Sen. Eric Schmitt on being a White House whisperer and Senate budget reformer | The Conversation
PAWLEYS ISLAND, South Carolina — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear drew a standing ovation from Georgetown County Democrats Thursday night, after he shook hands and grinned for photos. California Gov. Gavin Newsom packed standing-room-only crowds into a two-day rural county tour of the state last week. California Rep. Ro Khanna kicked off his multi-day swing Friday to promote his populist message to Black voters.
The 2028 Democratic primary calendar isn’t set yet, but presidential hopefuls are already making bets that South Carolina will hold a powerful role in the nomination process — even if it doesn't keep its number-one spot. While Iowa and New Hampshire are drawing some big names, no other state has seen as much action as this small Southern state.
And while these top Democrats credited their appearances to local invitations — and in the case of Beshear, his son’s baseball tournament in Charleston — the 2028 implications are clear. Democratic hopefuls road-tested stump speeches and previewed their lines of attack against Republicans and President Donald Trump, all with an eye toward introducing themselves to a set of influential voters.
“I'm out there trying to be a common ground, common sense, get-things-done type of messenger for this Democratic Party,” Beshear told elected officials and party officials in Charleston Thursday morning. “Because I believe that with what we're seeing coming out of Washington, D.C., the cruelty and the incompetence, that the path forward is right there in front of us.”
Christy Waddil, a 67-year-old Democratic voter who waited to shake Beshear’s hand Thursday night, said she was “excited” to meet all these potential contenders. But it’s a lot of responsibility to be the first state in the presidential primary calendar, she said: “We have our work cut out for us now.”
In June, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly spoke at an anti-gun event in Charleston to mark the grim anniversary of the Emanuel AME shooting. In May, Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Tim Walz of Minnesota headlined a pair of state party events to rub elbows with Rep. Jim Clyburn, the longtime South Carolina kingmaker whose nod helped anoint Joe Biden as the party’s nominee in 2020.
“It’s not a surprise,” said Clyburn when asked about the state’s revolving door of 2028 hopefuls nearly three years before the actual presidential primary. “Why argue with success? If it ain't broke, why fix it?”
South Carolina Democrats know their grip on the top spot is tenuous, with traditional early states like Iowa and New Hampshire eager to reclaim their lead-off position, and others —like North Carolina and Georgia — seeking to emerge as new states to consider. And it comes as there's been a major reshuffling on a powerful panel at the Democratic National Committee that has huge sway over the presidential nominating process.
“None of what those supposed candidates are doing right now is going to have any bearing on what the Rules and Bylaws Committee ultimately does for the calendar,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime member of the powerful panel. “That may or may not include all of the states that are in the early calendar now.”
Democrats haven't won the state in a general election since 1976, and President Donald Trump won it by 18 points last year.
It's led more competitive neighbors to wonder whether they should get top billing instead.
“[National Democrats] have a lot of mobility to get power back at the federal level by investing early in North Carolina. And I think a lot of people will hear that message loud and clear, especially after we just got our asses kicked,”said state party chair Anderson Clayton, who is interested in usurping its neighbor to the south and angling for one of the open at-large slots on the RBC. “The future of the state of the Democratic Party also runs right through North Carolina too.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker will deliver the keynote address at North Carolina's state party unity dinner on July 26, and state party leaders are in talks with Sens. Kelly of Arizona and Cory Booker of New Jersey about visits to the state later this year.
But moving the order of primary states is easier said than done. North Carolina is hamstrung by state law from moving its date, and Democrats would need the GOP-controlled legislature to agree to any changes. DNC members have also emphasized smaller states to allow lesser-known candidates to build followings.
“The most powerful force in the universe is inertia, so South Carolina is probably the favorite to stay just because of that,” said an incoming member of the committee granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. “Every state has a chance to be first, but I do think we have to come into this with a degree of realism.”
The DNC is attempting to remain neutral.
“The DNC is committed to running a fair, transparent, and rigorous process for the 2028 primary calendar. All states will have an opportunity to participate,” Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman said in a statement.
Iowa Democrats are also gearing up on a bid to restore their caucuses to their traditional spot as the nation's first presidential contest. Michigan replaced Iowa as the Midwestern early state in 2024.
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said she planned to have "tough and direct conversations" with the party in a statement, even as the DNC removed Iowa's only representative, Scott Brennan, from the Rules and Bylaws Committee this year.
Already, potential 2028 candidates have traveled there, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who held a town hall in Cedar Rapids in May. Walz stopped by the Hawkeye State in March, and former Japan Ambassador Rahm Emanuel and freshman Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego are both slated to visit the state in the coming months.
New Hampshire Democrats also openly clashed with top DNC officials last cycle — and plan to stick with their state law making it first primary in the nation. Pritzker went to an influential state party dinner there in April.
“The potential candidates on the Democratic side and, to some extent, the Republican side are coming through New Hampshire,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said in a brief interview.
The positioning at the national party over early states is already underway.
Party insiders are voting for the remaining open seats on the panel after DNC Chair Ken Martin named members to the governing body in recent weeks. Cardona said the goal of the committee is to ensure the strongest and most electable candidate emerges from what is expected to be a crowded field. Talks will begin on the next presidential primary calendar later this year, but will ramp up after the midterms.
South Carolina’s ascension was aimed at recognizing South Carolina’s significant Black electorate, long considered the backbone of the Democratic Party.
That’s partly why Khanna is there, he said in an interview on why he is focusing on reaching out to Black voters.
“I believe that’s critical for all the people who want to lead the Democratic Party, in whatever form, and to me it’s encouraging that people are going down to South Carolina” to reach them.
Beshear, too, expressed support for South Carolina’s representation, telling reporters that Democrats “need to make sure that the South is represented in the primary calendar” because “for too long, the investments haven't been made in places like Kentucky and in places like South Carolina.”
In defense of remaining in the early window, South Carolina Democrats are playing up the state’s diverse electorate and inexpensive media markets that could allow for the best presidential candidates — not just the best fundraisers — to emerge in a wide open presidential cycle in 2028.
“The Democratic primary for president is not based on the state's competitiveness in a general election,” said Parmley. “This is the same bullshit that loses us presidential elections, and we only play in eight competitive states.”
Lisa Kashinsky and Kelly Garrity contributed to this report.
The unlikely alliance of the populist left and right has strengthened over the Jeffrey Epstein controversy.
Leading the charge for Congress to vote on publicizing Epstein-related records are Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). The odd couple — a libertarian from rural Kentucky and a progressive from Silicon Valley — is piecing together Republican and Democratic support for the House to take an up-or-down vote on releasing the so-called Epstein files. If successful, their efforts would further complicate President Donald Trump’s ability to move on from the spiraling scandal that has angered his political base.
“I do believe that there are issues that populists on the right and left can collaborate on,” Khanna said in an interview. "In this case, it's about going after the corruption in our government. Rich and powerful men shouldn’t have impunity from accountability. And that's something that both people on the left and right are sick of.”
Discharge petitions, which allow any member of the House to force legislation to the floor if a majority of members agree, are usually a long shot. As of Friday afternoon, Massie, a frequent White House foil, and Khanna had convinced 10 Republicans and five Democrats to get on board as cosponsors. It’s not the first time they’ve teamed up: Massie and Khanna collaborated on legislation aiming to limit U.S. involvement in the wars in Yemen and Iran.
Their newest gambit would pay off if the entire Democratic caucus signs on — which Khanna guaranteed in a recent video clip. Democrats have been hungry to capitalize on Trump’s Epstein problem, given the president’s longstanding ties to the accused sex trafficker that were illuminated in a Wall Street Journal story this week. The paper focused on a letter Trump reportedly wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday. Trump denies he wrote the note, and POLITICO has not independently verified it. The president has never been accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.
Nevertheless, the political fallout has been widespread as it weds the divergent factions of Congress.
From conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to famed progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the cosponsors on Massie’s measure represent an eclectic mix of lawmakers who rarely agree on anything — or even speak to each other cordially. The list yokes one of the furthest left members of Congress, Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, with Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). And one Republican in a battleground district, Rep. Tom Barrett from Michigan, has also signed onto the push.
It’s not the first time that the populist left and right have converged: A handful of leaders on both sides have found agreement recently on wars in the Middle East, U.S. involvement in Israel, antitrust policies, artificial intelligence and the unaffordability of housing.
To that end, Khanna said he’s “exchanged a few texts” with MAGA godfather Steve Bannon, who has expressed support for a special counsel to examine the Epstein case. Their correspondence was “in the context of trying to stop the regime-change war in Iran,” Khanna said.
Asked for comment, Bannon listed Khanna as one of a group of figures on the populist left and right who have found common ground on “neo-Brandeisian antitrust.”
On X, Massie is keeping a live whip count of cosponsors for his proposal to release the Epstein files and encouraging his 1.3 million followers to ask their representatives if they support the idea. When Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Thursday the Justice Department will move to release grand jury transcripts — a decision seen as an attempt to appease the MAGA base — Massie declared: “Folks, Keep the pressure on, it’s working. But we want all the files.”
Should it come to pass, the resolution would be symbolic — Congress doesn’t have the power to force the Justice Department to release any information. But under procedural rules, action on the floor can’t take place until September, meaning that Trump's Epstein problem could linger in Congress for several more weeks.
Khanna said he has a “very friendly” relationship with Massie. The idea for the discharge petition came about after Khanna introduced an amendment to release the Epstein files, and Massie texted him to propose they draft a bill on the topic.
“We text back and forth all the time. I will often see him on the House floor, pick up the phone and call him,” he said. “Obviously, we come from different ideological perspectives, but there are areas where we have agreement in making sure that we’re preventing wars of choice overseas and transparency.”
A spokesperson for Massie declined to comment. Earlier this week, Massie said in an interview that the pressure will intensify on House Republicans over the upcoming recess.
“They probably want to let the steam out, but this will build momentum over August,” Massie said. “They can’t sweep it under the rug.”
It’s not the first time Massie, often an iconoclast in his party, has found strange bedfellows in Democrats. He and other conservatives joined forces with libertarian-minded and anti-interventionist lawmakers on digital privacy and war powers measures. And just last month, he teamed up with Khanna on a measure to reign in Trump’s ability to use military force in the Iran-Israel conflict.
“It is very on brand for Thomas Massie to stick with his position, even under pressure,” said Marisa McNee, a Democratic strategist from Massie’s northern Kentucky district. “The thing that bugs his party about him is that he’s sort of unwavering once he has a position on something.”
Massie, who is up for re-election next year, has easily survived primary challenges. But he’s become a top target for Trump’s allies angered by his choice to break party lines and vote against the megabill.
Meanwhile, Democrats are angling to exploit their opposing party's wedge over Epstein. As Democratic lawmakers filtered into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday, one chanted “Epstein, Epstein, Epstein,” and Democrats frequently heckled their GOP counterparts as the House debated clawbacks of public media and foreign aid overnight.
House Democrats reveled this week in the pressure they and Massie applied to the GOP, underscored by a group of Rules Committee Republicans huddling with Speaker Mike Johnson for hours Thursday in search of political cover.
Republicans advanced their own non-binding resolution calling for the release of a limited scope of Epstein-related documents, while voting down a Democratic amendment to advance Massie’s bipartisan legislation.
“We'll determine what happens with all that. There's a lot developing,” Johnson told reporters, after declining to commit to put the GOP resolution to a full House vote.
The Epstein controversy is the latest example of Massie creating a major headache for his fellow Republicans, following his opposition to the megabill. Just a few weeks ago, Trump and Massie actually appeared headed to a sort of political truce. But it was short-lived.
House Republicans said Trump appeared to blow up the detente he and Massie struck during a late-night call to advance the struggling megabill on the House floor last month.
Shortly after, in a move that shocked some Republicans on Capitol HIll, Trump allies poured millions into a PAC attacking Massie, three House Republicans said this week as the Epstein chaos swirled. Trump allies say they wanted Massie to vote for the megabill final passage itself, not just the procedural move to advance it.
Massie going after Trump on Epstein “probably has the virtue of being able to poke Trump in the eye and appeal to important aspects of the base," said former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a Republican. "It makes sense he's engaging."
Nicholas Wu, Meredith Lee Hill and Mia McCarthy contributed reporting.
Sen. Eric Schmitt says isolationist label 'is a slur'
https://www.politico.com/video/2025/07/19/sen-eric-schmitt-says-isolationist-label-is-a-slur-1686299
President Donald Trump would like to see a “better option” than Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins to represent the state. He probably can’t get one.
The moderate GOP senator causes frequent headaches for the White House when it comes to securing her crucial vote, which is needed to pass key elements of Trump’s agenda.
That’s led White House officials to discuss a potential Collins replacement in the state if she opts not to run for reelection, though there are no thoughts of actually launching a primary challenge.
But in a state that continues to trend blue, local Republicans warned, Collins is effectively the lone Republican who can fend off high-level Democratic challengers in the state. Republicans point to her seniority in the upper chamber and appropriations role as unique advantages no other candidate would match. And while Collins may frustrate the MAGA wing, a different Republican more in line with Trump’s agenda would also be much more likely to lose the seat.
For Collins to drop out “may be for very conservative people a wish list item,” said Andre Cushing, a Penobscot County commissioner and former Republican state senator.
“But, candidly, I think she’s made her announcement and she is the kind of person that doesn’t do those things lightly,” Cushing said. “She certainly has my support even when I disagree with her.”
Collins’ unique position in Maine shows the limits of Trump's political power. The president has been fiddling with all levers of the midterms equation — ordering Texas Republicans to redraw a map, pressuring battleground House Republicans to seek reelection rather than run for higher office and now exploring primary challenges against the handful of incumbents who have bucked him. Collins, the Senate Appropriations Chair, has been frustrated by White House attempts to clawback spending that she supports, and has been vocal about her disagreements.
There appears to be little appetite — in either party — for challenging Collins, who won reelection by 9 points in 2020, despite Joe Biden easily winning the state.
That victory, which followed record Democratic spending and a wave of public polls suggesting Collins would lose, has left Democrats facing their own struggles to find a formidable challenger this year, even as they point to her dipping approval rating.
Top Maine Democrats including former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who ran against Collins in 2014, have opted to run for the state’s open governorship instead. Rep. Jared Golden of the 2nd District is running for reelection.
That has left national Democrats without a top recruit in what should be one of their most competitive offensive targets. Gov. Janet Mills, who is term-limited, would be their top recruit. But Mills, 77, is older than Collins, 72, and the two women have generally had a good working relationship. The Democratic governor doesn't seem eager for what would likely be a bruising Senate battle.
Even as some Republicans in Washington grow frustrated with Collins, there is no appetite to primary her back home.
“I don't think any reasonable person that might be interested in that position would think about challenging her,” said Maine GOP strategist Alex Titcomb.
Collins has already publicly indicated plans to run for reelection. Her fundraising surged in the second quarter of the year, according to campaign finance reports filed this week. And a super PAC planning to back her said it raised $5.6 million so far this year. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is already cutting digital ads for Collins.
Democrats' best hope to flip the seat would be if Collins did not seek reelection. Republicans would have to scramble in their attempts to find a replacement — she is the only GOP candidate to win statewide in Maine since 2014.
“Everybody knows that Susan Collins is a gift to the Republican Party in Maine,” said Garrett Mason, the former Maine Senate majority leader and GOP gubernatorial candidate.
Collins has ruffled some GOP feathers in the first six months of Trump’s term with high-profile votes to oppose his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the sprawling “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
A similar dynamic played out during Trump’s first term in office, when conservatives slammed her vote against the Affordable Care Act repeal. But Collins largely rallied the Republican base in her favor for her 2020 reelection campaign, even earning an endorsement from former Gov. Paul LePage, who had previously been critical of her.
But Republicans in the state know that when it comes to Maine’s Senate seat, there is no “better option.” A Collins retirement — or primary loss — likely means the GOP loses the seat. And many in the state still pride themselves on her senior status in the Senate, something even another Republican could not immediately replicate.
“If someone were able to run against her and by chance beat her, that would be a really bad thing for Maine,” said Mason, the former majority leader. “But I just don’t see that happening. That’s not what’s on the ground here.”
Arizona Democrats voted late Wednesday to boot their embattled party chair, Robert E. Branscomb II, ending a brief tenure that was defined by infighting. Statewide officials had already redirected their campaign efforts through a county party amid the squabbling.
The party voted 476-56 after hours of delays, clearing the required two-thirds threshold by eight votes.
Branscomb defended himself until the very end, telling attendees on the call that the effort to remove him was “rooted in misrepresentation, divisive tactics and does not reflect our democratic values.”
The controversy surrounding Branscomb dates back to April, when he sent a letter to members of the state committee that attacked Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego and aired private disagreements among them.
In response, all of the state’s top elected Democrats said in a letter that Branscomb “lost their trust.”
Gov. Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes — who are all up for reelection in 2026 — went on to create a statewide coordinated campaign to circumvent the state party, a prospect POLITICO first reported in April.
Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia, maintains a double-digit lead over her Republican opponent, according to a new poll from Virginia Commonwealth University.
The survey, conducted between June 19 and July 3, found that 49 percent of registered voters support Spanberger, with 37 percent saying they would vote for GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears if the election were held today. That’s an even bigger lead than Spanberger enjoyed in Commonwealth’s December poll, which had Earle-Sears trailing her by 10 percentage points.
The poll also found that the cost of living continues to dominate as voters’ top concern, with reproductive rights and immigration also ranking high among Virginians’ priorities. Spanberger, who represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District from 2019 to 2025 after serving in the CIA, is leaning into the issue by touting an “Affordable Virginia Plan” that lays out her vision for lowering housing, energy and health care costs.
The centrist Democrat enjoys an even wider lead among young voters, with respondents aged 18-24 years old siding with the Democrat by a margin of 31 percentage points. Her campaign also outraised Earle-Sears’ by more than $4 million in the last three months, raking in over $10 million between April and June, according to a report filed Tuesday with the Virginia State Board of Elections.
The Commonwealth survey polled 764 registered voters via landline and cell phone. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Sen. Eric Schmitt praises Pam Bondi, declines to opine on Epstein case | The Conversation
President Donald Trump wants lawmakers in Texas to redraw the state’s congressional district map to give Republicans five more House seats, he told reporters Tuesday.
“There could be some other states we’re going to get another three, or four or five in addition. Texas would be the biggest one.” he said. “Just a simple redrawing we pick up five seats.”
The White House and Department of Justice pushed for the redistricting, POLITICO reported Friday, and Gov. Greg Abbott asked state leaders to do it during a summer special session. The move is seen as an opportunity for Republicans to prevent Democrats from flipping the house back in 2026, but some see it as a dangerous risk.
Democrats currently control 12 of Texas’s 38 congressional districts. A 13th district anchored by downtown Houston is currently vacant but was controlled by Democrats until the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner last March.
Putting more Republican voters in Democratic districts would make those races more competitive, but it also removes those voters from their current Republican districts, diluting the GOP advantage. Those shifts could create the potential for Democrats to win more seats in Texas than they otherwise might.
“They are playing a little bit of roulette with these maps,” said Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas). “In a wave election like what we have a potential opportunity for in ‘26, I think it makes these Republicans very vulnerable.”
Trump’s allusion to “other states” likely includes Ohio, which is required by law to draw new congressional maps this year and could give Republicans up to three more seats. It is unclear which other states he sees as opportunities for midterm pickups.
A messy fight between the current and former leadership of Vote.org is escalating.
Debra Cleaver, the nonprofit’s founder, said she has filed complaints with four states’ attorneys general alleging that the high-profile voter registration group has defrauded donors, including by vastly inflating the number of voters it could register in 2024, financial mismanagement and using charitable funds for the personal benefit of its current CEO.
The allegations follow a wrongful termination suit from Cleaver over her firing in 2019 and have prompted a new threat of litigation from the group over what it called a “sustained and vindictive campaign rooted in misinformation.”
Vote.org counsel Vanessa Avery, a partner at McCarter and English, vigorously denied the claims by Cleaver, saying they were “categorically false.”
In the 28-page complaint, shared first with POLITICO, Cleaver alleged there was no serious plan for the group to deliver on its pledge to register 8 million voters for the 2024 cycle, which would have been more than the total number of voters it had registered during its entire 14-year history. Vote.org ended up registering 2.2 million voters in the 2024 cycle.
Cleaver, who now runs a similar group called VoteAmerica, filed the complaint with the attorneys generals of New York, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia. POLITICO independently verified all filings except the one in Georgia. Among her claims: that the group originally set an internal goal to register 6 million voters, but that was increased to 8 million to avoid the “symbolism of 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.”
“The fact that Vote.org ultimately failed to register 8 million voters is inconsequential to the organization, because that was never the true goal,” Cleaver said in the complaint. “The goal was staying afloat, attracting donor attention, and retaining relevance through the illusion of scale.”
The organization is one of the biggest nonpartisan voter registration vehicles in the country, but it has come under scrutiny in recent years over its internal management. The complaint points to the example of Taylor Swift, who previously worked with the group. But last year, when Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, she directed fans to go to Vote.gov to register instead of plugging Vote.org. The complaint alleges a Daily Mail story on internal turmoil at the group helped cause Swift to avoid touting the organization again. (A Swift spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Vote.org’s spending and alleged internal dysfunction was also the subject of a Chronicle of Philanthropy investigation last year.
The complaint also alleges that donor money was inappropriately used to pay for Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey’s personal travel and notes a jump in expenses on Vote.org’s “travel conferences and meetings” totaling more than $275,000 in 2023. It also notes that IRS documents show that Vote.org spent almost $600,000 on legal fees in 2023 versus $89,000 in 2019 as the organization fought wrongful termination lawsuits from Cleaver and another employee.
In the Cleaver case, she sued Vote.org and one of its human resources vendors. The suit between Cleaver and Vote.org was dismissed with prejudice with both parties dropping their claims and no money was exchanged between Vote.org and Cleaver, according to the settlement agreement. The agreement shows the HR vendor paid her $50,000 in a separate deal which said Vote.org would not reimburse the vendor.
The attorneys general complaints also made claims, which POLITICO has not independently verified, that Vote.org has paid for private security for Hailey even though Cleaver says staff haven’t received any threats against Hailey. Vote.org told the Daily Mail that Hailey did receive threats.
“For the past six years, she has organized a sustained and vindictive campaign rooted in misinformation, aimed at discrediting this organization and its leadership,” Avery, the Vote.org counsel, said in a statement.
“Her wrongful termination lawsuit was withdrawn with prejudice, and she is now resorting to even more desperate and baseless tactics. We will be filing a defamation claim in the near future and will vigorously defend against these lies.” She also said that they have emailed the state attorneys generals to rebut her claims.
Avery defended the high voter registration target for 2024, which Vote.org did not meet. “Successful organizations set ambitious goals -- no one aims for underperformance,” she said. “We set bold targets because the stakes are high.” She said the group has registered more voters than any other organization in American history; Score could not independently verify this.
When asked why she filed the complaints, Cleaver told Score in a statement: “As the founder, I would like nothing more than Vote.org to succeed. Unfortunately, for five years now Vote.org has been racked by a series of financial, governance, and ethical lapses.”
A spokesperson for the New York attorney general’s office said they’ve “received the complaint and are reviewing.” Spokespeople for the other states’ attorneys generals didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, is a longtime immigration law enforcement official now tasked with helping implement the administration’s massive deportation campaign.
In a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, Homan explains what will be done with the $170 billion recently passed by Congress to help the effort, defends the tactics of ICE agents, and has a message for those who say undocumented farmworkers should be spared.
“People who say ‘don't arrest workers,’ they don't understand the whole ugly underbelly of illegal immigration the way I do,” he tells Burns.
Plus, on the one year anniversary of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, PA, journalist Salena Zito shares her first-hand account as described in her new book, “Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland.”
Listen and subscribe to The Conversation with Dasha Burns on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Democrat Josh Cowen is launching a bid by highlighting education and affordability issues in what is already becoming a crowded primary in a tossup Michigan district.
Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, singled out the school choice and voucher programs pushed by Michigan Republicans like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as part of what inspired him to run for Michigan's 7th Congressional District in the central part of the state.
“I'm a teacher, and I have been fighting Betsy DeVos across the country on a specific issue, and that's privatizing public schools,” Cowen said in an interview. “She's been trying to disinvest, defund commitments to kids and families all over the place, and that's actually the same fight as everything that's going on right now — trying to protect investing in health care through Medicaid and other systems — protect jobs.”
Several Democrats have already announced bids against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who flipped the seat last cycle after Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) vacated it to run for Senate. He could be a tough incumbent for Democrats to dislodge and reported raising over $1 million last quarter.
Still, Democrats see the narrowly divided seat as a top pickup opportunity next year, with former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink and retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam among the field of candidates running. Cowen brushed off concerns about a contested primary, saying, “They're going to run their campaigns. I'm going to run mine.”
“I am going to be running really hard on the fact that I am in this community. I've been here for 12 years. My kids went to public schools here. My youngest is still there,” he added.
Elon Musk declared the launch of his new political party on Saturday, a project he has repeatedly floated in the weeks since his explosive breakup with President Donald Trump — but provided no details as to how he planned to jump through the hoops necessary to establish a viable alternative.
The billionaire entrepreneur and onetime Republican megadonor — who mere months ago appeared as the president’s right-hand man in the Oval Office after pouring millions into his campaign — has for weeks publicly contemplated starting a new third party to disrupt the current system.
Musk on Saturday appeared to confirm his intention to launch his “America Party,” after posting a poll to his X account the prior day asking followers whether or not he should create the new party.
“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” he wrote. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
Musk’s third-party musings began in earnest after last month’s massive meltdown between the president and his former adviser over the “big beautiful bill,” which the former DOGE head has decried as wasteful.
As Trump on Thursday flaunted his successful push to muscle the Republican megabill through Congress this week, Musk sought to drum up support for his potential third party launch, positing that his new party would target a handful of vulnerable swing seats to leverage political power.
“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” he wrote.
While Musk may have the millions to pour into backing certain candidates — which he has already promised to do, pledging to support Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) reelection campaign amid targeting from Trump — establishing a third party involves a series of thorny obstacles including navigating complex state laws, ballot access regulations and other legal hoops.
So far, the billionaire would-be party founder has yet to outline a concrete plan forward. Just two months ago, Musk had vowed to cut back on political spending, saying he had “done enough.”
Democrats believe President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spend megabill gives them a heavy cudgel ahead of the 2026 midterms. Now they have to effectively wield it as they try to reclaim the House.
Ad-makers have quickly prepped attack ads to air as soon as the holiday weekend is over, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. House Democrats are plotting to turn the August recess into the opening salvo of the midterms, including through town halls and organizing programs.
And Democrats see an opportunity to expand the battleground, going on offense into red areas across the country. The bill that passed Thursday has already triggered a spike in candidate interest deep into Trump territory, House Majority PAC said. Separately, Democrats are digging into a round of candidate recruitment targeting a half-dozen House districts Trump won by high single or double digits, according to a person directly familiar with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s plan and granted anonymity to describe private conversations. They’re recruiting Democrats to challenge Reps. Ann Wagner of Missouri, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Kevin Kiley of California, Nick LaLota of New York and Jeff Crank of Colorado
“There's almost nothing about this bill that I'm going [to] have a hard time explaining to the district,” said Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who represents a district Trump won by 9 points. “This is a giant tax giveaway to wealthy people. Everyone fucking knows it.”
Democrats’ renewed bravado comes after months in the political wilderness, following sweeping losses across the country last year. And it’s not just the megabill’s consequences that give them electoral hope.
Leading to Thursday’s vote was a series of moves they believe portend success: North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who criticized the bill for its steep Medicaid cuts before voting against it, announced his plans to not seek reelection last weekend. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents one of the three GOP-held districts that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, also announced his plans to not run for reelection. That opened up two top midterm battleground races in one weekend.
Democrats have also been far more in sync with their pushback in recent days after months of struggling to unify around a coherent message during Trump’s second term. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ record-setting speech on the House floor Thursday morning mirrored those of several Democratic candidates who mentioned Medicaid cuts in their campaign launches this week.
Next they have to spread the message farther, as polling shows many Americans aren’t yet aware of the megabill and its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs. And Democrats privately acknowledge that as voters learn more, the party needs to stretch its House battlefield to chart a path back to power.
“No Democrat is going to nationally define this bill in six weeks, so we have to build a drumbeat. You do that by having 70 to 75 campaigns, because then you’re localizing the attack across the country,” the person directly familiar with the DCCC’s plans said. “We don’t have that yet. In reality, there are maybe 24 to 30 districts with good campaigns going right now.”
Tina Shah, a doctor who launched her bid against Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) this week, attacked Republicans for “gut[ting] Medicaid,” and Matt Maasdam, a former Navy SEAL who is challenging Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), said “the price of healthcare is gonna go up … all to line the pocketbooks of billionaires.”
Some Democratic strategists are urging the party to capitalize on this momentum even more aggressively.
“We need to be doing early, paid communications on this — not just the same old cable buys, token digital buys in swing districts and press conferences,” said Ian Russell, a Democratic consultant who served as the DCCC’s political director in 2014 and 2016. “Democrats need to take some risks here, mobilize early, spend money they may not have because voters' views harden over time, and this is when we can shape it.”
In 2024, Democrats failed to break through with their message after President Joe Biden dug the party into a hole with voters on the economy. Trump successfully cast himself as focused on bringing down costs while painting Kamala Harris as overly obsessed with social issues like protecting transgender people. Harris, for her part, ran a scatter-shot, three-month messaging blitz that jumped from cost-of-living to abortion rights to Trump’s threats to democracy, which ultimately didn’t move voters.
Republicans, for their part, plan to emphasize the megabill’s tax cuts, especially those on tips and overtime, and increased funding for border security. On Medicaid cuts, they hope to neutralize Democrats’ attacks by casting them as reforms: tightened work requirements and efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, a pair of Medicaid-related changes that generally polls well among voters.
“This vote cemented House Democrats’ image as elitist, disconnected, snobby, unconcerned with the problems Americans face in their daily lives, and most of all — out of touch,” said NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella in a statement. “House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026, and we will use every tool to show voters that Republicans stood with them while House Democrats sold them out.”
But as Republicans look to sell their bill, public polling on it is bleak. Most Americans disapprove of it, in some polls by a two-to-one margin, according to surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Washington Post, Pew Research and Fox News.
Meanwhile a pair of Democratic groups, Priorities USA and Navigator Research, released surveys this week showing majorities of voters aren’t fully aware of the megabill. Nearly half of Americans said they hadn’t heard anything about the bill, according to Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC. Of those who had heard about it, only 8 percent said they knew Medicaid cuts were included in the legislation.
Two-thirds of survey respondents who self-identified as passive or avoidant news consumers, the kinds of tuned out and low-information voters Democrats failed to win in 2024, said they knew nothing about the bill.
“We have a lot more work to do as a party to communicate the impacts of this bill to voters who are tuning out politics,” said Danielle Butterfield, Priorities USA executive director.
Butterfield urged Democrats to “get beyond the stats” and “start collecting storytellers.” Then, start putting ads online, particularly on YouTube, not just traditional TV ads.
“We need to put a face on this as soon as possible,” she said.
Among those potential faces is Nathan Sage, a first-time candidate and Iraq War veteran who is challenging Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst. Sage grew up occasionally relying on food assistance, another program that will be cut in the GOP bill, and has said he’s already hearing from Iowans who “feel that they were duped into believing the Republican agenda when it first came out, because they were talking about no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime. That's things that working class people want.”
“Until they start hearing [how it] is actually going to affect them, when they do hear that, that's when the outrage happens,” Sage said in an interview.
Iowa, once a perennial battleground, is now solidly red, as Democrats have consistently lost white, working class voters there. Sage and Democratic pollster Brian Stryker argued the megabill opens a path to winning them back
The Medicaid cuts “enable us to have an issue that’s salient, substantive that’s on the side of working class people,” Stryker said. In 2024, 49 percent of Medicaid recipients voted for Trump, while 47 percent backed Harris, according to polling from Morning Consult.
“I hope that this does wake up the working class, does wake up people to understand — listen, they don't care about us,” Sage said, “and the only way that we are ever going to get out of the situation is to elect working class candidates to represent us, to fight for us, because they are us.”
Andrew Howard contributed reporting.
Brian Fitzpatrick’s survival mechanism as a battleground House Republican entails occasionally distancing himself from his own MAGA-controlled party.
On Thursday he took that to the next level by voting against President Donald Trump’s megabill amid an unrelenting pressure campaign from the White House.
The head-turning move made Fitzpatrick one of just two House Republicans to buck the party on the president’s signature domestic policy legislation that some in the GOP fear is worsening their political outlook ahead of the 2026 midterms. Over the past few days, two congressional Republicans in swing seats announced they were not running for reelection. Fitzpatrick belongs to a GOP trio representing districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris captured, and Democrats are once again eyeing him as a top target next year when they try to reclaim the House.
Fitzpatrick’s break with Trump over his key legislation also carries major risks of intra-party backlash. On Thursday, some MAGA influencers were already threatening a primary challenge.
“He has now gained the ability to say, ‘I am not a rubber stamp to Trump. I will vote against his agenda when I believe it’s the right thing to do,” said Mike Conallen, Fitzpatrick’s former chief of staff. “But given the inclination of the president and his supporters to basically go after anybody who doesn’t support them, you’ve now become potentially the lighting rod for all those MAGA individuals and the president himself.”
Fitzpatrick attributed his vote to changes made by the Senate, which deepened the cuts included in initial bill language he had backed.
“I voted to strengthen Medicaid protections, to permanently extend middle-class tax cuts, for enhanced small business tax relief, and for historic investments in our border security and our military,” he said in a statement. “However, it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis.”
It was a shocking move even for Fitzpatrick.
First elected in 2016, he has cultivated a brand as a moderate Republican who supported former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package, won the endorsement of a major gun-control group, and regularly visited mosques in his district. He has at times even downplayed his affiliation with the Republican Party, calling himself “a fiercely independent voice.” His X header reads, “Defend Democracy. Vote Bipartisan.”
Still, many Republicans were shocked Wednesday night when he broke with the party on a procedural vote to move the legislation to a final vote, particularly because he had backed the earlier version of it weeks prior. They said he had not explained his opposition to them, even as other initially resistant Republicans went public with their concerns.
“I was surprised,” Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) said. “And I do not know what his objection was.”
Some speculated his stance might be related to a letter he wrote to Trump this week opposing the administration’s halt of some weapons to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Fitzpatrick’s curveball briefly set off a scramble to find him, with the congressman reportedly bolting from the chamber and House Speaker Mike Johnson appearing to tell Fox News he was looking for him. Even some of Fitzpatrick’s fellow members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation were taken aback by his decision.
“You’ll have to ask him,” Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), who is eyeing a gubernatorial run, said in response to a question about the vote.
A Democrat hasn’t held Fitzpatrick’s prized Bucks County-based seat since his late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, reclaimed it from then-Rep. Patrick Murphy in 2010. In the past, Democrats have fielded candidates who lacked electoral experience or were an otherwise imperfect fit to take on this durable incumbent. But they believe they have finally recruited a top contender to run against Fitzpatrick in a county commissioner named Bob Harvie, who has shown the ability to win the battleground county, which comprises most of the district.
“They’re scared. They know this bill is unpopular,” Harvie said of Republicans, arguing Fitzpatrick’s vote was “too little, too late” and “the only reason it got to the Senate is because he voted for it.”
A pro-Fitzpatrick super PAC, Defending America PAC, quickly released a statement Thursday casting the vote as proof of his bipartisan leanings and touting his record of “winning a seat for Republicans in a district carried by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton,” and slamming Harvie for "bitching and moaning with no solutions of his own."
Even for Fitzpatrick, though, his vote was particularly a lonely one.
Only he and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a longtime gadfly for Trump, voted against the megabill on Thursday. And Fitzpatrick was the sole Republican who did not support clearing Wednesday night’s procedural hurdle to advance the bill and didn’t back down under pressure. A handful of other Republicans initially cast votes against it, but switched them at the last minute.
Fitzpatrick’s allies said he’s proven adept at navigating the complicated political cross-currents in his swing district. And sometimes, they said, that means upsetting his party.
“Working with Brian over the years, he’s very aware of his district,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.). “And he’s very aware of where he should be when he’s representing them.”
Kelly said Thursday he has not spoken with Fitzpatrick about his vote but has “no problem” with it.
Some MAGA activists weren’t as forgiving.
Conservative influencer Nick Sortor posted on the social media platform X on Wednesday, “ATTENTION PEOPLE OF PENNSYLVANIA’S 1ST DISTRICT: Your Congressman @RepBrianFitz SOLD YOU OUT.”
Pro-Trump activist Scott Presler likewise wrote on X, “Yes, I am aware that Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA01) voted NO to the Big Beautiful Bill. Message received. CC: Bucks County.”
Democrats would be delighted if Fitzpatrick faced a messy, expensive primary.
Fitzpatrick has easily fended off challenges from Republicans running to his right. But they have lacked institutional support — namely Trump’s endorsement. Trump and his operation backing a primary opponent would present a new challenge for Fitzpatrick.
For weeks Trump has attacked Massie and promised to try to oust him, while his team launched a super PAC to unseat him.
The criticism from the White House was relatively tame in the hours after Fitzpatrick’s dissent. Trump told reporters that he was “disappointed” by the lawmaker's vote, but declined to immediately call for a primary challenge. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
And Republican House leaders appear to be sticking by Fitzpatrick. After eventually finding him, Johnson told reporters he had spoken with him “at length” and “he just has convictions about certain provisions of the bill — he’s entitled to that.”
But Fitzpatrick’s opposition extends beyond his usual maneuvers, thus presenting a test for the modern-day GOP: Can a party that demands total loyalty to Trump stomach someone who occasionally defies the president in order to keep their congressional majority?
More often than not in recent years, the answer to that question has been no.
Rep. Don Bacon, a frequent Trump critic who represents another Harris district in Nebraska, announced this week that he would not run for reelection. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina also said Sunday he'd step down after Trump vowed to back a primary challenger against him because he opposed the megabill.
An ally of President Donald Trump and former Department of Government Efficiency adviser James Fishback on Tuesday is launching a super PAC called FSD PAC designed to blunt Elon Musk’s political ambitions.
FSD PAC, a play on Tesla’s “full self-driving,” stands for Full Support for Donald.
Its strategy is to be a bulwark against Musk’s threats — real or perceived, and comes as multiple Republicans shrug off the latest social media spat as little to worry about in a world where Trump so thoroughly commands the loyalty of the GOP base.
The PAC will spend money in any race where Musk follows through on his plan to bankroll a third-party hopeful, or where he backs a Democrat or a Republican primary challenge against a Trump-endorsed incumbent. The goal: ensure that Musk’s deep pockets don’t undermine Trump’s grip on the GOP.“There's real frustration in our movement with Elon and his antics,” said Fishback, who stepped away from DOGE last month after Musk lashed out at Trump. “I'm a big believer in what he's doing in the private sector. But when it comes to politics, he's dead wrong on this.”
Fishback, who is represented by Lex Politica, the same firm that represents Musk and his SuperPAC AmericaPAC, is putting $1 million of his own money into his PAC.
FSD PAC’s formation comes amid an intensifying standoff between the world’s wealthiest man and the Republican party. Musk, the GOP’s largest individual donor, has publicly threatened to start his own party, the “America Party,” if Congress passes Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package, known as the Big Beautiful Bill.
The Senate passed that bill on Tuesday and it could land on the president’s desk this week.Trump on Tuesday, said he wasn’t concerned Republicans would be swayed by Musk or his money. “I don't think he should be playing that game with me,” the president said.A Trump ally added that he was not too concerned about Musk’s threats, noting his lackluster track record of political endorsements.
“A guy named Elon Musk tried to play Kingmaker in the 2024 Republican primary by backing Ron DeSanctimonious,” said the person who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Musk also spent millions to sway a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, including handing out million-dollar checks to two Wisconsin voters, but the Democrat won handily anyway.“For it to have any impact, you’d have to have Republicans leaving the Republican Party of President Trump and joining a new party just so they can take a check from Elon,” said a Republican strategist granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “I just don’t see that happening.”
And FSD is just one of several pro-Trump organizations ready to attack Republicans deemed disloyal. Just last week, another pro-Trump group, MAGA Kentucky, aired a TV ad against Rep. Thomas Massie, one of only two House Republicans who voted against the president’s marquee legislation. The 30-second spot targets Massie for voting against legislation that cuts taxes and funds border security, and puts him alongside Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Musk has been criticizing the legislation for weeks but his attacks have ramped up over the past few days as the legislation gets closer to the finish line. The owner of Tesla and X said that conservative lawmakers who support the bill “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth” and said he “will” support Massie.
Trump escalated the rhetoric on Tuesday morning, telling reporters that his administration “will have to take a look” at deporting Musk, a South African native and naturalized U.S. citizen. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said, referring to the agency at the center of his government-shrinking agenda.
Musk, for his part, responded on X: “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”
Irie Sentner contributed to this report.
Former Rep. Colin Allred is jumping back into the Texas Senate race, after losing to Ted Cruz eight months ago.
In a video released Tuesday, Allred, who flipped a red-leaning district in 2018, pledged to take on “politicians like [Texas Sen.] John Cornyn and [Attorney General] Ken Paxton,” who “are too corrupt to care about us and too weak to fight for us,” while pledging to run on an “anti-corruption plan.”
Democrats are hopeful that a messy Republican primary — pitting Cornyn against Paxton, who has weathered multiple scandals in office and leads in current polling — could yield an opening for a party in search of offensive opportunities. But unlike in 2024, when Allred ran largely unopposed in the Senate Democratic primary, Democrats are poised to have a more serious and crowded primary field, which could complicate their shot at flipping the reliably red state.
Former astronaut Terry Virts announced his bid last week, when he took a swing at both parties in his announcement video. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) has voiced interest, while former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018 and 2022, has been headlining packed town halls. State Rep. James Talarico told POLITICO he’s “having conversations about how I can best serve Texas.”
Allred, a former NFL player turned congressman, leaned heavily into his biography for his launch video. He retold the story of buying his mom a house once he turned pro, but said, “you shouldn’t have to have a son in the NFL to own a home.”
“Folks who play by the rules and keep the faith just can’t seem to get ahead. But the folks who cut corners and cut deals — well, they’re doing just fine,” Allred continued. “I know Washington is broken. The system is rigged. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In six years in Congress, I never took a dime of corporate PAC money, never traded a single stock.”
Turning Texas blue has long been a dream for Democrats, who argued the state’s increasing diversity will help them eventually flip it. But Trump’s significant inroads with Latino voters in Texas, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, may impede those hopes. Of the 10 counties that shifted the farthest right from the 2012 to 2024 presidential elections, seven are in Texas, according to a New York Times analysis, including double-digit improvements in seven heavily Latino districts.
Early polling has found Allred leading Paxton by one percentage point in a head-to-head contest — though he trailed Cornyn by six points. The polling, commissioned by Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP leadership-aligned super PAC that supports Cornyn, underscored Paxton’s general election weakness while showing Cornyn losing to Paxton in the GOP primary.
SAN FRANCISCO — A former longtime friend of Elon Musk has a word of caution for President Donald Trump about the tech mogul: He doesn’t really move on.
Philip Low, an award-winning neuroscientist who partnered with the late, legendary cosmologist Stephen Hawking as a test subject, learned that the hard way in 2021 when he fired Musk, one of his early investors, from the advisory board of the Silicon Valley startup he founded.
Over an hour-long interview, Low weaved something of a psychological portrait of his former adviser, casting him as obsessive, prone to seeking revenge, power hungry and in constant search of dominance. He suggested Musk aims to explore every available avenue to establish competition with and ultimately overshadow bitter rivals. Low has known him for 14 years but doesn’t believe Musk has matured over time, and he’s convinced he never will.
Though the two continued to speak for years after Low fired him, Low felt that Musk carried a grudge and their bond was permanently altered. It finally snapped in January when Low joined other critics in accusing the billionaire on social media of performing Nazi salutes at Trump’s inaugural rally. Musk brushed off the public backlash as “sooo” tired.
“I’ve had my share of blowouts with Elon over the years,” Low told POLITICO in a rare interview since Musk’s ugly spat with Trump. “Knowing Elon the way I know him, I do think he's going to do everything to damage the president.”
Musk did not respond to multiple requests for comment directed to him and his businesses X, Tesla and SpaceX. A spokesperson for his super PAC, America PAC, declined to comment.
Musk and Trump’s made-for-TV breakup erupted earlier this month over the president’s megabill that is still moving through Congress. Complete with threats, nonstop X posts and conspiracy-laced insults, their feud hit a peak after Trump mused about canceling the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s government contracts.
In response, Musk unloaded on the social media platform he owns by trashing the president’s megabill, floating support of a third party, chiding him for “ingratitude,” taking credit for his election win and even insinuating in a now-deleted post that records of the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein "have not been made public" because Trump is in them.
(While it has long been public that Trump and other prominent figures are referenced in documents released in cases surrounding Epstein, Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.)
Both sides now say tensions have cooled. The White House is eager to move on, with Trump telling reporters he’ll keep Starlink internet and wishing Musk well. Musk, for his part, admitted some of his posts got out of hand and offered an apology a week later.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement, “Politico’s fixation on another palace intrigue non-story is laughable and fundamentally unserious. The President is focused on Making America Great Again by securing our border, turning the economy around, and pursuing peace around the globe.”
But Low, who considers himself a political independent, said that Trump and the American public shouldn’t be fooled. Simply put: Any reconciliation with Musk will be “purely cosmetic” and transactional.
“He has been humiliated,” Low, 45, said of his old friend. “The whole idea that Elon is going to be on his side and help woo Congress and invest in election campaigns for right-wing judges — Elon might do all of that, but deep down, it's over.”
Low has observed that Trump, on the other hand, “tends to make up with his former sparring partners like [Steve] Bannon a bit more easily than Elon does,” though the president is known for returning to his grievances as well.
As he tells it, Musk and Low became fast friends after first meeting in 2011 at a social occasion in Paris. Their relationship deepened over late nights in Los Angeles — where Musk lived at the time — spent hanging out, attending each other’s parties, texting frequently and trading stories about personal struggles.
Musk asked to invest in the company Low built around a non-invasive brain monitoring device used to detect conditions like sleep apnea and neurological disorders. He participated in NeuroVigil’s 2015 funding round and joined its advisory board. Low had already gained attention as a young innovator, launched a NASA satellite lab and demoed how his technology could translate Hawking's brain waves into speech.
Musk gave Low some pointers as the neuroscientist was preparing to visit the White House for the first time, as a guest of former President Barack Obama. “He said ‘he’s a human being like anybody else,’” Low recounted. “He views Trump sort of the same way, just a human being.”
During Trump’s first term, as Musk was also grappling with how to balance Tesla’s business interests against policy disagreements with the administration, Low returned the advice and recommended he step away from White House advisory councils he served on to protect the automaker’s brand. Musk ultimately did in 2017 after Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
A few years later, in 2021, Musk was looking to pull out of another business arrangement. He wanted off NeuroVigil’s advisory board. Instead of letting him resign, Low said he fired Musk, which prevented him from exercising his stock options to hurt NeuroVigil.
“Let’s cut ties here,” Low wrote in an email message to Musk at the time, viewed by POLITICO. Musk by then had launched his brain implant company Neuralink and had long been dreaming of colonizing Mars. “Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don’t fuck with me,” Low wrote.
Musk, of course, went on to donate $288 million during the 2024 election, which cemented his place in MAGA politics and status as the largest and most prominent individual political donor in the country. His America PAC once vowed to “keep grinding” at an even more audacious political playbook ahead of the midterms. But Musk scaled back his 2026 ambitions, promising to do “a lot less” campaign spending in the future, shortly before his public clash with Trump.
With Musk’s allegiance to MAGA called into question, Low predicted he could seek revenge behind the scenes — “it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when” — a possibility Trump has openly pondered.
The president warned of “serious consequences” if Musk funds Democratic challengers against Republicans who back his “big, beautiful bill”— the legislation that would enact Trump’s domestic policy agenda, but that Musk has scorned as wasteful pork-barrel spending.
However, if there was any lingering notion that Musk would completely retreat from politics, he dispelled it on Saturday by renewing his attacks on the bill ahead of a critical vote.
The takedown
Unlike his old pal, Low prefers to keep a lower profile. The Canadian neuroscientist wore aviator sunglasses indoors throughout the interview. When POLITICO first reached out, an automated reply from Low’s email robot came back, noting that he was “completely off the grid” and providing a math puzzle to solve to get on his calendar. POLITICO didn’t solve the problem, perhaps because it's not solvable, but he replied anyway.
Low spoke to the press infrequently between the early 2010s, when his company partnered with Hawking, and when he posted the takedown that ended any remaining friendship with Musk earlier this year. One of the rare exceptions was a 2013 fireside chat where Low, in an “Occupy Mars” shirt, spoke next to Musk at the Canadian Consul General’s Residence in Los Angeles.
Low sees little daylight between the Elon he knew before and the one who fractured his relationship with the president.
“A lot of people close to him will say that he changed. I don't believe that to be true,” he said. “I've seen this side of Elon over the years, but I just think that over time, he got cozy with the idea of showing more of that, and now it seems to have affected him.”
When Musk came under fire for his salutes at Trump’s post-inauguration rally, Low, the son of a Holocaust survivor, said he first confronted his former friend with a private message. He said in the email viewed by POLITICO: “I am so glad I fired your dumb ass” and warned him to learn from the fate of Rodion Raskolnikov, the central character in “Crime and Punishment,” who convinces himself that extraordinary men are justified in committing crimes if they serve a higher goal.
Four days passed without a reply, and Low proceeded to cut contact before letting it rip in a nearly 2,000-word open letter that went viral on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“I made my displeasure known to him as one of his closest former friends at that point, and I blocked him,” he said.
That’s a diplomatic description. Low in his letter delivered a blistering portrait of Musk as a narcissist whose “lust for power” keeps driving him to undermine the very organizations that challenge his hold on it. Musk didn’t respond publicly.
According to Low, those tendencies put Musk “in a league of his own” in Silicon Valley — where he locked into power struggles with many a co-founder, from PayPal’s Peter Thiel to Tesla’s Martin Eberhard to OpenAI’s Sam Altman. And the predictable playbook followed him to Trump’s side as first buddy, a role Low dubbed his former friend’s greatest investment.
“Elon has his own pattern of trying to destabilize companies. He wants to take over, and if he can't take them over, then he tries to create a rival entity to compete,” Low said. “They were absolutely on a collision course, and I think that Trump tried to gloss over it by making it look as if he wanted Elon to be as aggressive as he was.”
‘Playing defense’
Musk is back in industry mode, for now. Earlier this month, he addressed an artificial intelligence boot camp hosted by the startup accelerator Y Combinator in San Francisco, downplaying the importance of the Department of Government Efficiency by comparing his work on the commission to cleaning up beaches.
“Imagine you’re cleaning a beach, which has a few needles, trash and is dirty. And there’s a 1,000-foot tsunami, which is AI, that’s about to hit. You’re not going to focus on cleaning the beach,” Musk told the crowd of students and recent graduates of why he ultimately left.
His attention has since shifted to Austin, Texas, where Tesla heavily promoted and launched its long-hyped robotaxi service last weekend. Of companies within Musk’s business empire, the automaker took the hardest hit from his political entanglements, battered by consumer protests, tariffs, declining sales and dips in its stock price that allowed SpaceX to overtake it as his most valuable asset.
Low looks back at the Tesla Takedown protests that sprung up in the months following his letter with satisfaction. It was proof, in his mind, that the message struck a chord: “The audience was the world, and it worked.”
While few peers in Silicon Valley have called out Musk to the same degree, Low added that several reacted positively to him in private for taking those criticisms public.
“Many of these people happen to have investors on their boards, who made money with Elon, so they felt that they were putting themselves at risk if they spoke out,” he said. “A number of people did reach out and thank me, and they were in violent agreement.”
Low said he had “an armada” of lawyers at the ready in case Musk went after him. That possibility hasn’t yet panned out.
Although they no longer speak, Low still follows Musk’s activities. He said he was busy during the Trump feud and had to catch up later. But during the interview with POLITICO, he would reference the occasional X post from Musk, including a recent one where he shared negative drug test results to dispute reports of his alleged ketamine use.
To Low, the post was a sign the rift hasn’t been fully smoothed over and that Musk is “playing defense.” Bannon has called for a federal investigation into New York Times reporting that claimed Musk took large amounts of ketamine and other drugs while campaigning for Trump. POLITICO has not independently verified the allegations.
“The way I read that is that he is concerned that some government contracts could be canceled and that the drug use could be used against him, so he's trying to already build a moat,” Low said.
As for Trump, Low has some advice for handling a potentially resentful Musk: “Abide by the constitution,” and perhaps, listen to some of the tech titan’s policy preferences.
Low was especially outspoken against the administration’s ICE raids and efforts to limit immigration, arguing they will cost America its advantage in technologies like AI by sapping Silicon Valley of the global talent that allows it to compete. Many in tech circles had hoped Musk’s seat at the table would help the industry loosen barriers for high-skilled workers, a cause he once vowed to “go to war” with MAGA Republicans over.
That's something that Low, given his experience with Musk, thinks Trump should take seriously.
“Elon has wooed enough of Trump's supporters to be an actual threat politically,” Low said, arguing that Trump would better insulate himself by moderating his agenda. “He doesn't realize the battle that he has on his hands, and one way to cut the support away from Elon is to actually adopt some of the things he is for.”
Marco Rubio joins POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for an exclusive interview to discuss his dual roles as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor as he navigates the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
Burns is later joined by Alex Bruesewitz to discuss his rise from very online Trump supporter to close adviser to the president, and why vigorous online debate has helped, not hurt, the MAGA coalition.
Plus, POLITICO diplomatic correspondent Felicia Schwartz at The Hague during the NATO Summit discusses the diplomatic efforts underway amid ceasefire talks between Israel and Iran.
Listen and subscribe to The Conversation with Dasha Burns on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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ST. PAUL, Minnesota — Former President Joe Biden joined thousands of mourners Friday as former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman lay in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda while the man charged with killing her and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, made a brief court appearance in a suicide prevention suit.
Hortman, a Democrat, is the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans accorded the honor. She lay in state with her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert. Her husband was also killed in the June 14 attack, and Gilbert was seriously wounded and had to be euthanized. It was the first time a couple has lain in state at the Capitol, and the first time for a dog.
The Hortmans’ caskets and the dog’s urn were arranged in the center of the rotunda, under the Capitol dome, with law enforcement officers keeping watch on either side as thousands of people who lined up filed by. Many fought back tears as they left.
Among the first to pay their respects were Gov. Tim Walz, who has called Hortman his closest political ally, and his wife, Gwen. Biden, a Catholic, visited later in the afternoon, walking up to the velvet rope in front of the caskets, making the sign of the cross, and spending a few moments by himself in silence. He then took a knee briefly, got up, made the sign of the cross again, and walked off to greet people waiting in the wings of the rotunda.
The Capitol was open for the public from noon to 5 p.m. Friday, but officials said anyone waiting in line at 5 would be let in. House TV livestreamed the viewing. A private funeral is set for 10:30 a.m. Saturday and will be livestreamed on the Department of Public Safety’s YouTube channel.
Biden will attend the funeral, a spokesperson said. So will former Vice President Kamala Harris, though neither is expected to speak. Harris expressed her condolences earlier this week to Hortman’s adult children, and spoke with Walz, her running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, who extended an invitation on behalf of the Hortman family, her office said.
Lisa Greene, who lives in Brooklyn Park like Hortman did, but in a different House district, said she came to the Capitol because she had so much respect for the former speaker.
“She was just amazing. Amazing woman. “And I was just so proud that she represented the city that I lived in,” Greene said in a voice choked with emotion. “She was such a leader. She could bring people together. She was so accessible. I mean, she was friendly, you could talk to her.” But, she went on to say admiringly, Hortman was also “a boss. She just knew what she was doing and she could just make things happen.”
A hearing takes a twist: The man accused of killing the Hortmans and wounding another Democratic lawmaker and his wife made a short court appearance Friday to face charges for what the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota has called “a political assassination.” Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, surrendered near his home the night of June 15 after what authorities have called the largest search in Minnesota history.
An unshaven Boelter was brought in wearing just a green padded suicide prevention suit and orange slippers. Federal defender Manny Atwal asked Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko to continue the hearing until Thursday. She said Boelter has been sleep deprived while on suicide watch in the Sherburne County Jail, and that it has been difficult to communicate with him as a result.
“Your honor, I haven’t really slept in about 12 to 14 days,” Boelter told the judge. And he denied being suicidal. “I’ve never been suicidal and I am not suicidal now.”
Atwal told the court that Boelter had been in what’s known as a “Gumby suit,” without undergarments, ever since his transfer to the jail after his first court appearance on June 16. She said the lights are on in his area 24 hours a day, doors slam frequently, the inmate in the next cell spreads feces on the walls, and the smell drifts to Boelter’s cell.
The attorney said transferring him to segregation instead, and giving him a normal jail uniform, would let him get some sleep, restore some dignity, and let him communicate better. The judge agreed.
Prosecutors did not object to the delay and said they also had concerns about the jail conditions.
The acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joseph Thompson, told reporters afterward that he did not think Boelter had attempted to kill himself.
The case continues: Boelter did not enter a plea. Prosecutors need to secure a grand jury indictment first, before his arraignment, which is when a plea is normally entered.
According to the federal complaint, police video shows Boelter outside the Hortmans’ home and captures the sound of gunfire. And it says security video shows Boelter approaching the front doors of two other lawmakers’ homes dressed as a police officer.
His lawyers have declined to comment on the charges, which could carry the federal death penalty. Thompson said last week that no decision has been made. Minnesota abolished its death penalty in 1911. The Death Penalty Information Center says a federal death penalty case hasn’t been prosecuted in Minnesota in the modern era, as best as it can tell.
Boelter also faces separate murder and attempted murder charges in state court that could carry life without parole, assuming that county prosecutors get their own indictment for first-degree murder. But federal authorities intend to use their power to try Boelter first.
Other victims and alleged targets: Authorities say Boelter shot and wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin before shooting and killing the Hortmans in their home in the northern Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, a few miles away.
Federal prosecutors allege Boelter also stopped at the homes of two other Democratic lawmakers. Prosecutors also say he listed dozens of other Democrats as potential targets, including officials in other states. Friends described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views. But prosecutors have declined so far to speculate on a motive.