Category: Politics

After a nine-month stint helping run the FBI, former deputy director Dan Bongino is a podcaster once again.

On Bongino’s first show back on Monday, President Donald Trump briefly dialed in, offering Bongino — who resigned from the agency in December — well wishes.

But otherwise, the episode was more of a two-hour monologue that saw Bongino attempting to skewer old enemies — namely the mainstream media — and reconnect with the masses that launched his name, years ago, into the MAGA stratosphere.

“The podfather is back,” he declared, “and I’m here to take back this movement.”

Before joining the FBI last year, Bongino was a prolific right-wing podcaster who peddled in deep-state conspiracy theories. As the agency’s No. 2, working alongside the real-world powers he used to rail against, Bongino was often caught between his past digital footprint and his new job helping lead one of the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies. 

For years, he entertained conspiracies about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s death, dismissing the authorities’ claims that the late financier killed himself. Bongino built a fanbase by stoking these very fires — and angered many when, after joining the FBI, he swiftly backtracked his rhetoric. Online, some of Bongino’s former supporters have slammed him as a sellout.

The show was a big moment for Bongino, whose tenure at the FBI was at times chaotic. The show’s launch included a Times Square billboard, and opened with around 140,000 viewers — according to conservative video platform Rumble’s view count — and peaked at around 220,000.

After a victory lap around the nation’s top law enforcement agency, Bongino is not returning to the friendliest audience. And he had some choice words for any critics.

“I want to address the grifters out there who mistakenly thought I wasn’t coming back,” he said during the livestream. “This movement’s been hijacked by a small group of dipshits and bums and losers, who are nothing but doomers under the frame of accountability.”

This was the throughline for much of the two-hour segment, which saw Bongino ripping into a number of his critics. “Get your lips and just pucker them up and plant a big wet one on my ass,” he told “the libs and their media pals.”

The “dipshits” in media, he said, remain “totally divorced from reality.”

And to alleged leakers at the FBI: “You guys destroyed the place, and you tried to destroy us too,” he said. “But I’m back now, and you can go fuck yourself.”

Bongino, exhaling at the end of his minutes-long diatribe, smiles into the camera: “We’re so back. Aren’t we?”

But unlike the first version of his podcast, Bongino largely shied away from conspiracy theories — except for when, 15 minutes into the show, his livestream abruptly cut off thanks to a technical glitch. 

“Rumble is under attack, this show is under attack, this is what these scumbags do,” he said. “Can’t have a voice like me speaking out.”

“They just don’t want me to talk,” he repeated for the rest of the show.

He also offered “behind the scenes” insights into his time at the FBI, defending himself against critics who misunderstood, he said, the decisions they made — including the agency’s handling of the Epstein files. 

“When you get selected for one of these principal or deputy positions, everything you do is a level 10 decision,” Bongino said. “Find out which one is the shittier decision and avoid it. That’s the best you can do.

“Here’s the problem with the Epstein mess,” he continued. “The FBI doesn’t have the evidence many thought it did. … There were not tapes with powerful men raping kids. There was not a list. Epstein’s rolodex was already public. The files are largely unreleasable for many reasons.”

The files didn’t contain the smoking gun people were expecting, Bongino said, but “this administration got you the information.”

Near the end of the show, Trump — who hand-picked Bongino for his post last year — dialed in for a brief interview, where the two discussed the administration’s crime crackdown, Minnesota’s welfare fraud scandal and National Guard deployments.

“I’ll tell you what, if I were a Democratic governor and I were in charge of Chicago, as an example, I would be begging Donald Trump to come,” Trump told Bongino.

Trump took another chance to rail at the results of the 2020 election (“I won in a landslide,” he said), urging Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and suggesting taking over voting “in at least 15 places,” which he didn’t name. And he patted himself on the back for his military actions in Iran and Venezuela, saying the U.S. is “respected again like never before.”

“Listen, you did great in the FBI,” Trump told Bongino. “I’m very torn. I think, maybe, I’d rather have you where you are. “Very few people can do what you do, and your voice is a very important one.”

Bongino, who has generally been a reliable supporter of Trump, intends to host his show every weekday. And for those expecting a Bongino chastened by his time in government — or those looking to take his space in the MAGA media sphere — he had a direct closing message.

“All my bullshit detractors or whatever,” Bongino said at the end of the episode, “don’t know shit about anything. Throwing popcorn from the front row. We’re the number one livestream in the world. … I’m such a target that they came after the whole damn website. That’s how bad they want to keep me off the air.”

“But I have my first — guys, you ready for this screenshot? — double barrel to those who tried to stop us,” he continued, silently flipping two middle fingers to the camera.

​Politics

Sen. Tina Smith is endorsing Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan as her successor over Rep. Angie Craig, taking sides in a hotly contested primary to fill Smith’s Senate seat that’s been roiled in recent weeks by the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement efforts.

“Today, 3,000 federal agents are terrorizing our communities,” Smith said in a video announcing her pick that was shared first with POLITICO. “I know that right now there is no one that I trust more to stand with Minnesota than Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.”

Flanagan, in the video, called it an “honor” to have the retiring senator’s endorsement and pledged to “continue in her footsteps.”

“We’re going to push back against the status quo and send a progressive fighter to continue representing us in Washington, D.C.,” Flanagan said.

Smith’s endorsement comes a day before the state’s Democratic and Republican precinct caucuses, the first step in each party’s formal endorsement process.

In selecting Flanagan, Smith is elevating a fellow lieutenant governor and progressive over Craig, a moderate, for the seat she has held since 2018. Smith is the eighth sitting senator to endorse Flanagan, who also has the backing of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other members of the so-called Fight Club of progressive senators of which they are all a part. Former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who held the seat before Smith, also endorsed Flanagan.

Craig has some high-profile endorsements of her own, with five senators including Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) in her corner, as well as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Smith’s decision comes against the backdrop of deadly incidents involving federal agents enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the state that have opened new fissures in the Senate primary. While both candidates have called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s impeachment, Flanagan has attacked Craig for taking “pro-Trump” immigration votes last year, while Craig has countered that her rival is being “disingenuous” about the content and context of the measures.

Antoine Givens, a spokesperson for Craig’s campaign, said in a statement that Craig “is the only candidate who has proven she can both win tough, competitive races against a Republican and go toe-to-toe with the Trump administration.”

“From voting to impeach Donald Trump twice and now taking on Kristi Noem and ICE, to writing the law that capped the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors and banning members of Congress from trading stocks, Angie Craig has shown she’s the fighter Minnesotans need to hold the powerful accountable,” Givens said.

Nonpartisan public polling in the race has been scant. Polling conducted in the past month for Flanagan’s team, as well as a separate survey commissioned by a pro-Flanagan group, shows the lieutenant governor with a double-digit lead over Craig. A poll commissioned by Craig’s campaign showed the race within the margin of error.

Craig has built a fundraising advantage in the race, raising $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and starting the election year with $3.7 million in cash on hand. Flanagan, meanwhile, raised roughly $1 million in that timeframe and ended the year with $810,646 in the bank.

​Politics

President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed former Sen. John E. Sununu in New Hampshire’s open Senate race, boosting a longtime critic over one of his former ambassadors, Scott Brown.

Trump hailed Sununu, who Republicans see as their best chance to flip the blue Senate seat, as an “America First Patriot” in a Truth Social post Sunday afternoon. And Trump said Sununu will “work tirelessly to advance our America First Agenda.”

“John E. Sununu has my Complete and Total Endorsement — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN — ELECT JOHN E. SUNUNU,” he posted.

Sununu, a moderate who has opposed Trump across his presidential runs, thanked him in a statement and quickly pivoted to talking about his priorities for New Hampshire.

“I want to thank the President for his support and thank the thousands of Granite Staters who are supporting me,” Sununu said. “This campaign has and always will be about standing up for New Hampshire — every single day.”

Trump’s endorsement further tips the scales in an already pitched GOP primary between Sununu and Brown, who represented Massachusetts in the Senate before moving to New Hampshire and running unsuccessfully for Senate there in 2014. He served as Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa in his first term, and has been presenting himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate as he courts the MAGA base.

Brown vowed to fight on. And he took a veiled shot at Sununu, accusing him of not being sufficiently dedicated to the MAGA movement.

“I am running to ensure our America First agenda is led by someone who views this mission not as a career path, but as a continuation of a lifelong commitment to service,” Brown said in a post on X. “Let’s keep working.”

The two are competing to take on Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Pappas issued a simple response to Trump’s endorsement of Sununu: “I’m Chris Pappas, and I approve this message,” he wrote on X. His campaign manager, Rachel Petri, said in a statement that Trump’s endorsement “confirms” that Sununu “will sell out Granite Staters to advance his political career.”

Trump’s support for Sununu once would have seemed unfathomable. The scion of a moderate New Hampshire Republican dynasty, Sununu served as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and joined his family in backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president against Trump in the 2024 GOP primary.

Ahead of New Hampshire’s 2024 presidential primary, Sununu penned an op-ed lambasting Trump as a “loser.” (Trump went on to win by 11 points). And he later derided Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies as “completely inappropriate.”

Republicans initially were bullish about flipping an open seat in purple New Hampshire that’s already changed hands between parties twice this century — Sununu defeated Shaheen to win the seat in 2002, then lost it to her in 2008 — and coalesced quickly behind the moderate Republican as their best option against Pappas. Sununu received instant backing from the GOP’s Senate campaign arm upon his launch last October and has wracked up endorsements from the majority of Republican senators. He’s also won support from Republican leaders in New Hampshire — all of which Trump noted in his Truth Social post Sunday.

Trump also initially supported Sununu’s younger brother, former Gov. Chris Sununu, running for the Senate seat. Chris Sununu, also a vocal Trump critic, declined to launch a bid, prompting GOP interest in his brother.

But some in Trump’s Granite State MAGA base quickly rejected his endorsement of Sununu, calling it a “slap in the face to grassroots supporters” long loyal to the president.

“The Sununu family openly mocked, degraded, and worked against the America First movement, the President himself, and the policies that energized New Hampshire voters,” a group of MAGA activists wrote on X. “We will continue and intensify our campaign opposition to the Sununu operation.”

Sununu holds a wide lead over Brown in polling of the GOP primary. The latest, a University of New Hampshire online survey of likely primary voters from mid-January, showed Sununu up 48 percent to 25 percent with 26 percent of likely voters undecided. But Pappas is ahead of both Republicans in hypothetical general-election matchups, leading Sununu by 5 percentage points and Brown by 10 percentage points in the UNH poll. The survey of 967 likely GOP primary voters had a margin of error of +/-3.2 percent.

Pappas also outraised both Republicans, bringing in $2.3 million last quarter and amassing a $3.2 million war chest heading into the year. Sununu hauled in $1.3 million and had $1.1 million in cash on hand in his primary campaign account while Brown raised $347,000 through his main account and had $907,000 in the bank.

​Politics

DETROIT — As a professional driver navigated a gleaming new Ford Bronco Sport up a steep ridge, Mallory McMorrow found herself pinned in the back seat clinging to the overhead roll bar.

The Detroit Auto Show course is designed to show off the Bronco’s capabilities — while putting an escapist scare into its thrill-seeking passengers. But it just reminded McMorrow of her day-to-day reality running for Michigan’s open Senate seat.

“It’s a teeter-totter, man,” McMorrow told POLITICO about her race, after having navigated a very literal giant teeter-totter in the Bronco. “It could go any direction.”

McMorrow is locked in a tight three-way primary with Rep. Haley Stevens and physician Abdul El-Sayed that has emerged as a test for what the next generation of Democrats will look like — and whether they can win a key swing-state election that will help determine Senate control.

In recent days, the trio of candidates’ squabbles careened hour to hour from whether they should embrace Medicare for All, to how far Democrats should go in fighting ICE. In fact, the contest has emerged as a catch-all for every question and problem plaguing Democrats politically and tactically: Where should they stand on Israel and Gaza? Should they send their aging congressional leaders packing? What does electability look like in this political environment? Should Democrats tap into the attention economy or focus on traditional campaigning?

El-Sayed, on the left, has taken consistently maximalist positions fitting for a man who wrote a book titled “Medicare For All: A Citizen’s Guide” and has vocal support from Sen. Bernie Sanders. Stevens, a classic swing-state centrist favored by many establishment Democrats, has taken smaller-bore stances. Between them sits McMorrow, who’s aiming to appeal to voters in both of their lanes.

But this three-way battle to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) isn’t just about what direction the Democratic Party takes in Washington — it’s whether they can get there in the first place.

Democrats think they see a route back to the Senate majority. But if they don’t hold on to their seat in Michigan, that faint path won’t materialize.

“It’s already a long shot, but it’s a doable thing — but not without Michigan,” said David Axelrod, the longtime senior adviser to former President Barack Obama.

Axelrod called it the “most fascinating and consequential primary” in the country.

Democratic leaders both in Michigan and D.C. are growing more worried by the day that the hard-fought contest, which won’t be decided until the August primary, will exacerbate ideological tensions and leave the nominee in a weakened position heading into a contest against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).

“We’re used to having long primaries,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. “No one loves them, but we’re used to having them. And I don’t think it’s insurmountable.”

For now, the race is wide open.

Most public polls have found a tight three-way race in the primary, with Stevens or McMorrow holding a slight lead depending on the survey; in those same polls, Stevens runs slightly ahead of Rogers in the general election, with McMorrow just a bit behind her and El-Sayed a bit further back.

Stevens has a fundraising edge. According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, which posted on Saturday, she brought in $2.1 million in the past quarter and has $3 million cash on hand; McMorrow and El-Sayed both raised around $1.75 million and each has just under $2 million in the bank. Rogers raised just under $2 million and has just under $3.5 million cash on hand.

Part of the lack of separation in the polls is that voters haven’t engaged yet. The campaigns don’t expect cleavage until paid media starts happening in full (El-Sayed is the only candidate so far to roll out a statewide ad.)

“Only the most political have started to click in,” Slotkin said.

Michigan Democrats also worried about the impact the primary could have on the rest of the party as they fight to hold on to term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office and win back control of the Legislature.

Whitmer, with her 60 percent approval rating, is facing a pressure campaign from some in the party to endorse either Stevens or McMorrow early in the race to narrow the field, according to two senior Michigan Democratic officials granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. Otherwise, one of them worried, “we could see real losses.”

Whitmer and El-Sayed duked it out in a 2018 gubernatorial primary, and the officials say bad blood remains between them.

A Whitmer spokesperson declined to comment.

A clash of ideologies

The candidates have sharp ideological divides on major issues including health care, Israel and Gaza and accepting corporate PAC money.

After a second person was killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, the three candidates’ diverging approach to ICE and its funding supercharged the primary.

While McMorrow and Stevens glad-handed at the Detroit Auto Show and union halls around the MLK holiday, after immigration agents killed Renee Good and before they killed Alex Pretti, El-Sayed, who has championed the Abolish ICE movement since 2018, went to Minneapolis and filmed man-on-the-street interviews for social media that were reminiscent of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful viral campaign videos.

He told POLITICO he was there to “understand what it looks like when an arm of the government lays siege to a city in America.” (El-Sayed also jetted to California for a fundraiser earlier that week).

McMorrow has expressed supportfor reforms to ICE, such as requiring agents to be unmasked, and argues Republicans and Democrats should “deny DHS one penny more until complete overhaul and accountability of this agency” happens.

Stevens, meanwhile, is co-sponsoring a bill that would divert what she called ICE’s $75 billion “slush fund” to state and local law enforcement agencies; she has also called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s impeachment.

The candidates are also at odds over health care, an issue over which they’ve sparred in recent days.

In an interview with Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen last week, El-Sayed reignited the health care debate. He said, “if you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there for you,” apparently flipping on his stance on Medicare for All. McMorrow and her allies seized on his remarks as El-Sayed seemingly embracing a position he had repeatedly attacked her on. El-Sayed hosted a December health care town hall with Sanders where he contrasted his Medicare for All support with McMorrow’s and Steven’s backing of a public option.

“It’s wild to call yourself the ‘next generation’ of Democratic leadership and be running AGAINST Medicare for All in 2026,” he posted on X a month ago, quote-tweeting McMorrow.

In an interview with POLITICO after the dustup, El-Sayed declined to discuss specifics of his position on the record. In a statement, a spokesperson said that he supports Medicare for All as a baseline option for everyone, “and if folks want additional private coverage through a union or an employer then that can be there for them too.”

The conflict in Gaza has also led to sharp divisions in the race.

El-Sayed, who is the son of Egyptian immigrants, has been an outspoken critic of Israel, which he has long said was committing genocide in Gaza. That’s a major issue in a state with the highest percent of Arab-Americans in the country; more than 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” instead of backing then-President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary over his administration’s support of Israel — an effort El-Sayed helped lead.

He told POLITICO that when he talks about U.S. tax dollars “being misappropriated to weaponize food against children and to subsidize a genocide, rather than to invest in real people in their communities and their kids and their schools and their health care, it is the single biggest applause line in every speech.”

McMorrow took a bit more time to come to that view. In October, when asked whether she thought the conflict was a genocide, she paused for several seconds, exhaled, and responded, “Based on the definition, yes.” Her campaign said her view was informed by a September United Nations Commission of Inquiry report.

Stevens has been more supportive of Israel, and has the support of AIPAC, the politically influential pro-Israel lobby. Some senior Michigan Democrats have expressed concern that an AIPAC independent expenditure campaign backing Haley could make the primary even more toxic ahead of the general election. Asked about their plans, an AIPAC spokesperson told POLITICO they had no updates.

Asked by POLITICO in November whether she was comfortable with AIPAC support, Stevens dodged, saying she’s delighted to “see the hostages get home,” and added she “wanted to see an enduring ceasefire where Hamas surrenders and so that we can get the people of Palestine and Israel in long standing peace, living peacefully, side by side with one another.”

Stevens’ campaign also attacked both El-Sayed and McMorrow’s record on manufacturing, a sector that employs some 600,000 in Michigan. She told POLITICO that McMorrow “has a history of criticizing Michigan’s key industries” and that El-Sayed “supports policies that would decimate Michigan’s manufacturing economy,” citing his support for the Green New Deal.

“I’m going to call out what isn’t working for Michigan’s manufacturing economy, whether it is Mike Rogers or members of my own party,” Stevens said in an interview in the conference room of the Teamsters Local 234 union hall in Plymouth.

Old school vs. new school

The race is also shaping up as a test of offline coalitional politics at a moment increasingly defined more by viral videos than baby-kissing and union hall campaign stops.

Stevens has leaned hardest into traditional brick-and-mortar campaigning, while El-Sayed has been much more focused online, with McMorrow’s approach once again falling between them.

McMorrow’s biggest splash of the campaign so far came with a viral video that attacked NFL RedZone for adding ads as “the latest example of corporate greed,” and tied it to spiking grocery costs. It earned nearly 2 million views.

El-Sayed has built a national profile and fundraising network in part with a health care-focused podcast on Crooked Media, the network run by the Pod Save America team made up largely of former Obama senior advisers. At least three members, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes, appeared as hosts on an invite to El-Sayed’s fundraiser earlier this month in California.

Stevens has taken a different tack, putting more focus on campaign stops and meat-and-potatoes fights for local industry, especially auto and other factory jobs.

In a year-out-from-election day memo, Stevens’ campaign argued that her “strength with Black Michiganders and union workers, her relentless focus on lowering costs and protecting Michigan manufacturing, and her record fighting for Michiganders — which has led to her winning tough primaries and general elections — will propel her to victory.”

Campaigning at a Teamsters Local 234 union hall in Plymouth, she spent a lot more time talking about a local labor contract dispute than national concerns.

“Look, manufacturing might not light up the internet, but it fuels a lot of jobs here,” she told POLITICO afterward.

That dogged approach helped her flip and hold a swing seat, then win a tough incumbent-on-incumbent primary in 2022, and is one she thinks will pay dividends now.

“I’ve had a couple of tough primaries before, and I’m just out here trying to win it for Michiganders,” she said.

But it remains unclear how well it will translate in a statewide campaign.

“Haley seems to have more institutional support — whether or not it’s admitted as such — and that is a strength, but it also could be a weakness,” said a longtime Michigan Democratic operative who remains neutral in the race and was granted anonymity to assess the primary. “Her presence on the campaign trail I’m not sure is one that’s really like, Man, I got to be with her.”

Stevens has earned criticism over whether she can galvanize the online, grassroots activists, or electrify crowds on the trail. “She’s [an] uneven campaigner when it comes to the retail stuff,” said Adam Jentleson, a longtime Democratic campaign strategist whois pushing for the party to break more with left-wing interest groups and focus more on expanding the party’s coalition to win (he also voiced concern about El-Sayed as a general-election candidate).

Right now, both El-Sayed and Stevens have been training most of their fire on McMorrow rather than each other, seeing her as the bigger threat to their potential voting coalitions.

Insiders and outsiders

Stevens’ electoral track record is part of why many establishment-leaning Democrats in D.C. prefer her in the race.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) invited her to attend a fundraising retreat in Napa Valley that featured a crypto roundtable, but Stevens told POLITICO she did not attend due to the government shutdown.

In an interview with POLITICO, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was bullish on defending Michigan but declined to appraise any individual candidacies; a DSCC spokesperson declined to comment on whether the committee would officially endorse in the race.

McMorrow has taken a very different approach to D.C.’s Democratic leadership.

Shetold POLITICO last March, before she was even officially a candidate, that she wouldn’t vote for Schumer as party leader should she win her Senate seat. She also previously penned a scathing letter to Biden following his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, urging him to drop out.

“We’re drawing a contrast that is really about defining my lane,” McMorrow said in an interview at a campaign stop at a park in Grand Rapids late last year, suggesting Stevens, without naming her, was running “an uninspiring campaign that’s right out of the D.C. playbook” and that El-Sayed, also without naming him, was campaigning on the idea “that there’s just one weird trick to fix democracy.”

Stevens has said it’s too early to determine whether to would back Schumer; she has called him “a great leader.”

El-Sayed also hasn’t said whether he’d back Schumer for leader. But he’s made it clear he is running headlong against the Democratic establishment.

“The movement we’re building is about taking a bet on the divide in our politics not really being about left versus right, but being about the folks who are locked out and the folks who are locking them out,” El-Sayed told POLITICO.

About the only thing the candidates can all agree on is the stakes of the contest.

“The future of this party is going to be based on what happens in this race,” McMorrow said.

Elena Schneider contributed to this report.

​Politics

Donald Trump’s political war chest grew dramatically in the second half of 2025, according to new campaign finance disclosures submitted late Saturday, giving him an unprecedented amount of money for a term-limited president to influence the midterms and beyond.

Trump raised $26 million through his joint fundraising committee in the back half of last year, and another $8 million directly into his leadership PAC. And a super PAC linked to him has more than $300 million in the bank.

All together, a web of campaign accounts, some of which he controls directly and others under the care of close allies, within the president’s orbit have $375 million in their coffers.

The funds far outstrip those of any other political figure — Republican or Democrat — entering 2026, and have no real historical precedent. And Trump could put them to use this year for the midterms, or to shape future elections, even as he cannot run for president again.

Trump continues to outpace any other Republican in raising money, both from large and small-dollar donors. His joint fundraising committee — Trump National Committee, which pools fundraising for a variety of Trump-aligned groups — accounted for 1 in 8 dollars raised on WinRed, the primary Republican online fundraising platform, during the second half of 2025, according to a POLITICO analysis.

And no super PAC raised even half as much in 2025 as the $289 million from MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned super PAC that both the president and Vice President J.D. Vance appeared at fundraisers for last year.

Trump has given few clues as to how he might put the funds to use. Trump National Committee primarily sends funds to the president’s leadership PAC, Never Surrender, with a bit of money also going to the Republican National Committee and Vance’s leadership PAC, Working For Ohio.

Candidates cannot use leadership PAC money for their own election efforts. But the accounts — which are common across Washington and have long been derided by anti-money in politics groups as “slush funds” — allow politicians to dole out money to allies or fund political travel.

Never Surrender spent $6.7 million from July through December, with more than half of that total going toward advertising, digital consulting and direct mail — expenses typically linked to fundraising.

So far, Trump’s groups have held their powder in Republican primaries. While Trump has endorsed against a handful of Republican incumbents now locked in competitive primaries — including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — and threatened others, he hasn’t used money. A super PAC targeting Massie, MAGA KY, is run by Trump allies but has largely been funded by GOP megadonor Paul Singer.

MAGA Inc.’s only election-related spending last year was to boost now-Rep. Matt Van Epps in the special election in Tennessee’s 7th District.

Trump’s massive war chest makes him a political force, independent of the traditional party infrastructure. The RNC — which derives a significant portion of its fundraising from Trump — had $95 million in the bank at the end of the year, roughly a quarter of what the Trump-linked groups have.

And their rivals at the Democratic National Committee are far worse off — at just over $14 million, while owing more than $17 million in debt.

​Politics

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, won a special runoff election on Saturday to serve the remainder of former Texas Rep. Sylvester’s term, who died last year.

The Associated Press projected that Menefee beat Amanda Edwards, an attorney and former member of the Houston City council, after a protracted process to fill the central Houston seat after Turner’s death in March 2025. The process was drawn out by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott’s refusal to quickly schedule a special election following Turner’s death and a crowded field that triggered a runoff following the first round of voting in November.

But the contest between the pair will continue: Both Menefee, 37, and Edwards, 44, are participating in the March primary for a newly refashioned 18th Congressional District, going up against Rep. Al Green, 78. That winner will be heavily favored to win a full two-year term in November.

The March primary is the latest example of the generational change debate animating the Democratic Party, as the two young Democrats take on progressive icon Green, who has been in Congress for more than two decades. It’s a fight that’s taking place nationwide, pitting young and old factions of the party against each other as they both argue they’re better fighters against Republicans.

Residents in this district have been without consistent representation since former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee died in 2024. Lee held the seat for three decades.

Green’s current district was scrambled by the Texas GOP’s redistricting, prompting him to jump into the race to represent a new district that contains many of his constituents.

Menefee’s victory is a huge boost to his public profile ahead of the primary. Early voting begins in two weeks.

​Politics

Democratic state election officials say the Justice Department’s letter to Minnesota over its voter rolls represents a significant escalation, with several warning that the Trump administration could use immigration enforcement to exert influence over November’s midterm elections.

The officials are baffled by the Trump administration’s continued demand for access to state voter information and refuse to comply, telling POLITICO they view the requests as part of a broader effort by the administration to insert itself into state election proceedings.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, has been at the center of the push after Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a letter to Gov. Tim Walz that one condition of restoring “law and order” in the state amid the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown would be for Minnesota to turn over its voter rolls to the federal government.

Minnesota — one of two dozen states, along with the District of Columbia, sued by the administration — has rejected the request, prompting an unprecedented legal clash between the Justice Department and state election officials.

“To me, [it] seems to be a project in service of the president’s longstanding but false view that election systems around the country are rigging elections,” Simon told POLITICO. “And this project seems to be in service of that, and that’s the best I can tell.”

Simon said he has not heard back from the Trump administration since responding to the Bondi letter. “This was already a dispute, but it was a dispute being fought where it belongs, which is in a court of law,” he said.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat running for reelection this year, called the letter to officials in Minnesota “extortion” and echoed the suggestion that the effort was aimed at something beyond voter rolls.

“The voter roll stuff is not about voter rolls. There’s something bigger going on,” Fontes said in an interview this week, as dozens of secretaries of state gathered in Washington for a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State. “They’re bits and pieces, interchangeable in this jigsaw puzzle, and we’re being told something that’s not true,” he added.

The highly unusual push for access to states’ voter rolls is part of a yearlong campaign by the Trump administration, which says it is seeking to ensure that states’ voter registration practices comply with federal law and safeguard election integrity. The White House has requested voter records from nearly every state and Washington, D.C. The move comes as Trump frequently repeats his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”

The White House said it was authorized to make the requests under longstanding laws such as the Civil Rights Act.

“The Civil Rights Act, National Voting Rights Act, and Help America Vote Act all give the Department of Justice full authority to ensure states comply with federal election laws, which mandate accurate state voter rolls. President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

At least 11 states have complied with the administration’s request, according to the Brennan Center.

Wyoming is one of the states that complied, and its secretary of state, Chuck Gray, a Republican, told reporters on Friday that it has been “very disturbing” to watch Democrats rebuff the administration’s request to engage in what he described as regular upkeep of voter rolls.

“We’ve been engaging in routine voter list maintenance that people support in making sure the voter lists are clean,” he said.

The Justice Department has sued the 24 states — most, but not all, of which are helmed by Democrats — that have refused to comply, with most citing concerns over exposing sensitive voter information.

“I’m certainly concerned that people may fear that the Department of Justice having access to the voting rolls might make them a target in some way,” said Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

“This Justice Department has weaponized its office to target people based on identity and based on political affiliation,” she said.

Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at Elias Law Group, which is representing voters and civic organizations in several states who are also trying to prevent the release of voter rolls, called the effort “another example of overreach by the Department of Justice and the federal government.” “The fact that DOJ officials have stated publicly that they expect to see hundreds of thousands individuals removed from the rolls once they have this data … should set off a red flag,” Nkwonta said, noting that maintaining voter registration lists is a responsibility for the states, not the federal government.

​Politics

BANGOR, Maine — The federal immigration crackdown in Maine may have ended, but the political fallout could continue to reverberate through the 2026 election.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills launched her first Senate campaign ad on Friday — and it’s focused on attacking Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Political newcomer Graham Platner, competing with Mills for the Democratic nomination, held an anti-ICE protest at Sen. Susan Collins’ offices in Maine on Thursday, calling for her to block funds for the agency.

The message from both Democrats was clear: Immigration enforcement politics is not going away, and they think it could be a winning issue as they look to unseat the only Republican senator up for reelection this year in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024.

But Collins’ Thursday announcement that ICE was ending its immigration enforcement campaign in Maine — dubbed Operation Catch of the Day by the Department of Homeland Security — released some of the pressure that had been building in the state for more than a week, with local leaders expressing an initial sense of relief.

That campaign had left the state’s immigrant communities hiding in fear and Democrats and activists raging at their treatment. The surge disrupted life for many in southern Maine, with decreased attendance in schools, legal immigrants afraid to go to work and observers trailing ICE agents in the state.

Now, in the aftermath of an operation that led to more than 200 arrests and prompted widespread protests, lawmakers and community leaders are navigating the upheaval left behind. The political impact continues to ripple.

Collins’ announcement Thursday morning, which implied her conversations with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had helped sway the decision, is emblematic of how she wants voters to think of her: a powerful pragmatist who can get results, including by standing up to her own party. And it was a high-profile reminder of her longstanding case that her senior role in Washington helps her deliver for the Pine Street State.

Still, Democrats and activists, buoyed by rapidly shifting public opinion around immigration enforcement after videos of violent arrests and two fatal shootings in Minneapolis, are redoubling efforts for broader restrictions on ICE and its funding — along with a reckoning on what happened in Maine. Reports of the end of the operation in Maine, they said, are not enough.

“Senator Collins is going to try to use this moment to trick us. To say that she, somehow, used her power to impose upon ICE,” Platner said in protests at the senator’s Portland and Bangor offices on Thursday, held hours after the end of the surge was announced.

He mocked what he called a “pinky promise” she received from Noem to cheers from dozens of supporters who had gathered in Bangor in single-digit temperatures. “We all know it’s nonsense. What she is actually doing is trying to justify to us why she is about to try to give them 9 billion more dollars in funding.”

Platner demanded that Collins, the Senate’s top appropriator, cut off funding for ICE entirely, saying the Trump administration could not be trusted to follow the law.

Collins advocated for passing a DHS funding bill that Democrats blocked this week, citing its funding for body cameras for federal officers as well as de-escalation training. Negotiations are likely to continue in Washington after lawmakers agreed to pass just a two-week stopgap. Failure to pass DHS funding would not stop ICE, as the agency is well-funded from Trump’s major budget bill last summer, but Democrats are hoping to leverage anger at the agency to pressure the GOP for reforms. A Collins spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

The Maine senator’s positioning still held her somewhat as an outlier. Maine Republicans largely expressed support for federal immigration operations in the state while accusing Mills and Democrats of ginning up conflict with law enforcement. Local Republicans were largely quiet about Collins’ news of the drawdown.

Mills, in an interview earlier in the week, derided Collins’ calls for retraining ICE officers, telling POLITICO that the “horse was out of the barn already.” On Thursday, she characterized the drawdown of ICE operations as insufficient, calling for Noem’s removal at DHS as well as congressional action to halt ICE funding until measures are in place at the agency to prevent what she characterized as “abuses of power.”

“Until there are substantive measures and changes in place, no state — including Maine — is protected from the weaponization of Federal law enforcement agencies against its own citizens by the Trump Administration,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat, sent a letter to Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons on Friday demanding information about the immigrants arrested in the state and where they are now.

Community leaders and lawmakers are also working to understand what the drawdown means in practice, what happened to those detained by ICE and how to begin restoring trust among immigrants who have barely left their homes in weeks.

“It is welcome news. ICE operations in Maine have failed to improve public safety and have caused lasting damage to our communities,” said Carl Sheline, the mayor of Lewiston, which is home to a large Somali American population and was one of the Maine cities to see significant ICE activity. “We will continue working to ensure that those who were wrongfully detained by ICE are returned to us.”

Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat from Biddeford, said among those detained by ICE was a man named Marcos, whom Fecteau had previously employed as a contractor working on his home. Fecteau said he talked on Thursday to the man’s wife, who said he was at an ICE facility in Arizona two days earlier, but the ICE database was no longer showing his whereabouts.

“Over the last week and a half there have been people in Maine who have been arrested and detained unlawfully. We want answers for those people. Who they are, where they are, what was the reason for their detention. Those things need to be answered,” Fecteau said. “I hope that Senator Collins, who clearly has some influence here — she spoke with Kristi Noem yesterday — I hope that was part of the conversation as well.”

In Augusta on Thursday, Maine lawmakers heard testimony over a bill that would require ICE to obtain judicial warrants to search private spaces of schools and health care facilities, among other locations.

Mills on Thursday threw her weight behind the new bill, citing in part the destabilizing effects of the recent surge. It was a notable move for the former prosecutor, who faced heat from progressives and Platner for not taking a stronger stance last year when she allowed a bill limiting law enforcement cooperation with ICE to go into effect without her signature, rather than signing it outright.

Activists and observers who had been trailing ICE in Maine noted some agents appeared to be off duty on Thursday, reflecting the drawdown.

“It’s good news. I hope it’s true. I hope that we can all find peace and rest in the next coming days,” Eric Nathanson, an activist with Jewish Action Maine who was arrested alongside other faith leaders earlier in the week while protesting at Collins’ Portland office. “If the surge is on pause, we reiterate the goal of no additional funding even more strongly.”

But the images and experiences from the past week were not easily forgotten.

“Three people in the past week were abducted in front of my workplace. My coworkers had to watch an ICE agent beat and drag people out of cars,” Nathanson said. “We will stay strong and stay vigilant.”

​Politics