Anna Langthorn, the new chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, is only 24 years old — and that might be all you know about her based on national coverage of her successful campaign for the position in May.

But since Langthorn has taken office, Democrats in Oklahoma flipped two state legislative seats in special elections, and over the past two months she’s begun the work of rebuilding the Democratic Party in a state in which Donald Trump won all 77 counties and the state overall by 36 points.

The special elections that Democrats won weren’t exactly normal ones. Both involved the resignation of the Republican in office; one was facing sexual harassment claims, and the other was facing three felony counts of solicitation of a 17-year-old boy. It remains to be seen how the party will fare in more typical elections. But while it’s an uphill battle for Langthorn and her party — the state won’t be turning blue anytime soon — these wins have given Oklahoma Democrats some hope.

Langthorn volunteered on her first gubernatorial campaign at the age of 17. Two years later she was elected the president of the state’s Young Democrats, the youngest president in the country at the time. She’s worked professionally on races of every type in Oklahoma: legislative, gubernatorial, or tribal. Most recently, she was a junior partner at SkyFire Media, a political advertising and consulting firm.

A young politico like Langthorn might’ve given up when she saw Trump’s overwhelming victory during the 2016 election or the Republican supermajority in the state legislature and offices. Many liberal young people move away from more conservative, rural places like Oklahoma — but Langthorn didn’t.

“I want to do the work where it’s really needed,” she says. Oklahomans, she says, “deserve it just as much as somebody else in a state where it would be easier for me to work. That’s why I’m here, because those people deserve advocates too.”

I spoke to Langthorn after her first two months in office. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Garet Williams

You’ve had a chance to actually be in the job for a bit, a chance to get on the ground. What has that work looked like, whether in terms of reorganizing the party or making other changes? 

Anna Langthorn

Every day is a different day. I’ve got committees that I’ve got to appoint people to. I’ve got candidates that I have to work with. We’re in a weird position where we’ve got six — well, we’ll have a total of seven special elections in the year 2017, so far. We have four more remaining.

Those are things that I hadn’t necessarily, when I started running or started thinking about running in February … anticipated happening. I thought I was going to have a year to build infrastructure, and we’ve got a year full of — you know, our last special election is November 14. So we’ve got elections this year that we’re helping candidates with. We hired two field organizers.

Garet Williams

Looking past 2017, I noticed that the Oklahoman had reported last week that only four Democrats had filed for some of the 2018 statewide elections versus a larger slew of Republican candidates. What do recruitment efforts look like either for those state offices now or even for national offices? 

Anna Langthorn

We’re in the process of going through the list and seeing where we’ve got potential candidates, where we need to find potential candidates, and setting up meetings to have those conversations. I felt like that Oklahoman article kind of jumped the gun, because in terms of filing, filing doesn’t happen until April of 2018. So really, what they mean is candidates that have signed up with the ethics commission to say that they are fundraising.

We intend to have a full slate of statewide candidates. We know we’ll never have the number of candidates that the Republican Party has, but I don’t really think that’s news because we’re in a supermajority Republican state. So they’re gonna have busy primaries and that’s okay, because it’s going to give our candidates more time to talk to general election voters and really solidify their message. 

Garet Williams

The state hasn’t gone blue in a presidential election since 1964, but as recently as 2010, Oklahoma had a very popular Democratic governor of Oklahoma in Brad Henry. What are some of the seats or races that you think are going to be the best targets for 2018? 

Anna Langthorn

I definitely think that in 2018, we have a real shot at taking the governor’s seat. [Editor’s note: A Morning Consult poll from April to July said Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Mary Fallin had a disapproval rating of 51 percent, making her one of the 10 least popular governors in the country.]

Like you said, we had a Democratic governor as recently as 2010, and we’ve always had a big division between national politics and local politics when it comes to the Democratic Party in Oklahoma. We tend to be more successful locally than we do federally. I think we can win the governor’s seat and I think we can make our legislature veto-proof, which requires us getting more than one-third of the state house, which I think we would be able to do. Those are our big top goals.

Garet Williams

Let’s talk about your recent successes: the 44th District and 75 District. Do you see those wins for Democrats at the state level as indicating a potential trend for Democrats moving forward, or do you think it will be a different ballgame when you’re running in a primary and a general election in 2018? 

Anna Langthorn

Somewhere in between the two options you’re giving me. You can’t deny that there is a different dynamic when you’re talking about special elections, but I do think they are generally reflective of the sentiment of Oklahoma voters.

Then going into 2018, we have already started having this conversation, and it’s a conversation that’s gonna be focused on Oklahoma politics, not necessarily national politics — about the fact that we’re in the midst of a budget crisis, in the midst of an education crisis, in the midst of a health care crisis, and that our economy, particularly in rural Oklahoma, is not doing as well as Republicans like to pretend it is.

Garet Williams

What makes Oklahoma Democrats unique from the national Democratic organization or even from other Democratic state parties?

Anna Langthorn

In terms of what makes us unique, we’ve got more federally recognized tribes than any other state. We have probably the largest Native American population, I think. I could be slightly wrong, but we are definitely up there on the list in terms of the number of federally recognized tribes and the percentage of our population, because it is about 10 percent of our population that is native — and that’s substantially larger than most other places, keeping in mind that those are sovereign nations within the boundaries of Oklahoma. So that makes our conversation a little bit different a lot of the time.

People don’t realize that Oklahoma was a solidly Democratic state, a blue state, into my lifetime. It wasn’t that long ago, the early ’90s and really the early 2000s, that we lost control of the legislature — I frequently say, and I might get in trouble for saying this, at our own fault.

It was the fault of the Democratic Party that things changed in Oklahoma. I don’t know if that makes us super unique because I know there are other states that are dealing with that, but it has sometimes surprised people how far the pendulum can swing and how quickly memories can fade.

The Trump administration supports Ohio’s policy of kicking people off the voter registration rolls if they go six years without casting a ballot — which has led hundreds of thousands of people to lose their voting eligibility.

A lawsuit over the Ohio law is headed to the Supreme Court. As reported by Mother Jones’s Ari Berman, the Justice Department, in a stark reversal from the Obama administration, filed an amicus brief Monday in support of the state.

The case — featuring Jon Husted, the state’s secretary of state and Republican candidate for governor — hinges on whether the state law violates the 1993 federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), known as the Motor Voter Act, which was designed to make voter registration easier and simpler. The law prohibits invalidating voter registrations because people failed to vote.

Under the law, Ohio officials send an address verification letter to the registered address after a person has not voted for two consecutive years. If the person does not respond to the letter, and they also do not vote for four more years, then the person is purged from the rolls. That means they have to register again in order to cast a ballot.

A lower court sided with Ohio and upheld the law. But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision last September. The US Supreme Court will hear the case during its upcoming term this fall.

While the Motor Voter Act prohibits the removal of voters from the rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote,” acting US Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall argued in the amicus brief that this should be interpreted as meaning removal from the rolls only by reason of failure to vote. Ohio, Wall argued, also tries to verify addresses, so failure to vote isn’t the only reason voters would be kicked off.

But the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an African-American trade union group, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, and Larry Harmon, a man who was purged from the rolls, are the suing the state over the law. They argue that the law says each voter “has the right not to cast a vote — and the mere exercise of that right should not be the basis for removal from the voter rolls.” Ohio law would then, they argue, violate the law by removing someone’s registration with no evidence that they have actually moved addresses. The lawsuit was initially filed on their behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and Demos, a liberal think tank that works on election reform.

This case come as part of the Trump administration’s larger fight against voter fraud, which the president claims, without evidence, is widespread. Fights against voter fraud have often led to policies that simply make it harder for people to vote. And the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision could have long-lasting effects on protections for voters in Ohio and beyond.

For venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Donald Trump has turned out to be a poor investment.

BuzzFeed News reported on Monday that billionaire investor Peter Thiel, an early supporter of President Trump who served on his transition team, has been quietly criticizing the administration, going so far as saying at a January event: “There is a 50 percent chance this whole thing ends in disaster.”

These comments undermine Thiel’s effusive praise of Trump as someone who could break the Republican orthodoxy and provide a new path forward — and raise questions about how enduring Thiel’s support might prove to be.

Thiel was revealed in May 2016 as a Trump delegate to the RNC, endorsed Trump in a speech at the convention, and later outlined his support of Trump last September in an op-ed for the Washington Post, writing that “Trump’s heretical denial of Republican dogma about government incapacity is exactly what we need to move the party — and the country — in a new direction.” Thiel argued that the government was lacking in competence and propensity for innovation. But just about a year after publicly aligning himself with Trump’s campaign, Thiel described Trump’s administration as “incompetent” per BuzzFeed’s reporting.

As Timothy Lee wrote for Vox last summer, Thiel’s speech endorsing Trump at the RNC was couched in criticism of a government as ineffective and obsolete and a political scene focused on “fake culture wars” amidst an “economic decline.” For Thiel, Trump’s brash personality and lack of political expertise offered a way to break the molds of politics and government. BuzzFeed’s Ryan Mac reports that Thiel’s support of Trump apparently remained genuine as the campaign stretched into the fall, with Thiel citing tax reform as one of the few actual issues with which he aligned with Trump.

After Trump’s electoral victory, Lee wrote that Thiel’s endorsement, in hindsight, looked increasingly like a savvy investment for a venture capitalist known for “long-shot” investments, and whose data analytics firm, Palantir, is still in litigation regarding a multimillion dollar contract with the military.

Thiel was soon tapped to serve on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team, where he played a significant role in vetting candidates for various Cabinet appointments. As Mac noted, several of Thiel’s former colleagues, including Palantir’s Justin Mikolay, were hired by the Trump administration.

But at some point in the fall, Thiel’s confidence in Trump appears to have begun to waver: Though Thiel was publicly supporting and praising the candidate, according to Mac’s reporting for BuzzFeed, Thiel came across as less certain in private conversations, even as far back as just before Election Day:

But in at least one private conversation, Thiel admitted he didn’t have much confidence in either candidate. Whoever wins, he said, will likely be a one-term president, according to a person familiar with the discussion, with Thiel predicting that there would be a major financial catastrophe in the next four years.

At another event after the election, Thiel appeared to downplay the social policies of the administration to his liberal friends, noting his repeated belief that there was about a 50 percent chance of success:

According to two people in attendance, Thiel described the administration as a work in progress and discounted the suggestion that progress on social issues like gay marriage might be rolled back in the next four years. But these same people said Thiel tempered his enthusiasm with a caveat during one meal, remarking that “there is a 50% chance this whole thing ends in disaster.”

More recently, Mac reports, Thiel has been described as “annoyed” by the Trump administration’s lack of movement on policy, and perhaps most damningly, told guests at an event in San Francisco in May that the Trump administration is “incompetent” after all.

Apparently, though, he was talking about muskets.

So says Hatch’s office, which tweeted the following on Monday:

In his original statement, Hatch was attempting to dismiss any discussion of returning to health care reform as Republicans move on to the next item on their agenda: tax reform. “We’re not going back to health care. We’re in tax now. As far as I’m concerned, they shot their wad on health care and that’s the way it is. I’m sick of it,” Hatch said to Politico last Wednesday, though published Monday.

Instead of suggesting that Republicans had wasted an opportunity to repeal Obamacare via a reference to Civil War-era muskets, it appeared to many that Hatch was referencing a common slang term for ejaculation.

Despite the clarification from Hatch’s office, many on Twitter made fun of the comment:

But the president appeared to take issue with the poll, which was first reported on by Axios on Saturday, in a series of tweets Monday morning.

The poll of 2,901 likely voters from Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania showed a drop from 35.3 percent of voters in April who had “strongly favorable” views of Trump to 28.6 percent in August.

This drop in support is particularly high among Republicans with an almost 10 percent drop in strongly favorable views of the president among GOP likely voters. Unfavorable views of Trump among Republicans jumped from 20.5 percent to 26.9 percent in that same time.

The poll, first published on Friday, seems to have caught the eye of Trump, who tweeted Monday morning about “Fake News polling,” disputing the results.

Firehouse Strategies, the firm behind the new polling, is made up of a number of alumni of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) 2016 presidential campaign.

Republicans control the White House and Congress. But over the past several months of Donald Trump’s presidency, congressional Republicans have slowly started to find subtle ways to oppose and constrain the president.

Two newly introduced bipartisan bills would notably limit his ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, and this week Trump signed a piece of legislation, passed by veto-proof majority, that would limit his ability to roll back sanctions against Russia. Politico summarized this as “reining in Donald Trump.” The Senate also took time to put a procedural block on Trump making recess appointments — what many see as preventing him from firing and quickly replacing “beleaguered” Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The quotes Politico got from GOP senators are striking in their stridency, with Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) talking about Trump as a “reluctant” ally:

“As we’ve seen on the Russian sanctions bill, sometimes the president will come along, even reluctantly, and we’ll be able to make progress,” Cornyn said. “Historically, it hasn’t always been the case that the president is the one who sets the policy and Congress responds. It was that Congress led. And I think this is the opportunity we have now and I welcome that.”

Other Republicans quoted by Politico sounded almost as if they were members of an opposition party — explaining it was a “good thing” that Congress was limiting the president’s powers. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) noted that the sparring was indicative of Congress claiming its status as equal to the executive:

“That’s a good thing, right?” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking GOP leader, said of the moves to establish more independence from Trump. “It’s important that Congress assert its authorities under the Constitution and be an equal branch of the government.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a co-sponsor of the bill to protect Mueller, seemed to agree with Thune, telling Politico:

“If you look back over the last 75 years, there have been a number of instances where Congress has conveyed authority to the president because it happened to be their president in the White House,” Tillis added. “It’s more appropriate to be reserved here on Capitol Hill.”

This inter-branch tension is a feature rather than a bug of the United States political system — but usually one that isn’t as prominent when one party controls both Congress and the executive branch.

Trump spoke out about Congress’s sanctions against Russia in his typical fashion, with some angry tweets.

Meanwhile, Congress closed up shop and went home for August recess.