Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Peter Hamby. Happy first birthday to my sweet baby daughter, who inspires me every day to write about top lines and crosstabs.

Tonight, I bring you exclusive new data from our polling partners at Echelon Insights on Republican proposals to suspend the gas tax, with prices at the pump now rising to more than $4 per gallon in all 50 states, thanks to Trump’s costly war in Iran. And speaking of Iran, we asked voters how they view Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth’s management of the conflict. It turns out that Rubio is scoring points with Republicans these days…

Also, be sure to check out a double dose of Hamby podcast content today. First, I appeared on The Town with Matt Belloni to talk about the politics of saving Hollywood, from the California governor’s race to the wacky campaign for L.A. mayor. And on my own show, The Powers That Be, I welcomed Julia Ioffe to go deep on the precarious situation in Cuba—and what the Trump administration might be planning as it takes aim at the island nation’s fragile regime.

Also mentioned in this issue: Derek Dooley, Mike Collins, Brian Kemp, Joe Biden, Jeff Van Drew, Josh Hawley, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Ron DeSantis, J.D. Vance, Ken Martin, Jake Auchincloss, Paul Rivera, Todd Blanche, and more.

The Cloakroom

Leigh Ann Caldwell

Mike Collins on the rocks?: Earlier this week, I reported that Trump is expected to endorse Rep. Mike Collins in the Georgia G.O.P. Senate runoff over Derek Dooley, an ally of Gov. Brian Kemp. Now sources close to the White House confirm that a video about Collins has been circulating among key D.C. Republicans—and that it’s caused some alarm about his electability in Georgia against Dem Sen. Jon Ossoff.

In a 2022 debate for his congressional seat, Collins said, “I always have and always will be 100 percent pro-life, period. No exceptions.” The idea of a “no exceptions” abortion ban—even in cases of rape or incest—is extremely unpopular. Georgia banned abortion after six weeks of gestation following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but even that ban allows some narrow exceptions. Furthermore, Collins and his former chief of staff, Brandon Phillips, are undergoing a House Ethics Committee investigation for alleged misuse of congressional funds. Still, it’s not clear that either the video or the investigation will have any influence on Trump, who proved once again this week that he doesn’t consider political vulnerabilities in his endorsement decisions.
G.O.P. punts on ICE and Trump’s ballroom: Senate Republicans’ consternation over Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund has derailed the party-line reconciliation bill intended to fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection. The legislation’s text stalled for more than 24 hours as senators demanded answers about the fund from the administration and pushed to impose at least some guardrails on its use.

A meeting today with acting attorney general Todd Blanche, which Republicans hoped would help lead to a compromise, instead went horribly off the rails. Senate Republican leadership responded by pulling the bill altogether, and will now take it up after the Memorial Day recess, missing their self-imposed June 1 deadline to fund the two agencies. This marks the second major setback Senate Republicans have dealt Trump this week: Just yesterday, they stripped the bill of the $1 billion allocation for his ballroom project.

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Campaign Memo

Marianna Sotomayor

The D.N.C.’s post-autopsy autopsy: The release of the Democratic National Committee’s long-buried “autopsy” on the party’s 2024 shellacking landed with a thud in Democratic circles—and not only because it came out incomplete and riddled with errors. The general reaction, on and off the Hill, was that this was yet another fumble by D.N.C. chair Ken Martin after he’d promised the report, then shelved it, then reversed course again via a lengthy apologia that, critics quickly pointed out, he made all about himself. “I am the embodiment of the eye-roll emoji here,” one House Democrat texted me.

Democrats had already grown to disdain the D.N.C., with some ignoring HQ entirely and several establishing their own offshoots to find and boost candidates rather than relying on the D.N.C.’s directives. “We weren’t waiting on an autopsy,” said Rep. Jake Auchincloss, who chairs Majority Democrats, a new organization meant to reshape the Democratic Party. “We’ve been out talking for the last year to the voters Democrats lost.”

D.N.C. insiders knew they would receive blowback whether they released the half-baked autopsy or not, though some members pushed Martin to release it after his disastrous interview with Pod Save America last month, if only to clear up the mystery around it. A source familiar with the thinking of these insiders said that the report’s author, Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, did not produce the work in a timely manner or provide transcripts, notes, or a list of people interviewed. When it was submitted late last December, this person said that the only options were to release the report, bury it, or start over. Martin said in his statement that he chose not to devote resources to a redo during a midterm year. “In short, I didn’t want to create a distraction,” Martin wrote. “Ironically, in doing so, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. And for that, I sincerely apologize.” (He also said he didn’t endorse the report, but that “transparency is paramount.”)

I’m told by those close to Martin that he knows his dithering could mar his chairmanship—though I’m also told by card-carrying D.N.C. members that he’s not going anywhere before the midterms. He, and many D.N.C. members, are hoping that the report’s release puts an end to this saga.

Now on to the main event…

Trump’s Midterm Tax & Rubio’s ’28 Gains

In exclusive new polling for Puck, more than six in 10 Americans say the economy is getting worse—about the same number that want the gas tax suspended. Meanwhile, Vance’s support is slipping—even as he maintains a whopping 19-point edge over Rubio in a possible 2028 primary matchup.

Peter Hamby

Donald Trump was a little cranky back in January when he traveled to Iowa to kick off the midterm year, only months after his party took a beating at the ballot box in Virginia and New Jersey. “People forget, so they say, ‘Ohhh, affordability, let’s vote for the Democrats,’” he told a crowd in Clive. “No, they caused the problem.” At the time, White House officials were struggling to get the president to refocus his messaging on the issue that voters cared about most: the cost of living. Trump, naturally, preferred to talk about anything else: stolen elections, ballroom plans, transgender athletes, autopens, whatever.

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In Iowa, though, Trump dug in on the topic. He went on a riff about gas prices—how Democrats “almost destroyed our country” with inflation until he roared back into the White House to save the citizenry. “They were pricing you out. When gasoline was at $4.50, and now … I was told that it was $1.85 a gallon in Iowa. You know, that’s like a massive tax cut.” The Iowans cheered.

Today, gas in Iowa averages about $4.28 per gallon, according to AAA. By Trump’s own logic, that amounts to a 131 percent tax increase on Iowans since his January speech, before he launched the war on Iran in February. The price of diesel, crucial in an agricultural state like Iowa, is even higher. I called up one of my favorite Iowa road trip spots—the World’s Largest Truck Stop, in Walcott—and a nice woman told me that truckers rolling down Interstate 80 this week are paying $5.73 per gallon. Before the Iran war, diesel in Iowa was $3.35. So that’s a 71 percent tax increase on truckers and farmers, if you’re inclined to think about it that way.

There’s more bad news for Trump and Republicans heading into Memorial Day weekend and the summer travel season. AAA’s gas map shows prices above $4 per gallon in every state in the country. Even as Trump promises that gas prices will fall whenever the “excursion” in Iran is cinched up, most energy analysts expect the opposite: that high prices at the pump will continue through the end of the year, and probably beyond.

Voters are noticing. A new survey from Echelon Insights, Puck’s polling partner, found that only 20 percent of voters think the country’s economic situation is improving, down seven points from just one month ago. Meanwhile, 64 percent of Americans say the country’s economic situation is getting worse. Those sour feelings about the economy, by the way, are on par with poll numbers from 2022 and 2023, when Joe Biden was confronting an inflationary “vibecession” and shedding public support along the way. Democrats, too, tried to sell a rose-tinted view of the economy to voters—which, as you’ll recall, didn’t end well for them in 2024.

The Gas Tax Gimmick

It’s no wonder, then, that Republicans everywhere are reaching for something, anything, to stave off a voter backlash in November. One idea gaining steam among Republicans in Congress—and with the White House—is a suspension of the federal gas tax. In the Senate, Missouri’s Josh Hawley is proposing a three-month suspension. In the House, New Jersey’s Jeff Van Drew is suggesting an 18-month suspension. “It’s a small percentage, but it’s still money,” Trump told reporters the other day with a shrug.

Small is right. The federal gas tax amounts to 18 cents a gallon for gas and 24 cents a gallon for diesel. How much would it save drivers? The fiscal hawks over at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation estimated that a gas tax holiday would save them about… $9 per month. Sure, an extra $9 sounds fine. Every penny counts. But if you live in Clive, Iowa, and drive a Toyota Corolla, those nine bucks are a drop in the bucket compared to the extra $75 you’re now spending every month on gas, on average, compared to life before the Iran war. Meanwhile, a three-month gas tax suspension would also blow a $9.5 billion hole in the federal Highway Trust Fund.

So yes, it’s a gimmick—one that’s been proposed many times before during gas freakouts, by Democrats (Hillary Clinton in 2008, Joe Biden in 2022) and Republicans (John McCain in 2008, Ron DeSantis in 2022). But gimmicks in politics persist because voters tend to like them. In exclusive polling for Puck, Echelon found that a large majority of voters agree with Trump’s proposal to temporarily suspend the gas tax, with 62 percent in agreement and 23 percent opposed. Independents agree by 59 percent to 24 percent. Good numbers! But I suspect that even more voters would approve of Trump becoming a time traveler and teleporting back to February 27 to avoid entering the costly war in the first place.

As for the war itself, Americans continue to hold their noses. A near-majority of voters disapprove (49 percent) of the military action, which has now entered a clunky peace process, compared to 43 percent who approve. Those numbers have held mostly steady relative to Echelon surveys in March and April. At the same time, negative views of Trump’s foreign policy have inched up modestly since last month, with 59 percent of voters now disapproving of his handling of foreign policy.

Rubio vs. Vance

We also had Echelon ask voters about two of Trump’s most prominent deputies: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Both men are underwater with the American public on the question of how they’re handling the war, but Rubio fares noticeably better. Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of his management of the conflict, while 44 percent disapprove. Hegseth trails, with 31 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving. Rubio’s advantage comes from independents and Republicans, the latter of whom approve of Rubio’s handling of the conflict by a 68–13 margin, compared with 57–24 for Hegseth. Among independents, Rubio earns 32 percent approval, while Hegseth manages only 25 percent.

As Rubio’s profile inside the administration rises—Trump called him “outstanding” just last week—his standing with G.O.P. voters appears to be rising as well, particularly among those with an eye toward 2028. And his climb might just be coming at the expense of his White House frenemy, Vice President J.D. Vance. Last month, Echelon found Vance leading the Republican presidential primary field with 42 percent support, followed by Rubio at 14 percent. In the most recent polling, Vance was still on top, but his support had slipped to 36 percent, while Rubio’s climbed to 17 percent. Still, Vance maintains an important edge in a possible primary matchup: Trump-first Republicans prefer him over Rubio by a massive 50–14 margin. Rubio does much better with party-first Republicans, among whom Vance’s lead narrows to 28–19.

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