The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been drained, but the Trump administration's swampy ooze is getting deeper for Republican candidates who insist on drinking the befouled Kool-Aid.

The putrid bilge promises to wash up in Nevada, where Trump loyalists prevailed in key primary races despite the president's botching of the Iran war and mishandling of the economy and a trade policy that continues to harm this state's largest industry.

As if that weren't bad enough, on Wednesday, Trump petulantly refused to sign a bipartisan bill aimed at relieving the nation's housing shortage with a goal of making homes more affordable. Talk about blowing the political equivalent of a gimme putt. Add it to the long list of self-inflicted failures now reflected in his plummeting polling numbers.

Trump made matters worse by whining about the failure of his majority-Republican Congress to ram through an unconstitutional nationalization of our country's voter rolls. It turns out not everyone in the GOP's side of the legislative branch is ready to trash the states' role in managing their own elections.

This week, a federal judge sided with the argument of two dozen states, including Nevada, which challenged Trump's executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and limit mail-in balloting. Trump's brazen attempt to control the outcome of the 2026 election is stalling.

None of it bodes well for his favored candidates in Nevada, where MAGA minion, campaign conspiracy-theorist and 2020 election-denier Jim Marchant is again running for secretary of state. After easily winning the primary against Shirley Folkins-Roberts, who was endorsed by Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) and made it clear she believed Nevada elections weren't riddled with widespread voter fraud, Marchant will again face Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D).

Aguilar won in 2022 by about 2 percentage points — far too close an outcome for an integral office that is now more important than ever. Marchant's endless spinning of election conspiracies — he once said all Nevada election winners since 2006 were "installed by a deep-state cabal" — make him even more dangerous in 2026 given Trump's hard-core monkey-wrenching. 

The winner will oversee the 2028 presidential election in the state. In a bizarre, only-in-Nevada twist, multibillionaire Miriam Adelson, whose family owns the state's largest newspaper, has pledged to give Trump $250 million to run for an unconstitutional third term. Anyone who has watched America's authoritarian president knows he doesn't take losing power lightly. He is a person who is proud of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and who doesn't mind comparing himself to Mao, Stalin, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Hitler.

Aguilar has proven a capable secretary of state, much like his Republican predecessor, Barbara Cegavske. She was vilified by her own party in 2020 for fairly following the rules. But Trump's stated intentions to make it harder to vote and easier to sully the outcome of an election threaten to make this important race far closer than it ought to be.

Trump endorsed five Republican candidates in the primary, and most highlighted that relationship above their own credentials. Retired military man David Flippo, recently unpacked after moving to Reno from Southern Nevada, crowed about Trump's endorsement on the way to knocking off veteran elected official James Settelmeyer in the primary race to replace Mark Amodei in the conservative 2nd Congressional District. The district has never elected a Democrat, and challenger Teresa Benitez-Thompson stacks up as an energetic underdog, but Trump's stumbling could make this race close.

I tend to tune them out until October, but one candidate I'm still not hearing use Trump's name in campaign commercials is Lombardo, pitted in a tight race against state Attorney General Aaron Ford.

These days you'll see the governor smiling at schools and talking about getting things done for Nevadans, but I don't see ads featuring a red sea of MAGA caps or grip-and-grin photos with the Chaos King. Which at least means Lombardo and his campaign team continue to read the latest headlines and polls. His campaign website does feature a gushing Trump endorsement. I don't wonder whether his opponent has found it.

I expect we'll continue to see it repeated time and again by his opponent. Meanwhile, Ford's campaign is doing everything possible to attack the two like conjoined twins. 

Trumpbardo, anyone? And why not. Trump's approval rating founders in the mid-30s, and disapproval of his mishandling of the war in Iran and the economy are statistically unquestioned.

A rising tide can lift all boats, but let's see if Trump's deepening ooze sinks some.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family's Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.