Trump pushes $5,000 'dividend' pledge for midterms but Republican candidates are keeping their distance

From the Newshound archive · first published 19 September 2026.

President Donald Trump is championing a $5,000 payment to Americans if the GOP wins the midterms, but his own party's candidates are reluctant to embrace it. A poll shows the pledge has failed to move key voters, and his efforts to restrict mail-in voting have collapsed after the Supreme Court rejected his executive order. The US Postal Service has now abandoned the verification scheme entirely, leaving Trump's midterm strategy in disarray.

Republicans privately fear Trump's toxic brand could cost the party both chambers of Congress.

The Supreme Court's rejection of Trump's mail-voting order effectively killed his most controversial election-shaping effort.

Trump has long claimed, without evidence supported by courts, that mail-in voting enables widespread fraud and cost him the 2020 election.