In today’s edition … Surveillance pricing hits the general election … Voters feel like life is out of control … but first …
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The Supreme Court dealt President Donald Trump a major loss on Monday night when it blocked his attempt to restrict the use of mail-in ballots ahead of November’s midterms.
The Trump administration filed an emergency application with the court, hoping the body would stop lower-court rulings that barred the U.S. Postal Service from implementing a plan that, among other things, would have required states to submit lists of voters eligible to receive mail ballots to the federal government.
The Supreme Court was divided. The order was 7-2, with conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting. That means the three justices Trump nominated to the high court in his first term — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — went against the president on an issue that has animated him for years.
You can read more here from Justin Jouvenal, Patrick Marley and Mark Berman.
This election is about many things. But it’s also about just one: Control.
Let me explain.
Polls, interviews and research have shown there are countless issues that are top of mind for voters right now — from their pocketbooks, to fears that artificial intelligence could take their jobs, to the data centers popping up in their communities (often against their will), to concerns about a war in the Middle East and President Donald Trump’s approach to governing.
Those issues may seem disparate, but interviews with candidates and operatives suggest they all make voters feel that they have little control over their finances, their government and, really, their lives. And that in this election, Americans will vote for whoever can convince them they’ll give that control back.
“Voters feel more disconnected, and Americans just generally feel a lot more out of control,” said Guy Cecil, a longtime Democratic operative who recently launched the American Horizon Project, a group that aims to shape messaging on quality-of-life issues affecting a broad swath of Americans, including the implementation of artificial intelligence. “All these things feel like they’re happening to them, and their ability to control it is limited.”
This dynamic is clear in polls.
Gallup released a poll this morning that found “27% of U.S. workers fear technology could make their jobs obsolete,” with college graduates particularly afraid. A CNN poll released in May found the most common word Americans attributed to their finances was “uncertainty.” And an Economist/YouGov poll in January found 71 percent of Americans feel the nation is “out of control.”
This dynamic is particularly concerning for Republicans. As we have seen with issues like gas prices and inflation, voters are eager to punish the party in power when they feel like no one — including the federal government — has control over issues directly affecting their lives. This was a factor in the losses Democrats took in 2024, as voters felt like the party was focused on less important issues when, years removed from the coronavirus pandemic, their lives were still out of control. Republicans, including Trump, successfully promised a return to stability and swept back into power.
“So much of what is happening in politics and the economy right now is happening against this backdrop of people feeling that things are getting worse and they have no ability to make it better,” said Rob Flaherty, a former deputy campaign manager for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 reelection campaign who recently launched Tomorrow Together — a Democratic super PAC focused on how the party talks about AI.
Flaherty acknowledged that this dynamic was at play in Harris’s loss but added that Trump is particularly vulnerable because he has been dismissive about many issues Americans are worried about.
Yesterday, he minimized Americans’ concerns about AI — which undergird worries about data centers and the economy — by arguing he is the only bulwark needed to keep it from becoming runaway technology.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote. And the Republican leader has pooh-poohed worries about affordability, calling it a “hoax” and downplaying the pain people are feeling, and has lambasted anyone who criticizes the war with Iran.
“Trump is unique in that he has actual things he did that can be attributed to the prices going higher,” Flaherty said. “This is putting Republicans in a tough situation.”
As you might expect, candidates are coming at this from distinctly different perspectives.
Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, told me a few weeks ago that his campaign is “about giving people back control.”
“I do think it’s that question of who gets to control what, that’s at the heart of it,” he said, focusing especially on how voters feel like they can’t stop data center projects coming to their communities.
Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Republican Senate nominee in Iowa, argued that while people may be worried now, their lives were more out of control before Trump’s win in 2024, due to the rate of illegal immigration over the U.S.-Mexico border and what she called “true big government and chaos.”
“It’s so empowering to return power back to the people as much as we can,” Hinson said. “I want to make sure people do feel like they’re controlling their own destiny and that it’s not a big, bad federal government coming in and telling them what to do.”
“And at the end of the day,” she concluded, “that’s really what drives Iowa voters.”
But both candidates’ focus, despite their differing approaches, highlight how control will be a key overarching theme of these midterms.
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Need more proof that control is a potent political message right now?
Take this ad, shared exclusively with this newsletter, from Sen. Mark Warner on the rise of surveillance pricing, the first of the Virginia Democrat’s reelection campaign.
“These two online grocery orders are exactly the same. Same store. Same product,” Warner says in the spot, standing in front of two paper bags of groceries. “But the price is very different. It’s called surveillance pricing.”
As a reminder, surveillance pricing — also known as dynamic pricing — is when companies use your browsing history, data they have about you, and AI to change a product’s price based on your need for it, or when you may be buying. We wrote about it back in May.
“In the Senate, I’m going after these companies to stop the rip-off,” Warner says. “Because this isn’t innovation, it’s exploitation.”
The spot, a spokesperson for Warner said, will air statewide in Virginia starting today and in the D.C. market.
Warner has been part of a bipartisan effort in the Senate to fight surveillance pricing, working with Democrats Ruben Gallego and Richard Blumenthal, as well as Republican Josh Hawley. So it makes sense that surveillance pricing would make it into his ads.
But it’s particularly telling that this is the topic of the first ad campaign of his reelection run against Republican Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army major general. It’s just one more example of how much control matters this election cycle.
Bangor Daily News (Maine): Sen. Susan Collins’s superpower has long been her ability to win over moderate Democrats. The paper finds that unique path to victory may be slipping away from the Republican.
Idaho Capital Sun: Are gray wolves and Mexican wolves about to come off the Endangered Species Act list? Trump has given the federal government 90 days to decide. Opponents of the move say the wolf populations are not fully recovered.
Missouri Independent: Missouri Republicans aren’t done fighting for their gerrymandered congressional map. But legal experts say the map is unlikely to be used for the general election.
I asked how you use artificial intelligence, and it turns out many of you rely on it despite your concerns.
Matthew Floegel wrote, “I heavily rely on the thing I fear most.”
“I am as concerned about AI apocalyptic scenarios as anybody is, but at the same time, I use AI daily,” Floegel wrote. “My primary use is language study. With the use of ChatGPT, I have been able to achieve B2 fluency in Mandarin Chinese in one year.”
Don Callen Jr. wrote that he hadn’t “been worried about a ‘Terminator’-style scenario, until several AI executives said they were.”
“I have been more worried about technology that can duplicate your voice and appearance, and can work around security measures to obtain one’s critically sensitive information. Bad actors could take you out financially, if not physically,” he wrote.
Jayne Phillips wrote that “AI has many concerning issues but it also has some incredible benefits.”
Phillips wrote that she used Claude to understand why a bid for work on her acreage came in the way it did.
“It allowed me to talk with the contractor on his terms and I shared Claude’s findings with the contractor so he could see how AI evaluated his bid so he could provide more complete bids on the future,” Phillips wrote. “We ended up having a lengthy conversation where he felt a curtain had been lifted on previous work he bid and didn’t win.”
And Mary Beth Foarde wrote that she uses AI to “provide definitions for medical terminology.”
“But, DEFINITIONS ONLY,” she wrote. “NO medical advice.”
It feels unlikely that Trump’s proposed $5,000 checks will ever happen. But some Republicans are, at least sheepishly, getting behind it. Would you want the check? What do you think of the plan? And for those of you who oppose the president, how would you feel — if this plan were to ever come together — about accepting money from someone you oppose? Let me and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
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