A former member of Congress, who pulled off a rare win for a Democrat in Utah, is drawing early support from an influential national political action committee as new political boundaries offer an unexpected chance to pick up a seat in the deep-red state.
Former Rep. Ben McAdams is being touted by Welcome PAC, which backs more moderate candidates over progressives, for what is expected to be a newly created district, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.
“Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. But it’s usually the best clue we’ve got,” says the fundraising email, which was expected to be distributed to Democrats nationwide on Friday. “Ben McAdams is a superstar.”
The email offers the early contours of a race that could help Democrats as they try to retake the House in the midterms — an effort that has been complicated by a nationwide redistricting war set in motion by President Donald Trump’s push to have Texas draw new congressional boundaries.
Democrats could pick up one or two seats under newly drawn lines in Utah under a redistricting fight that was underway before Trump pressured Texas and set off a wave of gerrymandering in states led by Republicans and Democrats, including Indiana and California.
The court-ordered map in Utah would provide Democrats with a somewhat improved chance of victory in the state: A Salt Lake Tribune analysis pegs the most competitive redrawn districts at R +6 and R+11, well below the 23+ point margins Democrats faced in federal races in 2024.
In 2018, McAdams unseated the late Rep. Mia Love, who won her previous election in the district by 12 points. In 2020, he lost by 1 percentage point to Republican Burgess Owens.
McAdams has not launched a campaign, but filed a statement of candidacy earlier this month with the FEC, allowing him to begin raising money. He is expected to announce a bid once a map is finalized, according to two people with direct knowledge of his thinking. The former lawmaker declined to comment.
“He’s clearly the strongest candidate Dems have had anywhere in nearly a decade,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of Welcome PAC. “We want to take this bigger platform we have and clearly say that he should run — and that people who are listening to our view of the party should show that encouragement by contributing to his campaign account.”
McAdams isn’t the only name in the mix. The slate of potential primary candidates includes 2024 Senate candidate Caroline Gleich, state Sens. Kathleen Riebe and Nate Blouin, and 2022 Senate candidate Kael Weston. None have formally entered the race.
Welcome PAC has been making waves in center-left politics since Trump's reelection. Their WelcomeFest conference in June featured swing state and district Democrats like Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Maine Rep. Jared Golden. Earlier this week, they issued an expansive report on how Democrats can rebuild after their 2024 failures.
“People read the report and are like, ‘What should we do?’ And it’s like ‘well, shit, here’s a clear example,’” Kerr told POLITICO, about supporting McAdams.
As a member of Congress, McAdams was part of the Blue Dogs — the PAC and coalition now helmed by Golden and Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, both Democrats serving in districts Trump won — and the New Democrats caucus. Before Congress, he was mayor of Salt Lake County.
Utah’s new congressional map is not yet final. In August, a district judge ruled the current map — which divides blue Salt Lake County between four districts — ignored the intention of a 2018 ballot initiative calling for an independent commission to draw the boundaries. The GOP-controlled state legislature drew a new map that favors Republicans — but still gives Democrats a better shot than the current map.
A district judge has until Nov. 10 to approve the new map for it to be in place for 2026.
“Right now, Democrats are focused on winning,” said a Utah Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak openly. “We realize this is a huge opportunity to get serious.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ripped the Heritage Foundation on Friday, as conservatives clash over the organization’s continued embrace of Tucker Carlson in the wake of his friendly interview this week with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
“Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” McConnell, the former Republican Senate majority leader, wrote in a post on X. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is…”
In the interview, Carlson said Republican supporters of Israel have been “seized by this brain virus.” And Fuentes told Carlson that “organized Jewry” poses the main obstacle to keeping the country together.
But Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation’s president, defended Carlson in a video posted to X Thursday, and even spoke out against deplatforming Fuentes while adding he disagrees with and abhors “things that Nick Fuentes says.”
The real enemy force, Roberts contended, is “the vile ideas of the left.”
McConnell, who has spent the past several months sinceleaving leadership working to safeguard his foreign policy and ideological worldviews within the Republican Party, panned the conservative think tank’s stance.
“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends,” he said.
The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But McConnell isn’t the only Republican senator taking aim at Carlson for his interview.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also went after the former Fox News host while speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit Thursday in Las Vegas. Cruz has long clashed with Carlson over Israel, including on an episode of Carlson’s podcast in July.
"If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil," said Cruz.
The finance director for Graham Platner’s Senate campaign announced his resignation on Friday, the latest in a series of personnel departures for the Maine hopeful’s high-profile bid that has been marred by controversies over old social media posts and his tattoo with Nazi connotations.
Ronald Holmes, who had served as Platner’s national finance director since August, announced in a post on LinkedIn that he’s leaving the operation. He follows campaign manager Kevin Brown, who stepped down after less than a week on the job citing family reasons, and political director Genevieve McDonald, who resigned in a fiery fashion earlier this month, saying she could not look past some of Platner’s previous Reddit posts, where he self-identified as a communist and downplayed sexual assault in the military.
“I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things,” said Holmes in his post on Friday. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign.”
Holmes did not immediately respond to messages Friday morning. His previous work included the campaigns of Michigan Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Swanson and Rep. Josh Riley.
Platner’s campaign was off to a hot fundraising start, raising more than $3.2 million in his first six weeks as a candidate, largely from small-dollar donors.
In a statement, a campaign spokesperson pointed to the campaign’s focus on those small donors and said fundraising efforts will continue.
“Ron helped the campaign reach out to big dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign's fundraising success has come largely from small dollar donors,” said the spokesperson. “Nearly 90 percent of what we've raised has come from small dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director.”
Platner, who went from an unknown oysterman to a high-profile Senate candidate endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in just a few weeks, apologized for his controversial Reddit posts and covered up his tattoo, saying he only learned after launching his campaign that it could be a Nazi symbol.
He has continued to campaign in recent weeks despite the controversies, holding town halls across the state. His campaign launched an ad this week urging voters to reject a voter-identification measure on Maine’s ballot this November.
Recent polls, though wildly different from one another, have shown Platner as a strong candidate in the Democratic primary that also includes Gov. Janet Mills — who is national Democrats’ preferred candidate in the race — along with a handful of other contenders including former congressional staffer Jordan Wood.
In Wisconsin, Democrats are launching nearly 400 canvassing events this weekend focused on health care. A major liberal advocacy group, Protect Our Care, will push a six-figure digital campaign. Top Democratic governors, including Kentucky’s Andy Beshear and Laura Kelly of Kansas, are holding press calls to “to slam D.C. Republicans for causing Americans’ health care premiums to skyrocket.”
It adds up to a campaign of doomsday messaging aimed at voters’ concerns about health care as premium spikes are due to arrive.
“November 1st is a health care cliff for the American people, and I think it's also a political cliff for Republicans,” said Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care, a liberal nonprofit that has hosted a dozen town halls with House Democrats throughout the country on the impending premium increases. “More and more people are paying attention to it.”
In the coming days, Democrats will launch ad buys, hold town halls and convene media appearances to highlight the Nov. 1 date when Americans must choose to purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace with higher premiums or forgo it altogether, an attempt to ensure Republicans shoulder the blame for rising health care costs.
Some of the tactics, like the DNC holding a call with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are routine. But others are more national in scope, including Protect Our Care is deploying a digital search advertising campaign that targets people who are researching their ACA health care plans online with ads blaming Republicans. Those ads will run in House districts held by vulnerable Republicans in Arizona, Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania, among other places.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also has an upcoming ad scheduled to run in 35 competitive House districts starting this weekend. The four-figure digital buy shows Speaker Mike Johnson on vacation — a reference to the House being in recess for six weeks amid the looming insurance hikes.
In the days leading up to Nov. 1, Democratic governors have described how the hikes could devastate Americans. On Monday, outgoing Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers released the 2026 plan outlining rates for the state’s individual marketplace, which showed that many premiums for individuals and families will double. Some seniors will face an increase of more than $30,000 per year. Nationally, on average, out-of-pocket premium payments for subsidized ACA enrollees will be 114 percent higher without the tax credits, according to KFF, a health care research group.
“Republicans’ reckless decisions are causing prices on everything to go up,” Evers said in a statement. “Republicans need to end this chaos and stop working to make healthcare more expensive. It’s that simple.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill have refused to engage in health care negotiations with Democrats until the government reopens, and many within the GOP are resistant to extending the tax credits at all. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would meet “soon” with Democrats to discuss an appropriations agreement, which would amount to the most high-level meeting to end the shutdown that will soon enter its second month.
In Virginia and New Jersey, where voters will cast ballots next week in off-year bellwether elections, the Democratic candidates for governor have made combating rising costs central to their campaigns — tying that message to the looming ACA hikes. It's an early road test of a message the party will hammer leading up to the midterms: President Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington have made life more expensive.
Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, has highlighted how out-of-pocket costs could be two to more than five times higher for families who purchase insurance through the ACA exchange, and those hikes could force thousands of people to go uninsured. Spanberger this week toured a rural hospital in southwest Virginia that stands to feel the effects of the Trump administration’s tax law that slashes Medicaid.
In Wisconsin, a battleground state that backed Trump by under 1 point last year, Democrats are launching hundreds of canvassing operations focused on subsidy cuts, and are planning messaging billboards as well. This weekend, as Wisconsinites see tangible increases in their premiums, Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker said, “the objective reality is going to hit people in a way that you can't talking point your way out of, if you're the Republican Party.”
Wisconsin Republicans aren’t planning to spend money in response, however. State GOP Chair Brian Schimming says Democrats are going to hang themselves by tying the subsidy cuts to the shutdown.
“I think they're putting a massive, massive bet on not just the shutdown, but on getting people to think that the shutdown is … Republicans’ fault,” he said.
One Republican candidate in South Carolina’s open gubernatorial primary said Donald Trump would “decide my fate.” Another pledged to send the state’s National Guard troops wherever Trump wants. A third accompanied the then-presidential candidate to his 2024 criminal trial in Manhattan.
In recent interviews with POLITICO, three contenders for the seat being vacated by Gov. Henry McMaster gushed over Trump’s coveted endorsement and described some of their early efforts to secure it as the president plans to attend a fundraiser in the state for the reelection of his longtime ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The winner of next June’s Republican primary is all but guaranteed to become deep-red South Carolina’s next executive. The candidates include the state’s lieutenant governor, attorney general and two members of its congressional delegation — all of whom are thirsting for the president’s support.
A new Winthrop University poll — the first major independent survey of the primary — found Rep. Nancy Mace and Lt. Gov. Pam Evette led the field in a statistical tie at 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Rep. Ralph Norman and Attorney General Alan Wilson followed with 8 percent each.
Though early favorites have started to emerge, the race remains wide open without Trump’s nod.
“He’ll get to decide my fate. He is a kingmaker, and I hope in this case he will be a queenmaker,” said Mace, the third-term member of Congress known for being outspoken on conservative cable news and social media.
South Carolina has a long history of fierce loyalty to Trump. McMaster became the first statewide elected official to endorse the president’s nascent 2016 campaign, and Graham is one of his closest advisers on Capitol Hill and friends on the putting green. Democrats haven’t won the state in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976.
But so far, Trump has stayed out of the race, forcing the contenders to try to define themselves and their candidacies without input from someone who has dominated the party for a decade and remade it in his image. In that way, the race — taking place during a pivotal midterm cycle — mirrors the challenge awaiting the Republican Party, which must begin to grapple with a future without Trump, who is in his final term.
For now, the candidates aren’t willing to explore that future.
“Donald Trump is the gold standard. He casts a very long shadow over state politics here in South Carolina, especially in the Republican primary,” said Wilson. “Anyone who says they don’t want the president’s endorsement is crazy.”
From his perch in Columbia, Wilson has filed nearly 20 briefs across the federal judiciary in support of Trump administration initiatives like federalizing the National Guard or enforcing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, according to a POLITICO analysis. His campaign website features a “Trump Tough” section, which includes a slideshow of selfies and step-and-repeat pictures with the president.
Trump’s only attention to the race so far was a captionless post on Truth Social in mid-August showing the results of a survey that put Mace atop of the crowded field — a poll that the congresswoman shared with the president, according to campaign spokesperson Piper Gifford.
“I absolutely communicate with the White House on this race and provide data and information to them and to those who will be ultimately making the decision,” Mace said in the recent interview.
Wilson has also been in touch with “high level members” of the White House about his candidacy, but has yet to broach the race directly with Trump. “They are aware of my campaign. They are aware of what I have done as attorney general. They are aware that I have defended the president's agenda, that I have defended the president,” he said.
Evette entered the race in mid-July. Though she served two terms alongside McMaster, her foray into gubernatorial contention will be her first time running for elected office on her own ticket. Asked about any behind-the-scenes conversations with the White House seeking support, the state’s second-in-command demurred, while reiterating her loyalty to Trump at his political nadir.
“In January of ‘23, President Trump came to South Carolina, and he was looking for friends,” Evette said, recalling Trump’s brief time in the political wilderness following his 2020 loss and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “Out of all the people that are in this race, I was the only one that showed up for him, stood shoulder to shoulder with him when there were no polls to say that he was going to win.”
She recalled national consultants warning her, “‘You have a bright future, you're killing yourself. Like, why are you doing this? He's going to get indicted.’ And I was like, well, loyalty matters.”
Loyalty to Trump might determine his endorsement, and the candidates are willing to leverage that litmus test against one another.
Unlike Evette, Mace publicly rebuked the president following the attack on the Capitol but has since returned to his side as a faithful ally on Capitol Hill.
Norman might have the hardest case to make in seeking Trump’s endorsement.
As a member of Congress’ hard-right Freedom Caucus, Norman’s deficit-hawk style has at times positioned him against some White House-backed legislation that the group criticised for expanding the national debt. Perhaps worse for his fate: endorsing South Carolina’s Nikki Haley during the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
“Ralph Norman has the best record of voting with Trump of any candidate and is proud to work with him in Congress. He'd welcome the President's endorsement but knows that the President has other friends in this race and he respects that,” Norman spokesperson Evan Newman said in a statement.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s conversations around a possible endorsement or whether he is communicating with any of the candidates. The lack of endorsement in South Carolina isn’t indicative of a larger trend, though. The president has already thrown his support behind Rep. Byron Donalds to succeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis next year, and his former rival-turned-ally Vivek Ramaswamy got the coveted endorsement not long after his campaign launch in February.
Lacking a race-changing boost from the president, the candidates have touted their own fundraising as evidence of grassroots support and the campaign strength. By those metrics, no runaway favorite has yet to emerge.
The four contenders each reported raising over a million dollars since starting their campaigns, according to financial reports filed with the South Carolina Elections Commission. Evette and Norman led the pack with $1.4 and $1.3 million respectively, though both also gave their own campaigns six-figure sums.
Wilson, who launched his campaign first, has just under $1.3 million. According to a memo released by his campaign, about one-fifth of that haul includes a six-figure transfer from his state attorney general campaign account, with “still more transfers on the way.”
“They believed in him to be Attorney General and now want him to be Governor,” campaign finance chair Barry Wynn wrote.
Mace’s fundraising shows her slightly trailing her competitors, with $1.06 million raised, but other indicators bode well for her campaign. In addition to the new Winthrop poll showing her with a slight lead, she pulled in over 18,500 individual donations, exponentially more than her rivals.
In addition to the candidates’ agreement on the eminence of a presidential endorsement, the emerging issues separating them are decidedly local.
They’re aligned on the perennial sticking points that are likely to define the race: lowering taxes, and specifically eliminating the state’s income tax, and fixing the state’s aging infrastructure as it buckles under population growth.
Judicial reform has also emerged as a salient issue, with South Carolina and Virginia being the only states in the country where judges are selected by a commission and approved solely by a legislative vote. Neither the governor nor voters have a say in who serves on the local bench.
“Many of these folks have cases before these judges and then many of these attorneys fund the attorney generals and the solicitors when they're running for office. Everybody gets paid, and nobody goes to jail,” Mace said.
The candidates don’t seem to agree on how to implement this one: as the state’s top prosecutor, Wilson helped push some recent changes through the state legislature that allowed the governor to appoint one-third of the seats on a selection committee that took effect this year.
“I believe that the governor should have all of the appointments on the [Judicial Merit Selection Committee],” Wilson said, while expressing openness to pushing a constitutional amendment that would embrace the federal advise-and-consent model.
Evette, banking on the relationship she forged with the state legislature alongside McMaster, hopes to move directly to amending the state constitution to have the state mirror federal judicial appointments.
Norman is the only candidate to call for direct election of judges in the state.
McMaster, who has focused on business development in the relatively small state, is preparing to leave his two terms in Columbia with a 46-percent approval rating, matching Trump at the top of the public figures included in the Winthrop University survey.
McMaster has so far demurred on whether he’ll endorse any of his potential successors.
Speaking to reporters recently, he said, “Elections will come and go, and endorsements will be made whenever they’re made.”
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.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts is standing by Tucker Carlson after the conservative podcaster’s friendly interview with Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes drew condemnation from within a GOP grappling with a series of antisemitic incidents.
Roberts, in a video posted to X Thursday, denounced the “venomous coalition” that has criticized Carlson and said “their attempt to cancel him will fail,” though he didn’t specifically name anyone. He said Carlson remains a “close friend” of the highly influential conservative group and “always will be.”
Roberts added that “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer, either.”
Roberts, whose group launched “Project Esther” to combat antisemitism, also said “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned.”
The Heritage Foundation leader’s public support of Carlson comes as the former Fox News host faces backlash from conservatives over an inflammatory interview with Fuentes that was laced with antisemitism. Carlson said GOP supporters of Israel — including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — suffer from a “brain virus,” while Fuentes said the “big challenge” to unifying the country was “organized Jewry.”
Huckabee, who is set to speak at this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership conference in Las Vegas, dismissed the criticism.
“Wasn’t aware that Tucker despises me. I do get that a lot from people not familiar with the Bible or history. Somehow I will survive this animosity,” Huckabee posted on X.
Cruz defended Huckabee in his own post. The former governor “is a pastor and a patriot who loves America, loves Israel, and loves Jesus. I’m proud to be in his company,” Cruz said.
Roberts and Carlson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Fuentes could not be reached for comment.
The furor over the Fuentes sitdown comes as Republicans wrestle with how to respond to a string of antisemitic incidents on the right. POLITICO first reported two weeks ago on an explosive Telegram group chat in which leaders of various Young Republican groups joked about the Holocaust and lauded Adolf Hitler. A day later, a staffer for Rep. Dave Taylor’s (R-Ohio) joined a virtual meeting with a flag featuring a Nazi symbol visible behind him.
And last week, POLITICO reported on another group chat in which Paul Ingrassia, then Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel at the Justice Department, claimed he has “a Nazi streak.” Ingrassia previously appeared at a rally for Fuentes.
The incidents have broadly divided the GOP. Cruz recently decried what he called “antisemitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen…in my entire life.” Some prominent GOP officials swiftly denounced the racist texts in the Young Republicans group.
But others have followed Vice President JD Vance’s lead in attempting to divert attention onto Democrats as one of their candidates, Virginia Attorney General nominee Jay Jones, became engulfed in his own violence-laced texting scandal. And that was before Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol forced Democrats to confront antisemitism within their party.
Female mayors experience political violence at a much higher rate than their male counterparts, according to the results of a new study conducted by the Mayors Innovation Project.
The findings come as America faces an increase in political violence — including the assassination of Charlie Kirk last month and the killing of Minnesota State Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and killing attempt of Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman.
“I don't know if America is ready to talk about the steps that are … giving greater permission and room for violence,” said former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, who helped develop and facilitate the survey and conducted interviews with some of the other current and former elected officials who were polled.
According to the poll, female mayoral candidates reported experiencing harassment in greater numbers both while campaigning and while in office. Eighty-four percent of female candidates were harassed while campaigning, compared to 64 percent of male candidates. And once in office, 25 percent of female mayors experienced harassment at least three times per month, while 10 percent of male mayors reported the same level and frequency of harassment. Nearly twice as many female mayors also reported threats to their family as male mayors.
The survey was conducted in February 2024 of about 235 mayors, who answered the survey online. Respondents were about 60 percent male and 60 percent were full-time mayors (versus part-time). Of the respondents, 43 percent represented cities of less than 30,000 people and 42 percent represented cities with a population of 30,000 to 100,000. Only 15 percent represented cities over 100,000. The survey was funded by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.
Former Kankakee, Illinois, Mayor Chasity Wells-Armstrong also helped develop and conduct the survey. She herself was the target of harassment as mayor, and told POLITICO in an interview that she did not want to run for a second term in part because of the threats she experienced.
While in office, Wells-Armstrong said someone shot a bullet through her garage door. Another constituent posted a photo of a mailer she sent out with the caption “this is good for target practice.” And one man left a voicemail saying that she should be thrown off the third floor.
The poll found that this type of harassment came at a cost to the mayor and to the city, in terms of additional security and also the time taken to deal with harassment or threats that could have been spent dealing with city concerns.
After the poll, the Innovation Project also conducted in-depth interviews with 49 female mayors. One of them said a local school had to add extra security after a potential threat was made to a mayor’s grandchild, and another said they spent half of their $10,000 salary putting up security cameras.
By far, the most common experience reported by mayors was degrading comments on social media, said Katya Spear, co-author of the report and managing director of the Mayors Innovation Project.
“It was so pervasive that we basically stopped reporting on it,” Spear explained.
Americans are taking threats of violence more seriously in the wake of the Kirk and Hortman assassinations. Some states have moved to toughen penalties for politically motivated violence. Others are now removing the home addresses of politicians from public documents and websites.
Wells-Armstrong said that deeming crimes motivated by politics as hate crimes would be a big step, and also suggests publishing a list of people who commit political violence — similar to the sex offender database.
“If you hit people where they're going to be fined or lose their jobs or those types of things, I believe that that can be a big deterrent,” she explained.
Cities can also support increases in safety and security, the study’s authors suggest. Both Wells-Armstrong and Hodges said they were told they were overreacting when asking for additional security or for law enforcement to check on a threat — like the bullet holes in Wells-Armstrong’s garage door. Having an infrastructure that takes harassment and threats against all mayors seriously — including women — could prevent actual acts of violence and help mayors feel supported enough to continue doing their job well.
“In light of the many instances of physical and psychological threats, harassment, and actions documented here and in other research (and the media) recently, it’s critical to build public and media support for reasonable requests for safety-related staffing and infrastructure in a way that does not hinder the democratic process,” the report reads.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the status of Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman. He was the target of an attempted killing. It also misidentified collaborators of the study. This story also clarifies that the poll was conducted in 2024.
Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive Democrat running for an open House seat in Illinois, faces federal charges after attending a protest at a U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement processing center outside Chicago.
Abughazaleh, a social media influencer who recently moved to the state, was charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer and assaulting or impeding an officer as they engaged in official duties at the Broadview ICE detention center.
According to the indictment, Abughazaleh was among several protesters who in September allegedly surrounded a government vehicle, banged on the hood and windows and scratched the body of the car, including etching the word “PIG” into the vehicle. The indictment also alleges the protesters broke one of the vehicle’s side mirrors and a rear windshield wiper.
Video of the encounter that day, posted by Abughazaleh, showed her and protesters placing their hands on the vehicle as the agent continued to slowly drive forward into the line of protesters, with some banging on the car.
Abughazaleh is one of the more than a dozen Democratic candidates running for Congress to fill the seat now held by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who announced earlier this year that she won't seek reelection in 2026.
In a statement, Abughazaleh called the charges “political prosecution” and a “gross attempt to silence dissent.”
“This case is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up,” Abughazaleh said, adding that the charges are “unjust.”
Other political figures named in the indictment include Catherine Sharp, a chief of staff to a Chicago alderman and a candidate for Cook County Board; Michael Rabbitt, a Chicago Democratic ward committeeman; and Brian Straw, a member of the suburban Oak Park Village board.
Sharp's attorney, Molly Armour, called the charges "ludicrous," saying, "we are confident that a jury of Ms. Sharp’s peers will see them for exactly what they are: an effort by the Trump administration to frighten people out of participating in protest and exercising their First Amendment rights.”
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Advocates and politicians have protested regularly outside the Broadview detention center since President Donald Trump ordered ICE agents into the city to conduct mass arrests.
Abughazaleh has previously protested outside the center, including at least once prior when she was teargassed and thrown to the ground by an ICE agent.
Following the release of the indictment, Evanston mayor Daniel Biss — who is also running for the seat — called the charges “frivolous” and accused ICE of engaging in “violent and dangerous behavior at Broadview.”
“As someone who has protested at Broadview multiple times, I know these protests are nonviolent demonstrations against the kidnapping of our neighbors,” Biss said in a statement posted on X. “Now, the Trump Administration is targeting protestors, including political candidates, in an effort to silence dissent and scare residents into submission. It won’t work.”
Graham Platner’s campaign manager is stepping down after less than a week on the job, the latest departure on a campaign that has seen several high-profile shake-ups in recent weeks as it attempts to fend off a string of controversies.
"Graham is a dear friend,” Kevin Brown, the former campaign manager, told POLITICO in a statement Monday. “I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way. Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race and we want to lean into this new experience as a family so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the Manager he deserves."
The progressive oyster farmer running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins has attempted to turn the page on the since-deleted comments, explaining in a video that the comments reflected his mental state following his military deployment to Afghanistan and that they are not representative of his present views.
POLITICO reported on Thursday that Brown, who has worked for Democrats like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, joined the campaign as manager after Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director, resigned.
The campaign has also brought on an in-house attorney and hired a compliance firm tied to progressive candidates, in addition to sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers, POLITICO previously reported.
His campaign has also been bogged down by controversy surrounding a tattoo that resembles a Nazi symbol. Platner has said that he was not aware of the symbol’s implications when he got it nearly two decades ago and has since had the tattoo covered up.
Still, Platner has continued to poll ahead of his Democratic primary opponent, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, despite the party establishment throwing its weight behind Mills’ campaign.
Americans are sharply divided on the NFL’s decision to feature Puerto Rican-born artist Bad Bunny at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, according to a new survey by Quinnipiac University.
Overall, nearly half of respondents said they approve of the decision, with 29 percent disapproving and another 24 percent offering no opinion. While nearly 3 in 4 Democrats said they approve of the NFL’s decision, more than 3 in 5 Republicans oppose the move.
Opinions were also largely divided by race and age: Bad Bunny enjoyed significantly more support among Black and Hispanic adults than among white respondents, and his biggest contingent of support came from those aged 18-34.
The NFL, which has repeatedly drawn the ire of the MAGA movement in recent years, once again faced attacks from President Donald Trump and his supporters after announcing last month that Bad Bunny would take the stage at the most-watched live event in the country.
The artist, who was one of the top three most-streamed artists in the world on Spotify last year, has been vocal in his criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, declining to schedule dates in the mainland U.S. during his upcoming world tour due to concerns about heightened ICE presence. The music video for his song “NUEVAYoL” also features a parody of Trump’s voice purporting to “apologize to the immigrants of America.”
Trump called the decision “absolutely ridiculous” in an interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly earlier this month, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has warned that ICE agents would be “all over” the Super Bowl.
Still, the NFL has stood by its decision, with Commissioner Roger Goodell reiterating last week that the league would move forward with the show despite blowback from conservatives.
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted by telephone Oct. 16-20, with a random sample of 1,519 adults. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Centrist Democrats have a plan for their party to win again: Talk more about the economy and less about democracy. Reject corporate interests and ideological purity tests. Keep the progressive policies that are popular — like expanding health care and raising the minimum wage — and moderate on issues like immigration and crime.
Those are among the takeaways laid out in an expansive report Monday from WelcomePAC, which supports center-left candidates, on how Democrats can rebound from last year’s electoral wipeout in 2026 and 2028.
The 58-page prescription comes as Democrats continue to war over the direction of their party nearly a year after their national shellacking. And it drops a week before a slate of gubernatorial and mayoral contests that will serve as the first major temperature check of the electorate since 2024 and President Donald Trump retaking the Oval Office.
It features input from a who’s who of top Democratic consultants — including David Axelrod; James Carville; David Plouffe, a top adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign; Lis Smith; and former Biden White House spokesperson Andrew Bates — as well as analysts and strategists like Nate Silver, Sarah Longwell and former Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois.
The report is less an autopsy of the 2024 election — it spends a scant five pages on former President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ campaigns — and more so an indictment of the party’s leftward shift since the Obama administration and the donors, campaign operatives and progressive advocacy groups the authors blame for putting Democrats in an unwinnable position.
It uses polling data to reinforce the message many centrist Democrats believe voters sent the party in 2024: that voters felt Democrats were prioritizing democracy, abortion and identity over top-of-mind issues like the economy, immigration and crime. It argues that moderate candidates tend to overperform progressive ones, citing centrist Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) as models for how the party should message on border security and the economy.
And Democrats “should distance ourselves from the Biden administration,” the authors write, “particularly by critiquing the Biden administration’s approach to border security and the cost of living.” Harris, they posit, lost in part because of her failure to do so — and because voters couldn’t let go of her past progressive policies even as she ran a more moderate campaign.
The report doesn’t call for a wholesale rejection of progressive stances. Expanding access to public health care, making the wealthy “pay their fair share” in taxes and raising the minimum wage are all popular with voters, and WelcomePAC believes the party should continue to focus on them. Democrats, the authors say, should emulate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Democratic nominee for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “relentless focus” on affordability.
But they also say Democrats should focus less on “lower-salience issues where our views are unpopular,” such as transgender athletes. They insist that running against the establishment — as is en vogue these days — doesn’t have to mean running toward the left. And they contend that simply running younger candidates “is not a panacea.”
WelcomePAC made no mention of next week’s gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia. But their strategy will undergo an early test in both states, where the party has put forward a pair of moderate lawmakers with military and national security backgrounds who are running campaigns centered on affordability. Democrats are favored to win both races, though Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s contest in New Jersey is expected to be far closer than former Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s in Virginia.
WelcomePAC warned against drawing conclusions from the elections heading into 2028 in its report, insisting that “doing well in midterms and special elections does not guarantee Democrats anywhere close to the same results in a presidential race” because less-engaged voters tend to skip those intermediate contests.
But Democrats across the ideological spectrum will undoubtedly be scanning the results of next week’s elections in two states that stayed blue in 2024 but shifted toward Trump for signs of what is — and isn’t — working for the party heading into a high-stakes midterm election and the critical presidential contest to follow.
Republicans’ redistricting push is on ice in New Hampshire, in a blow to the White House’s aggressive effort to protect the GOP’s House majority in the midterms.
State Sen. Dan Innis has yanked his own bill that would have kicked off a mid-decade redraw of the state’s two congressional districts in the face of resistance from GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte.
“The governor wasn’t that supportive of it since it’s in the middle of the normal redistricting cycle,” Innis, a Republican who recently ended his U.S. Senate campaign, told POLITICO. “Rather than create a difficult situation in my own house, the New Hampshire State House, I thought it made sense to save this for another time.”
Innis’ decision to withdraw his bill deals the White House another setback in its pressure campaign to strong-arm GOP-led states into redistricting. Indiana Senate Republican leadership said this week that they lack the votes to pass a mid-cycle redraw in the Hoosier State, though Gov. Mike Braun is still eyeing a special session to redo the state’s maps. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about New Hampshire.
The White House had been ratcheting up pressure on New Hampshire Republicans to put forward a new map for months, threatening a take-no-prisoners approach that included weighing a primary challenge to Ayotte. Trump ally and longtime New Hampshire resident Corey Lewandowski, who is serving as a Department of Homeland Security senior adviser, said days later he was considering running for governor against Ayotte.
There is some interest among Granite State Republican lawmakers in remapping, because New Hampshire has been using a court-approved congressional map since then-Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, vetoed plans the Legislature sent him in 2022. Democrats need to net three seats in next year’s midterms in order to win back control of the House, and the Trump team was hoping to secure one seat in a New Hampshire redraw.
Both of the districts are currently represented by Democrats, although the state’s open 1st District will likely be a battleground next November even without new lines.
State lawmakers say they would want buy-in from Ayotte, who isn’t budging.
The first-term governor has repeatedly rejected the idea of a mid-decade redraw, saying the “timing is off” and insisting the Trump team’s pressure tactics wouldn’t change her mind.
“We’re in the middle of the census, I don’t think the timing is right for redistricting,” Ayotte recently told local television station WMUR, adding that “the thing [Granite Staters are] talking to me about is not redistricting.”
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.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is known for being a firebrand when it comes to his conservative, small-government principles. He’s also known for being a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, despite taking issue with some of the president’s policies.
But Paul takes issue with being what he says is the only Republican willing to stand up to Trump and his latest moves which, according to Senator Paul, fly in the face of GOP principles and campaign promises.
Most recently, he was concerned over his Republican colleagues’ hesitation to confront Trump about his now-former nominee to lead Office of the Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia. Ingrassia withdrew from the Senate confirmation process earlier this week after POLITICO’s reporting on texts that showed him making racist and antisemitic remarks.
“I hear a lot of flack from Republicans and they want me to do it. They say, ‘Oh, well, you're not afraid of the president. You go tell him his nominee can't make it,’” says Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “I'm just tired of always being the whipping boy.”
In this week’s episode of The Conversation, Paul joins POLITICO’s Dasha Burns — just hours after he was snubbed from a presidential luncheon — to talk about this GOP fear of confronting Trump, support for House colleague Rep. Thomas Massie, the administration's latest foreign policy moves, the Epstein files and a “farmageddon” that may be on the horizon.
“If I'm given the choice of President Trump versus Harris or versus Biden, without question, I choose President Trump over and over again,” says Paul. But that doesn't mean I'm going to sit back and just say, ‘Oh, I'm leaving all my beliefs on the doorstep. I'm no longer going to be for free trade. I'm no longer going to be for balanced budgets. I'm no longer going to be opposed to killing people without trials, without naming them, without evidence.’ No, I have to remain who I am.”
Later in the show, Dasha speaks to epidemiologist and public health professor Katelyn Jetelina, the founder of the Substack “Your Local Epidemiologist." They discuss what it’s like being a health communicator in the time of MAHA and why she thinks public health is nearing "system collapse."
If you want more of The Conversation, check out the interviews with Senator Paul and Dr. Jetelina on YouTube and the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Graham Platner is shaking up his campaign amid a swirl of controversy, bringing in a longtime friend to function as his Maine Senate campaign’s new manager, hiring a compliance firm and sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers.
Kevin Brown — who became the campaign manager this week and whose past campaign work includes the presidential bids of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, though he has not worked in Maine — is only one of the changes. The campaign has also brought on an in-house attorney, as well as compliance firm Spruce Street Consulting, which has ties to a constellation of buzzy progressives including Zohran Mamdani.
Amid fallout from Platner’s controversial years-old social media posts, his campaign began sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers last week, according to his former top political director, Genevieve McDonald, who said she declined to sign one.
“The campaign offered me $15,000 to sign a NDA,” McDonald told POLITICO in an interview. “I did not accept the offer. I certainly could have used the money. I quit my job to work on Platner’s campaign, believing it was something different than it is.”
A statement from the campaign referred to the $15,000 offer as standard severance. A Platner campaign spokesperson said the team recently hired Spruce Street “to take over campaign compliance to institute standard practices that had yet to be put into place. Some of those standards had to be instituted retroactively but as a matter of course we do not require anyone previously involved in the campaign to do so. Genevieve McDonald was offered severance which is standard for all campaign employees and contractors.”
The moves to salvage a campaign months after its launch underscore how fast Platner took off and how imperiled he finds himself, in a crucial state for Democrats in their uphill quest to retake the Senate. Platner burst onto the scene with viral videos as a kind of progressive warrior poet, campaigning for Mainers’ “freedom to live a life of dignity and joy.” But his promising bid has been beset by negative stories about his past over the last week, shortly after Gov. Janet Mills, favored by national Democrats to take on Sen. Susan Collins, entered the primary.
Revelations of the staffing changes and non-disclosure agreements — which have not been previously reported — come as Platner’s campaign is in damage control. On Wednesday, the candidate confirmed to The Advocatethat his Reddit posts included “homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes, and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men.”
That follows Platner expressing regret over getting a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest 20 years ago, along with previously unearthed offensive Reddit posts, including one from 2013 downplaying sexual assault in the military and another since-deleted 2018 one suggesting violence is necessary to enact social change. Platner has apologized for the posts and said they do not represent his growth in recent years.
Brown, the new campaign manager, declined to comment on the record.
The non-disclosure agreement first circulated among the Senate Democratic hopeful’s campaign in the hours after he came under fire for those Reddit posts last week.
The paperwork — sent electronically by a campaign contractor Sunday to McDonald, who resigned two days earlier — was voided by the campaign at 7:04 p.m. Wednesday, several days after she had already resigned and hours after POLITICO requested comment from the campaign on its use of NDAs.
The NDA — titled "Graham for Maine NDA.pdf” — was sent by Victoria Perrone, a political compliance expert and Spruce Street’s president and founder. Peronne, reached by phone, confirmed Platner was a client but would not comment further.
McDonald said she understood the financial offer to be conditional on her signing the NDA. She provided a screenshot of a text message from Perrone suggesting Monday that if McDonald could "get it back to me before the end of the day, I can get your payments out the door."
McDonald said that Daniel Moraff, who was a consultant on Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn’s 2024 campaign, functioned as the de facto campaign manager prior to Brown’s arrival this week. In a brief phone call, Moraff said he was never officially Platner’s campaign manager.
McDonald resigned last week, citing Platner’s past posts.
“Either they didn't thoroughly vet him or they didn't think the things they found would be a problem,” McDonald said in an interview. “Either way, that was a poor calculus. You cannot say things like rural Mainers are ‘racist’ and ‘stupid’ or you're a radicalized communist at 37, play them off as 'you were a young man’ and remain a serious contender against Susan Collins. This was four years ago.”
A Platner campaign representative called McDonald a “disgruntled former employee” to the Bangor Daily News, before voiding her NDA offer.
It remains unclear whether the controversy surrounding Platner’s past will present a long-term drag on his campaign in this anything-goes era of politics for both parties.
A poll conducted over the past week — as some of Platner’s Reddit controversies were making news — and released Thursday by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center found Platner leading Mills in a primary matchup, 58 percent to 24 percent among first choices for Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, with remaining voters preferring other candidates or undecided.
The poll was largely conducted after the first revelations about Platner’s social media history had emerged, but before news of his tattoo. It found both him and Mills with positive favorability numbers among likely Democratic primary voters, with Platner’s advantage driven by younger voters.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Four family members of a Republican running for governor in Illinois were killed in a Montana helicopter crash, his campaign said Thursday.
Killed in the crash Wednesday were the son and daughter-in-law of former state Sen. Darren Bailey, a Republican who lost the 2022 gubernatorial election in Illinois and is seeking his party’s nomination again in next year’s race.
Bailey’s son, Zachary, his wife, Kelsey, and their two young children, Vada Rose, 12, and Samuel, 7, died in the crash, his campaign said in a statement. The couple’s third child was not on the helicopter.
“Darren and Cindy are heartbroken by this unimaginable loss. They are finding comfort in their faith, their family, and the prayers of so many who love and care for them,” the statement said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that it was investigating a helicopter crash in eastern Montana near the town of Ekalaka. The sheriff’s office in Carter County said the helicopter went down southwest of the town early Wednesday evening.
Bailey, from the southern Illinois town of Xenia, announced this year that he is seeking the GOP’s nominee for governor in 2026. He lost to Gov. JB Pritzker in 2022 after serving single, two-year terms in both the Illinois House and Senate.
He unsuccessfully challenged five-term incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost in last year’s primary race for a district that covers much of the bottom one-third of Illinois.
Illinois GOP Chair Kathy Salvi said in a statement that the party is grieving the tragic loss. “Please join us in keeping the Bailey family in our thoughts and prayers during this unimaginable time,” the statement said.
Some of Washington’s biggest lobbying firms raked in unprecedented amounts of cash last quarter. But it’s the upstart firms with ties to President Donald Trump or his administration that have been drowning in lobbying fees, lapping their more established rivals on K Street as Trump’s second term continues to scramble the hierarchy of the influence industry.
Ballard Partners led the charge with more than $25 million in lobbying revenues in the third quarter, shattering the firm’s previous record of $20.7 million the previous quarter. Clients flocked to the firm that once counted White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi as employees.
Ballard’s phenomenal growth — the firm is set to add 5,000 square feet of new office space in the coming weeks, despite previously having moved into larger offices in the last few years — is another indicator of a transformation of lobbying in Trump’s second term. The biggest winners aren’t the massive law and lobbying firms that have pulled together deep benches of bipartisan lobbyists with extensive policy expertise and ties to the Hill and party establishment.
Those carefully curated rosters, aimed at insulating firms from the whiplash of transitions in political power, are being supplanted in value by the consolidation of federal authority within the West Wing — and the select group of firms that might be able to get a foot in the door.
“The industry is in an adjustment year as lobbying needs have changed under the Trump administration in a way not normal for a ‘new’ President,” John Raffaelli, a longtime Democratic lobbyist and founder of the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, wrote in an email.
Ballard is perhaps the biggest winner of all. The firm signed roughly three dozen new clients during the third quarter, including one of Brazil’s top business lobbies, the Swiss watchmaker Breitling, the city of Miami and the Port of Long Beach. It collected six-figure payments from over 80 clients, according to a POLITICO analysis of disclosures and reported holding three of the most lucrative lobbying contracts on K Street last quarter.
The runner-up last quarter was a decades-old mainstay of the D.C. lobbying world, but one that touts its own ties to the White House.
BGR Group, which employs Trump adviser David Urban and previously employed Transportation Secretary (and acting NASA Chief) Sean Duffy, reported $19.2 million in lobbying revenues in Q3 — up from $17.7 million in Q2 and $11.4 million a year ago.
“Every one of our policy practice areas has got something big going on,” said Loren Monroe, a principal at BGR. He pointed to the firm’s leading health care practice, whose clients include marquee drug lobbies, health systems, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, patient groups and providers.
The firm also represents top targets of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, including pesticide companies and giant food conglomerates. It has signed up elite universities whose federal funding has been frozen, crypto firms looking for a light regulatory touch and defense companies seeking business.
BGR leapfrogged two of K Street’s more recent leaders, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which respectively took in $18.9 million and $16.3 million in lobbying revenue last quarter.
Another firm with close ties to the White House, Miller Strategies, jumped into the top five with $14.1 million last quarter, up from $2.9 million a year ago. Miller Strategies is led by Jeff Miller, a top GOP fundraiser who served as one of the finance chairs for Trump’s second inauguration.
When it comes to Trump’s impact on the lobbying industry, the rising tide has lifted most boats.
Brownstein’s third quarter earnings were still a firm record, and while Akin’s numbers were down slightly from the previous quarter, the firm had its best third quarter ever.
Across the top 20 firms by revenue, 14 shops saw their revenue rise by double digit percentages or more, according to the POLITICO analysis and numbers provided by the firms.
Of the top 20, only Forbes Tate Partners and Capitol Counsel saw their lobbying income decline compared to the same time a year ago — and those decreases were minuscule, coming in at 0.3 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively.
“I think for a traditional bipartisan shop we have managed this well,” said Raffaelli, whose firm reported a 2.3 percent increase in revenues compared to the second quarter.
Another Trump-linked firm that has capitalized is Continental Strategy, which was started in 2021 by former Trump administration official Carlos Trujillo. The firm’s lobbyists include former Trump campaign aides and former top aides to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Continental reported $8.3 million in lobbying fees in Q3, compared to nearly $400,000 during the same period last year.
A person familiar with the firm's thinking said that Continental hasn’t needed to do much outbound client prospecting to fuel its boom in business. New business has been driven more by referrals from existing clients, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss business dynamics.
“Our growth isn’t driven by any specific policies or issues — it’s clients seeking us out for our reputation and the talent we have assembled,” Trujillo said in a statement.
Other firms that saw big increases are Checkmate Government Relations, which is led by Trump family friend Ches McDowell; Mercury Public Affairs, a bipartisan shop that’s been in D.C. for over two decades, but which was Wiles’ most recent K Street home before going into the administration; and Michael Best Strategies, which is led by Trump’s first White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
The gold rush on K Street comes despite the fact that Trump signed the year’s shining legislative achievement — the reconciliation package permanently extending prized tax cuts, gutting clean energy incentives, slashing funding for safety net programs and unlocking billions of dollars for an immigration enforcement — just four days into the quarter.
The third quarter tends to be sleepier for lobbyists because the city clears out for the August recess. But any concerns about an end-of-summer slump did not come to pass.
“I said to someone the other day that if your lobbyist is telling you that nothing is happening in Washington because of the shutdown or because of gridlock or because of August recess … you are missing the forest for the trees,” Monroe quipped.
Efforts to shape how the megabill is implemented are now underway at the agency level. Beyond that, lobbyists repeatedly cited the frenetic pace of activity in the executive branch — on trade in particular — as one of the top drivers of business last quarter.
Brian Pomper, a partner at Akin, said that Trump’s trade policy “has prompted clients from virtually every industry to seek counsel” from the firm’s roster of trade lobbyists, which includes a top trade official from Trump’s first term along with former House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady.
The firm has signed more than two dozen new clients this year to work on trade or tariff issues, disclosures show. They include steel giant Alcoa, Volvo North America, retailers Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co., Kimberly-Clark Corporation and Driscoll’s.
Tariffs were mentioned as a specific area of focus in 350 lobbying disclosures last quarter — triple the number of disclosures that listed tariff policy during the third quarter of 2024.
Even though the chaos that marked the initial rollout of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs in the spring has died down somewhat, K Street will be glued to next month’s Supreme Court proceedings to determine whether Trump’s broad tariffs are illegal.
One lobbyist even went so far as to suggest that anxiety surrounding the tariff litigation has exceeded the uncertainty leading up to Trump’s unveiling of the tariffs, dubbed “Liberation Day” by the president.
Not even a government shutdown has managed to dampen lobbying activity.
Though it has snarled efforts to set up meetings for clients across the government, lobbyists are now working to tweak their game plans for convincing lawmakers to use their dwindling floor time to prioritize their clients’ top issues. There’s a whole host of issues vying for that time: appropriations, a defense reauthorization, tax extenders, technical corrections to the reconciliation bill, crypto regulations, health reforms, AI, permitting or another issue entirely.
“We need to look past the shutdown,” said Will Moschella, who co-leads Brownstein’s lobbying practice. “Because that ultimately is going to resolve itself.”
Indiana Senate Republicans say they do not have votes to pass mid-cycle redistricting despite a pressure campaign from the White House, according to a spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray – but President Donald Trump’s allies are still demanding the matter comes up for a vote in a special session.
“The votes aren’t there for redistricting,” said Molly Swigart, Bray’s spokesperson.
The news comes just days after Trump held a phone call with reluctant members of the caucus.
POLITICO spoke to four people close to the sensitive talks, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the issue. Indiana state Senate Republicans’ latest move threatens to upend what has been a nationwide push from the White House to force red states to redraw maps ahead of the midterms.
Three of those people said Indiana Gov. Mike Braun was inclined to call a special session to redo the state’s maps— a move that could come as early as next week.
A spokesperson for Braun told POLITICO that the governor “is still having positive conversations with members of the legislature and is confident the majority of Indiana statehouse Republicans will support efforts to ensure fair representation in congress for every Hoosier.”
They said the White House conducted a dial-in poll of lawmakers that revealed the majority of Senate Republicans backed mid-cycle redistricting. But one of the Republicans cautioned that colleagues were confused by the instructions for the survey because the administration did not provide guidance on how to move forward.
Two of those Republicans briefed on the poll said the White House believed the poll showed the majority of the holdout caucus supports mid-cycle redistricting. But they said that Bray and his leadership team represent the majority of no-votes.
“If Bray would personally release his leadership to support this, there would be enough votes for this to pass,” one of those people said.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A person close to the White House, who was granted anonymity to discuss the pressure campaign, disputed that the votes weren't there.
The "White House has a private whip count from individual calls, expects it will have the votes as it already does in the House, and it expects it to be put up for a vote," the person said.
Indiana House Republicans are more broadly supportive of the plan after caucusing Tuesday, and emerged from those talks last night with enough votes to move forward with redistricting if a special session is called, according to a third Republican briefed on the matter.
Allies to the White House, such as Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), have warned control of the House rests on whether Indiana can produce two additional Republican-held congressional districts by re-doing the maps.
Trump allies, including Turning Point Action and the late Charlie Kirk, have threatened primaries for Hoosier holdouts who do not back Trump’s mid-cycle redistricting plan.
“Now the real fun begins,” Chris LaCivita, Trump’s former 2024 campaign manager, posted to X after POLITICO first reported news the state Senate said they did not have the votes.
Republicans have recruited a Sununu to run for Senate in New Hampshire after all.
Former Sen. John E. Sununu said Wednesday that he is running to reclaim the seat he held for a single term before Democrat Jeanne Shaheen ousted him in 2008. Shaheen is retiring next year.
“Maybe you’re surprised to hear that I’m running for the Senate again. I’m a bit surprised myself. Why would anyone subject themselves to everything going on there right now?” Sununu said in a launch video posted online Wednesday morning. “Well, somebody has to step up and lower the temperature. Somebody has to get things done.”
The scion of a prominent GOP political dynasty, Sununu, 61, likely gives Republicans their best chance of flipping the seat after his brother, former Gov. Chris Sununu, rejected the party’s recruitment efforts for another cycle.
John E. Sununu brings access to his family’s fundraising machine and boasts close relationships with members of Senate GOP leadership, including Majority Leader John Thune. National and state Republicans consider him a strong candidate. Early polls put him ahead in the GOP primary and show him as the most competitive Republican against the Democratic front-runner, Rep. Chris Pappas.
Sununu has been in talks with the White House about his campaign and will soon meet with President Donald Trump about it, POLITICO first reported. Trump’s endorsement would be critical in the GOP primary, even though the state’s broader electorate thrice rejected him for president.
But Sununu’s path to securing Trump’s nod — and the GOP nomination — is not clear.
Sununu has long opposed Trump, serving as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president in 2024. He penned an op-ed lambasting Trump as a “loser” ahead of New Hampshire’s presidential primary last year (Trump went on to win by 11 points). He later derided Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies as “completely inappropriate” through his position with the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan group focused on restoring public trust in election security.
And Sununu faces another former senator, Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts before moving to New Hampshire and mounting an unsuccessful bid to unseat Shaheen in 2014. Brown was the president’s first-term ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa and is now seeking his own political comeback by positioning himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate in the race. Another GOP candidate, state Sen. Dan Innis, has already dropped his bid and backed Sununu. He’s called on Brown to do the same, but the former ambassador is battling on.
“Anyone who thinks that a never Trump, corporate lobbyist who hasn’t won an election in a quarter century will resonate with today’s GOP primary voters is living in a different universe,” Brown said in a statement.
Sununu, who is also the son of former Gov. and White House chief of staff John H. Sununu, served three terms in the House before defeating then-Gov. Shaheen to win his Senate seat in 2002.
He pledged in his launch video to focus on the economy and “making our lives more affordable.” He also called to “protect Medicare” and “really tackle our health care costs” as expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies take center stage in the government shutdown now spilling into a third week. WMUR was first to report on his official campaign launch.
Sununu starts with a polling advantage in the GOP primary. A University of New Hampshire survey from late September had him leading Brown 42 percent to 19 percent, with 28 percent undecided.
Early surveys also show him within striking distance of Pappas. The Democrat leads Sununu 49 percent to 43 percent in the UNH poll’s hypothetical general-election matchup; Pappas leads Brown by a wider margin of 52 percent to 37 percent. A survey from GOP-aligned co/efficient had Pappas leading Sununu by 3 percentage points and Brown by 10 points.
Alex Latcham, Senate Leadership Fund’s executive director, said in a statement that Sununu’s candidacy “instantly expands the Senate map and puts the Granite State in play for Republicans.”
His candidacy has also generated instant excitement in the Granite State. A group of prominent New Hampshire GOP donors and business leaders — including Phil Taub, Joe Faro, Al Letizio Jr., Nick Vailas and Kelly Cohen — will host a fundraiser for Sununu in Bedford on Nov. 3, POLITICO has learned first.
Still, Sununu could face challenges in his attempted comeback. While his family’s brand remains strong in New Hampshire, Sununu largely faded from elective politics after his 2008 defeat, ceding the spotlight to his younger brother. His post-congressional work on corporate boards has drawn him early fire from his opponents on both sides of the aisle. The state Democratic Party already has a website attacking Sununu for “selling out to corporations.” Pappas hammered Sununu for “cashing in … working for special interests” in a statement Wednesday responding to his launch.
And his past opposition to Trump could prove difficult to reconcile with the MAGA base, even though it could win him support among independents who can pull ballots in the GOP primary.
Sununu downplayed Trump’s importance in the Senate race in a WMUR interview last month, saying the contest “is going to be about New Hampshire.”
But Brown is working to weaponize Sununu’s repeated rejections of the president, even as he faces his own MAGA image problem after saying in 2021 that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
A person drove a vehicle into a gate outside the White House on Tuesday night, according to the Secret Service.
“At approximately 10:37 p.m., an individual drove a vehicle into the Secret Service vehicle gate located at 17th & E St, NW,” the Secret Service said on X.
The law enforcement agency, which is responsible for protecting the president, added the driver was “arrested & the vehicle was assessed and deemed safe.”
“Our investigation into the cause of this collision is ongoing,” the Secret Service said, without giving further details about the person arrested, the type of vehicle or a possible motive.
President Donald Trump was inside the White House at the time of the incident, the New York Times reported.
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