Reading · My Adirondack Diary

May 23, 2026 ~ Vol 55

I’ll have to admit, even I was impressed—and totally surprised—that anyone would attempt an act of such brazen corruption—in full public view—as this White House pulled off this week. Richard Nixon, in his darkest moments, never demanded to be paid for his felonies, which is basically what Trump is doing by setting up a billion dollar slush fund to pay off his supporters, including, according to Congressional testimony, the J-6 insurrectionists that he pardoned earlier in his term. The fund is actually over $1 billion; it is $1.776 billion. Get it—1776? How patriotic of Trump. What a wonderful way to honor the Founding Fathers! You really do have to wonder if our political system is not irreparably broken.

Even after all that this President has perpetrated on the American people, the majority of Republicans would still vote for him. A New York Times/Siena poll released in May found Trump’s overall approval at just 37% — a new second-term low — driven heavily by economic discontent, particularly over inflation and the fallout from the Iran war. About 64% of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy.

Yet within the Republican Party, the story is more nuanced. A CNN/SSRS poll from March 2026 found Trump at 80% approval among Republicans — down from 87% in January. A Pew Research Center poll from April found him at 68% approval among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. An AP-NORC poll similarly found 68% approval among Republicans, down from 81% in January. CNN

On the question of voting behavior specifically, a Fox News poll found that 85% of self-identified Republicans view their own party favorably — and Democrats who were surveyed said they would “almost universally vote for their party,” with independents also favoring Democrats. The implication is that tribal partisan voting remains the dominant force on both sides even amid declining enthusiasm.

And therein lies the rub. For most of us, our politics are so ingrained in our psyche that any argument from “the opposition” has little if any chance of breaking through. Democratic Congressional candidates have found a wall of Republican opposition here in the New York north country for years—since NY-21 district lines were redrawn to favor Republican candidates after the 2010 census.

A CNN poll found that 74% of Republicans said they were extremely or very motivated to vote in the 2026 midterms — lower than Democrats’ 80%, but still a large majority expressing intent to show up.

One problem is that these polls survey self identified Republicans (27%-28% of voters) and self identified Democrats (27%-28%), but the number of people who now self identify as a party member are now exceeded by self identified “Independents”. (45% / Gallup). This would be the “pox on both your houses” vote, mine included.

A bigger problem is that approximately one third of eligible voters do not even bother to cast a ballot. It is hard to decipher why someone could just take a pass, given the urgency of the current headlines, but many people feel that their vote doesn’t count, or that the candidates—all of the candidates on the ballot—are too flawed to support. (My friends in Maine are now facing this dilemma.) I suspect that a goodly percentage of the population is also just uninformed or ill informed, given the current partisan state of our media. It would be hard to identify a truly nonpartisan national media platform. I think of FOX and NEWSMAX as being on the hard right, and MSNBC—now MS NOW on the left, with CNN someplace closer to the middle but “leaning left”. Local network stations tend to be more focused on local news with little to no national political coverage, which helps us evade the partisan bickering but leaves us ignorant of the daily shenanigans in Washington. To get a truly balanced view you have to work at it, reading both “progressive” publications like the Atlantic and the New York Times, and “conservative” publications like the Wall Street Journal and National Review. Taking them all in on a regular basis requires a lot of time and no small amount of money to subscribe to them all. (I use Apple News for most of what I read regularly— including The Albany Time Union, the WS Journal, the Atlantic, New York Magazine, which are all included in the package). Only 36% of Americans consider themselves to be actively engaged with the news on a daily basis. Alarmingly, only 10% of Americans say they get their news from local newspapers, undoubtedly because of the number of local newspapers that have been shuttered. Here in the north country, my friends at NCPR / North Country Public Radio News Department offer excellent coverage of local issues.

Approximately one third say they get “most of their news” from television. In the aggregate, according to Gemini AI, the majority of Americans—64%— do not follow the news on a “daily or near daily basis”. While that sinks in, consider the data that suggest that 54%—most Americans—read at a sixth grade reading level or less. We can only hope that they are all the same people.

I asked Anthropic’s, Claude, to help explain, and he (she? it?) offered this:

Why Republicans Still Back Trump Despite Low Overall Approval

Several well-documented factors explain this:

1. Negative Partisanship For many Republicans, the motivation isn’t enthusiasm for Trump so much as fear or dislike of Democrats. Polling consistently suggests that Democrats’ current advantage is largely due to frustration with Trump rather than a belief that Democratic policies would be better. On issues like border security, crime, immigration, and national security, voters continue to prefer Republicans. The Hill

2. The Democratic Party’s Own Problems Democrats aren’t faring much better in terms of internal satisfaction — about 44% of Democratic voters say they aren’t satisfied with their party, while just 26% are. Only 23% of Republicans say the same about the GOP. In other words, Republicans remain more unified around their party than Democrats are around theirs. Axios

3. Cultural and Identity Attachment Trump has commanded a level of loyalty and devotion in the GOP that Biden never came close to matching in the Democratic Party — and that identity-based attachment persists even as policy approval softens. Many Republican voters see Trump as a cultural and political avatar, not just a politician. CNN. (Italics mine)

4. Weakening but Still Present Loyalty A Pew survey found that 61% of Republicans now say Republican lawmakers have no obligation to support Trump’s policies simply because he is a Republican president — up from 55% last year. This signals Republicans are carving out more space for dissent, but it doesn’t translate to voting Democratic. Newsweek

5. Inflation and Dissatisfaction Cut Both Ways A Fox News poll found that a majority of Republicans now rate the economy (56%) and their personal financial situation (52%) negatively — yet economic frustration with the incumbent doesn’t automatically push voters toward the other party if they distrust that party’s solutions even more. The Hill

The bottom line is that Republican approval of Trump has eroded meaningfully since January 2025, but the gap between “disapproving of Trump” and “voting Democratic” remains wide — kept open by party identity, distrust of Democrats, and the lack of a compelling alternative figure on the right. In my mind, all of the above stats simply confirm that party members, Republican and Democratic, are not about to vote for the other party’s candidate regardless of how upset they are with their own party. In a nutshell, this confirms to me that the election will be decided by independent voters, who have no allegiance to either party.

Which brings us full circle and back to my opening observation: This week the President of the United States announced what many observers are describing as the most egregious ethical breach in the history of the White House. He proposed setting up a reimbursement fund to compensate what Trump called “victims” of government political prosecutions—including the J-6 insurrectionists!

There appear to be few formal constraints on who can submit a claim. Trump has broadly stated that his allies were politically targeted by the justice system, from the “Russia collusion” investigation to the nearly 1,600 seditionists charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Trump stated they’re getting reimbursed for their legal fees and “the other things that they had to suffer.” CNN

Anyone paying attention believes this planned restitution account amounts to blatant corruption, allowing the president to enrich allies using our taxpayer money over what they describe as unfounded claims of political prosecution by the Biden administration. The fund is likely to face immediate legal challenges from Democrats and watchdog organizations. CNN.

The first suit in my inbox was this (free gift Washington Post Article):

Police officers at Capitol on Jan. 6 sue to block DOJ payout fund

It’s worth noting that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who previously served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney — signed the “settlement” agreement, which has drawn additional scrutiny given the obvious conflict of interest. Twenty four hours after floating the slush fund proposals, a follow up was added to state that as part of this agreement, the IRS would be barred from investigating or auditing the President, or any one in the President’s family, or any business owned by the President or the President’s family. In other words, anything that is submitted on any Trump-related tax return must be accepted as presented, and precluded from challenge by the Treasury and the IRS. What could go wrong? On the day of this announcement, Brian Morrissey, the General Counsel and top lawyer in the Treasury Department —who had been nominated by President Trump—resigned from his office. (The IRS is an agency of the Treasury Department.)

Nothing that Trump does should surprise us at this point, but the audacity of this week’s proclamations should send a shudder down our collective spines. I would feel more hopeful about the future if our Congress and our Supreme Court actually had spines, but their recent behavior suggests that this is not the case. Pardoning the J-6 insurrectionists was bad enough, but now paying them as a reward for their treasonous behavior - which we all saw live on TV but Trump now describes as a “Day of Love”— is beyond the pale. And this Congress will do nothing about it.

From Wednesday’s New York Times (A free gift article):

For a decade Trump has gaslit all of us about an ongoing IRS audit being the reason that he could not release his tax returns. Remember when Presidential candidates would disclose their finances by releasing their tax returns? Now he has proclaimed himself audit proof and immune from future challenge or prosecution. The brazen self dealing and scale of his self aggrandizement is staggering. He is without a doubt the most corrupt person to ever be in the White House (and I do not just suggest that he is the most corrupt person to hold the office of President, he is probably the most corrupt person to ever step inside the building). And we elected him. Twice.

This should be a watershed moment for my Republican friends. It should not matter how you feel about any one candidate’s views on trade, or deficits, or women’s rights, or gay rights or health care. In this election cycle only one thing counts, and I have only one set of related questions for any Republican candidate:

Do you support Donald Trump, and if the answer is yes, how do you feel about January 6th, pardoning the insurrectionists, rewarding those seditionists and other supporters with a $1.8 billion slush fund, while exempting himself and his family from any and all IRS oversight. Any answer in the affirmative supporting any of these should be disqualifying. Period, full stop. I will be greatly surprised if any Republican candidate actually answers any of those questions during the campaign—because they cannot. Any candidate who does not parrot Trump’s lies can expect to be primaried by a pro-Trump candidate endorsed by the President.

The warning lights are no longer flashing yellow. This is a government in crisis and a democracy in peril. If Congress will not do their job and represent and protect US citizens, then we must replace Congress with Representatives who will stand up and counter his lies, speak truth to power, and block his corrupt initiatives . We cannot afford to wait for the next Presidential election.

What I am reading: Two of my favorite Substack columnists, Paul Krugman and Paul Mrocka, wrote on a similar topic this week. One author is a Nobel laureate in Economics and former NY Times columnist, and Mrocka owns our local brewery, Paradox Brewery. (Guess which one I see more often?)

From Paul Mrocka’s Substack:
History has shown this pattern before. Corrupt governments often survive by keeping people angry, divided, distracted, and loyal to personalities instead of principles. Leaders wrap themselves in patriotism while enriching themselves and their allies. Citizens are told the media is the enemy, political opponents are evil, institutions cannot be trusted, and eventually people become numb to behavior that once would have outraged the country. That is where America feels like it is heading now.

From Paul Krugman’s Substack:
Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.

Our darkest hour?

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