{ "archive_path": "archive/1789305309.231071", "base_url": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560", "basename": "688560", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-13 13:15", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.theatlantic.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560.html" }, "domain": "www.theatlantic.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1V61NNT8JVK6KX4W8Z7Z", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.theatlantic.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:12.215431+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:11.744403+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:12.626718+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:12.225144+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:31.114128+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:27.036191+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmph2v5k1i6", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:27.021467+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Nearly every day, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles meets with Meghan Bauer, a presidential assistant who coordinates with Cabinet members, to review who\u2019s recently traveled where, who\u2019s heading out into the country, and\u2014perhaps most important\u2014who\u2019s in a swing district at that very moment. The debrief is part of the administration\u2019s unofficial Cabinet Travel Competition, overseen by Bauer, in which the White House encourages Cabinet secretaries to traverse the country to promote President Trump\u2019s agenda and tracks their visits to politically competitive congressional districts or states ahead of the midterm elections.We first found out about the competition when chatting with a Cabinet secretary about an event that person had declined to attend in Manhattan, in part for fear of being docked points in the White House contest for going to a solidly blue area. (Several White House officials said that no one ever loses points, and two added that a trip to New York for a cable-news hit praising the administration\u2019s policies, for instance, would still count toward the contest.)When we talked with Karoline Leavitt late last month, in her final days as White House press secretary, she marveled: \u201cI think we have seven or eight of them out on the road in targeted districts just today.\u201d The formal competition ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day, although secretaries will likely be encouraged to keep going through November. There were rumors of a prize\u2014possibly a dinner with the president for the winning Cabinet secretary, plus their family\u2014but several White House officials insisted that the competition is simply for bragging rights. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal matters.These officials said that contestants are encouraged to travel to key congressional districts or competitive states, appear with members of Congress, and participate in local media interviews. The thinking, in part, is that local press coverage is more valuable than talking with national outlets in Washington, and that Cabinet officials can help drive Trump\u2019s message by highlighting how his actions and policies have improved the lives of voters. Any midterm-related travel must be flagged for White House approval\u2014and everyone is instructed to comply with federal rules that forbid certain forms of partisan politicking. As in previous administrations, taxpayers foot the bill for travel related to the secretaries\u2019 official duties, and the top officials are expected to pay for any personal political travel themselves. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got approval to use a more costly military jet for some of his trips, The Washington Post reported.In February, Wiles told agency heads they should limit their international travel so that they could focus on helping Republicans win the midterm elections. The president would do the same, she said at the time, and he would spend every other week stumping through the country, ramping up to at least once a week as the November elections neared. Punishment for those who disobeyed was swift; among the various reasons Kristi Noem was pushed out as Homeland Security secretary were images of her atop a camel in Bahrain and well-documented horseback-riding jaunts in Argentina\u2019s Campo de Mayo and near South Dakota\u2019s Mount Rushmore, where there are no competitive federal midterm races. \u201cThey know not to take 10-day-long vacations in Wyoming,\u201d Leavitt said of the Cabinet members. \u201cThe president is working all the time, and he expects them to as well.\u201dRead: The YOLO presidencyThe White House declined to provide us with its tally of each Cabinet member\u2019s political travel, but it did send us a list of the numbers of visits made to at least 13 states over the summer. In the lead with 46 visits was Texas, where Republicans are spending millions to try to hold on to a Senate seat. Following close behind was Pennsylvania with 42, and New York with 40. (Manhattan may not be MAGA country, but New York has several competitive House districts.) On the lower end of the most-visited states were New Jersey and North Carolina (both 10), Alaska (five), and Nevada (four). In a little more than three months, the White House said, Cabinet members made a total of 265 visits to those 13 states.We made our own list, searching through publicly documented domestic travel by members of Trump\u2019s Cabinet starting on Memorial Day and ending on August 31. To try to emulate the White House\u2019s tracking system, we gave each person a point for traveling to a competitive congressional district or a state with a close Senate race. We used the Cook Political Report ratings to determine competitiveness, focusing on the 37 districts with races that Cook rated as a toss-up or leaning toward one political party, as well as any states with a similarly competitive Senate contest. (Though the White House might reward someone who went to Manhattan for a media interview, we did not. We also awarded only one point for multiple stops in one state during a single trip.)According to our tally, the winner is likely Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler, who took at least 18 trips to competitive states, including more than one stop each in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. She is followed closely by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins (at least 17), Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling (at least 15), and Kennedy and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (at least 10 each). In certain ways, the competition is really just among the handful of members whose job lends itself to regular national travel; folks such as the U.S. trade representative, the CIA director, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget seem to have each taken only one trip to a competitive area since Memorial Day. We could not find any midterm-related trips for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who since his confirmation has clocked thousands of miles overseas. And though Duffy tied for fourth place during this period, we were nonetheless surprised his travel wasn\u2019t a bit more robust, given that he previously spent several months traversing the country with his family for his six-episode reality series, The Great American Road Trip. Perhaps he was just recovering from his long joyride across the United States.The White House spokesperson Olivia Wales praised both Trump\u2019s Cabinet and his policy achievements in an emailed statement. \u201cCabinet officials will continue to meet with everyday Americans across our country to inform future policymaking and tout these victories, drawing a strong contrast to the record of failure by radical Democrats on the border, inflation, and crime,\u201d she wrote. Since Trump\u2019s first term, Democrats and watchdog groups have accused Trump officials of violating the Hatch Act\u2014a 1939 federal law that, to minimize partisanship in government, limits federal employees from engaging in certain political activities. And in the run-up to these midterms, at least one Cabinet member\u2014Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2014has come under intense criticism for seemingly blurring the line between personal and government travel.Two decades ago, President George W. Bush\u2019s staff similarly tracked Cabinet travel before the 2006 midterms, and offered incentives to federal employees who volunteered in battleground races. The Office of Special Counsel condemned the operation years later, objecting to the use of federal funds for political purposes. Back then, the Republican National Committee kept an \u201cAdministration Tracker\u201d spreadsheet to log the travel of political appointees to targeted races, and the White House kept its own list of Cabinet \u201cassets\u201d and where they had deployed. The investigation found that the Bush tracking system spurred a \u201cfriendly competition\u201d between White House liaisons that, ultimately, was part of the \u201ctype of electioneering proscribed by the Hatch Act.\u201dThe partisan travel of federal officials has long been legally and politically fraught. During the Biden administration, in 2024, House and Senate Republicans investigated trips that top officials from the Small Business Administration, including the administrator, took to crucial battleground states. Federal watchdogs found in 2021 that members of the Trump administration had shown \u201cwillful disregard\u201d for the law by pushing for Trump\u2019s reelection in their official capacities.Whether the White House is violating the law now would depend on what internal safeguards have been created to prevent federal funds from being spent on political purposes, Donald Sherman, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told us. \u201cThe details do matter,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it is also hard to imagine that that compliance is being prioritized in a competition-like scenario, particularly in an administration that has been hostile to the Hatch Act in pretty much every other instance.\u201dTrump fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel when he returned to office, and the Hatch Act has not been enforced against senior Trump-administration officials since then, despite complaints from watchdog groups about apparent violations. A White House official told us that the administration has implemented a process in which the White House and agency ethics officials review political appearances by Trump\u2019s appointees. \u201cAll Administration officials who chose to participate in political activity and travel have been encouraged to work with their respective agency counsels and the White House to ensure that they are in full compliance,\u201d the official wrote in an emailed statement.In the run-up to the 2010 midterms, then-President Obama and his team invented the \u201cRecovery Summer,\u201d a six-week push\u2014featuring, yes, Cabinet secretaries and other senior officials\u2014to spotlight infrastructure investments from their stimulus bill. In 2022, the Biden administration deployed its top messengers across the country to highlight his policies as well. Then\u2013Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg proved the most in-demand Cabinet surrogate, and his position allowed him to tout the administration\u2019s roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill.Read: Trump plans to buy midterm ads about his own recordBut those administrations were more diligent than Trump\u2019s in distinguishing between personal and government travel, and took pains not to mix the two. And despite the Trump administration\u2019s alleged disregard for the Hatch Act, many of the Cabinet members we\u2019ve tracked have similarly avoided blurring political and government trips, albeit with (at least) one notable exception. In May, before the official competition began, Hegseth appeared in Kentucky alongside the former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who successfully challenged Representative Thomas Massie, a Trump irritant, in the Republican primary. Hegseth\u2019s star turn on the stump raised questions about whether he\u2019d violated the Hatch Act; though a Pentagon spokesperson said Hegseth had attended in his \u201cpersonal capacity,\u201d he appeared the same day at Fort Campbell in Kentucky in his official capacity to award Purple Hearts. Past Pentagon chiefs and other top Defense Department officials have avoided even a whiff of partisanship. Then, in August, Hegseth appeared at the Iowa State Fair alongside Representative Zach Nunn, where he endorsed Nunn\u2019s reelection bid and praised him as an ally of both the Pentagon and the president.Perhaps emboldened by his previous campaign-trail appearance\u2014which prompted much griping but no meaningful consequences\u2014Hegseth declared, \u201cAccording to the lawyers, I\u2019m only here in a personal capacity.\u201dAgriculture Secretary Rollins\u2014a frequent traveler, by our count\u2014journeyed in early June to a farm in North Carolina, where she walked between rows of tobacco and stood in front of John Deere tractors, touting the Trump administration\u2019s labor reforms, which she said had reduced costs for the state\u2019s farmers. In July, she joined a radio interview in Georgia with Representative Brian Jack\u2014a Republican expected to win his reelection campaign\u2014and described a new program for shipping meat as \u201cso exciting\u201d and \u201cso important\u201d for the state. And in late August, she appeared at the Iowa State Fair, where she defended Trump\u2019s controversial decision to ease restrictions on imported beef, which she said was necessary to lower prices for struggling families. All three states have competitive Senate races that are essential to Republicans maintaining control of the chamber.Her fellow Cabinet members traveled to other key states to spread similar enthusiasm. Energy Secretary Chris Wright\u2014with nine trips to competitive areas, by our count\u2014traveled to Alaska to deliver \u201ca giant thank-you\u201d for the state\u2019s copious oil exports. And Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins tied with him, including travel to a military event in Virginia Beach with Vice President Vance and a day of stops in central Michigan to meet with local veterans, alongside the district\u2019s Republican representative.The agency chiefs tailor their messages to their specific audiences. But if the competition is any indication\u2014and mere mention of it elicited knowing nods and smiles from agency staff and White House officials\u2014the Cabinet officials understand their singular mission: to spread the Trump doctrine far and wide, but especially to purple battlegrounds. They are eager to comply.Madison Hahamy, Jack Rodriquez-Vars, and Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed to this report.*Illustration Sources: Shawn Thew / EPA / Bloomberg / Getty; Kevin Dietsch / Getty; Anna Moneymaker / Getty; Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty; Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg / Getty." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:25.260595+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:25.253819+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Trump\u2019s Secret Points System for Cabinet Members - The Atlantic", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:25.221958+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--backup-converted", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--warc-file=/data/archive/1789305309.231071/warc/1789316592", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:25.211955+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-13T16:23:12.636278+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Trump\u2019s Secret Points System for Cabinet Members - The Atlantic", "warc": null, "wget": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1789305309.231071", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-13T16:23:27.036191+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-13T16:23:11.744403+00:00", "path": "/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "529929b5-e9cb-46db-a612-61b05e675e1f", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1789305309-import.txt" ], "tags": ",pool,war-wiki,drudge", "tags_str": "pool,war-wiki,drudge", "timestamp": "1789305309.231071", "title": "Trump\u2019s Secret Points System for Cabinet Members - The Atlantic", "updated": "2026-09-13T16:23:11.744254+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-13 16:23", "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-cabinet-travel-midterms/688560" }