Democrats, including 23 incumbents who represent voters in districts Trump won.

Democratic incumbents and candidates have stated their messaging plainly. The Republican National Committee is  accusing them of “TDS.”

“Voters want secure borders, lower prices, safer communities, and a strong economy, not Trump Derangement Syndrome,” RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels said in a statement. “Americans are seeing through the Democrats’ tired strategy of attacking and vilifying President Trump and his supporters.”

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Do Trump’s “humiliating loss to Iran” and his White House cage fight signal a nation in free fall? Or the moment America wakes up and fights back? Those are the questions The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol is asking.

“The coincidence yesterday of the announcement of an agreement on a deal and the cage match at the White House has led to much discussion of imperial decadence, and of our entering an age of bread and circuses,” writes Kristol in “Bread and Capitulation.” He says that the Roman Empire lasted 80 years after the advent of “bread and circuses,” but warns that “things seem to move faster these days. Our decline shows every likelihood of being far quicker and more thorough than Rome’s.”

Kristol points to The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols, who analyzed the deal that is expected to end the Iran war.

“The United States has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre—but nonetheless extremely dangerous—adversary,” Nichols wrote. “It is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.”

Iran, says Kristol, “comes out a winner.” But that is less important than the “defeat” of America. He says that “Trump’s failure in Iran has confirmed and accelerated the broader retreat during his second term from our standing as the linchpin and guardian of an American-friendly international order.”

America was “the greatest world power” from 1941 to 2025. But now the nation is just one power “among many, even one bully among many, perhaps the preeminent one, but one without much credibility among either allies or enemies.”

Trump’s failed war, says Kristol, leaves the nation and the world “less feared and less respected,” and the world more dangerous.

But he asks, could “the humiliating loss to Iran—along with the embarrassment of our 250th anniversary celebration—be a kind of blessing?”

Could it provide the catalyst to stop and “reverse our decline in national power and also our slide into imperial decadence?”

He notes that the American people largely opposed Trump’s UFC cage fight at the White House. “Perhaps here, unlike in imperial Rome, it may not be too late to revive the spirit of republican virtue?”

Pointing to the Knicks’ “remarkable comeback,” Kristol asks: Who’s to say America can’t have one too?

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Republican lawmakers and staffers on Capitol Hill are expressing frustration and anger over President Donald Trump’s timing of announcements that go on to undermine their legislative agenda. Some expressed that the president doesn’t consider Congress when he acts, while others suggested that his announcements were intentionally disruptive, MS NOW reports.

From his announcement of the highly controversial naming of Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence, to what critics called his proposed $1.8 billion “slush fund” for January 6 rioters, to his 11th-hour endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for the seat held by U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), Trump’s announcements have had a strong impact on Republicans’ efforts to pass legislation.

“The most common thought of most Republicans I’ve talked to is he doesn’t give a s—— about the legislative branch and he pays no attention to anything going on that we’re doing because all of the actions he has taken has done nothing but been unhelpful to us putting stuff on his desk or keeping a lot of our government agencies open,” one House Republican told MS NOW. “Everything is timed so perfectly that it’s like they sit around in the White House and think to themselves when is the worst possible time to do this — and then they do it.”

“I don’t think he’s dumb,” another GOP lawmaker told MS NOW. “I think he does a lot of this stuff on purpose, and I think he’s trying to undermine our institutions, and it’s setting some really bad precedents.”

“We all know the president talks to one group of people, and it’s his base,” the lawmaker also said. “He doesn’t care about anyone else. And when he talks to them, I think a lot of the actions he’s taken is to try to undermine both the legislative branch and the judicial branch and strengthen his position of executive branch and the importance of him sticking around.”

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) suggested that there was little thought behind Trump’s announcements and their effect on Congress.

“I don’t think he thinks about the impact on us, and the timing,” Murkowski told MS NOW. “I just don’t think he thinks about it.”

She also said she does not think the president is “connecting” what lawmakers do daily with his actions.

U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) told MS NOW that “the president’s the president.”

“He can announce his initiatives whenever he wants,” he added, while acknowledging that the “terrible timing” of Trump’s announcements “obviously complicates” Republicans’ efforts.

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