AP report catalogs transformations since election cycle began
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters last week that “some of these things are out of our control.” He was responding to questions about whether the year’s political frenzy would damage his party’s election prospects, according to an Associated Press report.
The remarks came as the final midterm of President Donald Trump’s presidency rapidly approaches. The AP report characterizes the political landscape as especially volatile and notes that Trump has frequently been at the center of the year’s developments.
The report contrasts the present with the earliest days of the election cycle. At the cycle’s start, the U.S. was not at war with Iran, the East Wing of the White House was still standing, and the Kennedy Center was not threatened with demolition.
The AP report catalogs other transformations as well. Artificial intelligence data centers were not yet bipartisan shorthand for the tech sector’s excess, Democratic socialists were largely confined to the outer edges of political discourse, and Lake Ontario’s name was not in question.
The AP report also notes that Trump has had a knack for dominating the national conversation so thoroughly since entering politics more than a decade ago that it can be hard to keep up.