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ATLANTA — Not too long ago, Stacey Abrams had reason to believe that she, not Kamala Harris, would be in a tight presidential contest.

In 2020, Abrams and Harris were on the top of Joe Biden’s list of vice presidential choices, and Abrams was fired up: “As a young Black girl growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if I didn’t speak up for myself, no one else would, so ... ‘Yes, I would be willing to serve,’” she declared on NBC in April of 2020.

That chance went to Harris.

Now, Harris’ fate is again intertwined with Abrams, as the vice president tries to replicate Biden’s surprise victory in Georgia — a victory largely credited to Abrams’ vision and fundraising prowess. But compared to 2020, when she was at her political peak, Abrams is something of a diminished figure, and there are doubts about whether her legacy is strong enough to rouse voters and help Harris eke out a victory — even if she makes a real effort.

Despite their parallel paths, Abrams and Harris have had little interaction over the years. After appearing together at the very first Georgia rally after Harris secured the nomination in July, Abrams was largely invisible on the campaign trail for weeks. Now, she’s stepped up her appearances, but few people expect that she can be the decisive political force that she’s been in past elections.

“Leader Abrams played that role when the president won in 2020. I think that the machine that she helped build facilitated the Georgia wins at the U.S. Senate level for Warnock and for Ossoff,” said Kasim Reed, the former Democratic mayor of Atlanta. “She paid a price for her organizing work, but I don’t think any serious person would argue that Leader Abrams is the same messenger today as she was in ’18 or ’20 or ’22.”

There are similar doubts about Abrams’ vaunted network of nonprofit groups.

The nonprofits she founded, which once spurred widespread voter registration in Black neighborhoods and engaged low-propensity voters, are struggling. Fair Fight Action has been beset with fundraising woes, starting the election year $2.5 million in debt, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution — in 2020, it started the year with almost $1 million in the bank, according to its annual tax filing. The New Georgia Project, which specialized in community organizing, is trying to recover from financial scandals that led to a state ethics probe and the departure of its longtime leader.

Though she is no longer directly involved in the groups, they drew heavily on the power of her political brand. But that brand suffered after her surprisingly large 7.5-point loss to GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in their highly touted rematch in 2022. (Four years earlier, the margin was just 1.4 percent for Kemp.)

From the start of her 2018 campaign for governor through the end of her second gubernatorial run in 2022, Abrams’s campaign committees, PACs and the nonprofits she founded raised and spent $460 million for her own bids for public office and to organize, register and inspire Democratic voters in Georgia.

But in 2024, Abrams’s fundraising has brought in less than $4 million: less than $200,000 to a state PAC that also reported about $800,000 cash on hand and is in debt for about the same amount due to expenditures from her 2022 gubernatorial campaign, according to the most recent financial disclosure; and an additional $3.6 million to a newly formed federal PAC founded by Abrams, Speak Up PAC, according to an October financial disclosure filing.

Democratic officials in Georgia say those numbers don’t reflect all the fundraising she’s done for other groups and for Harris directly. Plus, she’s stepped up her activity in the final weeks of the campaign, headlining a rally the day before early voting began and multiple canvassing kick-off events. In recent days, Abrams has joined former President Bill Clinton in Fort Valley and Julie Roberts in Atlanta and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff in Athens.

Abrams did not respond to an interview request made through Fair Fight Action.

The Harris campaign declined to comment.

Other leading Democrats expressed hope that the structures Abrams built are strong enough to propel the party forward, even if she is no longer at the vanguard of the movement.

“Stacey Abrams was very keen on making sure it was not about her being on the ballot or not about her just doing the organizing work,” said Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), who is also chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “There are so many organizations and so many organizers on the ground that benefited from the training and the investment that she made in the state of Georgia.”

Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been close to both Abrams and Harris, predicted that Harris would benefit from Abrams’s emotional presence in the minds of Georgia voters.

“I have an office in Atlanta for the National Action Network. I had young people that were not interested in the electoral process and Stacey brought them in, and they never left because Stacey gave them an identity,” said Sharpton. “She was young, she was energetic, she could talk their language. They became the infrastructure [and] … it was built by Stacey Abrams.”

Nonetheless, some political observers see Georgia slipping away from Harris. The polls remain very close, but the 538 polling average gives Donald Trump a two-point advantage. And despite the state’s purple status, Republicans have won more statewide races than Democrats since Biden’s shocking 12,000-margin victory in 2020.

Black voters — Abrams’ organizing specialty — are a challenge for Harris in Georgia. The state electorate is about 25 percent Black, one of the highest percentages in the country, but Harris’s polling margins within that group aren’t as strong as those of Biden in 2020 or even Hillary Clinton in 2016 in public surveys. Last weekend, former First Lady Michelle Obama visited the state, in an implicit acknowledgment of the need to rally Black voters for Harris.

A surge in activity by Abrams in the final days could be a difference-maker, according to Georgia Democrats, but the campaign declined to share information about where Abrams would be deployed.

Abrams is important to Harris for another reason, because each represents a different face of a Black woman’s experience in America: Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, grew up in liberal Northern California; Abrams, the second of six children of United Methodist ministers, was raised in conservative Gulfport, Mississippi. After moving to Atlanta, Abrams worked the back roads of Georgia politics to become Democratic leader in the state legislature. Harris, meanwhile, was a protégé of legendary San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and rose through the legal ranks as San Francisco DA and state attorney general.

Since the 2020 election, Harris and Abrams have been frequently lumped together as Black trailblazing women in the party. They were credited for increasing enrollment at HBCUs. They were both shortlisted in speculative media stories to fill a Supreme Court vacancy that would eventually go to Ketanji Brown Jackson. And they were each floated as possible replacements for Biden before the 2024 election cycle kicked off.

But during Harris’s tenure as vice president, the two have rarely crossed paths in person, according to a POLITICO review of press clips and event archive pages.

The last time before July’s Atlanta rally that both Harris and Abrams were on the campaign trail together was in November of 2020 when then-Sen. Harris was stumping in Georgia as Biden’s running mate. Abrams’ stock was high in anticipation of her 2022 gubernatorial comeback run, but some local Democrats had felt disappointed by Biden’s selection of Harris over their home-state favorite.

Sharpton was one of many Black leaders who had pressed Biden to pick a Black woman as his vice presidential nominee. “I said [that] to Joe Biden, and I said that Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris or [former Florida Rep.] Val Demings are certainly qualified,” he said, recalling his personal shortlist.

Abrams was not shy about wanting the number two job.

“I would be an excellent running mate,” Abrams said in an interview with Elle Magazine. “I have the capacity to attract voters by motivating typically ignored communities. I have a strong history of executive and management experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. I’ve spent 25 years in independent study of foreign policy. I am ready to help advance an agenda of restoring America’s place in the world. If I am selected, I am prepared and excited to serve.”

Abrams was also insistent that Biden pick a woman of color for his number two in 2020, saying on “The View” that April that failure to do so would be “a slap in the face” to a key cohort of the Democratic Party’s base.

Coming from a working-class background, Abrams regularly related her personal story on the campaign trail with that of the broader Black and Southern experience.

Harris’s upbringing in urban California as the daughter of immigrants represents an entirely different dimension of the Black experience in the U.S. It’s also something Harris has steered away from making a focal point of her campaign. Though Trump has attacked her, saying she “became a Black person” — a statement that is false — Harris has given the comment as little oxygen as possible.

Abrams has been less hesitant to talk about the role of race and gender in politics, defending Harris from criticism that she deemed racist and sexist while serving as vice president.

“We are not always great with new," Abrams told MSNBC in late-2023. "But more importantly, I know if you filter through the critiques, if you think about how she is castigated, it is inextricably linked to race and gender. I applaud the poise with which she has responded.”

After Abrams’s surprisingly lopsided loss to Kemp in 2022, her campaign manager and longtime political ally, Lauren Groh-Wargo, blamed the defeat in part on the work Abrams did for other Democrats, including Biden and Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

“In the end, Stacey leveraged her time, talents and organizations to secure the wins of 2020 in the major battleground states as well as Georgia in 2020 and 2021. In doing so, she also made the 2022 gubernatorial race against a well-funded incumbent nearly impossible,” Groh-Wargo said in a 52-post thread on X.

The 2022 defeat depleted Abrams’s stock. And the dimming of her personal star coincided with hard times for the flagship nonprofits she founded, even though she was no longer involved in them.

Fair Fight Action, the largest of the Abrams-founded nonprofits, spent most of its fundraising haul on a sweeping voting-rights lawsuit in federal court, which it lost. The law firm overseeing the case — headed in part by Abrams’ former campaign chair and friend from law school — took in more than $19 million over four years.

Groh-Wargo returned to lead Fair Fight Action in January, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the nonprofit was $2.5 million in debt and that it had laid off 75 percent of its staff. She did not respond to an interview request for this story made through her communications team.

Fair Fight Action is still operating and recently claimed that it aired a TV ad to call attention to potential changes to state election laws implemented by a Republican-controlled State Elections Board — though there is no record of the TV spot on the ad-tracking website, AdImpact.

Fair Fight Action did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Also on the sidelines is the formerly litigious — and often victorious in its cases — New Georgia Project, another Abrams-founded nonprofit that has had significant turnover since the 2022 election.

Days before the 2022 midterm, Abrams’s hand-picked leader of the New Georgia Project was fired and accused in federal financial disclosures of owing $27,127 for unauthorized expenditures in 2021 and 2022.

The New Georgia Project still focuses on voting rights but has broadened its mission to include access to affordable housing, environmental justice and childcare, according to its website.

The New Georgia Project did not respond to an interview request.

In their prime, those groups vacuumed up money, but left little room for more locally focused grassroots organizations. As millions flooded into Georgia campaigns, smaller nonprofit organizations often found themselves left out of the financial windfall. Now, those groups are promising to fill the gap and deliver for Harris.

Christine White, head of Georgia Alliance for Progress, which helps to fund hyper-local and smaller nonprofit groups for year-round organizing, said she had never heard from small grass-roots groups about having received money from Abrams’ network, even though some donors were under that impression.

The need for greater funding of what White described as an entire ecosystem of organizing — including the campaigns, parties, PACs and nonprofit groups — has been a constant since Georgia first became a swing state.

With only days before the election, the Harris campaign is outspending the Trump campaign on airwaves in the state. The vice president’s ground team was faster to open field offices across the state than Trump. Democrats involved in the campaign insist that smaller nonprofit organizations are succeeding in their goal of filling the void left by Abrams’s network.

But whether Georgia stays blue is far from a settled question.

Abrams told MSNBC during the Democratic National Convention in August that she believes Harris can win Georgia. And she feels her own campaigns helped laid the groundwork.

“Part of the challenge was building, first and foremost, the imagination: people believing that this was a possibility,” Abrams said. “The second was the conscience: showing the people the consequence of not acting. So I would look at my ’18 race as the imagination race, showing people you should pay attention to Georgia. 2020 and 2021 and again in 2022 was the conscience race, here’s what happens in America and in Georgia if we don’t act. And this third race, which will be our third cycle, will be the opportunity to show change.”

© Alex Brandon/AP

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.

Podcast host Joe Rogan declined the Harris campaign’s offer to record an interview with Kamala Harris on Tuesday because he “would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour.”

But the interview isn’t off the table.

“The Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast,” Rogan said in a post on X. He wants it to take place at his Austin studio, saying his “sincere wish” is to “get to know her as a human being.”

Harris will conduct five interviews on Tuesday ahead of her speech in Washington, D.C. Four will air on television in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the fifth will be on a Pennsylvania Spanish radio station to reach Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, according to her campaign. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Rogan’s post.

“The Joe Rogan Experience” is the largest podcast in the U.S., with an audience that is largely young and male — a demographic where former President Donald Trump leads Harris. The Harris campaign has worked to gain support with male voters in recent weeks. An interview with Rogan would offer Harris the opportunity to make her case to his large audience.

Rogan, a comedian-turned-podcaster and UFC commentator, has hosted a range of guests with diverse ideologies on his show, from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to comedians like Chris Rock and political figures like Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Trump’s sit-down in Austin on Friday with Rogan, which has more than 37 million views on YouTube, lasted the usual three hours. In the wide-ranging interview, he said a politician needs “the attitude of a comedian” and shared that he regretted some past political appointments. He also called hosts of The View “so stupid.”

In his interview with Rogan, Trump said he hoped Harris would agree to sit down with Rogan because “it would be a mess.” Rogan responded that they “would have a fine conversation.”

Harris sat down with former NFL player Shannon Sharpe on his podcast “Club Shay Shay” yesterday. She’s previously appeared on Alex Cooper’s podcast “Call Her Daddy,” Spotify’s second-biggest podcast behind “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

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. Heres an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

After three decades representing his home of Springfield, Massachusetts, in the U.S. House, Democratic Rep. Richard Neal reached the goal of his lifetime in January 2019: He took the gavel of the House Ways and Means Committee, with far-reaching powers to shape the nation’s tax code.

A year later, his 45-year-old son Brendan Neal launched a one-person public affairs firm dedicated to “political advice, lobbying, and strategic communications.”

Then the payments started: $4,425, almost always on the 13th of each month, from Richard E. Neal for Congress Committee to Brendan Neal Strategies for “strategic consulting services.” The payments were bumped to $4,630 in 2024 and have continued through this August, totaling $196,340.

Brendan Neal’s lobbying work, however, started before his firm received money from his father’s campaign.

First came Van Heuvelen Strategies, a lobbying firm with interest in at least half-a-dozen separate Ways and Means issues. It paid Brendan Neal at least $20,000. There was also the nursing home in the Springfield area run by a City Council member and a business mogul. It paid Brendan Neal $40,000.

Meanwhile, a lobbyist with roots in the Springfield area messaged Brendan Neal on LinkedIn with an invitation to coffee to discuss his new business. Around 10 months later, the lobbyist’s client, a Boston-based technology company, signed Brendan Neal on. It proved to be Brendan Neal’s most lucrative contract yet, paying him $20,000 for most quarters from 2021 through 2024, totaling $252,500.

During much of the same period, that lobbyist simultaneously earned $770,000 for his firm to work on tax issues for the administrative arm of the world’s largest private equity firm, Blackstone, which has been one of Rep. Richard Neal’s top donors.

Among the issues that were most important to the firm: a proposal, floated before the Ways and Means committee, to eliminate special tax treatment for so-called carried interest prized by the private equity industry, which critics call one of the most egregious loopholes in the tax code.

For more than a decade, Richard Neal has been a quietly dominant force in tax policy, culminating in his four years as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, arguably the most powerful panel in Congress.

The Massachusetts lawmaker diligently worked to ascend the ranks by championing Democratic priorities like Social Security and expansions to the Child Tax Credit, but also legislative proposals pushed by the financial and insurance industries, which reliably help fundraise substantial amounts for Richard Neal’s campaign and political action committees.

Now, after two years as ranking member, Richard Neal is poised to again guide the panel through what many in Washington are calling the “Super Bowl of Tax” — a massive renegotiation of $4.6 trillion worth of expiring tax cuts enacted by former President Donald Trump, and potentially trillions more tax cuts affecting issues such as Social Security and state and local taxes.

For many observers of the committee, Richard Neal is regarded as an “old-school” Democrat, a deft political operator who gravitates to the center and knows how to navigate the complexities of policy and fundraising in Washington.

But many tax advocacy groups and progressives, which have seen their influence expand under the Biden administration, also privately regard him as too close to special interests and the main obstacle within the Democratic Party to closing loopholes that companies and wealthy people use to lower their taxes.

Brendan Neal’s cash haul from working for his own father’s campaign and others with interests before his committee — which has not been previously reported — significantly heightens concerns for liberal tax policy advocates — and has led some to publicly voice their concerns about the Ways and Means power broker.

“Lobbyists sending huge amounts of money to the son of a particularly powerful politician, who has a great deal of control over tax policy, just reeks of corruption,” said Morris Pearl, the chair of Patriotic Millionaires, a coalition of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. “Almost anyone, including the clients of the lobbyists who are concerned about tax policy, would conclude that these lobbyists are trying to curry favor with Representative Neal for their clients.”

Richard and Brendan Neal declined to be interviewed.

Jack Chamberland, the communications director for the lawmaker’s office, said in a statement that Richard Neal was not aware that lobbying firms with tax issues before his committee were employing his son and does not discuss official business with him.

"Brendan Neal has never lobbied Congressman Neal’s office or Ways and Means Committee,” Chamberland said, adding: “Anyone looking to understand the congressman’s values should look at the policies he’s championed, which have made a material difference in the lives of average Americans: tax credits for families with children and tax credits for green energy, new incentives to boost American manufacturing, and tax increases on the ultra-wealthy.”

The lawmaker’s campaign added that Brendan Neal earns $53,000 a year for part-time work for his father’s campaign committee on matters pertaining to Richard Neal’s district, “which he’s very well qualified to do given his extensive experience in Massachusetts campaigns.”

Brendan Neal said in a statement: “With over two decades of experience in external-facing roles across business, political campaigns, and government, I take pride in the achievements that stem from my own dedication and hard work.”

“I’m proud of my work advocating for causes like LGBT suicide prevention, the opioid crisis, climate change and American industry,” he added. “I’ve always followed ethics rules. I don’t lobby my father and we don’t discuss my business.”

People who work on tax policy, including outside advocacy groups but also former staffers and administration officials, express serious concerns about Brendan Neal’s lobbying and his clients’ interests in his father’s committee. However, interviews with 19 lobbyists, members of Congress, former staff members and others who work on tax policy paint a complicated picture of Richard Neal’s tenure.

Granted anonymity to speak about committee matters, many acknowledged that closeness to lobbyists is not unusual in Washington. Members of both parties who serve on tax-writing committees have long held fundraisers soliciting donations from those seeking to influence bills — as part of a long-standing practice where the national parties demand that members on important committees contribute more than the average member to party-affiliated campaign committees.

For instance, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recommended “party dues” for the 2023 election cycle were $660,000 for the ranking members of several of the “A” committees, including Ways and Means.

But Richard Neal’s level of interaction with lobbyists has long struck those working on tax legislation as strong even by Congress’ standards: Proposals conceived by lobbyists often found their way into complicated tax bills overseen by the chief Democratic tax writer, such as the 2022 retirement legislation called Secure 2.0, which cost the federal government around $51 billion.

Two people, including a former lobbyist and a former staffer turned lobbyist, pointed out that he regularly asks for campaign contributions from any firm doing business with his committee — for himself and all his Democratic colleagues.

“He’s one of the best known for reaching out for donations,” said one former lobbyist for a large technology company, who recalled that Richard Neal asked a colleague who worked at another big tech company to host a fundraiser for him at one of the party conventions.

The lobbyist noted that when the lawmaker’s staff calls lobbyists of companies with PACs, it is implicitly understood that they should donate to him within a few weeks of the call.

A spokesperson for Richard Neal’s campaign acknowledged that he is a heavy fundraiser but said that “the contributions he receives do not impact his values, rather, they go toward flipping the U.S. House.”

Others noted his close ties to Fidelity, based in Boston, and MassMutual, based in his district, which have both been large donors to his campaigns. 

Richard Neal was also the biggest recipient of PAC money of all members of the House in 2020 and the second-largest recipient of PAC money during the 2022 cycle, according to the nonpartisan research group Open Secrets — though the figures place him among the ranks of previous chairs of Ways and Means, who have been similarly powerful fundraisers.

Now, as Democrats press a significant fundraising advantage to win back the House, Richard Neal is poised to oversee a rare generational change in the tax code, with the expiration of trillions of dollars in Trump tax cuts. Congress will have to renegotiate personal income-tax rates, the Child Tax Credit and business tax breaks.

Business interests have seen him as their most receptive Democratic ally, especially given that the Biden administration and Richard Neal’s counterpart in the Senate, Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), have embraced large swaths of progressive tax legislation. He’s also garnered the respect of the majority of Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, who expect him to be chair next year.

“[Richard Neal] brings everyone together, looks for common ground, but kind of toes that center line,” said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), a member of the Ways and Means Committee who is also vying to lead the powerful New Democrat Coalition, a large caucus within the House that casts itself as a voice for pragmatism and bipartisanship.

Progressives, particularly those who are retired or granted anonymity to speak candidly, tell a different story.

“The progressive community felt that Chairman [Richard] Neal was overly protective of corporate special interests,” said Frank Clemente, the now-retired former executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of 400 organizations that advocates for higher taxes on companies and wealthy people on Capitol Hill.

“A person who’s the chairman of the [Democratic Ways and Means committee], and is trying to finance a major, multi-trillion-dollar investment agenda, ought to be there leading and pushing the envelope and moving his caucus to the progressive position of taxing corporations and the rich,” Clemente said. “But he’s always had to be pushed.”

That perceived closeness to special interests is getting renewed scrutiny, as ethicists and tax policy advocates weigh in on the revelations regarding Brendan Neal’s business connections.

With deep-pocketed special interests limited to the low four-figure caps on donations to lawmakers, ethics experts say there is a precedent of interests looking to pay a lawmaker’s relative to circumvent contribution limits and ethics restrictions — and thereby further grease the influence campaigns of K Street power players.

In corruption scandals surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2006, the FBI zeroed in on consulting fees paid to the wives of top staffers of former Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay — in an investigation that agents referred to at the time as the “Wives Club.”

DeLay’s former deputy chief of staff admitted that $50,000 in consulting fees his wife received was part of a corrupt scheme with Abramoff to influence DeLay’s office. DeLay’s wife herself had received $115,000 in consulting fees from a lobbying firm set up by her husband’s former chief of staff.

The sprawling investigation ultimately resulted in at least 20 guilty pleas or trial convictions of those in Abramoff’s orbit. Abramoff and two of DeLay’s former senior aides, including the former deputy chief of staff, went to prison, though the Department of Justice did not end up prosecuting DeLay himself. DeLay maintained that he never did anything unethical and said that his political enemies were to blame for the long-running investigation into his conduct.

Questions have also arisen over whether the spouses of former Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri and former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota wielded inordinate influence when they worked as lobbyists at the same time that their husbands held office.

“There are limits to what you can do with campaign funds, so you start doing business with the family members,” said Richard Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and the former chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush administration. Painter has since switched parties, running unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 2018 for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.

“K Street’s always been looking at Ways and Means,” Painter said. “I wouldn’t let [a lobbyist] pay my son a lot of money and then they come lobby the committee.”

Richard Neal’s ascendance in Springfield politics was meteoric and, in the eyes of some constituents, encapsulated the American dream. He grew up in a working-class area of Springfield and was raised by relatives on Social Security survivor benefits after his parents died.

His first political job was as co-chair of presidential candidate George McGovern’s 1972 campaign in western Massachusetts. He went on to work as an aide to Springfield Mayor William Sullivan. Beginning in 1977, Richard Neal served three terms on the Springfield City Council and then ran for mayor in 1983, successfully forcing the incumbent into retirement and winning reelection in 1985 and 1987.

Under his tenure, Springfield maintained its reputation for rough-and-tumble patronage politics, but he also won plaudits for revitalizing the city’s neighborhoods and downtown.

His most notable encounter with scandal occurred in 1993, after he had been elected to Congress, as reports surfaced that the Massachusetts attorney general launched an investigation into a no-bid $2.5 million contract Richard Neal had granted to a company called Insurance Cost Control.

The attorney general said that the company’s then-president, a well-known political operative, had solicited employees to donate to Richard Neal’s campaign, who were then reimbursed by the company.

Richard Neal denied any wrongdoing and asserted that the investigation was put into motion by a political rival. Richard Neal was never charged, though the attorney general said that ICC’s president participated in a scheme that resulted in the city overpaying the company. The president later agreed to pay $101,000 in penalties for false billing.

Tipped off by his predecessor, former Democratic Rep. Ed Boland, of his impending retirement, Richard Neal ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for Boland’s seat and won the general election in 1988. He landed a spot on the Ways and Means Committee in 1993 and began moving up the seniority ranks, serving as chair of the subcommittee with the sole jurisdiction to originate federal taxes.

He used his clout to obtain federal aid for programs at local colleges and renovations to Springfield’s Union Station. He was also known as a fierce champion for Social Security, drawing on his personal story as a childhood recipient to oppose Bush’s efforts to privatize portions of the program.

Richard Neal finally attained the top Democrat slot on Ways and Means in 2016 and became chairman in 2019, when Democrats retook the House.

From that perch, he oversaw the tax provisions together for the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that would have established a 15 percent minimum corporate income tax on the biggest companies and new taxes on high-income individuals to finance wide expansions of tax credits for parents, green-energy companies and people with health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

It was a feat that impressed many of Richard Neal’s colleagues, especially after the Senate later struggled to pass a bill with similar provisions that was a fraction of the size. Build Back Better never became law, though large parts of it were incorporated into the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Go look at what we did on what was then Build Back Better and eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Schneider. “I was very impressed. He’s very good. He’s got a good team.”

Richard Neal also took particular interest in retirement policy, passing two large retirement bills by overwhelming margins in the House. He championed increases in tax-deferred savings as important for enhancing retirement security, but they also helped him and his Democratic colleagues increase their campaign support from financial companies with interests in tax policy.

Richard Neal also came under fire when POLITICO reported that, in 2019, he presided over a “centennial congressional reception” for American International Group, a little over a decade after the insurance giant received a $180 billion bailout following the financial crisis.

Now, as he prepares to retake the gavel, some in the business community see Richard Neal as more pragmatic than many of his Democratic colleagues, willing to consider business concerns that the Biden administration is not attuned to.

“I think the Republicans would vote for him. He’s that good,” said Ways and Means Committee member John Larson (D-Conn.). “There’s tremendous respect for him.”

Many progressive groups, on the other hand, see the 2025 tax debate as an opportunity to radically change the taxation of the ultra-wealthy and multinational companies, in order to finance sweeping housing and social care policies.

They view Richard Neal’s tenure from a different perspective, saying he looks to raise revenue, when he must, by upsetting the fewest special interests, and has on multiple occasions stonewalled efforts to increase taxes on wealthy people and the insurance industry.

“[Richard] Neal rules the committee with an iron first,” said one former senior House aide who worked on tax policies. “Progressives off the committee have tried to advance tax proposals, particularly during the pandemic, and they were frequently met with ridicule by Richie Neal and his staff.”

Richard Neal’s family has also played roles in his political life. Brendan Neal, one of four children born to Richard and his wife, Maureen Neal, received a total of $50,067 from Richard Neal’s campaign committee between 2004 and 2010. Richard Neal also brought on his daughter, Maura Neal Fitzpatrick, to chair his reelection campaign in 2012, though she did the work pro bono.

Concurrently, Brendan Neal worked as director of community relations for Springfield College from 2006-2012, according to his LinkedIn. He then worked in U.S. public affairs for the Canadian oil and gas firm TC Energy for eight years. In 2020, he launched Neal Strategies, after which he began again receiving payments — this time much larger — from his father’s campaign committee.

The two years that Brendan Neal was ramping up his firm were a busy time for his father, who was assembling provisions for Build Back Better and Secure 2.0. POLITICO found numerous instances during that period of overlap between Brendan Neal’s lobbying and people who stood to benefit from his father’s work in Congress.

Those overlaps were revealed through an analysis of publicly available lobbying disclosures. Law mandates that federal lobbyists register with Congress’ recordkeepers and disclose their expenses, as well as the subject of their lobbying and certain other information.

The overlaps first became apparent when Brendan Neal announced that he was starting his own firm. Matt Trant, a veteran appropriations lobbyist with roots in the Springfield area, messaged Brendan Neal on LinkedIn, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Great to have another Western Mass guy representing in Washington! Like to grab a coffee and talk about your public affairs and communications work when you have time...” Trant said.

“Absolutely Matt. It would be great to catch up soon…” replied Brendan Neal.

Lobbying records show that around nine months after the exchange, a Boston-based biotechnology company named 908 Devices, which was looking to obtain government contracts from the Department of Homeland Security, was registered as a client of Trant’s.

One month after that, Brendan Neal Strategies registered as 908 Devices’ second lobbyist — though none of Brendan Neal’s experience indicates that he has lobbied government appropriators on Homeland Security contracts. It became Brendan Neal’s most lucrative contract.

When asked by POLITICO whether he helped facilitate Brendan Neal’s connection to 908 Devices, Trant said the appropriations work was brought to him and Brendan Neal “by a consultant friend who worked for DHS in the Bush Administration.”

“We met with them together and have been helping them for three years,” Trant said. In a post published on LinkedIn in September, Brendan Neal named Trant as one of his “many mentors and business partners,” thanking him for his “unwavering support and guidance.”

In an email to POLITICO, Trant said that “Richie Neal has been a family friend for more than 40 years,” since he and Trant’s father were in local politics together.

908 Devices declined an interview request.

At the same time that Brendan Neal and Trant were lobbying for the device company, Trant had already begun lobbying for the administrative arm of Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, on “tax related provisions” in the Build Back Better Act, according to lobbying records. Trant made $220,000 for the National Group in 2021 alone lobbying for the company.

While none of the other partners of Trant’s lobbying firm, the National Group, donated to Richard Neal, Trant also began making significant donations to the lawmaker’s campaign committee and leadership PAC, giving $5,000 to Richard Neal’s campaign in 2019, as well as $5,000 to his leadership committee PAC and $1,500 to his campaign in 2021. Trant gave an additional $2,500 to Richard Neal’s leadership PAC in 2022 and an additional $1,000 to his campaign in 2023.

The company had myriad interests in financial tax issues before the Ways and Means committee, but perhaps most of all, Blackstone had a significant stake in the fate of “carried interest,” which allows private equity managers to earn their income at a much lower tax rate, 20 percent, compared with the top rate of 37 percent that high-earning managers would otherwise have to pay.

It’s a benefit that the company has, again and again, gone to great lengths to protect.

When former President Barack Obama first floated a proposal to eliminate carried interest in 2010, Blackstone’s CEO Stephen Schwarzman famously compared Obama’s plans to raise taxes on the private equity income to war: “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” Schwarzman said, though he later apologized.

Blackstone and Schwarzman, who has personally made hundreds of millions of dollars in carried interest, have since become a poster child for the issue.

A coalition of other private equity groups, which counts Blackstone as a board member, have since spent tens of millions lobbying on tax issues. Those industry efforts have successfully killed several proposals that would raise taxes on carried interest income.

One of the most challenging moments for the industry came, in 2019, when closing the carried interest loophole had been gaining crucial momentum among Democrats. The late Ways and Means Committee member Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) unveiled legislation, with the support of four colleagues on the committee, that would have entirely ended the favorable tax treatment. Pascrell called it “a giveaway to private equity tycoons.”

But what ultimately exited Ways and Means, in legislation written by committee staff under Richard Neal, was a provision that merely extended the holding period to qualify for the favorable tax treatment from three to five years, disappointing many Democrats.

The Ways and Means proposal crafted under Richard Neal also had a carve-out for carried interest related to real estate that would have greatly benefited Blackstone, which had raised $48.7 billion in capital over the previous five years for real estate deals, the largest amount of any private equity firm in the world, according to an industry publication.

“The Ways and Means proposal is deeply flawed, in my view, by moving the holding period out only to five years,” Victor Fleischer, a former chief tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, wrote at the time. “It’s hard to see the Ways and Means proposal as anything other than the Democratic version of [Republicans’ 2017 law on carried interest] — designed to give the appears of doing something on carried interest reform without actually doing so.”

When asked whether Trant’s lobbying on tax issues for Blackstone included carried interest, Trant did not respond.

But when the legislation’s successor, otherwise known as the Inflation Reduction Act, was being debated in the Senate in 2022, there were only two lobbyists advocating on tax issues for Blackstone’s administrative arm: Trant and Ryan McConaghy, the former senior adviser to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to lobbying disclosures.

Blackstone did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In addition to Brendan Neal’s connections to Trant, other firms that dealt with him appeared to notch wins in Richard Neal’s legislation.

Van Heuvelen Strategies, founded by Democratic lobbyist Bob Van Heuvelen, paid Brendan Neal to lobby on behalf of a California-based biofuel company. In 2019 and 2020, the same year Heuvelen employed Brendan Neal through a contract amounting to at least $20,000, Van Heuvelen’s firm was lobbying for four separate clients on tax provisions involved in Build Back Better and Secure 2.0.

As an indication of Van Heuvelen’s strong interest in the bills, he made his first-ever contributions to Richard Neal beginning in 2019, donating a total of $26,600 to the lawmaker’s campaign committee and leadership PAC between 2019 and 2022.

Between 2020 and 2021, Van Heuvelen’s firm was also under contract for at least $190,000 by three companies to lobby on tax credits provided to businesses that recapture and store carbon dioxide, among other issues.

Legislation that passed through Richard Neal’s Ways and Means Committee ended up significantly expanding the credit and made it directly payable to those businesses so that they could get refunds from the IRS — at a cost of $2.13 billion to the federal government, according to Congress’ tax revenue-scorer.

The carbon-capture industry was thrilled.

“The [Carbon Capture] Coalition is also grateful to Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA), Subcommittee Chair Mike Thompson (D-CA), and majority members of the House’s tax-writing committee for including its top two legislative priorities in their signature clean energy tax package,” declared a coalition of carbon-capture firms in 2020, as the package was coming together.

Van Heuvelen’s firm was also paid at least $390,000 between 2019 and 2021 to lobby for a New York insurance company called Genworth Financial on taxes and other issues. It had a keen interest in Secure 2.0 and, in particular, long-term care insurance for seniors.

Secure 2.0, which became law at the end of 2022, made it possible for savers to make early withdrawals from their retirement accounts to pay for certain long-term care insurance premiums, while expanding options for retirees to invest in insurance contracts.

Van Heuvelen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Meanwhile, lobbyist Rob Epplin was also lobbying on his clients’ tax priorities. Epplin’s firm, Epplin Strategic Planning, paid Brendan Neal Strategies at least $20,000 to lobby for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth, in 2021.

Epplin’s lobbying shop had been under contract by the National Association of Broadcasters, an organization representing media companies and TV stations, since 2015. It paid Epplin’s firm $180,000 between 2021 and 2022 to lobby on advertising and media-related tax issues, among other topics.

One of the association’s priorities included legislation introduced to Ways and Means in June of 2021 that would allow journalism outlets to defray up to $25,000 in employment taxes for each local journalist they employed in the first year and $15,000 in the next four — at a total cost of $1.7 billion over 10 years.

The final version of Build Back Better, as passed by the House, contained the provisions, for which the president of the National Association of Broadcasters thanked Richard Neal.

Epplin was also lobbying for an association of trial lawyers, which has given Richard Neal $76,500 in campaign contributions dating back to 2003, on tax issues that affect trial lawyers. Notably, provisions were included in the Build Back Better Act that would have changed the ways the IRS treats deductions for trial lawyers.

In contingency fee cases, trial lawyers get a percentage of their client’s settlement, typically 30 to 40 percent, when the case resolves. The contingent nature of the income allows trial lawyers to access unique tax deferral strategies to minimize taxes on their portions of those large settlements.

That also means that lawyers typically can’t deduct their expenses until after a case ends. The proposal advocated by the trial lawyer association would have allowed trial lawyers to deduct their costs immediately, regardless of whether they ultimately get reimbursed for those expenses later.

The changes to such deductions, as included in the Build Back Better legislation, were set to be a $2.5 billion boon to trial lawyers in the form of tax write-offs, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Epplin asked to be sent a list of questions by email but did not respond to them.

While most of Brendan Neal’s clients were federal lobbying firms subcontracting out work to him, one of Brendan Neal’s other clients, based in the Springfield area, would also have had reason to try to curry favor with Richard Neal.

Brendan Neal’s client, a nursing home company in western Massachusetts, is owned by Cesar Ruiz, a local business mogul who had poured $190,000 into a super PAC in 2023 to get involved in Massachusetts politics.

However, Massachusetts’ campaign finance regulator forced the super PAC to dissolve in August because it had made direct contributions to candidates and overreported its expenditures. Ruiz told the Springfield publication Western Mass Politics & Insight that they were unintentional, clerical errors.

Ruiz did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But in separate conversations about how Richard Neal operates in Springfield, other local political players claimed that it’s impossible to move up in Springfield politics without Richard Neal’s blessing.

“Nothing happens here in Springfield unless it’s sanctioned by Richie,” said Justin Hurst, a former Springfield city councilor who mounted an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2023. “Every step of the way there is a significant battle for a political seat that is relevant to the establishment here in Springfield, Richie is involved.”

Under order from the local campaign finance regulator, Ruiz had to pay $189,500 in the funds to local charities. Of the donations Ruiz elected to make as of early August, close to half, $25,000, had gone to the Irish Cultural Center in West Springfield — an institution which, earlier this year, launched a $2 million campaign to develop a new facility. The center announced that Richard Neal would be honorary chair of the campaign.

There has long been a loophole in ethics law that allows for family members of lawmakers to receive money from lobbyists. That can be especially tempting for deep-pocketed special interests who want to get around rules that limit PAC donations to $5,000, ethics experts say.

“They are looking for opportunities to open access and earn influence above the amount of influence you can get for low five-figure amounts of money,” said Jeff Hauser, an ethics expert and executive director at the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group that scrutinizes corporate influence in policymaking.

He said representatives whose family members are lobbyists should do everything possible to avoid appearances of undue influence.

“You can try and send a message that … I will do everything possible to discourage anyone from hiring my son in a way that gives the appearance of buying influence with the Ways and Means Committee,” Hauser said. “It does not sound like [Richard Neal] is doing any of them.”

As for the payments for consulting services that Brendan Neal receives from his father’s campaign committee, Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics expert and professor at Washington University School of Law, says that campaign finance law allows lawmakers’ campaign funds to pay relatives, as long as they are performing services at fair market rates.

While Richard Neal’s staff has said Brendan Neal provides commensurate services for his payments, Clark said the payments also raise a reasonable question of “whether [Richard] Neal is actually a good steward of his campaign money, or whether he is using his campaign as a kind of slush fund to benefit his family member.”

While the dealings between the Massachusetts lawmaker and his son aren’t unprecedented, the revelations come as both Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for the expiration of trillions of the Trump tax cuts in 2025.

Tax policy experts say they worry about the appearances caused by Brendan Neal’s lobbying work, to the extent that his clients also have business before Ways and Means.

“Particularly given that Democrats, and especially Chairman [Richard] Neal, have been hammering former President Trump for using the tax system to his advantage, it hurts the Democrats’ cause if there’s an impropriety at the top of the Ways and Means leadership,” said Daniel Hemel, a professor of tax law at NYU School of Law, whose scholarship focuses on the tax system and wealth inequality.

Tax lobbyists with their eyes on 2025 have been looking to get a head-start on the negotiations.

One of the biggest questions of the 2025 debate centers on to what extent foreign-based companies will keep their tax benefits, with Republicans suggesting that tax deductions should be clawed back from companies that don’t make their goods in America.

Trump has suggested lowering the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent, except for companies that don’t make their products domestically. Likewise, congressional Republicans also ensured that tax legislation included an exclusion of foreign companies from larger tax benefits for research and development.

“This is certainly distressing, but it portends something even worse for the future: many more favourable TCJA provisions will begin to expire at the close of 2025,” said Michael DiRoma, managing partner of the lobbying firm DiRoma Eck and Co. LLP, in an April post for Business & Finance Magazine on the subject.“What is going to motivate Congress to act any differently toward foreign companies?”

DiRoma suggested “taking early affirmative steps to connect with policymakers” — actions that his firm would be well-equipped to facilitate.

DiRoma, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, was formerly tax counsel to Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and lobbied on international tax issues in the Build Back Better Act for Credit Suisse.

His fellow co-founder is a former senior official at the Treasury Department. The firm’s senior strategic adviser is David Malpass, the former president of the World Bank and a fiscal and tax policy veteran who worked for the Reagan and Trump administrations.

The firm also has an additional asset in its reserves: its senior adviser, Brendan Neal.

© Alex Brandon/AP

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump was considering Brooke Rollins — his former Domestic Policy Council director now serving as president of a MAGA think tank, the America First Policy Institute — to serve as his chief of staff should he return to the White House.

Within 24 hours, stories emerged that AFPI — dubbed the “White House in waiting” for its quiet role mapping out a second Trump term — had been hacked by the Chinese.

But inside Trump’s inner circle, that wasn’t exactly news: The institute’s online security perimeter had been breached almost a full year prior, then again earlier this month.

The reason news seeped out this time? Because, some Trump confidants speculate, someone who didn’t like Rollins wanted it to.

“The knife-fighting is underway,” one said. “Someone’s like, ‘Oh, she wants to be chief of staff? Well, she can’t even stop her own organization from getting hacked.’”

It’s just one vivid example of the behind-the-scenes jockeying playing out over a crucial White House role even before Trump wins the election. The chief of staff job has always been seen as particularly crucial and particularly fraught for Trump, who ground through four chiefs in four years during his first term. Each, despite wildly different styles and personalities, struggled to rein in Trump and keep him and his administration focused.

Trump himself, those around him say, has been superstitious about making plans before a victory and has been reluctant to discuss the matter much. But among those orbiting the ex-president, tongues are freely wagging.

A host of insiders view the job as crucial to a potential second Trump administration’s success — and had plenty to say about the three people most discussed for the role: Rollins, Susie Wiles and Kevin McCarthy.

The frontrunner

As de facto campaign manager, Wiles probably has the job if she wants it, almost all of the insiders said. Trump, after all, has a history of rewarding those who help him win — tapping RNC chief Reince Priebus as chief and campaign CEO Steve Bannon as chief strategist following his 2016 victory.

But that’s not the only reason people are betting on Wiles, a veteran of Florida politics who grew closer to Trump when he was persona non grata in political circles after Jan. 6.

She’s the biggest reason why Trump has a more professional and organized campaign this cycle, insiders say. They appreciate her instituting order on an otherwise chaotic political menagerie and credit her zero-tolerance policy on backbiting for an era of relative peace in their orbit.

Most importantly: The boss trusts her. While Trump doesn’t always listen, they’ve established a rapport where Wiles can be frank with the former president and tell him when she disagrees — not something many are willing to do in the face of Trump’s occasional temper.

Her few detractors argue Wiles hasn’t had a modern-day government job. She worked on the Hill briefly for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), as a scheduler for Ronald Reagan and in the Labor Department before decamping to Florida, but Beltway politics have changed considerably since then.

Still, those who’ve seen Wiles up close say she’s a quick study. Under Trump, she’s navigated big egos and sharp elbows, assassination attempts, court cases and convictions. “She’s unflappable,” one insider said.

One thing: It’s unclear if Wiles actually wants the job given its grueling nature and how past Trump chiefs departed. She has already had a remarkable three-year run at Trump’s side, and people wonder if she got her fill of personnel drama earlier this year after Corey Lewandowski’s sudden return to the campaign.

The policy hand

According to that Times story, Trump has been soliciting people’s opinions about Rollins and suggesting she’d make “a great chief of staff.” Those who like Rollins say that’s a sharp assessment: She’s a polished policy hand, they argue, who can help get Trump’s legislative agenda passed.

But the story has only crystallized opposition to Rollins among many Trump insiders, who believe she has no business having that job, casting her as a relative newcomer to Trump world whose main attributes are self-promotion and close ties to AFPI’s influential donors. Some worry she’s too close with traditional free-market conservatives and would clash with Trump’s embrace of tariff-heavy “MAGAnomics.”

Still, Rollins has a power base: A Texas native who came up through Gov. Rick Perry's administration, she grew close to Jared Kushner and helmed domestic policy during Trump’s final half-year in office then gave fellow ex-administration officials a home at AFPI after the chaotic end to Trump’s presidency.

Her critics argue that despite her policy chops, her political acumen is sorely lacking. Some of those who have worked with her believe she’d be eaten alive in the role. The counterpoint is that Trump would not be seeking reelection and thus needs someone who can primarily execute on his agenda. She’s clear-eyed about her political deficiencies, her backers argue, and could outsource that role. (Notably, she brought Kellyanne Conway on at AFPI.)

But what does Trump think? One person told us Trump has lavishly praised her, saying she could run any business in the country. But he’s confronted her in the past over AFPI’s use of his “America First” brand, with the Times reporting he’s sought as much as $50 million in compensation.

The ousted speaker

If Wiles has the political chops and Rollins has the policy know-how, McCarthy backers argue that the former speaker has both: “I think there is an argument to having someone who's been a legislator,” one Trump ally said, harking back to the difficulties Trump had in 2017 getting his agenda across Capitol Hill.

Some have questioned if McCarthy would actually take the job. A longtime-staffer-turned-longtime-lawmaker, he’s now making big money for the first time in his life.

But those who know him best know better. McCarthy is an inveterate political animal who loves playing the inside game. Perhaps no job in Washington would better harness the relationships he’s built over a lifetime in politics. (Asked in the past about serving under Trump, McCarthy has said he’s not angling for a job but wouldn’t rule out taking one.)

Some, in fact, think McCarthy is too eager. Two Trump insiders pointed out to us unprompted that McCarthy’s longtime consigliere Jeff Miller has been lobbying for Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO who is also leading Trump’s transition, prompting questions about Miller’s influence on personnel decisions.

Miller told Playbook he isn’t involved: “Howard has been a friend and client for quite a while, but I have no role — officially, unofficially or in any way whatsoever — in [the] transition.”

As for Trump’s view, it’s complicated. Trump didn’t do much to intervene when MAGA die-hards moved against McCarthy in the House. Some say he viewed McCarthy as a weak negotiator during his months as speaker, and he remains vexed that the Californian didn’t make good on a promise to “expunge” his twin impeachments.

Still, the two remain close and talk frequently. Trump appreciates that McCarthy was one of his earliest congressional allies. But the view among those closest to the ex-president is that they’d be surprised if he gave McCarthy the job.

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© Alex Brandon/AP

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.

CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was catapulted into office as an outsider vowing to shake up the city’s notoriously combustible politics. But nearly two years into his term, he’s increasingly isolated and has alienated even some of his ideological allies as he battles to implement his progressive agenda.

The most glaring recent example is the unfolding controversy over his strong-arm effort to overhaul the city’s school board. Its seven members rejected Johnson’s call to fire the schools’ CEO — who had rebuffed his request to take out a short-term, high-interest loan to fix a budget shortfall — and they resigned en masse.

Johnson aggressively defended his tenure in an interview with POLITICO on Friday from London, where he’s focused on economic development and attending a Chicago Bears game in the city.

“There are people who might have some trepidation around how bold our vision is,” Johnson said, pointing to big investments in affordable housing, among a list of accomplishments. "There are individuals that are having a tough time adjusting. But for the masses in the city of Chicago, they're very much aligned with the vision.”

The school board dustup is only the latest drama from the fifth floor of City Hall. Before that, Johnson reshuffled his intergovernmental affairs team, bringing in an executive who had worked closely with the Chicago Teachers Union — the influential group that helped elect him mayor. He’s clashed repeatedly with the City Council over his drive to eliminate the use of controversial gun detection technology. And he failed at getting his first and second choices approved to chair the council’s powerful zoning committee.

All that came ahead of the mayor delaying the release of his proposal to address arguably the city’s most pressing problem: a $1 billion budget shortfall heading into 2025.

Many City Council members support Johnson’s progressive agenda for the city, but they bristle at how he’s been trying to accomplish it. His unilateral moves to remake the school board, in particular, have antagonized city officials like Alderman Bill Conway.

“I appreciate that Mayor Johnson is a principled man, but he also needs to realize that city government is not set up like a dictatorship,” Conway said.

Nearly two years ago, Johnson, a former social studies teacher and CTU organizer, was a surprise hit to win the Chicago mayor’s race.

He came up the ranks as an activist, even leading a hunger strike to keep a South Side school open. He was backed by the teachers union to become a county commissioner and then, a few years later, CTU anointed him as its candidate for mayor.

But Johnson’s challenges started as soon as he was sworn into office, when Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started sending busloads of migrants to Chicago to call attention to national immigration problems.

Johnson embraced Chicago’s reputation as a welcoming place for immigrants, devoting significant resources, along with the state and county, to provide housing and other services to the new arrivals. But some Black Chicagoans felt slighted — why was the mayor willing to find housing for migrants, they asked, when there were many in their own community needing help?

The migrant crisis also created tensions with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, when the mayor repeatedly criticized the state for not doing more even though Illinois paid more to address the relief effort.

Johnson has touted his efforts to build up struggling neighborhoods in this diverse city that has nearly the same populations of Black, Latino and white residents. And he has been methodical in trying to hire Black staffers for key positions.

But the mayor’s focus on boosting opportunities for Black residents has also sparked criticism.

“As much as he wants to deal with legitimate problems affecting the African American community, you can’t do that if that's all you focus on,” said Bill Singer, a former alderman and veteran City Hall observer. “You’ve got to focus on the entire city and you’ve got to focus on things where the entire support structure of the city is working with you. And right now it’s not.”

Johnson dismisses such criticisms, arguing his administration’s efforts benefit the whole city, including programs he says have led to lower crime rates, bond investments that boost small businesses and expand affordable housing, and plans for a $1 billion corporate investment in a quantum computing campus.

“I made a commitment to do things differently, and I'm going to do that,” Johnson said. “If people have issues with Black young men being the highest group of individuals enrolling in community colleges, these are the same individuals perhaps that did not care when those young Black boys were in schools that were being disinvested and closed.”

Recent tensions between the mayor and the City Council echo the turbulence of the 1980s, when Mayor Harold Washington was scrutinized by a group of council members at every turn. But there’s a notable difference: Washington’s opponents were a narrow group of white aldermen, while Johnson is facing pushback from all sides, including some progressive allies and Black council members.

“He is absolutely right to bring attention to areas of the city that have been long neglected and disenfranchised, but he needs to bring City Council along with him,” said Constance Mixon, a political science professor at Elmhurst University and co-editor of the book “Twenty-First Century Chicago.” “He can't do it himself.”

Johnson was propelled into office with the support of progressives and minority communities who wanted a change from a system that they say is dominated by white corporate elites. For decades, every Chicago mayor has been connected to Richard J. Daley, who was first elected in 1955.

“They all came out of the Daley machine,” said Delmarie Cobb, a political consultant who got her start working for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, mentioning former mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, as well as Paul Vallas, who Johnson defeated in last year’s mayoral contest. “This was a chance to slay the machine completely.”

Crime remains a persistent concern in Chicago, despite some recent successes, including a significant decrease in homicides. Black communities have debated whether the ShotSpotter gunfire detection system approved during Emanuel’s administration is the best way to protect their gun-riddled neighborhoods. Johnson has vowed to end the contract with the company, arguing as many progressives have that it is merely a surveillance tool that does little to solve crimes.

But some Black communities — and their City Council members — credit the tool with saving lives. ShotSpotter identifies gunfire so police and paramedics can get to the crime scene quicker.

The mayor stuck by his campaign promise nonetheless and has nixed the program, prompting his opponents to weigh a legal challenge.

But Johnson’s biggest challenges are over finances and the school system. The city faces a nearly $1 billion shortfall and the Chicago Public Schools system is grappling with mounting debt.

It’s a financial storm that the mayor hopes to skirt. He’s attempting to divert a school workers’ pension payment from the city to Chicago Public Schools, and he wants the schools to take out a $300 million short-term, high-interest loan to pay for it.

When Pedro Martinez, the school board CEO, rejected that idea, Johnson grew frustrated that his hand-picked board didn’t back him up. All seven ultimately stepped down — an astonishing move given the board is also in the middle of contract negotiations with the powerful teachers union.

The upheaval comes just weeks ahead of the November election, when Chicagoans will vote for their first elected school board. Critics say Johnson is trying to circumvent the new board, which will consist of 21 members — 10 elected and 11 appointed by the mayor — so he can fire Martinez and meet CTU’s contract requests.

Many elected officials and civic leaders have warned against taking out a loan, and they worry firing Martinez would be a mistake, especially given that schools appear to be improving under his watch.

Johnson earlier this week compared those who have complained about the city’s financial challenges to Confederate slave owners, a reference that has angered civic leaders who also run businesses in town.

“They said it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people,” the mayor said. “And now you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”

The controversy threatens Johnson’s ability to manage going forward — in the short term as he tries to get the City Council to approve his budget and in the long term as he hopes to get reelected to a second term.

“There needs to be an understanding that the legislative and executive are co-equal branches, and this tension and chest-bumping about whose authority is what isn't helpful,” said Alderman Andre Vasquez, who is a co-chair of the council’s progressive caucus.

Singer, the veteran alderman who has long studied Chicago City Hall, said the city will get through the latest turbulence.

“The bones are great. The institutions are great. They're not going away. But the city will shrink more than it's already shrunk if this continues,” said Singer. “I think it can survive another couple of years of [Johnson], but not a second term.”

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© Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

5 people who might want Eric Adams' job

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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.

How hurricane misinformation will haunt Americans longterm

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Political cartoons from the desk of Matt Wuerker.

Biden decries Trump’s ‘onslaught of lies’ as Milton nears landfall

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Big donors are flooding the fight for control of the House — and, in the final stretch, Democrats have been outraising Republicans.

It’s a stunning reversal: Republican super PACs have been dominant in recent cycles and crucial to helping candidates who have struggled to raise as much as their Democratic opponents. But now that advantage has disappeared in the House.

Congressional Leadership Fund, the largest GOP group dedicated to winning the House, announced Tuesday that it raked in $81.4 million from July to September, its highest quarterly total. It’s a particularly impressive number considering Republicans lost their single-best fundraiser about a year ago, when Kevin McCarthy was dethroned as speaker.

But CLF didn’t come close to beating its Democratic counterpart. House Majority PAC said it raised roughly $99 million in the third quarter, with $69 million in September alone.

Both super PACs have now raised about $210 million this cycle — a warning sign for Republicans who have been relying on their biggest donors to keep them competitive across battlegrounds.

"HMP could not be more proud to have bested our Republican counterparts in Q3, erasing the GOP Super PAC advantage as the candidate fundraising gap continues to grow for Democrats,” said Mike Smith, the group’s president. “In the four weeks leading up to Election Day, we believe our record-breaking fundraising and strategic advantage in reserving crucial television and digital time at optimal rates will allow us to take back the House in November."

Republicans have long believed they don’t need to match Democrats dollar-for-dollar on TV. After replacing McCarthy, Speaker Mike Johnson has worked to develop a relationship with donors, and he kept in place Dan Conston, the operative McCarthy tapped to lead CLF.

“We’re continuing to raise necessary resources and strategically deploying them to make a real impact in the pivotal races that will shape the Majority,” Conston said in a statement.

Still, there’s only so much outside groups can do. Candidates can purchase TV airtime for much less than super PACs, making it far less efficient for outside groups to buy ads than the campaigns. Republicans are generally more reliant on outside groups because their candidates often don’t have enough funds to pay for their own ads

Since 2018, Democratic candidates have largely raised far more than their opponents. So far this year more than 10 Democratic challengers have already announced raising more than $2 million in the last quarter.

For example, Janelle Bynum, the Democrat challenging Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) reported raising $3.4 million in the third quarter. Laura Gillen, the Democrat challenging Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) raised $2.4 million and Derek Tran, the Democrat challenging Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) raised more than $2 million.

With Republican House candidates consistently trailing Democrats, CLF has played a key role in filling the gap.

In the 2020 cycle, both CLF and HMP were relatively close in fundraising. CLF raised $165 million to HMP's $160 million. But Republicans surged in 2022, and CLF maintained a steady cash advantage, raising $260 million over the cycle to the Democratic group’s $182 million.

And that cash has significant implications for campaigning down the final stretch. In 2022, CLF’s cash advantage meant it was able to spend $141 million on independent expenditures in House races from Oct. 1 through Election Day, compared to $121 million from HMP, according to FEC data. CLF outspent HMP in 32 of 47 races in which they were both spending.

But that dynamic might be reversed this year. HMP, flush with cash, is regularly dropping new rounds of reservations. It currently has reserved $52 million more than CLF in future TV and radio ad bookings from now through Election Day, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks political spending. Both sides, of course, can still buy additional ads, changing that split before November.

© Francis Chung/POLITICO

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.

HOCHUL MANAGES: As Mayor Eric Adams fights a five-count federal indictment on fraud and bribery charges, it’s been left to Gov. Kathy Hochul to manage the delicate moment.

Hochul has publicly and privately telegraphed to Adams that he should sever ties to people in his administration who are under legal scrutiny.

This week Tim Pearson, a top Adams lieutenant, resigned. Schools Chancellor David Banks, whose phone was seized in an FBI raid in September, is leaving his job earlier than expected.

Adams told reporters this morning that Banks’ new departure date was, in part, to put incoming Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos on solid footing. But he also acknowledged those discussions came after speaking with fellow leaders.

“One of the things my team stated and in my conversation with other leaders is that this is a time of real stability and to have Melissa and David there at the same time didn’t bring the stability that we wanted,” he said.

Hochul has had a strong public relationship with Adams over the last three years. Both the governor and mayor have cultivated the perception they work well together as a stark contrast to the infamous feuds that enveloped their predecessors — like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani, and Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch.

But Hochul, who holds the power to remove Adams from office, has not been afraid to leverage her influence amid the broader concerns over city governance.

Hochul told reporters Wednesday she’s been working with Adams to ensure key jobs are filled by “responsible” people.

“We expect changes. That's not a secret,” she said. “And changes are beginning.”

Hochul, the first western New York native in a century to hold the governor’s office, has become more steeped in New York’s political world since becoming a statewide official in 2015, according to those who know her.

“She’s very focused on the whole state at this point,” said Jack O’Donnell, a political consultant and lobbyist. “New York City was a huge focus of her housing plan. She’s learned how to navigate the politics but also the governance issues of the city.”

Some good-government advocates wish she would go further.

“She’s not cleaning house, she’s saying you should sweep your stoop every now and then,” said Reinvent Albany Executive Director John Kaehny. “This is not very aggressive.” — Nick Reisman

GIBBS DETAINED: State Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs was arrested and taken into custody by the New York City Police Department on Thursday in his East Harlem district, according to witnesses, POLITICO reports.

Two people who spoke with sources within the NYPD said Gibbs’ brother was pulled over for having an unregistered vehicle. The lawmaker was in the car too and got into a heated conversation with the cops, who arrested him and gave him a summons.

Nearly a dozen police cars responded to the incident on Lexington Avenue, just outside the James Weldon Johnson Community Center, said Frederick Thomas, a security guard with the New York City Housing Authority. Cops from the Strategic Response Group patted down Gibbs, put him in handcuffs and drove him away from the scene.

Three other eyewitnesses confirmed Gibbs’ arrest to POLITICO. It was first reported by the New York Post.

Calls to Gibbs’ phone and his office were not returned, and the NYPD press office said they did not have any information on the incident. Gibbs’ district office was closed Thursday. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gibbs is a close legislative ally of Mayor Adams, whose administration has been caught up in criminal investigations. There was no indication Gibbs’ arrest is related. — Jeff Coltin

DON’T LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT HIM: Outgoing Schools Chancellor Banks revealed Thursday that Mayor Adams forced his early resignation — exposing a rift between the longtime friends as federal probes envelop the administration, POLITICO Pro reports.

In his first public remarks since City Hall announced Wednesday evening that he will resign in mid-October, three months earlier than he intended to, Banks confirmed he had no intentions of stepping down so soon.

With his monthslong conflict with the mayor now out in the open, the chancellor released a statement through the TASC Group, a public relations firm he retained, instead of through the Department of Education. In that statement, he said he will continue to lead for another two weeks.

“Last week, I announced my planned retirement, and I was ready, willing and able to stay in my post until December 31st to conduct a responsible transition for our staff,” Banks said. “The Mayor has decided to accelerate that timeline. My focus will be on supporting the incoming Chancellor as she assumes this new role and continues the great work that we have started at New York City Public Schools.”

Spokespeople for the DOE and City Hall did not respond to requests for comment on why Banks issued the statement through the firm.

When asked if he’s still Banks’ spokesperson, DOE press secretary Nathaniel Styer said, “I am the press secretary for New York City Public Schools.” — Madina Touré

ANOTHER INNER CIRCLER SEARCHED: Jesse Hamilton, a longtime political ally of Mayor Adams who has a top job managing the city government’s real estate portfolio, had his phone seized by criminal investigators Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, POLITICO reports.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office took Hamilton’s phone at JFK Airport as he returned from a vacation to Japan alongside Adams’ chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin, according to the two people who spoke with POLITICO on the condition of anonymity.

Hamilton, a former state senator, is another addition to the growing list of high-ranking Adams appointees caught up in the criminal probes swirling around City Hall.

The seizure was first reported by the Daily News, which noted an employee of commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield was also on the trip. That Cushman vice chair, Diana Boutross, also appears to have a relationship with Lewis-Martin, according to a POLITICO review. — Joe Anuta

IN OTHER NEWS

— LAWLER IN BLACKFACE: Rep. Mike Lawler wore blackface as part of a Halloween costume when he was a college student almost two decades ago, according to photos. (New York Times)

— NY-17 BALLOT FIGHT: Democratic allies of former Rep. Mondaire Jones filed a lawsuit in an 11th-hour bid to knock a “spoiler” Working Families Party candidate off the ballot. (New York Post)

— PRACTICING ‘RESPECTFUL’ SPEECH: As NYC college campuses brace for protests marking the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, administrators are hosting events modeling “respectful, open dialogue.” (Gothamist)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Melania Trump on Thursday signaled she is taking a different stance than her husband on access to abortion rights.

While Donald Trump has touted his role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the former first lady said in a video promoting her upcoming book that women’s “individual freedom is a fundamental right that I safeguard.”

“Without a doubt there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom,” Melania Trump said. “What does ‘My body, my choice’ really mean?”

Melania Trump’s book, due to publish Tuesday, goes into much more detail about her belief in the need for access to abortion to remain legal, according to The Guardian, which obtained an early copy of the book.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” Melania Trump wrote, according to the Guardian. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”

The timing of her public comments in favor of abortion rights — just a month before Election Day — reinjects an issue into the political conversation that Republicans have largely sought to avoid litigating, instead focusing on topics such as the economy and immigration under President Joe Biden’s administration.

While the former president himself has criticized states with particularly restrictive abortion laws, his position has been that states should be free to set whatever abortion regulations they choose — and the 2022 Supreme Court decision that he has bragged about has since prompted some states to ban all abortion.

After avoiding for months saying how he will vote in a Florida referendum this month to expand access to abortion beyond the six weeks currently allowed by the state, Trump pleased anti-abortion leaders when he said a month ago that he would vote against the measure. But he has continued to appear uncomfortable discussing the issue, repeatedly declining to say whether he would veto federal restrictions before abruptly announcing on Truth Social during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that he would veto a national ban.

A spokesperson for Kamala Harris’ campaign, Sarafina Chitika, said in a statement that “Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump Abortion Ban that threatens their health, their freedom, and their lives.” Chitika added that if Trump wins, “he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women, and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.”

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, said. "The Harris campaign is lying, again, because they are losing.”

“President Trump has been unequivocally clear: he will NOT sign a federal abortion ban when he is re-elected,” Leavitt continued. “He strongly believes abortion is an issue that must be decided at the state-level."

Trump’s campaign did not comment on the former first lady’s position on abortion.

Abortion has been a political landmine for Republicans to navigate, particularly in the two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. States who have put the issue up for a vote in ballot measures have seen abortion rights proponents consistently win out over those opposed to abortion access, even in otherwise conservative states.

In a second excerpt from her new book obtained by The Guardian, Melania Trump wrote that she urged her husband to end his administration’s policy of separating children from their families when entering the southern border illegally.

“While I support strong borders, what was going on at the border was simply unacceptable. I immediately addressed my deep concerns with Donald regarding the family separations, emphasizing the trauma it was causing these families,” she wrote. “As a mother myself, I stressed: ‘The government should not be taking children away from their parents.’ I communicated with great clarity … ‘This has to stop.’

She added that the policy was changed soon after.

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© Leon Neal/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump is promising to remove Temporary Protected Status and deport the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio — an escalation in rhetoric against a community his campaign has targeted with misinformation for weeks.

“Absolutely I’d revoke it and I’d bring them back to their country,” Trump told NewsNation.

The GOP presidential nominee's onslaught against the migrants in Springfield has been at the forefront of his campaign in recent weeks, including his now-infamous line in the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris where he accused the migrants of eating their neighbor’s pets — a baseless claim that nonetheless sparked bomb threats targeting Springfield schools. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, had reposted the claims on social media leading up to the debate.

In his interview with NewsNation, Trump said the influx of migrants in the community “just doesn’t work” and “you have to remove the people; we cannot destroy our country.” Roughly 15,000 Haitian migrants have relocated to Springfield in recent years, according to the Associated Press.

Temporary Protected Status allows migrants to stay in the U.S. when their countries are unsafe to return to. In many cases, the countries are undergoing armed conflict, but environmental disasters and other conditions can also lead to TPS being granted. There are currently 16 countries whose citizens have TPS in the U.S. As of March 31, there were over 860,000 people in the U.S. with the temporary status, according to the American Immigration Council.

Despite ongoing criticism for their rhetoric around the migrants in Springfield, Vance and Trump have continued to double down. “I’m still going to keep on talking about what the migrants have done to Springfield, Ohio, and what Kamala Harris’ open border has done to Springfield, Ohio,” Vance said in mid-September on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Some of Trump’s allies believe his continued focus on Springfield has caused his campaign to lose some focus. And Harris has said Trump’s rhetoric against the migrants “has to stop.”

“Regardless of someone’s background, their race, their gender, their geographic location, I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s got to stop,” Harris said in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in September.

© Alex Brandon/AP

Gerald Rafshoon, former President Jimmy Carter's White House communications director, initially refused to join Carter’s 1966 campaign for Georgia governor because, he said, it wasn’t "good for business."

But when he heard a particularly cringeworthy campaign jingle on the car radio, Rafshoon said he “almost ran off the road.” Recalling the jingle in a 2023 POLITICO interview, he called it "just awful." Soon after, he joined the campaign.

As the media mastermind who launched Carter from peanut farmer and state senator to governor and then president, Rafshoon, now 90, has a unique and intimate perspective on his friend, the former president.

Today, Carter marks his 100th birthday. Watch the video to hear more about Rafshoon's groundbreaking ad campaign and what it was like behind the scenes in the Carter administration.

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Antitrust officials in Washington and their supporters across the political spectrum are asking whether Kamala Harris is fully committed to President Joe Biden’s crusade against America’s biggest companies.

Normally a back-burner issue in national politics, antitrust has become one of the White House’s top legacy issues — and increasingly urgent as Biden’s top corporate regulators have launched a fresh wave of major suits over insulin prices, financial services and rental costs.

On top of existing cases against Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, Ticketmaster and more, that puts the next president in the position to empower a historic push against corporate growth, or stop it in its tracks.

What Harris chooses to do if she wins is “very important,” said Josh Tzuker, a former antitrust official at the Department of Justice, who joined the consulting firm FGS Global earlier this year. “The Biden Administration charted a course that is going to be really hard to change.”

Harris has said little about antitrust explicitly, but the signals she’s sent so far have been encouraging to some antitrust advocates.

As part of the economic policy plan that Harris released last week, Harris is supporting several Biden administration competition moves. She called out price-fixing by landlords — an issue the Justice Department is addressing in a suit against a software company. She also attacked grocery mergers while the Federal Trade Commission awaits a decision on its lawsuit to block the megadeal between Kroger and Albertsons.

Notably, however, she has said little about Big Tech — a key focus of Biden’s top antitrust officials, Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DOJ.

Some Harris critics on the left worry about some of her advisers’ ties to big business, including her brother-in-law and head Uber lawyer Tony West, and debate adviser Karen Dunn, a corporate lawyer who is currently leading Google’s defense in an antitrust case.

That, coupled with Harris’ silence on calls from major donors like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman to fire Khan from her role as FTC chair, have put some antimonopoly advocates on edge.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not respond for comment.

The next president officially inherits every one of the administration’s cases — but it’s up to the White House how hard to push its strapped antitrust agencies. The momentum of the movement could be imperiled not only if former President Donald Trump wins and eases up on corporate growth, but also if Harris wins and takes office without the same fervor of her predecessor.

Longtime antimonopoly advocate Barry Lynn says he detected two strong antitrust signals at the Democratic National Convention this summer. One was a speech by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who progressives have long felt was among the Biden administration officials most cozy with big business. She used her convention speech to call out “monopolies that crush small businesses, workers and startups.”

Another signal was a prominent appearance by populist antitrust hawk Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the night Harris accepted the nomination.

The Biden administration’s focus on economic competition has proven popular with voters, even starting to make ripples in pop culture. FTC Chair Lina Khan, a key face of the effort, appeared on the Daily Show to an enthusiastic audience. A poll commissioned for The Guardian found Harris’ proposal to ban price-gouging the most popular economic policy espoused by either her or the Trump campaign.

There are also several advisers whose presence in the Harris orbit would indicate she’s likely to stay the course. Those include former Biden National Economic Council director Brian Deese, who is advising Harris on economic policy; and Bharat Ramamurti, formerly Deese’s deputy at the NEC and an alum of Warren’s office. Just last month, Rachel Brown, who headed competition policy at the NEC, also decamped for the Harris campaign, according to people with knowledge of the move.

A Biden administration official noted that those people wouldn’t likely be involved in the campaign if Harris were looking to make a major break from Biden on economic policy. “The gang is kind of back together,” the official said.

“I don’t think we have the final word on it, but it's broadly consistent with the antitrust program that has been enormously popular,” Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, who previously led competition policy at Biden’s National Economic Council, said of Harris’ antitrust plans to date. “Obviously who she appoints will be where the rubber meets the road, but the broad themes don't suggest a real break.”

An “overhang” of antitrust suits is a feature of every presidential transition, but is especially acute in this one — where Joe Biden’s aggressive approach to competition policy has empowered regulators to file a historic series of major suits against powerful players.

The FTC and Justice Department have been practically shoveling antitrust cases into court in recent months, with more on the way before Jan. 20. Those cases will take years to resolve, making it hard for any successor to dramatically change course.

© Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

Ahead of his first and likely only national debate of the presidential cycle, JD Vance prepared for the event at his home in Cincinnati and virtually on Zoom. He recruited Republican Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota to play his opponent in mock sessions. And he brought in Donald Trump’s campaign strategist Jason Miller and his own wife, Usha, to help, people familiar with the debate said.

But in his words, he doesn’t need to get ready.

"We have well developed views on public policy so we don't have to prepare that much,” Vance said in a Teamsters press call on Wednesday morning. "We feel a lot more confident and frankly, you don't have to prepare if you don’t have to hide what you say.”

His statement was in many ways exactly why Republicans — and especially Trump — continue to support him: He’s pithy, plainspoken and gets spirited with the media. And unlike Trump, he stays relentlessly on message and is known as an agile debater.

“It will be the first time a lot of Americans see him, and I think they're going to be very impressed with him, especially answering questions in that format,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a close ally to Vance who was also in the running to be Trump’s running mate. “I mean, he's been answering the questions he's going to get asked at that debate now for years, certainly in his whole time in the Senate and as a public figure.”

Vance is only in his second campaign, after his successful run for Ohio Senate in 2022. But the Yale Law School alumni and author of "Hillbilly Elegy" has already gained a reputation as a strong communicator and policy whisperer for the Trump campaign, as well as the torchbearer for the MAGA movement. In addition to regularly taking media questions for the campaign, he often joins cable news networks and Sunday shows — sometimes before unfriendly questioners — to defend Trump’s policies.

On the campaign trail, Vance has said answering questions from reporters — he often holds press conferences during his rallies to highlight how few media appearances Vice President Kamala Harris has done — has prepared him most for the Oct. 1 debate in New York. He spent most of this week on the campaign trail, with rallies in North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“What me and Donald Trump are going to keep on doing is going everywhere and talking to everybody,” Vance said when asked how he is preparing during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Monday. “We talk to the hostile media, we talk to the friendly media, we talk to the national media, we talk to the local media and we do it because we think the American people deserve leaders who try to earn their vote instead of expecting it to be given to them.”

Yet Vance’s rollout onto the national political stage has hardly gone smoothly.

Since former President Donald Trump tapped him to be his running mate in July, resurfaced clips have gone viral of the Ohio Republican grumbling about the country being run by “childless cat ladies.” He was criticized for arguing that childless couples should pay more in taxes. And he drew rebukes from GOP moderates after he pushed a conspiracy that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. (Vance has since defended his “childless cat ladies” comment as sarcasm.)

Vance continues to poll well among GOP voters, with 57 percent of registered Republicans viewing him favorably in a recent AP-NORC poll. But the poll also exposed some weaknesses, including that Democrats are more negative toward Vance than Republicans are of Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, 80 percent to 61 percent. Independents also view Vance more negatively than Walz, with 43 percent disliking Vance compared to 30 percent for Walz.

Vance plans to attack Walz during the debate over his record as governor — specifically on his handling of the Minneapolis riots in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, according to one person familiar with the debate strategy who was granted anonymity to speak about the preparations. Vance, as he has done on the campaign trail, will also grill Walz over his 24-year military service after the Minnesota governor said in 2018 “weapons of war, that I carried in war” when explaining why he changed positions on supporting an assault weapons ban when he ran for governor. Harris’ campaign said Walz misspoke.

The person also said that Vance will also attempt to undercut Walz’ image as a moderate (he famously flipped a Minnesota seat) by painting him as a liberal, pointing to some of his the socially progressive policies he signed as governor like a bill that requires students of all gender identities to receive menstrual products, the person said.

It’s a similar strategy Vance used during his debates against former Rep. Tim Ryan in 2022. In his previous Senate debates, Vance effectively brought immigration policy and the economy into the spotlight. He tied Ryan to Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, painted Ryan as a “too liberal” congressman and questioned Ryan on what he had accomplished over his two decades in Congress.

“Tim Ryan says that he believes in reasonable solutions,” Vance said during his last Senate debate. Turning to the congressman, he said, “Well Tim, what were you doing on those reasonable solutions in your 20 years in Washington DC?”

And he’s made the same argument about Harris: “Kamala, day one was 1400 days ago, what the hell have you been doing the whole time?” he said at a rally in Michigan on Wednesday — a line he has used throughout the campaign, specifically when talking about Harris’ day one promises. The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

“A lot of people know him. They know his story,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), a close ally of Vance, said. “If they didn't read the book, they watched the movie, and maybe they're going to see him in person for the first time or speaking for the first time.”

Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.

© Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

'I almost ran off the road': The ad exec behind Carter's winning message

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NEW YORK — “Saturday Night Live” began its 50th season with a parade of former co-stars, including Maya Rudolph as Vice President Kamala Harris, Andy Samberg as her husband Doug Emhoff and Dana Carvey as President Joe Biden.

“We’ve got to stay focused,” Rudolph-as-Harris said at a mock rally in the show’s cold open. “If we win, together, we can end the drama-la and the trauma-la and go relax in our pajama-las.”

After bringing out running mate Tim Walz, played by comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan, she invited Samberg-as Emhoff to the stage and then, almost as an afterthought, Biden, played by the oldest of the group, the 69-year-old Carvey.

“A lot of people forget I’m president, including me,” said Carvey, best known on the show for playing President George H.W. Bush in the late 1980s.

Rudolph and Carvey jointly delivered the “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night” that launched season 50 of the sketch comedy institution.

Rudolph’s return to play Harris — she won an Emmy for playing her previously — had been reported, but it was not certain when she would appear. The guest spots from Carvey, Samberg and Gaffigan were all surprises.

“Designing Women” star Jean Smart, fresh off winning her sixth Emmy for her lead role in “Hacks,” was host, a role the 73-year-old has somehow never played in a four-decade career.

“I remember watching the first episode of ‘SNL’ and thinking, ’someday I’m going to host that show,” Smart said in her opening monologue. “And this is the first Saturday that fit my schedule.”

That first episode came on Oct. 11, 1975, with Lorne Michaels at the helm, just as he is now.

George Carlin hosted and the nation got its first dose of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players: Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Garrett Morris.

There were two musical guests — Billy Preston and Janis Ian — playing two songs apiece, the norm in the early days.

The country singer and rapper Jelly Roll had the music role to himself Saturday, singing his songs “Liar” and “Sober.” Like Smart, he was a first-timer.

Smart introduced Jelly Roll with her “Hacks” co-star Hannah Einbinder, the daughter of original cast member Newman.

That debut show is documented and reenacted in the newly released Jason Reitman film “Saturday Night,” part of a wave of reflection and celebration the show is getting on the cusp of its 50th anniversary.

Despite the showy guest stars on this Saturday night, regular cast members took on the bulk of the show, which quickly settled into its regular routine.

James Austin Johnson was back playing Donald Trump at his own rally, saying he wanted Biden as an opponent instead of Harris.

“We miss Joe Biden, folks,” Johnson’s Trump said. “What we wouldn’t give to have him stand next to me and be old.”

Colin Jost and Michael Che returned for another season of the mock-news “Weekend Update.”

“There were so many insane political stories this summer and everyone kept asking, ‘Are you are you so bummed you aren’t on the air right now?” Jost said to open the segment. “And I was like, ’I have a feeling there’s going to be more that happens when we get back.’”

Rudolph, Carvey, Gaffigan and Samberg joined Smart, Jelly Roll and the cast on stage for the traditional sign-off.

Upcoming episodes are scheduled to feature host Nate Bargatze with musical guest Coldplay, Ariana Grande with Stevie Nicks, Michael Keaton with Billie Eilish and John Mulaney with Chappell Roan.

Those shows will lead up to a three-hour primetime special on Feb. 16 that will serve as the official 50th season celebration. It’s sure to feature a wide range of the many stars the show has spawned, including Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell.

© Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

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.

Biden: ‘Diplomatic solution’ still possible in the Middle East

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Kamala Harris is calling for changes to Senate procedure to pass federal legislation protecting abortion rights.

Harris voiced support for ending the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation in the Senate, commonly known as the filibuster, during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio that aired Tuesday.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris said.

Harris has for months promised that she would sign legislation codifying Roe v. Wade’s protections in federal law but had yet as a presidential nominee to specifically weigh in on whether she supports an exception to the filibuster to do so. President Joe Biden has long said he supports such an exception, and in 2022 Harris promised as vice president to cast a tie-breaking vote to end the filibuster for reproductive rights and voting rights.

Democrats face an uphill battle to keep the Senate this November.

Secret Service admits 'failure' at Trump rally shooting

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