Category: Politics

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Wednesday accepted President Donald Trump’s offer to help fix the massive sewage spill outside the city, making an unusual request for Trump to declare the area a disaster and pay for repairs.

Bowser’s request came days after Trump tried to blame the spill on her and other Democrats and said that if they want federal help “they have to call me and ask, politely.”

Bowser signed her letter “Respectfully” in asking for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to offset all “costs incurred” by the city and regional sewer authorities following the Jan. 19 collapse of a sewer line in Montgomery County, Maryland. FEMA usually pays 75 percent of disaster repairs unless damage is extreme.

Bowser told reporters Thursday that she made the request now because Trump expressed interest in helping and to minimize costs to D.C. residents. In addition to seeking assistance, the three-term mayor — who is not seeking reelection — declared a local public emergency and asked the federal government to support several other water quality and flood protection projects in the city.

“I have had outreach from the president’s team,” Bowser said during a press conference. “That would indicate to me that they’re supportive of the request.”

No president has approved a disaster declaration for a sewage spill, according to an analysis by POLITICO’s E&E News of FEMA records dating to 1953.

President Barack Obama approved an emergency declaration in 2016 for water contamination in Flint, Michigan, that began in 2014. FEMA provides limited aid for emergencies.

But presidents have authority to approve disasters for a wide range of events. In his first term, Trump approved disaster requests for every state to cover their costs of handling the Covid-19 pandemic. FEMA has given states roughly $140 billion for pandemic costs.

Bowser’s letter contains no cost estimates — which governors routinely include in their multipage disaster requests — and acknowledges aid would help residents outside her jurisdiction, in Maryland and Virginia.

Federal law says that disaster requests “shall be made by the Governor of the affected State” — or by a government leader such as a tribal chief, territorial governor or the mayor of Washington, and that a disaster request must be based on a finding that a jurisdiction cannot handle an event by itself. Bowser’s letter to Trump makes no such claim.

Neither Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland nor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, both Democrats, have requested disaster aid from Trump. DC Water, the sewer authority, operates the sewer line that extends from as far as Dulles International Airport to a treatment plant in the city and did not respond to a request for comment.

“Maryland will not be seeking an emergency declaration because the responsibility for the repair and subsequent clean up does not fall to Maryland,” said Rhylan Lake, a spokesperson for Moore, in an email. “Since Maryland owns neither the infrastructure nor the land, Maryland does not anticipate needing supplemental resources at this time.”

Neither the White House nor FEMA responded to questions Thursday about whether they planned to grant D.C.’s assistance request.

Considered the largest raw sewage spill of its kind in U.S. history, the broken sewer line has released over 250 million gallons of raw sewage in the Potomac River. Environmentalists have been raising concerns for weeks about the spill, which could render the river unsafe for fishing and boating and undermine longstanding efforts to repair the Chesapeake Bay.

Local environmentalists said they would welcome federal funding to help with the cleanup, but that the priority should be to increase water quality monitoring and better notify the public about whether it’s safe to use the river.

“Going directly from zero comments on it to an emergency declaration after the fact seems like an unusual pathway,” said Betsy Nicholas, president of Potomac Riverkeeper Network. “We haven’t heard anything from the mayor or the mayor’s office on this for an entire month, which in and of itself was a little surprising and frustrating.”

Representatives for the utility have previously noted that they are working to accelerate a previously planned rehabilitation project to fix the sewer line. The line dates to the early 1960s.

Trump administration officials and local authorities have traded jabs in recent days over who is responsible for the spill, with the exact cause still undetermined.

Trump has primarily cast blame on Moore, with the White House describing the state as responsible for protecting water quality in the Potomac. But both Moore’s office and Bowser say that EPA is the primary regulator of DC Water.

A FEMA report Thursday morning says DC Water “is engaged with” EPA, FEMA, environmental agencies in the District, Maryland and Virginia, and the National Park Service, which owns the wooded parkland where the spill occurred next to the Potomac.

“Since the incident was first reported, DC Water has provided daily updates,” the FEMA report says.

​Politics

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a bellwether Democrat on AI and data centers, is tempering his message ahead of his reelection campaign.

Shapiro, a swing-state Democrat and a 2028 presidential prospect, has staked his state’s economic fortunes on the tech industry. He wooed a $20 billion investment from Amazon along with major investments by Microsoft and Google. Shapiro has backed President Donald Trump’s call for more nuclear and natural gas plants to power new tech hubs.

He’s now trying to hedge his bet as data centers absorb a nationwide backlash from voters increasingly concerned about their impact on electricity bills.

“Pay for your own power, so it’s not saddling local businesses or homeowners with higher costs,” Shapiro said in an interview with POLITICO earlier this month from a union hall in Philadelphia.

It’s an unmistakable pivot by a leading practitioner of data center politics who along with other Democratic governors has been trying to bring under control rising electricity prices that could be political kryptonite for both parties. Household electricity bills are rising at twice the rate of inflation. In recent weeks, Shapiro has joined Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democrats who are sharpening their tone and putting new policies in place to try to claw back taxpayer expenses, increase pressure on utility companies and address local backlash against development.

“Too many of these projects have been shrouded in secrecy, with local communities left in the dark about who is coming in and what they’re building,” Shapiro said in his annual address to the Pennsylvania General Assembly earlier this month.

Shapiro, who is riding high in the polls as he launches his reelection campaign, is pitching the AI and data center boom as a source of union jobs during the yearslong construction phase — but also trying to manage the boom’s potential to alienate other voters.

Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said Shapiro’s “get stuff done” political brand runs into trouble if voters tie energy affordability concerns to data center projects.

“People have started to connect the demand for AI and data centers to pricing,” he said.

Jobs and energy

Few Democrats have anticipated the data center zeitgeist as deftly as Shapiro. Shortly after taking office in 2023, he ordered an analysis of where the state and U.S. economies were headed. AI jumped out as a key opportunity, a top adviser said.

“Not just because we thought it was cool, but because we have strengths,” said Rick Siger, a former Obama staffer who serves as Shapiro’s secretary of community and economic development.

Carnegie Mellon University, a top engineering and technology school, was a selling point. So was the state’s manufacturing base, which makes hardware for data centers and boasts tech companies that will deploy advanced AI. Shapiro’s team fixated on what major developers were after. “Speed matters, in particular to companies that are competing in AI,” Siger said.

In June 2025, Shapiro announced Amazon’s $20 billion investment in two data center complexes: one in the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County and another south of Wilkes-Barre.

“The employees will be making, in some cases, double the average wage in that county,” Siger said, “to work in a high-tech job and be able to stay home and raise their kids in their hometown.” The data center piece of the AI juggernaut also works well for Shapiro’s union-heavy constituency. He toured Steamfitters Local Union 420’s training center in Philadelphia earlier this month, which is training apprentices to install cooling systems for the computer chips packed in wall-to-wall racks inside the cluster of AI factories being developed in Bucks County.

Rory Carroll, a 42-year-old steamfitter who was among the trainees greeting Shapiro, said he’s “tried everything” to make a living. “I sold cars, delivered pizza, managed a supermarket.” Now, he says he’s on a rising tide.

Local officials in Bucks County — which Trump flipped red in 2024, for the first time since 1988 — are wary but welcoming.

“Do I think the trend of technology replacing jobs will continue with the data centers? Of course I do,” said Erin Mullen, vice chair of the Falls Township Board of Supervisors. But she said the temporary construction jobs were worth pursuing. “This is a blue-collar township,” Mullen said. “So even though the jobs are temporary, a lot of families here survive on temporary jobs, and this is huge for the trades.”

Data centers’ demand for energy also works for Shapiro, who’s been touting the state’s large natural gas reserves in talks with tech companies. Last summer, he joined Trump and the state’s Republican senator, Dave McCormick, in Pittsburgh to announce multibillion-dollar commitments for restarting aging hydropower and expanding electricity generation from nuclear and natural gas.

Now, after cuts to federal renewable energy tax credits, he’s still touting Pennsylvania energy — with a partisan edge.

“I’m an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy governor,” Shapiro said in the POLITICO interview. “Unfortunately, the president of the United States has cut hundreds of millions of dollars from clean energy development in this commonwealth, which has cost us 26,000 union trade jobs who were set to work on these projects.”

“I don’t think it’s an either-or — it’s a both-and,” he continued. “We need to generate more power. Yes, it will rely in part on Pennsylvania natural gas. We also need to generate more power with renewables.”

Power politics

Shapiro’s call for data center developers to pay for electricity infrastructure that could drive up utility bills echoes the Trump administration’s recent rhetoric exhorting them to “pick up the tab” — but Shapiro’s focus on power bills was a long time coming.

In July 2024, as Shapiro was chasing Amazon, mid-Atlantic ratepayers were hit with a $14.7 billion, one-year charge from PJM Interconnection, the region’s electricity grid manager. The double-digit cost increases in utility bills came as a result of projections that electricity supplies could fall short of demand across the 13-state region stretching from northern Virginia to Chicago.

Shapiro demanded a price cap in December 2024 on the fastest-rising part of PJM customers’ electricity bills — a headline-grabbing event in Pennsylvania. And he’s threatened to pull Pennsylvania out of the PJM market all together, a major uprooting of the way power is delivered in the region. He’s attacked PJM for its byzantine utility-heavy leadership structure that leads to a sclerotic response to rising power prices.

According to federal data, electricity prices in Pennsylvania rose roughly 20 percent between November 2024 and November 2025 — the highest rate in the country. And PJM has warned that states could face power shortages by the end of the decade if the construction of new data centers race ahead of the energy supply.

“PJM is broken,” Shapiro said in December. “They’re too damned slow. And the needs we have in this country to produce more energy to support everything from data centers to more manufacturing need to be met. And we are being held captive.”

The enormously complex market rules that affect power prices in Shapiro’s state are outside average Americans’ conversations. But Shapiro and Trump have tied a rising part of their political parties’ credibility to the outcome of their pledges to make data centers pay their own way.

In January, Shapiro went to the White House alongside other East Coast governors of both parties to call for PJM to control power prices — and for data centers to “bring their own power” through long-term contracts with new generation developers.

Big tech companies are starting to sign on. Trump used a Truth Social post in early January to announce the White House was working with tech companies to get more agreement on containing the public cost of energy infrastructure. Microsoft then pledged to shoulder more of those costs.

Shapiro’s tack could work for him, according to recent polling.

A POLITICO poll released last week showed an electorate still wrestling with the data center question. Respondents’ top concerns surrounding data centers were power prices and the risk of blackouts — yet they were generally willing to support a new data center in their area evenif it hikes their power bills.

In his address to lawmakers, Shapiro proposed a three-pronged strike against rising energy costs — proposing new rules for data center developers, electric utilities and the regional grid PJM. He pledged to “hold data center developers accountable to strict standards if they want our full support.”

Last week, PJM agreed to extend price controls on future electricity production into 2030.

​Politics

A pro-Israel group is wading into nearly a dozen contentious House primaries as it tries to shape the Democratic Party’s approach to the controversial issue.

The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, which backs pro-Israel Democrats, is endorsing 11 House candidates, including several in expensive and crowded primaries the party must win in order to retake the House. The group’s initial endorsement list was shared first with POLITICO.

DMFI, first launched in 2019, is one of several groups across the political spectrum looking to influence the party’s views on Israel, even as its military operations in Gaza have divided the Democratic Party and become an early litmus test for both 2026 congressional candidates and 2028 presidential hopefuls.

The endorsements include candidates in six battleground races and five more in safe-blue, but crowded, Democratic primaries. They are backing moderate state Rep. Shannon Bird over progressive state Rep. Manny Rutinel for the right to face Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) in a swingy Colorado district.

In New York, the group is backing Cait Conley, who has entered a crowded primary to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) in a district which Kamala Harris won by a one-point margin in 2024. In Texas, DMFI has endorsed police officer Johnny Garcia in a wide-open primary for the newly drawn, red-leaning seat.

DMFI is backing a pair of candidates in two of the four most competitive seats in Pennsylvania — Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who will face off against Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), and former TV anchor Janelle Stelson, who is also on track to run against Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). And in Virginia, former Rep. Elaine Luria picked up the group’s support as she vies to take on her former opponent, Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).

The other candidates who are receiving DMFI’s endorsement are all running in crowded primaries in safe blue seats: Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo, who is running to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.); Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is running to replace Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is running for Senate; and former Obama administration official Maura Sullivan, who is running to replace Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), who is running for the Senate.

“The vast majority of Americans support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and understand the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said former Rep. Kathy Manning, who serves on the DMFI PAC board. “If you’re running in a competitive district, you need Democrats, you need independents, you need Republicans.”

Several groups, including DMFI and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, are boosting pro-Israel candidates with significant outside spending. The two groups have often overlapped in their endorsements, but AIPAC supports Democrats and Republicans — and has drawn the ire of progressives. DMFI, for its part, is focused on regaining a Democratic congressional majority.

AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, dropped more than $38 million on independent expenditures in 2024, while DMFI spent about $4.3 million. DMFI President Brian Romick said the group expects to be spending “comfortably” in the “seven-figures again” in 2026 but declined to elaborate further on the plans.

In Illinois, among the first primaries next month, DMFI and AIPAC appear aligned in their preferred candidates. DMFI announced it is backing former Rep. Melissa Bean, who is running to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who is running for the Senate, and Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, who is vying to replace Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), another Senate candidate.

Bean and Miller have also attracted attention for their connections to AIPAC. Their primary opponents in both races have accused them of benefiting from AIPAC’s spending, concealed by shell super PACs that are boosting them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in positive TV spending. But DMFI has not yet endorsed in Illinois’ 9th District, another contentious primary to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky that AIPAC appears to have waded into.

Earlier this month, AIPAC triggered a wave of criticism and frustration, even from its own allies, for spending $2 million to sink former Rep. Tom Malinowski in a congressional special election in New Jersey. The group’s spending backfired, eliminating Malinowski, but failing to lift up its preferred candidate. Analilia Mejia, a progressive organizer who has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza, ultimately won.

Romick and Manning declined to comment on AIPAC’s strategy, with the former congresswoman noting DMFI is “a distinctly different and separate organization.”

In 2024, DMFI and AIPAC targeted former Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in 2024, both of whom lost their primaries to pro-Israel candidates. Romick demurred on whether DMFI planned to target any Democratic incumbents in 2026, adding that it is going “to take these primaries as they come and see if things develop.”

Jessica Piper contributed reporting. 

​Politics

President Donald Trump didn’t just take his feud with Maryland governor and possible 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful Wes Moore into the gutter this week. He turned to the toilet.

In a series of social media posts Monday and Tuesday, Trump blasted Moore for what he deemed an inept response to a sewage spill that sent hundreds of millions of gallons of raw waste into the Potomac River beginning four weeks ago.

“There is a massive Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River as a result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social, saying that it’s time for the federal government to step in. “I cannot allow incompetent Local ‘Leadership’ to turn the River in the Heart of Washington into a Disaster Zone.”

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president is worried that the Potomac River will carry the stench of excrement during the July 4 celebration of the country’s semiquincentennial that Trump has been planning since returning to office.

“He is worried about that. Which is why the federal government wants to fix it, and we hope that the local authorities will cooperate with us in doing so,” Leavitt said in response to a reporter’s question during the White House press briefing.

It’s not the first time Trump has turned poop into a political weapon. In fact, the president who complains regularly about low-flow toilet standards has a long list of scatological gripes that have become one of the few areas where his administration is seeking additional environmental protections as it aggressively rolls back dozens of climate, air and water pollution rules.

It was on the sewage-fouled beaches of San Diego that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin marked his first Earth Day as the nation’s top environmental regulator. The administration has put concerted effort into pressuring Mexico to do more to stem the tide of raw sewage pollution flowing across the border from Tijuana, which for years has dirtied beaches and sickened residents and Navy SEALs who train nearby.

And during Trump’s first term, it was San Francisco’s long-running sewer overflow problem that EPA targeted for enforcement after the president groused about the city’s large homeless population — a move that California leaders saw as politically charged.

Now as Trump feuds with Moore, the nation’s only Black governor, less than two weeks after excluding him from a White House dinner for the National Governor’s Association, the image of millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing into the nation’s capital offered another level of political punch altogether. The situation comes as Moore is pushing to redraw Maryland’s congressional lines to counter Trump’s red-state redistricting.

“It’s a great political issue. Nobody wants sewage in the water — that is true of Democrats and Republicans,” said Mae Stevens, a water infrastructure lobbyist who previously served as an environment staffer for Democratic former Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.

Asked about the president’s longstanding interest in sewage pollution, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said the administration would not allow “the failures of local and state Democrats to diminish the quality of life for millions of Americans.”

The source of the spill is the Potomac Interceptor sewer line, which partially collapsed Jan. 19 near Cabin John, Maryland, amid frigid winter temperatures, releasing nearly 200 million gallons of untreated wastewater in the first five days. Operating since  constructed in 1964, the 54-mile line carries wastewater from D.C. suburbs as far away as Dulles Airport to a treatment plant in southern Washington.

DC Water, the utility that operates the line, has been making emergency repairs to the broken interceptor, but the effort will take four to six more weeks. After that, crews will need to get to work on an already-planned rehabilitation project, which could take a further nine or 10 months, DC Water spokesperson Sherri Lewis said.

Though the spill captured the nation’s attention only this week, local environmentalists have been sounding the alarm from the beginning.

“It’s certainly a big ecological problem and an incredible threat to public health to have raw sewage splashing around and on shorelines,” said Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy, a conservation group. “We don’t need partisan politics getting in the way. This crisis is just too serious.”

Officials in Maryland, which is technically responsible for the Potomac River, responded “within hours” of the initial spill, said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Moore. But the interceptor falls under EPA’s regulatory purview, according to the governor’s office, accusing the agency that’s lost thousands of staff under Trump of failing to take action.

“For the last four weeks, the Trump Administration has failed to act, shirking its responsibility and putting people’s health at risk,” Moussa said in a statement. “Notably, the president’s own EPA explicitly refused to participate in the major legislative hearing about the cleanup last Friday.”

Zeldin shot back at that accusation on Tuesday afternoon.

“At no point in the lead up to today had DC Water or the state of Maryland requested EPA to take over their responsibilities, and EPA has continued to offer its full support to state and local leaders from the onset,” Zeldin said in a post on X.

Funding woes and ‘really poor infrastructure’

Water experts say the sewage spill is a symptom of a larger problem: Aging sewer pipes and water lines nationwide are in desperate need of repairs, but cash-strapped local governments are struggling to pay for them.

The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed to slash federal funding for water projects. Last year, the White House proposed a 90 percent cut to EPA’s State Revolving Funds, the water sector’s largest source of federal dollars. The Senate ultimately rejected the cut in a spending bill that Trump signed into law last month.

But extra water funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law is set to run out this fall, and experts warn of a coming funding cliff at the same time as extreme weather and AI data centers put more pressure on existing pipes, sewers and treatment plants.

“We’ve got really poor infrastructure. A lot of these pipes, especially on the East Coast, were built decades ago,” said Jon Mueller, a visiting associate law professor at the University of Maryland. “I think it’s unfortunate that it takes a disaster like this to get people to focus on the problem.”

It’s not yet clear how much the Potomac spill will cost, but the broader rehabilitation project for the interceptor sewer system’s “most vulnerable sections” is $625 million, said DC Water spokesperson Sherri Lewis. The utility has been coordinating with EPA, she added.

“Just last week, we hosted the Assistant Administrator for Water for a tour of the site and briefing on the project and the progress made to date,” Lewis said in a statement.

Although officials say the worst of the spill has been contained and that it has not impacted drinking water supplies, 243.5 million gallons of sewage overflows have been reported thus far.

Environmental advocates are worried about long-term implications for the river, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary and the subject of decades of cleanup efforts.

Earlier this month, University of Maryland researchers recorded extremely high concentrations of bacteria, including a strain that resists antibiotics, tied to the spill. By springtime, that could render parts of the water unsafe for boating, canoeing and fishing.

Dean Naujoks, who leads the environmental group Potomac Riverkeeper, said he hopes Trump’s involvement could improve what he described as a “botched” cleanup process by DC Water. But he cast blame as well on EPA, describing the agency as essentially missing in action.

“We can’t get a hold of [EPA]. I have no idea what they’re doing,” Naujoks said. “The squabble between Trump and Gov. Moore has focused more of the attention on accountability, which I think is a good thing.”

​Politics

The Republican battle to become Texas’ next attorney general has turned into a MAGA purity test, with major implications for the future of the GOP after President Donald Trump leaves office.

Rep. Chip Roy, a well known Freedom Caucus rabble-rouser and hardline fiscal conservative who has occasionally broken with Trump, is fighting to stay the front-runner for a job that has long been used to aggressively push the conservative agenda and served as a jumping-off point for higher office — like current Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running for Senate.

The next Texas attorney general will help shape the future of the Republican party post-Trump, playing a key role leading the conservative legal movement. But if Roy is going to get there, he’ll first have to get by State Sen. Mayes Middleton and former DOJ attorney Aaron Reitz, who have both carved paths as aggressive foot soldiers for the MAGA movement. The race also includes state Sen. Joan Huffman, who is making a more measured pitch for the job.

Roy has a lead in the polls, and all three candidates are trying to keep him from earning more than 50 percent of the vote in the March primary to force a runoff in May.

Their main line of attack: Roy’s past dustups with Trump shows he is inadequately conservative in order to represent Texas in court. Roy, in response, has argued that his reputation as an obstructionist in Congress, deep experience in Washington and independent streak within the party demonstrates he’s well equipped to serve as Texas’ top lawyer.

The candidates’ eagerness to prove their MAGA credentials were on display in the first few moments of a debate Tuesday night. Middleton bragged that Trump once called him a “MAGA champion.” Reitz said Trump regards him as a “true MAGA attorney.” Huffman said she “led the fight with President Trump on border security” in the state legislature. Roy said he has worked alongside Trump to designate cartels as terrorist organizations.

But Roy’s rivals have repeatedly hammered him for being at odds with Trump and the GOP in the past. The congressman was the first to call for Paxton to resign after he faced charges of bribery and abuse of office in 2020. He bucked Trump to certify the 2020 election and said the president demonstrated “clearly impeachable conduct” on Jan. 6. Roy backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president in 2024, making him one of just a handful of House Republicans who opposed Trump during that year’s primaries.

And, his refusal to fall in line with GOP leadership in the House — even holding up numerous funding bills — has occasionally infuriated Trump. In late 2024, as Roy led the charge against Trump’s demand that the House raise the debt ceiling without restrictions on future spending, Trump blasted him as “just another ambitious guy, with no talent” and invited primary challengers against him. Roy was a late holdout on Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, though he eventually voted for it.

“This is somebody who has a deep disdain for the MAGA movement … and he’s only now singing a different tune now that it’s campaign season,” Reitz said of Roy in an interview, while touting his own experience working in the Trump Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, a position he held for several months. Reitz has received Paxton’s coveted endorsement and posted strong fundraising numbers.

Trump has not yet weighed in on who he prefers to take the mantle from Paxton, but his potential endorsement looms over the field. A recent poll shows Roy in the lead, with 33 percent of likely Republican voters, followed by Middleton, with 23 percent. Huffman and Reitz trail at 13 percent and 6 percent, respectively. A quarter of voters are undecided.

Among Texas Republican voters, “the attorney general position is kind of viewed as the police officer of the state,” said Jen French, chair of the Travis County GOP. “Voters like somebody who’s going to get in there and what they perceive as ‘fight, fight, fight.’”

All four GOP candidates are closely aligned on policy, vowing to follow strict interpretations of the Texas and U.S. Constitutions, but Middleton and Reitz have made more bombastic declarations about how they would enforce the law. The differences between the set are mostly stylistic, as they try one to one-up each other on red meat issues like stopping the alleged spread of Sharia law in Texas and halting the flow of abortion pills into the state.

Middleton has nicknamed himself “MAGA Mayes,” a slogan he’s put on hats his campaign gives away. He’s also leaned into culture war issues that rally the base like banning trans student athletes from competition and allowing the Ten Commandments in schools. The oil and gas businessman from Galveston has largely self-funded his campaign, putting more than $11 million toward the effort.

Roy, who also leads in fundraising, has been endorsed by well-known conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who Roy once worked for as his chief of staff, as well as fellow Freedom Caucus Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Andy Biggs of Arizona. Roy reported $4.2 million in the bank in January, fueled by a $2 million transfer from his congressional campaign account.

Huffman, one of the longest-serving state senators, highlights her experience prosecuting felony crimes as an assistant district attorney and state district judge in Harris County. In an interview, she said she would treat the job of attorney general as “chief law enforcement officer for Texans,” and work closely with local law enforcement.

Whoever emerges from the GOP primary will be the heavy favorite in the general election in the Republican-leaning state. On the Democratic side, the race includes State Sen. Nathan Johnson and former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski, who is making his second shot at the nomination. Jaworski, in an interview, said voters are tired of “a rabid ultra MAGA representation of what government is. It’s all about punishing the vulnerable.”

The job has long allowed its holder a leading role in the national culture wars — and a springboard to higher office. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was attorney general before he ran for governor and barraged the Obama administration with lawsuits that made national headlines: He famously quipped in 2013 that his day-to-day was, “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.” Before he had the job, it was filled by now-Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the man Paxton is currently running against.

Paxton spent a decade steering the office into the center of the culture wars, pursuing actions in the name of preserving religious liberty and spearheading multistate lawsuits filed by Republican attorneys general against the federal government. The AG role has since become the top destination for young conservative legal talents, a number of whom have gone on to become judges appointed by Trump.

It is a “choice position,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

“There’s this whole playing field within the legal system where the states can have a powerful impact on national policy in a wide range of areas,” he said. “And no state has more successfully – or at least more aggressively – used the power of the courts to try to further a conservative policy agenda than the state of Texas.”

​Politics

Cinde Warmington launched a repeat bid for governor of New Hampshire on Wednesday, giving Democrats their first major challenger to GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte in the purple state.

Warmington, a former state executive councilor, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2024, losing the Democratic nomination to former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig who then went on to lose to Ayotte. She now enters a relatively open Democratic field, with just one other declared candidate.

In a launch video posted to her campaign website, Warmington attacked Ayotte for “making your life more expensive.” She also accused the Republican of not standing up to President Donald Trump’s attempts to open an ICE detention facility in the state.

“I’ll stand up to Trump when he jacks up health care costs and tariffs. I’ll say ‘no’ to ICE’s warehouse. I’ll work for our small businesses and I’ll make sure we don’t have a sales or income tax,” Warmington said in the video. WMUR first reported her launch.

Ayotte, for her part, has clashed with Trump. She has criticized the lack of transparency around the ICE warehouse and forced the resignation of a state official who had been communicating with the Trump administration without alerting the governor. Her refusal to redistrict last year led the White House to weigh putting up a primary challenger against her.

Ayotte spokesperson John Corbett blasted Warmington in a statement, saying the former health care lobbyist “chose to make money off big pharmaceutical companies who hurt Granite Staters, and she is absolutely disqualified from serving as our Governor.”

Democrats are bullish they can block Ayotte from a second term, emboldened by their party’s wins in the off-year elections. But they face an uphill battle in a blue-leaning battleground state that routinely elects Republican governors while sending all-Democratic delegations to Congress.

Recent history is not on Democrats’ side: The party thrice failed to unseat Ayotte’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu. And prognosticators rate the seat as “likely Republican” this year.

Democrats may also face another messy primary just two years after Warmington and Craig waged a bruising battle to be their party’s nominee. For now, just Warmington and Democrat Jon Kiper, who finished a distant third in the 2024 race, have declared their candidacies. But Democratic Portsmouth Mayor Deaglan McEachern has been publicly weighing a bid for governor as recently as this month.

A University of New Hampshire survey from January showed Ayotte leading both men in hypothetical general-election matchups; it did not test her against Warmington. Ayotte notched a 50-percent approval rating in the poll, though 44 percent of likely voters said she did not deserve to be reelected compared to 42 percent who did.

​Politics