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2026-04-21 01:26:40

Infowars could finally have a new owner: Global Tetrahedron, the Chicago-based company that owns the satirical news outlet The Onion. The news was first reported by journalist and podcaster Pablo Torre, and also announced by Onion CEO Ben Collins, who wrote on Bluesky, “With the help of the Sandy Hook families, The Onion has reached a long-awaited deal to take over InfoWars.” Collins also said on Bluesky that Infowars’ new creative director will be comedian Tim Heidecker.

Collins also posted a link to a statement purportedly put out by Global Tetrahedron’s fake owner, Bryce P. Tetraeder. “Today I can finally say the sweetest nine or 10 words in the English language: Global Tetrahedron has completed its plan to control InfoWars,” the statement read. “With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us. It will be like the Manhattan Project, only instead of a bomb, we will be building a website.”

According to the New York Times, the Onion has reached a deal with the bankruptcy receiver overseeing Infowars, Gregory S. Milligan, to license the website from Milligan. Despite the Onion‘s description of the deal, its bid must still be approved by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in a Texas district court.

This is the Onion’s second attempt to acquire Infowars. While Global Tetrahedron won a 2024 bankruptcy auction to buy the company while promising to turn the site into a parody of itself, a bankruptcy judge voided the results, saying that he wasn’t convinced the company’s bid had more value than one offered by allies of Jones. The announcement is the latest installment in an endless series of legal skirmishes that began in 2018, when the families of people killed during the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School sued Jones for defamation. Jones repeatedly claimed on-air that the shootings were a hoax; he lost all the lawsuits filed against him in Texas and Connecticut by default after failing to meaningfully participate in discovery. 

If the past is any guide, Jones’ public response will likely involve a good deal of shouting and a vow to remain on-air, no matter what. During a live broadcast on Monday, after a viewer called to ask about the news, Jones said a “new thing” would soon be in place. Since 2024, Jones has been directing his viewers to buy supplements and donate money at a new site, the Alex Jones Store, which is currently hawking a “last-stand super sale” of Infowars products, billed as a “fundraiser” to keep the company alive. Jones has also said that if Infowars is shut down, he’ll immediately begin broadcasting from the Alex Jones Network, a website which currently broadcasts a mirror of Infowars content.

“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Jones added. “The media is going to run around and call this a victory. They already are. It’s all going to blow up in their face.”

The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

2026-04-20 23:30:10

On Sunday afternoon, Palantir, the defense-tech company that sells software to clients like ICE, the US military, and the Israeli military, decided to give us all a piece of their mind. The company’s official X account published a list of excerpts from co-founder Alex Karp’s 2025 book The Technological Republic. 

The book frames Silicon Valley’s move into military technology as the righteous repayment of a “moral debt” owed to the country that built the tech billionaire class. “The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.” 

If you read past the post and dig into the book itself, you’ll find that this sentence continues: “the engineering elite must also, Karp said, participate in “the articulation of a national project—what is this country, what are our values, and for what do we stand.” 

That is to say: Men like Karp should decide what this country is. 

“If a US Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software,” Palantir’s Bill-Ackman-esque digression continued. It asserts that the future of American military dominance will not depend on nuclear deterrence, but on AI weaponry—possibly like the Palantir AI product that is reportedly used to help generate ‘kill lists’ for the Israeli military in Gaza. 

Then, after arguing for the primacy of its own products—called “spy tech” by Palantir’s critics—Karp suggests the remilitarization of the Axis Powers. “The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone,” Karp’s company account asserted. “The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.” 

That would make those countries massive defense markets, which means more money for Palantir. Right now, about half of their earnings come from their contracts with various governments. A further militarized Japan and Germany could see that share expand further. 

The rest of the manifesto is also, essentially, a sales pitch for corporate capture: “hard power in this century will be built on software,” Palantir says, meaning that if America doesn’t buy that software, someone else will. The company has had a banner year profiting on Trump’s ICE crackdowns, and currently holds $970 million in US government contracts, but is eager for more. 

As Palantir pitches an increasingly militarized United States, ideologically determined by Silicon-valley tastes—at one point in the post, they suggest bringing back the draft—they’re suggesting a country in which they get all the power.

2026-04-20 23:27:40

Petro-imperialism is back in a big way.

On Monday, Iran’s military vowed to execute “necessary action” against US forces after it fired at and seized an Iranian-flagged ship the day before—destroying any hope for renewed peace negotiations in the near future.

While a spokesperson for Iran’s military called the US’ capture of the Iranian cargo ship trying to pass through a US blockade “blatant aggression,” they said the country’s first priority was to ensure the safety of crew members and their families on board. These developments are a drastic escalation of the fight for control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz is a key waterway in the Persian Gulf through which approximately 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas flowed—at least before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran starting in February. Iran announced the re-opening of the strait after a 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon. (Israel continued its indiscriminate bombing campaign against Lebanon even after the ceasefire agreement between the two countries).

But according to Al Jazeera, Iran reversed its decision on Saturday, stating that the strait will remain closed until the US withdraws its blockade on all ships entering and leaving Iranian ports. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, said in a television interview that the blockade, which began last Monday, was “a clumsy and ignorant decision” and violated their ceasefire agreement with the US.

Since then, Iran has reportedly fired at ships with Indian flags attempting to cross the strait and President Donald Trump has threatened to commit war crimes against Iran again by decimating civilian infrastructure—including power plants and bridges—if Iran didn’t agree to re-open the strait in a new deal to end the war. Iran is, of course, not cooperating as the US has persisted with their naval blockade on their shipping ports. 

Thus, the two countries are at a stalemate. According to CNN, JD Vance is expected to travel to Pakistan on Tuesday to discuss next steps with Iran, but the vice president isn’t exactly a skilled negotiator. 

As Jeff Colgan, a political science professor and Director of the Climate Solutions Lab the Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University, told me last month, during which the US and Iran were largely in the same place regarding control of the strait, the Trump administration’s poor planning and foresight to the lasting impacts of their bombing campaign with Israel has brought us to this situation.

More than 3,000 people in Iran have been killed as of April 9 and Iran’s “backs are to the wall”—they have no other realistic option to defend themselves, especially as the US has intervened in Iran’s oil trade since the 1950s.

The Trump administration has returned to what Colgan calls “petro-imperalism,” interventionist policies that not only affect Iran but have also led to the recent attacks on Venezuela.

2026-04-20 22:09:02

Jerry Rodriguez appeared to be a deeply aggrieved man—the victim of a scheme orchestrated by his girlfriend’s domineering ex-partner to “murder” not one, but two, of his “unborn children.” In a lawsuit filed in Galveston, Texas, last summer on behalf of “all current and future fathers… in the United States,” Rodriguez was portrayed as a devoted boyfriend who accompanied his girlfriend to ultrasound appointments and, eventually, pleaded with her not to go through with abortions that her ex was trying to force her to have. 

Weirdly, the villain in this anguished narrative story wasn’t the girlfriend’s estranged husband, but a California-based provider named Dr. Rémy Coeytaux whom Rodriquez accused of “wrongful death” for allegedly supplying the abortion pills used to terminate her pregnancies.  

Demanding justice on Rodriguez’s behalf was anti-abortion legal mastermind Jonathan F. Mitchell, who was seeking an injunction to stop Coeytaux—and all other medical providers—from sending pills to Texas, where abortion is banned. This winter, Mitchell amended the lawsuit to incorporate a new Texas law, House Bill 7, that allows private “bounty hunters” to sue abortion-pill providers for at least $100,000 per violation.

The suit was part of a larger legal strategy by Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general who has helped craft some of the most radical and punitive anti-abortion laws in the country, including Senate Bill 8, a six-week ban enacted in 2021, and HB 7 itself. Four years after the end of Roe v. Wade, abortion pills have become so widely available that the number of abortions across the US has actually risen, with medication now accounting for 63 percent of the total. Mitchell is trying to use the courts to resurrect the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era anti-obscenity, anti-abortion law that has been dormant for decades. If Comstock is revived, it would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills nationwide, amounting to a federal ban. 

Sympathetic-sounding plaintiffs like Rodriguez are an essential part of Mitchell’s strategy. But a few months after the case was filed, Rodriguez’s story has fallen apart, highlighting just how ineffective Mitchell and his allies have been—so far—in using such lawsuits to push their sweeping anti-abortion agenda.

According to an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, at the same time that Mitchell was promoting his client as a symbol of aggrieved fathers-to-be, the Galveston man was evading a felony arrest warrant for allegedly beating up the girlfriend whose abortions he claimed to mourn. In October 2024—a few months before filing his lawsuit—Rodriguez had a violent altercation with his girlfriend at a motel. He allegedly grabbed the woman’s neck as if he was trying to “crush” it, the article detailed, to the point where she “believed she was going to die.” She told police the attack was the eighth time in five months that Rodriguez assaulted her. He then proceeded to slam her to the floor, climb on top of her, and punch and slap her until she finally broke free and escaped, the Chronicle said. 

It wasn’t Rodriguez’s only alleged incident of domestic abuse. According to police records, he pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman he lived with in 2006 and to harassment for threatening to kill a different woman in 2009, spending a total of two days in jail. 

Now attorneys for Coeytaux have asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, in part due to Rodriguez’s abusive history. As it turns out, HB 7 specifically excludes anyone who has committed a “family violence” offense from suing under the state law, making Rodriguez ineligible to be a plaintiff. In a 43-page motion filed last Thursday evening, lawyers at the Center for Reproductive Rights offer a list of other arguments for why they thinks the suit should be thrown out—including the fact that all the allegations Rodriguez raised against Coeytaux occurred more than a year before HB 7 took effect. The law is not retroactive. The attorneys also argue HB 7 has “serious constitutional defects” that violate both the Texas and US Constitutions.

Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones. 

Marc Hearron, a senior counsel at CRR who is representing Coeytaux in the case, draws parallels between Rodriguez’s alleged violence and his lawsuit. “The decision to have an abortion is a personal, intimate choice,” Hearron says. “Who would have the gall to file a lawsuit over someone’s decision like that and splash it all over the papers, except for someone who intends to further abuse? This is not something an average person would ever do.”

Other legal experts were perplexed at the suit’s apparent conflicts with a law—HB 7—that Mitchell helped write. “The retroactivity part seems quite obvious,” says David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University and expert in abortion rights.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Rodriguez lawsuit is that it’s part of a pattern. In 2023, for example, a Mitchell client named Marcus Silva sued two friends of his ex-wife for wrongful death and $1 million in damages for allegedly helping her obtain medication to end her pregnancy. Then Silva was revealed to have a history of what a Texas Supreme Court justice called “disgracefully vicious” harassment and emotionally abusive behavior—including threatening to drag his wife to court if she did not have sex with him. The friends countersued, alleging that Silva knew about the abortion and, hypocritically, didn’t do anything to stop it. Silva eventually dropped the case. 

Mitchell is coming up against similar issues in yet another wrongful death lawsuit, this one against international abortion provider Aid Access and its founder, Rebecca Gomperts. Last summer, a Corpus Christi woman named Liana Davis accused her ex-boyfriend, Christopher Cooprider, of spiking her cocoa with abortion drugs from Aid Access. Davis says she became pregnant in early 2025 but Cooprider “wanted the baby dead.” In text messages included in court documents, Cooprider insisted that the two were not an item and that it would be “messed up” for them to bring a child into the world. Cooprider, a Marine pilot in training, is now countersuing Davis for $100 million, alleging she framed him and lied about multiple pregnancies and miscarriages. 

“These cases range from messy to downright wild,” says Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis. “It’s kind of a PR disaster.” The underlying issue, she says, is that Mitchell’s main goal isn’t to win justice for individuals claiming to have been harmed by abortion pills. It’s to use the courts to try to stop the flow of pills nationwide. 

To find plaintiffs who can bring such cases, Mitchell—along with the state’s largest anti-abortion activist group, Texas Right to Life—have been working with religious ministries, crisis pregnancy centers, men’s rights groups and so-called “abortion recovery groups.” But these organizations tend to attract publicity seekers, grudge-bearers, and ideologues—“basically, people who have enough of an axe to grind to overcome the usual reasons that others might hesitate before opening themselves to this kind of exposure,” Ziegler says. And so the plaintiffs “end up being controlling, abusive, or dysfunctional themselves.” 

Another weakness of the cases, says University of Texas law professor Rachel Rebouché, is that they seek to place the bulk of the blame for abortions on out-of-state pill providers, rather than on the actions of individuals who may have manipulated a woman into getting an abortion. 

“It’s pretty novel to go after a third party—the pill providers—rather than the person who allegedly coerced you or your partner into ending the pregnancy,” Rebouché says. “There’s a causation issue here, and it’s not clear to me that it’s going to be an easy argument to make to a judge.” 

What’s more, the remedy Mitchell is seeking for his wrongful death lawsuits—asking courts to stop abortion-pill providers around the country from sending any more pills through the mail—is wildly overbroad, Rebouché says. “It’s like filing a physician negligence claim where you ask the court to never allow any doctor to be negligent ever again,” she says. “It makes no sense.” 

Rebouché sees these wrongful death cases as experiments, akin to other efforts by anti-abortion lawyers and lawmakers around the country to find ways to stop the flow of abortion pills. “Mitchell is known for testing out a lot of different strategies and theories,” she says. “He’s not afraid to try something new and see what works.”

In Ziegler view, Mitchell’s goal may not necessarily be for his clients to win. Rather, his main objective seems to be to elevate the Comstock issue, in hopes of using the courts to force a nationwide abortion ban that the Trump administration—so far at least—has not been willing to put in place. Mitchell has strategically filed his recent wrongful death cases in federal court, where some ultraconservative Trump appointees—notably US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo—have shown themselves willing to issue sweeping national rulings. The Galveston federal judge hearing the Rodriguez case is also a Trump appointee. Mitchell’s ultimate goal is to get a case to the US Supreme Court, where the conservative supermajority might well agree that Comstock is the law of the land. 

“Mitchell may not actually care about what the public thinks about his plaintiffs,” Ziegler says. “And no hole in the case may be too gaping with the right audience of like-minded judges.” 

Cohen, however, is doubtful the strategy will work. “Mitchell has been wildly unsuccessful in various attempts to get [courts] to pay attention to the Comstock Act,” he says. “There’s no reason to believe yet another misguided attempt of his will succeed this time.”

Not to be outdone, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—an anti-abortion ideologue who is running for the US Senate—has filed a handful of lawsuits also taking aim at out-of-state abortion providers, including Aid Access and Coeytaux. “Radicals sending abortion-inducing drugs into our state will be held accountable for ending innocent life,” Paxton said in a statement this January. “My office will defend the lives of the unborn and relentlessly enforce our state’s pro-life laws.” 

While Mitchell’s cases lean more heavily on wrongful death and the Comstock Act as avenues to cut off abortion pills, Paxton is targeting shield laws—statutes that make it possible for abortion providers and helpers in blue states to safely care for patients living in places where abortion is illegal. Telehealth care under shield laws now accounts for 27 percent of abortions nationwide, according to the Society of Family Planning’s most recent data.

However, Paxton’s suits face their own problems. For instance, his office’s cases against Aid Access and another provider, Her Safe Harbor, run by a nurse practitioner in Delaware, are based on either the organization’s advertisements or news media reports, rather than relying on any tangible proof of patients in Texas actually receiving or using pills. These groups are a “notorious part of a growing network of out-of-state abortion traffickers that deliberately target Texas residents,” the state claims. 

“The Texas attorney general’s case against Her Safe Harbor doesn’t seem to be based on any real investigation or actual evidence,” says Autumn Katz, interim director of US litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She pointed to another Paxton case filed last year against Texas midwife Maria Rojas, which also involved what turned she called a “shoddy investigation.” “This seems to be a pattern,” Katz says.

Paxton’s first attack on an out-of-state provider ended with a strong rebuke: In October, a New York judge dismissed Texas’ effort to enforce a $100,000 civil fine against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a telemedicine doctor whom Paxton accused of prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman. Carpenter’s medical services fall “squarely within the definition of ‘legally protected health activity’” under New York’s shield law, the judge found. The Carpenter case was yet another example of a disgruntled man seeking revenge on a woman’s reproductive choices: The patient was turned in by her ex, who found her abortion pill bottles at her home. 

“Each case is weak factually for different reasons,” Cohen says. “But all face the same problem—shield laws that protect the provider.” And given that none of the cases involves a woman injured by the pills seeking compensation for that injury, he adds, “the shield law will hold up and prevent any judgment from being enforced in another state.”

The Paxton cases are similar to others in Louisiana, where Attorney General Liz Murill has sought to extradite both Carpenter and Coeytaux for sending pills to patients in the state. To Brittany Fonteno, president of the National Abortion Federation, these cases all highlight the hypocrisy of abortion opponents who claim that telehealth and mail-order pills enable “reproductive coercion”—which they define as disgruntled ex-boyfriends and other bad actors forcing women to get abortions they don’t want. Anti-abortion groups have even created legal resources, like the Justice Foundation’s Center Against Forced Abortions, to reinforce and promote this larger, national narrative. 

But ample research shows that women aren’t being coerced in large numbers to have abortions; far more often they are forced to continue pregnancies they don’t want. Meanwhile, survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault frequently report that abortion pills are the very thing that makes it possible to escape their controlling and abusive partners. 

“Access to abortion, including medication abortion, is critical to the safety and autonomy [of such patients],” Fonteno says. She cites patients like Alissa, a 21-year-old from Texas who was assaulted by her partner. “My husband raped me when I asked for a divorce and impregnated me in an attempt to get me to stay,” she told NAF. Abortion pills, she said, were her only option, since he also controls her finances.

“This type of freedom—particularly for women and marginalized communities—is empowering,” Fonteno says. But to anti-abortion extremists, she adds, it’s “terrifying.”

2026-04-20 19:30:00

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The first thing drivers probably check when they go to the gas station is the cost of gasoline—especially with prices surging. What they might not pay as much attention to is diesel. Perhaps they should. The price of that essential fuel has climbed even more quickly, and new data shows that it’s blowing nearly as big a hole in the American economy.

When bombing began in the Middle East, Iran quickly closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes. Prices immediately shot up—and, with the United States and Iran failing to negotiate a peace settlement over the weekend, the price of oil is once again rising. 

As of April 13, the war has saddled consumers with a staggering $19 billion in added fuel costs, according to researchers at Brown University who recently launched an online tool that tracks the impact of rising oil prices. Although the national conversation has focused on gasoline, diesel accounted for $9.4 billion, or almost half, of that increase. At about $71 per US household, that’s having a profound impact on everyone, even those who do not buy diesel.

“You’re probably feeling it in ways you don’t realize,” said Jeff Colgan, a political scientist at Brown who, along with his students, built the dashboard, which updates continuously. Some people purchase diesel for their passenger vehicles, but the fuel is also essential to commercial operations such as trucking, rail, agriculture, and construction. Virtually every good in the country passes through the diesel supply chain at some point, and higher costs are eventually passed to consumers. 

”Diesel is the fuel that powers the economy much more than gasoline does,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, an app that lets consumers track fuel prices. He explained that because each barrel of oil produces less diesel than gasoline, the impact has been disproportionately higher. According to the Brown University tracker, diesel prices have climbed 54 percent since the war began on February 28, compared to the 38 percent jump for gasoline.

Gas customers have been driving less as a result, but the industries that rely on diesel rarely have that option. “Gasoline demand is more elastic, meaning as prices go up, Americans can simply reduce consumption to some degree,” said De Haan. Diesel demand, on the other hand, doesn’t move as much. 

The timing of the war with Iran is another factor contributing to the relative spike of diesel. The United States and Israel began bombing Iran on the heels of a long, cold winter in New England, where most of the country’s heating oil is consumed. Because heating oil and diesel have nearly identical molecular structures and energy content, there was already upward seasonal pressure on prices at the pump, which the war exacerbated. “Coming out of winter, heating oil consumption is elevated,” said De Haan. “That usually impacts diesel as well.” 

While rising fuel prices have been bad news for the world’s consumers and economies, there have been some winners. “The really big beneficiaries are the oil producers around the world that haven’t been locked in behind the Strait of Hormuz,” Colgan said. “Russia is by far the biggest one of them, and the United States.”

Despite a two-week ceasefire intended to open the strait, only a handful of ships have transited the embattled waterway. When peace talks collapsed, President Donald Trump announced a blockade on Iranian ports. That campaign started Monday morning, once again driving oil prices higher. The commonly cited benchmark, Brent crude, reflects what traders expect a barrel will be worth in a month or two. But the spot price—or what it actually costs to buy a barrel now—has been trending higher than that, suggesting the crisis could be deeper than many realize.

“Physical prices and physical supplies would reflect a tighter market than I think the forward curve reflects,” said Mike Wirth, the chief executive of Chevron, at a conference last month. 

Even when the strait opens and ships start moving again, it could take months to repair damaged oil infrastructure and for the market to recalibrate. It’s also unclear what new factors might be introduced by then. For example, Iran reportedly wants to charge million-dollar tanker fees that could be passed down to customers. But with winter ending and summer—when gasoline prices are highest—coming, De Haan expects the gap in price between the two fuels to shrink. 

“From here on out,” he said, “you may see a little bit less of an increase in diesel as markets move up.”

2026-04-20 01:33:00

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have dropped to their lowest level since the start of his second term. 

According to the NBC News Decision Desk Poll released on Sunday, only 37 percent of adults approve of Trump’s work as president. Meanwhile, 63 percent disapprove, including 50 percent who disapprove strongly. Some of that strong disapproval comes from Trump’s handling of skyrocketing costs for most households: Among the over 32,000 American adults that NBC News surveyed over two weeks in March and April, 52 percent said they “strongly disapprove” and 16 percent “somewhat disapprove” of Trump’s handling of inflation and the cost of living. 

That’s a large disapproval jump compared to a few months ago. When NBC News asked the same inflation question to Americans last August, 45 percent noted they “strongly disapprove”—seven percentage points lower than this month’s results. 

The NBC results also suggest that Trump is beginning to lose his voter base. The number of Republicans who approve of Trump’s performance on inflation sank by 10 percentage points (from 83 to 73 percent) since last summer. The poll also found that overall support for the president dropped by four percentage points (from 87 to 83 percent) among his Republican support in just two months.

Inflation has taken a toll across the country: 40 percent of the NBC poll respondents said their personal finances were worse today than a year ago. That’s the highest response to that question of any poll by the network during Trump’s second term. 

The poll also found that approximately two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s war campaign in Iran. NBC News reported on Sunday that this percentage did not change significantly even after the US government announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran earlier in April. The agreement is set to expire this week. 

Notably, the Decision Desk poll recorded improvements in Trump’s approval rating on immigration and border security at 44 percent, a four percentage point increase from the previous survey in late January and early February. This comes after Trump removed Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino in late January and DHS secretary Kristi Noem in March.  

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit and nonpartisan data research and distribution organization at Syracuse University, over 60,000 people are being detained by ICE as of April 4. About 70 percent of those detainees have no criminal convictions. Meanwhile, the number of immigrants who have died while in ICE custody has reached a record-high. Since last October, 29 people have died, according to NPR, exceeding the previous annual record.

With midterm elections coming up this fall, continuous drops in Trump’s approval ratings could impact key races across the country if Americans see them as a referendum on the failures of his administration.