As the election nears, it becomes clearer than ever that loyalty is the attribute the president prioritizes above all others.
The midterm elections are just days away, and while surprises can never be ruled out, the broad consensus among pollsters points to a difficult night for Republicans.
Seeking to secure a win for his party, President Donald Trump embraced a provocative strategy: buy the voters’ favor.
“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” Trump stated in September, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”
According to Vice President J.D. Vance, this “dividend”—which would amount to more than $1.3 trillion—would be funded by the “extraordinary amount of revenue” produced by Trump’s tariffs. Of course, that math is dubious: the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated tariff revenue at just under $300 billion between January 2025 and July 2026, not counting refunds the government has had to issue after the Supreme Court ruled they were unlawfully imposed.
By that metric, tariffs would need to accumulate for years merely to finance Trump’s dividend. Adding another layer of frustration, tariffs are paid by Americans, meaning we would be taxing ourselves to fund our own payout.
Yet in the final stretch of the campaign, Trump has rolled out a series of additional threats and guarantees, all contingent on his party’s success—a use of governmental power that many view as wholly inappropriate.
In September, three Ohio Republicans—Rep. Mike Turner and Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted—asked the president to locate a planned Space Force training academy in their state.
“Every other state wants it,” Trump asserted at an Ohio campaign rally this month. “If we win the midterms, Ohio will be very, very strongly considered.”
Some of his promises have been even more explicitly transactional.
On October 17, the Department of Defense—which Trump refers to by its original name, the Department of War—announced a conditional loan of $80 billion to the pharmaceutical maker Antheia. That same day, at a campaign rally in Kentucky, Trump pledged to voters there:
“If the Republicans win, the Department of War will invest $100 million in Antheia to revive a massive drug-manufacturing facility in Winchester, Kentucky,” he declared. Yet he prefaced the remark for Rep. Andy Barr, the Republican candidate for Kentucky’s open Senate seat, with, “you have to win, Andy. Otherwise, forget it.”
Days later in Kansas and Iowa, Trump revisited E15, a gasoline blend containing up to 15 percent ethanol derived from corn. While it has pros and cons as an alternative fuel, it represents a boon for agrarian states.
“Normally, E15 isn’t permitted during the summer because higher temperatures boost fuel evaporation and exacerbate ozone pollution,” notes Benjamin Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute.
The government can suspend that rule to avert supply disruptions, a move it made in March amid fuel-price shocks linked to Trump’s conflict with Iran. The House approved a bill in May to make the waiver permanent and allow E15 to be sold year-round, which Trump supported in June; the Senate version of the Farm Bill includes a year-round E15 amendment, but Democrats have blocked its passage.
“With Roger Marshall in the Senate,” Trump told Kansans last week, “we will secure year-round E15 permanently. But if [Democratic candidate] Adam Hamilton is in, I’m not doing it.”
He delivered a similar pledge in Iowa, where Rep. Ashley Hinson is the Republican nominee for the Senate. “With Ashley in the Senate, we will make it year-round E15,” Trump proclaimed. “We’ll make it permanent.”
Of course, grandiose campaign promises in exchange for votes are hardly new. In many cases, they are largely empty.
And yet Trump’s promises do reflect a basic reality: keeping the Senate in Republican hands would facilitate certain actions. Still, several of his pledges have been indefensible, more akin to coercion than conventional political bribery.
At a rally in North Carolina last month, he tied disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the election prospects of Senate candidate Michael Whatley.
“We have disbursed more than $2 billion in FEMA funding,” he told attendees. “You’re waiting for additional money… and I’m going to deliver it to you, Michael. Now if Michael loses, I’m not sending it.” He added, moments later, “I’m only joking, you’re going to get it.”
Other times, he refrained from retracting the assertion: Trump appeared at a Georgia rally this week, campaigning for Rep. Mike Collins to defeat Sen. Jon Ossoff, and part of his sales pitch was that Ossoff’s victory could lead to Georgia being neglected.
“The president has substantial authority,” he said, noting a stark difference depending on whether he favors a state’s representatives. Collins could contact me at any time. But if Ossoff wins, he added, he won’t take the call, and he even described a hypothetical exchange to illustrate his point: “‘Tell him I’m not in.’ ‘But he needs funding for Georgia.’ ‘I don’t care what he wants!'”
This week also saw Trump assailing the Alaska Senate race, where Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan fights against both former Rep. Mary Peltola and a retired teacher named Dan Sullivan. The New York Times recently reported that Peltola’s campaign actively recruited the second Sullivan to run as a spoiler to siphon votes away from the incumbent.
“I have delivered for Alaska at historic levels,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Democrats are attempting to steal this crucial Republican seat and, if that occurs, all we’ve achieved for Alaska will immediately grind to a halt [sic].”
It is one thing to argue that the federal government should provide less aid to states—and since taking office, the administration has reduced or paused such disbursements by about $177 billion. Last week, FEMA’s administrator indicated that states should bear a larger share of their own disaster relief going forward.
But this stance goes much further, with the president explicitly conditioning aid on whether or not the voters in a state have displeased him.
Perhaps, as in North Carolina, Trump was merely joking; the White House did not respond to Reason’s request for clarification.
Yet there is a clear pattern suggesting he was serious.
“Last September, the Department of Energy (DOE) recommended canceling 624 clean-energy grants approved by the Biden administration,” Reason’s Jacob Sullum wrote in July. The government then “narrowed it down to 284 grants, nearly all of which went to projects in states represented by Democrats in the U.S. Senate and that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.”
In March, Politico reported that Trump approved 89 percent of disaster-aid requests from states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators, but just 23 percent from states led by Democrats in those offices.
According to the Idle Rambling Substack, the trend persists: Trump has rejected nearly half of aid requests from Democrat-led states this term while turning down only 18 percent from Republican-led states.
But worst of all, he has threatened not to dole out damages to individuals who suffered harm.
From 1953 to 1987, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina suffered water contamination due to leaks of fuel and dry-cleaning solvents. It is estimated that up to a million people—service members and their families—were exposed to hazardous chemicals. The Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes eight diseases linked to exposure, including several cancers and Parkinson’s disease.
In 2022, Congress enacted the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, which waived federal immunity claims and enabled veterans to sue over exposure to tainted water. As of September 2026, the Department of Justice reports paying out more than $879 million of the more than $1.1 billion offered in settlements.
“We’re also fighting for our great veterans, and taking care of those veterans who filed claims related to Camp Lejeune’s water contamination,” Trump told North Carolina rally-goers last week. “And if we win the House and the Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as swiftly as possible.” But “if we don’t win, there’s no money. If we do win, you’re getting it.”
By now it should be evident that Trump prizes personal loyalty above all else. In service of that principle, he leaves little room for dissent or failure to comply with his demands.
In the campaign’s final days, he is more explicit than ever, tying his party’s fortunes to whether a state’s voters believe they deserve equal treatment under the law.
Trump was right that presidents wield considerable power. He also serves as a vivid reminder of why that power should be restrained.
