Americana

1. Conversion therapy bans under fire
2. Wisconsin’s court fight
3. Jeanne Shaheen’s exit
4. The old resistance
5. Wes Moore on the DOGE wars

Also: The shutdown polling that Democrats never used

The Democrats’ Tea Party was born on Thursday night, when Chuck Schumer took the Senate floor to announce his grudging vote for a Republican spending bill. In the Capitol, senators from states far redder than Schumer’s announced that they would not follow their leader. Forty miles away, at their retreat in the DC exurbs, House Democrats who had overwhelmingly opposed the bill vented about Schumer’s weakness.

“There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters at the retreat. And there was, along with amazement that the party’s strategy to stop the continuing resolution was so outdated.

That strategy relied on a rump of House conservatives refusing to vote for it. They expected this because a rump of House conservatives had always refused to vote for spending packages. What Democrats didn’t appreciate was that the key conservatives, who’d given up on getting real spending cuts through the Article III obstacle course, were very happy to outsource that to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

“This continuing resolution is going to continue spending, but those checks aren’t going to be cut,” North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson told Fox News on Sunday. “We’re going to claw back that spending, places where DOGE has identified that it’s wasteful.”

The idea of climbing over the most ambitious people in an 800,000-person district to hand your power to the president is baffling to many Democrats. This is a party that’s down two members, two months into the year, because Texas’s Sylvester Turner and Arizona’s Raúl Grijalva ran for full terms after fatal cancer diagnoses. Democrats get elected to be in the room and move resources back to their districts. They rarely get everything they want, but they can pack enough into must-pass bills that the grind is worth it.

DOGE had changed that. Congressional Democrats watched helplessly as the new administration fired government workers and slashed agencies that they had all agreed to fund. The legal arm of the resistance slowed some of this down; the administration blamed that on “activist judges” and plowed ahead. Would the Supreme Court uphold the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and reverse this? Why wait to find out? “I would never support this language, but I do trust Donald Trump,” Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison told NOTUS this week.

Burlison only got to DC two years ago. He missed the Obama-era battles that made Republicans bolder when they saw the executive branch do what Congress wouldn’t, like giving legal status to illegal immigrants after every reform bill foundered. Ocasio-Cortez arrived here two years into the Trump presidency, during a shutdown triggered by his refusal to fund the government without border wall money. Days into her first term, she watched Trump declare an emergency to get billions of dollars in wall funding anyway.

What president is going to take office and give up the powers that Congress and courts keep handing him? Joe Biden didn’t do it. For Democrats, the legacy of Schumer’s defeat may be a future majority ditching the legislative filibuster — a looming issue if Ocasio-Cortez runs for Schumer’s seat in 2028. Three years ago, when two moderate Democrats stopped a run at the filibuster, Mitch McConnell warned their party about what Republicans would do without it: Pass “all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side.” That’s exactly what happened with the continuing resolution.

Conservatives move against conversion therapy and pronouns

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear a challenge to bans on “conversion therapy,” the controversial practice of treating gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction as a condition that can be reversed. One day later, Texas Rep. Keith Self ended a hearing after twice referring to Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress, as “Mr. McBride.”

In both cases, conservatives are challenging the medical consensus on gay and trans identity — in the first case, on free speech grounds. Chiles v. Salazar, brought by the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, argues that Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law violates the First Amendment rights of a Christian therapist, Kasey Chiles, because “she believes clients can accept the bodies that God has given them and find peace.”

LGBT rights groups condemned the lawsuit and the court for taking the case, arguing that the case concerns what treatments are permitted, not what therapists can say. But conservatives are hopeful that five justices will challenge the consensus behind conversion therapy bans that passed with bipartisan support, across most of the country, with the backing of medical and psychiatric groups.

But critics are now questioning whether transgender identity is real at all.In last year’s oral arguments over Tennessee’s youth gender medicine ban, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether gender identity was really an “immutable characteristic.” On Wednesday, after a “Detransitioner Awareness Day” conference on the Hill, activist Chloe Cole, who reverted to her gender at birth after transitioning as a teen, told Semafor that reversing conversion therapy bans “would allow for these children and these young men and women who are coming in as patients to be given another chance, to be given another option.”

In the House, Self’s refusal to call McBride a woman followed Illinois Rep. Mary Miller calling her “the gentleman from Delaware” on the floor. “I thought, here we go again,” McBride told Semafor on Tuesday, shortly after the hearing. At a Thursday press conference at the House Democratic retreat, McBride told reporters that “the Republican Party is obsessed with culture war issues,” and with her in particular. But Self cited the president’s executive order defining two biological, unchangeable genders for his statement, and Republicans have grown bolder about refusing to accept transgender people’s stated gender.

“It’s astonishing to me how cruel the anti-trans movement is right now,” said Brianna Wu, a trans woman and Democratic activist who has been critical of the larger movement. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wisconsin court election breaks spending record

Early voting for Wisconsin’s state supreme court election starts next week, as both major parties ramp up their spending and organizing. According to WisPolitics, $59 million has already been spent on the race between Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel and Democratic Party-backed Susan Crawford — smashing the record set in the 2023 court race, with far more Republican funding this year.

Schimel and Crawford faced off Wednesday in a televised debate, where the liberal candidate, echoing Democrats and their “People vs. Musk” message, said that the DOGE chairman had “basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign.” Musk, who had not spent money in previous state court races, had become the biggest single donor on Schimel’s behalf, running ads for him through Building America’s Future and sending direct mail to Trump voters through America PAC.

“I have support from all over the country — and it is because Elon Schimel is trying to buy this race, and people are very upset about that,” Crawford said, after the Republican shot back that her campaign was also funded by mega-donors outside Wisconsin. Schimel, who had aligned himself with Trump and previously defended the state’s 1849 abortion ban, said that he would hold Trump “accountable” if the president had a case before the court; on the abortion law, he did “not believe that it reflects the will of the people of Wisconsin today.”

Schimel will campaign with Donald Trump, Jr. on Monday in the conservative Milwaukee suburbs. Crawford will kick off an early voting tour the next day in Madison.

Democrats see opportunity in elderly senator exits

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement this week, creating a vacancy that Democrats said they weren’t yet worried about defending. Shaheen, 78, was already facing criticism from Republicans for pondering re-election. Democrats see swing seat Rep. Chris Pappas as a strong and likely successor — and see the overall trend as an opportunity to lower the average age of their caucus.

“How can I be someone who just replaced my senior senator and not think that it’s a good idea?” said Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who replaced ex-Sen. Debbie Stabenow this year.

After Shaheen’s announcement, Democrats are now defending three open seats in swing states, all of which Republicans say they’ll compete in. But multiple senators told Semafor that they liked the opportunity to put younger candidates in those races, in the aftermath of a presidential election where Joe Biden’s age and stumbles badly hurt their party.

Frustrated Democrats rally behind long-lived leftists

For three years, Texas Rep. Al Green has occasionally walked with a cane — black wood with a gold handle. It was a gift from a friend after an emergency surgery, emblazoned with his name and decorated in the colors of their college fraternity. Last month, when Green joined fellow Democrats at an anti-DOGE rally, he held the cane high and stabbed the air, as they chanted “we will win!” Critics compared him to “Grandpa Simpson,” a one-man illustration of the party’s gerontocracy.

Green’s cane took on a different life last week. Images of the 10-term congressman holding it in the air as he disrupted the president’s address to Congress went viral. Interviewers asked why other Democrats weren’t fighting as hard as him. Liberal activists drew a favorable contrast between Green, who was quickly censured for the interruption and threatened with the loss of his committees, and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, whose official response to Trump mixed a working class appeal with a paean to Ronald Reagan.

Republicans were happy to elevate Green. They were happy to do the same to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose rallies against “oligarchy” in swing seats drew larger-than-expected crowds. An 83-year old who was never going to run for office again had a more potent appeal than any Democrat looking at a 2028 presidential bid. And by Friday, more Democrats, from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the leaders of the DNC, were following the Sanders playbook, scheduling town hall meetings in GOP districts.

An interview with Maryland’s Democratic governor

There have been harder times to be the governor of Maryland. The Civil War comes to mind. But 2025 isn’t going very smoothly for Gov. Wes Moore. The first-term Democrat has scrambled to deal with the DOGE cuts threatening 160,000 of his federal worker constituents directly — and more, whose jobs in the DC suburbs rely on federal contracting. He got more bad news this week when the Trump administration canceled $800 million in contracts with Johns Hopkins University, a Baltimore mega-employer that got on the wrong side of conservatives with gender medicine.

“If you believe in cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, the answer is that so do I,” Moore told Semafor Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith this week, highlighting his own effort to reduce costs in Annapolis. “But we’re being transparent, and we really are focusing on how you can have a measure of expertise that’s helping to guide the decisions about what is necessary and what is not. We’re not doing what are oftentimes seemingly arbitrary and ideological and cruel cuts.”

Many Democrats see Moore as a potential presidential candidate in 2028, a decorated veteran with private and public sector experience and natural political talent. But no one else in their line-up faces so many challenges from the current president, right now.

Polls

When Donald Trump left office four years ago, his approval rating on economic issues was higher than his approval rating overall. That’s flipped in CNN’s first polling for the second term; 45% approve of the president, down a bit since January, but more than the percentage that like how he’s handling economy. One-third of “conservatives” and one-fifth of Republicans say they disapprove of how Trump is using tariffs, his weakest level of base support on any issue in this poll. The twist here is that immigration, historically a problematic issue for Trump, is now his greatest strength, with 16% of Democrats and 19% of all voters who disapprove of Trump saying they support how he’s handling. Starting with their decision not to whip against the Laken Riley Act, and allow a rump of Senate Democrats to pass it, the opposition simply hasn’t engaged on that issue the way it has on the economy. In 2017-2020, Trump spent his political capital from economic growth on immigration; in 2025, he’s spending his political capital from the closed border on short-term economic pain.

The Apr. 1 election for Wisconsin’s supreme court swing seat is on track to smash spending records set during the last court race, two years ago. Most of the new money — including more than $8 million from Elon Musk and his PACs — is going to TV ads that paint Crawford as a soft-on-crime liberal, and Schimel as a sabertoothed anti-abortion zealot. The impact so far? Pretty soft. Schimel, who served as the state’s elected attorney general until 2019, is better known than Crawford, but neither has much crossover appeal. Crawford is best-liked among voters who say they’re certain to vote, and underwater with voters who say they’re “less than certain” to. The GOP strategy, with the help of mail from Musk’s America PAC, has been to reach Trump voters who turned up in 2024 but typically skip these off-year elections. 

When power changes hands in Washington, so do the talking points about government shutdowns. Republicans have endless clips of Democrats warning not to risk government funding; Democrats have confidence that voters always blame the president’s party for a mess in Washington. The electorate captured in this poll has cooled on Trump since the inauguration (down to a 42% approval rating), is largely negative about Elon Musk (37% favorable), and is not inclined to blame Democrats if the government’s funding runs out — though if it does, it would be because Democrats don’t vote for the funding. As in 2019, when the new Democratic House was sworn in during a shutdown, just a fifth of independents say their party would be responsible for it. Chuck Schumer’s party is less worried about the electoral impact, more worried about what would happen during a freeze.

Ads

• V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims, “Endorsed.” The president’s name appears four times in this debut ad from Vivek Ramaswamy’s PAC, reminding voters that he has Donald Trump’s endorsement for governor. An image of the two politicians embracing is from New Hampshire — the rally where Ramaswamy, who endorsed Trump as soon as his own race ended, campaigned against Nikki Haley. The rest is about Ohio, and the candidate’s promise to make it a “state of excellence” by improving everything, though it doesn’t get into the details from Ramaswamy’s speeches and rallies.
• Schimel for Justice, “Tell Me.” Before they started tying Brad Schimel to Elon Musk’s donations, Democrats pummeled the GOP-backed state supreme court candidate over abortion and rape kits. Those issues are rooted in Schimel’s time as attorney general, and his current campaign; the Republican’s rebuttals have focused on the rest of his legal career and his advocacy for crime victims. Here, using only her first name, a woman who credits Schimel for getting a conviction after her sister was murdered more than a decade ago: “Brad would kneel next to my mom and hold her hands, and you’re going to tell me that’s a person who doesn’t care about victims?”
• Winsome for Governor, “Spanberger Betrayed Us at the Border.” The first video from Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears since rebooting her campaign and drawing a primary challenger avoids the Democrats’ best issue — federal workforce layoffs — to focus on the GOP’s strengths. That means immigration, and a clip of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger saying she opposes a border wall after a series of clips about illegal immigrants committing crime. Footage of CNN’s Manu Raju saying that Spanberger as “seen to the left of Joe Biden” is actually from 2023, when Spanberger joined most Democrats in voting against a reversal of DC’s criminal justice reforms, and Biden undermined them in signing it after signaling that he wouldn’t. Here, the clip is in a montage of proof that the Democrat is actually quite left-wing.

Scooped!

I thought I knew which Democrats were looking at a presidential bid right now — fewer than eight years ago, many more than four years ago. But I didn’t know as much as Jonathan Martin. In Rahm Emanuel’s many post-election interviews, speeches, and TV hits, he saw a politician “already road-testing the first outlines of a stump speech,” one whose friends assumed he was serious about it. We disagree about the hole Emanuel might fill — he’s not the only Democrat trying to craft a winning, coherent position on transgender issues — but Martin changed the 2028 conversation by noticing this.

Next

• 18 days until Wisconsin’s state supreme court election
• 235 days until off-year elections
• 598 days until the 2026 midterm elections

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