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I joined James Hohmann on Make It Make Sense, The Washington Post’s flagship podcast, to talk about whether Democrats are having their own tea party moment.
Is the Democratic Party having its tea party moment? James Hohmann talks with Liam Donovan about the rise of Democratic populism, its effects on the midterms and how it compares to the rise of Trumpism.
On this week’s Lobby Shop, we dug into 2026 midterm map and paths to a majority.
Co-hosts Josh Zive, Dylan Pasiuk, and Paul Nathanson welcome back Liam Donovan—fresh off his appearance on Ezra Klein’s podcast—to break down the 2026 midterm landscape. The discussion includes each party’s path to a majority with a spotlight on key races, the importance of candidate quality, President Trump’s approach to endorsements, and what it all could mean for the legislative agenda in the final stretch of the current Congress.
I joined Ezra Klein on The Ezra Klein Show to talk through whether Trump actually wants to lose the midterms, what the 2026 map looks like from inside the GOP, and the widening split between traditional conservatives and the right’s media wing.
Klein: Trump is now under 40 percent approval in a bunch of different polls — more unpopular at this point in his term than basically any modern second-term president. Let’s start with him. Why is he down there?
Donovan: If you think about the mood of the country that produced the comeback of Donald Trump, putting together the coalition that he did, that was predicated on a rejection of the status quo and the bet that Trump would be able to return us to the economy and maybe the vibes of pre-Covid 2020. Of course, that’s much harder to do than it is to talk about. I think this is fundamentally about frustrations of how difficult some of these problems are to tackle.
Donovan, on Tucker Carlson: What was good for Tucker is getting attention however he can, including right now picking fights with Donald Trump, because there is an appetite for that in a way that there wasn’t a couple years ago. But I don’t know that that’s his project. I don’t know that his is an electoral proposition. He’s trying to build his own platform. He’s trying to build his own audience.
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My piece for The Washington Post on how climate litigation lands on consumers as a hidden tax.
Never mind that taxing the companies that heat your home and fuel your car doesn’t merely vanish into the corporate ledger. The price lands on you, the consumer. An independent estimate in 2022 pegged the suits’ penalty at 31 cents per gallon of gasoline for every $100 billion in damages awarded, or roughly $326 per household per year.
This is climate lawfare, the process of using litigation to impose energy policies that haven’t been achieved through the democratic process… A single favorable ruling in a handpicked jurisdiction can set a precedent that reshapes national energy policy without a vote from a single elected legislator.
My latest, on Republican views on Iran, the midterms and 2028.
Greetings from sunny Ocean Isle Beach, NC, where the Donovan clan is riding out Spring Break. Yesterday I took a break for a poolside chat with New York Times opinion editor John Guida, who was looking for an inside take on the mood among Republicans heading into November. Having been unplugged for the past six weeks, my perspective is less oriented by the online hive mind than it otherwise might be. And while I have been derelict in this space over the same period, the forgiving format of Q&A—the lazy man’s oped—was too good to pass up. What was published is a lightly trimmed version of our real-time conversation. (Sadly no OIB dateline.)
On what congressional Republicans actually think about the Iran war:
“The posture of the congressional G.O.P. reflects where their constituents are — instinctually wary of protracted involvement in the Middle East, uncertain as to exactly what our current objectives are in Iran and relieved by the cease-fire to the extent they are following closely. They’re eager to give this president the benefit of the doubt, and his willingness to speak out against previous misadventures gives him additional credibility in the near term even as it has confounded expectations.”
On the midterm environment:
“A great presidential cycle like the one Republicans had in 2024 is a double-edged sword. It’s fun to win elections, it’s exhilarating to control the levers of power, but there’s inevitably an electoral hangover… Heading into November, the G.O.P. has three things going for it — a constrained House map, forgiving Senate terrain, and an unpopular Democratic Party going through an identity crisis of its own. The wild card is time; seven months is a political eternity, especially in the Trump era.”
On 2028:
“In my mind the binary is order versus disorder. An orderly 2028, which I would expect at this point, is the conventional path where the vice president takes the mantle from a popular, term-limited president and romps to victory in a primary where would-be challengers read the writing on the wall and stay out. It’s not about JD Vance versus any particular candidate — if it’s not JD Vance, it’s a free-for-all.”