Americana

1. MAGA effect in 2025 races
2. Democrats retire
3. The resistance’s legal strategy
4. ’28 conspiracy theories begin
5. Arab Americans rebel

Also: Why pharma didn’t fight the Kennedy nomination.

Two weeks ago, when Bob Menendez made his semiannual post-verdict speech outside of a courthouse, he closed with some first-rate groveling.

“President Trump is right,” said the former New Jersey senator, who’d twice voted to convict that president for abuses of power. “This process is political and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.” Everybody knew what Menendez was doing. Trump has been sympathetic to politicians indicted over corruption charges, Republican and Democrat. He’d suggested that Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar was punished because he “wouldn’t play Crooked Joe’s Open Border game,” that former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was railroaded by “the Comey gang,” and (previously) that Menendez was targeted because he “wasn’t getting along too well” with fellow Democrats.

Ever since McDonnell v. United States, when a unanimous Supreme Court narrowed the definition of political bribery, it has been more difficult for prosecutors to prove that politicians are exchanging gifts for favors. But voters have taken an expansive view of what “corruption” means. And politicians have taken advantage of that.

In his confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. accused Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders of “corruption” and “accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry,” based on a misreading of campaign finance reports.

Sanders had never taken money from industry groups; he had taken small dollar donations from some of the 5.5 million people employed by the industry. But on Elon Musk’s X, Sanders was deluged with Kennedy fans who believed that the now-HHS Secretary had exposed a quid pro quo. Musk himself has advanced the idea that any government worker or politician who’s grown wealthy must have gotten that way through graft.

“We do find it rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth,” he said in a White House press spray with Trump this week. This was a reference to former USAID administrator Samantha Power, whose financial disclosures say exactly where her money came from.

The high-level idea here is that politicians are on the take unless they prove otherwise — and maybe even if they provide that proof. When a politician faces an investigation, prosecutors must be trying to bring him down because he stepped out of line. It’s a powerful monomyth, and pretty easy to invoke. Menendez hasn’t gotten the grace he wants from Trump yet, but New York Mayor Eric Adams just did, squelching the federal investigation into his gifts and campaign funds after aggressively courting Trump and his administration.

This may backfire badly on Adams. The resignation of Manhattan’s interim US attorney, who wrote in detail about the pressure from the new DOJ to let Adams off, has become an explosive scandal, ahead of a Democratic primary Adams was almost certainly going to lose. But you can understand why he tried it. The yearslong effort to convince people that their leaders are crooked has created amazing opportunities for the ones who are.

State GOP contenders get closer to Trump

Four years ago, Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey kept Donald Trump at arm’s length as they ran for governor. This year, they are hugging him as tight as they can.

“I have been an ardent, strong and effective supporter of President Donald Trump since he came down the escalator in 2015,” said radio host Bill Spadea at the first televised debate between the GOP’s gubernatorial hopefuls, held last week at Rider University.

“He endorsed Ron DeSantis,” shot back Jack Ciattarelli, the 2021 nominee who nearly defeated Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. “And he also suggested that Trump should have resigned and let Mike Pence finish the job.” Trump’s effect on state politics, and the effect of the Elon Musk-led effort to shrink the federal workforce, is only just starting to be seen in the year’s marquee races for governor. Three months ago, the president lost both Virginia and New Jersey by five points — a massive overperformance for a Republican in the latter. In both states, while Trump is more popular than at any time in the past eight years, Democrats expect him to be a liability.

But an early trend for Republican nominees is defending Trump and recanting past criticism of him. In Virginia, where Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears has no GOP primary competition, she appeared on MAGA radio host John Fredericks’ radio show this week to face questions about a 2022 interview where she said Trump should “step off the stage.”

“I am clearly pro-Trump,” Earle-Sears said, recounting how she’d watched Trump’s 2024 RNC speech and cheered when he talked about God saving him from an assassin’s bullets. “After that, we were good.”

Ciattarelli had not involved Trump in his 2021 campaign, and said that year that he didn’t realize a rally he attended was part of the “Stop the Steal” movement. But in this race, as Spadea has challenged his electability and MAGA loyalty, Ciattarelli has defended Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters; in the debate, he chided Spadea for giving Chris Christie a helpful interview, because there’s “nobody Donald Trump detests more than Chris Christie.”

Democrats were watching closely, as another set of election results this week found Republicans running well behind Trump’s 2024 numbers. On Tuesday, Oklahoma Democrats ousted the Republican mayor of Norman, Okla., and New York Democrats easily held the county executive’s office in Westchester County. That was after a last-minute Truth from the president, encouraging Republicans to vote; New York Rep. George Latimer reacted by calling the win a “referendum on Trump.”

Open seat jamboree

Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith was appointed to replace Al Franken less than seven years ago. She won a special election to fill out his term by 10 points, then an election for a full term by five points. Republicans didn’t see her as an obvious target in 2026, and on Thursday, she confirmed that she won’t be: She wouldn’t run again.

The retirement of Smith, 66, and Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who’s just a few months younger, surprised Democrats and created openings in two must-win 2026 battlegrounds. “We have a deep bench of political talent in Minnesota,” Smith said in her announcement. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who had been waiting to see if Gov. Tim Walz would seek another term, quickly jumped into the race; Walz did not rule it out, and neither did suburban Rep. Angie Craig or Minneapolis Rep. Ilhan Omar.

But the retirements by two Democrats in their 60s put a spotlight on the elderly senators who have not yet said whether they’ll seek new terms. They include New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who turned 78 last month and had a notably soft fundraising quarter; Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, who at 80 is the oldest senator ever to serve Illinois; and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who turned 70 in December and has not said whether he is running again.

No Republican senators have stated plans to retire next year, though several are facing or expect to face primary challenges from pro-Trump activists. Smith’s decision could also scramble Democratic politics in the home state of the Democratic National Committee’s new chair. Omar’s potential campaign has intrigued pro-Israel campaigners, who have tried twice to beat her in a House primary, and believe she would lose statewide if she ran for Senate — as a less pro-Palestinian Democrat took her seat.

Democrats whine as their legal eagles win

Democrats had a plan to survive the Trump administration’s first 100 days: A multifront legal war carried out by state attorneys general and hundreds of liberal groups. They executed it, winning injunctions that have slowed down the implementation of the new president’s agenda and the firings illegally ordered by DOGE.

Still, this hasn’t made Democratic voters very happy, and members of Congress know it.

“The problem is, it moves slower,” said Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley. “That’s hard for people to digest, because the threats are so urgent that you want to see a response to counter it that’s just as urgent.”

The Trump administration has plowed ahead in any case, including in its effort to reduce the workforce, with Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reporting that 75,000 workers took a “buyout” offer that the legal activists said was a trap. But the setbacks in court have frustrated the White House, almost as much as the perception of flailing and failure has frustrated Democratic activists who want their Hill leaders to do more.

The governor and the smear

Last summer, after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Penn., the county’s district attorney received an unusual criminal complaint. A woman who’d moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, and filed several lawsuits against Gov. Josh Shapiro and other Democrats, was accusing Shapiro of some role in planning the shooting. The evidence was nonexistent, consisting of the Democratic governor talking sometimes to Joe Biden as he ran for reelection.

“The allegations were, to say the least, preposterous,” said Richard Goldinger, a Republican serving his fifth term as DA. “The complaint was not approved for filing.”

Goldinger was surprised this week when he started getting new questions about the dismissed complaint. It had been shared on a Facebook page that covers lurid Pennsylvania crime stories; that page’s description, which suggested that Shapiro was facing a serious investigation, was shared widely on X. There, it got the attention of Shawn Ryan, one of the country’s most popular podcasters, who reshared it with one million followers along with his commentary: “Wow.” Shapiro’s office, which reached out to Meta and X about the spread of the false story, did not hear back; it didn’t comment, either. As they try to draw attention to the Trump administration moves that worry them the most, the opposition party is constantly asking what to do about bogus stories that get online traction. The old ways that politicians handled these situations have been outmatched by the sheer amount of high-traffic accounts sharing anything, to audiences that assume that a story ignored by the legacy media must be false.

“You can’t get distracted and play endless whack-a-mole, because then you know that is designed to really prevent us from being as effective and focused in our work,” said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “But at the same time, there are certain key pieces of misinformation that I do think are important to tackle head-on.”

Arab Americans (formerly) for Trump

Dr. Bishara Bahbah chaired Arab Americans for Trump during last year’s election. As the Biden administration supplied aid to Israel without conditions, and as the war in Gaza continued, Bahbah’s group urged voters to back the GOP nominee, send a message, and get a new deal.

Trump won, helped broker a ceasefire, and seemed to be delivering on Bahbah’s hopes. And then, last week, standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said that the United States would take over Gaza and move out its inhabitants before it was rebuilt into something else. Almost immediately, Bahbah renamed his group — it’s now Arab Americans for Peace — and warned that Trump was making a mistake that would affect millions of lives while ending his political alliance with a decisive voter bloc. When Netanyahu praised Trump’s bold thinking, Bahbah had another reaction.

“I describe it not as out-of-the-box thinking. I describe it as out-of-the-stratosphere thinking,” he said. “The idea of displacing Palestinians in Gaza is just unacceptable, outrageous.”Keep reading for the full interview about the tough choice facing Arab-American organizers.

Polls

There are a few reasons why Donald Trump is more popular at the start of his second term than at his first. One of them, basic but underappreciated: He’s made some popular moves, very quickly. There was widespread support for his gender-related executive orders — barring transgender people from military service, not polled here, was the only one without majority approval. His first immigration moves, all of them sued over by Democrats, were popular and previewed at length in 2024. But only Republican voters, who approve of every Trump decision so far, are satisfied by the Jan. 6 pardons and the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, a surprise that Trump didn’t campaign on. Just 16% of independents support this, even as the administration bars the Associated Press from the White House pool for not adopting it. When immigration is a high-salience issue, Trump benefits; when a fringe idea gets more salience, he suffers.

Democrats have made it easier for Republicans to compete in next year’s Michigan elections with a few crucial decisions. First, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a Democrat in a city that never elects Republicans, opted to bypass the Democratic primary and run for governor as an independent. He draws both Democratic and Republican voters, but he’s unsurprisingly strongest in Detroit and its suburbs, where Democrats need landslides to win statewide. Second, Sen. Gary Peters declined to seek a third term, with no clear successor, but one very famous one: Pete Buttigieg, who only moved to Michigan recently. He’s the only Democrat tested here (as several more look at the race), and he’s in a fairly weak position, losing independents to Rogers. As last year’s GOP nominee for Senate, Rogers lost independents by 7 points.

Ads

• Underly for Wisconsin, “Future.” Four years ago, Republicans tried to turn the race for Wisconsin’s nonpartisan superintendent of public instruction office into a referendum on gender identity in schools and sports. It helped them narrow the gap a bit in a contest that Democrats tended to win easily, with the support of teachers’ unions. But Democratic Party-backed Jill Underly won anyway, calling the cultural issues distractions, and her reelection campaign messaging is all about classroom deliverables — graduation rates, funding, standards. There’s a subtle cultural message there, too: Underly isn’t talking about the debates over equity in testing that have been politically devastating to liberals in other states.
• Karrin for Arizona, “Karrin Taylor Robson for Governor.” True four years ago, true now: The most important thing any Republican candidate can show primary voters is a Trump endorsement. Robson spent more than $10 million of her own money on her 2022 bid for governor of Arizona, and lost because of Trump’s support for Kari Lake. Last year, Trump used his speech at Turning Point Action’s AmericaFest to endorse Robson. Her intro spot is entirely about the Trump endorsement, contrasting it with the “open borders career politician” in the governor’s office — Katie Hobbs, pitched with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who have been silent about national politics since Jan. 20.

Scooped

My favorite stories start with one of two questions: “Why is this happening?” and “Why isn’t this happening?” And the latter category is underrated. When no one wants to talk about something, it can be hard to put it on paper — but that’s why they don’t want to talk. Daniel Payne’s Politico reporting on pharma’s quiet stand-down over the Kennedy HHS nomination notes that “none” of the groups with business before the department wanted to comment on why they did nothing to oppose him. “One public affairs executive said health groups are now seeking to tailor their messaging with populist movements — such as Kennedy’s MAHA following — in mind.” While other people were counting votes (which added up to 52, as usual), Payne identified a lobbying strategy that will shape the next four years.

Next

• 46 days until Wisconsin’s state supreme court election
• 263 days until off-year elections
• 626 days until the 2026 midterm elections

David Recommends

It’s never too early for the “invisible primary,” to watch what potential presidential candidates are doing or to speculate about their chances. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has picked high-profile, buzzy fights with the president. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro keeps avoiding the DC discourse (apart from condemning the pardons of Jan. 6 rioters). Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy is appearing on your TV at this very second. I don’t agree with Ettingermentum’s full ranking of the 2028 hopefuls, but it’s a good first stab at this, before anyone knows what the primary calendar will be.

Mark Read has pledged that 2025 will be WPP’s “year of execution,” pitching the UK advertising giant he leads as having finally cracked the challenge of balancing the two skills that clients value most in the AI era — creativity and technology, Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson wrote.