Welcome to your weekly Drain Pipe, a guide to what’s driving the news in The Swamp.

By now we’ve become well acquainted with the Deep State. For a decade or more, it’s become clear that some of the most important power players in Washington are people you’ve never heard of. America has been riven by power hungry middle managers with Bruce Springsteen T-shirts and Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History bumper stickers.

On Friday, the Department of Justice indicted Nikki Floris, the head of former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s Foreign Influence Task Force, the Orwellian name for Wray’s internal team downplaying tips that may substantiate President Donald Trump’s concerns about election interference and neutering factual information about Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation. (“I am basically running a shadow government inside the FBI right now,” Floris told her colleague, an FBI official who prepared the President’s Daily Brief for Trump.)

Floris assured Congress under oath she did not have any knowledge of the Laptop From Hell — a big fat fib, the New York Post’s Miranda Devine reports.

Meanwhile, ousted USAID employee Marcia Mundt, who once oversaw $1 billion in “democracy promotion” abroad — a euphemism for achieving the electoral outcomes America likes — was caught red-handed by saying explicitly (and bitterly) that she was ready to apply these methods at home.

While Americans may hope the FBI and CIA are tracking down drug cartel kingpins and courting intelligence sources in Beijing, these washed-up national security officials are instead issuing warnings about election interference in a barely concealed bid to discredit Republicans and strengthen their control over the levers of democracy.

We’ve seen this playbook for ten years.

In December 2016, James Clapper strong-armed his counterpart at the National Security Agency into participating in the conspiracy to tie Trump to election interference by Russia, calling it a “team sport.”

A decade later, one gets the sense we’re at ever greater risk of total domination under what paleoconservative Paul Gottfried described as the “managerial state” — an illiberal, unaccountable, and fundamentally mediocre bureaucracy operating in the shadows.

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Take a dip in The Drain Pipe, your weekly guide to the Washington swamp.

Is it time to place the “swing voter” on the Endangered Species List?

When I volunteered as a precinct captain in Northern Virginia during the 2024 presidential election, I met voters of all kinds who were terrified of what the Biden-Harris administration was doing to our country and hopeful that electing Donald Trump would undo it. While I haven’t been a political operative in a while (and I don’t plan to be), it’s clear that the mood has changed.

Democrats only need three seats to flip the House, where sixteen Republican seats are toss-ups as of Oct. 16, according to the Cook Political Report. Meanwhile, they only need two seats to flip the Senate, where six Republican seats are reportedly toss-ups as of Oct. 6.

This doesn’t mean that Americans are “switching sides,” nearly as much as it could mean that they may feel that Trump hasn’t delivered the respite they were promised.

The share of Americans identifying as Republican fell 3% since last year (31% to 28%), while the share identifying as Democrats grew marginally by 1% (28% to 29%), according to data gathered by Pew Research Center from Jan. 30 through June 18. Meanwhile, those who identify with neither party rose 3% (41% to 44%).

Only 65% of Republicans say they’re certain they’ll vote in the midterms versus 72% of Democrats, according to an ABC/Post/Ipsos poll published Saturday night. The poll also found that Trump’s approval rating reached a record-low of 33%, with 75% of respondents rating America’s economy negatively.

These polls come as Trump urges voters to “pretend” he’s “on the ballot.” Sure, much of the inflation his administration is trying to tackle could’ve been caused by his predecessor, but the Iran War — which has reportedly cost the average American household $2,000 — may’ve made that a riskier request to make.

With Democrats repeatedly proving themselves to be the party of socialism and political persecution, it’s easy for Republicans to campaign on being the party of common sense. But that doesn’t mean that’ll be enough to cross the finish line. In order to meet Americans where they’re at — in the growing middle — Republicans’ receipts must show common good.

— Spencer Maximilian Lombardo

THE EXECUTIVE

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Welcome to The Drain Pipe, your guide to what’s driving the news in Washington this week.

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Welcome to The Drain Pipe, your guide to the week ahead in Washington.

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Welcome to The Drain Pipe, your guide to the week ahead in Washington.

Enough has been written about the Chipotle Price Index (CPI) by now.

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Socialists are winning elections across the United States. That’s not because voters suddenly love socialism. They don’t. Less than half of Americans sa…

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THE DRAIN PIPE

Welcome to The Drain Pipe, a normal person’s quick and dirty guide to Washington. You shouldn’t have to be a member of the White House press pool, a Polymarket…

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