Surviving Trump. Saving America

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We have been fooled before. In 2016, the forecasters gave Hillary Clinton strong odds, and she lost. In 2020, Susan Collins trailed in nearly every public poll in Maine, and she won by almost nine points. Now Democrats lead the polling average in all nine races that will decide the Senate. Most of those leads are within a few points.

This episode takes a clear look at the candidates in each race: who they are, where the race stands, each side's strengths and weaknesses, and what could decide it. It doesn't dismiss the good news for Democrats. It shows how much could still change before November 3rd.

What's in This Episode

Episode 5 is the second of two Senate episodes. Last week covered the map and the forces shaping it. This week covers the candidates. All polling averages are from Decision Desk HQ, checked on October 6th.

North Carolina: Roy Cooper vs. Michael Whatley. Cooper leads by 9.6 points, Democrats' best chance to flip a seat. The seat opened when Thom Tillis voted against Trump's signature law and retired the next day. Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chair, has kept reporters at a distance, and Republican groups are pulling ads. But in 2020, Cal Cunningham led here too, and lost.

New Hampshire: Chris Pappas vs. John E. Sununu. Pappas leads by 6.6 points for the seat Jeanne Shaheen is leaving. Sununu once wrote an op-ed headlined "Donald Trump is a Loser." Trump endorsed him anyway. Pappas has raised far more money, but Republicans are spending more on TV.

Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed vs. Mike Rogers. El-Sayed leads by 3.7 points after surviving a record $30.6 million effort by AIPAC's super PAC in the primary. Rogers asked AIPAC to stay out of the general election. A Washington Post and Schar School poll found El-Sayed running behind his own party, especially among Black voters.

Texas: James Talarico vs. Ken Paxton. Talarico leads by 2.7 points in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Paxton was impeached in 2023 and acquitted. An Associated Press review found he left about 730 workdays blank on his calendar. Republicans spent $122 million on ads for him in September, including ads PolitiFact rated false.

Alaska: Mary Peltola vs. Dan Sullivan. Peltola leads by 2.7 points and beat Sullivan by eight in the August primary. A New York Times investigation into how she treats her staff came out on September 23rd. Her campaign points to the grief she lived through in 2023. Sullivan says he doesn't accept that explanation.

Ohio: Sherrod Brown vs. Jon Husted. Brown leads by 2.3 points in his comeback bid. Husted called for the war in Iran to end, then voted against limiting it. Brown's main attack is data centers. A crypto super PAC has pledged nearly $30 million against him. And polls in Ohio have missed badly in recent elections.

Iowa: Josh Turek vs. Ashley Hinson. Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist, leads by 1.8 points in a state Trump won by thirteen. Hinson turned his missed votes in the legislature into a seven-figure ad. She now faces an ethics complaint over her husband's insurance lobbying role, which she calls false.

Maine: Troy Jackson vs. Susan Collins. Jackson leads by 1.7 points. Collins broke with Trump on three of four major votes, but says she would vote for Brett Kavanaugh again. A ProPublica report raised questions about a defense contractor's donations. The newest polls disagree: one has the race tied, another has Jackson up four.

Kansas: Adam Hamilton vs. Roger Marshall. Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, leads by just 0.2 points, the closest race of the nine. Marshall and his medical practice sued more than 700 patients over unpaid bills. Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

The Fetterman Question. Democrats need a net gain of four seats. That assumes every senator who caucuses with them stays. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote against limiting the war in Iran. If he switched parties, Democrats would need five seats. Asked what he would do if the Senate came down to his vote, he said: "Wait till the midterms. See what I do."

Why It Matters

The Senate decides wars, judges, cabinet nominees and any impeachment trial. Democrats lead in every race on the map, but by margins that polls have missed before. Knowing the candidates, and the risks, is how we stay clear-eyed until November 3rd.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

FOUR SEATS TO TAKE THE SENATE

Trump, the Money, and the Nine Races That Decide It

Trump won Iowa by thirteen points in 2024. Today, more Iowans who voted in that election disapprove of him than approve — and the Iowa Senate race is close to even. That pattern repeats across the map. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the Senate, and for the first time this cycle, the forecasters say they have a real path to get there.

This episode maps the nine races that will decide control: where Trump's unpopularity is hurting Republican candidates, how Republican senators voted on his least popular decisions, and the flood of super PAC money Republicans are counting on to overcome it all.

What's in This Episode

Episode 4 is the first of two Senate episodes. This one covers the map and the forces shaping it. Next week covers the candidates.

Trump's Standing in the Senate Race States

Senate races are statewide, so no district lines protect a Republican candidate from how a state feels about the president. Among people who voted in 2024, Trump is now underwater in all nine states that will decide the Senate. In the five states he won by double digits, the effect is real but uneven. Ohio, which Trump won by eleven, now disapproves of him by eight points, and Sherrod Brown leads appointed Senator Jon Husted by four and a half. In Texas, which Trump won by fourteen, James Talarico leads Ken Paxton by about three — in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. History cuts both ways: Democrats gained forty-one House seats in 2018 and still lost two Senate seats, but in 2006, Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown won in states that usually favor Republicans.

Where Democrats Can Win

The nine races, sorted by what we know about the Republican candidates. 

Three toss-ups feature a Republican senator running for reelection, so we measured their records against four Trump decisions most voters now reject: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Hegseth and Kennedy confirmations, and this week's vote on limiting the war in Iran. Husted and Alaska's Dan Sullivan voted with Trump all four times. Maine's Susan Collins broke with him on three. 

In the open-seat races, Iowa's Ashley Hinson voted against ending the war on September 15th — then called for its "immediate end" six days later. 

And in North Carolina, the seat is open because Senator Thom Tillis voted against Trump's signature law and announced his retirement the next day.

What Voters Are Feeling

Tariffs and the war in Iran are reaching voters directly. After the Supreme Court struck down Trump's emergency tariffs in February, he turned to a law from 1930 to impose fifty percent tariffs on Canadian goods — and Canada answered with tariffs on American steel, aluminum and farm equipment. 

Canada is Maine's largest trading partner and the top foreign market for Iowa's exports. Meanwhile, diesel hit a record six dollars and twenty-nine cents a gallon on September 14th, landing hardest on farm states. Trump says the election won't change his approach to the war.

The Money. 

A donor can give a Senate candidate thirty-five hundred dollars. The same donor can give a super PAC millions. That gap is reshaping these races. 

A New York Times analysis found that only about one in ten dollars Republicans have reserved for ads in nine key Senate races comes from the candidates and the party — the rest comes from outside groups. 

In Texas, Republican groups reserved ninety-four million dollars for September alone, against twenty million for Democrats. In Ohio, the crypto super PAC Fairshake is spending thirty million against Sherrod Brown, two years after spending forty million to defeat him. But money has limits: candidates buy airtime at the lowest rate by law, super PACs pay market rates, and in North Carolina, Republican groups have started pulling their ads.

What the Forecasters Say

How ratings differ from models, and what four major forecasters see now. Decision Desk HQ gives Democrats a fifty-five percent chance of winning the Senate, VoteHub fifty-eight. Cook calls it a true toss-up. The forecasters agree on Maine, Ohio, Texas and Iowa — and split sharply on New Hampshire. Plus the math: hold Michigan and New Hampshire, win North Carolina, and flip three of the five Republican-held toss-ups.

Why It Matters

This week, the Senate rejected limits on the war in Iran by a single vote. The Senate chosen in November could decide questions like that one differently — the war, Trump's nominees, any impeachment trial. This election is also a test of whether unlimited money can outweigh what voters live with every day. And nothing on this map is settled: a new ProPublica series, a New York Times investigation, fuel prices and a trade fight could all move these races before November 3rd.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Twenty-one House seats are rated genuine toss-ups this cycle. Sixteen are held by Republicans, five by Democrats. Democrats need a net gain of three. This episode sorts every one of those races — plus four more that became contests for reasons the official ratings haven't caught up to — into a clear picture of where that path actually runs.

What's in This Episode

Episode 3 moves from the House math to the candidates who will decide it, applying four consistent factors — cash on hand, polling quality, the redrawn map, and the candidates themselves — to sort 25 races into three groups.

What Actually Moves These Races. 

A toss-up rating alone doesn't tell you which seats are more winnable. We explain the four criteria used to sort every race this episode: money actually available to spend in the final stretch, polling quality and disclosure, whether a district was redrawn for or against the Democrat, and the strength of each candidate's own record. A race lands in Higher Confidence when at least two of those four factors point toward the Democrat — though sometimes one factor alone carries a race, as with a Pennsylvania Republican who pledged to ban his own stock trading, then made roughly six hundred fifty trades once in office.

Higher Confidence: Seven Races. 

• In Arizona's 6th, a Republican-sponsored poll and two Democratic-sponsored polls all show Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza ahead of incumbent Juan Ciscomani, who won by one-tenth of a point in 2024 and told voters he "cannot and will not" cut Medicaid before voting for a bill that did. 
• In Colorado's 8th, Republican Gabe Evans has built a moderate brand that his own voting record contradicts — including Medicaid and SNAP cuts affecting roughly ninety thousand of his constituents — while a new ICE detention facility opening in a heavily pro-Trump town has split him from some of his own base. 
• Florida's 14th is Kathy Castor's own seat, redrawn this year to favor Trump by more than ten points; election raters genuinely disagree on it, and her opponent's fundraising is ninety-five percent a personal loan. 
• Iowa's 1st is a third straight rematch in the tightest House race in the country — Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by just 799 votes in 2024, is tangled in a residency dispute over a home drawn out of her own district, and a hospital in the district is ending maternity services next year, citing her Medicaid votes as a factor. 
• New Jersey's 7th is considered the single closest race nationally: two independent polls both show Navy veteran Rebecca Bennett ahead of Congressman Tom Kean, whose favorability is badly underwater after a four-month, unexplained absence from Congress.
• Pennsylvania's 8th centers on Republican Rob Bresnahan, who sold stock in four Medicaid-linked insurers a week before voting to cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars, and is now being outraised in consecutive quarters by Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti. 
• And Pennsylvania's 10th pits Republican Scott Perry — who introduced Trump to the lawyer he later tried to install as attorney general — against 26-year local news anchor Janelle Stelson, who now out-raises him; a Trump-aligned super PAC has stepped in with nearly a million dollars, the only House race in the country where that group is currently spending.

Lower Confidence: Seven Races. Seats where a hostile redraw or a money gap outweighs an otherwise promising case. 

• Michigan's 10th is open and leans Republican; Democrat Christina Hines enters the fall with under $160,000 on hand against her opponent's nearly $1 million. 
• Michigan's 7th saw Democrats' preferred moderates split the primary vote, handing the nomination to a Sunrise Movement co-founder in a district Trump carried by just one point. 
• Ohio's 9th is a rematch for 22-term incumbent Marcy Kaptur, defending a district redrawn as much as eleven points against her, though she holds nearly a seven-to-one cash advantage. 
• Pennsylvania's 7th pairs a Shapiro-recruited union firefighter against an incumbent with old audio calling the Affordable Care Act "an infringement upon our rights." 
• Texas's 34th was redrawn specifically to defeat Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez, and nearly half of voters districtwide can't identify him by name after the redraw brought in unfamiliar territory. 
• Washington's 3rd may be the year's real test of a Trump-district Democrat: two-time winner Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez actually finished second in her own primary for the first time, after a progressive challenger took nearly a third of the Democratic vote over her support for Israel — and a Trump-aligned super PAC has reserved $1.7 million against her in this district alone. 
• And Florida's 25th is a brand-new district with no voting history and no general-election polling at all.

Wildcard: The Unpredictable and the Unexpected. Seven toss-ups where the data is too thin or too contradictory to call. 

• New York's 17th has two polls from opposite sponsors showing opposite five-to-six-point leads in a district that actually voted for Harris at the presidential level — the one race here every rater agrees is a genuine toss-up. 
• Arizona's 1st has no candidate-specific polling at all. 
• California's 22nd saw a twenty-three-point swing between two polls just six weeks apart.
• Iowa's 3rd has one six-month-old poll that already conflicts with the candidates' current fundraising, and the Des Moines Register has tied the incumbent's voting record directly to the state's rising cancer rates. 
• Wisconsin's 3rd has four consistent polls — all from the same side — and a Democrat who won the fundraising race but lost the cash-on-hand race after a costly primary.
• Virginia's 2nd has exactly one poll, a dead-even tie. 
• And Ohio's 7th is competitive for one reason only: Republican incumbent Max Miller, facing abuse allegations from his ex-wife, stayed on the ballot past the withdrawal deadline even as her father — Ohio's other sitting Republican senator — publicly called Miller "a danger to my daughter."

Four more races round out the hour, contests Cook doesn't officially rate as close at all. 

• Texas's 23rd became a race only after Republican Tony Gonzales resigned following an affair with a former aide who later died by suicide, handing the nomination by default to gun-rights YouTuber Brandon Herrera; Cook still rates the seat Likely Republican.
• Montana's 1st opened when Ryan Zinke retired two days before the filing deadline — the only independent poll has the Republican up one point, but both parties are now spending there anyway. 
• North Carolina's 11th and Florida's 7th both saw damaged Republican incumbents replaced on the ballot before November, leaving Democrats with a campaign built against a scandal that's no longer there.

The Math That Gets Democrats There. Win the six offensive targets in Higher Confidence and hold Florida's 14th, and Democrats reach a net gain of six — double the target. From there, every one of four shakier defensive seats they lose costs them one seat off that total, meaning Democrats can lose up to three of those four and still land exactly on target. And beyond the twenty-one official toss-ups, ten more Lower Confidence and Wildcard seats, plus four additional scandal-driven races, offer further chances if the strongest path falls short.

Why It Matters

A toss-up rating is a starting point, not an answer. Sorted by money, polling, the map, and the candidates themselves, Democrats have a real, overlapping path to a House majority — one that runs through their six strongest offensive targets, depends on holding most of what they're already defending, and still has ten more chances waiting beyond that if it isn't enough on its own

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Surviving Trump 

Republicans hold the House by just two seats — the margin they started this Congress with in January 2025. That's the baseline behind the entire fight: a net gain of three seats flips control. This episode breaks down where that fight is actually happening: the maps redrawn to protect it, the scandals threatening to lose it anyway, and the money both parties are pouring in to decide it.

What's in This Episode

Episode 2 lays out the ground fight for the House as of early September — the math, the maps, the races, and the money.

State of the House. As of September 1st, Republicans hold 218 seats, Democrats 212, with two seats vacant and one independent caucusing Republican — the gap has narrowed since January due to resignations and vacancies, though the "three seats to flip" math is still measured against the original 220-215 starting point. History favors Democrats here: the president's party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterms, and Republicans' original two-seat cushion was thinner than either party has held heading into a midterm in decades.

The Redistricting Battle. A 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, clearing the way for Republican legislatures to redraw maps in ten states. Eight of the ten redraws favored Republicans — Texas added five GOP-leaning seats, Florida added roughly four, and Missouri's new lines made Congressman Emanuel Cleaver's seat all but unwinnable, a 21-point swing toward Republicans. North Carolina's map targets Congressman Don Davis directly, cutting through the state's historic "Black Belt" — a federal court has already allowed the map to proceed for 2026 despite an NAACP lawsuit. California moved the other way: voters approved a new map themselves through a ballot measure, adding five Democratic seats, over objections from the Trump administration that courts rejected. Cook Political Report ran the same national numbers against the old maps and the new ones: Democrats would net 235 seats under the old lines, only 223 under the new ones. Twelve seats, gone from redistricting alone.

Where the Race Ratings Stand. Cook Political Report rates 18 House seats true toss-ups — 14 held by Republicans, only 4 by Democrats. Republicans are defending more than three times as many close seats.

The National Environment. Trump's approval has hit record lows — 32% in Quinnipiac's tracking, 34% in CNN's, matching his post-January 6th low. Voters trust Democrats over Republicans by wide margins on income inequality, healthcare, and rising prices, and Trump's approval on handling the war with Iran sits underwater by 60 points or more. Rural voters — a group he's supposed to be able to count on — have collapsed from positive 20 in early 2025 to negative 14 by May 2026, driven by tariff-hit farm exports, rising equipment and fertilizer costs, and manufacturing job losses in small towns that depend on a single plant. Iowa, a state Trump carried by 13 points, now has two of its four House seats rated toss-up.

Retirements, Scandals, and Open Seats. Six seats are now in play for reasons beyond the map: Montana's Ryan Zinke retiring amid low approval; New Jersey's Tom Kean Jr. returning from inpatient treatment for depression; North Carolina's Chuck Edwards censured by the full House 413-2 after resigning his re-election bid; Texas's Tony Gonzales resigning after an affair, replaced on the ballot by an extremist Trump has endorsed anyway; Florida's Cory Mills under an active DOJ investigation; and Ohio's Max Miller, accused of domestic abuse by his own ex-wife — the daughter of Ohio's other Republican senator — while House leadership and Trump stand by him publicly.

Where Democrats Are Recruiting. The DCCC's Red to Blue program has grown from 12 candidates in February to 37 by late August, now recruiting veterans running on Iran-war credibility and reaching into districts Trump won by double digits, including Tennessee's 5th, where Trump's personal endorsement wasn't enough to save Congressman Andy Ogles from a primary loss.

Money Behind the Map. Trump has told supporters he's amassed over $1.5 billion in political funds since Election Day 2024. Donors under active federal scrutiny — a pardoned banker's daughter, an OpenAI co-founder — have given millions during periods when the administration shaped policy affecting them. A June Supreme Court ruling struck down coordination-spending limits between parties and candidates entirely, and Republican committees currently hold the larger cash advantage because of it. After months of his own reluctance to spend it, Trump has now approved routing tens of millions from his personal PAC to vulnerable Republicans — even as one official called the stakes of losing "f*cking horrible," while Trump publicly claims he isn't campaigning at all.

Why It Matters

Republicans have manufactured every advantage a party can build — favorable maps, uncapped coordinated spending, and more money raised for a midterm than any party in modern history. Whether that manufactured advantage survives a genuine political collapse is the real question heading into November. Independent ratings put the truly competitive seats at eighteen to twenty, and that's before counting the six seats now in play because of retirements, health crises, and scandals Republican leadership chose to defend rather than abandon.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

They control the House, the Senate, the courts, and the White House. Every rising price, every unresolved war, every unreleased file is Trump’s alone to answer for. And for the first time in years, he has no one else to blame.

What’s in This Episode

Episode 1 lays out the stakes for the season ahead — who’s afraid of losing, why the numbers favor Democrats, and what it will actually take to win. The playbook is recognizable.  From gerrymandering districts to building a plan to delay, sabotage, or nullify results. Dirty tricks are already in motion to disrupt the midterm elections.

The Election Assistance Commission has zero leadership. ICE is showing up in the cities where turnout will decide close races. A Trump executive order requiring citizenship checks on every mail ballot is stalled at the Supreme Court, days before the midterms. And since February, lawyers coordinating with the White House have circulated a draft order that would let Trump seize control of vote-counting under a fabricated Chinese-interference emergency.

Three Groups, Three Reasons to Be Afraid. Trump, MAGA, and the donor class each have something different to lose in November — financial and ideological. We break down the unitary-executive theory the donor class is protecting, the more than four hundred million dollars Elon Musk has spent since 2020, and the billion-dollar cash advantage Republican-aligned groups now hold thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that gutted coordinated-spending limits.

Reasons for Optimism. Trump’s approval sits at thirty-nine percent, underwater by double digits on the economy, inflation, and trade. Sixty-nine percent disapprove of his handling of the Iran war. His own family has profited more than two billion dollars from crypto ventures while he’s been in office. We cover the polling, the special-election results, and the vanity projects — a taxpayer-funded ballroom, a triumphal arch he says is “for me” — adding up to a president more exposed than at any point since taking office.

The 1992 Parallel. Democrats faced a similar wall once before — twelve years of Republican control of the White House, no clear candidate, no clear strategy. They found one anyway: pick the right candidates, target the right voters, focus on the right states, stay on one message. We walk through why that same four-part approach applies to this midterm.

The Math and the Warning Sign. Democrats need a net gain of three House seats and four Senate seats. History says the environment favors them — every incumbent president’s party but two has lost seats in the following midterm, and Trump’s numbers are worse than Clinton’s in ‘94, Obama’s in 2010, or Biden’s in 2022. But the deeper story is turnout, not conversion: most voters souring on Trump aren’t becoming Democrats, they’re becoming non-voters. We trace that exact dynamic back to Georgia’s January 2021 runoffs, when Republican turnout collapse cost the GOP the Senate outright.

Season Roadmap. Two episodes on the House, two on the Senate, one on the tactics working against all of it, one entirely on donation strategy, one on what a model campaign looks like, and a final episode two days before the election. Here’s what’s ahead for the next eight weeks.

Why It Matters

A favorable environment doesn’t win elections by itself. History and turnout both point toward a strong Democratic year — but only if that advantage gets converted, seat by seat, into actual votes on a map drawn to make that harder than it should be. That conversion is what the rest of this season is built to help you do.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Surviving Trump 

It’s not long until the most consequential midterms of our lifetime. Season 3 of Surviving Trump: Saving America starts September 10th — nine episodes, tracking the 2026 midterms week by week, from the threats already in motion to exactly where your time and money matter most.

What’s in This Season

•Episode 1 (Sept 10): Sixteen threats to this election straight from Project 2025, plus new polling showing Trump’s approval at a record low.

•The House, in two parts: Which seats are actually close, and the candidates running in them.

•The Senate, in two parts: The same breakdown — the numbers, then the people.

•Voter suppression, nationally: Disinformation and administrative sabotage, tracked from the federal level down to the county level.

•Where your money matters: A full episode on donation strategy — which races, which organizations, which dollar goes furthest.

•A campaign getting it right: What one candidate’s message and discipline can teach the rest.

•The final episode (two days before Election Day): One last update on where everything stands, and a final push to get every eligible voter to the polls.

Why It Matters

This isn’t a season about watching from the sidelines. Every episode is built to leave you with something to act on,  who to watch, where to give, and what’s actually at stake if we don’t show up. There is still enough time to change the outcome. This season is the roadmap.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Summary

The thing about a “rigged election” is that you don’t have to prove it.

You don’t need fake ballots or hacked machines. You just need enough people who believe that if their side lost, something went wrong — and enough officials, lawyers, and judges willing to act on that belief.

This episode follows four ways that belief gets turned into power: pressuring officials not to certify results, weaponizing override mechanisms built for genuine emergencies, manufacturing the feeling of fraud through audits and investigations that find nothing, and flooding courts with lawsuits designed for press releases, not verdicts.

This is a story about what it takes today to make losing acceptable — and what happens to a democracy when one side decides it never has to.

What’s in This Episode

Episode 37 maps the four tools of election nullification — how to overturn a result without ever winning a fraud case.

Certification Under Siege: In Wayne County, Michigan, two Republican canvassers voted to certify the 2020 results unanimously — then Donald Trump called them that night and asked them to take it back. It didn’t work, but the attempt set a pattern. In Otero County, New Mexico, commissioners overruled their own county clerk and refused to certify a 2022 primary until the state supreme court forced their hand. Watchdog groups have now tracked more than thirty officials across eight to ten states attempting the same move. Every single attempt has failed — so far.

Override: Safety Valves Turned Weapons. On January 6, 2021, 147 members of Congress objected to counting electoral votes — a mechanism used in any contested way only once before in over a century. We explain the legal theory behind the objections, why courts and the outgoing vice president had already rejected it, and the Electoral Count Reform Act that Congress passed in 2022 specifically to close the loopholes January 6 exposed.

Manufacturing Fraud: The Maricopa County “forensic audit” searched ballots for bamboo fibers and still ended up confirming the official result. The film 2000 Mules depicted legitimate voters as ballot traffickers. A data-entry error in Antrim County, Michigan, corrected within hours, became permanent “proof” of rigged machines. We trace the three-step playbook — prime, manufacture, mainstream — and follow it all the way to January 2026, when the Director of National Intelligence personally showed up at the Fulton County ballot raid.

Courts, Standing, and the Fight to Stay Open: Why did judges toss dozens of 2020 lawsuits on standing and timing — and why did that look, to millions of people, like the courts refusing to look at the evidence? We cover Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court case that rejected the legal theory behind many of those challenges; Bost v. Illinois, which gives candidates the right to challenge election rules before they lose; and the real consequences already landing — a $787.5 million Fox News defamation settlement, and a federal judge sanctioning lawyers who sought $160 billion in damages over claims he called “the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”

Why It Matters

Nullification doesn’t require proving fraud. It requires manufacturing enough suspicion that supporters reject any loss and allies feel justified overriding results. The strategy survives every debunking by shifting its target: if the machines check out, blame the mail ballots; if the mail ballots check out, blame the rolls; if the rolls check out, blame certification; if certification goes through, blame the courts.

This episode closes the season’s argument about how power gets protected once it’s been seized. The response to nullification politics doesn’t get headlines — it looks like a clerk signing a form she knows will bring her threats, or a judge writing a careful opinion explaining why a fraud claim failed. The question now isn’t whether someone will try to nullify the next election. It’s how ready the rest of the system — and the rest of us — are to say no.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Spencer Pratt went to bed on election night looking like a winner.

His odds on Kalshi and Polymarket were surging. Cable news loved it. X loved it. And then the ballots kept being counted.

As late mail ballots arrived and Nithya Raman pulled ahead, Trump-aligned influencers — on paid affiliate contracts with the prediction platforms — began posting fraud narratives. Trump declared the race “rigged.” The U.S. attorney’s office opened multiple “election fraud investigations.”

Nothing unusual had happened in Los Angeles. The count worked the way it always does. But in the span of a week, normal ballot processing was turned into a national story about theft.

This is one city, one race. It is also a rehearsal.

What’s in This Episode

Episode 36 maps the five lanes of election sabotage — the ways you can corrupt a midterm without canceling it.

The DOJ Raids. FBI agents walked into Fulton County’s election offices and walked out with 650 boxes of original ballots, acting on claims courts had already rejected. Wayne County, Arizona, Wisconsin, Los Angeles — the same pattern repeated. We trace how the Trump administration dismantled DOJ’s internal guardrails (the Public Integrity Section, the Election Crimes Branch, mandatory training) and what it means when the magistrate judge becomes the last check on a politically motivated warrant.

Guns, Badges, and the “Election Integrity Army. The RNC has deployed staff in 17 states under the “election integrity” banner. Operation Metro Surge sent thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents into Minneapolis in paramilitary gear — two U.S. citizens were killed, both deaths ruled homicides. Steve Bannon said ICE would “surround the polls.” The White House wouldn’t rule it out. We cover the state laws — New Mexico, California, Virginia — trying to keep armed federal agents away from polling places, and the vigilante drop-box watchers already organizing for 2026.

Prediction Markets as Outrage Machines. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket paid influencers to promote their odds — and when those odds moved against their preferred candidate, the influencers shouted fraud instead of admitting a mispriced market. We explain red mirage, blue shift, and “ballot dumps”: why late-counting Democratic ballots are normal, and why the same graphs get used every election cycle as supposed proof of theft.

Raids on Organizers and Officials. The second wave of Trump’s weaponization isn’t targeting famous names — it’s targeting the boring infrastructure. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative raid. Data demands in Franklin County, Ohio, and five other counties. Machine-access demands in Missouri. An FBI investigation in Nevada that closed without charges but left staff afraid. Fifteen resignations in Missouri alone. Tiffany Lee in La Plata County, Colorado fielding SAVE Act confusion. Bridgette Escobedo in Williamson County, Texas forced to leave her home after a doctored video.

The Hollowed-Out Cyber Shield. Thousands of fake “election” and “vote” domains registered in early 2026. CISA gutted — no Senate-confirmed leader, no answers when local officials call. EI-ISAC defunded, membership collapsed. A Republican election supervisor in Florida: “Try calling somebody at CISA and see who answers the phone. It’s been radio silence.” The very infrastructure built to protect elections from foreign interference is being dismantled as the threat environment grows.

Why It Matters

Sabotage doesn’t need to cancel an election to work. It only needs to make voting feel dangerous, make counting feel corrupt, make the people running the system feel exposed, and make enough of the public believe that any result going against one man is inherently illegitimate.

These five lanes — DOJ raids, armed intimidation, disinformation about the count, raids on organizers, and dismantled cyber defenses — are not separate problems. They are a coordinated strategy. Each one softens the ground. Together, they create the conditions for something more drastic.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Summary

On July 26, 2024, Donald Trump stood before a room full of conservative Christian voters in West Palm Beach, Florida, and told them: “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” The room cheered. A minute later, he said it again.

He has said versions of that five times over six years. To Elon Musk. To Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. To Reuters. To House Republicans. And once on social media in 2020, when he suggested delaying a presidential election he was afraid he would lose. Every time, his people call it a joke. He keeps coming back to it.

In November 2026, every seat in the House and a third of the Senate will be on the ballot. For Trump, for Heritage, for the Christian nationalist networks and the donor families who have funded this project — losing Congress is an existential threat. It would mean subpoenas, hearings, and investigations into everything this season has documented.

So the question this episode asks is simple: if you controlled the White House and a free election could take Congress away from you — how would you make sure that election was never allowed to happen?

What’s in This Episode

This series covers how you rig a midterm in three phases — Prevent, Sabotage, and Nullify. Episode 35 is about Phase One: everything that happens before a single ballot is cast. An election can be preventing through: 

Cancellation: Trump has floated the idea of not holding elections five times across six years — to Christian voters, to a foreign president, to Reuters, to House Republicans, and on social media in 2020. His allies have already sketched the pretexts: war with Iran, large-scale unrest, a cyber emergency. Marjorie Taylor Greene — once one of his most loyal allies, now openly at odds with him — warned that Trump is “planting the idea” and normalizing it through repetition. Project 2025 supplies the mechanism: an executive branch with sweeping emergency powers and no internal resistance left to slow it down.

The SAVE Act — voter suppression as national policy: The House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — the SAVE Act — almost entirely along party lines. It would require documentary proof of citizenship to register and vote, eliminate online and automatic voter registration, and sharply restrict mail-in ballots. Trump has said openly that if it passes, Democrats will “never be elected again.” Project 2025 builds the enforcement infrastructure: shifting election prosecutions to the Criminal Division, requiring states to share voter rolls and DMV databases with the federal government, and eliminating registration programs that currently add 3.5 million voters to the rolls each year.

The Machinery: In 2025, Trump’s election-security adviser Kurt Olsen pushed a plan to have the Commerce Department declare Dominion voting machines a national-security risk — effectively banning machines used in more than half of U.S. states. The goal was to force a rushed switch to hand counting before the midterms, creating the kind of chaos that makes fraud claims easier to sell. A federal task force dismantled machines in Puerto Rico. They found no Venezuelan code, no foreign threat. The plan collapsed for lack of evidence. The Mandate for Leadership calls for stripping the Federal Election Commission of its independent authority and prohibiting the FBI from combating election-related disinformation.

The Loyalty Machine: None of the Prevent phase works without Republican cooperation. Trump has built a loyalty economy inside the party — where advancement depends on usefulness to the project of permanent rule. The Justice Department’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund was designed to reward loyalists and signal that compliance pays. A federal judge shut it down. The primary threat runs alongside the money: Republicans who resist face challengers, outside spending, and isolation. Schedule F installs the same logic inside government. Project 2025 supplies the rules and institutions that make both tracks permanent.

Why It Matters

Episode 34 showed what the surveillance infrastructure looks like when it has $170 billion, a monopoly contractor, and no oversight requirements. Episode 35 shows what happens when that same ecosystem turns its attention to the election itself.

The Prevent phase doesn’t guarantee Trump and his allies can’t lose in 2026. But it does everything possible to make a genuine contest less likely — to shrink the electorate, tilt the field, and pre-rig the infrastructure before anyone shows up at a polling place.

None of this is improvisation. Project 2025 laid out each of these strategies in advance — the voter suppression laws, the federal takeover of election machinery, the loyalty apparatus inside the party. What this episode documents is the blueprint being executed.

The question Episode 36 asks: what happens when the rules aren’t enough, and they move to break the election in real time?

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com

Send us Fan Mail

Surviving Trump • Episode 34 • Series 4: Corporate Power and Control

It was 5:30 in the morning on October 30, 2025, still dark, when ICE agents began watching an apartment complex in Woodburn, Oregon. An AI targeting app had identified the neighborhood as a priority area — not because any individual had been suspected of a crime, but because the data said people like them lived there. Seven farmworkers were inside a van, carpooling to a job site. ICE smashed the windows. Six were handcuffed and made to sit on the pavement. An agent held his phone inches from one man’s face while a flashlight shone on him. He scanned for 12 seconds. The agent said out loud, on camera: “Mobile Fortify couldn’t find him.”

A federal judge later ruled the arrests were unlawful. The class action lawsuit is ongoing. This is what the surveillance infrastructure looks like in operation. 

What’s in This Episode

Six categories of surveillance now operating nationwide: Biometric surveillance — facial recognition, iris scanning, DNA collection. Location and movement tracking — license plate readers, commercial data purchased without warrants. Predictive AI targeting — neighborhoods chosen before any individual is suspected. Digital and social media monitoring — used against activists, journalists, and legal observers. Database aggregation — 1.4 million federal searches of Oregon residents in a single year. Physical surveillance — checkpoints, drones, and stakeouts concentrated in the 100-mile border zone where two-thirds of Americans live. Together they form an architecture that is continuous, nationwide, and largely invisible to the people it is watching.

Project 2025 as the blueprint: The 900-page governing plan specified exactly this surveillance infrastructure — total information sharing across DMV records, voter rolls, tax data, and Social Security records. And immigration was only the beginning. The same blueprint specified surveillance of the federal workforce, monitoring of reproductive healthcare, and tracking of digital speech.

Palantir — the contractor at the center: Founded in 2003 with CIA seed funding, Palantir has received more than $900 million in federal contracts since January 2025. Its Chairman Peter Thiel wrote in 2009 that freedom and democracy are incompatible. Its CEO Alex Karp said on CNBC in March 2026 that his technology is designed to reduce the economic power of college-educated Democratic voters and increase the power of vocationally trained Republican voters. He acknowledged the technologies are “dangerous societally.” He said the danger is justified. Stephen Miller held Palantir stock worth up to $250,000 while ICE was awarding the company its contracts. He divested in August 2025 — after the public found out.

ImmigrationOS and ELITE: Palantir’s Immigration Lifecycle Operating System was awarded a $30 million sole-source contract — no competitive bidding — that grew to $145 million, then to a $1 billion blanket agreement covering every DHS agency. Its targeting system maps neighborhoods where people who have ever had contact with an immigration agency are concentrated. In court testimony, ICE confirmed that definition includes naturalized U.S. citizens. The system runs on AI rather than fixed rules — meaning if legal definitions change, the targeting maps repopulate automatically. It just needs new instructions.

Arrest first, justify later: Gerardo Gonzalez was born in Pacoima, California — a natural born U.S. citizen detained because a database said otherwise. A federal court found the system was producing unconstitutional detentions based solely on flawed database outputs. The government’s response was to fund a larger version at $2.8 billion. There are no checks, no safety nets, no required verification before an arrest is made. A database flags a name. An agent moves.

The system beyond immigration: Federal employees at the Agriculture Department, Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration are now tracked by Palantir — monitored for attendance, location, and compliance. DHS has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord demanding the identities of anonymous ICE critics. Tom Homan announced a database to publicly expose people arrested for interfering with ICE. In Minneapolis, bystanders at protests had their faces scanned and were told they were being added to a database of domestic terrorists. And Project 2025 has specified that the same infrastructure should be used to track abortions, miscarriages, and women who travel across state lines for reproductive healthcare. The surveillance infrastructure does not need new technology to expand. It needs new instructions. 

Why It Matters

Episodes 30 and 31 documented billionaires buying the press. Episode 32 documented the donor class funding the Project 2025 blueprint. Episode 33 documented Musk manufacturing the fear that makes the agenda politically viable. Episode 34 shows what the agenda looks like when it has $170 billion, a monopoly contractor, and no oversight requirements.

Thirteen former Palantir employees published an open letter warning that the tools they built to fight terrorism and authoritarianism had been turned into the infrastructure of domestic control. Their company’s leadership responded by offering NDAs and asking for more committed hobbits. The people who built this system have not hidden what it is. They have justified it — in published essays, in shareholder letters, on cable television — presenting mass surveillance as progress, as national security, as the defense of Western civilization.

Which raises the question this episode leaves open: if this is the infrastructure that exists today — pointed at immigrants, federal employees, political critics, and soon reproductive healthcare — what happens when it gets pointed at an election? That is Episode 35.

Support the show

Bella Goode is a pseudonym — but the voice, research, and mission are all real. A Republican turned Democrat advocate in 2016, I was raised by middle class parents in Pennsylvania.  I’m a former marketing executive, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner with an MBA from Wharton and a Master’s in Psychology from Penn. I spent decades telling stories in the business world; now I use those skills to connect the dots in American politics.

I’m here because the truth matters — and because the stakes have never been higher. Surviving Trump isn’t lighthearted. It’s clarity, evidence, and a fight for the future of our democracy.

Follow my blog on Substack https://survivingtrumppodcast.substack.com