Category: Politics

Janeese Lewis George is on track to become the next mayor of Washington, D.C., after winning the Democratic primary on Thursday.

Lewis George faces no major challenger in November’s general election, putting her on a glide path to take the reins from Mayor Muriel Bowser next year and giving Washington a change in executive leadership for the first time since Bowser took office in January 2015. Her victory will usher in a new era for the district and put her on a collision course with President Donald Trump for the final years of his term.

Earlier Thursday, her opponent Kenyan McDuffie conceded the race and said he had called Lewis George “to congratulate her on her victory.”

In a primary stacked with anti-Trump Democrats, Lewis George presented herself as a candidate unafraid to oppose the president. She has pledged to rescind the order allowing the city’s police to coordinate alongside federal immigration agents and take a hard legal stance against any attempts by Trump to encroach on the District’s autonomy.

Lewis George told POLITICO in an interview last week that she would “actively tell our employees to resist” if Trump again attempted to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department.

Her position is likely to pit the democratic socialist directly against a president who has attempted to tighten his grip on the district, taking extraordinary measures to crack down on crime and cut through bureaucratic red tape to pursue a slate of ambitious beautification and construction projects around the city.

When Trump was asked in the Oval Office about the possibility of Lewis George winning the primary and becoming mayor, he told reporters: “I wouldn’t like it.” “Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis,” Trump said. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”

A third-generation Washingtonian, the 38-year-old Lewis George has represented the district’s 4th Ward on the D.C. Council since 2021. She ran a progressive campaign, promising change from Bowser’s tenure and casting herself as a champion of the working class who would stand up to Trump. Her platform — including universal child care, social housing and public safety reforms — galvanized a coalition of voters that skewed young, white, college-educated and newer to Washington, according to polling.

McDuffie, her main opponent in the race, pitched himself as a more pro-business pragmatist who gained Bowser’s tacit support.

The change in leadership for Washington comes at a time of tumult in the city.

D.C. is facing a $1.1 billion budget gap, which Bowser has argued should be covered by cuts to social services. The Trump administration’s government funding cuts and decimation of the federal workforce hit Washington especially hard — resulting in the greatest number of job losses of any metro region in the country in 2025. And Trump’s moves to wrest control of the city by temporarily taking over the MPD and indefinitely calling on the National Guard to patrol the District’s streets were deeply unpopular among Washingtonians.

Washington is also dependent on the federal government for multiple high-profile projects that have the potential to accelerate a sluggish economy, including upgrades to Union Station and the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus. Lewis George told POLITICO that “there are avenues I want to work with this administration,” including those projects — but she also promised to “stand up to anyone who harms our communities or threatens home rule.”

The race between Lewis George and McDuffie — whose base skewed toward voters who are Black, older and lifelong District residents, polls showed — had grown increasingly fraught in its final weeks. Lewis George collected endorsements from several top unions, while McDuffie found support among establishment Democrats, including former Mayors Sharon Pratt and Tony Williams, and former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.

Lewis George leaned into a campaign focused on affordability, blaming rising prices on Trump and proposing that she would bring down sky-high housing costs by constructing 72,000 new units, compared to McDuffie’s proposed 12,000. McDuffie argued that imposing greater taxes on businesses to pay for more ambitious social programs would drive them away from the district, exacerbating its economic woes.

The candidates also differed on public safety, a marquee issue in light of Trump’s crime crackdown. Lewis George, who was first elected to the Council following the social justice protests of 2020, argued for public safety reform with a holistic approach to crime prevention that includes bolstering community programs and nonpolice response.

​Politics

A prominent Michigan pollster is accusing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s Senate campaign of pressuring a state capitol news outlet into killing a survey of the heated Democratic primary.

The pollster, Steve Mitchell, told POLITICO the survey was conducted on behalf of Michigan Information & Research Service, an independent news outlet covering the state capitol that his firm regularly works with. But MIRS ultimately chose not to publish the survey after pushback from the McMorrow campaign.

The poll found McMorrow at just 6 percent ahead of the state’s pivotal Aug. 4 contest, far behind former public health official Abdul El-Sayed at 42 percent and Rep. Haley Stevens at 33 percent.

“The poll, in the eyes of the McMorrow campaign, understated their support,” Mitchell, whose firm Mitchell Research & Communications conducted and paid for the poll, told POLITICO. “And they put intense pressure on MIRS, and therefore MIRS decided that they weren’t going to run the survey. That’s their decision, and I support their decision.”

McMorrow has trailed the other two candidates in a number of recent public surveys, but 6 percent would mark a new low — a sign her campaign for the critical Michigan Senate seat may be mired in third place. McMorrow’s campaign told POLITICO the polling methodology was faulty and that its resulting memo was riddled with errors, including spelling her name wrong.

Kyle Melinn, a news editor with MIRS, said he killed the poll after speaking with the McMorrow campaign and other pollsters.

“I told Steve that the campaign did raise issues with the poll, and that they were pressuring me to not run the poll,” Melinn said in an interview. He added that after registering the McMorrow campaign’s concerns, he solicited the advice of other pollsters, and “didn’t run it because I didn’t feel comfortable with it.” The other unidentified pollsters shared his issues with the poll, according to Melinn.

McMorrow campaign spokesperson Jackson Boaz said in a statement that “Voicing concerns about a poll isn’t a pressure campaign. They chose not to publish a survey that is deeply flawed.” Asked whether the campaign had asked MIRS not to run the poll, Boaz said, “MIRS chose not to run the poll because they agreed the poll did not meet their standards.”

Boaz said the McMorrow campaign reached out to MIRS after “we noticed odd things about the data,” including that 0 percent of Black voters were undecided in the race; 0 or 1 percent of voters in Detroit and its metro area were undecided while other parts of the state had undecided voters at 25 percent, 48 percent, and even 54 percent; and that McMorrow was at just 5 percent support in her home base of Oakland County.

Their suspicion — which they said MIRS confirmed — was that the poll allowed anyone to take it through an open link, rather than having access controlled to ensure a random and representative sample of the state.

The poll was conducted through a methodology known as text-to-web, in which random voters are selected to receive a text message link to a survey to fill out. That allows pollsters to ensure they are reaching an appropriately wide-ranging group of voters. But the McMorrow campaign said all respondents received the same open-access link, which would allow anyone with the link to take the poll — potentially multiple times.

“The outlet that sponsored this poll declined to publish it because it didn’t meet their standards. It was conducted through an open SurveyMonkey link sent over text, meaning anyone who received this poll could vote multiple times or send the link to friends and supporters to impact the results,” Boaz said in a statement. “This is fundamental polling malpractice. We urge either of our opponents, or any reputable pollster, to stand by this shoddy methodology.”

In an interview, Mitchell admitted he got some of the polling memo wrong, saying for example that he meant to write El-Sayed supported Medicare for All, not “Social Security for All.” But he said he stood by the poll and its methodology.

“I have always had 100 percent confidence in all the polling I do,” Mitchell said. “I believe that we’ve been very strenuous in the methodology that we use. We’re very careful about it. We weighted it well, and more importantly, we have a track record that shows we are a strong and good pollster.”

“A poll is a poll,” Mitchell said when asked about the open link question, sharing a poll with POLITICO from GOP gubernatorial candidate John James that he said used a similar approach.

The controversy over the spiked poll underscores the importance of the Michigan Senate race. Democrats view defending the open seat as crucial to reclaiming the Senate majority, and the party establishment has mobilized hard against Bernie Sanders-backed El-Sayed, who they argue could pave the way to Republican Mike Rogers flipping the seat in November.

But recent pollssuggest McMorrow is falling behind El-Sayed, who is experiencing a surge in support, and Stevens, who is backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In the memo about the contested poll, Mitchell wrote there has been a “huge erosion in support for Mallory McMorrow.”

“One of the reasons for her seeming collapse is the fact El-Sayed had received a large amount of unpaid media because of the endorsements by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Hasan Piker the anti-Semitic podcaster while Haley Stevens had an outside organization spend more than $6 million on her candidacy,” Mitchell wrote. However, he added: “Our poll was conducted June 11-13 which coincided with an ad buy of at least $5 million on behalf of McMorrow that started just the day before we began our polling. Therefore, McMorrow’s ads did not have enough time to impact our results.”

​Politics

President Donald Trump’s primary victory spree has a new $100 million asterisk.

That’s the record-breaking sum the upstart self-funding businessman Rick Jackson spent to defeat Trump’s chosen candidate in the GOP primary for Georgia governor. Jackson’s flood of ads helped drown out Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and other Republicans up and down the ballot, as the billionaire tried to convince voters that he didn’t need Trump’s explicit endorsement to be a true MAGA warrior. In the end, his pitch worked, through persuasion or sheer force.

Tuesday’s result is the latest embarrassing and high-profile blemish in what had been a near-perfect record this year for the president. Just two weeks ago, another Trump-backed candidate — Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa — failed to win his gubernatorial race. And across the map Tuesday he saw mixed success.

Trump-endorsed Rep. Barry Moore cruised in his Alabama Senate runoff, though he had help from a pro-crypto super PAC that spent millions. Trump’s picks in two Oklahoma races are headed to runoffs after failing to surpass 50 percent of the vote in crowded primaries. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) won the Senate runoff to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, but it was far from a blowout victory and Trump’s 11th-hour endorsement makes it hard to give him full credit for the win.

“The Trump endorsement has an effect, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s not the end-all-be-all for politics in Georgia,” said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County Republican chair who supported Jackson in the race.

Jones supporters and Trump allies were quick to blame Jackson’s cash — but some in the lieutenant governor’s orbit also suggested the president didn’t do enough to hit Jackson.

“[Trump] absolutely moved the needle. He just moved the needle 15 points when we needed him to move the needle 25 points,” said a Georgia operative who backed Jones and was granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics of the race candidly.

Trump endorsed Jones early in a crowded race. But while Trump often unloads against his political rivals, he was notably quiet on Jackson, even as he chipped away at Jones’ lead in the polls.

Jackson, a onetime Trump-skeptic turned MAGA ally and Trump donor, tied himself closely to the president on the campaign trail, repeatedly insisting he would be “Trump’s favorite governor.”

“I feel pretty certain that there’s never been a candidate that the president endorsed that got outspent by $90 million in the primary,” said a second GOP operative who supported Jones. Still, the person acknowledged: “If you’re a Jones supporter, you would have loved if the president would have said something bad about Rick Jackson.”

Trump brought Jones on stage at an official White House event in February in the northwestern corner of the state and appeared on a pair of telerallies, but some Jones supporters questioned Tuesday night whether he could have done more to boost his candidacy amid the onslaught of spending from Jackson.

“I’m the only candidate who doesn’t owe a thing to the political establishment,” Jackson said in his election night victory speech. “I don’t care what special interests want, how much they beg, how much they give me. I can’t be bought, and I won’t back down.”

The acknowledgement from some Jones supporters that Trump could have done more to boost his preferred candidate could be a warning in other GOP primaries.

Polling in next week’s South Carolina gubernatorial runoff shows Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette struggling to hold onto her lead as other Republicans in the state rally behind her opponent. In Louisiana, GOP Rep. Julia Letlow succeeded in ousting a Trump foe in Sen. Bill Cassidy, but still needs to defeat state Treasurer John Fleming — also a MAGA ally — in the Senate runoff later this month. And in Oklahoma, Trump’s candidates may need some extra juice from the president to win their August runoffs.

Even before voters hit the polls on Tuesday, Trump-world was working to paint a Jackson win as a win for the movement.

“No matter who wins tomorrow, it’s a victory for MAGA,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X Monday afternoon.

Some Trump-world advisers privately scoffed at Jackson’s massive spending and the lengths his campaign and supporters went to project alignment with the president despite not receiving his endorsement. Some of the efforts drew notice among Trump-world advisers, including a mailer that featured a photo of Jackson and the president alongside the line: “Businessmen. Outsiders. Men of action,” as well as a digital video that highlighted Jackson’s $1 million donation to Trump’s political operation.

“Rick Jackson set a record for spending in a statewide Republican primary. He spent Tom Steyer level money in a state the fraction the size of California,” a Trump political operative said. “That’s going to have an impact.”

The president himself didn’t seem to sweat the loss.

“I HAD A LOT OF BIG ELECTION WINS LAST NIGHT. THANK YOU TO ALL!!!” Trump said on Truth Social early Wednesday morning. Just a few minutes later, he worked to take at least some credit for Jackson’s win.

“Congratulations to Rick Jackson, who very successfully campaigned on being ‘TRUMP,’ and won,” Trump wrote.

​Politics

Georgia Republicans finally have their Senate nominee. Now comes the hard part.

A bruised GOP Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) will go head to head against Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff, a prolific fundraiser who many Republicans worry will be difficult to beat this November.

While Republicans spent months turning their fire on each other, Ossoff has steadily built his campaign infrastructure — and refined his general election message.

“Anyone who’s being honest knows it’s going to be a very tough race to unseat Jon Ossoff. All the polling shows Georgia as leaning Democrat, not toss-up,” Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County Republican chair, told POLITICO before the Tuesday result. He had supported Collins’ opponent, former football coach Derek Dooley.

Heading into the midterms, Ossoff was widely considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic candidates in a state Trump handily won in 2024. But since then, the senator has stockpiled mountains of cash, sailed through his primary unchallenged, and has positioned himself as someone who stays above the fray of partisan cable news hits.

“Ossoff is tricky, he’s good at raising money, he does not step in it,” said one senior RNC official before the runoff, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the midterm landscape.

The race is expected to be one of the most closely watched Senate contests of the cycle. Holding onto Ossoff’s seat is key to Democrats’ narrow path to winning back control of the Senate, while Republicans see flipping it as one of their best opportunities to expand their majority. The state has also become one of the country’s premier battlegrounds, serving as an early test of the forces — and people — that could shape 2028.

Several Republican strategists and operatives say that some of Collins’ hardline policy stances, plus an ongoing House ethics investigation against him, may make him vulnerable to Democrats’ attacks.

They also worry Collins has a lot of catching up to do in the money race.

Collins raised$4.9 million and had just $1.2 million in cash on hand as of May 27, according to fundraising reports. By comparison, Ossoff has raised$60 million and had $32 million left in the bank at the end of April.

“It’s a real severe uphill battle,” said one Republican operative involved in races up and down the ballot in Georgia, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state’s marquee race.

Collins will require significant help from outside groups, the operative said, but it’s not clear how much will come: “What is the willingness to go all in for Mike Collins? Do they think he can win? Do they think they can get this done? What are those resources going to look like? Because he’s not going to fundraise — I don’t think — very well.”

Collins’ allies argue the bitter primary has prepared him for a brutal general election.

“Jon Ossoff has been, always will be, the most vulnerable Democrat up for reelection. Nobody is more battle tested than Mike Collins after this primary,” said a person close to Collins’ campaign.

Some Democrats suggest they got their preferred candidate in Collins — rather than Dooley, who had the backing of popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, which could have helped broaden his appeal across the state.

“Dooley is much less of a political extremist than Collins is and Collins is on the record voting directly for the policies that have devastated Georgians,” said one person aligned with a Democratic PAC involved in Senate elections, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “As for an [opposition] research perspective and in our effort to air out his dirty laundry we have a lot more ammunition with Collins.”

Even President Donald Trump, who made a last-minute endorsement for Collins ahead of Tuesday’s election, had grilled him about his strict stance on abortion, pressing him on how he could win in a general election in one of the nation’s premier swing states. Abortion has become a political vulnerability for Republicans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Collins already appeared to soften his stance in the final stretch of the runoff. During a 2022 debate for his current House seat, Collins said, “I have always stated and I’ve always been and always will be 100 percent pro-life, period. No exceptions.” Recently on the campaign trail, he said he supports Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, which includes exceptions in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.

Ossoff was quick to hammer Collins after his victory, tying him to Trump and assailing him as a “notorious bigot.”

“Collins, who is only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman, voted to double health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians, for the Iran War, and for the Trump tariffs,” Ossoff said in a statement.

But Democrats know Collins still poses a real threat, even with the wind at their backs. Ossoff won by a razor-thin margin in 2020 over former Republican Sen. David Perdue — a contest that went to a runoff — and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) won by less than 3 points over Trump-endorsed former football star Herschel Walker in 2022.

“Democrats understand that if a Herschel Walker can get to 49 percent, you know, this is still going to be a battle, and this is still going to be a fight ahead,” said Andrew Heaton, a Democratic strategist and former campaign aide for Warnock.

National Democrats say they are planning to hit Collins hard. Senate Majority PAC, the main Senate Democratic super PAC, has committed $20 million for television ads supporting the incumbent in the general.

National Republican groups have largely been waiting in the wings to get involved in Georgia, held back by Trump’s long silence on the Senate race and a messy, drawn-out primary to determine their nominee. Now, with Collins knighted as their standard bearer to lead the ticket, groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund will face pressure to start spending — fast.

Those two leading Republican groups have already raised $1 million in a “first-of-its-kind joint fundraising operation” put aside for the Republican nominee in Georgia, POLITICO first reported. That’s in addition to the$44 million SLF already committed to Georgia’s Senate race. Collins could also receive a boost from sharing a ticket with billionaire Rick Jackson, who won the GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday — and has already signaled plans to invest heavily across the state.

“We will have a large field team and field operation. Collins will benefit greatly,” one person familiar with Jackson’s campaign said Tuesday night, granted anonymity to discuss not-yet-finalized plans.

A second Georgia-based Republican operative said “it’s imperative” that resources start flowing to the Senate race. “The general election campaign starts right now, we don’t have a moment to lose,” the operative said just minutes after the primary was called for Collins.

Collins used his victory speech on Tuesday night to preview his attacks on Ossoff’s voting record, tying the Democrat to liberal policies unpopular with many Georgia Republicans.

“This choice in this race is crystal clear: You got a businessman who has delivered results in both the private sector and in Washington … or an out-of-touch, far left liberal who has raised your taxes, made your life more expensive, less safe, and left Georgia worse off,” he said.

How Collins handles the early days of the general election will be key to convincing the skeptics, said one Georgia-based operative unaffiliated with the Senate race, granted anonymity to discuss the landscape.

“A lot of people don’t think he’s gonna have a chance, and that may end up working to his advantage,” the operative said. “I think the race is gonna get very tight once we get into the summer and early fall, but I think that there’s going to be a lot of eyeballs to see how he performs out of the gate.”

Buoyed by the late-stage Trump endorsement, Collins emerged from the primary as the candidate carrying the MAGA mantle. He earned support from several prominent House Republicans, in addition to the powerful Club for Growth and Turning Point Action. His victory on Tuesday night underscored his strength in Georgia’s rural, heavily Republican regions.

But to compete in November, he’ll need to go beyond the MAGA base and win over Dooley’s coalition, which was built on the support of more moderate voters in the metro Atlanta area. Collins said in his victory speech Tuesday that he had spoken to both Kemp and Dooley.

“It’s an uphill battle against Senator Ossoff, but it would have been an uphill fight for anyone,” said Buzz Brockway, a GOP strategist and former state representative in Georgia. “Now Collins needs to unite the GOP behind him, which I think he can do.”

​Politics

Robert White won the Washington, D.C., delegate Democratic primary, setting him up to represent the United States capital in Congress as its first new delegate in more than 35 years.

White’s victory begins a new chapter for Washington, which has been represented in the House by Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton since 1991.

He faces no major general election challengers in the deep-blue district and will ascend to a post that gives him a voice, but not a vote, to champion a city that has been roiled by President Donald Trump’s attempts to exert pressure in his second term.

White’s ascension caps off a long career for Holmes Norton — for whom he used to work. Holmes Norton was known as a behind-the-scenes operator in Congress who helped restructure Washington’s finances in the 1990s and brought major federal projects and jobs to the district. Holmes Norton’s signature project was D.C. statehood, elevating it from a Washingtonian pipe dream to a mainstream Democratic issue culminating in House passage of statehood bills in 2020 and 2021.

But Holmes Norton’s visibility and power waned in recent years, and questions about the 89-year-old’s acuity and ability to serve drew a steady stream of headlines in 2025. In October, D.C. police said that Holmes Norton was scammed out of more than $4,000, and an initial police report reportedly described her as having “early stages of dementia.”

A fifth-generation Washingtonian, White has served as an at-large member of the D.C. Council since 2016. He will be Washington’s third delegate since the position was reestablished in 1970.

White ran against primary challenger and fellow Council member Brooke Pinto on a platform focused on increasing affordability and public safety while defending the district’s autonomy — potentially setting him on a collision course with the president.

In an interview with POLITICO last week, White cast Trump’s crime crackdown in the city, including federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department and deployment of the National Guard and federal immigration agents, as “lawlessness” and “the opposite of public safety.” He also pledged to reintroduce a bill pushed for years by Holmes Norton that would grant command over the D.C. National Guard to the District’s mayor rather than the president.

The contest at times grew ugly. In April, Pinto’s campaign posted to her website a 67-page opposition research dossier about White, including information about his family and finances. White demanded Pinto withdrawal from the race, and Pinto’s campaign replaced the file with a new version that omitted information about White’s family, to whom Pinto apologized.

​Politics

Washington will soon enter a new chapter after voters pick the capital’s first new mayor in a dozen years and its first new Congressional delegate since 1991. And no matter who wins Tuesday’s primaries, they’ll be on a collision course with President Donald Trump.

The frontrunners in both races have hinged their campaigns on opposition to Trump, who since returning to office has chipped away at Washington’s autonomy and sought to remake parts of the city in his image. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has led the city since taking office in 2015, has taken a pragmatic approach to working with the president in an apparent effort to avoid further furor. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has represented the District since 1991 and condemned Trump’s actions in strongly worded statements, but the 89-year-old has dodged the spotlight amid questions about her acuity and ability to serve.

The candidates running to replace them say that’s far from enough.

In interviews with POLITICO, those leading candidates emphasized that they hoped to find common ground with the Trump administration and coordinate where possible, especially on projects that could jumpstart Washington’s sluggish economy. But they all drew a red line at Trump’s extraordinary law enforcement actions, including sending in the National Guard indefinitely and surging federal immigration agents in coordination with local police.

“Washington, D.C., residents want and deserve a mayor who’s going to stand up and fight back, and that’s what I’m bringing,” said Kenyan McDuffie, a relatively moderate, pro-business former D.C. Council member who is polling second in the mayor’s race. He has pledged to end coordination between the Metropolitan Police Department and ICE on his first day in office.

Janeese Lewis George, a D.C. council member who is polling more than 10 points ahead of McDuffie, has taken an even more adversarial posture against the president. She told POLITICO she would “actively tell our employees to resist” if Trump again federalized the MPD, adding that she would work with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb “to defend D.C.”

Trump is already making known his displeasure — particularly with Lewis George, a democratic socialist whose platform and campaign are reminiscent of those of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Asked last week about the possibility of Lewis George winning the primary, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I wouldn’t like it.”

“Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis,” he continued. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”

Lewis George’s campaign almost immediately cut Trump’s comments into an ad. “Look, we’re not going to get ICE off our streets by fearing this president,” she said in response. “We’re not going to protect our rights, or Home Rule, by complying in advance. Threatening Home Rule because you don’t like how residents are voting is an attack on democracy itself. The people of D.C. elect their mayor, and they want someone who’s gonna stand up to Donald Trump.”

There’s a similar sentiment among the leading delegate candidates.

Robert White, a city council member and one of two frontrunners in the delegate race, described Trump’s surge of federal agents and National Guard troops to the city as “lawlessness” and “the opposite of public safety.” He said he would seek to build a coalition in Congress to “push back in every way.”

Brooke Pinto, a fellow council member and the other delegate frontrunner who has centered public safety in her campaign, said the administration’s use of National Guard troops and ICE agents have not helped the city. “While I am very committed to advancing public safety in the District of Columbia, what we’re seeing from the Trump administration undermines those efforts,” she said.

That type of messaging is politically savvy in a city with an electorate that heavily supported Kamala Harris in 2024 and whose lives have been directly impacted by the president’s grip over Washington — from the troop surge to his sweeping cuts to government programs and razing of the federal workforce, which have severely contracted the District’s economy. That’s not to mention his efforts to splash his name and face across federal buildings, and mounting moves to beautify portions of the city and stand up ambitious architectural projects.

“When politicians try to interfere with our local public safety, when they are sweeping up unhoused residents, cutting jobs, when they are pushing policies that negatively affect our local economy and driving up overall costs of everything from gas to housing, I’m going to fight back,” McDuffie said.

But it sets the candidates — whoever wins — in explicit opposition to Trump, who has consistently sought to bring his enemies to heel whenever he gets the chance. The president has several levers at his disposal if he chooses to retaliate against Washington, from another federal law enforcement surge to using his influence over Congress to weaken D.C. Home Rule. The city also depends on the federal government for high-profile projects that would improve public spaces and bring jobs to the District, including upgrades to Union Station and the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus.

Asked how the White House is preparing for a potentially more adversarial mayor and delegate, a spokesperson referred POLITICO back to Trump’s Oval Office comments.

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​Politics