Good morning and welcome back to today’s edition of the Wolf’s Den. It’s Thursday, June 25th, and Washington is buzzing — but not for the reason you’d expect. Yes, Congress is in session. Yes, there’s plenty of official business on the floor. But the real story this week isn’t what’s happening between the parties. It’s what’s happening inside one of them.
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Yesterday, we watched an extraordinary blowout unfold between Donald Trump and Senate Republicans. The meeting devolved into a one-on-one shouting match between Trump and Senator Bill Cassidy over Trump’s handling of the war in Iran. Read that again: a sitting president, screaming at a member of his own party, in what was supposed to be a routine gathering.
This wasn’t a one-off. It’s the latest data point in a pattern that’s becoming impossible to ignore — Republican senators are increasingly willing to openly disagree with, and outright defy, Trump. Six months ago, this would have been unthinkable. A GOP senator standing toe-to-toe with the president and refusing to back down, in public, with cameras nearby, simply did not happen. Today, it’s happening more often than ever, and it’s worth tracking closely as the year goes on, because it tells us something real about where the power actually sits inside the Republican caucus right now.
So what’s driving it? Look no further than the numbers. Trump’s approval is sliding — not just with Democrats, not just with independents, but with Republicans too. The biggest culprit: a staggering 68% disapproval rating on his handling of the economy.
That number lands especially hard because it cuts directly against Trump’s signature promise. “Rapidly reduce prices” wasn’t a throwaway line — it was in both of his inaugural addresses and in nearly every campaign speech he gave. It was the pitch.
Now the data is rolling in, and it isn’t kind. Navy Federal economist Heather Long reported this week that PCE inflation jumped to 4.1% in May — the highest reading in three years — driven in large part by the economic fallout from the Iran war. Strip out food and energy, and core PCE inflation climbed to 3.4%, the highest it’s been since the fall of 2023.
For the voters paying these bills every month — the same working-class voters who swung to Trump in 2024 specifically because he promised relief — this is the math that matters. And it’s the math that’s starting to push them away from him, because the central promise simply hasn’t been kept.
That’s the engine behind everything else we’re seeing. It’s why Trump looks weak right now. It’s why Senate Republicans feel emboldened to publicly challenge him and chart their own course. And it’s why vulnerable House Republicans — in Texas, Iowa, Alaska, Maine, and districts across the country — are suddenly looking a lot more exposed than they did even a few months back.
Zoom out to the Senate map, and the shift is even more dramatic. Six months ago, the idea of a Democratic Senate majority felt like a fantasy. It was a brutal map — Democrats were stuck defending John Ossoff in Georgia and an open seat in Michigan, with almost no room for error and very few credible pickup opportunities anywhere else on the board.
Now? The ramifications of Trump’s weakening grip on his own party are starting to reshape that map in real time. A Democratic Senate majority, which looked impossible at the start of the year, is suddenly very much in play. That’s a remarkable turnaround in a short window, and it’s a direct result of the dynamics laid out above: a president whose own coalition is fraying, on an issue — the economy — that voters across the spectrum care about most.
That’s the fight ahead of us between now and November — and it’s exactly what we’ll be tracking here: Democratic wins, Democratic priorities, and the messaging that takes back the House and the Senate. I hope you will join me for that fight.
See you tomorrow.
-Ethan
