President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are entering the 2026 midterm cycle in a weakened political position, according to the source article, but Democrats are facing internal problems tied to reported turmoil under Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin.

The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein reported Sunday that Martin, 53, has become increasingly isolated inside the party organization. “At the center is Ken Martin, the 53-year-old party chairman, who has found himself increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats, including current and former D.N.C. officials and members,” they wrote. “Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s troubled state of affairs.”

Goldmacher and Epstein also reported an incident in early July involving a junior aide. “Mr. Martin’s fraying nerves are showing. In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.’s human resources department.”

According to the Times, the alleged phone-throwing episode led D.N.C. human resources officials to meet with Martin about the matter. The report described the incident as one of several problems during Martin’s brief tenure leading the organization. He has faced criticism for delaying the release of an autopsy of the 2024 presidential election and then releasing a version that was incomplete and annotated. He has made few media appearances, staff morale has been widely reported as low, and the organization has been affected by leaks. Martin has also reportedly been in constant fear of being fired.

The D.N.C.’s financial position is another major issue, particularly because national party resources can help fund voter outreach, data operations and support for congressional campaign committees during midterm cycles.

“None of the party’s problems are more acute than money,” the Times reported. “For more than a decade, the D.N.C. has transferred millions of dollars every election to sister committees responsible for winning the House and Senate. But the national party is now so short on cash — even after taking out a $15 million loan last year — that officials have privately conveyed to congressional leadership that there will be no such transfers in 2026.”

Republicans, despite struggling in polls, are significantly ahead of Democrats in fundraising, according to the Times.

“New financial reports released this week revealed the depth of the D.N.C.’s financial hole,” the Times reported. “The party is $2 million in debt, while the Republican National Committee has $128.5 million in cash on hand. The party that holds the White House almost always raises more money into its party coffers, but this year’s chasm is extraordinarily large.”

Sources who spoke to AlterNet in June also raised concerns about Martin’s leadership of the Democratic Party. One anonymous source, described as a longtime member of the DNC Women’s Caucus, told AlterNet that Martin had not acted to protect mail-in voting from Trump’s reported efforts to suppress it. The source also said Martin had declined to shift away from electronic voting toward paper receipts, which the source argued would be harder for Trump and other Republicans to tamper with.

The party’s May “autopsy” acknowledged concerns about technology, stating that “any assessment of the state of technology in the Democratic party would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that comprehensive data warehouses like Phoenix represent an irresistible target for hackers and other bad actors seeking to undermine the integrity of the modern political process.”