The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 47
Nov. 24, 2025
This week:
- Economy remains Trump’s biggest risk
- House margin on a knife’s edge
- Crockett keeps teasing a Senate run
Outlook
Economy: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The old adage from Democratic consultant James Carville remains as true today as it ever was. And at the moment, it is making a Democratic midterm victory seem increasingly likely. Although historical trends would seem to favor Democrats no matter what, the generic congressional ballot seems to be shifting decisively in their favor, at least for now.
It’s not that the economy is falling apart. There is still no economic crisis at this point. The stock market, despite a rough week last week, is only slightly off all-time highs. And as in the Biden era, anyone who wants a job can basically get one. Job gains in September outpaced expectations, and unemployment as of September 2025 was 4.4 percent — below what most economists consider “full employment.”
However — also as in the Biden era — a full-employment economy with spiraling costs and other structural flaws is not enough to satisfy people. Despite some progress in slowing the rate of inflation this year, consumers are badly afflicted by what is being called an “affordability crisis.” Younger Americans especially find themselves economically excluded from the American dream of homeownership and family formation due to high housing costs and high interest rates. Quick-fix proposals to stimulate demand (as opposed to increasing the housing supply) with stimulus checks or government subsidies for 50-year mortgages have been widely panned and seem doomed to make the problem worse, if anything.
Jitters over the economy have become sufficiently pronounced that Trump has even backed off his tariff agenda with respect to many grocery items. This tacit acknowledgment of tariffs’ ill-effects comes even before a likely Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s assertions of broad unilateral presidential tariff powers. But Trump has about six months to improve the situation (or get very lucky) and avoid an electoral disaster.
Immigration and crime: Trump ran on inflation, immigration and crime. And this is where Carville’s famous saying takes on another layer of importance. Because although immigration and crime are huge issues for voters when they get out of hand, their importance tends to recede when things improve. Biden let himself be sunk in large part by a broken border and continued unacceptably high crime rates post-COVID, but Trump could become a victim of his own success on these issues.
Yes, between self-deportations and deportations of convicted, charged and wanted criminals, Trump is definitely delivering on what he promised on immigration. The statistical evidence of the positive effects will take time to develop, but as the example of El Salvador shows, the removal of so many criminals from society will serve as a force-multiplier in reducing violent crime.
Trump’s experiments in Washington D.C. and Memphis also provide good examples in real time, as we noted when he began the former months ago. On Aug. 11, when Trump sent in the National Guard and other federal law enforcement, the District was on pace for 162 murders this year. Since Aug. 12, that number has dropped to an annualized equivalent of just 88 murders per year, which would tie for the lowest total in at least 20 years. The obvious implication is that the level of criminality in D.C. is a policy choice, not an inevitability.
And yet Trump will never win the 2026 election on crime or immigration, because these improvements merely represent a return to the baseline of expectations. Trump does well to remedy problems that undid his predecessor, but he faces the problem that he won’t get as much credit as he hopes. By next year, voters will be more interested in how the economy is doing, and that puts the ball squarely in Trump’s court to improve the situation.
House 2025-2026
The exact margin in the U.S. House is currently on a knife’s edge. And this matters, given that so many bills have passed by such small margins. With a new and quick appropriations season approaching, the margin matters more than ever.
As of this writing, Republicans have 219 seats and Democrats 213, with three vacancies — a Republican majority of six. The exact composition of the U.S. House, and therefore the outcome of votes taken therein, may soon vary again.
Tennessee-7: For one thing, Republicans should add one seat very soon in Tennessee when voters go to the polls Dec. 2 — next Tuesday. They will be replacing former Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who quit in July to take a job in the private sector focused on business opportunities in Guyana. Cook Political Report considers the seat to be ten points more Republican than the U.S. House electorate as a whole, meaning that a Democratic upset would be very embarrassing right now for Trump and the Republicans.
New Jersey-11: Former Rep. Mikie Sherill (D) resigned last week in anticipation of becoming New Jersey’s next governor on January 20. No special election has officially been called yet to fill her Democrat-leaning seat. The seat is five points more Democratic than average.
Texas-18: The other vacancy is in Texas. Voters will go to the polls on January 31 to replace the recently deceased Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas). This will crucially leave the Democrats one man short through the Jan. 30 end of currently continuing appropriations, making a House-based shutdown slightly less likely.
Meanwhile, there is one impending vacancy and another potential vacancy.
Georgia-14: The controversial Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), having just had a massive falling out with President Trump, has just announced that she will resign on Jan. 5 — exactly five years and two days after she first took office. This is just enough time to fully vest her House pension and perhaps even to vote on some or all of the appropriations bills that will have to be finalized before funding runs out. The all-parties jungle-primary election to replace her could come as soon as February or as late as May.
Florida-20: Meanwhile, more vacancies are or might be in the offing. The $5 million fraud indictment of Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) could have implications on her availability to vote or even her membership in the House, depending on how quickly the case goes to trial (or how quickly a plea deal is struck). However, there are no indications just yet that she will have to step down and leave a vacancy behind. Her district is overwhelmingly Democratic.
Governor 2026
Ohio: The decision by former Rep. Tim Ryan (D) to forgo this race leaves a likely contest by default between billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (R) and former director of the state Department of Health Amy Acton (D).
Nowadays, it has become more fashionable among the very online Right to question the movement’s historically colorblind and merit-based (thus anti-DEI) approach to the race, ethnicity and even religion of immigrant families. (Ramaswamy’s parents are from India and he is Hindu.) Is this just an online trend? This race provides another real-world test of how a broader conservative electorate will react in 2025 to an accomplished, Trump-backed, and genuinely politically conservative member of an ethnic and religious minority. Although he would not be the first Indian-American Republican governor (Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley both precede him there), he would be the first Hindu — and he isn’t shy about it.
Senate 2026
Louisiana: Here’s a surprising story reported last week about President Trump acting out of character: He will not endorse against a senator in a conservative state who voted to impeach him in January 2021, and he might even endorse him.
And he apparently will not endorse one of his primary opponents. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) claimed in an interview with Punchbowl News that the White House has communicated to him that it will remain neutral in the primary. He even seemed to hold forth some hope that he could earn Trump’s backing. Cassidy has been very supportive of Trump’s agenda in his second term.
Texas: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) once again teased the possibility of a Senate run again in a CNN interview over the weekend. “My polling says I can win,” she said. She claimed that her numbers have her already beating Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and within the margin of error against Sen. John Cornyn (R). If she gets in, she will at least dominate the primary, probably putting the seat off the table, no matter whom Republicans nominate.
