Marjorie Taylor Greene, the onetime MAGA loyalist who rose to prominence for her ardent support of President Donald Trump, says she is resigning from Congress after a public feud with him.
In a statement released Friday, the Georgia Republican criticized the direction of the political movement she once supported.
Her relationship with Trump soured after she joined calls from Democrats to release files related to the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump had initially opposed. Trump subsequently rescinded his endorsement of Greene and broke with her last week.
Greene said she will step down from office on Jan. 5.
House Democrats are jumping into an upcoming special election in Tennessee, dumping $1 million on an increasingly nationalized battle for a deep-red congressional seat as President Donald Trump gets involved in the race.
House Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with the lower chamber’s Democratic leadership, announced plans on Friday to spend $1 million on TV and digital ads to boost state Rep. Aftyn Behn. The Tennessee Democrat faces Republican Matt Van Epps next month in a district Trump won by 22 points in 2024.
The spending represents a dramatic escalation for national Democrats, who have so far not spent significant cash on the long-shot race. Republicans have pumped far more — over $1.7 million — into it, including through the Trump-allied super PAC and the Club for Growth.
This week, Trump and Kamala Harris waded into the contest, with the president hosting a telephone rally for Van Epps, while Harris appeared at a canvass launch for Behn on Tuesday.
Privately, Democrats acknowledge it’s at best a narrow path to victory, but are voicing newfound optimism about their ability to win — or at least narrow past margins — on Republican turf after their consistent overperformance at the ballot box since Trump’s 2024 rout.
The Tennessee race marks the House Democrats’ super PAC’s first special election involvement this cycle.
Ahead of April special elections in Florida for two congressional seats in districts that Trump won by more than 30 points, Democratic candidates raised millions, mostly from online donors, but HMP and other Democratic super PACs steered clear. Republican-aligned super PACs spent more than $1 million on each race, and both Democratic candidates overperformed expectations, while still losing by roughly 15 points each.
Democratic enthusiasm is also showing up in the Tennessee candidates’ fundraising totals.
Behn raised just over $1 million since the start of October, according to a report her campaign filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. More than half the total was from donors giving less than $200. Van Epps raised $590,000 over the same period, with nearly half his funds coming from other political committees.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s supporters are relaunching the political party he formed last year — potentially creating a pathway for him to run for president again in 2028 and offering a home for disaffected Kennedy-aligned voters who backed Republicans in 2024.
A group of former Kennedy campaign staff, volunteers and backers have resurrected the We The People Party, the minor party Kennedy created to gain ballot access in some states during his long-shot independent presidential campaign.
Levi Leatherberry, chair of the We The People Party and a former Kennedy campaign staffer, said the organization is aiming to drastically expand its ballot access in the next three years. The nascent campaign’s first target is New York, where a Kennedy-aligned gubernatorial candidate could put the party on the state’s ballot.
“We only need to get to, like, 26 states for it to be as useful as it will be to any presidential candidate,” Leatherberry said of the party’s ballot access mission in an interview. “That's our focus. Building out, so we are actually useful, we're actually something to be reckoned with.”
The revitalized party is hoping to fold in voters across the political spectrum who identify with the medical freedom movement — the same voters Kennedy targeted with his campaign, and the same voters President Donald Trump and Republicans are hoping to appease through the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Leatherberry said he hopes the We The People Party will eventually be on the ballot in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. But he hinted that the party could create leverage for Kennedy or another ideologically aligned candidate without gaining ballot access nationwide.
“And yeah, we will be able to run national candidates,” he added.
The reboot comes amid some tension between Kennedy and some of the president's most ardent supporters. Over the summer, Trump whisperer Laura Loomer attacked Kennedy and Stefanie Spear, one of Kennedy's top aides at Health and Human Services and a key cog in his 2024 president run.
Loomer claimed Spear was laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run for Kennedy. Kennedy defended Spear and called speculation he would run for president a "flat-out lie” and an attempt to “drive a wedge” between him and Trump. "Let me be clear: I am not running for president in 2028,” he said in August.
Leatherberry said he has not spoken to Kennedy since taking over leadership of the party. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment sent through a HHS spokesperson.
Shortly after Kennedy abandoned his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of an independent bid, his campaign formed the We The People Party to circumnavigate cumbersome ballot access requirements for independent candidates. In some states, ballot access is significantly easier for candidates backed by a political party than for independents.
Even though Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump before Election Day, his name appeared on the ballot in 31 states. In nine of those states, he appeared on a We The People Party line.
Aides close to the president have been eager to keep Kennedy and his MAHA supporters in the tent ahead of the midterms, viewing them as crucial supporters who helped fuel Trump's victory in 2024. After a vaccine regulator had been forced out under pressure from Loomer, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles intervened and worked with Kennedy to get him reinstated.
In September, Leatherberry and other Kennedy supporters formally relaunched the We The People Party with an eye toward 2028. In a livestreamed organizing event, Leatherberry laid out a vision of gaining ballot access in dozens of states before the midterms and then endorsing a candidate in a national convention ahead of the next presidential election. That hypothetical candidate, Leatherberry said, would avoid the costly and litigious signature gathering process required of independent candidates in most states.
“Our candidate will be on — free, day one,” Leatherberry said in September. “That means we can already nominate a presidential candidate, or national candidates, or local candidates for free.”
Although Leatherberry hopes the party can recruit candidates in down-ballot races to expand the party’s influence quickly, thus far only one candidate has accepted a We The People Party endorsement: Larry Sharpe, a longtime Libertarian Party member who served as a Kennedy campaign surrogate in 2024 and is currently running his third consecutive campaign for governor of New York.
New York has some of the most burdensome ballot access requirements in the country — it was the only state without any independent or third-party presidential candidates in 2024. Sharpe himself failed to make the ballot in 2022, running as a write-in candidate instead, and a judge ruled Kennedy could not appear on New York’s ballot last year due to his improperly listing his residency.
But if Sharpe gets enough support in the gubernatorial race on the We The People Party line next year, it would make it possible for Kennedy — or anyone else — to run on that line in 2028.
Sharpe defined the party as united in its distrust of both Republicans and Democrats, and the two-party system at large — without any core ideological underpinnings.
“It is basically an anti-establishment party,” Sharpe said. “Anti-establishment is very vague.”
Some of Kennedy's supporters have also extended that wariness toward the Trump administration. Some MAHA supporters have targeted Spear, Kennedy's close aide, and Wiles, the White House chief of staff, claiming both were undermining the movement.
Kennedy flew to their defense. “The MAHA movement has no better friend in Washington than [Wiles] who has supported every effort to end the chronic disease epidemic and restore health freedom to every American,” he wrote on social media earlier this month.
Leatherberry also indicated interest in working with Tulsi Gabbard, the Democrat-turned-Trump campaign surrogate now serving as the Director of National Intelligence, and with Rep. Thomas Massie, the Libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican whose repeated antagonization of Trump has inspired a well-funded primary challenge.
A spokesperson for Gabbard declined to comment. A spokesperson for Massie did not respond to a request for comment.
Leatherberry insisted he’s neutral on whether Kennedy should run for president, or whether the We The People party should endorse a presidential candidate in 2028. But Sharpe said he hopes Kennedy will run as a third-party candidate to carry the torch for the anti-establishment voters the party represents.
“I think he kind of has to,” Sharpe said. “Unless someone else steps up. And at the moment, I don’t see anybody else stepping up.”
A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
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.
Dan Driscoll made history earlier this year when, at 38, he was sworn in as the youngest Army secretary in U.S. history.
And he just made news again this week when he became the highest-level Trump administration official to visit Kyiv for the White House’s secret peace talks in effort to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Driscoll joined high-level talks with Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as news broke about a potential peace deal on the horizon.
The Conversation 11-21-25
Driscoll is a veteran of the Iraq War, and as a result, has felt the effects of Pentagon decisions firsthand. He’s set out to reshape the U.S. Army and the Pentagon into an agile institution that can make better use of existing resources and channel the best practices of the private sector.
“When you are creating defensive and offensive solutions, you have to think even 10 years out when the war really gets to its most catastrophic moment, ‘What are the very basic tools of warfare that can't be impacted by the enemy,” Driscoll said.
In this week’s episode of The Conversation, Driscoll sits down with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns to delve into the future of warfare, his plans for reinvigorating the Army’s technology and the innovation spurred by conflict.
“I think the best guess is if the United States entered a conflict with a peer in a couple of years, it would be a hybrid war where nearly every human being on the battlefield would be empowered and enabled with a digital tool,” Driscoll said. “I think we believe every infantryman in the United States Army will carry a drone with them into battle.”
CNN "NewsNight" host Abby Phillip also joined Dasha to chat about her new book, “A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power,” Jackson’s influence on today’s political landscape and Phillip’s approach to her own roundtable show.
The Democratic National Committee took out $15 million in loans in October, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission submitted on Thursday.
The national party committee framed the line of credit as an early investment to boost its candidates in New Jersey and Virginia earlier this month, and help build up state parties ahead of next year’s midterms. But the need for a loan still puts the DNC in sharp contrast with its GOP counterpart, the Republican National Committee, which was sitting on $86 million at the end of September.
DNC Chair Ken Martin said the early investment was already helping the party win elections this month and position itself for what is to come.
“We can’t win elections or fight back against Trump if the D.N.C. downsizes operations like it often does after a presidential cycle,” Martin said in a statement. “I made a bet that investing early would build power, rack up wins and rally supporters back to the table. That bet is paying off.”
The DNC also spent $16.9 million in October, the most it has spent in any single month this year. Driving that total was election-related spending: The national party spent over $6 million in New Jersey and Virginia to boost Democratic gubernatorial candidates, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in Pennsylvania to help retain control of the state’s Supreme Court.
Democrats won all those races.
The national party committee also continues to send roughly $1 million each month to state party committees, and has a larger staff than it did at this time in 2017. It reported $18.3 million cash on hand at the end of October.
The DNC has taken out loans before, although usually not this early in the cycle or of this magnitude all at once. In Trump’s first term, when the national party similarly faced fundraising lags, it reported $3.2 million in debt in November 2017 — this same time in the cycle — and more than $7 million a few months later, according to past FEC filings. The DNC has not reported more than $15 million in total debt since February 2014.
But the national party has faced slower fundraising this year as many major donors have stayed on the sidelines amid the DNC’s rebuilding efforts. The party’s fundraising numbers have improved slightly in recent months, and it raised $7.5 million from donors in October, not far off from the same month in 2021.
The party committee’s cash totals were also hit earlier in the year as it paid off $18 million in lingering expenses from former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign.
Larry Summers once drove Cornel West out of Harvard in a very public fight. Now, Summers is back in the spotlight, and West can’t help but point out the irony.
“There's a certain level of, not just hypocrisy, but a certain kind of chickens coming home to roost here,” West said in an interview Wednesday. “It's just sad that [Summers] has been preoccupied with the 11th commandment, ‘Thou shalt not get caught,’ rather than the other 10.”
Last week, a tranche of newly released emails revealed that Summers had, over the course of a decade, corresponded with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including soliciting romantic advice as he pursued an extramarital affair. This week, Summers announced a retreat from public life, including stepping away from his teaching duties at Harvard.
Two decades ago, Summers chastised West for engaging in behavior that could be deemed “embarrassing” to the university or could interfere with his teaching, such as engaging in politics and recording a rap CD. The feud led to West’s resignation from Harvard.
Since leaving Harvard in 2002, West, a public intellectual and activist, has taken faculty positions at Princeton and Union Theological Seminary; he published eight books and recorded a pair of hip-hop albums; he ran for president in 2024.
West, reached by telephone, seemed unsurprised by the revelations that Epstein considered himself Summers’ “wing man.” (At the time of correspondence, Epstein had already been sent to prison on state charges of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18.)
“He's a neoliberal gangster, the way Trump's a neofascist gangster,” West said of Summers. “There's not a lot of integrity, honesty and decency. There is a lot of cold-heartedness and mean-spiritedness in both of them, even though they come from different ideological camps.”
West, a devout Christian, quickly qualified his statement. “I don't say that in order to trash them,” he said. “I think that they both could be better human beings, but they don't seem to be interested in it too much.”
West’s much-publicized feud with Summers began shortly after Summers’ arrival to Cambridge in 2001. Per West’s account, chronicled in his 2004 book "Democracy Matters," Summers, the newly installed Harvard president, summoned West — then a university professor in African American studies — to his office and chastised him for his political engagement, for recording a hip-hop CD, for contributing to grade inflation and for not producing philosophically rigorous academic work. He said West needed to “learn to be a good citizen at Harvard and focus on the academic needs of students, not the wages of workers,” per West’s account.
Summers “questioned my academic accomplishments and my political affiliations,” West later wrote, “without bothering either to read any of my work or to develop an understanding of how it has been regarded by the wider academic community.”
West claimed Summers apologized to him “more than once,” but Summers went on to tell The New York Times he had not apologized. “I then knew just what an unprincipled power player I was dealing with,” West wrote, calling him “a bull in a china shop, a bully in a difficult and delicate situation, an arrogant man, and an ineffective leader.”
Does that characterization still stand, two decades later? West thinks so. “The sad thing is that he, like Trump, has been able to get away with it for so long,” West said Wednesday. “Anytime you have that kind of gangsta behavior with impunity, no accountability, there's no answerability. He doesn't take responsibility up until now.”
That responsibility came by way of a terse statement, released Monday, in which Summers acknowledged he is “deeply ashamed” of his actions and decided he would “be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.” On Wednesday, he announced he would resign from OpenAI’s board.
When West spoke to POLITICO Wednesday evening, Summer’s resignation from his teaching duties at Harvard were not yet public, even though the university was facing increasing pressure — including from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a former Harvard Law professor — to dump him.
West wasn’t so convinced that Summers should have been ousted from Harvard.
“I think people should be able to teach at Harvard who have a variety of different degrees of moral character,” West said. “I don't think you have to be St. Francis of Assisi or have the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer to teach at Harvard. … I always give Brother Summers, and anybody else, a chance to just choose to be a better person. He’s still alive. He can bounce back.”
It’s a “sad thing,” West continued, “when you have professors who are willing to hang out with gangsters like Epstein, and therefore, all of the criticism that's moral and spiritual he deserves. I don't know that the inference means that he can just no longer teach at Harvard or any other place. I'm a little reluctant to move in that direction. I tend to come out of the Black freedom struggle, which says, lift every voice, which makes me a very strong libertarian.”
Former President Barack Obama is embracing his role as mentor-in-chief, huddling with nearly three dozen freshman House Democrats at the Capitol Hill home of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) at a Wednesday night event hosted by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The event — moderated by Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) — saw Obama buck up Democrats and offer insights on surviving Republican majorities.
“I get feeling discouraged sometimes,” Obama told the room over soda, water, crackers and crudite, according to excerpts provided by his office to POLITICO. “I get feeling worn out, tired, and embattled. But in our second term, Denis McDonough, my chief of staff, used to pass out stickers based on a conversation that he and I had had that talked about, ‘we do not succumb to cynicism — cynicism is our enemy.’ And it's pervasive in this town.”
He added that McDonough had stickers printed that read: “fight cynicism.”
“And that, I think, is our most important battle, right?” Obama said. “We don't give into that, and then we're going to be able to figure out the same stuff.”
Obama emphasized to attendees that he had “been in your shoes. Because when I was — everybody remembers the Democratic National Convention in 2004 — when you were. …well, you were in elementary school” — a line that drew laughter.
Obama also compared that moment more than 20 years ago to this one in the Democratic Party’s search for a path out of the wilderness.
“But what people don't recall is that John Kerry lost that election,” Obama said. “And we didn't control the House, and we did not control the Senate. And Tom Daschle, who was then the Democratic leader of the Senate, lost, which is unheard of. And Karl Rove, who was the chief architect of George Bush's campaigns and political career was – could be found on all the TV stations, talking about the ‘permanent Republican majority’ that had been created.”
The former president continued, describing a similar sense of despair in 2004 that Democrats felt after 2024 when President Donald Trump swept all seven battleground states and decisively beat former Vice President Kamala Harris.
But it ultimately turned out well for Democrats two decades ago, Obama said.
“And two years later, Nancy Pelosi was the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives. And four years later, somehow, I ended up being president. The reason I tell you that is not for you to, you know, feel complacent,” he said. “It's to indicate that the work that you are doing right now, the investment you're making, the focus that you're applying, the issues that you are developing, the interactions that you're having with your constituencies. All that is creating the momentum and the opportunity for change.”
Obama took five questions on several topics, including on lessons learned on the Affordable Care Act fight. On that point, he told Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) that he overestimated Republicans’ willingness to work with him, saying he could have learned that lesson quicker.
“We wasted a lot of time trying to engage the ideas of Republicans on a good faith basis,” Obama said.
Obama lingered with McBride in a photo line amid the event, according to a person familiar with the gathering granted anonymity to discuss a private conversation, and has complimented her on her high-profile media appearances and her messaging, including her interview with Ezra Klein earlier this year.
Obama has never been far from the campaign trail over the last year, and his post-presidency has focused on boosting the next generation of Democratic leaders. He stumped for candidates in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s off-year elections, and has had phone calls with incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, among others.
Ahead of the 2024 elections, he hosted several small group sessions in his office with the goal of offering a sounding board, according to a person close to him granted anonymity to speak candidly, including with a group of Obama administration alumni, emerging voices within the party and in-cycle senators.
This is only the second time in his post-presidency that Obama has met with freshman Democrats: He also did so in 2019. Obama spoke on the last episode of the Marc Maron podcast recently of his “move from player to coach” in the Democratic Party.
“His goal,” a person close to the former president said, “is to build a sustainable Democratic Party that can survive without him.”
Democrats believe they have an opening to reclaim Latino voters that fled the party last year — but a prominent Latino-focused group argued the party needs to present a message that’s more than just anti-Donald Trump.
Trump’s approval among Latino voters has tapped new lows, continuing a months-long plunge in support among the voting bloc Republicans are relying on to sustain their strongholds in the midterms, according to polling sponsored by Latino voter group Somos Votantes and its affiliated PAC that was shared first with POLITICO.
Trump’s personal favorability is underwater by 26 points among Latino voters, according to a survey conducted by GSG. The drop continues a sustained slump among the demographic that has only worsened since the beginning of the year, and sank another 6 points since September.
But the new polling offers an equally grim outlook on Trump’s handling of the economy — an issue the administration has touted as one of their top achievements and a ballot issue both sides of the aisle have identified as a main decider in top races. Trump is underwater by 30 points on the issue, dipping from 38 percent approval in May to 34 percent in November.
“The reality is that Donald Trump promised to slash prices on day one,” said Melissa Morales, Somos’ president. “That was something that he repeated over and over and that he certainly hasn't delivered on. What we need to see as we move into next year is that Latino voters are looking for a positive economic vision to believe in. The side that can deliver that in a real way will win over Latino voters.”
Latino voters who swung toward Trump in 2024 rebounded back toward Democrats in this cycle’s off-year races, with the Democratic candidates in both New Jersey and Virginia winning heavily Latino areas. Democrats have heralded these wins as a sign that their messaging on affordability offers the party a chance to harness Latino voters back to the party base, a takeaway Morales said the survey reaffirms.
“The Democratic message can’t just be anti-Trump,” she said. “It has to be providing Latino voters with a positive economic vision for the future and giving them something to believe in.”
“That's the sort of vision that Latino voters are looking for right now, and that if Democrats want to win Latino voters back over, that they will have to provide,” she added.
Republicans have largely dismissed the party’s recent struggles with Latinos, saying the GOP will bounce back by the midterms. They point to their inroads with Latino voters in recent cycles, noting Trump’s historic gains in 2024 as well as a string of wins in some majority-Latino congressional districts.
“Democrats have ignored Hispanic communities over the past nine years while millions of working families rejected their radical, socialist agenda,” Christian Martinez, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s national Hispanic press secretary, told POLITICO last week. “Republicans will continue to earn the support of Hispanic voters because we are working to deliver opportunity, security, and a better life.”
A majority of Latino voters in the Somos poll overwhelmingly reported extreme concern with the rising cost of living at 64 percent. The polling suggested that Democrats could capitalize on this concern, with Latinos largely holding Republicans responsible for the state of the economy: 45 percent say they blame the GOP for the rising cost of living, compared to 24 percent who blamed Democrats.
“Latino voters are genuinely worried about making sure that they make ends meet,” said pollster Rosa Mendoza. “And I think Republicans having that be one of their core messages as they were heading into the election in 2024, and yet being very much on the back burner — it’s not helping them.”
Global Strategy Group conducted the national poll of 800 Latino registered voters from Nov. 4 to 12. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points.
A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
Fresh off their staggering electoral losses this month, Republicans are urging President Donald Trump to start hitting the campaign trail for them next year with control of Congress on the line.
And in a sign of their rising anxiety over Democrats' renewed enthusiasm, the requests for rallies have started rolling in.
Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming said Trump’s team is “certainly aware” he wants to see the president visit the purple state next year, where he won by his thinnest margin in 2024 and his party is defending two competitive House seats and trying to win statewide races. Schimming plans to reup his ask when visiting Washington this week. In Tennessee, where Democrats are working to flip a House seat in a special election next month, Republican Matt Van Epps’ campaign requested the president hold an in-person rally in the deep-red district he won by 20 points last year. (Trump held a tele-rally for Van Epps last Thursday night.) Rep. Derrick Van Orden has told Trump he wants the president to campaign with him in his western Wisconsin swing district next year.
Depressed turnout is a persistent problem in non-presidential years. And Republicans acknowledge that Trump, whose approval ratings are underwater, can be a liability as well as an asset.
But he remains a singular motivator for the MAGA base, according to interviews with 11 Republican Party chairs, officials and operatives across the Rust and Sun Belt states. They said Republicans must step up their voter-outreach efforts heading into the midterms, when Democrats need only to net three House seats to regain control of the lower chamber. And they’re looking to Trump to be their triple threat — with his trademark rallies, endorsements and deep campaign coffers.
By comparison, Trump largely avoided campaigning for Republicans in this month’s off-cycle elections, later blaming poor candidate quality for the party’s withering defeats. He avoided showing up in New Jersey, where GOP gubernatorial contender Jack Ciattarelli was projected to lose by a slim margin and ended up getting routed by double digits. He never uttered the name of the Virginia Republican candidate for governor, who lost by nearly 16 points. And he lagged miles behind California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s fundraising juggernaut that helped propel a Democrat-backed redistricting measure to swift victory.
Now, even as the GOP descends into in-fighting over the release of files connected to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and state-level Republicans throughout the country buck Trump’s redistricting push, his party is clamoring for ever more of the president.
“Trump is the ace in the hole,” said Tom Eddy, the Republican chair in Erie County, Pa., a presidential bellwether Trump won in 2016 and 2024, but where Democrats swept key local races earlier this month. “It’s a matter of which party is more motivated. And right now, obviously, the Democrats are.”
A Republican strategist who works on North Carolina races, granted anonymity to speak candidly, painted a dire portrait of the party’s stakes as Democrat Roy Cooper makes the party’s best shot at flipping a Senate seat next year.
“Any Republican not preparing for a turnout challenge in 2026 is whistling by the graveyard,” the strategist said. “If Trump is on the ballot, Republican turnout is strong. And if he’s not, it craters. It collapses. There’s an entire group of people who are Trump voters, but Trump alone. There seems to be no way to get them to the ballot."
James Blair, Trump’s top political director, said on a post-election episode of POLITICO’s “The Conversation” that the president will be “far more involved in the midterms.” Trump has already endorsed the majority of House incumbents and across many Senate races, though he’s yet to clear the field in Texas, Georgia and New Hampshire, where fierce primaries are underway. Two of his top political operatives — Trump 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio — are advising campaigns across the country.
“With a lot of campaigning next year, with a lot of resources in the right districts for the right candidates,” Republicans’ turnout woes are “an overcomeable problem,” Blair said on “The Conversation.”
Blair cautioned that victory shouldn’t be entirely Trump’s responsibility, adding, “The president will campaign a lot to get people out” but “candidates still have to connect with these voters, too.”
Blair, LaCivita and a White House spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Republicans brushed aside Trump’s recent hands-off approach, noting the party lost in blue-leaning states where the president is unpopular. But they saw warning signs in the margins. Turnout data shows Republicans lost ground in the places that voted most for Trump last year, suggesting his voters were less likely to cast ballots outside of a presidential year.
Across Virginia, in precincts where Trump won at least 80 percent of the vote in 2024, turnout this year fell below 70 percent of last year’s levels, according to a POLITICO breakdown of the results. Statewide, that figure was 77 percent.
In southwest Virginia’s Buchanan County, where Trump won more than 85 percent of the vote, turnout for the gubernatorial election was less than 60 percent of the prior year. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger received about 73 percent of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ vote total while GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears got just 57 percent of the votes Trump had received.
Republicans shrugged off Earle-Sears as a weak candidate and attributed the results to typical swings toward the opposition party in off-year elections. But as Trump himself has suggested, it indicates Republicans have yet to figure out how to replicate his coalition when he’s not on the ballot.
Republican officials and operatives say Trump is still the “biggest base motivator” they have — a nod to his singularity and to the uncertainty of who else in the GOP has the gravitas to command his MAGA movement.
“We’ve got to make it clear what the stakes of it are — because they don’t want to go back to another Joe Biden,” Schimming said, acknowledging the party’s challenge in reaching irregular voters.
Republicans across battleground states are working to remind their voters of economic pain under the Biden administration — and warning that Democratic control of even one chamber of Congress could lead to investigations that could distract from, if not derail, Trump’s agenda.
They’re also pushing early voting as a way to reach lower-propensity voters and to keep them engaged outside presidential cycles, even as Trump tries to end the practice.
Republicans acknowledge some candidates would benefit from distancing themselves from the president on unpopular policies, like cutting health care benefits and imposing tariffs, in a midterm election that will serve as a referendum on his second term. Their concerns hark back to 2018, when Democrats picked up 40 House seats in a repudiation of Trump’s first term.
After Democrats rode affordability messaging to wins in last week’s elections, Republicans said they need to stay focused on cutting costs. To that end, the White House laid out in a Friday memo how the administration is working to lower prices.
Some Republicans also said Trump needs to focus less on his grievances, like putting millions of dollars from his political operation into primarying GOP Rep. Thomas Massie in a safe seat in Kentucky over the lawmaker’s opposition to Republicans’ megalaw and his push to release the Justice Department files on Epstein.
“Don’t waste your time going after Thomas Massie,” said Todd Gillman, a Republican Party district chair in Michigan, where the GOP is looking to snag the Senate seat being left open by retiring Democrat Gary Peters, hold the House seat Rep. John James is leaving to run for governor and wrest back control of statewide offices.
Instead, he said, “come to Michigan and fight for John James’ seat so we don’t lose it.”
Jessica Piper, Elena Schneider, Andrew Howard, Sam Benson and Liz Crampton contributed to this report.
A panel of federal judges has blocked Texas’ newly redrawn congressional map — which made five districts in the state more favorable to Republicans — saying the plan appeared to be an illegal race-based gerrymander.
In a 2-1 ruling, the court ordered Texas to rely instead on the boundaries legislators drew in 2021. The new map, the majority concluded, appears likely to be unconstitutional and was drawn at the urging of the Trump administration.
“The map ultimately passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor — the 2025 Map — achieved all but one of the racial objectives that DOJ demanded,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Galveston-based Trump appointee, wrote for the panel majority.
The decision is a massive blow in the White House’s push to redistrict across the country. Texas’ five-seat map represented the biggest gains for the GOP through redrawing. Texas appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court later Tuesday.
Brown was joined by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, an El Paso-based Obama appointee. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith, a Houston-based Reagan appointee, dissented but did not immediately release an opinion explaining his reasoning.
The majority repeatedly derided the Justice Department’s effort to goad Texas into targeting the four districts with non-white majorities — known as “coalition districts.” That effort, Brown said, began on July 7, with a letter from DOJ’s Civil Rights Division that was “challenging to unpack … because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors.”
According to the court, the letter selected the four districts “based entirely on their racial makeup” and was the key factor that spurred Texas Republicans to take up the extraordinary redistricting effort. The bulk of Brown’s 160-page opinion delves into the mindset of the state lawmakers and advisers who drew the new maps, suggesting that their motives clearly aligned with DOJ’s race-based push and that their characterization of the new maps as based only on race-blind partisanship were not believable.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request to comment.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, in a statement, pushed back against the ruling and suggestion that the newly drawn maps are unfair or biased.
"Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings," he stated. "This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.”
The court also downplayed the notion that scrapping Texas’ new maps would lead to chaos in the midterm elections. Though the judges acknowledged that it would scramble the calculus of some candidates who had announced their bids for office based on the new maps, they said filing deadlines had not yet elapsed.
“Simply put, the 2026 congressional election is not underway,” Brown wrote. “In any event, any disruption that would happen here is attributable to the Legislature, not the Court. The Legislature—not the Court—set the timetable for this injunction. The Legislature—not the Court—redrew Texas’s congressional map weeks before precinct-chair and candidate-filing periods opened. The State chose to ‘toy with its election laws close to’ the 2026 congressional election, though that is certainly its prerogative.”
The state’s candidate filing deadline is rapidly approaching: Dec. 8. Courts and state election officials are generally hesitant to move deadlines, but they can if necessary.
Two other states — Missouri andNorth Carolina — have passed maps that net Republicans one red-leaning seat each. And in Ohio, which was legally required to redraw its maps this year, Republicans and Democrats cut a deal that made two Democratic-held seats redder, but Democrats insist both will remain competitive in 2026.
Democrats have also filed legal challenges in North Carolina and Missouri, and they have long prioritized the courts as a way to stop Republican gerrymandering efforts.
Without the Texas map in place, Democrats’ five-seat pickup in California through Proposition 50 fully thwarts the GOP’s gains so far, though other red states are still being pressured by the White House to take up the issue ahead of next year’s midterms.
The decision is likely to put even more pressure on Indiana Republicans, who are being asked to draw a new map that would give the GOP two more red-leaning districts. So far, Indiana GOP Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray has resisted calls to alter maps in the state, making a path forward very difficult for the redistricting effort.
Lawmakers in the Hoosier State are already facing threats of primaries from the White House after Bray said his caucus did not have the votes to pass a new map, and President Donald Trump said Republican Gov. Mike Braun “must produce on this” in a social media post Tuesday.
The ruling in Texas is the latest in a saga that took the summer by storm, when Texas Democrats decamped from the state in an effort to stop the new map from being passed.
On Tuesday, the Democrats who led that effort hailed the court’s decision.
“Greg Abbott and his Republican cronies tried to silence Texans’ voices to placate Donald Trump, but now have delivered him absolutely nothing,” Texas Minority Leader Gene Wu said in a statement.
President Donald Trump is unleashing his anger at Indiana Senate Republicans for not backing the GOP redistricting effort, posting his displeasure three times to Truth Social in the last 24 hours and calling President Pro Tempore Rod Bray a “Total RINO.”
“In the entire United States of America, Republican or Democrat, only Indiana “Republican” State Senator Rod Bray, a Complete and Total RINO, is opposed to redistricting for purposes of gaining additional Seats in Congress,” posted Trump on Monday afternoon, who has seen Republican lawmakers in four states now reject his mid-cycle redistricting scheme. In another Monday post, Trump said competitors were lining up to primary Bray.
Bray is not the only Republican in Indiana who doesn’t back redistricting. On Monday, Indiana state Sen. Blake Doriot of Goshen issued a statement saying that he was a Trump supporter but that he opposed redistricting.
"I have long been a Trump supporter, and I want President Trump to continue to be successful with a Republican-led House so he can continue fixing our woke colleges, fighting illegal immigration and crime, and encouraging us to speak about our great nation and be proud of who we are as Americans – not apologize for it,” Doriot said in a statement.
The news comes as Trump is set to issue a retributive endorsement as early as Monday against one of a handful Indiana Senate Republicans who opposes the White House’s mid-cycle redistricting plan.
Among the holdouts targeted by the White House: Republican state Sen. Jim Buck of Kokomo, who is facing a primary from Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell. Trump could back Powell Monday, according to a person familiar with his thinking speaking exclusively with POLITICO, following through on MAGA’s and White House allies' long-running threats to primary opponents of their mid-decade redistricting effort intended to protect their slim House majority in the midterms next year.
Trump posted on Truth Social Monday morning that he “will be strongly endorsing against any State Senator or House member from the Great State of Indiana that votes against the Republican Party, and our Nation, by not allowing for Redistricting for Congressional seats in the United States House of Representatives as every other State in our Nation is doing, Republican or Democrat.”
A spokesperson for Buck did not respond to a request for comment.
The White House is extending invitations to Indiana lawmakers for Oval Office visits. The latest invitation accepted is by State Sen. Scott Baldwin, who confirmed the invite in a phone interview.
Baldwin has already announced his support for redistricting.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s post came after Bray announced on Friday that the chamber will not convene in December to redraw maps, drawing Trump’s ire to and a threat to withdraw his support for Bray, State Sen. Greg Goode and Gov. Mike Braun. Goode was the victim of a swatting incident over the weekend.
Bray said his decision was influenced by the lack of votes supporting the measure, but Trump on Sunday argued that meant Braun was not doing enough to secure GOP support.
“Considering that Mike wouldn’t be Governor without me (Not even close!), is disappointing!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “Any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED.”
Another member of the conservative Heritage Foundation has resigned following a video posted by the organization’s president defending Tucker Carlson’s interview with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
In a post to Facebook, board member Robert P. George said he can no longer remain part of the foundation without a “full retraction” of the video released last month by the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts.
“Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse,” George said.
Carlson’s interview with Fuentes — who has previously expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler — received widespread condemnation for antisemitism, and the aftermath has exposed fault lines among conservatives.
In his Oct. 30 video, Roberts denounced the "venomous coalition” criticizing both Fuentes and Carlson, adding that Carlson is a “close friend.” He said that though he disagrees with and even “abhors” things Fuentes said, he did not believe in “canceling” him or Carlson. On Sunday, President Donald Trump also defended Carlson, telling reporters “you can’t tell him who to interview.”
Fuentes, a well-known provocateur on the right, has previously said that “organized Jewry” is leading to the disappearance of white culture.
Roberts later said he “didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy,” and that his video script was written by an aide who has since resigned.
George on Monday said that Roberts is a “good man” who acknowledged a “serious mistake.”
“What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake,” George added.
A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation confirmed George's resignation in a statement to POLITICO, thanking him for his service and calling him a "good man" before defending Roberts.
"Under the leadership of Dr. Roberts, Heritage remains resolute in building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish. We are strong, growing, and more determined than ever to fight for our Republic," the spokesman said.
George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, had been a Heritage trustee since 2019, according to the foundation’s website.
His resignation is one of several in light of Roberts' video, including at least five members of the foundation’s antisemitism task force, according to CBS News.
“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is “created equal” and “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,” George said.
An Indiana Senate Republican who President Donald Trump called out in a Truth Social post Sunday for not backing the White House’s plan to draw new congressional maps was later targeted by a swatting, according to local authorities.
Greg Goode, who Trump posted was a “RINO” he was “Very disappointed in” Sunday was targeted hours later by what Vigo County Sheriff Derek Fell called a “swatting” in a statement.
Despite Trump’s social media post insinuating otherwise, Goode has not publicly announced his position on redistricting.
Fell said that around 5 p.m. Sunday “an email was sent to the Terre Haute Police Department advising harm had been done to persons inside a home, located in southeastern Vigo County,” Fell said. “This information was immediately relayed to the Sheriffs Office, at which point deputies responded to the home, which was the home of Senator Greg Goode. Attempts were initially unsuccessful to raise anyone at the residence, but ultimately contact was made with persons inside the home.”
Fell added that Goode and others “were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’).”
In a statement, Goode said he and his family were "victims," and thanked Fell and Terre Haute Police Chief Kevin Barrett for their "professionalism."
The news comes as efforts to redistrict have ground to a halt in Indiana on Friday, after Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray refused to reconvene the chamber to redraw congressional maps in favor of Republicans.
The president threatened earlier Sunday that a list of Senate Republicans resistant to gerrymandering the state would be "released to the public later this afternoon," which so far seems to have not materialized by this evening.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Earlier this month, Goode held a town hall in Terre Haute on redistricting, and 71 people spoke out against it and nobody spoke for it.
On Tuesday, Indiana lawmakers are expected to convene at the Indiana Statehouse for organization day, a largely ceremonial and administrative event kicking off next year’s session. Already, pro-redistricting advocates have announced a statehouse rally calling for redistricting.
President Donald Trump has broken with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch long-time ally and prominent MAGA figure who has been at sharp odds with the White House on economic issues, foreign affairs and the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump called Greene a “ranting lunatic” and said he was withdrawing his support for her in a social media post late Friday.
“All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.
The president continued to share several posts lambasting Taylor Greene on Truth Social into Friday night — including reposting comments that called the representative "a cheap political football," a "sellout" and another that said her "political future just ended," all in the span of a couple minutes.
The outburst marked a notable fissure in the MAGA coalition that vaulted Trump to office and has helped him carry out his agenda but has fractured in recent months, particularly over files related to Epstein.
Greene had been an unusually pointed critic of Trump, saying he should spend less time on overseas travel and foreign affairs and more addressing domestic issues such as the looming expiration of Obamacare subsidies that will cause health insurance for many to soar.
But Epstein appears to be the main factor in the breach. Greene and MAGA figures have long called for the government to release files from the investigation, something Trump had also appeared to support until he returned to office.
“It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level,” she said. “But really most Americans wish he would fight this hard to help the forgotten men and women of America who are fed up with foreign wars and foreign causes, are going broke trying to feed their families, and are losing hope of ever achieving the American dream.”
She added: “I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”
Trump’s criticism of Greene comes at a politically fraught moment for Republicans, who are feeling squeamish after a crushing off-season election cycle in which Democrats swept all major races in part by messaging on the shutdown and affordability. Democrats are hoping this momentum will carry them into the midterms, when they hope to regain control of the House.
The president said that a viable Republican who runs against Greene — who he now sees as “Far Left” — in a primary election next year would receive his endorsement.
“I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day. I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics,” he said. “If the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.”
Trump has used Truth Social to level similarly harsh attacks against Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) who, like Greene, has skewered Trump and other Republican leaders by calling for the full release of the Epstein files and pushing to cut back presidential war powers. Last month, Trump encouraged Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal, to run against Massie during the primary elections next year, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) later said he would help Massie clinch a victory.
“Did Thomas Massie, sometimes referred to as Rand Paul Jr., because of the fact that he always votes against the Republican Party, get married already???” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Boy, that was quick! No wonder the Polls have him at less than an 8% chance of winning the Election. Anyway, have a great life Thomas and (?). His wife will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!”
INDIANAPOLIS — President Donald Trump’s effort to force mid-decade redistricting suffered a major setback Friday, after Indiana’s GOP state Senate leader declared the chamber will not convene in December to redraw maps.
In response, Trump's team has begun summoning Indiana lawmakers to meet with the president in the Oval Office as early as next week, according to two sources familiar with the request, including one who had fielded an invite over the phone Friday.
"Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state's congressional maps,” Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said in a statement, after conducting a private test vote on Friday afternoon with his caucus. “Today, I'm announcing there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene in December."
It’s a massive blow to the White House’s efforts to shore up a Republican House majority next year via redistricting, and comes from a state Trump easily won last November. It marks the fourth state where efforts have stalled despite pressure from Trump and his political team.
Bray’s announcement on Friday immediately incensed those in Trump’s orbit.
“Our party can no longer afford to harbor these gutless, self-serving traitors who stab us in the back while accomplishing absolutely nothing,” Trump ally Alex Bruesewitz said on X. “The entire MAGA movement will be mobilizing to Indiana to PRIMARY and OUST every last RINO blocking these essential reforms to RESCUE our nation, this will include the totally clueless and weak State Senate President.”
Vice President JD Vance traveled to Indiana several times and expended political capital on the Hoosier state effort, flying twice on Air Force Two here to court lawmakers, and he had welcomed Indiana lawmakers to the White House. Trump himself entertained Bray and state House Speaker Todd Huston in the Oval Office to discuss the matter in August.
Vance’s office did not immediately comment on the development.
And while Republican-backed efforts continue to stall across the country, Democrats are beginning to ramp up their efforts. After four GOP states redrew nine red-leaning seats — starting with Texas — California voters approved a ballot measure that could net Democrats five seats of their own. Virginia is poised to follow suit with two potential seats, and the party is ramping up its pressure on Maryland and Illinois.
It’s no sure thing yet — as some states are expected to move forward with redistricting in January — but the battle is looking increasingly likely to end in a draw.
GOP Gov. Mike Braun, who had called for a special session but cannot force a vote on the issue, called on the state’s Senate to “do the right thing and show up to vote for fair maps.”
“Hoosiers deserve to know where their elected officials stand on important issues,” Braun said in a statement.
One person close to the redistricting process, granted anonymity to discuss conversations that are not yet public, said that Bray’s description of the vote tally is not accurate.
“The House has the votes and the Senate is very close to having the votes,” the person said, adding that Bray “claims to be protecting his members, but the reality is that he’s hurting his members and the voters who elect them by betraying Republicans and lying to the public.”
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) — whose seat was likely to be redrawn — hailed the decision on Friday.
“Prayer, people, and partnerships power change,” Carson said. “Hoosiers do things differently. We’re about collaboration, not division. We’re about independent thinking — not taking orders from Washington. I want to thank Senator Bray and all the Republican and Democratic members of the Indiana Statehouse who held firm on Hoosier values. This is a win for all of us."
Outside of Indiana, other GOP efforts are also struggling. In Kansas, Republican state House Speaker Dan Hawkins said earlier this month that his chamber does not have the two-thirds vote required to call a special session over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Hawkins responded to the disagreement in his caucus by stripping leadership posts from holdouts and has vowed to take the issue up during the January regular session.
Democrats are trying to blunt the Republican advantage on the widely popular no-tax-on-tips policy as both parties look to strengthen their appeal to the working class ahead of the midterms.
The most intense of these battles is unfolding in Nevada, where five percent of workers earn tips, about double the national rate. Republicans are looking to flip three of the state’s four congressional districts — which include some regions where the tourism and gambling economy dominates. They have already spent millions on ads targeting Nevada Democrats for voting against the GOP megabill that included the tax deduction for tipped workers, which was pushed by President Donald Trump.
"Everyone knows that that was a massively influential message by the president," said Robert Uithoven, a GOP strategist who is running the campaign of Lydia Dominguez, one of the Republicans vying for the party's nomination to take on Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.). Uithoven noted that Trump won Lee's district — which he said includes a large number of workers employed on the Vegas Strip — and carried the state.
Democrats, meanwhile, have blitzed through Las Vegas, Reno and the state’s other tourist hotspots, proclaiming that Republicans generated no such boon for tipped workers there.
“They’re going to see it, they’re going to feel it. They’re already feeling it,” Lee said in an interview with POLITICO. “It's a raw deal for tipped earners, because it's not permanent, and it's so much smaller than what the wealthiest Americans got out of that bill.”
The skirmishing comes as both parties look to control the narrative on the affordability of groceries, housing and other staples, along with the state of household incomes — issues expected to have outsized influence on next year’s midterms.
Moreover, Republicans are trying to better market the omnibus legislation they passed this summer, which hasn’t proven as popular as they hoped. They are zeroing in on individual portions of the megabill that are broadly appealing to working-class voters, and deductions for tipped workers could score the party much-needed political gains after a crushing off-year election defeat last week.
“Nevadans know who put more money back in their pockets, and it wasn’t the Democrat frauds who are trying to claim credit,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm. “Out of touch Democrats Steven Horsford, Dina Titus and Susie Lee can’t lie their way out of this one.”
Nevada Democrats bristle at Republicans’ characterization of them as followers — not leaders — on tax breaks for tipped workers. They note that the idea was a seminal part of their 2024 campaigns, and chastised their opponents for failing to back an alternative measure, which they said would have offered tipped workers more meaningful breaks, and the elimination of subminimum wages.
The bill fizzled out in Congress, which — according to Horsford, who drew up the measure — indicates the GOP’s efforts are disingenuous.
“My bill, the TIPS Act, does all the things that the tipped workers asked for because I asked them what they wanted included in the bill as I worked on it. That’s where the Republicans got their bill wrong from the beginning. They listened to one person, Donald Trump, and not the workers,” he said.
Titus, who has introduced legislation on the issue that would also raise the regular minimum wage, said: “Exempting tips from income taxes is only part of the solution to increasing the wages of tipped workers."
The Democrats' counteroffensive is part of a larger portrait Democrats have spent months drawing up in hopes of demonstrating that the GOP’s promise of beefier refund checks next filing season will be moot for the working class. They’ve pointed to several statistics: Over a third of tipped workersdo not make enough money to pay federal income taxes. Two in five tipped workersrely on Medicaid and other public assistance that the GOP has slashed or could let expire.
And they note that the tax break will lapse in three years unless Congress extends it, while the cuts to public benefits would be permanent.
“D.C. Republicans are giving temporary crumbs to working families,” said Lindsay Reilly, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House campaign arm. “Meanwhile, millions of families are at risk of losing their health care, hundreds of hospitals could close, and countless Americans could lose their jobs — all to pay for permanent tax cuts for billionaires.”
Nevada Democrats also say Trump’s coarse diplomatic relations with Canada have eroded the state’s tourism economy, which is heavily dependent on Canadian visitation, and squandered any windfalls the GOP tax deduction on tips could generate.
“When you have less tourism there, there’s less cars to park, there’s less rooms to clean, there’s less tables to serve,” said Lee, who represents Nevada’s third district, which includes southern Las Vegas. “That’s less tipped income.”
There’s perhaps no group more important for the parties to win over on the issue in Nevada than Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents the state’s hospitality workers. But in the union’s eyes, both sides are flailing.
In late October, the union sent a letter to Treasury and the IRS rebuking the limitations of the tax cut in the GOP megabill and asking for the same things Democrats have pushed for: a permanent extension of the tip tax deduction that would also cover automatic gratuities and eliminate the subminimum wage. Neither the agencies nor congressional Republicans have indicated they’re willing to offer concessions since then, to the union’s frustration, said Ted Pappageorge, its secretary-treasurer.
But that shouldn’t serve as a reprieve for House Democrats, even if they earned the union’s endorsement last year, he continued.
“There has to be a real fight with the Democratic Party about a message that is very clear that we are going to tackle the cost of living and support working class, kitchen table voters,” Pappageorge said. “We’ve been very clear, we’re going to talk to Republicans, Democrats and independents, and we’re going to run our own members because we don’t see Democrats focusing on working class issues in a way that is going to win in the midterms.”
In breaking ranks to end the federal government shutdown this week, Nevada’s two Democratic senators showcased the shifting politics of the once solidly blue state, home to a diverse, working-class population that relies heavily on tourism.
In the national battle for party expansion, Republicans have the edge in the Silver State.
Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen joined an octet of members in the Senate Democratic Caucus who backed ending the shutdown. Their home state politics made their gambit an electoral calculation and an economic necessity, even as it angered some Nevada Democrats, according to interviews with more than a dozen political strategists, staffers and elected officials in the state.
“Nevada isn't a blue state — it's a swing state with a Democratic lean and a Republican trend line,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who focuses on the Southwest. “Both senators are reading the room, and brinksmanship doesn't play well with the middle.”
The GOP advantage in Nevada has been building for several years. Republicans overtook Democrats in voter registration for the first time in nearly two decades this year, the result of a dedicated campaign from the Nevada Republican Party. Polls show GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo with a slight lead in his reelection bid, which will be one of the most competitive gubernatorial races next year. And Republicans are trying to flip Democrats’ three House seats in Nevada next year. In 2024, Donald Trump became the first Republican to win the state in 20 years, beating Kamala Harris by 3.1 points, while Rosen won reelection by just 1 point.
"Nevada has really tightened up," said Robert Uithoven, a GOP strategist from the state .
Republicans and Democrats are fiercely courting Nevada’s working class. In 2024, Trump appealed to the state’s service, hospitality and construction industries with promises to end taxes on tips and overtime — both policies that were passed in the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill.” And his campaign also made significant investment in reaching Latinos, who make up one in five registered voters.
Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping that the sluggish economy, GOP-backed health care cuts and aggressive deportations under Trump will help them win back anxious Nevadans.
“If you hear someone who is saying we are not going to tax your tips, that's compelling,” said Washoe County Commission Chair Alexis Hill, who is running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. “That economic message is consistently what we need to drive home as Democrats and get away from that corporate message."
Nevada’s economy is tethered to the tourism industry, fueled by hourly wage hospitality workers. The state has seen a massive downturn in travel this year after major post-pandemic increases, which — coupled with a sharp drop-off in construction jobs — sparked concern among economists and local officials, who largely gauge the health of the local economy on its tourism industry.
The state’s heavy reliance on federal aid also makes it more susceptible to partisan swings. The freeze on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program resulting from the government shutdown hurt the 15 percent of Nevadans who receive SNAP benefits, among the highest shares of any state. And recent disruptions around air travel significantly affected flights coming and going from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. On Saturday, the airport recorded 198 flight delays.
Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the politically influential Culinary Union, praised the two senators for “clearly fighting for working-class folks” but noted that now is the time to “get the government going and get the benefits moving.”
“At the end of the day, it's about who is going to be in the corner of working-class folks,” he said. “The Democrats' ship has been wandering the last few years, and the voters have been very clear about that.”
Both Cortez Masto and Rosen signaled they sided with Republicans on ending the shutdown because of its severe effects on workers. Cortez Masto, who also voted to end the shutdown over a month ago, defended her recent vote by citing the pinch felt by small businesses and other workers. Rosen, meanwhile, said she hit a breaking point in recent days as she saw the effect of “fully withholding SNAP benefits and gutting our tourism industry by grinding air travel to a halt.”
“How do you stay the course when people are rummaging through the trash for food because Donald Trump took away their SNAP benefits?” said one Rosen aide, granted anonymity to speak openly. “At some point, you’re hurting the people you’re trying to help by not putting an end to the Trump cruelty.”
Rosen is up for reelection in 2030; Cortez Masto in 2028.
Scott Gavorsky, the GOP Elko County chair, predicted the senators would have dealt with blowback from voters had they prolonged the shutdown, especially in areas that have trended to the right, like in the rural region he represents that helped Lombardo flip the governorship in 2022. “Memories are long out here,” he said.
But the pair is already facing backlash. Some Nevada Democrats voiced frustration with their decision to break from the caucus after Democrats stuck together for over a month.
Democratic State Assemblymember Selena La Rue Hatch said she’s heard from many constituents in her swing district in Washoe County, which encompasses Reno, over their “concern about whether we are actually putting the brakes on a reckless authoritarian administration.”
“I have heard overwhelming shock and dismay and concern that we have now given up the fight, and what are we getting out of it?” she said.
A Democratic state party strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely, called the agreement with Republicans to vote on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits at the heart of Democrats’ shutdown negotiations a bonus.
“At the end of the day it isn't focused on political tactics, it’s focused on ending this pain,” the strategist said.
The tourism-dependent state experienced the nation’s highest unemployment rates during the 2008 recession and 2020 pandemic shutdown, after it had become one of the fastest-growing economies in the nation from 1970 to 2008.
Trump’s 2015 ascent came just in time to exploit Nevadans’ lingering pessimism, said Andrew Woods, the director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Center for Business and Economic Research. Then, when Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak shut down Nevada’s casinos for 78 days during the 2020 pandemic, the state’s unemployment rate ballooned again, reaching 28 percent in April 2020.
“That sense of security was taken away,” Woods said. “It made the state purple.”
Republicans are making a big play in Nevada in next year’s midterms, hoping to flip three seats including the one held by Democrat Susie Lee, who represents many workers on the Las Vegas strip.
But Trump’s Nevada victory was fueled by economic dissatisfaction, and recent polling suggests Nevadans aren’t much more satisfied now. In an October poll from Noble Predictive Insights, 50 percent of respondents said the state is worse now than it was four years ago, and just 24 percent said it is better. Their top issues were affordable housing and inflation.
“The electorate is definitely more driven by economic anxiety than ideology these days,” said Mike Noble, the pollster.
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.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D–Mass.) is not one to shy away from criticism of his own party. He made waves in the past when he insisted that the Democrats’ approach to dialogue on transgender issues was stifling. Moulton has also been vocal about the need for generational change in an aging Washington.
This time, the Massachusetts congressman is speaking out about the deal that ended the longest government shutdown in history and how Senate Democrats missed an opportunity to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“If Republicans were somehow gaining advantage here, if the polling was shifting in their favor, if they had done well in the elections last week, then I might say, ’Okay, I get it. It doesn't seem like this strategy is working, so let's give up,’” Moulton said. “But Schumer has just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Moulton is a veteran who served four tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps infantry officer. He’s also challenging Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey for his seat in the 2026 midterms — a feat that former Rep. Joe Kennedy III attempted and lost in 2020.
“Senator Markey is a good guy,” says Moulton. “He served the country for half a century. I mean, he's been in office longer than I've been alive. He and I agree on many of the issues. He says the right things, he has great press releases, but how much has he actually gotten done?”
In this week’s episode of The Conversation, Moulton talks with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns about how he believes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is failing his party, why age needs to be a major consideration for lawmakers and how Senate Democrats could have done more to guarantee access to affordable health care.
Plus, POLITICO’s Senior Congressional Editor Mike DeBonis joins Dasha to discuss how the shutdown finally came to an end, which party ended up better off afterwards and how this event may shape Congress in the year to come.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated when former Rep. Joe Kennedy III has run against Sen. Ed Markey. It was in 2020. This report also previously misstated former Rep. Joe Kennedy III's title. He is a former congressman.
House lawmakers released more than 20,000 pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday — and they include communications between the convicted sex offender and high-profile individuals in politics, media, Hollywood and foreign affairs.
One email shows Epstein communicating with a former White House counsel. Some showed offensive emails between Epstein and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Another offers insight into Epstein’s offer to help Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon.
The documents, a small batch released by Democrats and a larger one released by Republicans, also shed light on the disgraced financier’s private musings about Trump and to what extent Trump may have known about his criminal conduct.
The Trump administration pushed back on allegations of wrongdoing Wednesday, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleging Democrats “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.” Trump, in a social media post, also accused Democrats of “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects.”
Here are some of the most stunning revelations from the latest trove of documents.
Epstein and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
Epstein’s inbox features several appearances by Larry Summers, a prominent economist who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations.
In one exchange, Summers shares snippets from a 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, including a quip that the “general view” among Saudi officials was that “Donald is a clown, increasingly dangerous on foreign policy.”
In another email, Summers remarks that “I observed that half of the IQ In world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
“I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank,” Summers added before directing Epstein: “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”
Summers has attracted scrutiny for his rhetoric about women in the past, including a 2005 speech in which he cited a controversial theory that has been used to suppose that men are more prone to extremely high or low IQs than women as one reason women are underrepresented in science and engineering. The backlash generated by the speech contributed to Summers’ decision to step down as president of Harvard University in 2006.
A representative for Summers did not respond to a request for comment about the exchange.
Michael Wolff’s advice
In a series of emails dating back 10 years, Epstein discussed his predicament and his ties to Trump with author and journalist Michael Wolff.
Wolff on several occasions offered advice to Epstein regarding how he might best publicly navigate his relationship with Trump, who at the time was in the midst of his 2016 presidential campaign
In a 2015 email, Wolff offers advice on what to do if Trump was asked about his relationship with Epstein. Specifically, Epstein asked Wolff how Trump would respond to such a question.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote of Trump in a 2015 email. “If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”
In a 2019 email to Wolff, Epstein wrote that “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. [O]f course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
The message appears to reference Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted Epstein co-conspirator currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for crimes connected to Epstein.
The following year, Epstein and several associates received word that Reuters was readying a story about a lawsuit filed against the disgraced financier and Trump over an alleged sexual assault from 1994.
“Well, I guess if there's anybody who can wave thus [sic] away, it's Donald," Wolff wrote. "Let me know if there's anything I can do."
Wolff’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Epstein and former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler
Epstein’s inbox also features repeated appearances by another member of the Obama administration: former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler.
In a 2018 exchange, Ruemmler — then a partner at law firm Latham & Watkins — discusses the criminal case against former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who admitted to conspiring with Trump to pay porn star Stormy Daniels hush money during a New York criminal investigation.
In one of the messages, Epstein exclaims: “you see, i know how dirty donald is. my guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. what it means to have your fixer flip.”
In a separate exchange, Ruemmler shared her apparent disdain for the people of New Jersey during an email about a planned road trip to New York.
“Think I am going to drive,” she wrote. “I will then stop to pee and get gas at a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike, will observe all of the people there who are at least 100 pounds overweight, will have a mild panic attack as a result of the observation, and will then decide that I am not eating another bite of food for the rest of my life out of fear that I will end up like one of these people.”
Ruemmler did not respond to a request for comment. She is now the chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs, which declined to comment.
Epstein and Peter Thiel
In one 2018 exchange, Epstein asks PayPal founder Peter Thiel — an ally of Vice President JD Vance — if he was enjoying Los Angeles. Epstein also complimented Thiel on his “trump exaggerations, not lies.”
“Can’t complain thus far…,” Thiel answered, to which Epstein replied, “Dec visit me Caribbean."
Epstein’s private island near St. Thomas in the Caribbean has long been the subject of speculation about which possible conspirators may have visited the island, which Epstein allegedly used to conceal his criminal behavior.
A spokesperson for Thiel said he never visited the island.
Epstein and Steve Bannon
In several of Epstein’s exchanges with business associates and friends, he boasts of his relationships to powerful figures in media, technology and foreign affairs.
In a 2018 exchange with Bannon, Epstein says “there are many leaders of countries we can organize for you to have one on ones” with if Bannon agreed to spend eight to 10 days in Europe.
“If you are going to play here, you’ll have to spend time, europe by remote doesn’t work,” Epstein wrote.
A representative for Bannon declined to comment.
Epstein and the Kremlin
Epstein apparently leaned on his foreign policy connections in at least one instance: in the lead-up to Trump’s 2018 bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Epstein suggested that Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign minister, seek his insights on Trump.
“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in an email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time.
During the exchange, Epstein said he had already spoken with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, about Trump before Churkin died in 2017.
“Churkin was great,” Epstein wrote. “He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.”
The Russian embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Epstein and celebrities
The rotating cast of characters Epstein turned to for advice apparently also included the family of disgraced filmmaker Woody Allen.
In one email, Epstein shared a news article about James Woolsey, who led the CIA during the Clinton administration, joining Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as an adviser with Soon-Yi Previn — Allen’s wife and the adopted daughter of actress Mia Farrow, whom Allen had a relationship with.
Previn replied that “Woody said it didn’t mean anything.”
Previn and Allen could not be reached for comment about the exchange.
Epstein and a well-known publicist
In 2011, Epstein wrote to Peggy Siegal, a prominent publicist who has worked in elite New York and Hollywood circles, with an ask: Could she reach out to media mogul Ariana Huffington to enlist her help in clearing his name?
In the exchange, Epstein and Siegal discuss “the girl who accused Prince Andrew” — an apparent reference to the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers who sued Prince Andrew in 2021 alleging he sexually assaulted her on several occasions. The prince was stripped of his titles and is now identified as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. He has long denied any accusations of sexual wrongdoing.
In one message, Epstein writes that Huffington — the co-founder of the Huffington Post, now HuffPost — “should champion the dangers of false allegations” and “send a reporter or reporters to investigate” Giuffre.
Epstein wrote of the idea: “the palace would love it, the girl in the photo, was nothing more than a telephone answerer,, she was never 15, according to her version she worked for trump, first at that age, at MAra lago.”
Siegal offered to send the message to Huffington on her own behalf if Epstein fixed the grammar in his message, although Huffington, who left HuffPost in 2016, told POLITICO she "was never contacted and never sent a reporter."
“It was a moronic request, and he constantly tried to embroil innocent people into the fantasy of his life," Siegal told POLITICO. "It’s beyond comprehension that I would call Arianna and get involved in this."
A spokesperson for HuffPost also said that "After reaching out to current and former staff, to the best of our knowledge, no talk of this coverage ever made it to HuffPost."
Epstein and controversial artist Andres Serrano
While several of the emails released Wednesday call attention to Epstein’s apparent ties to Trump, in one conversation, he appears to express doubt about supporting the then-candidate’s presidential campaign.
In the exchange from October 2016, Epstein discusses the election with artist Andres Serrano, whose controversial 1987 photograph “Piss Christ” — depicting a crucifix submerged in urine — attracted widespread condemnation.
Epstein wrote to Serrano that there was “no good choice” in the election, to which Serrano replied “I was prepared to vote against Trump for all the right reasons but I'm so disgusted by the outrage over ‘grab them by the pussy’ that I may give him my sympathy vote.” Serrano was referencing the widely known Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging about sexually abusing women.
“I'm sure Bill C said things, too,” Serrano added, in an apparent reference to former President Bill Clinton.
Serrano did not respond to a request for comment about the emails. Clinton has previously denied having a close relationship with Epstein and through spokespeople said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Gregory Svirnovskiy, Cheyanne M. Daniels, Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Erica Orden contributed to this report.
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect that Mia Farrow and Woody Allen were not officially married.
Behind closed doors on Wednesday, a Nevada Democrat implored her House colleagues to “stop pissing on each other and start pissing on” Republicans over the shutdown deal, according to two people familiar with her remarks.
The decision by eight Senate Democrats to give Republicans the necessary votes to reopen the federal government this week, without definitive concessions on health care costs, has inflamed divisions within a party that for years has been reeling from internal feuds. Now, Democratic strategists are warning the latest fight is distracting from the party’s mission of pummeling the GOP ahead of the pivotal midterms next year.
Nearly every Democrat running for the Senate condemned the deal and more than a half-dozen House Democrats called for the party to dump Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. House frontliners and prominent progressives piled on. Democrats popped off on cable news interviews, in direct-to-camera videos on social media and on podcasts, venting about how their party caved. They even started fundraising off the intraparty feud.
But all that fury is threatening to rebound on them, some Democrats said.
“We didn’t love the deal either, but that doesn’t mean we think Democrats should be out shooting at each other over this,” said Matt Bennett, president of Third Way, a centrist think tank. “We need to keep the focus on where this belongs: Trump and Republicans having taken away health care from millions. Internecine warfare among Democrats is bonkers and should stop.”
Or, as another Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly, put it: “The circular firing squad is not helpful.”
The House Democratic campaign arm weighed in, too, begging its members “to hold vulnerable Republicans … accountable” for the government shutdown in a memo circulated on Monday.
The internal dispute over how and when to end the longest government shutdown lays bare the deep divisions coursing through the party’s primaries across the country. Some Democrats, usually the younger ones, want to aggressively fight President Donald Trump’s agenda, reflecting the intense pressure from an enraged base. Yet other, more establishment-minded Democrats, don’t think “standing up to Donald Trump” worked, as Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said during an MSNBC interview Monday.
But there’s a risk, some Democratic strategists warned, in “los[ing] focus on the central health care issue and who’s to blame, which is the Republicans,” said Mark Longabaugh, a veteran consultant who was a top strategist for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “From a political standpoint, Democrats have to return their focus [to Republicans] no matter how angry they may be with a betrayal of eight senators.”
The pressure for party unity is high, as deadlines loom for the next round of political battles: In December, Democrats are seeking a vote to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that faces an uncertain path through the GOP-controlled Congress. In January, they’ll confront another government funding deadline.
It all comes at a perilous moment for Democrats, who are suffering from historically poor approval numbers that haven’t recovered much from their electoral wipeout last year. Democrats were jubilant about last week’s off-year victories across the country, positing that their candidates’ overperformance in two gubernatorial races indicates deep dissatisfaction with Republicans that will carry into the midterms. Public polling, too, consistently showed Republicans shouldering more of the blame for the shutdown than Democrats.
“Yet, now, here we are again, with Democrats in disarray,” said Jim Manley, a longtime Senate aide to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Republicans are reveling in Democrats’ latest civil war, while warning it could end quickly and refocus the spotlight onto the GOP over one of its weaker electoral issues. Democrats held the advantage in a recent KFF poll that asked which party voters trust to handle the high cost of health insurance. Only one-third of voters in an AP-NORC poll released this week approve of Trump’s handling of health care.
“Their very messy family fight may complicate primaries and the future of the party, but it does not provide cover for the GOP on health care,” GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett said.
Democrats whiffed their first shot at unifying on Monday, but the ongoing furor over their party’s defectors — and Schumer’s inability to control them — threatened to overpower Democrats’ attacks on the GOP after Republicans blocked Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-Wis.) effort to force a vote on a one-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies. They’ll have another opportunity as House Democrats launch their own effort to force a vote on an extension through a procedural maneuver that would require some Republican support to reach the floor.
“People are focused on the deal right now and there wasn’t a lot of advance hubbub around the Baldwin test vote,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said. “By the time there is a vote in December, presumably there will be some more attention around that.”
The intraparty pile-on speaks to the political forces shaping the competitive primaries Democrats are facing in critical Senate and House races. At a time when the base is clamoring for more fighters, no one wants to be caught on the wrong side of the ropes.
“This is a downstream effect of primaries because it incentivizes talking about people who generally share your values but you differ on tactics or strategy, and explaining why they’re wrong. I don’t think that makes us more at risk,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of the progressive candidate training group Run For Something. “I think working through it, then voters making a decision, makes us stronger in the end.”
But there appear to be limits to Democrats’ self-destruction.
Inside the Capitol, Schumer is not facing a serious threat to his leadership post at the moment, though confidence in his stewardship has taken another hit within the caucus, according to a Senate Democratic aide granted anonymity to describe internal conversations. Even Sanders, who has endorsed several of the Senate candidates most outspoken against the caucus, admitted this week that Democrats do not have a replacement.
“I understand the frustration of the base and members, but we can’t spend all our time attacking each other,” Manley said. “I’m hoping Democrats can return to the health care debate and put Republicans on their back foot.”
Rahm Emanuel believes Americans are being presented a “binary choice” between “defund the police” and President Donald Trump’s National Guard push.
So he’s offering an alternative.
As Democrats grapple with how to cut into one of Republicans’ core issues in the midterm elections next year, the former Chicago mayor plans to lay out his own approach to public safety at an event with police leaders in Washington on Wednesday. He plans to call for pairing community policing methods with tough-on-major-crime tactics and youth interventions. He said his strategy can be a model for cities and for fellow Democrats to combat the electoral narrative that they are weak on crime.
“Democrats a) should not be scared of it and b) should be proactive about what their agenda is,” Emanuel said in an interview Monday previewing his remarks.
A political operative who’s served three presidents and across levels of government, Emanuel is attempting to position himself at the forefront of his party’s conversation on how to tackle public safety as he weighs a White House bid in 2028. He told POLITICO he doesn’t have a “hard timeline” for that decision.
Emanuel will present his strategy at the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy event honoring graduates on Wednesday.
His approach includes combining more training in community policing with “tough action against hardened criminals and gang members,” as well as with youth programs like the mentoring initiatives he undertook as mayor. He also wants more enforcement of gun laws and efforts to intensify them.
He distilled his public-safety pitch into a slogan that harkens back to his time leading Chicago: “More cops on the beat, and getting kids, guns and gangs off the street.”
As mayor, Emanuel grappled with a surge in homicides and shootings, with the city reporting its deadliest year in two decades in 2016. Crime rates across major categories — murders, shootings, robberies and burglaries — declined over the next two years, which the city’s police department attributed to strengthened community partnerships and technological investments. And Emanuel poured millions in expanding youth mentoring and summer job programs to keep kids off the streets, initiatives that remain a point of pride.
Emanuel drew national headlines for tangling with Trump over crime and immigration during the president’s first term. He would face stiff competition in that lane if he ran for the White House in 2028 — Democratic governors like Illinois’ JB Pritzker are fighting Trump’s National Guard incursions into their major cities.
Emanuel expressed opposition to Trump’s efforts to flood blue bastions with Guard troops and federal immigration officers, part of a two-pronged crackdown the president is pushing to boost Republicans in the midterms. Trump claims it has reduced crime. Several states and cities have sued over his Guard deployments to somesuccess, with Illinois and Chicago currently battling the Trump administration before the Supreme Court.
Asked if there was anything effective about Trump’s strategy, Emanuel pointed to a “thread of positive” — that concentrating troops in one area of a city could give local law enforcement the ability to focus elsewhere.
But he stressed he was “not endorsing” that use of the Guard. “It’s a horrible idea to parachute in 100 to 200 people for a short duration of time who have no sense of a community or no sense of what policing is,” he said. “All the money you’re spending on the National Guard could be used to train 500 [local] officers.”
As Trump works to exploit public safety concerns in the midterms, Emanuel said Democrats have to get “comfortable” talking about crime. Democrats are broadly urging their party to go on the offense on the issue, bolstered by private polling that shows a mix of attacks on Republicans and showing steps Democrats are taking to reduce crime can swing voters in their direction.
Emanuel said Democrats should stop crouching behind falling crime statistics that don’t match voters’ perceptions. “Nobody can be complacent or comforted by a statistic,” he added.
He also repeatedly derided the “defund” slogan that criminal justice reformers and progressives popularized in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd but that Democrats have since abandoned. The rallying cry for police reform quickly became an anchor for the party as the GOP successfully argued against its absolutism. Since then, Democrats have worked to distance themselves from it, with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed scrubbing his social media of mentions of it and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani backing away from his past embrace of it.
Republicans are nevertheless seizing on it as they work to make Mamdani their midterms foil and hammer Democrats as soft on crime. But Emanuel argued they won’t be able to make the association stick to candidates broadly after Mamdani moved away from the mantra.
Emanuel will have to contend with his own past on public safety as he contemplates a political comeback, a record that includes helping pass Clinton’s controversial 1994 crime bill and his bungled handling of Laquan McDonald’s murder in 2014.
Emanuel said he bears “responsibility” for how he handled McDonald’s case. He has forged a “very strong relationship” with McDonald’s great uncle, Chicago pastor Marvin Hunter, who supported Emanuel as ambassador to Japan during the Biden administration. The two keep in regular contact.
He also pointed to his 2021 Senate confirmation hearing, when he acknowledged he had underestimated the “distrust” of law enforcement among Black Chicagoans and failed to do enough to address it.
“The problems were deeper, farther and more ingrained than I fully appreciated. That’s on me,” Emanuel said Monday. “But I was determined to make the changes.”
Maine Democrat Jordan Wood is dropping out of the Senate race to instead run for the newly vacant 2nd congressional district, he said in an interview this week, teeing up a fight to maintain Democratic control of the battleground seat.
Wood had pressed ahead in Maine’s Senate race, even as the primary rapidly evolved into a two-person race between Graham Platner and Gov. Janet Mills. But after Rep. Jared Golden’s (D-Maine) unexpected retirement from Congress, Wood said the high stakes race in northern Maine poses a more dire contest for Democrats to prove they can maintain their power.
“‘What do we do in this moment of crisis for our country and our state in democracy?’ That is what called me into the Senate race,” Wood said in an interview. “With Jared not running, it leaves open one of the most competitive House races in the entire country, and so I’m stepping up to take that on, because I believe we must.”
Republicans have clamored to regain control of the increasingly red district — which President Donald Trump won by 10 points in 2024 — and celebrated Golden’s withdrawal as a slam dunk for the GOP.
“What I hear from voters across the state is an anger and a frustration at a broken politics, and less directed at a single person but a political establishment,” he said. “Voters are really looking for candidates that are putting forward a vision of the future that they can believe in and that is addressing the biggest issues that they face in life.”
Wood declined to endorse in the Senate race following his withdrawal but said he’d “support whoever the Democratic nominee is.”
Wood — who said he currently lives about 20 miles outside of the district but grew up in the area — said he and his husband are in the process of moving within the district’s boundaries. He noted that he held town halls in all 11 counties of the 2nd District during his Senate run and heard directly from many would-be constituents.
He argued his campaign reached voters not by focusing on Trump but instead speaking to the “failure” of representatives across the aisle in addressing affordability and the cost of living — issues he says are “not all just Donald Trump’s fault.”
Wood will bring fundraising heft to the race. He’s raked in more than $3 million since launching his Senate campaign in late April — roughly half of which came in the last quarter — though that includes a $250,000 loan, according to his filings with the Federal Election Commission. He started the final three months of the year with $920,000 in his campaign coffers, which he can now roll over to his House campaign.
On the Republican side, two-term former Gov. Paul LePage had raised roughly $916,000 through the end of September and started the final three months of the year with $716,000 in cash on hand.
Wood joins former Golden primary challenger Matt Dunlap, the state auditor, who pledged to stay in the race after Golden’s exit.
Woods' entrance is unlikely to end the DCCC’s ongoing search for a candidate, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Wood said that he had “been in communication” with the DCCC and “let them know our plans” but declined to provide details on the conversations.
Another potential entrant into the race is current gubernatorial candidate and former state Senate President Troy Jackson, who last week left the door open to a run.
“I'm really flattered by everyone reaching out and I get why,” Jackson said in a statement. “I've won multiple times in a district that voted for Trump by talking directly to rural working class voters from across the political spectrum about how to make Maine more affordable for them.”
One other name to watch: Penobscot Nation Chief Kirk Francis, who was once mulling a Senate bid. A Francis ally told the Bangor Daily News last week that he was considering a run in ME-02.
A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro.You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
Login
lead image
lead image
lead image
lead image