Americans are struggling with affordability pressures that are squeezing everything from their everyday necessities to their biggest-ticket expenses.
Nearly half of Americans said they find groceries, utility bills, health care, housing and transportation difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month by Public First. The results paint a grim portrait of spending constraints: More than a quarter, 27 percent, said they have skipped a medical check-up because of costs within the last two years, and 23 percent said they have skipped a prescription dose for the same reason.
The strain is also reshaping how Americans spend their free time. More than a third — 37 percent — said they could not afford to attend a professional sports event with their family or friends, and almost half — 46 percent — said they could not pay for a vacation that involves air travel.
While President Donald Trump gave himself an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade on the economy during an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, the poll results underscore that voters’ financial anxieties have become deeply intertwined with their politics, shaping how they evaluate the White House’s response to rising costs.
Trump insists that “prices are all coming down,” as he told Burns, but the results pose a challenge for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterms, with even some of the president’s own voters showing signs that their patience with high costs is wearing thin.
POLITICO reporters covering a variety of beats have spent the past few weeks poring over the poll results. We asked some of them to unpack the data for us and tell us what stood out most. Here’s what they said:
TARIFFS
The big observation: Trump has struggled to persuade even parts of his base to accept the idea that tariffs will pay off over time. A minority — 36 percent — of Trump voters said tariffs are hurting the economy now but will benefit the U.S. over time.
Even fewer said the strategy is already working: 22 percent of voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2024 said tariffs are helping the U.S. economy both now and in the long term, according to the poll conducted in November.
What really stood out: Staunch supporters of the president were roughly twice as likely as other Republicans to believe tariffs are a net positive already, although large shares of both groups still said they view them as harmful. Even people who self-identify as MAGA Republicans were split on one of the president’s favorite tools: 27 percent of those MAGA voters said tariffs are boosting the economy both now and in the long term, while 21 percent of them said tariffs are damaging in both the short and long term.
What now? Tariffs represent more than an economic tool to the president, who argues the levies have helped him negotiate peace deals around the globe and nudged corporations to bring investment to American shores.
Trump has frequently urged Americans to be patient with his tariff strategy, much of which could be cut down by the Supreme Court in the coming months, but it remains a delicate political issue when a lot of voters may be more concerned about their everyday expenses rather than a broader global calculus.
– Ari Hawkins
COLLEGE COSTS
The big observation: The tuition is too damn high. Only a quarter of Americans think college is worth the money, regardless of party, The POLITICO Poll found. Overall, 62 percent of Americans said college isn’t worth it because it either costs too much or doesn’t provide enough benefits — a belief supported most by 18- to 24-year-olds and those aged 65 and up.
The income gap between Americans with college degrees and those with high school degrees widened over the last two decades. And recent research from the U.S. Census Bureau found the median income of households headed by someone with a bachelor’s degree or higher last year was more than double the median income of those with householders with a high school degree but no college.
What really stood out: Despite that economic divide, more than half of people surveyed who graduated from college supported the idea that higher education is either too expensive or not sufficiently useful.
What now? Both former President Joe Biden and Trump have tried to respond to this frustration, pitching efforts to boost technical education programs and federal support for professional degrees in lieu of 4-year universities.
The Trump administration has pressed universities to control their costs — attempting to tie those efforts to the schools’ access to federal funds — but also shed the student loan forgiveness programs Biden championed.
– Juan Perez Jr.
FOOD PRICES
The big observation: Trump attributed his 2024 victory over Biden partly to his pledge to bring down the cost of everyday goods like eggs. But a year later, Americans are more worried about being able to afford groceries than the rising cost of housing or health care, according to The POLITICO Poll.
Half of those surveyed said they find it difficult to pay for food. And a majority, 55 percent, blame the Trump administration for the high prices — even as the White House emphasizes its focus on affordability and the economy ahead of the midterm.
What really stood out: As affordability increasingly becomes a political flashpoint, with Democrats eager to seize on GOP vulnerabilities, a meaningful share of Trump’s own voters — 22 percent — blame the president for the high grocery costs.
What now? Balancing those concerns with a president who has put tariffs on goods imported from all over the world is a challenge for Trump’s administration — and an issue Democrats are certain to keep prodding.
– Rachel Shin
HOUSING
The big observation: Concerns about housing costs — which have represented a major share of inflation in recent years — eclipsed those for health care, utilities, commuting expenses and child care, The POLITICO Poll found.
Only grocery costs bested the issue across more than a dozen expenses when respondents were asked to identify the items they find “the most challenging” to afford. The high cost of housing is also coming through in other metrics: The median age of first-time homebuyers climbed to a record high of 40 this year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
What really stood out: The POLITICO Poll found that homebuying and rental costs were of particular concern for young and Hispanic adults, two constituencies whose support for Trump last year helped Republicans regain control of Washington. There’s also an interesting wrinkle among GOP voters. While only 10 percent of those who identified as MAGA Republicans believe the Trump administration is responsible for the housing costs they see as unfavorable (52 percent of them point to the Biden administration), that figure was three times higher for non-MAGA Republican respondents.
What now? Those surveyed spread the blame for high housing costs across the Trump and Biden administrations, state and local governments and private landlords. But it's Republicans who have to protect their hold on Washington heading into the midterms while the president generally dismissed affordability this week as “a hoax that was started by Democrats.”
– Cassandra Dumay
HEALTH CARE COSTS
The big observation: Nearly half of American adults find it difficult to afford health care, according to The POLITICO Poll. Health care ranked as the No. 3 cost concern for respondents.
Democrats are pushing to extend pandemic-era enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year. If they end, prices will skyrocket for many Americans who buy insurance through the Obamacare marketplace. Democrats, who have struggled since Trump’s victory to coalesce around a campaign message, are banking on health care costs and other affordability concerns being a winning issue for them in the midterms.
What really stood out: The divide between MAGA and non-MAGA. While 84 percent of people who identified as MAGA Republicans said they trusted the GOP to bring down the cost of health care for everyday Americans (7 percent of which actually trusted the Democratic Party more on this issue), 49 percent of non-MAGA Republicans felt the same way. And nearly a quarter — 24 percent — of the non-MAGA respondents put their faith in Democrats on this issue.
What now? While poll respondents overall said they were more likely to trust Democrats to bring down health care costs, the overall split may not be concerning to Republicans running for reelection: 42 percent favored Democrats on the issue, compared with 33 percent favoring Republicans. The question becomes whether the non-MAGA Republicans can be persuaded to break ranks, or undecided voters are wooed.
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s remarks on the economy in a swing district in Northeastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, his self-grading of an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” on a key midterm issue is roiling the campaign trail.
Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said in an exclusive statement to POLITICO that Trump’s remark — delivered during his sitdown with POLITICO's Dasha Burns for a special episode of “The Conversation” released this morning — is out of touch with reality.
“The President’s statement does not reflect the reality on the ground here in a community where many Pennsylvanians voted for him in the last election,” Shapiro said in the statement. “The record is clear: his policies have hurt the very communities that propelled him to the White House. Trump’s tariffs and economic policies have raised prices at the grocery store, shuttered markets for our farmers, hurt our manufacturers, and dramatically increased the cost of living for Pennsylvanians.”
During the interview with POLITICO, Trump was asked what grade he would give his economy, to which he responded: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” That remark comes despite consistent polling, including a recent POLITICO Poll, that shows voters are feeling pinched. According to the most recent Consumer Price Index, prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September. Trump’s top advisers, meanwhile, are pitching his Pennsylvania trip as an attempt to reboot an affordability message that’s been hindered by his insistence that the economy is strong.
The president’s comments to POLITICO on the economy are already being turned into a cudgel against him heading into the midterms, as Shapiro’s response — and other Democrats — shows.
Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, another potential 2028 candidate, joined Shapiro in dinging Trump for the comments. “Must be graded on a curve that excludes rent, groceries, and healthcare,” Pritzker wrote in a post on X.
“Bringing his alternative reality and talking points to our Commonwealth won’t bring down the cost of groceries or make life more affordable for working families,” Shapiro continued in the statement. “Instead of trying to put on a show, he should get to work with Democrats and Republicans to actually cut costs for hard working families — as we have done here in Pennsylvania.”
Steve Bannon, a MAGA stalwart and host of “The War Room” podcast, told POLITICO that he trusts in Trump’s ability to carry forward the message on affordability and cost-of-living issues.
“If you're gonna go on the road, go on it, but he’s showing you that he’s the best person to sell his program,” Bannon said. “And if you don’t believe it’s an ‘A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,’ then you're not the right guy to sell it.”
Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) was asked during an appearance on Fox Business earlier on Tuesday whether he agreed with Trump’s grade of the economy — the specifics of which he steered clear from. “I think the starting point is we're digging out of a huge hole that we're in as a result of the Biden administration,” he said. “What the president is saying is we’ve done a remarkable amount over the last 12 months. The economy is better. … But there’s a lot more work to do. Working families that are still living paycheck to paycheck, they’re still feeling crunched — by health care, by energy costs.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai told POLITICO that “much work remains” but that “putting an end to Joe Biden’s inflation and affordability crisis has been a Day One priority for President Trump” and ticked off accomplishments including “slashing costly regulations to securing historic drug pricing deals efforts that have cooled inflation and raised real wages.”
Stacy Garrity, the GOP gubernatorial candidate and Pennsylvania state treasurer — who was scheduled to attend Trump’s visit to Mount Pocono and has backed his tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — didn’t specifically address Trump’s economic grade when asked if she agreed with the assessment. Matt Beynon, a spokesperson for Garrity, said she is “looking forward to joining President Trump” and that the “treasurer is looking forward to being a partner with” Trump and “not a courtroom opponent like Josh Shapiro.”
Rahm Emanuel, who is mulling a presidential run, is pushing for the United States to follow Australia's lead in banning children under 16 from most social media.
Alarmed by the addictive nature of social media apps and the attendant health and safety risks for young users, Emanuel wants to amp up public pressure on American lawmakers to restrict access to some of the world’s most popular platforms.
In a bit of irony, the potential 2028 White House hopeful plans to issue his call to action Tuesday, as Australia’s ban takes effect, in a video he’ll post on his social media accounts, according to plans the Democrat shared first with POLITICO.
“We’ve got to make a choice when it comes to our adolescents: Who’s going to be a kind of moral guiding light? I put my thumb on the scale for adults over algorithms,” Emanuel said in an interview, accusing Big Tech of prioritizing profits over “protecting our adolescents.”
It’s the latest in a series of policy stances Emanuel is sharpening as the former ambassador, who worked for three Democratic presidents and was mayor of Chicago, calls out his party’s messaging from education to public safety ahead of a critical midterm election.
It also comes as Democrats are embracing social media influencers and encouraging political leaders and candidates to spend more time online to promote their messaging and reach younger voters.
But Emanuel sees those as separate issues — an electoral strategy targeted toward adults over 18 versus a public health problem affecting adolescents. He likened solving it to steps he took to curb youth smoking as mayor by raising the minimum age to buy tobacco products. And he suggested lawmakers should start with targeting three of the most popular apps among U.S. teens — TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
“We can’t lose another generation because of inaction or political gridlock,” he said.
Emanuel appears to be taking a tougher stance on youth access to social media than some of his would-be rivals for the Democratic nomination — and positioning himself against the Big Tech lobby that has fiercely opposed efforts to regulate who accesses their platforms by arguing it infringes upon free speech. As a candidate, he too received donations from tech giants, including Eric Schmidt and Sheryl Sandberg.
Asked about those contributions, he said his stance now shows his independence from those firms.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills this fall that require social media platforms to display health warning labels to minors and require apps to check kids' ages. Both Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have spoken out about social media's impact on kids' mental health.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed a “Kids Code” last year that aims to limit data tech companies can collect from children, but is mired in a legal battle. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law in 2023 that works to ensure children are compensated for appearing in online content.
Emanuel, asked if his proposed social-media ban would be key to his platform should he run for president, said “anything that allows us to keep focus on improving academic standards and protecting our children on a public-health basis is going to be a priority.”
There’s some support for a similar ban in the U.S. Nearly six in 10 voters in a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in late 2024 said they would like to see similar age restrictions, though support was lower among those ages 18 to 34. An August POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll of registered California voters showed 45 percent support for banning social media for kids under 16.
Still, a divided panel of appeals judges last month gave Florida the go-ahead to begin enforcing a law signed by one-time presidential aspirant, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, that bars children under age 14 from using many social media platforms and requires parental approval for those ages 14 and 15. DeSantis, who might mount another White House bid in 2028, has hailed the law as a way of keeping children safe from online predators.
Emanuel acknowledged the stiff legal challenges a sweeping social media ban could face. But he said there’s a potentially “winning argument” in casting the crackdowns as combating “a public health issue associated with technology” rather than the technology itself.
Tyler Katzenberger, Andrew Atterbury and Shia Kapos contributed to this report.
Indiana Senate Republican leader Rodric Bray reiterated his opposition to redrawing the state’s congressional lines as his legislative body began to consider a new, state House-passed map Monday.
But he would not say whether his caucus had enough votes to pass the measure being pushed by President Donald Trump, as he aims to keep Republicans’ slim control over Congress next year. Recalcitrant Republicans in the Hoosier State have presented the president with one of the biggest political tests of his second term.
“We’ll all find out on Thursday,” Bray said. It was a notable change from his regular insistence the GOP-controlled Senate lacks the votes to pass a mid-cycle redistricting measure.
Bray also addressed threats of violence against many of his own members received after signaling they don’t support remapping the state ahead of next year’s midterm election.
“It's unsettling for all of our members and people across the state to endure that,” he said of the dozen or so elected Indiana Republicans who have faced threats of pipe bombings, swattings and unsolicited deliveries of Domino’s pizza.
The Senate convened ahead of what is elected to be a final Thursday vote on the map the House passed last week. It would all but ensure GOP control over Indiana’s nine House seats, up from their current 7-2 advantage. Bray cautioned it’s possible the vote could slip to Friday.
As senators convened for a 13-minute session before adjourning for the day Monday, anti-redirecting protesters drowned out much of the proceedings with chants of “No means no” and “no cheaters.”
Trump’s aggressive remapping push, spearheaded in Texas, has withered in the face of state-level opposition elsewhere in the country.
Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett declared a U.S. Senate run on Monday, jolting an already contentious Democratic primary as the party banks on flipping the reliably red state in its push to retake control of Congress’ upper chamber.
Crockett, a two-term representative from Dallas, will challenge state Rep. James Talarico, a rising star within the Democratic Party. Despite polling suggesting an uphill battle, Democrats feel optimistic about winning statewide in Texas for the first time in decades by harnessing the same backlash to President Donald Trump that fueled their successful off-cycle elections last month. In 2018, the party caught a glimmer of hope when Beto O’Rourke came within 2 points of defeating Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in a blue wave.
Former Rep. Colin Allred, the first Democrat to get into the race, dropped out on Monday ahead of Crockett’s announcement, citing a desire to avoid a messy primary and the likelihood of a runoff that would be triggered if no candidate receives a majority of the first round of votes in the March 3 primary. It was Allred's second attempt at a Senate run: He lost to Cruz in 2024 by more than 8 percentage points.
“For too long, Texas has elected Senators who have defended politics as usual and protected the status quo, while Texans have paid the price,” Crockett said on her campaign website. “We’ve had Senators who have pushed the American Dream further and further out of reach.”
“I’m running for the United States Senate because I believe Texas deserves a Senator who will be an independent voice for all 30 million Texans – not a rubber stamp or party line vote for Donald Trump."
Ahead of the rally, Crockett released a 45-second video with audio of Trump calling her “the new star” of the Democratic party and a “very low IQ person.”
In recent weeks, Crockett publicly debated whether to jump in, saying she would only do so if polling showed she could win. She has said she believes she can expand the electorate in Texas, a formidable task given the state’s entrenched Republican politics and rightward shift in 2024, including in former Democratic strongholds along the border. She’ll kick off with an event Monday afternoon in Dallas.
Crockett will be able to draw on a national profile and strong fundraising network. As a House member in a solidly blue district, she raised more than $6.5 million as of the end of September, largely online from small-dollar donors, and had $4.6 million in her campaign account — funds that can immediately be used to propel her Senate run.
Crockett is known for going head to head against GOP rivals, and has attracted criticism for some of her comments, such as calling wheelchair-bound Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “hot wheels.” She also referred to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as having a “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body” during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
Some Texas Democrats said they believe Crockett brings a shot of enthusiasm – and her assertiveness is what the Democratic electorate is clamoring for. “We need some out loud, bold progressives, and that's what people like about her,” said Allison Campolo, chairwoman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party. “She doesn't shy away from anything. She doesn't run to the middle.”
Crockett has faced obstacles in the House, coming up short in a bid for a caucus leadership position and for Democrats’ top position on the Oversight Committee. Now her Senate bid is causing some musical chairs in the House, brought on by the Texas GOP’s new gerrymander. Her decision to run for Senate wards off one potentially tough member-on-member primary for her current seat, but Allred’s switch to vie for a recently redrawn House seat against Rep. Julie Johnson is forcing another messy primary in a safe blue district.
Republicans say Crockett’s combative reputation will disqualify her among moderate Texans. Sen. John Cornyn has been goading Crockett into the race, and his campaign believes she will be easily defeated in a general election. Cornyn told reporters Monday that he thinks Crockett wins the primary "but she's the worst possible candidate they can have in Texas."
But first Cornyn would have to survive a packed and bloody Republican primary. And his vulnerability among conservative primary voters who question his MAGA bonafides has Democrats frothing at the opportunity to flip the seat. He’s up against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right firebrand who’s often considered the frontrunner since launching his campaign in April. Rep. Wesley Hunt jumped into the race in October, essentially guaranteeing the early March primary will go to a runoff.
Democrats are staking their hopes of flipping Texas on a continued GOP split — and the possibility of Paxton, whom they view as a weaker candidate, advancing to the general election.
Crockett told the Dallas Morning News last week that she had called Allred and Talarico to discuss polling she had commissioned showing she could win the election. Talarico’s campaign said she never actually shared the survey when they spoke. Talarico has achieved fame for his liberal view of Christianity and involvement in a walkout staged by Texas state lawmakers over Republicans gerrymandering a congressional map at Trump’s request.
“Our movement is rooted in unity over division — so we welcome Congresswoman Crockett into this race,” Talarico said in a statement.
The biggest question facing Crockett is whether she’ll be able to translate her popularity in Dallas statewide, said Joel Montfort, a Texas-based Democratic strategist.
“I appreciate her scrappiness and abilities to go toe to toe with her detractors. She is quick witted and quite the firebrand,” he said. “Her key challenge will be getting the other urban and suburban voters in other cities to appreciate what she brings to the party.”
Former Texas Rep. Colin Allred ended his Senate run on Monday as challenger Jasmine Crockett prepares to announce her likely bid for the seat that has long eluded Democrats.
Allred instead declared his intention to run for Congress in Rep. Julie Johnson’s seat. A resident of Dallas, he was making his second attempt to unseat a Texas Republican in the Senate after losing to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2024.
Allred was facing the possibility of a crowded Democratic primary: He was already up against state Rep. James Talarico, a rising star within the Democratic Party. Allred lagged in fundraising behind Talarico, and Crockett – an outspoken member with a strong national profile – would also prove to be a formidable challenger.
Allred, in a statement, said he wanted to avoid a messy Senate primary and will instead run for Congress in the newly drawn 33rd Congressional District, which had its lines redrawn after the U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed Texas to use a new GOP-friendly map drawn this year. His switch comes on the final day candidates can file to run in Texas for the March primary.
A bruising primary is taking place on the Republican side: Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton or Rep. Wesley Hunt are dueling for the GOP nomination.
“In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlikkers Paxton, Cornyn or Hunt,” he said in a statement. “That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to end my campaign for the U.S. Senate.”
Democrats need to net four seats to regain control of the Senate — a tough task that they believe was made easier by their sweeping success around the country on Election Day last month.
President Donald Trump’s maximalist, command-and-control approach to the GOP faces one of its most significant tests yet, as a band of stubborn Indiana state Senate Republicans threatens his mid-cycle redistricting scheme when it is expected to come to a vote this week.
The Hoosier Republicans will gavel in Monday to decide on a map, passed Friday by the Indiana House, that supporters say would all but guarantee a 9-0 Republican congressional delegation and would be in effect for next year’s pivotal midterm elections. Present maps give the GOP a 7-2 advantage.
Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, who — along with roughly half his 40-member Republican majority — has resisted a four-month White House pressure campaign to redraw the congressional lines. Indiana Conservation Voters, Club for Growth and Building a Better Economy are among the groups that have spent nearly half-a-million dollars in ads trying to sway public opinion — the first group against redistricting and the second two for — in recent weeks, according to AdImpact. Trump campaign veterans like Chris LaCivita have joined the dark money group Fair Maps Indiana to advance the cause, too.
Speaker Mike Johnson has been calling reluctant Republican state senators in recent days — reported here for the first time, based on accounts from two people granted anonymity to freely discuss sensitive private conversations. One Indiana Republican elected official briefed on the calls said Johnson’s “soft touch” with lawmakers may be moving the needle.
“Anybody who tells you they know how this is going to play out doesn’t know,” this person said.
A Johnson spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The matter is top of mind for the president, who brought up Indiana redistricting to visitors at a White House Christmas party Sunday attended by Gov. Mike Braun, according to a person present and granted anonymity to disclose the conversation. Trump asked Braun in front of other guests if redistricting would pass, and Braun responded it would.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trump “thinks we should fight democrats every legal way we can to win the majority and keep accomplishing things for the people," according to a Republican close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss the president’s motivations.
And on Friday, Turning Point Action announced that it was partnering with several Trump-aligned super PACs to target Indiana Republicans who are blocking the president’s redistricting effort, including threatening to spend millions of dollars to primary resistant members of the Indiana GOP.
Trump needs the backup: The state Senate’s reservations threaten to derail his plans to push new maps across the country to shore up his party’s slim House majority, which Democrats would seize by netting just three seats in an election that is expected to be a repudiation of the party in power.
“These guys and ladies are under intense, 24-hour-a-day pressure and I don’t know if they can withstand it, ultimately — we will see,” said Mike Murphy, a former Republican member of the Indiana House of Representatives. “I feel badly for them and their families, primarily. They came to be public servants, and instead they are pawns in really what I consider to be Trump’s strategy to avoid a third impeachment and potentially set himself up a third term.”
The Trump-backed pressure campaign in Indiana has included two visits from Vice President JD Vance to Indianapolis on Air Force Two, and repeated calls and invitations to Oval Office meetings — including with Trump, Bray and Speaker of the House Todd Huston in August.
Now, lawmakers will convene amid threats of violence following Trump’s series of social media posts ramping up pressure. At least a dozen elected Indiana Republicans have faced swattings — false reports of danger that bring an aggressive law enforcement response designed to intimidate the target — and pipe bomb threats. Few though have publicly reversed their positions against redistricting since they stalemated 19-19last month on a vote that was a close proxy for gerrymandering. That means Trump and the White House would need to flip at least half a dozen GOP senators to secure a simple majority to pass the new maps.
“How does (Trump) have the time to mess with a nobody like me with all of the important matters that are to take his attention as the leader of the executive branch in this nation?” Republican state Sen. Greg Walker told a local newspaper in November.
Three Indiana Republicans close to the process — and granted anonymity to appraise support — said they do not believe there are currently enough votes in the Senate for the map to pass.
Asked whether he felt pressured by the White House to redistrict, Huston would only say, “We had conversations. There was no secret.”
Trump posted twice on Truth Social this weekend about his demand for redistricting in Indiana, the barn-red state he once called “Importantville” and that helped him clinch the GOP nomination in its May 2016 primary, saying, “this new Map would give the incredible people of Indiana the opportunity to elect TWO additional Republicans in the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He also posted the names of nine senators who "need encouragement to make the right decision” as they have not yet declared their position on the new map.
Turning Point last week deployed members of their “strike force” to meet with and whip many of those same senators, but the results of that effort remain unclear. “It's so hard to judge at this point, because it's such a fluid situation,” said Brett Galaszewski, Turning Point Action’s national enterprise director.
Meanwhile the Supreme Court reinstated Texas’ newly drawn congressional map last week, staving off a major setback to Trump's redistricting campaign. Now, the GOP has nine more favorable seats across four states — Texas, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. Those will likely be offset by the five Democratic seats California Gov. Gavin Newsom scored in his counterpunch last month.
Redistricting battles are brewing around the country, with Democrat-led Virginia and Maryland headed in opposite directions of one another.
Virginia Democrats expanded their grip on power in the General Assembly by picking up 13 House seats while flipping three Republican-held statewide offices, including governor, in last month’s elections. Top Democrats in the state legislature appear unfazed by Indiana’s push to redraw its maps. The state’s top Democrat said it was “full steam ahead” – a reference to the state lawmakers clearing a procedural hurdle in October to put a constitutional amendment before voters to allow the Democratic-led legislature to redraw its maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“We have a plan and process in place that will facilitate delivery of our maps on time,” state Sen. L. Louise Lucas said via text Saturday. “Virginia is a good place to be.” Don Scott, the Virginia House speaker, opined that a new map could drastically change the delegation makeup in Virginia, which is near parity with six Democrats and five Republicans.
Scott said “10-1 is not out of the realm to be able to draw the maps in a succinct and community-based way," at a public forum last week.
And in Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore continues to pressure his state lawmakers to take up new maps, but has run into opposition from state Senate President Bill Ferguson, who has refused to entertain bringing up a vote on the matter.
Moore’s Redistricting Advisory Commission, set up last month to solicit residents’ feedback on whether to craft new maps, is slated to hold its final public meeting Friday before it issues recommendations to the governor and Maryland General Assembly.
Trump set the latest redistricting arms race in motion when he leaned on Texas to redraw its maps earlier this summer.
“We don’t operate in a vacuum and states are doing this all across the country, red and blue states,” Huston told reporters Friday. “We felt like it was important for us to be a part of that, and to make sure that we used every tool we could to support a strong Republican majority.”
Asked whether he felt “proud” of the maps, Huston, who said in 2021 that he would “defend these maps all day long, six days to Sunday,” did not use that word, saying he felt “very blessed to lead the Indiana House of Representative.”
“I support this, and I support what we’re doing,” he said.
The state Senate committee on elections will meet in the Senate chamber to hear the congressional map Monday afternoon, with a final vote from the whole chamber expected Thursday.
Trump’s demands on Indiana lawmakers though have exposed some of the limits of his power.
“The MAGA movement hasn’t permeated down to the state legislative level,” said an Indiana Republican allied with Trump’s redistricting cause.
But this person, granted anonymity to discuss the tense debate, referenced primaries of resistant Indiana Republicans, saying, “we’re either going to get new maps, or we’re going to get a new Senate.”
“Some people think Trumpworld is bluffing or doesn’t have any juice left and this will just go away if the state Senate rejects the maps,” this person said. “The reality is that will only be the start of a long and brutal campaign to purge the state of anyone who opposed Trump on this issue. And there will likely be collateral damage that hurts even those who supported Trump.”
Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.
Republicans and Democrats are quietly pouring millions of dollars into a fight trying to block Missouri’s new gerrymandered congressional map, as each party scrambles for any advantage they can find in the national fight for the House majority in 2026.
Missouri is one of six states that have redrawn their congressional lines — after President Donald Trump kicked off the redistricting war by pushing Texas to redraw — with the GOP-dominated legislature passing a new map in September that would eliminate Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-based seat.
But unlike in many other states, Democrats have a clearer path to try to block the map, at least for next year’s midterms. They’ve now launched an effort that operatives in the state say is attracting an unprecedented amount of money — and legal fights.
“Imagine the kind of democratic paralysis our state would be in if this happened every 10 years, or every time we decided to draw new maps,” said Aaron Baker, a GOP strategist based in Missouri. “That would just be chaos.”
Almost immediately after the map passed, Democrats in the state organized a campaign to repeal the new map through popular referendum. The campaign committee, People Not Politicians, will need to submit about 107,000 valid signatures before the Dec. 11 deadline to send the new maps to a referendum. If they submit enough valid signatures, the state would be temporarily unable to enact the new maps until voters can weigh in on the ballot measure.
Well-funded organizations on both sides have since rushed into the state, duking it out in a fight that has already spawned a complicated nest of court cases and some aggressive tactics seeking to undermine Democrats’ referendum campaign.
If the state’s new maps do come to a referendum, some Republicans are concerned voters might reject their bid to aid Trump’s effort to skew the odds of maintaining control of the House in Republicans’ favor.
“It will be a very uphill battle for Republicans if [the referendum] is on the ballot,” Baker said.
Democrats in Missouri, meanwhile, are confident they’ll have enough signatures to push the maps to a referendum — and they’re optimistic voters will be on their side when it comes time to vote on the maps.
“[Republicans] are afraid for this to go on the ballot, because they believe that Missourians will vote it down,” said Doug Beck, the top Democrat in the state Senate. “That’s why they’re trying as hard as they can to not let it go to the ballot.”
The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Campaign Committee donated a combined $100,000 days after the Put Missouri First PAC, the GOP’s ballot measure-focused committee, was formed. That was followed by two separate $1 million contributions from the Trump-aligned Securing American Greatness PAC and the American Action Network, the nonprofit arm of House Republicans’ primary super PAC.
Officers for Put Missouri First — including the group’s treasurer and a law firm that shares the organization’s address — did not respond to interview requests.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. urged his social media followers to support the effort to block the referendum — a sign of the battle’s growing significance to Republicans outside of the state.
For the most part, Democrats in Washington have stayed out of People Not Politicians’ signature gathering campaign. But Democratic-aligned dark money groups have stepped in to contribute over $1.25 million to People Not Politicians, including a $500,000 contribution from American Opportunity Action, a newly-created left-leaning nonprofit that is also supporting a ballot measure campaign in Michigan to block a rewriting of the state’s constitution.
That level of fundraising from both parties is striking for a ballot measure fight in a state with a long history of referendum battles. Benjamin Singer — who has worked on different referendum committees in Missouri since 2018, and is the campaign director for a group seeking to put a constitutional amendment in front of voters to strengthen the state’s referendum laws — said he’s never seen a ballot measure fight with as much money coming in for both sides of the issue.
“They haven’t dominated with the big money, because they haven’t needed to,” he said.
Some opponents are seeking to impede Democrats’ signature collecting through questionable tactics. The Kansas City Star obtained a copy of a contract offering a canvasser for People Not Politicians $5,000 to stop collecting signatures. The paper could not identify the source of the contract, which POLITICO has not independently verified.
And Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, has sought to use Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration moves to target a firm working on signature collection for People Not Politicians that she accused of employing “illegal aliens.”
In a pair of social media statements, Hanaway said her office is investigating the firm, Advanced Micro Targeting, and said she’s contacted ICE about the situation. Advanced Micro Targeting has denied Hanaway’s claims.
Hanaway is also fighting against a potential referendum in the courtroom — she filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to declare that a referendum to block the legislature’s new maps violates both the U.S. Constitution and Missouri’s Constitution, leaning on principles of the “independent state legislature” theory that the Supreme Court largely rejected in the Moore v. Harper case in 2023.
In a statement, Hanaway said “Missouri will not allow out-of-state political groups to silence the voices of our citizens or override our state’s constitutional process. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office will defend the authority of Missouri’s elected representatives at every turn.”
Zachary Bluestone, a Trump-appointed judge assigned to the case, said he’ll decide whether to block the referendum ahead of the Dec. 11 deadline to submit signatures.
The federal case is one of at least seven lawsuits filed over the new maps or the potential referendum. Among those is a case brought to a Missouri state court by the ACLU, which has partnered with People Not Politicians, seeking to nullify the new congressional districts on the grounds that mid-decade redistricting violates a clause in the state’s constitution.
People Not Politicians is separately suing Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins for his handling of referendum procedure, including authoring language for the potential ballot measure that frames the old maps with six GOP-leaning seats as “gerrymandered,” and the new district lines with seven GOP-leaning seats as being a “more compact” map that “better reflects statewide voting patterns.”
“What’s going on in Missouri is an example of constitutional hardball,” said Travis Crum, a professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis who specializes in election law.
And even if the ballot referendum goes in front of voters, it isn’t a guarantee the map will be blocked for 2026. The plethora of redistricting-related court cases in Missouri are being adjudicated in hearings and rulings that will likely occur before the end of January — giving state election officials enough time to schedule a potential ballot measure election next year, operatives and court watchers said.
“I just think the noise has peaked or will be peaking between now and mid-January,” Baker, the GOP consultant, said.
A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this newsletter misstated GOP strategist Aaron Baker's surname, and also misstated donors to People Not Politicians; a group affiliated with former Democratic Rep. Cori Bush did not donate.
New polling shows many Americans have begun to blame President Donald Trump for the high costs they’re feeling across virtually every part of their lives — and it’s shifting politics.
Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.
Those are among the new results from The POLITICO Poll that crystallize a growing warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterms: Some of the very groups that powered Trump’s victory last year are showing signs of breaking from that coalition, and it’s the high cost of living that’s driving them away.
It’s a growing vulnerability that Democrats exploited repeatedly in recent months, with campaigns focused on affordability sweeping key races in last month’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia and powering an overperformance in a deep-red House seat in Tennessee on Tuesday.
“This is a small warning, but it’s one that Republicans need to understand, is that to hold the House in 2026, it’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said after the Tennessee election, where Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn by 9 points, but underperformed against Trump’s 22-point margin in 2024.
One year ago, Trump’s economic message helped him piece together a diverse winning coalition, fueling his return to the White House amid widespread frustration over spiraling inflation.
Then Trump, after campaigning against Joe Biden, inherited the economy he spent months attacking, and both parties were anticipating the moment when voters would begin to turn their blame to the new incumbent.
Almost one year into Trump’s term, that shift is well underway.
The POLITICO Poll, conducted by Public First, found that despite Trump’s continued support among the Republican base, his softest supporters — the ones the GOP most needs to hold onto next year — are expressing concern.
Republicans were already worried about how they can turn out lower-propensity voters during a midterm cycle when Trump himself is not on the ballot. Now Democrats are also trying to peel away their voters by focusing aggressively on affordability, which remains a top priority for 56 percent of Americans, according to The POLITICO Poll. As was the case in November, affordability was central to the Tennessee special election, with Behn repeatedly centering her campaign on an affordability pitch.
“Republicans have long had the advantage on dealing with the economy, but if [it] remains in the doldrums and prices remain high, it’s harder to find a good job, they will blame the party in power, and that’s Republicans,” said Arizona-based Republican strategist Barrett Marson.
Republicans’ growing vulnerabilities on the economy represent a stark inversion on an issue that has long defined the GOP, and presents an emerging splintering in Trump’s 2024 winning coalition as his party heads into a high-stakes midterm fight.
Three-quarters of Trump voters say they trust the Republican Party over Democrats to reduce the overall cost of living. But his numbers are far weaker among those who say they voted for him, but do not identify as “MAGA Republicans” — 61 percent, compared to 88 percent of MAGA-aligned voters — pointing to a possible weak spot in his coalition.
Even among Trump voters a meaningful portion — nearly 1 in 5 — say Trump holds full responsibility for the state of the current economy.
The White House disputes that Trump is losing ground on the economy. “Cleaning up Joe Biden's economic disaster has been a Day One priority for President Trump,” spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement.
“President Trump is just getting started implementing the policies that created historic economic prosperity in his first term, and Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”
Americans agree that affordability is their top priority, and they hold Trump responsible for addressing it
Across parties, age groups, races, genders and income levels, Americans say the cost of living is the nation’s top problem, The POLITICO Poll finds, a sign that the economy will again overshadow other political topics in next year’s midterms.
The poll underscores just how pervasive the affordability crisis cuts across Americans’ everyday lives. A 45 percent plurality list grocery costs as the most challenging things to afford, followed by 38 percent who say housing costs and 34 percent who say health care. (Respondents could select multiple responses.)
Forty-three percent of Americans — including 31 percent of Trump voters — say there is less economic opportunity in the U.S. now than there has been in the past.
Other indicators present a similarly bleak view: Consumer sentiment fell in November to one of its lowest levels on record, according to the University of Michigan.
And while Trump frequently points to his predecessor to deflect blame for inflation and high prices, the survey reveals that defense is starting to crack.
More Americans say Trump holds most or all responsibility for the economy (46 percent) than say Biden does (29 percent).
"Voters aren't going to go, ‘I voted for Trump to better the economy, but Biden just hamstrung [him] too much,'” Marson said. “Voters are going to very quickly forget about Joe Biden and just as quickly turn their ire to Trump unless things get better.”
The survey underscores how Trump is now running into the kinds of economic headwinds that dogged Biden and the Democratic Party during the 2024 campaign.
While inflation rates have fallen from a high of 9.1 percent during the Biden administration to roughly 3 percent last month, voters’ frustration with the cost of living has remained elevated.
Biden repeatedly pointed to job growth to argue the economy was strong, even as prices rose. Now Republicans — who repeatedly hammered Biden over his handling of affordability concerns — are increasingly concerned that Trump is taking a similar tack.
"It's striking to see President Trump make the same mistake," said Michael Strain, the director of Economic Policy Studies at the historically conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
Voters say Trump isn’t doing enough, and it’s fracturing his coalition
The survey shows that there is a limit to how long Trump voters are willing to give him to deliver on a core campaign pledge. Already, 1 in 5 say he has had a chance to change the economy but has not taken it, underscoring how an issue that helped Trump form his coalition is now splitting it.
A significant portion of Trump’s voters last year did not come from his base — more than a third, 38 percent, self-identified as not being a “MAGA Republican” in the survey — and those voters are more likely than self-identified MAGA Republicans to hold a pessimistic view of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Among non-MAGA Trump voters, 29 percent say Trump has had a chance to change things in the economy but hasn’t taken it — more than double the 11 percent of MAGA voters who say Trump had not taken his opportunity.
Non-MAGA Republicans were also much more likely than MAGA voters to say the Trump administration is more responsible for the things they find difficult to afford, including grocery costs, utility bills and health care costs.
Democrats are eager to take advantage of the shifting politics of affordability and make the 2026 midterms a referendum on Trump’s economic record — and plan to link GOP candidates up and down the ballot to his policies.
Democrats from New York to Georgia zeroed in on affordability to propel them to victory in last month’s elections, and many party leaders believe it’s a playbook that candidates should follow closely next year.
“House Republicans should 100 percent expect to see ads next year calling them out for their broken promise to lower prices and for supporting Trump's tariffs,” CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for the Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC, said in a statement.
Republicans, for their part, argue they’re the ones focused on reducing costs. “While Democrats are fighting amongst themselves on who can be the next Zohran Mamdani socialist, Republicans are laser-focused on lowering costs, rebuilding prosperity, and delivering relief for the middle class,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.
Trump allies also say he’s making an affordability pitch, even if voters aren’t yet feeling improvements in their daily lives. But Trump himself has sent mixed messages on the issue.
On Saturday, he posted on Truth Social about drug prices that he claimed are falling so fast Republicans should easily win the midterms, declaring: “I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT.”
Days later, he said “affordability” is a “Democrat scam” and “con job” during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting.
“They just say the word,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it — affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history, there was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything.”
Democrats are vowing to expand the midterm map into redder territory next year after strong showing Tuesday night in Tennessee, but prominent moderates warn the party must still overcome its tarnished national brand.
State Rep. Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in a district President Donald Trump won by more than 20 points last year further emboldened Democrats, after sweeping victories last month. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is planning to soon expand its 35-seat target list of Republican-held seats, according to a person familiar with the committee’s thinking who was granted anonymity to share details. And in a memo to donors and allied groups obtained by POLITICO, Senate Majority PAC President JB Poersch said Tuesday’s results “mean Ohio, Florida, Alaska, Texas and Iowa could be competitive.”
But Behn’s progressive credentials — and the GOP’s ability to spend-heavilly and bring her down with previous comments about police funding — is inflaming debates about the future of the Democratic Party and what types of candidates it should nominate in primary contests.
“It just sort of looks like we ran a standard to progressive Democratic campaign and we got the result you would expect,” Lamb said. “What a successful candidate would have done is motivate people, exactly the way that she did around Nashville, but also appeal to some more people who are less partisan outside of it.”
He added, “to win enough of a House majority to really be able to do anything of significance, we're going to have to do that.”
The internal sniping comes despite a string of special election overperformances this year — Democratic candidates won by double digits in New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial races last month. Those victories spurred fundraising surges and candidate recruitment for Democrats.
Behn’s race turned into a national flashpoint after those successes, drawing more than $3.5 million in outside spending from Republican groups to attack her as “a very radical person” in TV ads. She outran Harris by less than any other Democrat in a special congressional election since Trump took office — though those other races didn’t draw any significant outside spending. That triggered a round of finger-pointing, particularly on social media, over whether a more moderate candidate might have performed better.
When pressed in media interviews during the campaign about her previous social media posts, Behn said she’d “matured,” adding she was a private citizen when she made the comments. She also said police funding should be decided at the local level.
“I don’t think it’s radical to have spent my entire career organizing to make healthcare more affordable or groceries cheaper,” she said ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Ian Russell, a Democratic consultant who worked on Behn’s campaign, responded to post-election criticisms, saying that in her interviews and campaign ads, “Aftyn was laser-focused on lowering costs — a message that our polling showed worked very well with both Democrats and the very small pool of persuadable voters.”
Internal Behn campaign analytics shared with POLITICO showed thousands of Democrats who did not vote in the 2022 midterms had come out in the early vote. Early voting data out of rural counties also suggested she won over some voters who previously cast ballots for Trump or GOP Rep. Mark Green.
But some Democrats lamented Behn’s “politically toxic positions” as “anvils weighing [her campaign] down,” Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at the center-left Third Way, said.
After an election that many viewed as a disappointment for the GOP given the pattern of Democratic overperformances, Republicans were eager to exploit those divides.
“Democrats can daydream about ‘expanding’ the House map all they want, but reality keeps smacking them in the face,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Their party is splintered, their messy primaries are a socialist free-for-all, and voters are consistently reminded that the Democrat Party is on the wrong side of every single issue.”
Even so, Behn’s ability to narrow Republicans’ margin-of-victory coupled with stronger-than-expected turnout gives Democrats reason for optimism heading into the midterms. That’s why Democrats say they are casting their eyes deeper into the electoral map, which includes 46 GOP-held congressional seats that Trump won by 13 or fewer points in 2024 — the margin by which Behn closed the gap between Trump and Harris.
“If Democrats do 13 points better than [Kamala] Harris did next November in every district, we flip the House and it’s not even close,” Democratic pollster Brian Stryker said. “Add this to New Jersey and Virginia, and it’s clear if the election were today we’d clean Republicans’ clocks.”
Courtney Rice, the DCCC’s communications director, said in a statement that the committee “started the 2026 cycle on offense with our original list of ‘Districts in Play,’ ranging from true swing districts to districts Trump won by 17 points.” She said recent elections “are further proof that our strategy of expanding the map and holding Republicans accountable for their broken promises to lower costs is the right one.”
The Tennessee race — which drew the attention of Trump and Harris — also yielded higher turnout than other special elections this year. Votes cast in the special election slightly surpassed the 2022 midterm in the district, and were roughly 54 percent of the total cast in the 2024 presidential election. None of the other congressional special elections where Democrats made bigger gains this year came near that.
That means Behn’s overperformance can’t just be chalked up to low-turnout conditions that typically favor Democrats. Narrowing Republicans’ margin even with midterm-like turnout gives the party new reason for optimism heading into 2026.
“There is a lot of excitement based upon what we saw last night in the 7th [District],” said Columbia, Tennessee's Democratic Mayor Chaz Molder, who is challenging Rep. Andy Ogles in the state’s neighboring 5th District, which encompasses part of Nashville as well as suburbs and exurbs to the south.
“We saw a clear message from the voters that they want sensible leadership and candidates are focused on the issues that matter — lowering costs, that includes housing and grocery costs. I think affordability certainly remains a key theme here,” Molder said. “And so I'm going to use last night to show as a sign that I need to remain laser focused on those issues.”
An Ogles spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The high turnout in the race is spooking some in the GOP, where the mood was already sour following Democrats’ victories last month. While some continue to dismiss Democrats’ ballot box strength as an off-year anomaly, others see a rough cycle ahead.
"I think the results are more good for Republicans than bad, but it's clear the left is energized to turnout and if that continues a year from now it will be a rough year for Republicans,” said Republican strategist Matt Wolking.
And while Trump campaigned harder for Van Epps in Tennessee than he did in other races this year, he still hasn’t hit the trail, instead opting to rally voters remotely from Washington. To keep control of the House next year, Republicans believe Trump — who maintains a near-total grip on his MAGA base — needs to be more visible.
And as polls show that voters are losing faith in the president’s ability to handle the economy, Republicans need to find a cohesive message, fellow GOP members say.
Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s top pollster, told House Republicans during a closed door meeting to “stay the course and talk about the realities of the economy,” arguing the closer-than-desired margin was in part because of how Van Epps discussed the economy, POLITICO reported Wednesday.
Some of that is already underway. James Blair, Trump’s 2024 political director, told POLITICO after the GOP’s losses in November that the president “is very keyed into what’s going on” economically.
“I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” Blair, who now serves as White House deputy chief of staff, said in the interview.
Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the results on Wednesday, telling reporters, “This doesn’t concern me at all.”
“Democrats put millions of dollars in,” Johnson said. “They were really trying to set the scenario that there’s some sort of wave ongoing. There’s not.”
Republicans won Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee. But instead of celebrating, many are dreading what it means about the midterms.
Republican Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps’ roughly nine point win marks a massive shift toward Democrats from 2024, when President Donald Trump carried the district by 22 points. That double digit swing — on the heels of crushing losses in off-year elections in November — could be a harbinger of what House Republicans will face in the midterms next year, members and strategists warned, as they seek to hold on to their narrow control of the chamber.
“Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle,” said one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Republicans can survive if we play team and the Trump administration officials play smart. Neither is certain.”
Democrat Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in the Tennessee special election — which attracted millions of dollars in spending and national attention in its final days — continues a trend of concerning electoral results for the GOP. Earlier this year, Democrats saw big overperformances in losses in other special elections in deep-red seats, and last month they swept a slate of critical off-year elections, including gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
In the wake of those victories, some Republicans urged the White House to retool its political message to better engage moderate voters and independents who broke for Trump in the presidential election.
“I’m glad we won. But the GOP should not ignore the Virginia, New Jersey and Tennessee elections,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is retiring from his swingy Omaha-based district, said. “We must reach swing voters. America wants some normalcy.”
House Republican leadership had been preparing for Tuesday night’s results. And while Speaker Mike Johnson leadership’s team was bracing for a tighter-than-comfortable race, the single-digit margin was still a hard pill to swallow after national Republicans pulled out all the stops — including a Trump tele-rally and Johnson visit to the district — to rescue Van Epps in the final days.
“It was too close,” said one House GOP leadership aide, who was also granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race.
Trump himself projected confidence after the win, celebrating Van Epps’ victory. “The Radical Left Democrats threw everything at him, including Millions of Dollars. Another great night for the Republican Party!!!,” he wrote on Truth Social.
But Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and appointee in the first Trump administration, said the single-digit margin for Van Epps continues the momentum Democrats already feel after the New Jersey and Virginia races.
“None of it bodes well for the GOP in the midterms,” Bartlett said. “Being an ostrich with your head in the sand on the key issues that matter most to Americans is not a strategy, or certainty not a winning one.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) directly tied Van Epps’ underperformance to Democratic voters motivated by their disapproval of Trump, and he pleaded with Republicans to “set out the alarm” with Republican voters about the consequences of losing control of the House and the Senate.
"It was dangerous. We could have lost this district because the people who showed up, many of them are the ones that are motivated by how much they dislike President Trump,” Cruz said in a Fox News interview Tuesday evening.
"In a year, it's going to be a turnout election, and the left will show up,” he added. “Hate is a powerful motivator.”
Turnout was extraordinarily high for a special election, pacing the 2022 midterms. Van Epps got roughly 90 percent of the number of raw votes Republican Mark Green — whose retirement triggered the special election — got that year, while Behn got over 115 percent of the 2022 Democrat nominee’s total.
One GOP consultant, granted anonymity to speak candidly, worried the result in Tennessee signals that Republican voters won’t turn out in significant numbers for candidates other than Trump — a problem that has plagued Republicans in the past.
"The Trump coalition is captivated by the force of his personality and willingness to disrupt the established order. There’s not much interest in supporting other ‘politicians’ when Trump isn’t on the ballot,” the consultant said. “The winds are likely to blow against Republicans in federal races in 2026. People are rarely satisfied anymore and they’re looking for someone to punish."
In a statement celebrating his victory on Tuesday, Van Epps acknowledged Trump’s importance in the race.
“Running from Trump is how you lose. Running with Trump is how you win,” he said.
Ahead of Tuesday’s election, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson sought to downplay the results of an election that was projected to be uncharacteristically competitive, telling House Republicans in a closed-door meeting that special elections are unique. And after Tuesday’s win, he celebrated Van Epps, saying in a statement “no one is better positioned to take up the mantle and deliver results” for Tennessee.
But coming out of that meeting, one House Republican said that a narrow result could send shockwaves among the House GOP conference.
“If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged,” the House Republican said prior to polls closing on Tuesday.
Elena Schneider and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
Former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes launched his bid to replace retiring Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday, joining an already crowded and competitive Democratic primary.
Barnes, who lost a 2022 Senate race against Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), focused on affordability and attacked Republicans in his launch video, arguing that it “seems like the harder you work, the more Washington looks the other way — lower taxes for billionaires, higher prices for working people.”
“Under Trump, the name of the game has been distraction and chaos to avoid accountability,” Barnes said. “It isn’t about left or right, it isn’t about who can yell the loudest. It’s about whether people can afford to live in the state they call home.”
But Barnes’ entrance is not expected to clear the primary field, like it did in his 2022 Senate primary, several Wisconsin Democrats said. A half-dozen Democrats are already vying to replace Evers, including Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Rep. Francesca Hong, state Sen. Kelda Roys and attorney Missy Hughes. Evers over the summer announced he wouldn’t run for a third term.
A Marquette University poll, conducted in October, showed a wide-open race with 81 percent of Democrats who hadn’t decided who to back in the August primary. Crowley clocked in with the most name recognition, with 26 percent, followed by Rodriguez at 25 percent and Hong at 22 percent. The poll didn’t survey Barnes’ name, as he hadn’t entered the race yet.
Republicans also face a primary, where President Donald Trump has not weighed in yet with an endorsement. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, are both running.
When Wes Moore and Bill Ferguson stood together in a Baltimore bar on a sweltering Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2022, the two political figures projected a promising vision of power for Democrats in a blue-leaning state where they stood on the cusp of fully controlling government.
Moore was a former Rhodes Scholar and decorated combat veteran who was running for governor with Oprah Winfrey’s blessing but no experience in public office. Ferguson was a tactful consensus-builder who arrived in Annapolis with the moniker of “baby senator” before rising to become the chamber president a decade later.
“I’m a Baltimorean,” Moore told the campaign volunteers gathered in the Federal Hill neighborhood that Ferguson had represented since first being elected in 2010 at the age of 27. “Who’s making these decisions matters.”
Three years later, Maryland’s two top Democrats find themselves unable to agree on a big one. Moore has become a champion of redrawing his state’s U.S. congressional lines to generate an additional seat for his party in next year’s midterm elections. Ferguson, scarred by an earlier experience in which he helped deliver such an extreme map only to see it struck down by courts, is refusing to commit to even allowing a vote on a new redistricting measure.
The new rupture highlights a fault line emerging within both parties as Democrats and Republicans scour the national map for opportunities to improve their congressional positions via gerrymandering — between the short-term priorities of their respective national parties and the often longer-range yet parochial concerns of state legislative leaders.
For Democrats, the most immediate obstacle to further gains is Ferguson, whose defiance has made him a villain to party officials nationwide. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke with Ferguson in October ensuring he “understands the assignment,” as Jeffries put it. “We need the state of Maryland,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said upon redrawing his state's maps via passage of Proposition 50 to give his party five Democrat-leaning seats in the state. “Grow a pair” and stand up to President Donald Trump, a top Virginia lawmaker bluntly instructed Ferguson the next day.
The stand-off will likely come to a head in the coming weeks, as Moore faces an imminent choice: Call a special session and rely on Ferguson to deliver a majority for a gerrymandered map, or wait for the General Assembly to return in January for a regular session to allow more time for negotiations. Either way, the governor will have to convince 24 of the 34 Democratic senators to buck a respected leader whose control of campaign funds could help determine the fate of their reelection bids.
The view from outside Maryland may have Moore, a likely 2028 presidential contender, towering over Ferguson. But in Annapolis, many think it is the Senate president who has made the better case for how Democrats should move forward.
Ferguson “holds the cards” on redistricting, says former state Sen. Jill Carter, who served under both men. “Moore is very popular and charismatic, but Bill is very politically savvy."
William Claiborne Ferguson IV was born in Silver Spring, just outside of Washington, to a conservative-leaning father who worked in commercial real estate and a labor union-supporting mother who adored former President Bill Clinton. Ferguson attended Georgetown Preparatory School — the elite, all-boys Jesuit academy that also produced conservative Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — and Davidson College in North Carolina, where he studied politics and economics with sights on a business career.
But a post-collegiate stint with Teach for America at one of Baltimore’s toughest schools veered Ferguson away from his father’s career and towards one in left-leaning politics. While serving as an aide to local-government officials, Ferguson pursued a law degree at the University of Maryland and prepared to seek office. In 2010 he challenged Democratic state Sen. George W. Della Jr., who had been first elected in the year before Ferguson was born. As the primary devolved into mudslinging, Ferguson tried to keep the choice simple for voters: stick with the status quo or march with him into the future.
Ferguson came to a chamber dominated by Maryland Senate President Mike Miller, known for deploying hardball tactics to keep his caucus in line over what became a 33-year tenure in the role. As the chamber’s youngest senator, Ferguson won a reputation as a mild-mannered nerd who mastered education policy and the state budget while being teased by his staff for not knowing classic rock tunes.
When Miller prepared to retire in 2020, senate Democrats turned to the then-36-year-old Ferguson, unanimously voting him the next senate president. Many in the party cheered his ascension as a generational and philosophical pivot to a new progressive era in the state capital.
“Bill Ferguson is more collaborative. He listens. He is open to changing his mind when ... arguments are effectively made,” said state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat who served under both Miller and Ferguson. “He's less of a king and more of a leader among equals.”
Ferguson, now 42, spent much of his first few sessions as the Senate’s top Democrat in trying to reel in then-Gov. Larry Hogan’s Republican agenda. In the final two years of Hogan's second term, Maryland Democrats overrode the governor’s vetoes more than two dozen times. Ferguson also scored some bipartisan wins, too, helping Hogan deliver on a campaign promise by passing the largest tax cut in state history.
But it was a standoff with Hogan following the 2020 Census that left an indelible mark on Ferguson.
Maryland had gained a half-million people over the previous decade, even as its largest city, Baltimore, suffered a steep population drop. Hogan saw the churn as an opening to target a Democrat-held congressional district — the 6th, stretching north from the Washington, D.C. suburbs to the Pennsylvania border and west to the West Virginia line — often described as one of the nation’s most gerrymandered. Hogan established a nonpartisan redistricting commission, which returned a map that had two of Maryland’s eight seats leaning Republican.
When Hogan called a special legislative session in December 2021 to approve the map, Democrats rebelled. With supermajorities in both chambers, they instead passed their own over Hogan’s opposition, turning seven districts into safe Democratic seats and the long Republican-dominated 1st district — represented by House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris — into toss-up territory.
“I felt a little bit uncomfortable, I’ll be totally candid, with the first map we passed,” Ferguson recalled recently to The Bulwark. “I thought, I’m willing to help facilitate this process.”
After Republicans sued, a state court ruled in March 2022 that the Democrats’ map amounted to an “extreme partisan gerrymander” that violated the state Constitution. Already well into an election year, senior Judge Lynne Battaglia gave lawmakers just days to pass a new map. Democratic lawmakers had little choice but to pass a revised map that would win Hogan’s signature. Republicans kept their hold on the 1st district and Democrats have not since mounted a serious challenge to Harris there.
Ferguson, who declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article, now says he made a misjudgment in acquiescing to more seasoned leaders who convinced him a maximalist strategy would stand up to legal scrutiny. Seeing it shot down by the courts gives him a "different calculus of the risk,” as he told the Bulwark, about any attempt at a nakedly partisan gerrymander.
“Experience does matter. What you've seen and gone through in the past does matter,” said Malcolm Augustine, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Maryland Senate. “That’s the bottom line. He was there.”
On an unseasonably warm afternoon in January 2023, Ferguson stood at the state house to welcome Moore — a well-reviewed author and former college football player, Army officer, investment banker and nonprofit executive — to Annapolis. The ceremony dripped with nods to Moore’s status as Maryland’s first African American governor. Ferguson, who is white, stood less than three feet away as Moore placed his hand on a Bible belonging to abolitionist Fredrick Douglass during the swearing-in, which was held in a private event in the Senate chamber.
Moments later, at the public outdoor ceremony before a crowd that included actor Chris Tucker and presidential daughter Chelsea Clinton, the new governor name-checked Ferguson in the second line of his inaugural address. “It’s an honor to be your partner,” Moore said.
After years of playing defense against a Republican executive, Ferguson now had an ally who could allow legislative Democrats to define a proactive agenda. Many wanted to use the state’s structural surplus to fund mortgage assistance programs for first-time homebuyers and cancel parole debt for long-serving inmates.
Early optimism about what the state’s Democratic trifecta could deliver evaporated. Economic downturns ballooned the state deficit, as the Trump’s administration’s dismantling of the federal workforce and government contracts hit Maryland especially hard. Earlier this year, legislators resorted to raising taxes and fees by $1.6 billion — and have braced for lingering effects from the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history. The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore last year that left six people dead has become an unending catastrophe: A state agency last month estimated bridge-repair costs have doubled while the expected reopening has been delayed by years.
When Ferguson the next month helped deliver a bill forming a commission to study reparations for descendants of slavery, Moore vetoed it. The surprising rebuff was viewed by many Senate Democrats, including those in the General Assembly’s Black Caucus, as motivated by Moore’s desire to demonstrate to a national audience that he was willing to buck his own party. “I strongly believe now is not the time for another study,” Moore wrote to Ferguson in a May 16 veto letter.
But it was a national movement on redistricting that did most to fracture Ferguson and Moore’s relationship. In June, Republicans in Texas — under public pressure from the White House — first entertained the possibility of redrawing their U.S. House maps to produce more Republican-friendly seats. Democrats looked for states where they could offset Texas’s moves with partisan gerrymanders of their own.
Maryland appeared a natural candidate to join the growing Democratic counteroffensive. While California, Colorado and Virginia would have to amend their state constitutions for politicians to redraw lines mid-decade — and in New York a lawsuit to upend the status quo — pulling off such a move in Maryland would require only simple legislation. In August, Democratic state Sen. Clarence Lam introduced a bill that would place more liberal-leaning voters in the Republican-held 1st district.
Moore soon embraced the idea of moving forward with such plans. In September, he accused Trump of “attempting to gerrymander Black leaders out of office” and called the actions of Republican legislatures akin to “political redlining” in a speech at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner.
“It’s time for Maryland to have a conversation about whether we have a fair map or not,” he told reporters then.
Ferguson, too, expressed openness to the redistricting idea, telling POLITICO earlier that month that a mid-decade gerrymander was “the last possible option that we should explore, but we won't sit by idly and watch democracy get undermined.”
But as the pressure nationally ramped up, the more his ambivalence began to surface. He reminded colleagues of a 2002 state-court decision in which judges redrew Baltimore-area state senate districts upon ruling that a map drawn by Democrats violated constitutional requirements for Maryland’s districts to be “compact in form” around county lines and bodies of water. Ferguson also likes to point out that since the more recent smackdown of the 2021 gerrymander, Maryland’s Supreme Court still does not favor Democrats: five of the seven judges now on the court were appointed by Hogan.
That make-up, Ferguson suggests, could mean if the courts throw out any newly passed map, reverting to congressional boundaries with the current 7-1 advantage is not a foregone conclusion — and a replacement could end up a lot worse for Democrats.
Other Democrats who participated in the 2021 redistricting case see the legal issues differently. “There's no binding precedent in Maryland that would impact congressional redistricting in the way that I think Senator Ferguson fears,” former Attorney General Brian Frosh said in an interview last month.
Amid the uproar, congressional Democrats set their sights on Ferguson. Jeffries, who would become speaker if his party retakes the House, called Ferguson multiple times to make the case that the time was right for a partisan gerrymander. Days later, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a poll showing a majority of Maryland voters did not just support redistricting, but "are likely to support primary candidates that support Maryland redistricting by wide margins,” according to an accompanying memo from Change Research. Former Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer and Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin — a former state senator who served alongside Ferguson for six years — issued a public letter Nov. 10 calling it an “ethical moral and political imperative” that state lawmakers break with the Senate president.
Moore, too, began ramping up pressure on Ferguson. He formed a Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Commission that holds virtual meetings with residents to solicit recommendations to the governor and the General Assembly on whether to move forward with redistricting. At the first meeting, Ferguson — the only member of the panel who has publicly opposed Moore’s plan — was seen nodding in solidarity with members of the public imploring the commission to stand down on redrawing lines.
Moore also launched a “Leave No One Behind” legislative slate, something akin to a political action committee that those around the governor suggest he may use to launch primary challenges to incumbent Democratic lawmakers. (Moore’s office declined a request to interview him for this article.)
If anything, the public pressure seems to be hardening Ferguson’s hesitation about redistricting into full-blown resistance. In late October, a week after speaking with Jeffries, Ferguson issued a memo to his Senate caucus laying out his biggest fear about moving forward: that his party could end up losing up to two seats if more aggressive maps were struck down and ordered redrawn by the courts. The “certainty” of the current map, he wrote, “evaporates the moment we start down the path or redistricting mid-cycle.”
“The legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous and the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic,” Ferguson wrote.
Some of the Democrats in Ferguson’s caucus have begun to internalize his arguments. Nick Charles, whose senate district covers Prince George’s County, a wealthy majority Black suburb outside of Washington, said his constituents want lawmakers to join the national fight, but soften when they learn of the potential risks.
“What happens if we take that position?” asked Charles. “On the surface, it looks good, like ‘Man, we look like we’re fighting.’ But it's like bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Still other Democrats are growing more confident in their depictions of Ferguson as timid and naïve.
“I think President Ferguson … is an awesome public servant, very thoughtful guy, and certainly intends well,” said Baltimore city Councilman Mark Conway, who last month announced he would challenge Rep. Kweisi Mfume for not doing enough to confront Trump. Conway sides with Moore on redistricting and is disappointed by Ferguson for not jumping into the brawl. “I just think we’re looking at a new day and maybe some of the toughest times we’ve ever had as a country in light of the willingness of Republicans to do whatever it takes to secure power.”
Ferguson has already drawn his own primary challenge from social-media influencer Bobby LaPin — a charter-boat captain and political novice known to 90,000 followers on Instagram as the “Sail Local Guy” — who has said the Senate president’s resistance to redrawing maps pushed him to run.
Those close to Ferguson say he knows the intricacies of keeping his caucus together and brushes off the outside pressure campaign as political distractions. Ferguson had closely watched developments in Indiana, where Republican legislative leaders for weeks held off pressure from the White House and the state’s governor to take up redistricting, and had taken solace in their successful defiance. But those leaders reversed course and will begin a special session this week.
Maryland’s commission will end its work in December, which Moore could use as a basis to call a special session to take on the redistricting question. Otherwise, Moore could hold off until mid-January, when lawmakers return for their regular 90-day session. That would leave little wiggle room to move maps through the legislature, and limited time to survive likely legal challenges before the state’s all-important June primaries.
Each option carries political risks for Moore. Ferguson has the power to essentially ignore the governor’s desires by convening a special session and then quickly adjourning before a vote on redistricting. If Moore waits to focus his pressure campaign in January, Ferguson could respond by otherwise working to stymie the governor’s agenda at a moment he is hoping to elevate his national profile, including by overriding Moore’s veto of the reparations bill.
“It’s not going to be a good session for him, at least not starting,” a legislative aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly of Ferguson’s calculations, said of the governor. “He’s not going to get shit through — not a confirmation, not a thing.”
While Moore may feel urgency to join Democrats’ redistricting bonanza in time to shape the midterm elections, that time crunch is of little relevance to Ferguson. The Senate president is half a decade into his role leading the Maryland Senate — a blip compared to a predecessor who held it for more than three decades — and Ferguson expects to be still toiling away in Annapolis well beyond 2028.
Moore’s “only way out of the box that he's built for himself is to either change Bill's mind, which doesn't seem likely … or it's doing something that Wes has never done before in his life, and literally take out another politician — a sitting Maryland Senate president,” said Doug Mayer, a Republican strategist who worked for Hogan. “Bill Ferguson lives here, Wes Moore is just staying here. That's why Bill Ferguson is saying no to this.”
A top consultant to Rep. Nancy Mace’s campaign for South Carolina governor announced his resignation Monday, saying the gubernatorial hopeful has “decided to turn her back on MAGA.”
Austin McCubbin, a longtime Republican operative, bashed Mace in a post on X and accused her of trying to “hug the political cactus that is the Rand Paul [and] Thomas Massie wing of the Party” and questioned the third-term member of Congress’ ties to the Protect Freedom PAC — a Paul-aligned committee.
In his post, McCubbin claimed Mace told him she directed a friend to steer a “7-figure check” to the PAC, calling her “wittingly or unwittingly a proxy for Rand Paul’s 2028 presidential campaign.”
That conversation, he said, was the catalyzing moment behind his decision to leave the campaign. POLITICO has not independently verified the claim.
“My name has been used publicly, while going back on her word to pay me, to trade on my Team Trump status and to work on her behalf with the White House, and I am 100% breaking with her campaign out of loyalty to the President,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Mace, in a statement in response to McCubbin’s post, said: “Mr. McCubbin didn’t raise a dime for the campaign or better yet, never even bothered showing up. When he demanded $10,000 a month for ‘services’ and was told no, he ran straight to X. Good luck with that.”
President Donald Trump’s endorsement is all but certain to help propel his preferred candidate into Columbia’s top post. Mace — like the other candidates in the crowded field — has been angling for the president’s endorsement since her entry to the race in August.
“My advice to the President, my friends in the White House, and South Carolina Trump voters: scratch her name from the list,” McCubbin wrote.
Mace’s campaign for governor announced McCubbin’s hire as one of the campaign’s “lead consultants” in a press release earlier this year, touting his close ties to the successful Trump campaign operations in the Palmetto State during the 2024 election. The two had also worked together previously: McCubbin managed Mace’s first reelection bid in 2022.
“This is about loyalty,” McCubbin wrote, calling current Gov. Henry McMaster a “great governor” who has been “very loyal” to Trump. “South Carolina needs someone cut from the same cloth, where you know their word is their bond,” he added.
Indiana state House Republicans have released a draft congressional map that would give the GOP an edge in all nine of the state’s congressional districts — potentially netting the party two seats in the Hoosier State — though the map’s passage is still far from certain.
The biggest changes in the proposed map come in the state’s two Democratic-leaning districts, held by Reps. Frank Mrvan and André Carson. Mapmakers split Marion County — home to Indianapolis — into four different districts, essentially diluting the Democrats' strength in the area.
While the map is in line with President Donald Trump’s request for a GOP sweep, it still faces a number of obstacles in order to pass.
State House Speaker Todd Huston has consistently said his caucus could pass the new map, and Speaker Mike Johnson huddled with lawmakers this weekend in what was described by one person briefed on the call as very "rah rah" ahead of them convening.
The map’s fate in the state Senate, where President Pro Tem Rodric Bray remains opposed, is still uncertain. The White House and other outside groups continue to ramp up pressure on lawmakers resistant to redistricting, and one even faced threats of a pipe bomb over the weekend.
Republicans who oppose redrawing have said its best to focus the GOP’s energy on flipping a district outright instead of changing the playing field.
“It seems like the public is talking about this in terms of a binary choice: either 7-2 or redistricting and get 9-0,” Bray told POLITICO last month, explaining his reluctance to take on a redraw. “That is not clear at all to me, because we don’t know who’s going to run.”
The draft map's release comes after months of back and forth between the White House and Indiana lawmakers, including two visits to the state from Vice President JD Vance.
The state House is expected to vote on the map this week, and the state Senate is meeting next week to weigh the version passed by the House. Turning Point USA, one of the GOP groups pushing for a new map, is planning a rally at the statehouse Friday.
If state lawmakers approve the map, Indiana would become the fourth GOP-led state to redraw ahead of the midterms. So far, Republicans have drawn districts that could net nine seats across Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri, though legal challenges remain.
Democrats have found redistricting success, too, through California’s Proposition 50 — which could capture the party five seats of their own — as well as a court-ordered redraw in Utah. Utah’s GOP-controlled legislature plans to appeal the court’s decision.
In Virginia, Democrats took their first steps to redraw and will continue the process early next year. Maryland and Illinois continue to face pressure from within the party to pursue their own gerrymanders, but similar dynamics to Indiana have left some state lawmakers unwilling to get on board.
Republicans still have their own potential states on the board. Florida is expected to start discussing the issue later this month, and Kansas and Kentucky could join in January. Other GOP efforts in Nebraska and New Hampshire have faltered.
Democrats are charting a path back to power in the House as Republicans falter heading into the midterms. But first they have to contend with more than a dozen primaries across the country that are exposing deep ideological divisions within their ranks.
Democrats will undergo grueling intraparty battles across the country, from purple seats with retiring incumbents to battleground districts where they hope to go on offense to safe blue seats where the primary will all but decide the eventual winner. In one case, interest groups are squaring off against each other in a central California district amplifying party divides.
Animating these races are factional, ideological and demographic divides that have been brewing for years in a party that’s become more of a vehicle for opposition than one with a proactive message. Now the splits are peaking just as Democrats, buoyed by this month’s off-cycle election sweep, feel more optimistic about regaining control over the House, which would require a net gain of three seats. They also see a path — albeit much steeper — to retake the Senate.
Republicans — who have a long history of intense House primaries — face a far more relaxed environment next year, allowing their candidates to stockpile cash while hotly contested Democratic races consume valuable resources.
Democrats have long been grappling with a younger faction hankering to take on the establishment that is pushing policies and tactics that agitate mainstream politicians who believe their methods will yield general election victories. And the generational divides opened by Joe Biden’s decision to step off the presidential ticket in the face of immense internal pressure last year still ripple throughout the party.
Some Democrats are already growing concerned about the number of primaries their party is contending with.
“The beauty of a democracy is that anyone can run. But sometimes the disaster of a democracy is, they do,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, who faces a primary from a younger Democrat for his California seat. “We need to be focused. We need to be making sure that we're looking at taking back the majority, not fighting amongst ourselves.”
Some Democrats say the growing enthusiasm among newcomers to run for office signals a positive future for the party as it continues to grapple with its vast losses last year.
“No matter the primary dynamic, Democrats are united in our common mission to get a Congress that stops catering to the billionaires, and instead focuses on the needs of hardworking families struggling to get by under Republican rule,” Viet Shelton, spokesperson for House Democrats’ campaign arm, said in a statement.
Others believe that contested primaries will help rebuild the party’s frayed relationship with its voters.
“We have a trust problem,” said Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.). “We have to make the case to people that we are not just fighting for them for the sake of fighting, but we're fighting for them because we have the empathy to understand the real day-to-day struggles.”
Here’s a look at some of the hottest primaries unfolding around the country:
The open seats
Arizona’s 1st District was a top target for Democrats even before Republican incumbent David Schweikert decided to run for governor. Now a pair of repeat candidates are splitting groups that spend heavily in primaries.
Marlene Galan-Woods has the backing of EMILYs List and BOLD PAC, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm, while Amish Shah has support from AAPI Victory Fund and ASPIRE PAC, which both support Asian-American candidates. Democratic groups continue to recruit more candidates for the race, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private plans.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Nebraska’s blue-leaning 2nd District, where GOP Rep. Don Bacon has decided not to run for reelection. BOLD PAC and EMILYs List have lined up behind Denise Powell, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus is with state Sen. John Cavanaugh for the Omaha seat.
The mudslinging has begun between the opposing camps, with some corners of the party privately expressing concerns about Cavanaugh’s fundraising and that his voting record and fundraising could make him vulnerable to GOP attacks in a general election.
After Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) abruptly retired earlier this month, Democrats have been quickly forced to regroup in a district President Donald Trump carried by 9 points last year.
Former Gov. Paul LePage has staved off any serious primary on the Republican side, while Democrats are contending with a fight between one-time Golden challenger Matt Dunlap and former Senate candidate Jordan Wood, who switched to the open district following Golden’s announcement.
Democrats in the area are still recruiting, but it’s an uphill fight. One gubernatorial candidate, former state Senate President Troy Jackson had expressed interest in a bid but ultimately decided against it. Penobscot Nation Chief Kirk Francis is also considering a run, according to an ally, but Francis has not spoken publicly about the race.
Whoever enters the race needs to act quickly. Wood has carried over cash from his well-funded Senate bid, and Dunlap has a head start over others in the progressive lane thinking about jumping in.
The pickup opportunities
Democrats angling to pick off Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania’s 7th District are working against each other in a messy five-way primary. The Lehigh Valley seat has flipped between parties four times in the past two decades and was one of the closest House races in the country last year when Mackenzie won it for the GOP.
Firefighter union head Bob Brooks has earned a raft of endorsements from across the party spectrum — from progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) to Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and a host of unions. Carol Obando-Derstine has the backing of the district’s last Democratic representative, moderate Susan Wild, whom Mackenzie unseated in 2024, as well as EMILYs List and BOLD PAC.
They’ve both been outraised by Ryan Crosswell, a former Republican who resigned from the Department of Justice following Trump’s demand that the agency drop its corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He’s drawn support from VoteVets and New Politics, which back veterans running for office.
Gov. Josh Shapiro could tip the scales — the popular Democratic governor is expected to follow Davis in backing Brooks.
Democrats also face a primary headache in California’s San Joaquin Valley for the seat held by GOP Rep. David Valadao. The seat became bluer under the state’s new voter-approved map, but it has still swung between the parties in recent years. Visalia school board trustee Randy Villegas has backing from the party’s left wing, including from Sanders, the Progressive Caucus PAC and BOLD PAC. But Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains has rolled out a large slate of endorsements from sitting state and federal lawmakers as well as organized labor and groups like EMILYs List.
“Election Night 2025 was a clean sweep for EMILYs List women and made clear that the path to flipping the House in 2026 runs through electing bold women leaders,” EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler said in a statement.
There’s even quiet handwringing happening in western Montana over a brewing primary for the seat held by GOP Rep Ryan Zinke. Democrats are bullish on flipping a seat Trump won by nearly a dozen points last year, but party leaders are raising private concerns about the past lobbying work on sanctuary cities and transgender issues done by smoke jumper Sam Forstag, who is considering whether to enter the three-person race.
The comeback bid
If the national redistricting fight continues, it could further shake up at least one primary field.
Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District has flipped between parties four times over the past two decades and could be made bluer by Virginia Democrats in a redraw. Former Rep. Elaine Luria is trying to mount a comeback bid, but Navy reservist James Osyf is already in the race and has posted healthy fundraising totals.
“We're in the process of redistricting, and everyone expects the 2nd to be significantly different,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who represents a neighboring district.
President Donald Trump has held his coalition together throughout much of the first year of his second term in office like few other figures could — albeit at times with bailing twine and a red MAGA cap — but cracks are starting to show, according to the latest results from The POLITICO Poll.
And it’s clear whoever tries to pick up the MAGA mantle ahead of 2028 has some serious work to do to keep the coalition together.
For starters, a significant portion of 2024 Trump voters — more than a third — do not consider themselves to be MAGA Republicans. And not only are they less loyal to Trump than self-identified MAGA Republicans, the poll suggests some of them have already begun to turn on him: Non-MAGA Trump voters are much more likely to blame Trump for the state of the economy, say he has too much power and be pessimistic about the future.
The results underscore just how sui generis the cohort that reelected Trump was — and foreshadow the GOP’s coming challenges.
More than half of Trump’s voters last year — 55 percent — describe themselves as MAGA, but a critical 38 percent do not, according to the survey, which comprised 2,098 U.S. adults online and was conducted Nov. 14-17, with a margin of sampling error at plus-or-minus 2 percentage points.
And it’s here where the fissures start to emerge: Among those self-described MAGA voters, 47 percent say the current economy still belongs fully to Biden, compared to just 26 percent of non-MAGA Trump 2024 voters.
This divide becomes even starker on areas Republicans typically don’t own, like health care, where the White House is struggling to forge a path to extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies: 85 percent of MAGA Trump voters trust Republicans more to bring down health care costs, whereas just 55 percent of non-MAGA do — with 19 percent instead trusting Democrats and 27 percent saying they don’t know.
When it comes to trusting a given party on the economy, 88 percent of those MAGA voters back Republicans generally; but only 63 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters support Republicans, with 28 percent saying neither party or don’t know.
On affordability, the issue that Trump has said delivered him the election, and the one his own White House deputy chief of staff James Blair has said he will be “very focused on,” non-MAGA Republicans are more concerned by the cost of living than their MAGA counterparts: 59 percent to 48 percent.
Among the other findings centering on the economy:
The non-MAGA cohort is less likely to feel Trump has taken the chance he had to change things in the economy: 65 percent of MAGA compared with 46 percent of non-MAGA.
MAGA Republicans feel their personal financial situation has improved over the past five years (52 percent to 24 percent), whereas non-MAGA GOPers are virtually tied (37 percent to 36 percent).
In a fascinating divide, 73 percent of MAGA Republicans expect their personal financial situation to improve over the next 5 years, compared with 57 percent of non-MAGA Republicans.
Similarly, MAGA feels better off than the average American (49 percent to 17 percent), whereas non-MAGA is torn (30 percent to 29 percent).
What does this all mean ahead of the fast-approaching midterms? Already, we have evidence from the off-year elections that the 2024 Trump coalition isn’t holding, with Latino and young male voters shifting back to Democrats. On generic ballot vote intention, 92 percent of MAGA Republicans backed the Republican candidate, while 62 percent of non-MAGA did. There’s something in the MAGA Republican voter mentality — a kind of economic optimism — that is durable even amid the current turmoil. Trump’s definition of reality permeates their own.
And the GOP has less than four years to turn Trump voters into reliable Republican voters.
Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.
Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to huddle via conference call with Indiana House Republicans this weekend ahead of their upcoming state House session to redraw congressional maps, according to two people familiar with the planning and an invitation viewed by POLITICO.
The meeting, ahead of next week’s session, represents an escalation of Johnson’s involvement in mid-cycle redistricting, a process driven by the White House: He has routinely said it’s an issue for individual states and one in which he has no direct involvement.
House Republicans are expected to talk with Johnson on a conference call at 1 p.m. Saturday before convening on Dec. 1.
A spokesperson for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
POLITICO reported last week that Johnson called GOP Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray last Wednesday, after Bray, whose caucus has largely resisted redistricting, said Senate Republicans would not convene to advance new maps.
In the call, Johnson expressed the importance of holding Republicans’ thin majority in the House ahead of the midterms, according to Bray. Indiana Republicans are weighing redrawing the 1st and 7th congressional districts, potentially yielding Johnson two additional seats.
But earlier this week, Bray reversed course, saying his caucus would make a final decision on redistricting when they are expected to reconvene on Dec. 8.
Multiple Indiana Republicans close to the process, and granted anonymity by POLITICO to discuss a matter that has resulted in personal threats to their safety, said they believe the Senate is still a handful of votes away from having support for the matter.
Donald Trump is going to war with Democrats over the military. It could backfire on him.
The president’s attacks on six Democrats who recorded a video encouraging military members to buck unlawful orders are elevating members of a faction that just delivered big off-year wins for their party. Most hail from swing states or districts, identify as centrists and are leveraging their national security backgrounds to argue that Democrats can retake the patriotic lane.
Trump is also boosting some potential 2028 presidential hopefuls, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, while further undercutting the GOP’s attempts to make New York progressives like Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the face of the Democratic Party.
“Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are providing Mark Kelly with the kind of visibility that almost no amount of money could buy,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based Republican strategist, referring to the Defense secretary who ordered an investigation of Kelly. “Every 2028 contender wishes they could be attacked like this by the Trump administration.”
Since Trump accused the six of “sedition” and even suggested they could be executed, they’ve racked up millions of views on social media, done the cable news circuit and blasted out fundraising appeals highlighting the attacks.
It’s heightened the stature of even those who have already been the subject of speculation about their 2028 aspirations. Kelly, who was on the short list to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate last year, has already visited a raft of early primary and general-election battleground states this year. But only after Trump’s attack was he invited on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this week.
In recent months, Slotkin has been testing what she calls a “war plan” to “contain and defeat Donald Trump” in speeches outside of her state, meeting with low-propensity voters and theorizing about what she calls “Project 2029.” Now she’s brought those themes to a series of interviews and public appearances over the past week.
As Democrats debate how far to lean into themes of patriotism more often claimed by conservatives, a group of lawmakers organized by Slotkin released a video with anti-authoritarian themes ahead of the “No Kings” protests last month. A follow-up video last week called on troops not to obey unlawful orders, prompting Trump’s explosion.
The president posted on social media they were committing “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” by suggesting military members ignore their chain of command and shared a post calling for traitors to be hanged. The White House later denied Trump was threatening the lawmakers with death. Since then, the Pentagon has opened an investigation into Kelly, who is a retired Navy captain, and the six lawmakers claim the FBI has made inquiries through congressional authorities.
Democrats, particularly those with military backgrounds, have leapt to their colleagues’ defense, echoing their message about following the law and accusing Trump of weaponizing the government against his political opponents.
“Trump knows that we’re a threat” to Republicans’ grip on Washington, said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a military veteran whose Serve America PAC supports several of the Democrats in the video. “These are great leaders who can take the fight to Trump and MAGA.”
“It’s classic Trump — he ratchets everything up to an 11 and it blows up in his face,” said Austin Cook, a Democratic strategist and former Slotkin spokesperson. “Not only did it reinforce everything swing voters have always hated about him, but it’s also given this group the biggest megaphone they’ve ever had.”
But Tim Edson, a GOP strategist and former political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the video will only confirm the GOP base’s preconceived, negative views of Democratic officials.
“Republicans believe these Democrats are deranged with hatred of Trump, and it’s just their latest attempt to undermine lawful policies simply because they’re Trump’s policies,” Edson said. “These embarrassing antics only rally Republicans to the president.”
Some Democrats think it’s too early to tell how things will shake out for the “seditious six,” as some Trump officials are calling the lawmakers.
“Whether it works or not will depend on what comes next, if an illegal order actually does come down they get to be leaders saying ‘I told you so,’” texted one strategist who has consulted for Democratic veterans and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “If one doesn’t, they’ve simply made themselves victims to Trump’s latest attacks. Most Democrats fail at playing on his turf.”
Kelly doubled down on the video’s message during his talk-show appearance Tuesday night and noted some of his Republican colleagues are expressing support: “People are starting to take a look at this and saying, ‘Wow, this is just nuts that he's going after U.S. senators and members of the House for something they said.’”
Democrats are riding momentum from this month’s off-cycle elections into an eight-figure spend to expand their base in the midterm elections next year.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced the planned investment into engaging voters of color and rural voters Tuesday, a sign that national Democrats see an opening to combat Republicans’ 2024 gains with both groups.
“As House Republicans are raising costs, ripping away people’s health care, and standing idly by while their party strips voting power from communities of color in order to rig the midterms, and in the face of reckless tariffs and attacks on Medicaid that are hurting rural communities, this program will help ensure our message of lowering costs and protecting affordable health care breaks through with these key voting blocs," Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of the DCCC, said in a statement.
The new program, called “Our Power, Our Country,” will focus on battleground House districts by hiring staffers to organize for Democratic candidates, buying ads and mobilizing voters.
Earlier this month, Democrats saw marked improvements in off-cycle elections among rural votersand Latinos, two groups that swung to the right in 2024. In Virginia, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger made a targeted effort to court voters in the state’s deep-red rural counties, focusing on affordability and slamming President Donald Trump’s tariff policy. And in New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill honed in on a cost-of-living message in the state’s predominantly Latino precincts.
Both strategies worked: Spanberger outperformed previous Democratic candidates among rural voters by a wide margin, and Sherrill erased Trump’s 2024 gains in Latino-plurality areas.
National Democrats see both races as proof of potential expansion opportunity, heading into a cycle that will determine control over Congress for Trump’s final two years in office. In a statement, DCCC national political director Brooke Butler said the new rural engagement program “sends a strong message that we’re leaving no voter behind and no stone unturned in our efforts to flip the House majority.”
Some North Carolina Republicans are worried President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the battleground state could backfire.
The Trump administration has touted its North Carolina surge as a successful operation targeting the “worst of the worst” criminals, but some Republicans in the state — which will feature one of the most expensive and hotly contested Senate races next year — fear that message is not breaking through with voters.
The White House has largely focused its immigration sweeps on blue states that Trump officials have decried as sanctuaries for unauthorized immigrants. But the move to expand immigration arrests into North Carolina, mostly in the Charlotte area, offered the first test for whether the White House’s strategy can hold up in a purple state.
“Republicans had the upper hand on immigration, as long as they were going after the criminals and the gangs, but I think they’re losing the upper hand on that issue because of the apparent disjointed implementation of arrest,” McCrory said in an interview. “From a PR and political standpoint, for the first time, immigration is maybe having a negative impact on my party.”
He added, “If I were the administration, I would be really emphasizing who they’ve arrested and the negative impact they’ve had on the community, but we’re not hearing that.”
The concerns surrounding Trump’s Tar Heel State clampdown underscore a tension at the center of the president’s immigration agenda. The White House’s message, since January, has tied illegal immigration to violent crime in U.S. cities. But immigration officials are simultaneously under sustained pressure from the White House to increase arrests and deportation numbers, an effort that requires targeting immigrants well beyond violent criminal offenders — potentially treacherous territory for swing-state Republicans.
Edwin Peacock III, a moderate Republican who lost an at-large Charlotte City Council race to Democrats earlier this month, warned of the raids leaving “a real sour aftertaste” with voters.
“Is the price of doing this worth it?” Peacock added. “I don’t see this cloud moving away [from] what will be in the voters’ minds.”
In line with the administration’s messaging, North Carolina Republicans have sought to keep public attention on criminal arrests. But their narrative has been overshadowed by viral social media footage highlighting arrests of immigrants without criminal records and local media reports documenting the fear coursing through churches, schools and local businesses, these Republicans said.
National polls in recent months show voters largely support removing immigrants living in the country illegally but believe the Trump administration’s tactics have gone too far. Other polls show that voters support deporting immigrants with criminal records living in the country illegally, but that support falls when those surveyed are asked about the broader pool of immigrants. And Republicans are losing Latino support, after Trump made significant inroads with those voters — including in North Carolina — last year. From July through October, the proportion of Latino voters who say the president’s deportation agenda has gone too far has increased from 66 percent to 79 percent, according to a CNN poll.
Rep. María Salazar (R-Fla.) this week noted 200 people were arrested over 48 hours in Charlotte. Seventy percent of them didn’t have a criminal record, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Salazar added in a CNN interview.
“Kick out the ones that are bad hombres, the ones who have criminal records, the murderers and the rapists,” she said. “But do not touch the lady who has been here for 10, 20 years, contributing to the economy.”
Patrick Sebastian, a GOP pollster based in North Carolina, said voters “draw a clear line” between deporting immigrants who are living in the country illegally and working but not breaking other laws, and unauthorized immigrants who have committed crimes.
“In purple states, there’s broad support for removing the latter — and the left looks foolish protesting that,” Sebastian said. “But the other narrative has gotten more play over the past week, and that could be a problem for Republicans.”
Trump administration officials have defended the administration’s North Carolina efforts, with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem telling Fox this week that the agency is going after the “worst of the worst,” people who have “committed robberies, assaults, DUIs, getting them off the streets and keeping people safe.”
A senior White House official, granted anonymity to speak about internal thinking, argued that the president is making good on his campaign to execute mass deportations. The official said the previous administration allowed for millions of unauthorized immigrants to enter the country.
“The only way to fix that problem and solve it is to aggressively deport these illegal criminals,” the official said. “And so the administration is definitely going to keep doing that.”
The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that “Operation Charlotte’s Web isn’t ending anytime soon,” as some North Carolina residents remain on edge. Some local businesses are closed, and residents have gone into hiding. Viral videos filmed by locals have made national news, and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein warned that “masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb” were targeting American citizens and “racially profiling.”
A DHS spokesperson said Thursday the enforcement surge in the Charlotte area has resulted in 370 arrests targeting “some of the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” though the agency refused to say how many of those arrested had criminal records. Earlier this week, DHS said that over two days, 44 of the 130 people arrested had committed crimes that include aggravated assault, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault on a police officer, battery, driving under the influence and hit-and-runs. The spokesperson said the arrests also included two known gang members.
“You’re seeing social media creating a hyper sense of what may be going on, and it doesn’t always provide a full context. You’ve seen, in response, the administration talking through, ‘here’s what’s actually going on. Here are the criminals that we are taking off the streets,’” said North Carolina GOP chair Jason Simmons. “You’re talking about individuals that have committed abhorrent acts — murder, sexual assault, again, trafficking of all kinds.”
Meanwhile ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in North Carolina has become a feature in the contentious Senate race.
Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair running for the open Senate seat, has used the raids to attack his opponent, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. In an interview on Fox News this week, Whatley said if Cooper hadn’t vetoed bills requiring local law enforcement to honor ICE detainers, “then these people would not have been on the street.”
“Removing criminal illegal aliens isn’t politics — it’s about keeping our communities safe,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to Whatley’s campaign, said in a statement. “If deporting illegal aliens who’ve molested children, assaulted women, or been convicted of weapons charges is something Democrats want to oppose, that says everything about how far left Roy Cooper and the NC Democratic Party have drifted. Michael Whatley stands with law enforcement and with North Carolina families — period.”
Earlier this week, Cooper criticized the Trump administration’s operation for “randomly sweeping up people based on what they look like.”
And in a statement, Cooper campaign spokesperson Kate Smart defended the governor’s record: “Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them behind bars, and numerous North Carolina sheriffs spoke out against this legislation at the time because of a lack of resources; a problem that Washington D.C. insider and Big Oil lobbyist Michael Whatley has made worse because of his support for cuts to local law enforcement.”
The raids come weeks after Democrats swept off-year elections across the country, including in municipal and county-level positions in North Carolina. Peacock, who lost his own at-large Charlotte City Council bid, said he warned his fellow Republicans that this month’s elections were the “midterms before the midterms.”
“I know Whatley and his team aren’t looking at [Charlotte] as a place they can win, but what they’re probably not considering yet is that this region, this city, could define your loss because [Democratic turnout] could be at such exponential levels compared to traditional [norms],” Peacock said.
One GOP strategist working on races in North Carolina, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there’s a risk that the picture of a citizen being separated from their family, rather than the arrests of unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, will stick, adding, “You don’t know what the enduring image is going to be in voters’ minds.”
Donald Trump has long claimed that he — and he alone — dictates the future of the MAGA movement. And a topsy-turvey Friday will put that to the test.
A weekend wellness check on the MAGA coalition: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who on Friday announced her resignation, is spurned by its leader. And incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, held up as a midterm Republican bogeyman, is now welcomed by him.
In the space of a whipsaw few hours from Friday and into Saturday morning, Trump — who has said he knows what “MAGA wants better than anybody else,” — celebrated the impending departure of “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown” on Truth Social (“Marjorie went BAD,” he said) and fangirled over Mamdani (“a Great Honor meeting Zohran Mamdani”).
“A world turned upside down,” Steve Bannon, the onetime White House aide and MAGA media booster, said in a text.
MAGA’s Friday trip to The Upside Down all unfolded in a week during which Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), another frequent intraparty Trump target, effectively cracked Trump’s hold on his congressional coalition with their Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Taken together, this week is the freshest reminder that the MAGA movement has always been defined more by id than ideology, the political shaped by the personal — presenting quite the challenge for whomever must hold the coalition together after Trump.
Trump and Mamdani’s Friday meeting ended worlds away from where most expected it to go. The get-together, which Fox News previewed as a “showdown with socialism,” ended as a friendly back-and-forth between the democratic socialist and president.
“We had a meeting today that actually surprised me,” Trump told reporters during the public portion of the get together.
For some of the president’s most ardent supporters, Trump’s praise of Mamdani — a man he previously warned would lead to ruin in New York City, and who some of Trump’s closest allies (like Elise Stefanik) spent months setting up as their personal campaign trail foil — was agonizing.
“What’s the purpose of people voting in 2026 if the Democrat policies are ‘rational?'” Trump whisperer Laura Loomer said in a interview, referencing Trump’s answer to an Oval question in which he said of Mamdani, “I met with a man who’s a very rational person.”
“I’m a little confused,” she continued, “because, like, I need to know for the sake of my own edification what the administration’s stance is on Mamdani.”
The White House dismissed any handwringing about the direction of the president's movement.
"As the architect of the MAGA movement, President Trump will always put America First. He’s secured the border; tackled Biden’s inflation crisis; lowered drug prices; ended taxes on tips, overtime, and social security; deported criminal illegal aliens; implemented important reforms to put American workers first; and more," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
“The fact that President Trump met with the newly elected mayor of New York City shows he is willing to talk to anyone to Make America Great Again," she continued. "Only Politico would try to spin bipartisanship as a bad thing.”
Political horseshoe moments in Trump’s Washington rarely last. But even some of Trump’s closest allies tried to separate themselves from Friday’s meeting. Stefanik — his onetime pick for United Nations ambassador who is now running for New York governor — has repeatedly called Mamdani a “jihadist,” a label Trump explicitly rejected on Friday.
“We all want NYC to succeed. But we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one,” Stefanik posted on social media on Friday, repeatedly invoking the pejorative despite Trump’s about-face.
Still, Democrats — particularly those close to the incoming mayor — were thrilled with how Friday went down. “Trump respects strength and winners,” said Rebecca Katz, founding partner at Fight Agency, whose firm made ads for Mamdani.
And some Democratic strategists focused on 2026 celebrated Trump undermining Republicans’ attempts to paint Mamdani as the midterm bogeyman he entered the day as. Did Speaker Mike Johnson’s entire 2026 strategy just crumble?
“Pour one out for the NRCC/NRSC staffers who saw their 2026 ads go up in smoke. Sad!” said the veteran Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson.
Still, many are convinced that it is only a matter of when — not if — Trump’s embrace of the New Yorker will evaporate.
“Plenty of time for that to come if it does,” said GOP strategist Doug Heye. “Either of them coming out of that meeting on the attack would have been a mistake, especially given they’ve both tapped into voters who feel systems are broken and things cost too much.”
And some Democrats — particularly Mamdani’s intraparty critics — are convinced it all fades, and GOP messaging continues apace. Alex Hoffman, the Democratic strategist and donor adviser, said: “He will become the bogeyman as soon as he starts implementing policy and saying ‘socialist’ as the sitting mayor.”
But for Democrats, Friday’s friendly confab presented a possible path forward for handling the president.
In a year when Democrats have struggled with how to engage Trump, in which at least one of them hid behind a folder in a White House meeting and left the base wondering about her 2028 sauce, Mamdani just put on a masterclass, Katz and other Democratic strategists said.
Their theory of the case: In his meeting, he offered a template for handling Trump and Trumpism. Trump thinks Democrats are weak; Mamdani projected strength. His body language was neither embarrassed nor defensive. He did not moderate any of his positions. He didn’t grandstand, nor was he pugilistic.
“Some Democrats made the decision that they had to reject Zohran completely if they didn’t agree with all of his policies,” Katz said. “That was a mistake. Zohran doesn’t have all the answers, but he does have a way at looking at situations that is different from typical Democrats in Washington. We need a lot of wins in 2026. Let’s work together to figure out how to get them.”
Andrew Howard, Nick Reisman and Joe Anuta contributed to this report.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the onetime MAGA loyalist who rose to prominence for her ardent support of President Donald Trump, says she is resigning from Congress after a public feud with him.
In a statement released Friday, the Georgia Republican criticized the direction of the political movement she once supported.
Her relationship with Trump soured after she joined calls from Democrats to release files related to the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump had initially opposed. Trump subsequently rescinded his endorsement of Greene and broke with her last week.
Greene said she will step down from office on Jan. 5.
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