Category: Politics

NORFOLK, Virginia and NEWARK, New Jersey — Barack Obama reprised his role as the Democrats’ closer-in-chief on Saturday, filling a void for his still leaderless party in the waning days of closely watched gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey.

The former president’s stops — his first in Norfolk, home to the nation’s largest naval installation and two historically Black colleges, and later in Newark, the Garden State’s most populous city where nearly half of residents are Black — are nods that Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominees in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, see these voters as key to securing victory in the Nov. 4 election.

But Obama’s reemergence is also a reminder of the rudderlessness of the Democratic Party, which is still reeling from stinging losses in 2024 that left them completely locked out of power in the federal government. Democrats are counting on decisive victories from Spanberger and Sherrill, both of whom are favored to win on Tuesday, to help springboard them into the critical midterm elections next year.

President Donald Trump made gains in both states last year, in part due to improved performance among Black and Hispanic voters.

Democrats have worked to get these voters back on their side, with the bet that their affordability-focused messaging will demonstrate that Trump failed to deliver on his economic promises that drew in so many of them. But Republicans, too, have been courting these voters in an attempt to replicate Trump’s gains last year.

Obama underscored Spanberger and Sherrill’s focus on the economy as he sought to fire up voters.

“Abigail’s opponent does seem to care a lot about what Trump and his cronies are doing. She praised the Republican tax law that would raise the cost of health care and housing and energy in Virginia,” Obama said without mentioning Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, by name.

“It’s like everyday is Halloween, except it’s all tricks and not treats,” the former president said, drawing laughs from the crowd, before adding: “I did warn y’all.”

Just a couple of hours later in New Jersey, Obama told the crowd that there is “absolutely no evidence that Republican policies have made life better for the people of New Jersey.”

Obama criticized Sherrill’s opponent, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, whom he also did not mention by name, for choosing to “suck up to the Republicans in Washington” after running unsuccessful gubernatorial bids twice before. He also pointed to Trump’s endorsement of Ciattarelli, in which Trump called him “100 percent MAGA.”

“Not a great endorsement,” Obama said. 

Obama also spoke to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, according to a person familiar with the call who was granted anonymity to confirm the private conversation, underscoring the former president’s involvement in trying to direct an adrift Democratic Party. The call was first reported by The New York Times.

Without a singular figure driving the Democratic Party, Democrats are searching for a message that will resonate with voters. Tuesday’s races will be the latest temperature check on the effectiveness of their rhetoric on the economy — and their blaming of Trump for voters’ unhappiness with it.

“President Obama is somebody who is widely respected across the state,” Sherrill told reporters Thursday. “He’s a pragmatic leader who I think cares deeply about rights and freedoms, but also about driving down costs. And I think at this moment, having the architect of the Affordable Care Act — as now everybody here in New Jersey, because of President Trump, is set to see their premiums go up by 175 percent — is really telling.”

Spanberger and Sherrill have sought to tie their Republican opponents to Trump. The Democrats have positioned themselves as a bulwark to the president, whom they argue has made the economy worse since he returned to power — in part pointing to the ongoing government shutdown.

Thousands of federal workers are missing paychecks, and others are out of a job due to the Department of Government Efficiency-related firings earlier this year and more recently through Trump-backed job cuts since the shutdown began a month ago — a dynamic that is particularly acute in Virginia, which has a large number of federal workers.

“You deserve a governor who will work with Democrats and Republicans to grow our economy and not stand by while Virginia’s workforce is under attack,” Spanberger said Saturday.

Saturday brought in a new round of hardship: Millions of Americans were placed at risk of losing food assistance as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was forecast to run out of money. Sherrill said her campaign will be “collecting donations for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey as the Trump Administration is letting SNAP funding expire, forcing more families to rely on food banks for food assistance.”

In Virginia, outgoing Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared an emergency, blaming the “Democrat Shutdown” for the funding fight while stepping in to help SNAP beneficiaries. New Jersey also declared a state of emergency and is “accelerating” funds to food banks, term-limited Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. Murphy on Friday said “the Trump Administration’s decision to suspend SNAP funding as the government shutdown drags on is both unethical and illegal.”

The same day, federal judges ordered the Trump administration to use emergency money to fund the program.

“I’m angry that our president is cutting everything from the Gateway tunnel funds to SNAP benefits,” Sherrill told the crowd on Saturday. “But I don’t feel afraid. As I stand here, I feel nothing but courage. New Jerseyans give me courage, and I’m sure the nation feels that way too.”

In New Jersey, which is expected to be a tighter race than Virginia, some Democrats have expressed concerns about Democrats regaining ground with Black voters. Sherrill — who called Black voters a “key part of the Democratic firewall” — is likely to win among this demographic, but as Ciattarelli also attempts to appeal to them, the margin could make a difference in the outcome of the race.

Earle-Sears, who is Black, took Obama to task for his comments chastising Black men for not supporting then-presidential nominee Kamala Harris more aggressively, yet urging Black voters a year later to support Democratic nominees who are both white.

It was unclear prior to Obama’s remarks in Virginia whether he would weigh in on the controversy surrounding Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general.

Jones has been at the center of scandal surrounding violence-themed text messages he sent in 2022, where he fantasized about shooting and killing a Republican lawmaker, that came to light in the closing weeks of the race. It threw the party’s hopes for flipping Virginia’s top statewide offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general into question and offered Republicans a rallying cry to hammer Spanberger, who condemned the messages but refused to pull her endorsement of Jones or ask him to drop out of the race.

But Jones appeared early in the rally and made no mention of the scandal that has engulfed his campaign. While other speakers mentioned Jones, including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), neither Obama nor Spanberger did.

While Obama’s return to the campaign trail gave many Democrats a jolt of excitement — in New Jersey, attendees shouted “we miss you” when Obama said that the country and politics “are in a pretty dark place right now” — his presence has been pilloried by Republicans who suggest both nominees are incapable of leading Democrats into the future and are the reason they’re reliant on “the face of the Democrat Party from a decade ago.”

“Sherrill and Spanberger both lack a cohesive forward-looking agenda to improve the lives of voters in their states, so it comes as no surprise that they’re reliant on Democrat nostalgia despite its failed policies that let Americans down,” Courtney Alexander, communications director for the Republican Governors Association, said in a statement to POLITICO.

Obama has been a consistent presence for gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia in recent cycles, regularly serving as the headliner even after he left office.

He, along with a swarm of Democrats — many of whom have an eye on the 2028 presidential election — have come to rally for Spanberger and Sherrill in the closing stretch of the campaign. But the party’s more recent standard-bearers, former President Joe Biden and Harris, have largely stayed off the campaign trail.

“There’s no bigger voice, a more respected voice in our party, than Barack Obama,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said. “And so having him come in to rally the troops in the final few days, to thank the volunteers and the people who’ve been on the ground working so hard, and to really create, help remind folks of what’s at stake in this election, it never hurts.”

Gregory Svirnovskiy, Adam Wren and Daniel Han contributed to this report.

​Politics

After two years of devastating war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip, President Donald Trump declared an end to the war on Oct. 14, 2025. The peace plan includes a Hamas commitment to return all hostages and a withdrawal of Israeli forces.

In late October, both sides said they remained committed to peace, despite Israeli retaliation for the death of an Israeli soldier that killed 104 people, and despite the fact that the remains of 11 deceased hostages remain in Gaza.

Those setbacks aside, the new peace push is the most serious attempt so far to end the escalation of conflict that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militants on Israelis.

But what are the circumstances and actions that helped Trump advance such an agreement, the likes of which eluded former President Joe Biden? And what enabled Trump, working with a few close advisers and with mediators like Qatar and Egypt, to overcome the reluctance of Israel and Hamas?

The answer may have much to do with how Trump countered a phenomenon that political scientists call “spoiling.”

“Spoiling” in peace negotiations is defined by political scientist Stephen Stedman as actions employed by “leaders and parties who believe that peace emerging from negotiations threatens their power, worldview, and interests, and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it.”

In regard to the Middle East, critics have long accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of playing this spoiler card throughout the war.

Netanyahu was seen by many observers to be not interested in reaching a peace agreement because of risks to the political survival of his governing coalition. And it’s evident in attempts to postpone the investigation of the colossal failure of Israel to defend its citizens on Oct. 7, 2023.

For two years, Netanyahu engaged in this kind of spoiling by, for example, staging high-level assassinations of Hamas leaders at a timing detrimental for any negotiation’s success.

Yet, Netanyahu also employed a more sophisticated method of spoiling, one that political science scholar Ehud Eiran and I are exploring in our research.

We argue that leaders can spoil negotiations not just by resorting to violent means, or by posing hard-line positions within the negotiation room. Additionally, spoilers can work in broad daylight and make the diplomacy less likely to succeed through a careful use of rhetoric and media. This decreases their own constituencies’ and the enemy’s likelihood of accepting This decreases the likelihood of their own constituencies or the enemy accepting a compromise. It’s what we call “public spoiling.”

Spoiling in broad daylight

Netanyahu used these public spoiling tactics again and again during ceasefire negotiations.

In early May 2024, for example, when ceasefire negotiations were getting into high gear and indications mounted that Hamas may accept the deal on the table, a statement from Netanyahu attributed to “a senior diplomatic source” – known in the Israeli media to mean the prime minister himself – stated that “the IDF will enter Rafah and destroy the Hamas battalions remaining there, whether there is a temporary truce for releasing the hostages or not,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

Such declarations signaled to Hamas that Israel did not intend to keep its side of a deal. And it led the Palestinian militant organization to harden its position and further insist on a formal end of the war before all hostages were released.

In September 2024, Netanyahu used the Israeli military in another spoiler tactic after pressure mounted on him to yield to protesters’ calls for a ceasefire

After Hamas operatives murdered six Israeli hostages as soldiers approached their hiding place, the Israeli public erupted in protests against its government, blaming it for sending soldiers instead of negotiating. High-level officers in the prime minister’s office then stole a document from Israeli intelligence, allegedly written by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, forged some of it, and leaked it to the German newspaper Bild.

Netanyahu then cited the document in a speech, claiming Sinwar designed his policy to use public pressure on Netanyahu. In short, he used this false publication, leaked allegedly by his own people, to suggest that the protesters were doing Hamas’ bidding. The protests subsequently decreased dramatically, and the pressure on Netanyahu to compromise subsided.

This pattern continued into the Trump administration.

‘No daylight’

U.S. decision-makers, from the president to negotiators in the Biden and Trump administrations, were no doubt aware of these practices. So why did they allow them to continue?

The answer is complicated. What has become clear, I believe, is that at the heart of the problem stands a single phrase: “no daylight.” It’s an oft-cited position of U.S. politicians to mean that, publicly at least, Israel and the United States act as if they are in complete agreement or alignment, with no policy differences between them.

Though a longtime ally of Israel, the U.S. used to be more forceful with Israel when the latter was deemed by Washington to have crossed the line or threatened important American interests in the region. That was evident when the U.S. imposed a ceasefire in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War despite Israeli opposition. It was also clear when the U.S. prevented an Israeli response to missiles that Iraq launched at it during the Gulf War in 1991.

But in the past few decades, a perception has taken hold in U.S. foreign policy circles that pressure on Israel’s government should only be done in private and that it should never include strong public rebuke.

Thus, even when, in June 2024, the Biden administration knew full well that Netanyahu was thwarting efforts to reach a ceasefire, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken came out with a statement blaming Hamas. And when Netanyahu breached a ceasefire in March 2025 and ordered the military to return to fighting, the Trump administration blamed Hamas.

Netanyahu, with his knowledge of U.S. politics, was well aware that Washington would be unlikely to publicly blame Israel. And he took full advantage of this fact to promote his spoiling of the ceasefire negotiations in broad daylight.

No choice but to sign

So what changed in October 2025 that allowed Trump to overcome Netanyahu’s actions as a spoiler and secure a ceasefire?

In short, Trump simply decided to play the same game. He publicly announced that the deal existed and left Netanyahu no choice but to sign it to preserve the perception that there is “no daylight” between Israel and the U.S. As a former Netanyahu aide suggested, “Trump is unpredictable and will not fall in line with the Israeli position.”

Trump’s announcement of the deal, before many of the details were agreed upon, enabled the ceasefire agreement, Israel’s partial withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’ release of the Israeli hostages.

The road to an actual end of the war, not to mention Trump’s lofty declarations of a historic peace, is still in the far distance. But the ceasefire, if it holds, is a critical step, in my view, to end this terrible chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Boaz Atzili is related to two Israeli citizens who were held hostage by Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Many Americans will be voting on Election Day – or have already cast votes – in races for statewide office, local positions and on ballot initiatives with major implications for democracy.

Congress is not on the ballot this November, but it will be in the 2026 midterms. A year from now, Americans in every state and district will get to vote for whom they want representing their interests in Washington.

But right now, Congress isn’t giving the American people much to go on.

As the shutdown of the federal government passes the one-month mark, the U.S. House of Representatives has been in recess for over 40 days. That’s the longest it’s ever stayed out of town outside of its typical summer recesses or the weeks leading up to their own elections.

Notably, the shutdown does not mean that Congress can’t meet. In fact, it must meet to end the shutdown legislatively. The Senate, for example, has taken votes recently on judicial nominations, a major defense authorization bill and a resolution on tariff policy.

Senators have also continued to hold bipartisan behind-the-scenes negotiations to end the shutdown impasse.

But with dwindling SNAP benefits, skyrocketing health care premiums and other major shutdown impacts beginning to set in, the House has all but abdicated its position as “The People’s Chamber.”

Long ‘path to irrelevance’

In addition to not meeting for any votes, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has refused to swear in Democratic U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. Despite Johnson’s assurances, the shutdown does not prevent the House from meeting in a brief session to swear in Grijalva as a member for Arizona’s 7th District, which has been without representation since March.

Along with Casey Burgat and SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, I am co-author of a textbook, “Congress Explained: Representation and Lawmaking in the First Branch.” In that book, it was important to us to highlight Congress’ clear role as the preeminent lawmaking body in the federal government.

But throughout the shutdown battle, Congress – particularly the House of Representatives – has been unwilling to assert itself as an equal branch of government. Beyond policymaking, Congress has been content to hand over many of its core constitutional powers to the executive branch. As a Congress expert who loves the institution and profoundly respects its constitutionally mandated role, I have found this renunciation of responsibility difficult to watch.

And yet, Congress’ path to irrelevance as a body of government did not begin during the shutdown, or even in January 2025.

It is the result of decades of erosion that created a political culture in which Congress, the first branch of government listed in the Constitution, is relegated to second-class status.

The Constitution puts Congress first

The 18th-century framers of the Constitution viewed Congress as the foundation of republican governance, deliberately placing it first in Article 1 to underscore its primacy. Congress was assigned the pivotal tasks of lawmaking and budgeting because controlling government finances was seen as essential to limiting executive power and preventing abuses that the framers associated with monarchy.

Alternatively, a weak legislature and an imperial executive were precisely what many of the founders feared. With legislative authority in the hands of Congress, power would at least be decentralized among a wide variety of elected leaders from different parts of the country, each of whom would jealously guard their own local interests.

But Trump’s first 100 days turned the founders’ original vision on its head, leaving the “first branch” to play second fiddle.

Like most recent presidents, Trump came in with his party in control of the presidency, the House and the Senate. Yet despite the lawmaking power that this governing trifecta can bring, the Republican majorities in Congress have mostly been irrelevant to Trump’s agenda.

Instead, Congress has relied on Trump and the executive branch to make changes to federal policy and in many cases to reshape the federal government completely.

Trump has signed more than 210 executive orders, a pace faster than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican Congress has shown little interest in pushing back on any of them. Trump has also aggressively reorganized, defunded or simply deleted entire agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

These actions have been carried out even though Congress has a clear constitutional authority over the executive branch’s budget. And during the shutdown, Congress has shown little to no interest in reasserting its “power of the purse,” content instead to let the president decide which individuals and agencies receive funding, regardless of what Congress has prescribed.

Many causes, no easy solutions

There’s no one culprit but instead a collection of factors that have provided the ineffectual Congress of today.

One overriding factor is a process that has unfolded over the past 50 or more years called political nationalization. American politics have become increasingly centered on national issues, parties and figures rather than more local concerns or individuals.

This shift has elevated the importance of the president as the symbolic and practical leader of a national party agenda. Simultaneously, it weakens the role of individual members of Congress, who are now more likely to toe the party line than represent local interests.

As a result, voters focus more on presidential elections and less on congressional ones, granting the president greater influence and diminishing Congress’ independent authority.

The more Congress polarizes among its members on a party-line basis, the less the public is likely to trust the legitimacy of its opposition to a president. Instead, congressional pushback − sometimes as extreme as impeachment − can thus be written off not as principled or substantive but as partisan or politically motivated to a greater extent than ever before.

Congress has also been complicit in giving away its own power. Especially when dealing with a polarized Congress, presidents increasingly steer the ship in budget negotiations, which can lead to more local priorities – the ones Congress is supposed to represent – being ignored.

But rather than Congress staking out positions for itself, as it often did through the turn of the 21st century, political science research has shown that presidential positions on domestic policy increasingly dictate – and polarize – Congress’ own positions on policy that hasn’t traditionally been divisive, such as funding support for NASA. Congress’ positions on procedural issues, such as raising the debt ceiling or eliminating the filibuster, also increasingly depend not on bedrock principles but on who occupies the White House.

In the realm of foreign policy, Congress has all but abandoned its constitutional power to declare war, settling instead for “authorizations” of military force that the president wants to assert. These give the commander in chief wide latitude over war powers, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been happy to retain that power. They have used these congressional approvals to engage in extended conflicts such as the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later.

What’s lost with a weak Congress

Americans lose a lot when Congress hands over such drastic power to the executive branch.

When individual members of Congress from across the country take a back seat, their districts’ distinctly local problems are less likely to be addressed with the power and resources that Congress can bring to an issue. Important local perspectives on national issues fail to be represented in Congress.

Even members of the same political party represent districts with vastly different economies, demographics and geography. Members are supposed to keep this in mind when legislating on these issues, but presidential control over the process makes that difficult or even impossible.

Maybe more importantly, a weak Congress paired with what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the “Imperial Presidency” is a recipe for an unaccountable president, running wild without the constitutionally provided oversight and checks on power that the founders provided to the people through their representation by the first branch of government.

This is an updated version of a story that first published on May 15, 2025.

Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The finance director for Graham Platner’s Senate campaign announced his resignation on Friday, the latest in a series of personnel departures for the Maine hopeful’s high-profile bid that has been marred by controversies over old social media posts and his tattoo with Nazi connotations.

Ronald Holmes, who had served as Platner’s national finance director since August, announced in a post on LinkedIn that he’s leaving the operation. He follows campaign manager Kevin Brown, who stepped down after less than a week on the job citing family reasons, and political director Genevieve McDonald, who resigned in a fiery fashion earlier this month, saying she could not look past some of Platner’s previous Reddit posts, where he self-identified as a communist and downplayed sexual assault in the military.

“I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things,” said Holmes in his post on Friday. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign.”

Holmes did not immediately respond to messages Friday morning. His previous work included the campaigns of Michigan Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Swanson and Rep. Josh Riley.

Platner’s campaign was off to a hot fundraising start, raising more than $3.2 million in his first six weeks as a candidate, largely from small-dollar donors.

In a statement, a campaign spokesperson pointed to the campaign’s focus on those small donors and said fundraising efforts will continue.

“Ron helped the campaign reach out to big dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign’s fundraising success has come largely from small dollar donors,” said the spokesperson. “Nearly 90 percent of what we’ve raised has come from small dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director.”

Platner, who went from an unknown oysterman to a high-profile Senate candidate endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in just a few weeks, apologized for his controversial Reddit posts and covered up his tattoo, saying he only learned after launching his campaign that it could be a Nazi symbol.

He has continued to campaign in recent weeks despite the controversies, holding town halls across the state. His campaign launched an ad this week urging voters to reject a voter-identification measure on Maine’s ballot this November.

Recent polls, though wildly different from one another, have shown Platner as a strong candidate in the Democratic primary that also includes Gov. Janet Mills — who is national Democrats’ preferred candidate in the race — along with a handful of other contenders including former congressional staffer Jordan Wood.

​Politics

Trump and Carney’s diplomatic dance | The Playbook Podcast

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​Politics

A former member of Congress, who pulled off a rare win for a Democrat in Utah, is drawing early support from an influential national political action committee as new political boundaries offer an unexpected chance to pick up a seat in the deep-red state.

Former Rep. Ben McAdams is being touted by Welcome PAC, which backs more moderate candidates over progressives, for what is expected to be a newly created district, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.

“Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. But it’s usually the best clue we’ve got,” says the fundraising email, which was expected to be distributed to Democrats nationwide on Friday. “Ben McAdams is a superstar.”

The email offers the early contours of a race that could help Democrats as they try to retake the House in the midterms — an effort that has been complicated by a nationwide redistricting war set in motion by President Donald Trump’s push to have Texas draw new congressional boundaries.

Democrats could pick up one or two seats under newly drawn lines in Utah under a redistricting fight that was underway before Trump pressured Texas and set off a wave of gerrymandering in states led by Republicans and Democrats, including Indiana and California.

The court-ordered map in Utah would provide Democrats with a somewhat improved chance of victory in the state: A Salt Lake Tribune analysis pegs the most competitive redrawn districts at R +6 and R+11, well below the 23+ point margins Democrats faced in federal races in 2024.

In 2018, McAdams unseated the late Rep. Mia Love, who won her previous election in the district by 12 points. In 2020, he lost by 1 percentage point to Republican Burgess Owens.

McAdams has not launched a campaign, but filed a statement of candidacy earlier this month with the FEC, allowing him to begin raising money. He is expected to announce a bid once a map is finalized, according to two people with direct knowledge of his thinking. The former lawmaker declined to comment.

“He’s clearly the strongest candidate Dems have had anywhere in nearly a decade,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of Welcome PAC. “We want to take this bigger platform we have and clearly say that he should run — and that people who are listening to our view of the party should show that encouragement by contributing to his campaign account.”

McAdams isn’t the only name in the mix. The slate of potential primary candidates includes 2024 Senate candidate Caroline Gleich, state Sens. Kathleen Riebe and Nate Blouin, and 2022 Senate candidate Kael Weston. None have formally entered the race.

Welcome PAC has been making waves in center-left politics since Trump’s reelection. Their WelcomeFest conference in June featured swing state and district Democrats like Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Maine Rep. Jared Golden. Earlier this week, they issued an expansive report on how Democrats can rebuild after their 2024 failures.

“People read the report and are like, ‘What should we do?’ And it’s like ‘well, shit, here’s a clear example,’” Kerr told POLITICO, about supporting McAdams.

As a member of Congress, McAdams was part of the Blue Dogs — the PAC and coalition now helmed by Golden and Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, both Democrats serving in districts Trump won — and the New Democrats caucus. Before Congress, he was mayor of Salt Lake County.

Utah’s new congressional map is not yet final. In August, a district judge ruled the current map — which divides blue Salt Lake County between four districts — ignored the intention of a 2018 ballot initiative calling for an independent commission to draw the boundaries. The GOP-controlled state legislature drew a new map that favors Republicans — but still gives Democrats a better shot than the current map.

A district judge has until Nov. 10 to approve the new map for it to be in place for 2026.

“Right now, Democrats are focused on winning,” said a Utah Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak openly. “We realize this is a huge opportunity to get serious.”

​Politics

After the U.S. census is conducted every 10 years, each state must redraw its congressional districts to account for any loss or gain of congressional seats and to maintain an equal population in each district.

But in 2025, breaking from standard practice, President Donald Trump has asked Republican states to redraw their districts mid-decade to provide a greater Republican advantage in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

Not to be outdone, the Democrats have responded by starting a redistricting effort in California to offset the Republican gains in Texas. Californians will decide whether to approve those changes in a ballot measure on Nov. 4, 2025.

As other states join the fray, this battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives has escalated to what the media has called a “Redistricting War.” In this war, the control of the House may be determined more by how each party is able to redistrict states they control and less by how citizens vote.

The media and politicians focus on which party is winning or losing seats. But are the citizens winning or losing in this conflict?

Studies have shown that districts contorted for political purposes make it more difficult for constituents to know who their representatives are, reduces representative-citizen interactions and lowers voter participation in elections.

Changing a resident’s congressional district will sever any existing relationship or understanding of who their current representative is and how to seek help or share policy concerns. This forces residents to navigate unfamiliar political terrain as they figure out their new district, who is running, and what the candidates stand for. This added complexity discourages residents from voting.

More importantly, it diminishes their faith in the democratic process.

Staggering scale of changes

Just how big are the changes already enacted in Texas and proposed in California?

The University of Richmond Spatial Analysis Laboratory, which co-author Kyle Redican directs, has analyzed the impact of the mid-decade redistricting changes. The number of redistricting casualties – residents reassigned to a new congressional district – caused by these mid-decade changes in Texas and California is nearly 20 million. That’s about 6% of the overall U.S. population.

The scale of the changes is staggering: 10.4 million Texas residents, about 36% of the state’s population, and 9.2 million California residents, about 23% of the state’s population, will find themselves in new, unfamiliar congressional districts.

Only one district in Texas, of 38 total districts, and eight districts in California, of 52 total districts, remain untouched, making this a pervasive upheaval, not a surgical adjustment.

Most dramatically, nine districts in California and eight districts in Texas will have more than 50% new residents, fundamentally changing the overall composition of those districts.

The 41st District in California will have 100% new residents, while the 9th District in Texas will have 97% new residents, essentially becoming entirely different constituencies.

Making a change of this size mid-decade, as opposed to once every decade, will be highly disruptive and represent a major tear in the fabric of representative democracy.

Lawmakers picking their voters

So who exactly is being moved? The demographic patterns reveal the calculated nature of these partisan manipulations.

In Texas, Black and Hispanic residents are disproportionately shuffled into new districts compared to white residents.

Minorities constitute 67.1% of Texans who have been moved into a new district, while minorities constitute only 56.4% of Texans who get to remain in their same district. By moving more minorities out of a district and into another reliably Republican district, partisan mapmakers are able to reduce the likely Democratic voter share in that district and swing it to be a Republican-leaning district.

California follows the opposite playbook: White residents are disproportionately moved.

There, 41.2% of those moved into a new district are white, while only 32.7% of those who get to remain in their same district are white. In this case, California is moving likely Republican voters into another reliably Democratic district, which reduces the Republican voter share in the original district and swings it to be a Democratic-leaning district.

In either case, legislators are making deliberate decisions about which residents to move to achieve a political goal.

Yet fundamental to a representative democracy is a simple principle: The people choose their representatives. It’s not that representatives choose their constituents. The founders envisioned the House of Representatives as the people’s house, representing and accountable to the voters.

In the current mid-decade redistricting, the legislators are handpicking their constituencies.

Mocking the fundamental idea

Does the redistricting battle ever end?

If mid-decade redistricting becomes an accepted way to win elections, each time a party wins control of a state legislature and governorship they will have the incentive to redistrict. Each of these future redistrictings will continue to negatively affect citizens’ participation in the representative process and mock the fundamental idea that citizens should choose their representatives.

It’s entirely possible that redistricting could happen every two years – though that is an extreme outcome of this competition.

Texas and California have fired the opening shots in the redistricting arms race. Other states – Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia – are joining the fight, each time diminishing the public trust in our democratic process.

Today, it’s 20 million Americans caught in the crossfire. Tomorrow, it could be 100 million as this conflict spreads from state to state. With tit-for-tat redistricting offsetting gains in seats, who is really winning?

For sure, we know who is losing – the people and representative democracy.

Spatial Analysis Lab intern Ryan Poulsen worked on the block data processing for this story.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The United States government has been shut down for nearly a month, yet another indication that the political system has become deeply dysfunctional.

President Donald Trump has blamed the Democrats and called their negotiating strategy a “kamikaze attack.” Democrats are keen to stand their ground, hoping that the fallout is worse for Republicans. While each side casts blame on the other, it is Americans who suffer.

But the shutdown is just another episode in a series of polarization-fueled events that are leading Americans to lose faith in their government. Every nation has it limits, and one wonders how much America can take before the pressure to divide into separate countries becomes too great.

Consider the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which raised the specter of polarization-fueled conflict in America. Mentions of “civil war” surged online, fears grew over rising political violence, and the Trump administration vowed to crack down on left-leaning groups.

These are merely the latest examples of the mounting pressure on the American political system. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that 64% of Americans think the country is too politically divided to solve the nation’s problems. The same poll showed that only 42% of Americans held that position in 2020.

In other words, nearly two-thirds of Americans think the system is broken, and the number is growing fast.

Calls for a national divorce

It should come as no surprise, then, that some are calling for radical solutions like a national divorce.

On Sept. 15, 2025, five days after Kirk’s killing, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that America needs “a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it’s no longer safe for any of us.”

National divorce is the term used to describe the splitting of America into two parts: a red America and a blue America. Secessionist movements like Yes California and Red-State Secession have for over a decade been calling for a national divorce along political lines. And a 2023 Axios poll found that as many as 20% of Americans see national divorce as a solution to political polarization.

As a political scientist who studies secessionist conflict, I’ve found that the national divorce argument is commonly used as an analogy with marital divorce. Just as two spouses may be extremely ill-suited for one another, and far better off if they separated, the same can be said of red and blue America. They no longer see eye to eye on a range of issues, from reproductive rights to the environment and gun control.

If they seceded from one another and formed their own countries, the argument goes, then they could establish policies that would ensure the future they wanted.

But as I show in my new book, there is no way to disentangle red and blue America without tremendous violence. Additionally, a large and increasingly ignored percentage of Americans hold moderate views.

There is no doubt that polarization in America is a problem that is getting worse, but a national divorce is simply not the solution.

And yet America’s leaders continue to lead their country toward that outcome. The deployment of National Guard troops to blue cities, the polarization-enhancing consequences of competitive gerrymandering in states like Texas and California, and the spectacle of government shutdown are eroding the public trust. By continuing with policies that amplify polarization and erode the public trust, America’s leaders are fueling the calls for a national divorce.

How much can the country take?

The trend toward heightened polarization in America is not irreversible, but there are limits to how much the country can take before secession becomes a serious project. Some of the limits can be identified in advance.

First, it’s important that the country’s leaders take the pulse of America. If 20% of Americans favored national divorce in early 2023, what is the percentage now? That kind of sentiment can increase surprisingly fast.

Between 2006 and 2014, for example, Catalonian support for independence from Spain increased from 14% to 45%. If something like 50% of Americans concluded that America didn’t work and was better off broken up into smaller parts, then the country could tip rapidly into a secessionist crisis.

Second, high levels of secessionist support make the country vulnerable to trigger events that convince Americans that secession is the answer. The polarization-inspired assassination of prominent leaders can lead to a cycle of recrimination. Upcoming elections are also a concern. If they are closely contested and the losing side is unwilling to admit defeat, then the bedrock of democracy is broken. Both triggers can accelerate polarization and the turn to secessionism.

A third threshold moment is when a prominent leader decides to champion the cause of a national divorce.

Should someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott or the sore loser of a 2028 election conclude that the system is rigged, and secession is the only solution, then the entire project gains legitimacy.

It was that kind of elite conversion to the secessionist cause that energized the movement in places like Scotland and Catalonia.

The U.S. is a robust country and the longest-running democracy in the world. Americans have more in common than they realize, and the country can be a positive force in the world.

But without decisive action by political leaders to reduce the polarization that threatens to tear the country apart, the United States is at risk of turning from one country into two.

Ryan D. Griffiths receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts is standing by Tucker Carlson after the conservative podcaster’s friendly interview with Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes drew condemnation from within a GOP grappling with a series of antisemitic incidents.

Roberts, in a video posted to X Thursday, denounced the “venomous coalition” that has criticized Carlson and said “their attempt to cancel him will fail,” though he didn’t specifically name anyone. He said Carlson remains a “close friend” of the highly influential conservative group and “always will be.”

Roberts added that “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer, either.”

Roberts, whose group launched “Project Esther” to combat antisemitism, also said “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned.”

The Heritage Foundation leader’s public support of Carlson comes as the former Fox News host faces backlash from conservatives over an inflammatory interview with Fuentes that was laced with antisemitism. Carlson said GOP supporters of Israel — including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — suffer from a “brain virus,” while Fuentes said the “big challenge” to unifying the country was “organized Jewry.”

Huckabee, who is set to speak at this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership conference in Las Vegas, dismissed the criticism.

“Wasn’t aware that Tucker despises me. I do get that a lot from people not familiar with the Bible or history. Somehow I will survive this animosity,” Huckabee posted on X.

Cruz defended Huckabee in his own post. The former governor “is a pastor and a patriot who loves America, loves Israel, and loves Jesus. I’m proud to be in his company,” Cruz said.

Roberts and Carlson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Fuentes could not be reached for comment.

The furor over the Fuentes sitdown comes as Republicans wrestle with how to respond to a string of antisemitic incidents on the right. POLITICO first reported two weeks ago on an explosive Telegram group chat in which leaders of various Young Republican groups joked about the Holocaust and lauded Adolf Hitler. A day later, a staffer for Rep. Dave Taylor’s (R-Ohio) joined a virtual meeting with a flag featuring a Nazi symbol visible behind him.

And last week, POLITICO reported on another group chat in which Paul Ingrassia, then Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel at the Justice Department, claimed he has “a Nazi streak.” Ingrassia previously appeared at a rally for Fuentes.

Several Young Republican chapters were dissolved and participants in the group chat were fired or resigned from their jobs or public office. Capitol police investigated the flag in Taylor’s office. Ingrassia withdrew his nomination days later amid opposition from within the Senate GOP.

The incidents have broadly divided the GOP. Cruz recently decried what he called “antisemitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen…in my entire life.” Some prominent GOP officials swiftly denounced the racist texts in the Young Republicans group.

But others have followed Vice President JD Vance’s lead in attempting to divert attention onto Democrats as one of their candidates, Virginia Attorney General nominee Jay Jones, became engulfed in his own violence-laced texting scandal. And that was before Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol forced Democrats to confront antisemitism within their party.

Samuel Benson contributed to this report.

​Politics