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.”
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.
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.
Graham Platner is shaking up his campaign amid a swirl of controversy, bringing in a longtime friend to function as his Maine Senate campaign’s new manager, hiring a compliance firm and sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers.
Kevin Brown — who became the campaign manager this week and whose past campaign work includes the presidential bids of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, though he has not worked in Maine — is only one of the changes. The campaign has also brought on an in-house attorney, as well as compliance firm Spruce Street Consulting, which has ties to a constellation of buzzy progressives including Zohran Mamdani.
Amid fallout from Platner’s controversial years-old social media posts, his campaign began sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers last week, according to his former top political director, Genevieve McDonald, who said she declined to sign one.
“The campaign offered me $15,000 to sign a NDA,” McDonald told POLITICO in an interview. “I did not accept the offer. I certainly could have used the money. I quit my job to work on Platner’s campaign, believing it was something different than it is.”
A statement from the campaign referred to the $15,000 offer as standard severance. A Platner campaign spokesperson said the team recently hired Spruce Street “to take over campaign compliance to institute standard practices that had yet to be put into place. Some of those standards had to be instituted retroactively but as a matter of course we do not require anyone previously involved in the campaign to do so. Genevieve McDonald was offered severance which is standard for all campaign employees and contractors.”
The moves to salvage a campaign months after its launch underscore how fast Platner took off and how imperiled he finds himself, in a crucial state for Democrats in their uphill quest to retake the Senate. Platner burst onto the scene with viral videos as a kind of progressive warrior poet, campaigning for Mainers’ “freedom to live a life of dignity and joy.” But his promising bid has been beset by negative stories about his past over the last week, shortly after Gov. Janet Mills, favored by national Democrats to take on Sen. Susan Collins, entered the primary.
Revelations of the staffing changes and non-disclosure agreements — which have not been previously reported — come as Platner’s campaign is in damage control. On Wednesday, the candidate confirmed to The Advocatethat his Reddit posts included “homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes, and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men.”
That follows Platner expressing regret over getting a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest 20 years ago, along with previously unearthed offensive Reddit posts, including one from 2013 downplaying sexual assault in the military and another since-deleted 2018 one suggesting violence is necessary to enact social change. Platner has apologized for the posts and said they do not represent his growth in recent years.
Brown, the new campaign manager, declined to comment on the record.
The non-disclosure agreement first circulated among the Senate Democratic hopeful’s campaign in the hours after he came under fire for those Reddit posts last week.
The paperwork — sent electronically by a campaign contractor Sunday to McDonald, who resigned two days earlier — was voided by the campaign at 7:04 p.m. Wednesday, several days after she had already resigned and hours after POLITICO requested comment from the campaign on its use of NDAs.
The NDA — titled "Graham for Maine NDA.pdf” — was sent by Victoria Perrone, a political compliance expert and Spruce Street’s president and founder. Peronne, reached by phone, confirmed Platner was a client but would not comment further.
McDonald said she understood the financial offer to be conditional on her signing the NDA. She provided a screenshot of a text message from Perrone suggesting Monday that if McDonald could "get it back to me before the end of the day, I can get your payments out the door."
McDonald said that Daniel Moraff, who was a consultant on Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn’s 2024 campaign, functioned as the de facto campaign manager prior to Brown’s arrival this week. In a brief phone call, Moraff said he was never officially Platner’s campaign manager.
McDonald resigned last week, citing Platner’s past posts.
“Either they didn't thoroughly vet him or they didn't think the things they found would be a problem,” McDonald said in an interview. “Either way, that was a poor calculus. You cannot say things like rural Mainers are ‘racist’ and ‘stupid’ or you're a radicalized communist at 37, play them off as 'you were a young man’ and remain a serious contender against Susan Collins. This was four years ago.”
A Platner campaign representative called McDonald a “disgruntled former employee” to the Bangor Daily News, before voiding her NDA offer.
It remains unclear whether the controversy surrounding Platner’s past will present a long-term drag on his campaign in this anything-goes era of politics for both parties.
A poll conducted over the past week — as some of Platner’s Reddit controversies were making news — and released Thursday by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center found Platner leading Mills in a primary matchup, 58 percent to 24 percent among first choices for Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, with remaining voters preferring other candidates or undecided.
The poll was largely conducted after the first revelations about Platner’s social media history had emerged, but before news of his tattoo. It found both him and Mills with positive favorability numbers among likely Democratic primary voters, with Platner’s advantage driven by younger voters.
Indiana Senate Republicans say they do not have votes to pass mid-cycle redistricting despite a pressure campaign from the White House, according to a spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray – but President Donald Trump’s allies are still demanding the matter comes up for a vote in a special session.
“The votes aren’t there for redistricting,” said Molly Swigart, Bray’s spokesperson.
The news comes just days after Trump held a phone call with reluctant members of the caucus.
POLITICO spoke to four people close to the sensitive talks, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the issue. Indiana state Senate Republicans’ latest move threatens to upend what has been a nationwide push from the White House to force red states to redraw maps ahead of the midterms.
Three of those people said Indiana Gov. Mike Braun was inclined to call a special session to redo the state’s maps— a move that could come as early as next week.
A spokesperson for Braun told POLITICO that the governor “is still having positive conversations with members of the legislature and is confident the majority of Indiana statehouse Republicans will support efforts to ensure fair representation in congress for every Hoosier.”
They said the White House conducted a dial-in poll of lawmakers that revealed the majority of Senate Republicans backed mid-cycle redistricting. But one of the Republicans cautioned that colleagues were confused by the instructions for the survey because the administration did not provide guidance on how to move forward.
Two of those Republicans briefed on the poll said the White House believed the poll showed the majority of the holdout caucus supports mid-cycle redistricting. But they said that Bray and his leadership team represent the majority of no-votes.
“If Bray would personally release his leadership to support this, there would be enough votes for this to pass,” one of those people said.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A person close to the White House, who was granted anonymity to discuss the pressure campaign, disputed that the votes weren't there.
The "White House has a private whip count from individual calls, expects it will have the votes as it already does in the House, and it expects it to be put up for a vote," the person said.
Indiana House Republicans are more broadly supportive of the plan after caucusing Tuesday, and emerged from those talks last night with enough votes to move forward with redistricting if a special session is called, according to a third Republican briefed on the matter.
Allies to the White House, such as Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), have warned control of the House rests on whether Indiana can produce two additional Republican-held congressional districts by re-doing the maps.
Trump allies, including Turning Point Action and the late Charlie Kirk, have threatened primaries for Hoosier holdouts who do not back Trump’s mid-cycle redistricting plan.
“Now the real fun begins,” Chris LaCivita, Trump’s former 2024 campaign manager, posted to X after POLITICO first reported news the state Senate said they did not have the votes.
President Donald Trump phoned into a private Indiana Senate Republican caucus meeting Friday, pressing reluctant Hoosier lawmakers to undertake mid-cycle redistricting, according to two people briefed on the call who were granted anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
The call — which was Trump’s first-known call with rank-and-file Indiana state lawmakers on the matter following an August Oval Office meeting with state House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray — punctuated an intense period of national lobbying on redistricting.
It follows a new push by late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action this week to ramp up pressure on Indiana lawmakers who oppose mid-cycle redistricting. The New York Times first reported details of the call.
Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), a close White House ally, has warned that control of the House of Representatives could ride on whether the state can produce additional Republican-held congressional districts by reopening the maps.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun is supportive of calling a special session to do so, likely next month, but has not wanted to strong-arm the legislature into convening in Indianapolis.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The call also comes on the heels of Vice President JD Vance’s second visit to the Hoosier State to make the case to lawmakers last week. Allies of the White House’s efforts described that meeting as productive but not “a slam dunk.”
The Indiana Conservation Voters, a liberal environmental-focused group, has put six figures behind television ads opposing mid-cycle redistricting and set to play this weekend during this weekend’s Colts, Indiana University and Notre Dame games.
Ken Martin has been almost everywhere since he became the chair of the Democratic National Committee, attempting to put out fires for a party in the wilderness as he has hopscotched some 33 states over the last eight months.
Just this week, Martin quietly shuttled from Indianapolis, where Indiana Republicans are weighing mid-cycle redistricting at the demand of President Donald Trump, to Washington for the Supreme Court’s oral arguments of Louisiana v. Callais — which could weaken the Voting Rights Act and further set Democrats back — to Pittsburgh, where he campaigned for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court retention races.
“Most people think I've got the shittiest job in America, but I feel like I've got the best job in America,” Martin said.
But he also didn’t mince words about the challenges and drama that it has brought to his life.
“There’s not a day that I don’t go home wanting to pull my hair out, because it’s a tough job,” Martin said.
With Election Day looming next month, New Jersey’s gubernatorial matchup is making Martin nervous these days — and where he’s headed this weekend.
In a wide-ranging interview while he was in Pittsburgh, Martin spoke with POLITICO to preview the party’s prospects in New Jersey and Virginia, where Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger are trying to secure the governor’s mansions, and discuss Democrats’ efforts to defend House seats from Republican-led gerrymandering attempts.
“New Jersey is the best place, probably, for Donald Trump to actually stop the Democratic momentum — or at least minimize the Democratic momentum that we’ve seen throughout this year,” Martin said, pointing to what he cites as his party’s overperformance in nearly four dozen special elections since Trump’s inauguration. “We've overperformed on that to the tune of, on average, about 16 percentage points, which is a historic overperformance. And so, you know, they’re looking to blunt our momentum somewhere.”
Despite touting his party’s performance under Trump’s second presidency, Martin declined to handicap whether Sherrill needed to match or beat former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 6-point margin in the New Jersey last November.
“I don't care if we overperform or underperform,” Martin said. “What I care about is making sure we win. At the end of the day, we know that the Republicans are feeling very bullish about their chances in New Jersey for a whole host of reasons, right? Jack Ciattarelli lost to Phil Murphy by 3 points four years ago. In the Harris race last year, they significantly shrunk the presidential margin there. And New Jersey has a history of electing Republican governors, combined with the fact that they haven't ever elected a Democrat to a third term, right, at least in the last 50 years.”
Indeed, Republicans are feeling bullish here due to Trump’s inroads in the state last year — particularly in areas with large Black and Hispanic populations — and the increase in registered Republicans since Ciattarelli’s 2021 bid for governor, when he lost by an unexpectedly small margin. Should Sherrill win — which some Democrats acknowledge will be challenging — the party will be reading the tea leaves to see how she performed in these areas where Democrats lost ground last year.
Martin, though, said that if the election were held today, “certainly, I feel like both Mikie and Abigail would win handedly, but we've got three weeks left.”
Martin is also pushing for Democrats in some blue states to mount their own redistricting efforts to counter Republicans’ aggressive push to redraw maps in red states across the country, led by Trump and Vice President JD Vance. But he acknowledged that his party’s hands are tied in more ways than others.
“Every Democrat that I’ve talked to, including our governors, they all understand how imperative it is that we stand up to this, again, unconstitutional power grab by the Republicans,” Martin said. He insisted that Democrats “believe in good government” and are committed to “fair and free elections.”
“We believe in putting, you know, safeguards in place to prevent exactly what we're seeing around the country, and as a result, in many states, including in states like Illinois and other states that are controlled by Democrats, it's much harder for them to actually do what the Republicans are doing in those Republican-controlled states,” Martin said. “So I don't begrudge anyone for not being able to do it.”
In addition to the gubernatorial matchups in Virginia and New Jersey, the other major race that has garnered national attention is for attorney general in Virginia, where Democratic candidate Jay Jones has landed in hot water after his use of violent rhetoric in a text message was revealed. The incident has animated the gubernatorial race and become a cudgel wielded by the White House.
Martin granted that Jones made “reckless and unacceptable” comments and pointed out that he has apologized. But he didn’t go out of his way to defend Jones.
“Virginia voters are the ones that will have to make this decision, and each race is their own,” Martin said. “Virginians will make a final decision on who they want to be their next attorney general.” Still, Martin said he believes Jones will win.
Graham Platner, who is running as an insurgent Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, once suggested in online posts that violence is a necessary means to achieving social change — comments now drawing scrutiny in an era of increased political violence.
Platner, 41, a former Marine and combat veteran who now raises oysters, made the statements on Reddit in 2018, long before he emerged as a serious candidate to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the midterms.
If people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history,” he wrote in one since-deleted post. In another, he said that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
CNN first reported Thursday on Platner’s participation on the subreddit r/SocialistRA, alongside other Reddit forums where he called himself a “communist” and said that “all” police are bastards. All of the posts have been deleted.
The posts, which were removed three months ago shortly before Platner launched his Senate bid, were obtained by POLITICO and verified using an archive of deleted Reddit comments and by cross-checking other posts by the same user that mentioned biographical details consistent with the candidate’s life.
The posts suggest far deeper ties with socialist groups than were previously known. When he announced in August that he would challenge Collins, Platner said he rejects the label “liberal” but was also running on several progressive tenets – including universal health care and restricted arms sales to Israel. He has hired the Democratic strategist Morris Katz, who also works with Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for New York City mayor as a Democrat.
In a statement to POLITICO, Platner did not dispute his authorship of the posts but disavowed their violent rhetoric.
“As I told CNN, I was fucking around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die,” Platner said. “I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired shitposter.”
Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, recently joined the crowded race as the establishment favorite for the key midterm election. The revelations may cast a shadow over the meteoric rise of the tattooed oyster farmer in the state.
The existence of the graphic posts comes amid a spiral of actual political violence and violent rhetoric including by Virginia Democratic Attorney General candidate Jay Jones who suggested the former Republican House speaker should get “two bullets to the head.” Jones has since apologized for the texts.
Like the Jones’ exchange, which was from 2022, Platner must now contend with the yearsold posts. They include one from September 2018, when he responded to a Reddit user concerned about what their roommate would say if they purchased their first AR-15. Platner, under the username “P-Hustle,” replied: “Tell them that if they expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”
The reddit thread r/SocialistRA, which describes itself as the “Socialist Redditor Rifle Association,” says it is unaffiliated with the Socialist Rifle Association, a left-wing group that advocates for gun rights.
In a July 2018 post on the same subreddit, Platner said that he “agreed” with a 1914 quote from former socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs that workers should arm themselves unless they are “willing to be forced into abject slavery.”
Platner cited Debs, who ran for president from prison, as an example to counter the notion that the 2nd Amendment only gained salience in the 1970s.
“That’s why this poster and the Debs quote that follows above should be shared far and wide. An armed working class is a requirement for economic justice,” Platner said.
There are dozens instances of Platner engaging with posts on the subreddit r/SocialistRA, which is self-described as the “Socialist Redditor Rifle Association.”
In another since-deleted post from Sept. 2018, this time on the r/politics subreddit, Platner, again using the username “P-Hustle,” wrote: "Get Armed, Get Organized. The Other Side Sure As Hell Is,” in response to a story about a Democratic candidate in Colorado whose truck was shot at with her inside.
Platner, an Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran and political newcomer, said in his campaign launch video that he is “not fooled by this fake charade of Collins’ deliberations and moderation.” He has leaned into his status as a novice, earning the attention of younger Democrats and progressives. He also recently won the endorsement of three influential labor unions including the United Auto Workers.
His posts about arming the working class and fighting fascism take on heightened scrutiny in the era of increased hostilities and concerns over political violence.
Jones, has faced widespread backlash over the 2022 text messages that included a vow to “piss on the graves” of Republican opponents in addition to the violent remarks about former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert.
Jones again apologized for the texts, which were first reported by the National Review, during a Thursday debate and said, “I’m ashamed, I’m embarrassed and I’m sorry.”
President Donald Trump’s mid-cycle redistricting push is on the verge of stalling in Indiana, top state Republican officials have warned the White House, and Vice President JD Vance is on his way to the Hoosier state to turn things around.
The cautionary note, shared by three Republicans close to the deliberations, prompted Vance’s second trip in three months to the state to mount a “hard push,” one of the people said. The people cited in this story were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.
During the visit, the White House political shop is threatening to conduct its own whip operation.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, conveyed his concerns about the redistricting effort’s chances in the state Senate to the White House last week, two people familiar with those discussions told POLITICO.
One of those people said Indiana GOP Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray “has been doing nothing to help the effort along or encourage his members, but has been really sort of hiding behind them, and maybe even subtly or not so subtly pouring cold water on the idea so that he can say he doesn't have the votes.”
The White House’s renewed pressure campaign comes as Republicans look to keep up their momentum in their national redistricting fight — building on new maps they passed in Texas and Missouri that could net them up to six House seats in next year’s pivotal midterms. Remapping Indiana’s congressional lines could help the GOP secure two more.
Some of those seats could be offset by the Democratic push to respond in California, where voters will decide on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push in an Election Day ballot question. And given the GOP’s narrow advantage in the House, any stalling from a red state takes on added importance.
“I think the main thing is that the governor has consistently said that he wants to get the legislature on board with this approach,” the second person said. “He has indicated to the White House that he doesn't think that they're all there yet. And their main reaction to that is that, you know, the vice president wants to come out and continue to put the hard sell on Indiana legislative Republicans to get from point A to point B on this.”
Bray, according to the two Republicans, delivered the White House the same message. The state’s Speaker of the House, Todd Huston, told the president’s team he is willing to “get this done,” one of the Republicans said, but is concerned about securing votes in the Senate, as well as the optics of remapping the state mid-decade.
“I don't think Houston has been particularly helpful, but he's not really been harmful,” the person said. “I think he'll go along. And we can pull the house along if we have to.”
White House deputy chief of staff James Blair and Political Director Matt Brasseaux are expected to arrive in the state Thursday in their personal capacities to help with the pitch. They’ll be joined by Republican National Committee chief of staff Michael Ambrosini.
“I think the White House is going to take stock of the votes,” one of the Republicans told POLITICO. “And if people are going to say we’re not going to help Republicans, then I think the White House is going to make them tell them that to their face."
The White House and a spokesperson for Vance did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Bray declined to comment. And a spokesperson for Huston said, “the Speaker is still having conversations and getting feedback from his caucus members and constituents on this topic.”
Vance learned of the talks in recent days, one of the Republicans allied with Trump’s efforts said, and offered to go to Indiana for a second time, following his August visit to meet with local Senate Republicans.
Vance’s visit comes just weeks after former Transportation Secretary and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigeig visited the Indiana Statehouse to rail against redistricting efforts, saying that Hoosier Republican leaders were “ashamed of what they’re doing.”
White House allies in Indiana have argued that the death of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, who backed primaries for holdout state lawmakers, should lead to renewed efforts to redistrict.
“They killed Charlie Kirk — the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” Sen. Jim Banks, the Republican of Indiana, told POLITICO last month.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle earlier Wednesday first reported of Vance’s visit.
“It’s probably fair to say that the House, all things being equal, would rather not do it, but they're also not going to go walk the plank before they know they've got cover across the hallway,” the person added of the state Senate.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan Democrat running in a three-way primary to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters, has shifted her stance on the war in Gaza and now believes it is a genocide.
Her latest evolution came during a chat with voters at a brewery in the West Michigan town of Allegan Sunday, just days ahead of the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that led to the conflict. McMorrow’s team provided video of the exchange to POLITICO.
During the back-and-forth, an attendee asked McMorrow whether she would accept support from AIPAC — the politically influential pro-Israel lobby that’s backing rival Democratic candidate Haley Stevens, a member of congress.
“I’m not accepting AIPAC support,” McMorrow told the questioner. “I’m not seeking their endorsement. I’ve never accepted their support. And what we are seeing in the Middle East is a moral abomination.”
She went on to say she would’ve supported Sen. Bernie Sanders’ resolution to block offensive arm sales to Israel and called for a two-state solution.
“My view on this is we have completely lost the humanity of this issue,” McMorrow continued. “It is talked about as like a third rail litmus test without acknowledging these are human beings. They’re people. And our position should be that there is no individual life that is worth more than another individual life.”
A different voter interrupted her to asked whether the conflict was a genocide. McMorrow paused for several seconds, exhaled, and responded, “based on the definition, yes.”
“I don’t care what you call it,” she added, saying for some Jews the term “means something very different to them: that if you lost family members in the Holocaust it means the specific medical testing, gas chambers, being put on a train — I don’t want us to get lost in, ‘do you agree with this definition or not.’ I want to get to the solution.”
The issue is personal for McMorrow, whose husband is Jewish: She received a death threat on her daughter’s life after Oct. 7.
Her remarks demonstrate the fast-moving politics of the issue in a battleground state ahead of next year’s midterms. And they come as the Michigan Democratic candidates are looking for ways to contrast ahead of the election.
They also isolate Stevens as the only remaining Democratic candidate not to call the conflict a genocide. Stevens recently declined two interviews with POLITICO on the matter. Abdul El-Sayed, a former Michigan health official, has long said the war meets that criteria.
Asked 13 days ago by POLITICO about whether the conflict in Gaza is a genocide, McMorrow said “dehumanizing Palestinians, declaring collective guilt, blocking food and medicine and bombing Gaza to the point of uninhabitability is a moral catastrophe.” She declined to use the word “genocide.”
A spokesperson for McMorrow said she based her new stance on a United Nations Commission of Inquiry report from Sept.16 declaring that a genocide took place, as well as conversations with community leaders.
Asked for comment on McMorrow’s position change and its involvement in the race, an AIPAC spokesperson said in a statement: “Israel is fighting a just and moral war and is demonstrating a clear willingness to end the conflict. Rather than making false and malicious allegations against the Jewish state, the pressure should be applied on Hamas to release the hostages and give up power.”
On Saturday, the day before McMorrow called it a genocide, she told POLITICO she faces questions about the issue at nearly every event. She acknowledged it was “a probably small percentage of voters that are voting based on the issue, but it's a lingering concern people have.”
El-Sayed, who is endorsed by Sanders, has warned that AIPAC backing Stevens and spending a lot of money in the race could help Republicans win the seat. He’s noted the state’s “uncommitted movement,” the national pro-Palestinian group, could fray the party’s coalition. Like McMorrow, he said he faces questions about the issue at every campaign stop.
“When I talk about the fact that our tax dollars are being misappropriated to weaponize food against children and to subsidize a genocide, rather than to invest in real people in their communities and their kids and their schools and their health care, it is the single biggest applause line in every speech,” El-Sayed told POLITICO in an interview before a party confab here. “People understand that this is not about what’s happening over there. This is about what's happening with our tax dollars over here.”
Later in the evening Saturday, McMorrow, el-Sayed and Stevens gathered inside a room for Best of the West, a traditional Michigan Democratic fundraiser at a hotel in downtown Grand Rapids. There, they heard Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who is running for governor, also say that the war in Gaza is a genocide.
McMorrow’s comments came on a weekend in which candidates running in the contentious and longhaul primary—it’s not scheduled to take place until August, though state lawmakers have discussed moving it up—sharpened their knives against one another.
McMorrow and El-Sayed have also contrasted with Stevens over her receiving the tacit backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose leadership has become a flashpoint among a new generation of Democratic candidates.
Not long after El-Sayed recorded himself trying to eat a heaping, 12-stack cheeseburger to talk about rising costs and billionaires, POLITICO reported that Stevens was set to take a luxury California fundraising trip in Napa Valley this weekend amid the shutdown with members of the DSCC.
“The DSCC believes that Haley has the best chance to win in the general,” reads an email obtained by POLITICO from Stevens’ fundraising firm. “With a proven record of winning in tough elections, she starts this race with a clear lead. The Republicans are uniting in opposition to Haley Stevens in the primary, viewing her defeat as clearing a path to capturing a Michigan U.S. Senate seat for the first time in three decades.”
The email promotes a weekend fundraising swing though Los Angeles in addition to her Napa stop. “If the government hasn’t reopened, she won't attend the events,” a spokesperson for Stevens said.
Still, in such a competitive race even the trip itself was fodder.
“I've never been to a wine cave,” El-Sayed, who doesn't drink, told POLITICO in an interview. “I don’t really know what happens there, but I'll tell you this, I've been all over my state, and I've never found one.”
CLARIFICATION: Due to a transcription error, a quote from El-Sayed has been clarified.
The 2028 presidential primaries are already unfolding on YouTube.
Amid the rapid decline of cable news, potential candidates and other elected officials are locked in a digital arms race to draw subscribers, boost their reach and build what amounts to their own broadcast networks.
Potential candidates like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are closing in on audiences that rival or surpass total cable primetime viewers for individual networks. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is racking up millions of views. Vivek Ramaswamy, the former 2024 GOP presidential candidate who is running for Ohio governor, dwarfs any other Republican but President Donald Trump on YouTube with more than 813,000 subscribers. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s channel started the year with just 28,000 subscribers, and now has 177,000, having generated nearly 10 million views and accumulated 500,000 hours of viewing time so far this year, according to a spokesperson. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear saw a 448 percent increase in views from last year to this year, a spokesperson tells POLITICO.
Taken together, it signals the arrival of a fast-changing attention economy that has scrambled what effective political communication looks like. The 2028 cycle has the potential to be the first post-cable TV election, heralding the dawn of a post-literate era in which technology fully displaces reading and consumption of news from traditional outlets.
“I think there are a lot of elected officials and their staff who are realizing that their viewers are not necessarily just on cable news, and if they want to reach more people, more diverse audiences, they really have to diversify where they're talking,” said Emily Keller, a former Democratic National Committee social media director who now works with Democratic officials as a strategic partner manager for YouTube.
In this, Buttigieg’s thinking is instructive. In the past, his team turned to YouTube mainly to share clips from his media appearances. Their thinking is different now. “Looking ahead, we see the channel evolving into a destination of its own,” Chris Meagher, a Buttigieg spokesperson, told POLITICO. Meagher went on to describe the platform as “a place for Pete to connect in a direct and unfiltered way with millions of Americans.” (One example: Buttigieg recently spoke to a rural health care provider about the impact of President Donald Trump’s budget cuts.)
The landscape has fundamentally changed since 2016, which some political observers memorably (and incorrectly) predicted would be the “Meerkat election.” That was a passing fad. But the switch to YouTube has staying power.
Just last week, YouTube hosted what it trumpeted as its “first-ever exclusive, global broadcast of an NFL game.” C-SPAN has landed there, too. Young men and disaffected voters are also flocking to the platform for their news.
“YouTube by far represents the broadest reach potential of any platform, especially among younger audiences and disengaged voters,” Meagher told POLITICO.
YouTube says this is a boom time for politicians on the platform. “We’re seeing really significant growth in ways that I would not expect in an off year,” said Carly Eason, a former Republican National Committee official who works as Keller’s counterpart, focusing on YouTube’s outreach to GOP figures. “As they really invest in their channels, work on their channels, and follow a lot of YouTube best practices, they're really reaping the rewards.”
YouTube views are surging among both Republicans and Democrats. “Verdict with Ted Cruz” has some 331,000 subscribers. His top video — an interview with Elon Musk— has garnered 1.2 million views. “This Is Gavin Newsom,” hosted by the California governor, has 187,000 subscribers. Beshear, the Kentucky governor, has a series of videos called "Andy Unplugged: The Lighter Side of Leadership," in which he has taken on the drive-thru at Wonder Whip, shown off Churchill Downs and watched the 2024 solar eclipse.
Other political leaders have taken a different approach to YouTube’s rising influence, primarily focusing on outreach to existing creators on the platform. Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) recent push to improve child safety on Roblox, the online gaming platform, garnered more than 50 million views across 18 videos on other creators’ channels, said Marie Baldassarre, Khanna’s senior communications adviser.
That’s a deliberate choice.
“Our strategy with influencers, right-wing creators and non-political voices is reaching hundreds of thousands of first-time voters and letting them know that Democrats aren't so bad after all,” Baldassarre told POLITICO.
It’s not just potential 2028 candidates who are flocking to the platform.
More broadly, politicians are recognizing they need to build their own audiences. At 92, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — who, decades ago, was the first senator to adopt the fax machine — is kicking the tires on doing more podcasts, Eason said.
Few Democrats have done so well on YouTube as Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). He began the year with 24,000 subscribers and now has nearly half a million. His straight-to-the-camera videos perform well.
“The nice thing about building up a following on YouTube is that it puts my content in front of people who aren't necessarily looking for it,” Schiff told POLITICO in an interview.
Not long ago, amid his YouTube experiment earlier this year, Schiff said a waiter at a restaurant complimented him on his “show.” He thought the person must’ve been referring to an appearance on MSNBC or another media hit. He thanked the man and then pressed further.
“He looked at me somewhat surprised, and he said, ‘Your show on YouTube,’” Schiff said. “And I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I’ve got a show.’ And now you know that we’re closing in on 500,000 subscribers, that really is like the following of a cable news show.”
Schiff said his party still has work to do in checking Republicans’ rise on alternative platforms.
“We as a party still have a lot more catching up to do in the digital realm, both in terms of the different platforms, but also with digital and social media influencers,” Schiff said.
“The best time for Democrats to care about YouTube was 2018,” Stefan Smith, a Democratic digital strategist, told POLITICO. “The second-best time is now.”
One of Republicans’ most respected pollsters has identified an emerging group of swing voters who could help decide the 2026 midterms: Call them the weighted vest women.
They’re already flooding your social media feeds and neighborhoods — all while donning weighted vests, the latest fitness influencer fad of 2025. You don’t have to look far to find them. They’re covered on the pages of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and can be seen in plenty of TikTok videos.
Christine Matthews — the pollster for former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s reelection campaign, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ two campaigns and the president of Bellwether Research — first saw women wearing weighted vests all over her upscale neighborhood in Alexandria.
Matthews’ wanted answers to two simple questions: How many women were wearing weighted vests? And what were their politics? So she commissioned a poll of 1,000 women across the U.S., the results of which she shared exclusively with POLITICO.
Matthews found that about one in six women wear this year’s hottest wellness accessory. But more importantly, the weighted vest women broke for President Donald Trump by three points in 2024.
Going into 2026, though, this group backs Republicans and Democrats equally at 47 percent in a generic congressional ballot. Among all women surveyed, 48 percent would vote for Democrats compared to 35 percent for Republicans.
“The people who swing elections, it always sort of comes down — in particular in midterms — to suburban women,” Matthews said in an interview with POLITICO. “This, to me, is just a particularly interesting cohort that is a subset of that group that could swing these elections because they’re so engaged. They look like they’re definite midterm voters.”
These voters are “under age 45, have kids at home, and live in urban/suburban neighborhoods, [are] well-educated, higher-income and highly engaged with politics,” according to Matthews’ poll deck.
“While much more likely to ‘do their own research’ on health matters, they generally trust mainstream medicine and media,” according to the poll deck. “They aren’t vaccine skeptics or seed oil opponents. They are likely to be listening to a podcast while walking with a weighted vest. They are politically split.”
Matthews acknowledges that the weighted vest women comprise a small cohort, which could lead to a higher margin of error. “So we want to track them and get more data going forward,” she said.
More broadly, the poll found that 31 percent of Gen Z women disagree that vaccines are “generally safe,” and are turning to social media, influencers, podcasts and self-research over doctors and institutions for information. Gen Z women are twice as likely as Boomer women to be vaccine skeptics.
The survey also identified “a worrisome trend” among younger moms: 47 percent of moms to kids under 18 “primarily turn to doctors and the medical establishment for advice,” 32 percent “say they do their own research,” 15 percent “follow natural or holistic approaches” and 11 percent “rely on advice from friends/family.”
Some 71 percent of women say vaccines are safe. Democratic women are more confident about vaccine safety than Republican and independent women. Only 24 percent of Republican women strongly agree that vaccines administered in the U.S. are generally safe, while 49 percent of Democratic women strongly agree and 23 percent of independent women strongly agree. Meanwhile, 20 percent of GOP women and 16 percent of Democratic women say seed oils are unhealthy. And women who say seed oils are unhealthy are more likely to be vaccine skeptics.
It’s not yet clear what the defining issues for the weighted vest wearers in the midterms will be, and Matthews plans to commission more research about them in the coming weeks and months. But they appear to lean more conservative than the median voter.
“They have a modern diet of information that is heavily influenced by new media, social streams and podcasts,” Matthews said. “But it doesn't cause them to go down weird fringe rabbit holes. It encourages them to adopt something like a weighted vest, but not, like, oppose vaccines.”
President Donald Trump’s already brass-knuckled push for red-state redistricting is taking on an increasingly apocalyptic valence among MAGA stalwarts following the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Inside an Embassy Suites ballroom in suburban Indianapolis this weekend, Sen. Jim Banks’ inaugural Hoosier Leadership for America Summit drew hundreds of attendees who came to hear from next-generation MAGA figures ranging from Alex Bruesewitz, a top Trump adviser and longtime friend of Kirk’s, to GOP strategist Alex DeGrasse.
The summit marked the first official MAGA gathering since Kirk’s death and served as both a Kirk memorial and redistricting rally, unfolding amid an increased security footprint and ubiquitous police presence throughout the conference center.
Between musical interludes featuring Jason Aldean’s “Fly over States” and “Try That In a Small Town,” MAGA leaders spoke of “demons” at work behind the shooting of Kirk and the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska and “the righteous versus the wicked.” An attendee who posed a question to Banks wondered whether Kirk’s killing “lifted the veil between good and evil.”
“This isn’t a political battle anymore,” said Bruesewitz, who spoke to the crowd with visible emotion about his friendship with Kirk dating back to their teens, and recalled their last dinner together in South Korea just days ago. “It’s a spiritual battle.”
All of it presaged a coming national political hardening on the right with Kirk’s killing as the raison d'etre. More than any other issue at the conference, Kirk’s death seeped into the rationale for mid-decade redistricting.
In the final weeks of his life, Kirk underscored the argument for that push in Indiana: He posted to X last month Turning Point would “support primary opponents for Republicans in the Indiana State Legislature who refuse to support the team and redraw the maps.”
Bruesewitz in an interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of the summit said he initially considered asking Banks’ team to cancel the event in light of Kirk’s killing. But he decided to push ahead, recalling a message from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. “She said, ‘Do not let your words or your voice get softer, speak out now more than ever,’” Bruesewitz recalled.
Bruesewitz made the case to still-hesitant Hoosier lawmakers for a congressional map that delivers Republicans all nine Indiana districts, carving up Democratic-held areas in Indianapolis and Northwest Indiana.
“They need to recognize what time it is in our country,” Bruesewitz told POLITICO. “We are up against a wicked ideology that cannot continue to have power in our country. And Indiana has a unique opportunity to take some of their power away, doing it through lawful means and doing it through legislative means, and they should listen to the president and get it done.”
Banks said in an interview that Trump is closely monitoring the redistricting effort — and similarly tied the importance of the push to Kirk’s death.
“They killed Charlie Kirk — the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” Banks said. “And I sense it in this crowd, in a big way. And I sense it from supporters all over the state; that now's not the time to back off. Now's not the time to be nice. Now's the time to engage in a peaceful and political way.”
Missouri lawmakers passed Republican-drawn maps this week at Trump’s behest. Ohio is required to produce new maps soon, too. But in Indiana, Burkean conservatives have dragged their feet. Since an Oval Office meeting with Trump last month, legislative leaders have neither publicly addressed that meeting nor shown their cards.
Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate President Rodric Bray have been holding behind-closed-doors caucuses to take the temperature of their members. But people familiar and briefed on those proceedings say Huston hasn’t taken a vote on the matter and Bray’s Senate is said to have not made much headway.
Throughout Saturday morning, precinct officials, local GOP grandees and state lawmakers heard speakers turn up the pressure on the issue.
War Room host and keeper of the MAGA flame Steve Bannon joined the event via live stream, calling for a maximalist approach to redistricting. “We’re absolutely pushing for 9-0,” DeGrasse told Bannon from the stage. “That’s the whole ballgame.”
Kurt Schlichter, the Townhall columnist, said Indiana lawmakers needed to “get hard” and “have the stones” to succeed in their push. “You need to carve this state into nine Republican districts and drink their tears,” he told Republicans of Democrats.
The keynote panel featured three Indiana GOP state lawmakers who have become vocal proponents of redistricting. Among them was state Rep. Andrew Ireland, who said in an interview that Kirk’s killing “crystallizes what a lot of people think, what the party believes,” emphasizing that the country has a “real issue” with political violence — which he claimed the left was particularly responsible for — and that Republicans have been complacent. “For too long, I think Republicans have tried to just rest on their laurels when it comes to things like redistricting.”
Not all of those gathered were nodding their heads. State Rep. Becky Cash, who represents more purple parts of the Indianapolis suburbs, told POLITICO that even after hearing the case for redistricting afresh at Saturday morning’s event following her White House visit last month, she remained opposed. Since Kirk’s death, Cash said she has received messages saying she and her colleagues should “redraw it all.”
“I tell people, ‘I don't think it's gonna happen,’ and then they look at me and they're like, ‘Oh, you're definitely going back in” for a special session, she said. “I'm like, ‘Well, do you know something that I don't know?’ Like, I think it's 50-50 at this point.”
Even if lawmakers do go back into a special session, Cash said based on her attendance at private caucuses she is not at all certain new maps would pass.
“I can tell you that the speaker did not take a count,” Cash said. “People are individually communicating with him. Obviously, we have three legislators who were on a panel today who are 100 percent yes. And I don't know many who are ‘yes.’”
Spokespeople for Huston and Bray did not return requests for comment.
Banks painted the stakes of the effort in no uncertain terms, asking the audience of statewide officials, lawmakers and precinct officials and grassroots powerbrokers to imagine Republicans losing their House majority by one or two seats because the state failed to take up redistricting.
“Indiana could be ground zero for keeping the House of Representatives,” Banks said.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked a cacophony of condemnations and grief from leaders across the political spectrum. But missing from the din was the voice of a unifying political leader calling for calm.
No one appeared well positioned to play the soothing role that has fallen in the past to presidents and the nation’s faith leaders.
“I’m looking, but I can’t claim that I can identify that person,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told POLITICO.
Daniels, a Republican from a more genteel time in American politics, was not alone in his assessment of the bleak landscape.
Bill Daley, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview that President Donald Trump “is the only one who can do it, because he represents everyone.”
Rep. Don Bacon, the iconoclastic Nebraska Republican, told a reporter he hoped the president would step up to the challenge, adding, “But he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger.”
In a video statement recorded from the Oval Office late Wednesday, Trump denounced the violence on a Utah Valley University campus that led to the death of the 31-year-old conservative fixture. The president, who survived two attempts on his own life, spoke of the scourge of “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”
But he also laid blame at the feet of the "radical left," who he said compared Kirk to "Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.”
Trump has either actively refused or begrudginly — and then only briefly — embraced the role of consoler- or uniter-in-chief. He has routinely demonized his opponents on social media and threatened to withhold federal dollars from causes with which he ideologically disagrees. His previous rhetoric has included boasting he could stand “in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters and he recently ordered the National Guard to patrol cities whose Democratic leaders he argues let crime get out of control.
For some, Trump himself is part of the problem. As president, he has the power to ease an already tense situation — or inflame it.
“There is a violent undertow, and we have to be very careful about unleashing it,” said William Barber, an influential pastor and civil rights activist who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocates for the nation’s lowest-income residents. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
He suggested perhaps one person alone can’t fill the role of cooling the temperature.
“Does the president have a responsibility at this moment? Yes,” Barber added. “But I'm saying that in our history there has never been one person. So it’s the president, pulpits and politicians that hold key leadership positions that must step into this moment.”
Asked whether he could be the country’s lead uniter, a White House spokesperson highlighted the following portion of his Wednesday night remarks: “Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died. The values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God. Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his message and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.”
And asked how he would like his supporters to respond to Kirk’s assassination, Trump told a reporter, "He was an advocate of nonviolence. That's the way I like to see people."
But to another question he replied, “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”
Few know how to sew back together a civic fabric that seems irreparably torn.
“There's no one trusted broadly enough to play that role,” said Mike Ricci, former Speaker Paul Ryan’s communications director. Ricci crafted Ryan’s remarks in the minutes after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. “And in the absence of that kind of voice, it just leaves people retreating more into their own camps: They're more likely to share what Megyn Kelly says about it than they are the president.”
Trump still has room to seize the mantle, said Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s former spokesperson.
Back when the former president climbed a pile of rubble in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Fleischer said, “We were still a polarized nation where many Democrats thought President George Bush was an illegitimate president because of the Supreme Court ruling in the recount. What changed everything was the fact that America was attacked and our nation rallied."
"I don't agree that it's impossible for leaders to bring people together, because I saw it happen,” he added.
Indeed, FBI Director Kash Patel, a MAGA faithful, attended the anniversary ceremony Thursday alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an establishment Democrat, in a sign that a few moments and places remain to bridge the partisan divide.
Former presidents looked to offer their own way forward for the nation using the only megaphone they had: social media.
But no one can quite find the words — or the credibility or moral authority — to quell the molten anger of this American moment, an anger that shows no signs of receding ahead of the pivotal midterm elections next year.
Trump is as much an ailment to the body politic as he is a symptom. Declining trust in politicians, a fragmented and siloed media, and decades of waning social and religious institutionsare all colliding.
There’s no Rev. Billy Graham to speak to broad swaths of the faithful and call us to Americans’ better angels. The Pope — an American — hasn’t yet addressed Kirk’s death, though U.S. bishops did, urging for a national reckoning that rids “us of senseless violence once and for all.”.
“Billy Graham … spoke as someone who had something to offer to everyone, as opposed to someone who was speaking on behalf of a tribe— and that's what we've lost,” said Michael Wear, Obama’s former faith outreach adviser.
At its core, Wear said, the killing of Kirk — and the lack of a unifying leader to emerge in its aftermath — reveals something about American politics in 2025.
“Politicians used to be valued by their most strident supporters for their ability to speak and persuade others who were not among their core supporters,” he said. “Now, the common definition of a good politician is someone who excels at channeling and mobilizing anger among their core supporters against an enemy.”
Barack Obama called Texas state Rep. James Talarico last week to express support for his leadership in the state’s redistricting battle, according to two people familiar with the call.
The former president specifically praised Talarico as an effective spokesperson for showing up on different media and platforms, including his recent interview with Joe Rogan — which Obama told him requires risk and authenticity.
Obama’s call to Talarico comes as the Texas Democrat weighs entry into the state’s Senate race, which would pit him against former Rep. Colin Allred in a Democratic primary. The recent call between the two was not Obama signaling a preference in such a primary, the sources familiar said, and the two did not discuss a potential Senate run.
The call also comes as Obama has reengaged in the political moment in ways broadly uncommon for a former Oval Office occupant in response to President Donald Trump’s actions during his second term.
In private, he’s holding calls with the party’s rising stars. Earlier this summer, Obama called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York City, where the former president “offered him advice about governing and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time,” The New York Times reported.
In public, he’s rallying Democrats in a number of ways. He’s actively encouraging Democrats to fight the GOP’s Trump-inspired mid-cycle gerrymandering efforts — “an existential threat to our democracy,” Obama said in a video he posted Thursday. This week he trumpeted the party’s upset victory in a special election for a seat in the Iowa state Senate. “When we are organized and support strong candidates who are focused on the issues that matter, we can win. Let's keep this going,” he said.
He’s endorsed, via X, Wednesday’s edition of Ezra Klein’s New York Times show. In that episode, the host shared his concern that Trump is “creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build: an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him — that puts him in total control.”
It all amounts to something of an escalation for Obama. In April, he spoke about the importance of the “rules-based” order and criticized the Trump administration’s crackdown on Big Law. In June, he shared his concern that America was fast approaching a “situation in which all of us are going to be tested in some way, and we are going to have to then decide what our commitments are.”
Perhaps now that test has arrived.
It comes at a moment when the Democratic Party is largely rudderless at the national level, seemingly adrift. In that vacuum — no clear leader, no clear vision, no identifiable cause at the moment aside from stopping Trump — Obama may be the party’s most unifying figure.
Nearly 10 months after the 2024 elections, and the party is still embroiled in self-recriminations over where they’re talking, what they’re talking about and, now, the actual words they’re using. Or, more precisely: which words they shouldn’t utter.
In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put “a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” It’s a set of words that Third Way suggests “people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.”
They span six categories — from “therapy speak” to “explaining away crime” — and put in sharp relief a party that authors say makes Democrats “sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.” In the document, titled “Was It Something I Said?” Third Way argues that to “please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant,” according to the memo.
Among the blacklisted terms: privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.
“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” says Matt Bennett, Third Way's executive vice president of public affairs. “We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk. In recent weeks, this has become a bit of a thing, with comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman highlighting how insane Dems can sometimes sound. Also, elected officials like [Delaware Rep.] Sarah McBride and [Kentucky Gov.] Andy Beshear are begging their colleagues to just be normal again.”
“People can’t relate to something unless it has some edge about it,” Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s senior vice president, tells Playbook. “And we had shaved off all of our edges in an attempt to never make anyone upset about anything.”
The group doesn’t base its list on any specific polling. And the authors don’t offer specific counter recommendations for these terms. But they do outline the values their vision of the party includes.
“We will never abandon our values or stop doing things to protect those who need help, encouragement, trust, a second chance, acceptance, a fair shake, and the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness But as the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 has shown, the most important thing we can do for those people and causes is to build a bigger army to fight them,” the memo reads. “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”
It’s worth noting that in certain parts of the country, a lot of people, especially now, do talk in this language and use the phrases Third Way recommends against, even if it doesn't scream big tent enough. It’s also worth noting an inherent irony in all of this: it’s hard to police how politicians talk at the same time that you're asking them to be authentic.
The memo’s authors write “we are not out to police language, ban phrases or create our own form of censorship. Truth be told, we have published papers that have used some of these words as well. But when policymakers are public-facing, the language we use must invite, not repel; start a conversation, not end it; provide clarity, not confusion.”
“The Democratic Party brand is toxic across the country at this point with way too many people — enough that there’s no way for us to win a governing majority without changing that,” Erickson said. “Part of the problem was that we were using words that literally no normal people used — that we were sticking to messages that were so overly scripted that they basically sounded like nothing.”
What about bright spots for the party? Erickson cited three potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders who she says are good examples of how to communicate: Beshear, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
“Gallego is doing a great job talking about economic success,” she says. “He goes into communities and he’s like, ‘I want you to have a big ass truck, if that’s what you want.’”
Buttigieg, she said, is “doing a great job of going into spaces that are maybe not hostile, but unusual spaces for him to be in and having real conversations about complicated topics, like transgender people in sports, and saying, ‘you know, I think you should have empathy toward people that are figuring this issue out for the first time. And you should have empathy toward transgender kids and their families.’ But he's not afraid to say those things, and he’s getting yelled at.”
And Beshear is “getting this so exactly right, talking about how these terms aren't even what those communities use to call themselves,” she said. She recalled Beshear “talking about the fact that ‘justice-involved individuals’ is not a thing that any justice-involved individual would call themselves. They would call themselves incarcerated, call themselves convicted, or they would call themselves a whole lot of other things, but that's not what they or their families would call themselves. So inventing terms that the people that we're talking about and trying to protect don't even use, and then enforcing that that's the only way you can talk about those people, is crazy.”
So, can Democrats really talk their way back to power? It’s an Aaron Sorkin-eqsue idea to think that everything can be solved by the right words and a compelling speech. (And it’s one that the party has been tantalized by, on and off, for decades.) Of course, Democrats face bigger and deeper problems — a yawning voter registration gap among them — and are still figuring out which policies to advocate.
In some ways, Third Way is reaching the same political conclusion VP JD Vance arrived at during his interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham this week. “I mean, look, the autopsy for the Democrats, some free political advice from the president of the United States is: stop sounding like crazy people,” Vance said.
Vance’s remarks came on the same day he had burgers with the National Guard troops at Union Station. Which is itself a glaring reminder of some of the stakes if Democrats don’t get this right.
Erickson mentioned crime as a key issue on which Democrats need to recalibrate, citing Trump’s “invasion of D.C.”
“It shows that people don't think Democrats want to hold criminals accountable at all,” she said. “Like we don't care about violent crime and we don't care if someone hurts someone, that they should be held accountable. That's not true. We’re afraid to say that because we’re afraid that someone is going to criticize us for being too ‘tough on crime.’”
Third Way sees it as a place to start. “We need to reflect on the ways that our bubble and our fear of being criticized by anyone on the left has led to a problem with both our policy and our language,” Erickson said.
With an inescapable, smashmouth, all-caps-laden and meme-filled X account, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is holding a mirror up to MAGA — and MAGA doesn’t like what it sees.
There’s Newsom on Mount Rushmore. There’s Newsom getting prayed over by Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and an angelic, winged Hulk Hogan. There’s Newsom posting in all caps, saying his mid-cycle redistricting proposal has led “MANY” people to call him “GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
If this genre of social media post provokes deja vu, there's a good reason for that.
“He’s trying to mimic President Trump,” MAGA vanguard Steve Bannon tells POLITICO. “He’s no Trump, but if you look at the Democratic Party, he's at least getting up there, and he's trying to imitate a Trumpian vision of fighting, right? He looks like the only person in the Democratic Party who is organizing a fight that they feel they can win.”
For a decade, President Donald Trump has blazed trails online. And now, Newsom has found that by replicating Trump’s posts to the point of outright parody and trolling, he’s effectively gamed social media algorithms and colonized X’s typically right-coded “for you” tab.
In doing so, Newsom is not only getting on Republicans’ nerves, but also potentially redefining how Democrats function as the opposition party in the age of Trump.
Michelle Obama famously advised Democrats to live by a dictum: “When they go low, we go high.” Newsom has approached it a bit differently: When they go low, we go low, and — backed by lots of AI-generated slop — end up high in the algorithm.
"I’ve changed,” Newsom told Fox LA when asked about his new media approach in an interview that posted overnight. “The facts have changed; we [Democrats] need to change.”
Newsom’s MAGA-flavored posts have birthed an organic outburst of user-generated memes — not dissimilar to the dynamic Trump has inspired (and from which he has drawn over the years in posts on his @realDonaldTrump accounts). There’s Newsom riding a raptor into battle, a tattered Old Glory rippling in the wind behind him. There’s Newsom riding a different dinosaur while shirtless and sporting an eight-pack of abs, raising pistols in the air. (Newsom’s office tells POLITICO they don’t use AI to generate written content, though lean on it to create visuals.)
Newsom “isn’t just trolling MAGA; he’s proving to Democrats that stepping off your digital high horse and entering the fray is both messy and worth it,” says Stefan Smith, a digital strategist who was online engagement director on Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign. “The man was political roadkill a few months ago but, with a shift in strategy, he’s become a cause célèbre of the Resistance 2.0. No doubt the rest of the 2028 shadow primary entrants are taking notes.”
In some ways, it’s like peering into the near future of what a post-literate presidential campaign might look like. (In case you have trouble imagining who might occupy such a race, look no further than the side-by-side post of Newsom and fellow meme lord Vice President JD Vance, which has been seen on X at least 54 million times.)
“Newsom has entered the digital dojo, and he’s performing the sort of memetic jujitsu that’s scaring Republican white belts unused to actual competition,” Smith tells POLITICO. “For too long, Democrats have been posted up in the parking lot, too afraid of getting it wrong to throw a jab. This should energize folks to get into the octagon.”
Voices on the right are noticing, too. “If I were his wife, I would say you are making a fool of yourself,” Fox News’ Dana Perino said, speaking of Newsom’s antics on X. “He's got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little more serious.”
In private, staffers in Newsom’s press office smiled. Perino said nothing about the leader of the free world’s own social posting — the very thing Newsom is emulating.
“ALMOST A WEEK IN AND THEY STILL DON'T GET IT,” the account responded. The next morning, “Governor Newsom Press Office” again flickered to life. “FOX IS LOSING IT BECAUSE WHEN I TYPE, AMERICA NOW WINS!!!”
Perino responded to Newsom’s post during Tuesday’s episode of “The Five” on Fox News. “I thought they hated Trump, but they’re trying to be more like him and they have to pay people to do it. The thing is, what I was saying yesterday is that I believe that everybody needs to find their own way,” Perino said.
She continued, drawing a parallel to New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “If you think about Mamdani, his authenticity is what rocketed him to the top. And now you have Cuomo trying to copy him, and it’s just cringe. And that was my point. Is that if you’re doing this and it’s not authentic and you’re trying to do somebody else who you say is Hitler and you think that we don’t get the joke, oh no, we get the joke, it’s just not funny.”
Newsom’s press office says that Trump has used all-caps less in his own posts of late. White House communications director Steven Cheung is posting about the account, and recently said that Newsom is a “coward and Beta Cuck” for not fielding questions at a press conference. (He was, in fact, as a livestreamed video showed.) Newsom’s press office shot back: “Steven Cheung (incompetent Trump staffer) doesn’t know how to use his computer. SAD!” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson called Newsom’s posts “weird and not at all funny.”
Newsom’s staff count these critiques as wins. In their minds, the Trump aides are, in an indirect way, critiquing their own boss when attacking Newsom’s tactics.
“I hope it’s a wake-up call for the president of the United States,” the California governor said recently, breaking character when asked about his X posts. “I’m sort of following his example. If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president. … I think the deeper question is how have we allowed the normalization of his tweets, Truth Social posts over the course of the last many years, to go without similar scrutiny and notice?”
Asked for a comment, the White House sent POLITICO an original meme, referencing a famous scene from the show “Mad Men.” (It is, to our knowledge, the first official White House press statement delivered exclusively in meme form.)
Added Abigail Jackson: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The “Governor Newsom Press Office” account has humble origins. The handle, @GovPressOffice, was created by aides to Jerry Brown — a man more given to Zen Buddhism than the fever swamps of the internet — and belongs to the California governor’s office. Because of that, just as Brown’s aides passed it off to Newsom in January 2019, Newsom will hand it off to his successor in January 2027; he won’t be able to take what he built with him when his term ends.
And what his team has built is substantial. As of this writing, the “Governor Newsom Press Office” account has 408,000 followers on X. Since the beginning of August, it has gained more than 250,000 followers and earned more than 225 million impressions, according to Newsom’s office.
Though some online observers speculated that Newsom digital director Camille Zapata primarily steers the effort, POLITICO has learned that the account is helmed by a team of four or five people — a sort of "brain rot" trust that includes Newsom communications director Izzy Gardon and rapid response director Brandon Richards. Newsom’s office declined to describe the governor’s level of involvement, but told POLITICO that he leads the effort.
No other prospective 2028 candidate — Democrat or Republican — is breaking through in the online attention economy like Newsom. And it’s not just his press office’s account: His campaign X account tops 2.4 million followers. On his campaign accounts alone, since 2025 began, Newsom has gained 2.96 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, X and Substack. All of that has earned him a billion-plus views and impressions, his team tells POLITICO.
Still, AI slop and dinosaur memes don’t vote in Democratic primaries. But Democrats who are way more offline — and who hail from far beyond the Golden State — are also noticing Newsom.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say how happy they are to see a Democrat fighting back,” says Jim Demers, a former New Hampshire state representative and member of Stand Up New Hampshire, a group organizing town halls in the early primary state. “There’s this feeling that Democrats are not fighting hard enough, and he's showing the fight people are looking for."
“People in the MAGA movement and the America First movement should start paying attention to this, because it’s not going to go away,” Bannon tells POLITICO. “They’re only going to get more intense.”
Donald Trump’s political operation is considering primarying Indiana lawmakers who don’t embrace his mid-decade redistricting plans.
“They have a mountain of cash and even more motivation to win the redistricting wars Democrats started long ago,” a person familiar with the White House’s thinking told POLITICO.
The electoral threats are an escalation of a pressure campaign as Trump and his allies try to extract more GOP seats in Congress across the country. Indiana has been a top target of those efforts, but resistance among some rank-and-file officials has grown as a number of state lawmakers have publicly opposed those efforts in recent days.
“Politics is a team sport, and they prefer to do things with the team … but if Republicans refuse to play team ball, they will very likely begin to focus on upgrading players,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss private operational plans.
The comments came as Indiana House Republicans were preparing to convene for an afternoon caucus Monday to discuss redistricting. Lawmakers have already been targeted by robocalls and text messages from a mysterious group called Forward America. There is little public information about the group and its aggressive voter outreach campaign; a POLITICO reporter who lives in Indiana has received about two dozen calls and messages in recent days.
A number of Indiana lawmakers are planning a pilgrimage to the White House later this month, responding to an invitation extended prior to Vice President JD Vance’s visit to the state to talk redistricting.
“This doesn’t get any easier for Hoosier Republicans who oppose Trump on this issue,” said an Indiana Republican who supports the redistricting push. The Indiana Republican was granted anonymity to speak openly about a sensitive intraparty issue.
The threats of primaries are the latest signal that Trump’s political shop intends to amp up the redistricting arms race as Texas lawmakers move forward this week with passing a map creating five new GOP seats in Congress. It also shows they are eager to clamp down on any discomfort within the party over creating new maps ahead of the 2030 Census.
Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk said on X Monday that “We will support primary opponents for Republicans in the Indiana State Legislature who refuse to support the team and redraw the maps. I’ve heard from grassroots across the country and they want elected Republicans to stand up and fight for them. It’s time for Republicans to be TOUGH.”
The pressure on Indiana lawmakers comes as Texas is moving forward with a redraw of its congressional map at the request of Trump — and California is crafting its own retaliation.
On Monday, dozens of Texas Democrats returned to Austin after protesting redistricting by remaining out-of-state for two weeks, denying Republicans the ability to conduct legislative business. As Texas Republicans are back on path to passing their new, more aggressive gerrymander, national Republicans have turned their attention to other states like Florida, Missouri and Indiana.
A spokesperson for the Indiana House Republican Caucus did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.
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