The redistricting war is officially on.

After weeks of bluster from dueling governors and state lawmakers, California and Texas raced forward with parallel action this week to draw new congressional maps, setting into motion a national redistricting fight that could upend the midterms and determine control of the House.

Texas Republicans on Saturday passed a new map that will help the GOP flip as many as five House seats — a partisan play at the hand of President Donald Trump. On Thursday, California Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom preemptively agreed to send a retaliatory ballot measure to voters — the first step in potentially offsetting Texas’ maneuver by creating new Democratic-leaning seats.

The nation’s two largest states had fired the opening salvo in what is likely to become an intense and protracted redistricting campaign by both parties to grasp power in Washington. Now other red and blue state governors face pressure to follow their lead and aggressively gerrymander their congressional maps.

Republicans hold a clear advantage in the arms race: The GOP is poised to move forward with redistricting in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana, which could yield at least half a dozen more seats. Democrats, meanwhile, have struggled to get gerrymandering efforts moving in blue states beyond California, though leaders in New York, Illinois and Maryland say they are weighing options.

“Right now, these other states need to step up,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from Long Beach, Calif. “I know it’s hard, I know it’s complicated … But, if you’re a blue state governor, the time is now to step up and get it done.”

As the map battles continue, at stake is a national shift away from the norm of once-a-decade, Census-aligned redistricting and toward a more polarized landscape in which both parties redraw political maps at will to shift the balance of power. The escalation has major implications for Trump's post-midterm agenda and the political prospects of several prominent Democrats, including Newsom and his likely presidential run in 2028.

Democrats in the California Legislature framed their vote Thursday in that national context, casting it as a fight to save American democracy from Trump’s “election rigging” — even as they voted nearly unanimously to toss aside lines drawn by the state’s independent commission and put forward a partisan map. The ends, they argued, justified the means.

“We don’t want this fight and we didn't choose this fight, but with our democracy on the line, we cannot and will not run away from this fight,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Democrat from Silicon Valley.

The vote sets off a Nov. 4 special election for Californians, and both parties are gearing up for an all-out campaign sprint. Democrats estimate they will have to raise up to $100 million to mount an advertising blitz across the state’s large and expensive media markets to convince voters, whom early polling shows are skeptical.

Republicans, who have a thin minority in the California statehouse, unsuccessfully tried to derail the vote with a host of procedural maneuvers. They argued California Democrats betrayed voters' trust by adopting a map drawn behind closed doors, sidestepping the state’s voter-created redistricting commission. A GOP-backed legal attempt to thwart Democrats’ map was also dismissed by the California Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican from San Diego, called the vote a “political stunt.” When Democrats said he couldn't use props during his floor speech, he retorted, “Then, why have you become props to Gov. Gavin Newsom's presidential campaign?”

Texas Democrats, a minority in their state House, have pulled their own stunts. House members prolonged passage of the map by leaving the state for two weeks in protest, denying Republicans the quorum needed to conduct official business. When they returned, Rep. Nicole Collier refused to sign a permission slip ordered by GOP leadership allowing law enforcement to supervise her movements and instead staged a sit-in on the House floor.

Unlike California Democrats’ map, which requires voter approval to take effect, the Republicans in the Texas Legislature were able to approve their map without going to voters or mounting a statewide campaign. Both parties have vowed to fight the maps in court, disputes that could ultimately lead to the U.S. Supreme Court. A lawsuit in Texas was filed just hours after the map was approved by the legislature early Saturday.

“The fight is far from over,” Texas Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said on the floor after the map passed the House on Wednesday. “Our best shot is in the courts. This part of the fight is over, but it is merely the first chapter.”

In Texas, Democrats argue the GOP’s map illegally dilutes the voting power of Hispanic and Black voters. In California, where the state’s map preserves minority-opportunity districts, Republicans say the map illegally sidelines the state’s independent redistricting commission.

But in the redistricting wars, voting rights and other legal considerations are taking a backseat to purely partisan interests.

Efforts are underway to carve out more GOP seats in Indiana, Ohio, Missouri and Florida — and Trump’s political operation is pressuring individual state lawmakers to act. On Thursday, Trump declared on X that Republicans in Missouri — where the GOP could pick up one more seat by splitting a district in Kansas City — are “IN!” to call a special session to redistrict.

The legal hurdles for Democrats in other deep-blue states could prove more formidable, hampering their party’s quest to retake the House in the 2026 midterms.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to disband a quasi-independent commission in charge of drawing House map. But the panel, created by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, cannot be erased until 2027 at the earliest.

And while the New York governor has talked tough about redistricting, she acknowledged to reporters her hands are tied by the state’s lengthy constitutional amendment process. Any changes must be approved by two separately elected sessions of the Legislature before going to voters in a referendum.

“Now, everyone says, ‘Why don't you do what Gavin Newsom does?’ Gavin Newsom has a very different situation, because if I could, I would,” Hochul told reporters this week. “But I have to have the Constitution changed, and also the voters approved that change, before I can do that.”

Albany Democrats are under pressure to act faster anyway.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, has talked several times in recent weeks with Hochul about their options and this week urged her and other top New York Democrats to expand the state’s voting rights law — which enables legal challenges to local legislative districts — to include congressional seats.

That would open the door to a legal challenge to the existing house lines, a maneuver designed to force a mid-decade redistricting if the map is thrown out. But two New York Democratic officials, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said that would be a long shot given the complexities of the strategy. One of them said there are “no clear options” for what New York can do ahead of the midterms.

That’s leaving Democrats to scour the map for potential redistricting pick-up opportunities outside California.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has spoken boldly about the importance for Democrats to not let Texas go unmatched, and the state hosted many of the Democrats who left the Texas state House. But Illinois has been known for its aggressive Democratic gerrymanders, and it currently has just three Republican seats it can target.

It’s also unclear Illinois Democrats have the political will to take on redrawing the congressional map — most of the redistricting talk this week has been on a whole other set of maps. Former Barack Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, a Chicago Democrat, and Ray LaHood, a Peoria Republican who served as Obama’s transportation secretary, rolled out a “Fair Maps Illinois” proposal this week that would end the process of state lawmakers drawing their own districts.

In Maryland — one of Democrats’ few options to wage a response to the GOP — House Majority Leader David Moon is pushing legislation to open its redistricting process. Gov. Wes Moore has said that “all options are on the table,” but has not laid out any specifics.

“It is not our first choice to fight back against this, and I think it's everybody's preference that we stand down and everyone steps back from the brink here,” Moon said in an interview. “But I think the common sentiment you're seeing from everyone is that we have to be prepared in the event that this thing does explode.”

Shia Kapos and Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.

Texas Republicans approved a new, aggressively gerrymandered congressional map early Saturday morning, moving forward with a power grab pushed by President Donald Trump.

The GOP-controlled state Senate approved the map on a party-line vote after hours of debate that began Friday morning. Republicans used a procedural move to block a Democratic senator’s plans to filibuster the bill, forcing it to a vote — one final show of force from GOP leadership after weeks of partisan fighting.

The map could ultimately help flip as many as five seats for the GOP starting with next year’s midterms. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is set to quickly sign the legislation, capping off a turbulent few weeks in Texas over Republicans’ now-successful effort to further skew the maps in the GOP’s favor ahead of the 2030 census.

Under the new map, Republicans in Texas are aiming to earn 30 House seats — up from their current 25 — as they attempt to hold onto control of the chamber in what could be an unfavorable environment for them next year. Republicans currently have just a three-seat majority in the House, so the new Texas map alone will significantly affect their chances.

The unusual offcycle redistricting effort in Texas has set off a contentious national tit-for-tat. California formally launched its preemptive retaliation on Thursday, with lawmakers approving a ballot measure redrawing the state’s map to create five new Democratic seats to offset Texas. That measure —which would temporarily circumvent the state’s independent redistricting commission — now goes to voters on the November ballot, a gerrymander Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has cast as necessary to preserve democracy.

But Republicans could soon have the advantage as a redistricting battle escalates nationwide: The White House is pressuring other GOP states, like Indiana and Missouri, to take on their own redistricting gambits. Democratic governors in New York and Illinois have vowed to fight back, but have so far taken no concrete steps to do so.

Democrats and civil rights groups have vowed to challenge the legality of the map, and will likely argue that Republicans unlawfully took race into consideration when redrawing the lines.

Republicans, however, contend that they redrew the districts explicitly for partisan purposes and did not account for race or ethnicity.

“I did not take race into consideration when drawing this map,” said state Sen. Phil King, the Texas Republican who wrote the redistricting legislation, at a committee hearing. “I drew it based on what would better perform for Republican candidates.”

Racial gerrymandering claims are one of the last remaining ways to challenge a political map in federal court, since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 barred them from policing partisan gerrymandering. The new map – which was drawn using 2024 election data – creates four new majority-Hispanic districts, drawn to reflect Hispanic voters’ shift toward the GOP.

Texas House Democrats protested the maps by leaving the state for two weeks, depriving Republicans of the ability to conduct legislative business. Those lawmakers returned on Monday — clearing the way for Republicans to quickly pass the legislation. Democrats racked up thousands of dollars in fines for ducking their legislative duties, and when they returned, House Speaker Dustin Burrows sought one last punishment: He ordered law enforcement to chaperone the Democrats to ensure they would be present for passage of the map.

One Democrat, state Rep. Nicole Collier, refused to sign a permission slip allowing an officer to monitor her movements, instead staging a three-day sit-in on the House floor.

“When I press that button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents — I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination,” Collier said from the chamber.

The Senate passed its map on Saturday morning after thwarting an attempted filibuster from another Democrat who planned to stage one last protest against the legislation. But Republicans made a procedural move that ended debate and the chamber approved the map along party lines.

Democrats seem to think they can talk their way out of the political wilderness.

Listen closely and you can hear it through the din of their all-caps Trumpian X feeds, their hourslong “manosphere” podcast interviews and their more frequent swearing.

Nearly 10 months after the 2024 elections, and the party is still embroiled in self-recriminations over where they’re talking, what they’re talking about and, now, the actual words they’re using. Or, more precisely: which words they shouldn’t utter.

In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put “a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” It’s a set of words that Third Way suggests “people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.”

They span six categories — from “therapy speak” to “explaining away crime” — and put in sharp relief a party that authors say makes Democrats “sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.” In the document, titled “Was It Something I Said?” Third Way argues that to “please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant,” according to the memo.

Among the blacklisted terms: privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.

“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” says Matt Bennett, Third Way's executive vice president of public affairs. “We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk. In recent weeks, this has become a bit of a thing, with comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman highlighting how insane Dems can sometimes sound. Also, elected officials like [Delaware Rep.] Sarah McBride and [Kentucky Gov.] Andy Beshear are begging their colleagues to just be normal again.”

“People can’t relate to something unless it has some edge about it,” Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s senior vice president, tells Playbook. “And we had shaved off all of our edges in an attempt to never make anyone upset about anything.”

The group doesn’t base its list on any specific polling. And the authors don’t offer specific counter recommendations for these terms. But they do outline the values their vision of the party includes.

“We will never abandon our values or stop doing things to protect those who need help, encouragement, trust, a second chance, acceptance, a fair shake, and the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness But as the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 has shown, the most important thing we can do for those people and causes is to build a bigger army to fight them,” the memo reads. “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”

It’s worth noting that in certain parts of the country, a lot of people, especially now, do talk in this language and use the phrases Third Way recommends against, even if it doesn't scream big tent enough. It’s also worth noting an inherent irony in all of this: it’s hard to police how politicians talk at the same time that you're asking them to be authentic.

The memo’s authors write “we are not out to police language, ban phrases or create our own form of censorship. Truth be told, we have published papers that have used some of these words as well. But when policymakers are public-facing, the language we use must invite, not repel; start a conversation, not end it; provide clarity, not confusion.”

“The Democratic Party brand is toxic across the country at this point with way too many people — enough that there’s no way for us to win a governing majority without changing that,” Erickson said. “Part of the problem was that we were using words that literally no normal people used — that we were sticking to messages that were so overly scripted that they basically sounded like nothing.”

What about bright spots for the party? Erickson cited three potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders who she says are good examples of how to communicate: Beshear, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).

• “Gallego is doing a great job talking about economic success,” she says. “He goes into communities and he’s like, ‘I want you to have a big ass truck, if that’s what you want.’”

• Buttigieg, she said, is “doing a great job of going into spaces that are maybe not hostile, but unusual spaces for him to be in and having real conversations about complicated topics, like transgender people in sports, and saying, ‘you know, I think you should have empathy toward people that are figuring this issue out for the first time. And you should have empathy toward transgender kids and their families.’ But he's not afraid to say those things, and he’s getting yelled at.”

• And Beshear is “getting this so exactly right, talking about how these terms aren't even what those communities use to call themselves,” she said. She recalled Beshear “talking about the fact that ‘justice-involved individuals’ is not a thing that any justice-involved individual would call themselves. They would call themselves incarcerated, call themselves convicted, or they would call themselves a whole lot of other things, but that's not what they or their families would call themselves. So inventing terms that the people that we're talking about and trying to protect don't even use, and then enforcing that that's the only way you can talk about those people, is crazy.”

So, can Democrats really talk their way back to power? It’s an Aaron Sorkin-eqsue idea to think that everything can be solved by the right words and a compelling speech. (And it’s one that the party has been tantalized by, on and off, for decades.) Of course, Democrats face bigger and deeper problems — a yawning voter registration gap among them — and are still figuring out which policies to advocate.

In some ways, Third Way is reaching the same political conclusion VP JD Vance arrived at during his interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham this week. “I mean, look, the autopsy for the Democrats, some free political advice from the president of the United States is: stop sounding like crazy people,” Vance said.

Vance’s remarks came on the same day he had burgers with the National Guard troops at Union Station. Which is itself a glaring reminder of some of the stakes if Democrats don’t get this right.

Erickson mentioned crime as a key issue on which Democrats need to recalibrate, citing Trump’s “invasion of D.C.”

“It shows that people don't think Democrats want to hold criminals accountable at all,” she said. “Like we don't care about violent crime and we don't care if someone hurts someone, that they should be held accountable. That's not true. We’re afraid to say that because we’re afraid that someone is going to criticize us for being too ‘tough on crime.’”

Third Way sees it as a place to start. “We need to reflect on the ways that our bubble and our fear of being criticized by anyone on the left has led to a problem with both our policy and our language,” Erickson said.

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Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett said he will not run for reelection in his home district if the Texas redistricting proposal is approved, avoiding a potential member-on-member primary with Rep. Greg Casar, who was drawn into Doggett’s district in the new maps.

Doggett did not say whether he would retire from Congress if the maps are approved or if he plans to run in another Texas district.

The 78-year-old lawmaker has faced pressure from some Democrats to allow Casar to run in the new Austin-area district. A primary in the 37th District between Doggett and Casar could have reopened old fissures in the party over elderly incumbents — a debate amplified last year by Doggett, who was the first Democrat in Congress to call on then-President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

“If the courts give Trump a victory in his scheme to maintain control of a compliant House, I will not seek reelection in the reconfigured CD37, even though it contains over 2/3rd of my current constituents,” Doggett said in the statement.

Doggett said he will run for reelection in his current district if Texas Republicans’ “racially gerrymandered Trump map” is rejected. Doggett’s office did not immediately respond to requests for clarification about his intentions if the maps are approved.

A spokesperson for Casar declined to comment.

Doggett quickly announced his intention to run in his home district last month after Texas released its redrawn maps. Last week, he leaned on Casar to run in the new 35th District, a bloc east of San Antonio where Trump won 54 percent of the vote last year.

Days later, Casar’s chief of staff said he would only run for Congress in his native Austin, and chastised Doggett for attempting to force him to run elsewhere.

“I had hoped that my commitment to reelection under any circumstances would encourage Congressman Casar to not surrender his winnable district to Trump,” Doggett said in the statement. “While his apparent decision is most unfortunate, I prefer to devote the coming months to fighting Trump tyranny and serving Austin rather than waging a struggle with fellow Democrats.”

Pressure against Doggett ramped up in recent days after David Hogg’s super PAC said it planned to financially support Casar if the two members squared off in a primary. Doggett, who holds over $6 million in his campaign account, had said he planned to spend significantly to defend his seat. Hogg’s group said they had intended to help Casar make up some of the difference.

“Thank you, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, for letting the next generation lead and for your decades of progressive service. I hope more members of Congress follow his example and pass the torch,” Hogg said in a statement to POLITICO.

Donald Trump has strong-arming Congress down to a science. Now his redistricting gambit is putting his methods through a stress test.

It’s a strategy of intensifying levels of private coercion and public threats of consequence, driven by Trump and amplified by aides and allies behind closed doors and through the online MAGA echo chamber: White House visits, calls from the president, online insults and even primary threats.

The more-stick-than-carrot approach has delivered Trump major wins in Washington by helping him barrel through initial GOP resistance to controversial Cabinet picks and a politically perilous policy package in a stunningly short turnaround.

That machine is whirring into gear again as the White House pushes Texas, Missouri and Indiana to gerrymander their congressional districts to protect Republicans’ House majority in the midterms. Vice President JD Vance and top aides have been dispatched to Indiana and staffers have phoned into Missouri. Trump is summoning Hoosier Republicans to the White House next week. Both his political operation and right-wing influencers have begun floating primary challenges.

“These folks are not sitting around thinking about redistricting. But in an instant, Trump can prioritize that issue for them and subsequently he can mobilize them on his behalf,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who has worked for House GOP leadership and on presidential campaigns. “I think he recognizes that formidable power and he’s willing to apply it far and wide.”

Now that redistricting pressure campaign is providing a significant test of whether the approach Trump has near-perfected within his governing trifecta in D.C. can translate beyond the beltway.

Every president has the power of the bully pulpit, wielding the heft of the Oval Office and inside-the-beltway pressure tactics to advance his agenda. But Trump also retains a uniquely powerful hold over the most enthusiastic voters in the GOP, and is able to leverage the grassroots support of his MAGA movement and Truth Social platform to compound pressure on any resistant Republicans to accede to his demands.

Marrying the two, Trump has a singular strategy that he’s employed to great effect so far this term to compel Republican lawmakers into supporting his appointees and legislative agenda.

There are very few exceptions, in part because Trump has made clear the consequences for dissent. Trump and his team have repeatedly threatened primary challenges for GOP lawmakers who do not bend to his will, going as far as standing up a super PAC that’s raising millions of dollars to target Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) for voting against the “big, beautiful bill.” And the White House is vetting potential primary challengers to Massie, including Kentucky state Sen. Aaron Reed, who traveled to Washington for a meeting last month, two people familiar with the trip confirmed to POLITICO.

“Incumbent presidents have broad sway over their party…The only real difference is that Trump will operate with language and threats we haven’t seen from other presidents,” said Doug Heye, a GOP strategist who has worked for House Republican leadership. “He’s more YOLO than lame duck.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Now Trump and his team are trying their playbook on GOP governors and state lawmakers as they push as many red states as possible into mid-decade redistricting. They are on the cusp of success in Texas, where the Republican-controlled Legislature is imposing a new map designed to net the party five seats.

Missouri Republicans are widely expected to follow suit when they return to Jefferson City in September for their annual veto session — despite still smarting from a knock-down, drag-out redistricting fight just two years ago in which they ultimately rejected drawing an additional GOP district.

While Republicans in the state Legislature are reluctant to revisit the difficult inter-party politics at play, the Trump administration is working to force them to submit anyway, calling up Gov. Mike Kehoe and local lawmakers who have expressed skepticism about the effort.

There’s also a less direct form of pressure at play — one that has guided GOP decision-making throughout Trump’s time as the party’s standard-bearer.

“No one wants to be seen as anti-administration or anti-Trump,” said a Missouri GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly about private deliberations. “That does not do anyone any good when they go back to their district.”

But the potential limits of Trump’s pressure-campaign playbook are showing in Indiana, where Republicans are so far resisting a more intensive — and public — push. That includes several GOP state lawmakers who have publicly panned the effort, with one hard-right representative slamming it as "politically optically horrible.”

The White House dispatched Vance and top administration aides to Indiana to pitch the governor and GOP legislative leaders on gerrymandering the map. White House Intergovernmental Affairs Director Alex Meyer, in his personal capacity, hascalled several lawmakers to press them to redistrict. A group called Forward America flooded voters’ phones with robocalls and text messages urging them to call their lawmakers to back the effort. Trump’s political operation is considering primarying lawmakers who refuse to fall in line — a threat amplified by MAGA influencer and Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk.

As the pressure mounted, all seven of Indiana's Republican representatives in Congress issued a series of rapid-fire statements over six hours on Monday supporting Trump’s redistricting push — a clearly coordinated piling-on of pressure as state House Republicans huddled behind closed doors. The state’s two Republican senators backed the effort the following morning.

But progress remains elusive: Gov. Mike Braun is still undecided on whether to call a special session to advance a new map, and GOP resistance is still flaring from within the state house.

Trump and his team show no signs of letting up, bullish about Republicans’ advantages in the redistricting arms race that has exploded between red and blue states. The administration is planning to court more than four dozen Indiana Republicans — including the state House speaker and Senate president — at the White House next week.

And Trump’s allies believe his ability to get his party to fall in line on his agenda is nearly infinite.

“As Trump has said before: The party is what I say it is,” said David Urban, a Trump 2016 campaign adviser and longtime ally. “And that is largely true.”

Adam Wren contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misidentified the state Vance visited. It was Indiana.

Former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison is jumping on the Substack trend, but he seems to have overlooked the fine print.

Harrison appears to have run afoul of Substack’s terms of service by mass-subscribing his former campaign email list and other personal contacts. Substack’s rules say: “Don’t add people to your mailing list without their consent, and don’t import your contacts list or social graphs.” And Substack emphasizes that subscribers should have “explicitly opted in,” according to a Substack spokesperson.

Harrison recently uploaded those on his 2020 Senate campaign list and other contacts he had collected over the years, though he made that clear to subscribers when he started his Substack. His introductory email last week stated, “As a past member of my email list, you have been automatically subscribed to my new hub on Substack.” Harrison has a Substack podcast where he’s interviewed Democrats including Hunter Biden, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and he also started a paid subscription section for superfans to get early access to podcasts and bonus content.

The way he built his Substack list, however, has attracted negative attention online, with several X users expressing outrage that they were added to his Substack without their permission or even knowledge. One user wrote, “The horrors of giving my email to Democrats never cease. Why tf did I get auto-subscribed to Jaime Harrison’s Substack,” while another wrote, “Just found out I was automatically subscribed to Jaime Harrison’s Substack without my knowledge or consent.”

The spokesperson for Substack, granted anonymity to speak freely, declined to comment on Harrison’s case but said the company’s guidelines “require that any mailing list a publisher imports be made up of people who have explicitly opted in to receive emails from that publication” and that lists purchased or collected without consent (which frequently happens on campaigns) are not permitted. The spokesperson bolded the phrase “explicitly opted in.”

The spokesperson said Substack runs basic checks for issues including invalid addresses but that it doesn’t have a way to verify how emails were collected.

Harrison said in a brief phone interview that he “assumed” his team had followed Substack’s rules but added, “For me, knowing email stuff and all that other stuff, I don’t follow this stuff.” In a follow-up text message, he said he had abided by all Substack policies and that his team “worked directly with Substack to upload our list, which was collected from my Senate campaign and other personal activities.” A spokesperson for Harrison declined to give POLITICO the name of the Substack representative they dealt with and said such interactions were done only over the phone.

Several other Democratic politicians with Substacks have chosen different ways to build up their newsletter lists. A person familiar with Pete Buttigieg’s Substack, granted anonymity to discuss the matter, said the former transportation secretary is only using organic ways to grow his Substack, which has around 600,000 followers, and that his team doesn’t pull any lists over.

A spokesperson for Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he’s also grown his Substack organically and didn’t think it was necessary to pull subscribers from his campaign email list. The person said the video interviews the senator has done with anti-Trump influencers Jim Acosta and Jennifer Rubin, as well as journalist Anand Giridharadas, have been very helpful in adding new subscribers, now totaling more than 65,000.

Last week, Harrison’s Substack showed that he had a million subscribers, but most of Harrison’s posts have less than a dozen likes. After POLITICO started asking questions, the number of subscribers became private. A Harrison spokesperson declined to comment on why the subscription number is no longer public.

For years, Democratic consultants have raised concerns that Democratic politicians are exhausting donors with too many emails, but Substack is a new platform on which Democrats can grow — and annoy — people in their orbit.

“Substack prohibits unsolicited spam for a reason,” said Josh Nelson, CEO of progressive ad platform Civic Shout. “Jaime Harrison, as a former DNC chair, should know better than to add people to an email list without their knowledge or consent.”

Another Democratic consultant, granted anonymity because of fear of business consequences, said leaders of many progressive organizations and other influential Democrats now have Substacks that he joked they view as their “retirement plan.”

“It’s so dumb because obviously there’s not enough people on Substack to pay $5 a month for all these people, and they all use tons of organizational resources to pump up their own Substacks, which is so corrupt and such a misallocation of resources,” the consultant said.

The former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been charged in four separate bribery schemes, according to indictments released this morning by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Former chief adviser to the mayor Ingrid Lewis-Martin “overrode other City officials’ expertise and decision making to ensure that certain required actions were accomplished for the benefit of her co-conspirators,” according to a summary of the indictments.

Another longtime Adams ally Jesse Hamilton, a deputy commissioner at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, is being charged with Lewis-Martin in one case where the pair is accused of promoting a real estate developer’s projects in exchange for more than $5,000 worth of home renovations.

Lewis-Martin resigned from City Hall in December before being indicted on separate corruption charges to which she pleaded not guilty.

Adams, who is facing long odds as he runs for reelection as an independent, was not accused of wrongdoing in any of the cases.

Former President Barack Obama is supporting California’s mid-cycle redistricting effort as a “responsible approach” to Republicans drawing new maps in Texas.

Obama praised California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ballot measure proposal to redraw congressional districts and tilt at least five congressional districts in the state towards Democrats at a fundraiser on Tuesday for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

“I believe that Governor Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach,” he said, according to excerpts obtained by POLITICO. “I think that approach is a smart, measured approach, designed to address a very particular problem in a very particular moment in time.”

California Democrats are expected this week to allow voters to bypass an independent commission established by voters and decide whether to approve the new partisan maps for the next three election cycles in response to the Republican’s move in Texas.

Obama’s remarks comes as both parties in California gear up for what is expected to be a hard-fought campaign over the ballot initiative to redraw political boundaries in the state in response to President Donald Trump’s efforts to keep the House in Republican hands in the 2026 midterms.

The former president said redrawing the lines is “not my preference,” but that the Democratic-led effort in California is “responsible” in this context.

“We cannot unilaterally allow one of the two major parties to rig the game,” he said. “And California is one of the states that has the capacity to offset a large state like Texas.”

The Associated Press first reported Obama’s remarks.

Obama said he hopes that the NDRC and national Democrats will work to eliminate partisan gerrymandering as a “long-term goal,” but applauded Newsom’s response to the new Texas maps and Trump’s broader campaign to push other red states to draw new, more favorable maps.

“Given that Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House that is effectively saying: gerrymander for partisan purposes so we can maintain the House despite our unpopular policies, redistrict right in the middle of a decade between censuses — which is not how the system was designed; I have tremendous respect for how Governor Newsom has approached this,” he said.

Newsom thanked Obama for his support in a social media post and promised that California’s redistricting proposal will “neutralize any attempts Donald Trump makes to steal Congressional seats.”