Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who successfully ran for Congress in 1996 as a crusader for gun control after a mass shooting on a New York commuter train left her husband dead and her son severely wounded, has died. She was 81.

News of her death was shared Thursday by several elected officials on her native Long Island and by Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York State Democratic Committee. Details about her death were not immediately available.

McCarthy went from political novice to one of the nation’s leading advocates for gun control legislation in the aftermath of the 1993 Long Island Rail Road massacre. However, the suburban New York Democrat found limited success against the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment advocates.

McCarthy announced in June 2013 that she was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. She announced her retirement in January 2014.

“Mom dedicated her life to transforming personal tragedy into a powerful mission of public service,” her son, Kevin McCarthy, who survived the shooting, told Newsday. “As a tireless advocate, devoted mother, proud grandmother and courageous leader, she changed countless lives for the better. Her legacy of compassion, strength and purpose will never be forgotten.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul directed flags on all state government buildings to be flown at half-staff Friday in honor of the congresswoman.

“Representative Carolyn McCarthy was a strong advocate for gun control and an even more fierce leader,” Hochul said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi said the nation has “lost a fierce champion.”

“Carolyn channeled her grief and loss into advocacy for change, becoming one of the most dedicated gun violence prevention advocates,” Suozzi said on X.

She became a go-to guest on national TV news shows after each ensuing gun massacre, whether it was at Columbine High School or Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Known as the “gun lady” on Capitol Hill, McCarthy said she couldn’t stop crying after learning that her former colleague, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, had been seriously wounded in a January 2011 shooting in Arizona.

“It’s like a cancer in our society,” she said of gun violence. “And if we keep doing nothing to stop it, it’s only going to spread.”

During one particularly rancorous debate over gun show loopholes in 1999, McCarthy was brought to tears at 1 a.m. on the House floor.

“I am Irish and I am not supposed to cry in front of anyone. But I made a promise a long time ago. I made a promise to my son and to my husband. If there was anything that I could do to prevent one family from going through what I have gone through then I have done my job,” she said.

“Let me go home. Let me go home,” she pleaded.

McCarthy was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. She became a nurse and later married Dennis McCarthy after meeting on a Long Island beach. They had one son, Kevin, during a tumultuous marriage in which they divorced but reconciled and remarried.

McCarthy was a Republican when, on Dec. 7, 1993, a gunman opened fire on a train car leaving New York City. By the time passengers tackled the shooter, six people were dead and 19 wounded.

She jumped into politics after her GOP congressman voted to repeal an assault weapons ban.

Her surprise victory inspired a made-for-television movie produced by Barbra Streisand. Since that first victory in 1996, McCarthy was never seriously challenged for reelection in a heavily Republican district just east of New York City.

Some critics described McCarthy as a one-issue lawmaker, a contention she bristled about, pointing to interests in improving health care and education. But she was realistic about her legacy on gun control, once telling an interviewer:

“I’ve come to peace with the fact that will be in my obituary.”

NEW YORK — Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91.

Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former CEO of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Moyers’ son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a “long illness.”

Moyers’ career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson’s press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for “The CBS Evening News” and chief correspondent for “CBS Reports.”

But it was for public television that Moyers produced some of TV’s most cerebral and provocative series. In hundreds of hours of PBS programs, he proved at home with subjects ranging from government corruption to modern dance, from drug addiction to media consolidation, from religion to environmental abuse.

In 1988, Moyers produced “The Secret Government” about the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration and simultaneously published a book under the same name. Around that time, he galvanized viewers with “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,” a series of six one-hour interviews with the prominent religious scholar. The accompanying book became a bestseller.

His televised chats with poet Robert Bly almost single-handedly launched the 1990s Men’s Movement, and his 1993 series “Healing and the Mind” had a profound impact on the medical community and on medical education.

In a medium that supposedly abhors “talking heads” — shots of subject and interviewer talking — Moyers came to specialize in just that. He once explained why: “The question is, are the talking heads thinking minds and thinking people? Are they interesting to watch? I think the most fascinating production value is the human face.”

(Softly) speaking truth to power: Demonstrating what someone called “a soft, probing style” in the native Texas accent he never lost, Moyers was a humanist who investigated the world with a calm, reasoned perspective, whatever the subject.

From some quarters, he was blasted as a liberal thanks to his links with Johnson and public television, as well as his no-holds-barred approach to investigative journalism. It was a label he didn’t necessarily deny.

“I’m an old-fashion liberal when it comes to being open and being interested in other people’s ideas,” he said during a 2004 radio interview. But Moyers preferred to term himself a “citizen journalist” operating independently, outside the establishment.

Public television (and his self-financed production company) gave him free rein to throw “the conversation of democracy open to all comers,” he said in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press.

“I think my peers in commercial television are talented and devoted journalists,” he said another time, “but they’ve chosen to work in a corporate mainstream that trims their talent to fit the corporate nature of American life. And you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.”

Over the years, Moyers was showered with honors, including more than 30 Emmys, 11 George Foster Peabody awards, three George Polks and, twice, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton Award for career excellence in broadcast journalism. In 1995, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

From sports to sports writing: Born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, Billy Don Moyers was the son of a dirt farmer-truck driver who soon moved his family to Marshall, Texas. High school led him into journalism.

“I wanted to play football, but I was too small. But I found that by writing sports in the school newspaper, the players were always waiting around at the newsstand to see what I wrote,” he recalled.

He worked for the Marshall News Messenger at age 16. Deciding that Bill Moyers was a more appropriate byline for a sportswriter, he dropped the “y” from his name.

He graduated from the University of Texas and earned a master’s in divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was ordained and preached part time at two churches but later decided his call to the ministry “was a wrong number.”

His relationship with Johnson began when he was in college; he wrote the then-senator offering to work in his 1954 reelection campaign. Johnson was impressed and hired him for a summer job. He was back in Johnson’s employ as a personal assistant in the early 1960s and for two years, he worked at the Peace Corps, eventually becoming deputy director.

On the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Moyers was in Austin helping with the presidential trip. He flew back to Washington on Air Force One with newly sworn-in President Johnson, for whom he held various jobs over the ensuing years, including press secretary.

Moyers’ stint as presidential press secretary was marked by efforts to mend the deteriorating relationship between Johnson and the media. But the Vietnam war took its toll and Moyers resigned in December 1966.

Of his departure from the White House, he wrote later, “We had become a war government, not a reform government, and there was no creative role left for me under those circumstances.”

He conceded that he may have been “too zealous in my defense of our policies” and said he regretted criticizing journalists such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett, then a special correspondent with the AP, and CBS’ Morley Safer for their war coverage.

A long run on television: In 1967, Moyers became publisher of Long Island-based Newsday and concentrated on adding news analyses, investigative pieces and lively features. Within three years, the suburban daily had won two Pulitzers. He left the paper in 1970 after the ownership changed. That summer, he traveled 13,000 miles around the country and wrote a bestselling account of his odyssey: “Listening to America: a Traveler Rediscovers His Country.”

His next venture was in public television and he won critical acclaim for “Bill Moyers Journal,” a series in which interviews ranged from Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist, to poet Maya Angelou. He was chief correspondent of “CBS Reports” from 1976 to 1978, went back to PBS for three years, and then was senior news analyst for CBS from 1981 to 1986.

When CBS cut back on documentaries, he returned to PBS for much less money. “If you have a skill that you can fold with your tent and go wherever you feel you have to go, you can follow your heart’s desire,” he once said.

Then in 1986, he and his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, became their own bosses by forming Public Affairs Television, an independent shop that has not only produced programs such as the 10-hour “In Search of the Constitution,” but also paid for them through its own fundraising efforts.

His projects in the 21st century included “Now,” a weekly PBS public affairs program; a new edition of “Bill Moyers Journal” and a podcast covering racism, voting rights and the rise of Donald Trump, among other subjects.

Moyers married Judith Davidson, a college classmate, in 1954, and they raised three children, among them the author Suzanne Moyers and author-TV producer William Cope Moyers. Judith eventually became her husband’s partner, creative collaborator and president of their production company.

House GOP committees have issued new subpoenas to ActBlue, intensifying their probe of the Democratic fundraising platform.

The subpoenas are an attempt to force cooperation as ActBlue has pushed back on the congressional investigation, questioning its intentions and constitutionality after the White House launched a similar probe.

Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who lead the committees investigating ActBlue, issued the subpoenas Wednesday to compel a current and a former employee to testify about the platform’s fraud prevention policies.

The employees being subpoenaed had previously pushed back against voluntarily appearing before the committee, citing the White House’s investigation, and ActBlue sent the committee a defiant letter earlier this month criticizing the investigation as partisan. In subpoenaing the employees, the GOP lawmakers rejected ActBlue’s argument that the congressional investigation is being conducted at the behest of the White House probe.

ActBlue had slammed the congressional investigations in a letter this month as a “partisan effort directed at harming political opponents rather than gathering facts to assist in lawmaking efforts.” The platform and its Democratic defenders have argued that any probe into foreign donations and online fundraising should also include WinRed, the largest Republican fundraising platform.

Those Democratic complaints grew louder after President Donald Trump in April ordered the Justice Department to investigate foreign straw donations in online fundraising, citing in part the work done by the GOP-led congressional committees. That investigation is expected to carry into the fall — and ActBlue was the only company named in Trump’s order.

In the new subpoenas, however, the GOP lawmakers argue the committee is operating well within its rights, and that testimony from ActBlue could inform future campaign finance legislation. They say the House investigation is distinct from the Trump-ordered probe into the platform and that their committees have not provided any non-public information to the Justice Department.

The lawmakers also rejected ActBlue’s argument that the Constitution protects it from cooperation with the probe.

“Congress is free to choose how to conduct oversight, including which entities to examine and in what manner. A Congressional committee's decision to examine one entity and not another does not violate the Equal Protection Clause,” one of the subpoenas reads.

In a statement, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones assailed the subpoenas as “political theater” that would “give Shakespeare a run for his money.”

“The Republican-led committees have also not addressed ActBlue’s legitimate concerns about the partisan and parallel inquiries by separate branches of the government being waged against President Trump’s and MAGA Republicans’ political opponents,” Wallace-Jones said.

ActBlue previously provided documents to the GOP committees, some voluntarily and some under subpoena. The congressional committees asked for voluntary interviews with ActBlue employees in April, according to the latest subpoenas, but the employees balked, citing in part the Justice Department probe.

Republicans have frequently leveraged their committee gavels this Congress to go after Democratic officials, including mayors and governors. The House Oversight Committee is also investigating former President Joe Biden’s mental acuity while in the White House, amid a similar probe by the Trump administration. Comer has issued a subpoena to Biden’s physician and asked a number of former top White House aides to sit down with his panel.

Prominent MAGA-aligned commentators launched xenophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani over the 33-year-old state lawmaker’s Muslim religion following his apparent Democratic primary win in the New York City mayoral race.

In a series of posts, conservative social media personality Laura Loomer wrote “New York City will be destroyed,” Muslims will start “committing jihad all over New York” and that “NYC is about to see 9/11 2.0.”

If elected in November, Mamdani would become the first Muslim mayor in New York City’s history. And while many conservatives have criticized Mamdani’s progressive policies, others have taken aim at Mamdani for his religion.

“24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk posted on X, referencing the number of people killed in New York. “Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”

“New York City has fallen,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote, quoting a post by Michael Malice about when New Yorkers “endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

“After 9/11 we said ‘Never Forget.’ I think we sadly have forgotten,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) posted on X Wednesday, accompanied by a photo of Mamdani.

Mamdani’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist, won 43.5 percent of first-place votes in New York’s ranked-choice voting system. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the once-favorite to take the primary, conceded to Mamdani Tuesday night. However, the city board of elections is not expected to finalize results until early July, once ranked-choice votes are tabulated.

During the primary some of Mamdani's critics, including a super PAC backing Cuomo, said he either emboldens antisemitism or has himself espoused antisemitic views, in particular over his stance on Israel.

He has repeatedly criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, and in a June interview with The Bulwark, Mamdani said the phrase “globalize the intifada” represented “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” Mamdani drew heavy criticism for the statement, marking a tension point in a primary election in a city with large populations of Muslim and Jewish residents.

He has repeatedly pushed back against the antisemitism label, decrying violence against Jews in the country.

“I’ve said at every opportunity that there is no room for antisemitism in this city, in this country,” he said at an emotional press conference in the closing days of the race, adding the reason he does not have a more “visceral reaction” to being labeled that is because it has “been colored by the fact that when I speak, especially when I speak with emotion, I am then characterized by those same rivals as being a monster.”

At the same press conference, he said he has faced significant attacks because of his religion.

“I get messages that say, ‘The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.’ I get threats on my life, on the people that I love. And I try not to talk about it,” he said at that press conference.

Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is running for Senate in New Hampshire for a second time, he announced Wednesday.

“I’m running for the United States Senate to restore common sense, keep our border secure, and fight for our New Hampshire values,” Brown, a Republican, posted on social media Wednesday. WMUR first reported Brown’s plans to enter the race.

Brown, who served as Ambassador to New Zealand during President Donald Trump’s first term, praised the president — who narrowly lost the stateto former Vice President Kamala Harris last year — in his launch video, saying that Trump “is fighting every day to right the ship. He sealed the border, he stood up to China, and he restored our standing in the world.”

His announcement Wednesday makes Brown the highest profile Republican to enter the race to replace Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who decided to forgo a reelection bid in 2026.

Brown's announcement comes after former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu decided against his own Senate bid earlier this year, even after Trump told reporters he hoped the popular moderate governor would run.

Democratic New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas launched his campaign shortly after Shaheen went public with her retirement plans. Pappas' campaign was quick to criticize Brown following his announcement, accusing him of looking “for yet another opportunity to do Wall Street’s bidding and blindly support President Trump,” in a statement.

Brown, meanwhile, took a shot at Pappas in his launch video: “Chris Pappas wants a better title,” he said. “I want a better America.”

The shadow contest between Brown and Pappas has been playing out for months already as Brown laid the groundwork for a bid. Brown attacked Pappas for “supporting wide open borders, men in women’s sports and lying to his constituents about Joe Biden’s senility” when the Democrat launched his campaign back in April. Pappas has yoked Brown to Trump — a connection Brown appears to embrace both in his launch video and his recent social media posts. Democrats’ campaign arm has attacked Brown over abortion rights, among other issues.

Brown has been ramping up to another Senate bid for months, including attending GOP senators’ weekly lunch back in March and keeping up ties with Republicans’ Senate campaign arm.

Just as President Donald Trump appears to have hit pause on a major conflict in the Middle East, he is intensifying one at home.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is the chief target of the president's powerful political operation, which is looking to oust the outspoken congressman in the GOP primary next year.

The congressman has been a thorn in the president's side in the past, but Massie’s latest threat to introduce a resolution aimed at reining in presidential war powers comes as Trump was already seething about Massie’s multiple attempts to thwart the “big, beautiful bill” ahead of Republicans’ self-imposed July 4 deadline.

Massie has easily beat back challenges before, including a raft of money from pro-Israel donors. But this time, the six-term Congressman’s strong independent political brand may not withstand the blitz that the president's allies appear ready to unleash. Not only has Trump vowed to campaign “really hard” against Massie next year, his political operation has launched a super PAC dedicated solely to defeating the Kentuckian.

“He's probably more vulnerable than he's been since he first won in a primary because of all this,’ said GOP strategist and former Kentucky state Rep. Adam Koenig. “There's money outside of Trump world ready to go after Massie.”

Trump’s political apparatus began ramping up its efforts to boot Massie after the representative voted against the party’s massive tax-and-spending package for the president’s domestic policy priorities when it first went through the House last month. It went public with its plans — a super PAC dubbed Kentucky MAGA led by two of the president’s most-trusted lieutenants, Chris LaCivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio, first reported by Axios — as Massie pushed to reassert congressional authority over Trump’s military actions in Iran.

“He has established himself as a contrarian for contrarian sake,” LaCivita said in a text message to POLITICO. “He should be a man and switch parties instead of posing as a Republican.”

The president and his advisers have viciously attacked Massie on social media in recent days, with Trump marshalling his MAGA base to dump “LOSER” Massie and “GET THIS ‘BUM’ OUT OF OFFICE.”

Trump and Massie have had a contentious relationship dating back to the president’s first term, when he pushed to “throw Massie out of the Republican Party” after the Kentucky Republican erected a roadblock to Trump’s Covid-19 relief package in March 2020. Trump later endorsed Massie’s 2022 reelection bid and Massie backed Trump in 2024 — but only after initially supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the presidential primary.

But now that Trump is back in the Oval Office, Massie has attempted to cripple the president’s legislative agenda multiple times, including becoming the only Republican to vote against a stopgap government funding bill in March. Unlike in the past, the president appears to be making good on his threats to try getting Massie out of office by putting a super PAC on the case.

“I think there’s a real opportunity…they’re going to spend upwards of $30 million to defeat Thomas Massie,” said one Kentucky GOP political operative who, like many interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive intraparty matters.

The operative, who did not vote for Trump, also heard rumblings that AIPAC, one of the most prominent pro-Israel groups, is also ready to spend big in the May 2026 Kentucky primary — suggesting Massie's anti-war efforts may be met with resistance on multiple fronts. Some Republican strategists estimate combined spending could reach as high as $45 million, an unheard of total for a primary contest in the 4th Congressional District. (The only outside spending against Massie in last year’s primary was about $320,000 from AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project.)

Even Speaker Mike Johnson hedged Tuesday on whether he would support Massie next year — despite acknowledging it’s his job as the top House Republican to protect his party’s incumbents.

“I certainly understand the president’s frustration” with Massie, Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. “If you’re here and you’re wearing one team’s jersey and every single time you vote with the other team, people begin to question … why you’re so consistently opposed to the platform, the agenda of your party.”

But Massie appears unfazed by Trump and his allies’ electoral threats.

"In 2020 I got my Trump antibodies from a natural infection when he came after me, and I survived,” Massie quipped to reporters on Tuesday. “It will deplete his political capital if he doesn't succeed, and he knows that. So that's got to be part of his calculus."

In fact, Massie is embracing the fight. On Twitter, he teased an interview with podcaster Theo Von, a sign that he’s seeking to widen his exposure in a format that favors Massie’s unique brand of an isolationist budget hawk. He’s fundraising off the social-media sparring with Trump, telling Hill reporters Monday evening that he’d raised roughly $120,000 in 24 hours.

And he’s still pledging to move ahead with his war powers resolution if the ceasefire between Iran and Israel doesn’t hold, saying in television interviews and to Hill reporters it’s “not clear the war is over.”

Overhanging the primary threat is the question of exactly which candidate Trump's allies have in mind to run against the incumbent. Already, some think first-term state Rep. Aaron Reed, a retired Navy Seal and gun shop owner who is rarely seen without his cowboy hat, would be a possible challenger. Another option is state Rep. Kimberly Moser, who is not thought of as traditionally MAGA, but has over the years made inroads with the Trump wing of the party. There are some potential outsiders who might have the means to self-fund a campaign as well, like political pundit Scott Jennings or former gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft.

“I think it's too soon to know if his outright opposition to what Trump has done – and I think it’s pretty horrible what [Massie’s] done – will make a difference,” said Ellen Williams, a former chair of the Kentucky GOP. “You can't just put anybody up against him and spend a shitload of money. I just think it emboldens him.”

Members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation say Massie’s sprawling district, which runs along the northern border along Ohio and Indiana and stretches from the southern Cincinnati suburbs to the outer bands of the Louisville metro area, is a unique cross-section of the state that appears to relish Massie’s independent streak.

It’s home to some of the most prominent members of the “liberty faction” of the Kentucky Republican Party, a group that embraces Trump while also gravitating toward libertarian-leaning Republicans like Massie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. The senator has weathered his own barrage of attacks from Trump for voicing opposition to the megabill and defended Massie to POLITICO on Tuesday.

Massie is “very popular in Kentucky,” Paul said. “I will continue to support him.”

“His district is different,” Rep. James Comer, a fellow Kentucky Republican, said Tuesday on Capitol Hill, though he declined to weigh in on the conflict between Massie and Trump. “That’s a unique congressional district.”

Former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson believes Trump, as much as he is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, may be overplaying his hand when it comes to Massie’s district.

“As popular as Trump is in Republican politics, as popular as Trump is in Kentucky, as popular as Trump is in the 4th District, on the substance, on the policy, Thomas wins those arguments over Trump,” Grayson said. “Until you see someone step up, Thomas is still pretty formidable.”

He also warned of repercussions for Trump, who — constitutionally barred from seeking office again — is a lame duck. If the representative is able to fend off a primary challenge, it could open the floodgates for others who have private misgivings about the president's actions.

“It will make a difference if Massie were to overcome this,” Grayson added. “If he wins, if you’re a member, you’d be more likely to speak out in the future.”

Massie’s never been in serious jeopardy in the GOP primary. His closest primary contest was when he first ran for Congress in 2012 when he defeated Alecia Webb-Edgington, a state representative, to succeed the retiring Rep. Geoff Davis by roughly 7,000 votes. In subsequent primary contests, Massie cruised to victory in otherwise low-turnout primaries where he won with no less than 60 percent of the vote.

Many operatives believe Trump would need to juice primary turnout considerably to succeed in his quest to topple Massie. Some cautioned that Trump's popularity 11 months from now could shift considerably.

Massie was matter-of-fact about the challenges before him Tuesday afternoon when addressing reporters.

“I just have to spend more money if he gets in the race,” Massie said, when asked his thoughts on Trump meddling in his primary. He then laid out a pair of scenarios, one in which Trump endorses someone and then backtracks on the endorsement — as the president has done before. He floated another in which Trump's allies lay down a lot of money and groundwork, only to abandon its efforts down the line.

“They're gonna try to talk to somebody in the race...tell them that the Trump endorsement is coming, and then they'll wait to see if that person can get close. And if that person can get close, then Trump may get in,” Massie said. “If that person can't, they'll leave that person hanging on the bone.”

Democrats are scrambling to respond to President Donald Trump’s unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It’s another high-stakes move by the president that could present a major political opening — but the party has, so far, appeared fractured in its public messaging.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) quickly called for Trump to be impeached, but most House Democrats on Tuesday voted down Rep. Al Green’s (D-Texas) resolution to do so. Other Democrats have supported Trump’s strike, including Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who said the president was “right” to bomb Iran. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin posted “no new wars” on X, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vented that Trump “failed to seek congressional authorization.”

It’s the kind of disjointed and, at times, contradictory message that’s become emblematic of the Democratic Party that’s been locked out of power in Washington, cut out of the loop, and left without clear party leadership during Trump’s second term. Where Democrats were once reflexively #Resistance-driven during the president’s first term, giving them clear anti-Trump positions on much of what he did, they’re now more nuanced, sometimes circumspect, on Trump’s controversial moves on trade, immigration and now, foreign policy.

Democrats often unify on arguments about process and rules, including on the Iranian strikes, when they’ve primarily attacked Trump for failing to seek congressional approval. Multiple War Powers Resolutions — which would prevent Trump from further engaging in hostilities against Iran without congressional approval — are in the works.

But that response, so far, is “a classic Democratic messaging problem,” said Morgan Jackson, a top Democratic strategist based in North Carolina, who said that Democrats “should be making two points, clearly and consistently that’s broadly adopted: Trump is dragging us into a war, which he said he’d never do, and he’s making Americans less safe.”

“When we debate the process, war powers vote, impeaching him because he didn’t ask Congress — voters don’t care about that,” Jackson added. “When we have a message about process versus a president who took action, [then] that’s a losing message.”

Or as a Democratic consultant said when granted anonymity to speak frankly about the party: “Our response is to push our glasses up our nose and complain about the illegality of it? Come on. We can’t just bitch about the process.”

Democrats’ jumbled answer to the United States’ strikes in Iran, so far, is also the product of a specific challenge, several House Democrats said: They’re operating without much information.

The Trump administration postponed a closed-door congressional briefing on the Iran strikes Tuesday afternoon, drawing the ire of Democrats who questioned whether the administration was trying to obfuscate its intelligence, and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said he first heard about the attack on social media.

“There’s no official party line” because “you need the facts,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.).

That’s left Trump and Republicans to dominate the public messaging around a rapidly changing situation.

After Trump signed off on a trio of bombings on Iran’s nuclear sites on Saturday, he claimed the strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but his own military leaders walked back that assessment. Trump floated the possibility of regime change in Iran, then backtracked by Tuesday, telling reporters he wants “to see everything calm down as quickly as possible.” The president helped to broker a ceasefire deal between Iran and Israel, but it’s already been tested and it’s unclear how long it may hold.

That constant uncertainty is at the core of Democrats’ defense for their constitutionality argument. Himes, who has introduced one of the War Powers Resolution measures, warned that he “would be willing to bet my next paycheck that a ceasefire is not likely to remain in effect for very long,” so “I think the Constitution to which we all theoretically subscribe should be enforced.”

House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said it was “completely unacceptable that Congress has not been briefed on this in a timely fashion,” adding that “launching an attack without congressional authorization is wrong” and “launching a potentially unsuccessful attack without congressional authorization would be an administration-defining failure.”

Potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders, from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to former Secretary Pete Buttigieg to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have largely focused their responses to the Iranian strikes on public safety and concern for military personnel. Otherwise, they’ve largely stayed quiet.

“Our challenge is, yes, we have no clear leader but, just as important, everyone is still trying to figure out what’s going on,” said a Democratic operative who is advising a potential 2028 candidate and was granted anonymity to describe private conversations. “Donald Trump sows so much chaos and confusion into the process that Democrats can sometimes get distracted and respond to all of it, rather than having a coherent overall message.”

The muddled Democratic message on the Iran strikes is particularly notable because there is a clear political opening. A majority of Americans disapprove of the president’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, while six in 10 said the strikes will increase the Iranian threat to the United States, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday.

The DNC has urged Democrats to capitalize on that opening, even if it’s not yet the loudest message emanating from their own party. A messaging guidance memo from the DNC, and obtained by POLITICO, described Trump’s actions as "unconstitutional, dangerous and hypocritical."

Of the six messaging points detailed as pushback to it, only the last one focused on process, arguing that Trump “must bring his case before Congress immediately.” The other five ticked through safety, broken campaign promises and lack of public support for the strikes.

Republicans have also been divided on Trump’s actions, with some explicitly urging Trump not get involved further in the conflict. Trump ally Steve Bannon cautioned against the United States pushing for regime change in Iran, warning it could lead to more American military involvement. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) had initially joined Democrats in pushing for a measure to block American involvement, but he said he wouldn’t back it if the ceasefire between Israel and Iran held.

It’s frustrated some Democrats who wish the party would take better control of the moment, but Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic consultant, said Democrats might end up benefiting politically regardless of their current messaging.

“We’re a party without a head. We don’t have a Speaker, we don’t have a nominee for president yet, so we have this cacophony of voices in these moments. … But that matters less here because we just need to get out of the way because the story here is MAGA is at war with MAGA,” Giangreco said. “Donald Trump did something that only 17 percent of Americans agree with, so the Democratic response, even if it is messy, doesn’t matter this time.”

Steve Bannon expressed his disapproval on Monday with the possibility of the U.S. pushing for regime change in Iran — an outcome President Donald Trump floated over the weekend — while reiterating his desire to prioritize “America first” and stay out of foreign conflicts.

Bannon, the longtime Trump ally and leading figure in the MAGA movement, praised Trump for the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities during an episode of his podcast “Bannon’s War Room.” But he questioned the “regime change narrative,” criticized the Pentagon for its messaging in the hours after the strike and urged Israel to “finish what you started” without U.S. involvement.

Trump indicated he’d be open to seeing out regime change in Iran in a social media post Sunday evening, contradicting several senior administration officials who had insisted earlier in the day that regime change was not a goal.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.

The conflict in Iran has opened a rift with the GOP between interventionists like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and isolationists like Bannon, who argue against the U.S. entering an open-ended conflict in the Middle East.

Bannon congratulated Trump on the “precision, logistics, bravery, valor, boldness” of the Iran strike, but warned a lack of clarity on whether the strike was successful could create a pretext for the U.S. to send military personnel to Iran.

“Now it's all about, ‘Hey, we don't know where the material is,’” Bannon said of the enriched uranium stockpile in Iran. “What's that going to lead us to, folks? 'Hey, do we need the 75th Ranger Battalion to go in and find it?' Oh, it's coming. It's coming.”

Trump has repeatedly called the strike “very successful,” but Pentagon officials on Sunday said it’s too soon to know if Iran still retains nuclear capabilities, and the extent to which Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile was destroyed remains unclear.

Bannon voiced concern that the Iran strike was a “psy-op” and that the Trump administration’s stated goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was “cosplay” that could lead to further U.S. involvement in the war between Israel and Iran.

“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change? And if that's fine, Israelis, have at it,” he said. “If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government."

Bannon said he was “disappointed” by Pentagon leadership for losing the opportunity to “drive the narrative” around the strikes by not presenting an initial damage assessment on Sunday after the attack.

“We needed to see some grainy photographs,” he said. “I understand DOD that you don't have the battle damage assessment. That's going to take three or four weeks, as you said, but there's enough there to kind of take and start to drive the narrative. We lost that opportunity."