Under the political radar, the country’s food stamps program is undergoing a slow-motion transformation. The ramifications could bubble up into the midterms.

Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act are rolling out in phases, from tougher work requirements to restrictions on non-citizens. Food stamp rolls already shrank by more than 5 million people nationwide as of this summer, as the hardest-hit state, Arizona, saw an outright majority of its food stamp recipients lose benefits.

The latest alteration clicked into place Oct. 1, when the share of administrative costs states and counties have to pay rose to 75% from 50%. An even bigger financial shift looms in a year, when states with high payment error rates will have to assume some benefit costs for the first time, a scenario that’s already rippling through state and local budget planning.

It all adds up to a new era in federal-state relations — and in the size and nature of the welfare state.

In a year when affordability worries top voters’ priority lists and grocery prices strain their wallets, Democrats think the SNAP shift gives them an opening to make Republicans pay politically after the GOP used social safety net cuts to food aid and Medicaid to help pay for last year’s tax cuts.

“People are getting kicked off these programs at the very moment they’re going to the polls to vote,” House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) said. “I sure wouldn’t want to be a Republican headed into the November ballot.”

But Republicans think they have a compelling story to tell voters, trying to right-size a program that spends millions of dollars on erroneous payments. The SNAP changes align with the Trump administration’s broader push to crack down on fraud and make the government smaller or more efficient. Implementing stricter work requirements for welfare often polls well, and trying to move people toward work gets at the root causes of poverty, they argue.

“The premise is simple: Let’s make sure that this program is preserved for those truly in need, and that we aren’t squandering taxpayer dollars,” a senior USDA official told Playbook in an interview. “And let’s make sure that if folks are able-bodied, they are work training or volunteering for 20 hours per week.”

That doesn’t mean Republicans in competitive races are putting SNAP and Medicaid cuts front and center on the campaign trail. When they tout last year’s megalaw, new tax breaks typically lead the messaging. And 10 frontline GOP House campaigns didn’t respond to requests for interviews about how they can win on SNAP.

At the state and county level, some governments are scrambling to prepare for a massive cost shift, hitting at the same time as significant Medicaid changes. The resulting bureaucratic jumble has contributed to some of the SNAP losses this year, as recipients struggled to get through overtaxed call centers, some states cut staff, and others tightened their processes.

“It really sets up a change in the federal responsibility, and I view it as a slippery slope,” warned Barbara Guinn, New York’s commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. Her state is staring down a possible $1 billion added burden next year, though they’re advocating for a repeal of the benefits change. “Once they implement any kind of cost shift, I think it will be easier for them to take similar actions in the future.”

Whether to delay next year’s cost shift has already generated tensions over the farm bill in the Senate, where Democrats are demanding a longer postponement than Republicans’ offer of one year. Some Minnesota counties are considering significant property tax increases to pay for the extra costs, Craig said: “We’re going to be pushing hard for a two-year delay — at the request of, frankly, many of my Republican county commissioners, not just Democrats.”

Conservatives see the new calculus as a long overdue change to improve efficiency and incentivize program integrity. Improper payment rates are high in many states (though they comprise both over-payments and under-payments, and error rates are different from fraud). Those that reduce errors enough won’t have to take on paying the benefits. And even opponents of the changes think lower error rates are a worthy goal. SNAP rolls often ebb and flow with the economy, and the recent drop could reflect the job market pulling people out of need — or the removal of people who shouldn’t have been getting food stamps in the first place.

“There needs to be some level of accountability,” the USDA official said. States with high error rates “need to start to have skin in the game.”

But at a time when many households are already squeezed by inflation, the SNAP changes have correlated with higher numbers of Americans turning to charities to ward off hunger. The surge in people losing food aid came more quickly than expected. The unemployment rate hasn’t meaningfully changed. And the vast majority of large food banks in a recent NBC survey said they were grappling with higher demand, in part due to food stamp changes. Another rule kicking in the day after the midterms could lead to many retailers being bumped out of SNAP as places where low-income people can use their benefits.

For state governments, a set of sweeping operational changes are now underway to conform to new policy demands, often requiring more money or staffing at already under-resourced offices. And the budgetary stakes to get error rates lower are sky-high.

“It’s a really complicated, nuanced and confusing time for states who are trying to administer SNAP,” said Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director at the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, which has advocated for a delay in the benefits costs shift.

National Democrats are increasingly shifting their attention away from North Carolina’s Senate race as polls show former Gov. Roy Cooper ahead, eyeing once long-shot races as possible pickups. But a veteran Democratic strategist who helped deliver the party’s last presidential victory in the state is urging donors not to take a win for granted.

David Plouffe, who managed behind Barack Obama’s narrow 2008 victory in North Carolina, urged Democratic donors and supporters not to grow complacent in the final weeks of Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign, according to audio obtained by POLITICO.

“I think that this race ... has I think been the best run race in the country,” Plouffe said on the call. “But that doesn't mean that we can rest easy.”

He warned about North Carolina’s relatively fixed partisan makeup as a purple state, making it difficult for a candidate to dramatically expand their base of support.

“There's certain states that elections happen within a bound, and this one will be that way as well,” he said.

In public polling, Cooper leads Republican Michael Whatley, who has struggled to boost his name recognition against the much better-known former governor. And as Democrats grow increasingly bullish on their candidate’s chances of flipping the seat — one of four pickups they need to take control of the Senate — national groups have begun shifting their money and attention to other contests, including most recently to Kansas.

But Plouffe said North Carolina needs to remain a priority.

“We have to win the ones we have to win,” he said on the call to Cooper’s finance committee.

Just days before Plouffe’s remarks, Senate Democrats’ top super PAC pulled back some of its spending in North Carolina, following a much bigger retreat by Republicans’ top super PAC in the state.

Plouffe cautioned that North Carolina has historically been a tough state for Democrats at the federal level, especially in recent years. The party hasn’t won a Senate race there since 2008, when Obama became the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state, winning by fewer than 15,000 votes. He lost the state in 2012.

“Even though we carried the electoral votes back then, we only did so by I think 14,000 votes. So it was our narrowest victory,” Plouffe said. “And in 2012, we tried to win North Carolina again with the help of so many people on this phone, and we just couldn't get it done. And that tells you how difficult the state is.”

Plouffe also cast the stakes of Cooper’s race as extending beyond November, arguing that a Cooper victory could provide a blueprint for the party’s eventual 2028 presidential nominee.

“Democrats need to compete and win in North Carolina in 28,” he said. “And it's one thing to look how a governor can win a state. The best route, the best scout that you receive, is how someone in a federal race won in a tough state, and that can show you the way.”

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

One in four Trump voters say GOP candidates should break with the president to win in November, according to the latest POLITICO Poll, conducted by independent firm PF Global.

The findings underscore the degree to which even loyal Republicans understand President Donald Trump is a drag on the ticket. Persistent inflation, $4 gas prices, 7% mortgage rates, a quagmire in the Middle East and a trade war with Canada have given Republican candidates no shortage of opportunities to take the president to task.

Michigan’s GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers this week became the latest example when he called for an end to the “tariff war” with Canada — a notable shift after he spent weeks defending the president’s decision.

“It was brilliant by Mike Rogers … when you talk about the affordability issue, in every poll I get back, every week, more and more people have this as their top issue,” said Michigan-based GOP consultant Jason Roe, who is working on Rep. Tom Barrett’s (R-Mich.) reelection campaign. “Obviously the price of gas is a result of the Iran war, and in Michigan, more than anything else, the trade war with Canada.”

Rogers is hardly the only example. Florida GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar used an ad filmed in front of the White House to call out the president’s immigration crackdown. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), in her bid to win the Iowa Senate seat,has called for an end to the Iran war amid souring diesel costs. Ken Paxton, the GOP’s embattled Texas Senate nominee, has now been the subject of four leaks exposing his private attempts to distance himself from Trump and the national party.

“It’s just all dictated by the data,” said a GOP strategist working on a Senate campaign, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the president. “They see the writing on the wall about the gas prices and the inflation. Running as a Trump sycophant is not going to work in 2026. It’s the only political move you can do in Michigan, a state like that. It’s toxic to be tied to the man.”

There are some limits: No Republican has completely broken with Trump, and several are eager to stand next to him on stage or in the Oval. Few dare to criticize him directly. And many still lean on their ties to the president on the campaign trail and in their social media profiles as they seek to rally the MAGA base.

A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, scoffed at the idea that Rogers’ — or any other candidates’ — efforts to distance themselves from Trump administration policies, amounted to a major break with the president.

“If I’m a candidate that’s physically trying to push away from the president, I’m not attending this stuff. I’m just gonna back away all the way,” the official said. “Being in the midst of a campaign and needing to talk to the issues that are being discussed as kitchen table topics, you just kind of have to.”

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle pointed to the Trump administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs, cut taxes, secure the border and grow job numbers: “No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the president understands how to communicate with them. President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.”

Politicians touting their independence from Washington is nothing new. But as the poll reveals, it’s notable

that so many who voted for Trump, who has been the GOP's dominant force for a decade, are ready for candidates to take that leap.

Much of the fracture is driven by the non-MAGA wing of his coalition, the people who voted for Trump in 2024 but do not identify as part of his most loyal base, the survey found. When asked about specific issues such as the economy, trade and tariffs, data centers, immigration and the Iran war, non-MAGA Trump voters were roughly twice as likely as MAGA Trump voters to say their GOP candidate should break from the president.

But Trump still retains an intense hold over the base. More than two-thirds of MAGA voters said GOP candidates should continue to align with Trump across all of those issues.

That creates a no-win situation for many Republican candidates: Tie yourself to Trump and his policies too tightly and you lose independents and non-MAGA Republicans. Break too far, and you risk leaving MAGA disenchanted.

Candidates trying to thread that needle are quick to praise the president but blame his advisers, as Salazar did, or avoid mentioning Trump by name at all.

Roe said each candidate has to measure the “downstream effects” of a decision to distance themselves from the president, adding that it’s a balance between “alienating your base with appealing to voters that are looking for some independence.”

On the campaign trail, many Republicans acknowledge that the president remains an asset in shoring up base voters crucial to November. It’s part of the reason Trump has aggressively traveled to red states — including Alabama, Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and Texas — bastions of conservatism that need his star power to coax die-hard supporters to the polls. The White House official pointed to the president’s rally with South Carolina Senate candidate Darline Graham ahead of her run-off as an example of Trump’s ability to juice turnout.

RNC press secretary Natalie Baldassarre insisted that Republicans “remain united behind the president’s agenda” and are “laser focused on winning.”

“Our candidates will run the races necessary to best represent their districts and prevent Democrats from taking control,” she said.

The president is telling voters to “pretend” he is on the ballot, and he has insisted the party is already in a better place as he blitzes states across the country, touting his economy and arguing that higher prices are a small price to pay for national security amid the lingering war with Iran.

But some candidates are still nervous that if they campaign beside the president, they could alienate undecided voters. Some Republicans have encouraged Trump’s team not to send the president to a blue-leaning Omaha district and other key districts where his approval rating is underwater ahead of Election Day.

“I don’t think there are that many candidates who are clamoring for Trump to come to their state. But to the extent they do, it’s a gamble that they’ve already lost the voters who are gonna vote against them, and they need to light a fire under the voters who are sitting it out, and he’s the torch,” said Democratic strategist David Axelrod, who was chief strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. “The problem is the torch can burn the whole house down.”

The damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma is perhaps best captured with Paxton’s campaign in Texas. On Wednesday, Trump took the stage in San Antonio, bringing up Paxton, the same day his latest closed-door comments complaining about the Iran war and high prices dragging down his campaign went public.

But standing on stage with Trump, he struck a much different tune.

“Wow, what is it like to be up on stage with the president of the United States? Pretty amazing,” he said. “Mr. President, I want to thank you for coming for me, for coming for us and for coming for Texas.”

In late September, top Republicans across House GOP leadership, leading political operations and individual campaigns received a trove of internal polling. It sparked a new level of panic.

The polling didn’t just reveal a harsh environment for the party in power on par with typical midterms, but rather some close-to-catastrophic scenarios in a slew of formerly safe red seats across the country, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss private information.

Key seats in Kentucky, North Carolina, Nevada and other areas that President Donald Trump won by 10 points or more in 2024 were competitive. All three vulnerable GOP-held seats in Iowa looked doomed. And most ominously, a crop of Republican incumbents who haven’t had to run serious races in years were vulnerable, from Oklahoma to Wisconsin and beyond.

Now, less than four weeks before Election Day, the concerns are running so deep and the atmosphere is so uncertain that Republicans are beginning to brace for some of the worst-case scenarios.

"Polls aren't looking good,” retiring Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) said in an interview. “But we've also seen in the past couple of cycles, polls are really hard to predict. I think there's just a lot of things in play, and of course, what do we have three weeks out — that's light years in political time.”

One senior House Republican involved in the conversations added: “I think the scary part is we don’t know where the bottom is.” They, like others in this report, were granted anonymity to discuss the political climate honestly.

Their worst fear — according to conversations with more than two dozen Republican lawmakers and senior operatives — is that white working class voters in some states who have become central to the GOP coalition won’t just stay home next month, but instead they’ll be so angry or disillusioned by high fuel prices and the war in Iran that enough of them will vote for Democrats.

“The environment has a lot people scared to death,” said one GOP operative working on a red-leaning House race that is competitive.

“Where is the surge in Dem votes coming from?” that operative asked. “Is it truly no turnout among white working class? It's such an open question and we just don't know the answer. It's impossible.”

Spokespeople for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee brushed off the concerns.

"Anonymous strategists who spend more time bed-wetting to media than working in the trenches to win races have no idea what they're talking about,” RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said.

NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella agreed: “House Republicans have a more favorable map, a stronger ground game, a historic fundraising and spending advantages, and battle-tested incumbents while Democrats are stuck dragging their unelectable socialist nominees across the finish line.”

Still, top Republicans’ travel schedule reveals the extent of their concerns: Johnson is heading to deep-red Kentucky on Friday for a fundraiser to boost Republican Ralph Alvarado in the 6th District, which Trump won by 15 points in 2024. Johnson and Trump are also both planning trips to Montana where Republicans are working to fend off a Democratic challenger in a district the president won by more than 11 points.

“Speaker Johnson is leaving it all on the field and leaving no stone unturned as he campaigns in more than 40 districts and over 20 states in the month leading up to the election,” Johnson’s spokesperson Greg Steele said. And, pointing to Johnson’s record-setting third quarter funding, Steele added that: “Johnson is not slowing down and helping to get resources to every district that will decide the majority.”

Trump is holding a rally in deep-red Tennessee on Saturday, in GOP Rep. Matt Van Epps’ district. That seat — which is still considered generally safe — and several others in the state have not been on Republicans’ radar at all, but the current drag of the war and other factors are just too big for them to be comfortable.

“I’m worried about all three in the area,” one Tennessee Republican said of the red-leaning districts Democrats are targeting. “Too many unknowns.”

Even as internal GOP data shows a series of troubles, Republicans argue the polls are overemphasizing Democrats’ advantage. “I think there’s no question there is some undersampling,” said one RNC official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“I’m not surprised any of these are close. I’m not surprised that Democrats are trying to make it seem like we’re on defense everywhere,” they said. “These are never [races] that we assumed were overall slam dunks, but I very much like where we sit in all of them.”

Still, the person added that RNC officials don’t have their “heads in the sand” about the challenges, even as they have a more optimistic view of the map.

Loudermilk pointed to Republicans’ lack of cohesive messaging on high gas prices and other goods: “I don’t know if we’re doing a good enough job doing that.”

“It’s not the best of environments,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) told reporters in late September, though he still maintained the GOP will keep House control. “I liked it a lot better when I first got elected in 2010, when the environment was much better for Republicans.”

Top Republicans are most worried about staunching the bleeding in key Midwest districts. Senior Republicans believe their internal polling, if it holds, shows likely losses across all three at-risk GOP seats in Iowa: Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks and the race to replace now-Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, according to four people with direct knowledge of the private information.

A White House official, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the races, said the “doom and gloom notion” among the Iowa seats isn’t a new phenomenon. “But I do think that they’re probably performing better than most think that they are. And I think that folks will be pleasantly surprised [when] we go into November 3.”

But benchmarks they’re watching across the larger region are deteriorating as well. Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil, the House Administration chair, is in a tighter than comfortable race after winning by 11 points in 2024 — as is Rep. Brad Finstad across the border in Minnesota, who won his district by 12 points 2024.

In Michigan, the party has a host of problems in battleground districts, but now feels that once-safer seat Republicans — like Bill Huizenga, who Johnson campaigned with Wednesday, and the race to replace Rep. John James, who is running for governor — are in jeopardy.

Similarly, after top GOP outside groups cut bait on the blue-leaning Nebraska district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon, Republicans in the state turned their attention to Rep. Mike Flood’s seat, which Trump carried by 12 points.

One silver lining for Republicans in safer red seats is many are digging in now to shore up their races, and aren’t sleepwalking to November.

The White House official said it’s Trump’s “coalition of voters” that Republicans need to turn out in the midterms, and “the president is on the road almost every night this month … communicating with those individuals.”

But Democrats continue to stretch further into red territory while forecasting big wins.

“We feel confident that we will get to 218,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee political director Brooke Butler said in an interview earlier this week, saying the party could win as many as 240 seats. “The question that I’ve told people from the beginning cycle is ‘How much?’”

But while Democrats are increasingly bullish, they are navigating their own tough decisions because of Republicans’ massive cash advantage, leaving the GOP optimistic they can hold a few seats where Democrats don’t have the resources to compete. Top GOP House operatives remain confident about a number of core battleground districts — including where candidates have already put some distance between themselves and Trump.

One national party operative remained hopeful that as Election Day nears, the races will get closer than polling currently suggests, as has been the case in past cycles. That would help them hold some of these redder seats that are competitive.

Even as Republicans hope some red seats fall off the board as Election Day nears, many operatives told POLITICO they’re worried that outside groups will have to start siphoning resources into red areas to shore them up, moving important dollars out of the battlegrounds.

“People that are in R+10 districts are showing [polling that] they’re tied and they're saying, ‘I need help,’” said a GOP operative working on a battleground House race. “There's real opportunity for Democrats in a lot of these.”

Rep. French Hill, the chair of the Financial Services Committee from deep-red Arkansas whose opponent was just added to the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” list, said in a recent interview with POLITICO that he considers “the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years.”

Johnson, an eternal optimist, made clear during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania this week that he believes “this will be a close election.”

He’s ramping up his warnings across the campaign trail of what Democrats winning power would mean: “They would try to impeach the president, of course, immediately …They’d spend every waking hour investigating the president, his family, and the cabinet, and leaders of business and industry. That would roil the markets. Just ask yourself, if you're a hardworking family, how would that be for your family? That Democrats turned Congress into lawfare on steroids.”

Samuel Benson contributed to this report. 

Byron Donalds says he is not a ‘yes man’ to Trump

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