McBride calls for responding to 'Trumpism' with bipartisanship | The Conversation

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https://www.politico.com/video/2025/08/02/mcbride-calls-for-responding-to-trumpism-with-bipartisanship-the-conversation-1694100

MADISON, Wisconsin — A group of Democratic governors is urging its colleagues to get tough in countering Republican-backed efforts to gerrymander Texas’ congressional districts.

“It's incumbent upon Democrat governors, if they have the opportunity, to respond in kind,” outgoing Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly told reporters at a Democratic Governors Association meeting Friday. “I'm not a big believer in unilateral disarmament.”

The advice from Kelly, who chairs the DGA, came two days after Texas Republicans proposed congressional lines that would create five GOP-friendly House districts ahead of next year’s midterms. Democrats need only to net three seats to regain control of the lower chamber.

Kelly didn’t cite California Gov. Gavin Newsom by name, but he is the most high profile, and likeliest, example of a Democrat considering a counteroffensive remapping effort to squeeze more seats from a blue state. On Thursday, Newsom said he’d seek a November special election to have voters approve a new House map that would boost Democrats’ numbers. It’s an expensive and potentially perilous gamble that his Democratic colleagues throughout the country appear to be backing — a notably more aggressive posture for the party.

Various mid-decade redistricting efforts could launch a partisan arms race, as the parties look to redraw competing congressional maps to their own advantages. Democrats face a tougher path, as several blue states are bound by independent redistricting commissions and state constitutions, which would prevent them from quickly remaking maps. By contrast, discussions are already underway in several other Republican-controlled states that could follow Texas’ lead, including Missouri, Indiana and Florida.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged there’s “validity” to concerns that Republicans might gain even more seats, should redistricting wars escalate.

But, Walz and Kelly said, “there's a bigger risk in doing nothing.”

“We can't just let this happen and act like it's fine, and hope that the courts fix it,” Kelly said. “We have no idea, quite honestly, at this point, what the courts might do, but by virtue of us responding in kind, we do send a message. We're not going to take this line down.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who campaigned on ending partisan gerrymandering, called Trump’s requests for new maps “so un-American.” He nonetheless echoed Kelly’s call for Democrats to respond, adding when “you're up against the wall, you have to do whatever you can to stop it.”

Evers recently announced he will not seek another term, rendering the race to replace him a top-tier gubernatorial contest in one of the most politically divided states.

Kelly, Walz, Evers and several other governors, including Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Daniel McKee of Rhode Island, appeared together at the DGA press conference here, where they attacked President Donald Trump’s megabill.

Andrew Howard contributed reporting.

With help from Amira McKee

Mary Jobaida is a Bangladeshi-born, Muslim mother of three who wants to be the newest member of the state Legislature.

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani hasn’t been elected mayor yet. But if — or when — he becomes Gracie Mansion’s newest resident, his Assembly seat in the left-leaning “Peoples’ Republic of Astoria” will become vacant — and Jobaida wants to fill it.

Jobaida touts her membership with the Democratic Socialists of America and says she wants to stand up to ICE, make CUNY, SUNY, pre-k and public transportation free, and even decriminalize the theft of food by hungry New Yorkers.

“It's actually a waste of money, waste of resources and hurtful to people,” she said, noting that “it’s not practical” to arrest someone for stealing nourishment.

Running for the seat, she said, was arranged by God: “I was not going to run against Zohran Mamdani, for sure, because we need progressive elected officials here, but I say it’s like it's planned by God and accepted by people,” she said, recounting how the district's lines were redrawn two years ago to include her residence.

The Queens Democratic Party may have other ideas. If Mamdani — who currently leads mayoral polls — is sworn in as mayor on Jan. 1, a special election would have to be called by Gov. Kathy Hochul by Jan. 11 and would likely take place in mid- to late-February.

That would mean the Democratic, Republican and potentially Working Families Party organizations could select their own candidate to run in a special. As City & State reported, the Queens Democrats might jump at the opportunity to replace Mamdani with a more moderate candidate.

Jobaida, who has already started contacting donors, canvassing and gathering volunteers for her bid, is one of the first candidates to emerge amid a wave of leftist energy that’s engulfed the city since Mamdani’s win. She has a website and told Playbook she will officially launch her campaign later this month.

Last month, Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas announced she would primary state Sen. Jessica Ramos, an Andrew Cuomo foe turned ally. And Mamdani organizer Mahtab Khan registered Monday to run against Queens Assemblymember David Weprin.

One Democratic Party insider told Playbook that discussions around filling Mamdani’s seat aren’t expected to occur in earnest until the SOMOS conference in Puerto Rico — where politicos, lobbyists and policymakers fly to the Caribbean to rub elbows and drink rum in the days immediately after the general election.

The Working Families Party did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether it would pick a candidate — like Jobaida — to run for the seat on its ballot line. The co-chair of the city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter told Playbook the party will be hosting “several forums this fall to hear from interested candidates” before its membership votes on whom it wants to endorse.

And Mamdani and Jobaida haven’t spoken yet, though Jobaida plans to speak with him “very soon.”

Jobaida is about 45 years old. She was born in a rural village in Bangladesh that never recorded her birthdate and arrived to this country shortly after 9/11 with a “pretty messed-up education from Bangladesh,” she said.

She attended community college before enrolling in NYU on a scholarship. She got a start in political organizing in 2007 for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and then worked on Bill Thompson’s mayoral bid. She has taught kindergarten as a teacher in public school classrooms. She also handled constituent services for Jessica Ramos’ office (though she’s not sure if she’ll vote for her former boss yet).

In 2020, Jobaida mounted a primary challenge against longtime incumbent Kathy Nolan in Queens’ 37th Assembly District and lost by just 1,500 votes. After Mamdani’s primary win, Jobaida said she received calls and visits from community leaders, telling her, “You cannot sit quiet; you have to run for this seat.”

“I believe I'm going to win this special election,” Jobaida told Playbook. “If it is special election, it's sealed. I believe it's going to be a piece of cake.”

Though she believes the country has deep flaws with its criminal justice system and its treatment of the poor, she has immense gratitude for the nation that welcomed her with open arms.

“We are passing a very difficult moment as a country, as a community,” Jobaida said, referencing the recent shooting of a border patrol officer and border czar Tom Homan’s promise to “flood the zone” with ICE agents in its wake.

“Another way of saying it is like labor pain is harder before the childbirth,” she said. “We are going through some very difficult childbirth, labor pain, now, and I'm hopeful that we're going to see a beautiful America soon.” — Jason Beeferman

BEHIND THE NUMBERS: Adams unveiled a whopping figure at his housing presser in Brooklyn today: 426,800.

That’s the total number of housing units he says his administration has created, preserved or planned over the course of his tenure.

For New Yorkers looking around and wondering why, despite this influx, finding an affordable apartment still feels like competing in the Hunger Games, the operative word is “planned.”

Planned units — which include projections from rezonings, some of which aren’t even yet approved — account for nearly half of the total sum.

Those 197,000 projected homes include the yet-to-be-seen fruits of the mayor’s wide-ranging City of Yes blueprint, neighborhood plans like the yet-to-be-approved rezoning of Long Island City, private rezonings, housing RFPs and other projections.

Many of these initiatives rely on the whims of the private sector, and development decisions that are based on myriad economic factors outside of the city’s control.

“Everything is dependent on the real estate market more generally, everything we do,” Kim Darga, deputy commissioner for development at HPD, said during a briefing on the numbers.

“The mixed-income programs are very dependent also on the greater climate in which we are operating, so what happens with interest rates could drive what happens, what happens with tariffs could impact what happens,” she continued.

Adams nonetheless touted the 426,800-unit figure as far surpassing previous mayors’ housing totals and crowned his administration as “the most pro-housing” in city history. — Janaki Chadha

POT PROBLEMS: Gov. Kathy Hochul said her administration will support cannabis businesses that were incorrectly granted licenses by the state.

“It’s a major screw-up,” the governor told reporters today. “When I found out about it I was angry to say the least.”

Some 150 businesses were found to have been granted licenses for storefronts that are illegally located after regulators mistakenly measured how close they were to schools.

Hochul said she explored an executive order to fix the problem, but instead determined a more durable solution is a change in the law. She blamed the prior leadership at the Office of Cannabis Management for the error.

“I’ll protect these businesses,” she said, while adding that “we need to get the law changed to have a fix.”

State lawmakers, including influential Democrats such as Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger, have signaled support for changing the law so the retailers can stay put.

In a statement, the Office of Cannabis Management downplayed a report from Spectrum News that found the state knew about the issue for a month before alerting business owners.

“OCM notified impacted applicants and licensees within days of confirming the issue and identifying the scope of redress opportunities,” the office’s spokesperson, Taylor Randi, said in a statement. She added that its acting director, Felicia Reid, began reviewing dispensaries’ compliance “over the past year.”

OCM has also scrambled to dispel reports that dispensaries with locations too close to schools will have to close up shop. Randi said that as long as existing businesses properly file their applications for a renewal, they will be allowed to remain open until legislators come back to Albany to fix the problem. — Nick Reisman and Jason Beeferman

ICE’D OUT WITH AN APPOINTMENT: The Trump administration’s response to a lawsuit filed this week by House members barred from inspecting migrant detention facilities has revolved around the Democrats making unannounced visits.

But lawmakers in New York have sought access both announced and unannounced. Rep. Dan Goldman requested an appointment in June and was still denied entry to the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. Democratic lawmakers have simultaneously cited their authority to conduct oversight without giving advance notice of “detention facilities holding individuals in federal immigration custody.”

The 67-page lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington includes Goldman and Adriano Espaillat as plaintiffs. It references new DHS guidelines that congressional Democrats say infringe on their authority, including the need for seven days’ notice ahead of a visit.

In June, Goldman’s team emailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff a request for an appointment nine days before he and Rep. Jerry Nadler came to 26 Federal Plaza amid reports of unsafe conditions. They still were denied access.

The reason, according to DHS? The 10th floor of the building is a processing, not a detention, facility.

“These members of Congress could have just scheduled a tour,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said earlier this week in a statement reacting to the legal complaint by 12 members of Congress.

McLaughlin was asked again today on Fox News about the lawsuit and why lawmakers “think that they can just show up announced.”

“Exactly, this is about political theater,” she said in response. “This isn’t oversight.”

Goldman, Espaillat, Nadler and Rep. Nydia Velázquez have said migrants are being held for several days there in unsafe conditions as revealed in videos. And they have said they would use every tool to shine light on the treatment of migrants as President Donald Trump escalates his deportation agenda. — Emily Ngo

LET ’EM OFF EASY: Turkish construction executive Erden Arkan should be sentenced to only one year probation after giving illegal straw donations to Adams’ campaign, his lawyer argued in a memo Friday while denying Arkan had any coordination with the Turkish government.

Arkan, the co-founder of KSK Construction Group, pleaded guilty in January. His lawyer, Jonathan Rosen, said the federal probation office recommended that he receive only a year’s probation and no prison time.

Arkan “did not ‘coordinate’ his decision to use straw donors, the scheme at issue in this case, with the Turkish Consulate or any Turkish official,” despite what prosecutors alleged, Rosen wrote. A Turkish Consulate official invited Arkan to a meeting where he met Adams, but the decision to give illegal straw donations in the names of his employees came only after Arkan tried and failed to solicit donations legally from business contractors, who largely refused to give to Adams.

“Fearing embarrassment from the now impending fundraiser, Erden pivoted to a new strategy,” Rosen explained.

Rosen also argues that federal prosecutors were using Arkan to get to Adams, and he should be let off now that Adams’ case has been dropped. “The government’s characterization of Eric Adams as a ‘tainted prosecution’ ... calls into question any bona fide federal interest in Mr. Arkan’s continued prosecution in federal court,” he wrote, quoting former Trump administration Department of Justice official Emil Bove’s letter.

A spokesperson for the Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment. — Jeff Coltin

— FAKED SIGNATURES: Mayor Eric Adams’ reelection campaign submitted forged petition signatures in an effort to get on the November ballot as an independent candidate. (Gothamist)

— TALL ORDER: The Department of Education approved close to $750,000 in catering spending at a single Brooklyn restaurant in the fiscal year 2025. (amNewYork)

— HEALTH CUTS: Federal funding cuts to Medicaid could worsen New York’s nursing shortage. (City & State)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Roy Cooper has an early, six-point lead in the North Carolina Senate race, according to the first public poll of the marquee contest.

The Emerson College poll, released Friday morning, found the Democratic former North Carolina governor with 47 percent support to Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley’s 41 percent. Another 12 percent of voters are undecided.

The North Carolina Senate race — likely between Cooper and Whatley, who have each cleared their respective primary fields — is expected to be one of the most competitive and expensive in 2026. It’s the top offensive target for Democrats, who must net four seats to retake the Senate. In June, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis declined to run for reelection after clashing with President Donald Trump over his domestic agenda and warning fellow Republicans about the Medicaid cuts in their spending package.

Cooper, who finished his second term in 2024, starts the open race to replace Tillis with stronger name recognition and favorability than Whatley, a first-time candidate. Most voters view Cooper positively, one-third perceive him negatively and just 13 percent are unsure, the poll found.

By contrast, nearly two-thirds of voters do not know or are unsure of Whatley and another 17 percent view him favorably — capturing his challenge to quickly define himself with an electorate that isn’t familiar with him.

Cooper also holds a 19-point edge among independent voters, a significant bloc that supported him during his gubernatorial campaigns. For now, these voters prefer Cooper to Whatley 47 percent to 28 percent.

But in a preview of what will be a tight Senate race in a hyper-partisan environment, voters in purple North Carolina are evenly divided on whom they prefer on the generic congressional ballot: 41.5 percent support would back the Democrat and 41.3 percent would back the Republican.

In the 2028 presidential primary, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg leads among Democratic voters in North Carolina with 17 percent support. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who opted against a gubernatorial run this week, receives 12 percent, followed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom with 10 percent and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with 7 percent. Nearly a quarter of the Democratic voters are undecided.

Among Republicans, Vice President JD Vance dominates the GOP primary with 53 percent backing him, compared to 7 percent for Florida Gov. and failed 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis and 5 percent for Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Emerson College conducted the poll from July 28 through July 30, interviewing 1,000 registered North Carolina voters. It has a 3-point margin of error.

President Donald Trump is raking in cash for his political operation, building up funds that could allow him to continue to be a political kingmaker even as he cannot seek reelection.

The president’s primary super PAC brought in a whopping nearly $177 million in the first half of the year, while his leadership PAC raised $28 million, according to filings submitted to the Federal Election Commission late Thursday.

Those two groups alone reported a combined $234 million cash on hand at the end of June, the filings show — a massive sum. And a separate joint fundraising committee had $12 million more in the bank, much of which will later be transferred to other groups in Trump’s political network.

The Trump-linked groups have largely not begun to deploy that cash, instead building up a war chest the president could use next year in primaries or to boost Republicans’ prospects in the midterms. Trump has already shown substantial interest in the 2026 elections, with the White House intervening to encourage some GOP incumbents to run again, pushing potential challengers out of primary fields and asking Texas Republicans to draw new districts with the hopes of gaining seats.

Having millions of dollars at Trump’s disposal — an unheard of amount for a sitting president who cannot run again — could allow him to become one of the biggest single players in next year’s midterms, alongside longstanding GOP stalwarts like the Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund. Trump could boost his preferred candidates in GOP primaries, or flood the zone in competitive general election races in an effort to help Republicans keep control of Congress.

Trump has a smattering of political groups. His primary joint fundraising committee, Trump National Committee, spent $17 million on operating expenses while transferring just over $20 million each to the Republican National Committee and Never Surrender. A range of other political groups, including his former campaign committees from his 2016 and 2020 presidential bids, continue to spend relatively small amounts of money and get transfers from older joint fundraising committees, but largely are not involved in building up his cash.

Trump’s primary leadership PAC now is Never Surrender, which was converted from his 2024 campaign committee. It ended June with $38 million cash on hand, after spending $16.8 million, the majority of which was expenses lingering from Trump’s campaign last year.

MAGA Inc., the primary pro-Trump super PAC, reported a whopping $196 million cash on hand, after spending only a few million dollars.

The group, which does not face donation limits, benefited from fundraisers featuring Trump and Vice President JD Vance this spring. It raised money from a range of longtime GOP megadonors and cryptocurrency interests:

• Jeff Yass gave $16 million
• The pro-Trump dark money group Securing American Greatness gave $13.75 million
• Energy Transfer Partners gave $12.5 million, as did its CEO, Kelcy Warren
• Foris DAX, Inc., a cryptocurrency-linked entity, gave $10 million
• Blockchain.com, a cryptocurrency company, gave $5 million
• Elon Musk, who has publicly feuded with Trump in recent months, gave $5 million

The super PAC also received some donations made in bitcoin. Trump signed a landmark cryptocurrency bill favored by the industry in June, and his business empire has quickly expanded its crypto interests.

Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs personifies the conflict within her party over U.S. support for Israel and the nightmare in Gaza — and the increasingly precarious balancing act for any politician trying to navigate it.

The third-term member of Congress from San Diego is Jewish. She has family in Israel. So the country’s security is not an abstract notion. As a millennial, and the youngest member of Democratic leadership in the House, she doesn’t view criticism of Israel as off the table. But she also sits on the Armed Services Committee and represents one of the nation’s most military-centric districts, so she is acutely aware of Israel’s security needs and its role as a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.

All of those roiling elements were on full display last night, in Washington and at a town hall meeting in her district. The Senate voted down a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) to block the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel. The measure failed, but 27 Democratic senators, more than half the caucus, voted in favor — a sign that the horrific images of starvation coming out of Gaza in recent months are starting to erode the largely unconditional support that Israel has long enjoyed among many Democrats.

Jacobs says she would have voted in favor of the resolution, though she wants the U.S. to continue supporting Israel’s defense, including by helping to pay for the Iron Dome missile defense system.

She tried to lay out her nuanced position at the town hall, where pro-Palestinian protesters gathered noisily outside the high school auditorium in a suburban section of San Diego where the event was held. Inside, one of the first questions was what is she doing to ensure the people of Gaza are receiving humanitarian aid and whether Israel has committed genocide.

Jacobs, who worked for the United Nations and State Department before she was elected to Congress in 2020, tried to thread the needle — saying that Israel “might” have committed genocide.

“But I am not a lawyer, and that is a legal determination,” she told the restive audience. “I think we've clearly seen serious atrocities. I think we've likely seen war crimes, and we've definitely seen forced displacement that could amount to ethnic cleansing.”

Soon, members of the audience were yelling at her — and each other. Her efforts to explain her support for a ban on offensive weapons, but not for defense, were drowned out. “Weapons are weapons,” a woman shouted. A man stood and chanted “free free Palestine” while waving a black-and-white keffiyeh. Members of the crowd shouted back at him.

After about 20 minutes, police escorted the man with the keffiyeh out of the auditorium and the town hall turned to other topics — mostly expressions of anger about various actions by President Donald Trump wrapped into a question.

Jacobs said the next day that she welcomed the protests and is less worried about the politics of the issue within the Democratic Party than she is about addressing the larger issues. “The thing that needs to be worked out is how we get unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, and then how we get back on a path to a situation where you have two states where Israelis can live safely and securely and where Palestinians can live with dignity and autonomy and self determination,” she told POLITICO today.

The bitter politics of the conflict aside, Jacobs contends there’s a middle position in which people can condemn both the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the Israeli response that authorities say has led to about 60,000 deaths, mostly civilians in Gaza.

“I truly believe both that Oct. 7 was horrible and we should be calling for the release of the remaining hostages, and that what's going on in Gaza right now is horrible, and those don't have to be mutually exclusive,” she said. “Civilians shouldn't be blamed for their government actions, and that's true of Israeli civilians, and it's true of Palestinian civilians, and it's true of American civilians.”

Despite what happened at her town hall, the protests over the war in Gaza around the U.S. have, for now at least, ebbed since last year and many Democratic voters in general have turned their attention to other issues. But it’s not clear how long politicians like Jacobs, or her party, will be able to walk this precarious middle ground.

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A month after saying he had “done enough” political spending — and amid a bitter falling out with President Donald Trump — Elon Musk gave $10 million to help Republicans keep control of Congress.

The contributions came as Musk publicly feuded with Trump and was slamming Republicans for voting for the megabill that he argued would blow up the deficit. Still, the SpaceX CEO donated $5 million each to the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund on June 27, according to both groups’ filings with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.

The next week, the world’s richest man said he would start his own political party.

Musk, who spent $290 million of his own money to boost Trump and other Republicans last year, led the cost-cutting efforts of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the first few months of the Trump administration. When he left that role in May, he also suggested he was done with political giving for the time being: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I don’t currently see a reason,” he said at the Qatar Economic Forum.

He then engaged in a harsh public fight with Trump in June amid the push to pass the president’s signature budget bill, breaking with the president and, later, the GOP.

Musk’s donations to CLF and SLF were enough to make him the largest known individual donor to the main House and Senate GOP super PACs so far this year, although they reflect only a fraction of the money both raised. Congressional Leadership Fund brought in $32.7 million in the first half of the year, while Senate Leadership Fund raised $26.4 million.

A spokesperson for the Congressional Leadership Fund said it does not comment on donors. Senate Leadership Fund and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Musk also poured another $45 million of his own money into his super PAC, America PAC, this spring. That group spent primarily on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race in April, which Musk was heavily involved in publicly.

Its expenses included $27 million for petition incentives, $12.7 million on campaigning related to the Wisconsin race and three controversial $1 million payments to spokespeople selected for signing Musk’s petition opposing “activist judges.” Musk’s preferred candidate in that Wisconsin race, conservative Brad Schimel, lost by 10 points in what was widely seen as a sign of Musk’s electoral drag on Republicans.

In July, Musk said he would create his own political party, the America Party. But Thursday’s FEC filings, which cover only through the end of June, provide no insight into what that effort might look like.

With help from Amira McKee

IN MEMORIAM: Five candidates running for New York City mayor — as well as hundreds of NYPD officers — paid their respects this afternoon to Didarul Islam, who died in uniform in Monday’s tragic mass shooting.

Mayor Eric Adams, Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and independent candidate Jim Walden all gathered at the Parkchester Jame Masjid, where Islam’s body lay.

The officer’s death became an instant political test for Mamdani, who was away on an 11-day vacation in Uganda at the time of the shooting. Cuomo drew attention to Mamdani’s anti-NYPD activism in the wake of the shooting. And within hours of his return to the U.S., Mamdani was pressed about his prior support for defunding the police and his call to disband the NYPD unit that responded to the shooting.

Aside from the mayoral hopefuls, Gov. Kathy Hochul and several other officials attended the funeral, including NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Attorney General Letitia James, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, City Council member Yusef Salaam, and Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Richie Torres.

Reporters were there to cover the memorial to the slain officer — and to carefully watch for signs of political differences between the candidates.

Adams eulogized Islam at the event and spoke of the pain of losing a loved one — but he made a point to thank the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, the elite police unit Mamdani has previously called to eliminate.

“I want to say thank you to the men and women of the New York City Police Department in general, but specifically to the men and women of SRG,” Adams said. “They entered the building while the shooter was still alive, and they conducted a floor-by-floor search. They wanted to ensure that everyone in that building would have come out safely.”

Mamdani said Monday he no longer supports defunding the police, but he also doubled down on eliminating the SRG. The unit is tasked with policing political demonstrations and has faced criticism from the New York Civil Liberties Union and others for its use of heavy-handed tactics.

Islam, a Bengali immigrant and father of two with a third child on the way, had been working as a security guard when a gunman armed with a military-style rifle entered a Park Avenue building and carried out the deadliest mass shooting in the city since 2000. The three-year NYPD veteran was in full uniform when he was murdered along with three others who perished that day.

Unlike the other candidates and officials there, Mamdani sat with Islam’s family during the service and was greeted by them upon his arrival. He also remained to join his fellow Muslims in prayer after the political speeches concluded, as other officials filed out.

While the intimate service was limited to family, friends and invited guests, hundreds of men and women, many in uniform, gathered on the surrounding blocks in the hours before the funeral, setting up food trucks and tents to eat and socialize. As the funeral began, police cleared the street outside the mosque to allow space for prayer.

“The residents of this city, indeed, this state, must show greater platitudes and gratitude for our police force, they have not received enough in years of late, in my opinion, and that must be rectified,” said Hochul, dressed in a black headscarf in line with Muslim tradition. “They need our support.” — Amira McKee and Jason Beeferman

NORTH COUNTRY SPECIAL LOOMS: The impending resignation of Assemblymember Billy Jones will open up a potentially competitive special election in a North Country district that straddles the Quebec border.

Jones, who’s serving his fifth term, has been as secure in his seat as any rural Democrat in recent years. He’s run unopposed in three of his past four elections and won the other by 24 points.

That was due in part to his personal popularity, but the district is as competitive as can be on paper: There are 30,392 Democratic and Working Families Party members compared with 29,920 Republicans and Conservatives.

“Republicans, for the first time in a long time, have a real chance to win this one,” Essex County Conservative Party Chair Bill McGahay said.

Malone Mayor Andrea Dumas is among the Republicans being discussed as a candidate for the seat.

Several Democrats have expressed interest in running as well, and Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman is “gaining traction,” according to Clinton County Democratic Chair Brandi Lloyd.

“Democrats are definitely optimistic that this will hold,” Lloyd said. “We’re seeing a trend across the whole country — in rural areas as well — where seats are staying blue or flipping blue.”

Jones announced Tuesday that he’d be stepping down later this summer. Several people familiar with his plans said they expect his resignation will come at a time that would allow Hochul to call a special election that coincides with the Nov. 4 general. — Bill Mahoney

‘MY HEART IS BROKEN’: Hochul demanded today that Israel work with the United States to rectify deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza — a departure for a governor who counts herself as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state.

“Allowing innocent children to starve to death is simply unconscionable, and as a mother, my heart is broken by these images of famine,” Hochul said in a statement.

The reports of starvation that sparked the governor’s latest remarks have also motivated other New York Democrats who support Israel to speak out against the government. Hochul has been outspoken in her support in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, visiting Kfar Aza and advocating for the release of hostages taken by Hamas.

The tides of war abroad and politics at home have shifted significantly since then.

On Saturday, Reps. Jerry Nadler, Pat Ryan and Paul Tonko were among the moderate Democrats to sign a statement released by New York Attorney General Letitia James calling for immediate access to humanitarian aid in Gaza. Though Hochul was not a signatory on that statement, her recent remarks offer additional evidence there’s a consensus building among Democrats, who have been deeply divided on Israel.

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Israel this morning with plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visit an aid distribution site in Gaza, a move Hochul said she hopes will be a turning point for the crisis.

“Support for the people of Israel also requires us to demand that the Israeli government do what is right,” Hochul said. “At the same time, we must continue to demand that Hamas release all hostages and finally bring an end to this conflict. This humanitarian crisis has gone on for too long, and it is time to secure a lasting peace that protects the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians.” — Amira McKee

FREEZE THE FARE: With all the talk about freezing the rent, some New York Democrats are now pushing to freeze the fare.

The MTA announced Wednesday that it plans to hike subway fares, and electeds are saying the increase would be too much for New Yorkers to bear.

“Proposing a fare hike without demonstrating meaningful improvements is offensive to hard-working New Yorkers, and that’s why I’m urging all board appointees to vote no on this proposal,” Adams said, referring to the Senate-confirmed MTA body responsible for approving the plan. “We strongly oppose this fare increase and remain committed to fighting for a more affordable and equitable city.”

Under the transit authority’s proposed increases, the price of a subway ride would jump from $2.90 to $3. LIRR and Metro North tickets would spike up to 8 percent. And tolls for bridges and tunnels would increase 7.5 percent.

The MTA said the fare and toll changes “are small and occur at regular intervals to keep up with inflation and avoid surprising customers with unpredictable or double-digit increases.”

The hikes will need to be approved by the MTA board following a trio of public hearings in August, and would take effect in January 2025 if approved.

Mamdani, who ran an affordability-focused campaign, wants to persuade Albany to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to make MTA buses free. The MTA so far has signaled opposition to the idea.

Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, the chair of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus, is also railing against the hikes.

“At a time when the federal government is deriving new ways to crunch the middle class and siphon their hard-earned dollars, New York State must be clear that we will not add to the burden,” she said. “This proposed rate increase must be rejected, and I encourage all New Yorkers who are able and willing to make their concerns known to the MTA Board.”
— Jason Beeferman

VETO, AGAIN: Mayor Adams vetoed a bill that would have decriminalized illegal street vending, a late Wednesday night surprise that shocked the City Council.

Existing criminal penalties are “an important enforcement tool,” Adams wrote in a brief veto message.

The bill was meant in part to protect street vendors — many of them immigrants — from deportation. The bill’s sponsor, Council Member Shekar Krishnan, was furious, saying in a statement that “Adams did Donald Trump's bidding by vetoing my legislation that protects our immigrant small business owners.”

Adams spokesperson Zachary Nosanchuk denied the veto had anything to do with the mayor’s coordination with the Trump administration. Instead, he said the mayor was concerned the law would prevent the NYPD “from intervening, even in the most egregious cases.”

Adams’ stamp of disapproval came hours after he also vetoed the council’s decision that would have blocked a casino bid from moving forward in the East Bronx.

Speaker Adrienne Adams’ office has not yet said whether she’s planning to schedule votes to override the vetoes. — Jeff Coltin

— BIG ‘RIG’: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries bashed the Trump administration, accusing the president of attempting to “rig” Texas’ congressional map. (Daily News)

— FLOOD WATCH: Hochul declared a state of emergency for New York City, Long Island and parts of the Hudson Valley as the National Weather Service raised the region’s flash flooding risk. (Gothamist)

— ANOTHER SUBWAY MELTDOWN: The city’s beleaguered transit system continues to struggle after another system power outage this morning. (New York Post)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

'Overcorrections': McBride on some Democrats' remarks on transgender people | The Conversation

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https://www.politico.com/video/2025/07/31/overcorrections-mcbride-on-some-democrats-remarks-on-transgender-people-the-conversation-1692918

For more than five decades, Joe Biden’s existence was not only incredibly public but busy — his waking hours spent surrounded by a coterie of devoted aides and strategists, his calendar filled with speaking engagements and meetings, his home a bustling and buzzing swarm of activity.

In “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s magnum opus on the candidates who sought the presidency in 1988, he captures the scene in the Biden household on the eve of his campaign announcement: “there were typists upstairs, waiting, and gurus present for consultations, and Joe's parents were over, just to help out … there were a hundred media calls and a million staff and volunteer calls and VIP arrangements — train passes and hotel rooms, Wilmington cops, and state cops and Amtrak cops, the height of the podium (wrong, of course), money bigs with suggestions, food for the staff, people at the airport, people called and said ‘Is Joe there?’”

Ultimately, Biden had what it took to win the presidency.

Now, he’s on the other side of the mountain. And his life has entered a new phase that is quieter and smaller.

He’s staffed by only one or two aides and a small Secret Service detail. He holes up for hours at a time in Delaware working on his memoir with a new ghostwriter, while undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He flies commercial, an aide tells POLITICO, with little of the luxury or exclusivity that is often associated with former heads of state.

He’s still Amtrak Joe. But he’s also American Airlines Joe.

“He’s very in the wild,” a person familiar with Biden’s comings and goings told POLITICO. “His footprint is significantly smaller, and it’s sort of shocking.”

In quiet moments outside the Beltway, Biden is often greeted warmly by passersby offering handshakes.

But in Washington, his closest and most loyal advisers sit for closed-door depositions and transcribed interviews on the alleged “cover-up” of his decline and his use of an autopen as president. And as his own party’s still-developing 2028 primary bursts at the seams, Biden’s presidency is still something of a millstone around its neck.

That’s the split screen Biden steps into Thursday night, when he speaks at the closing gala of the National Bar Association’s Centennial Convention in Chicago. His remarks will center on “the progress we’ve made, and the important work that remains to further the cause of justice in America,” a person familiar tells POLITICO.

Biden’s post-presidency is already striking. His memoir sold for $10 million — a major sum, but tens of millions less than Barack Obama’s. At least one report has suggested he may be struggling to raise money for his presidential library, though a spokesperson described this characterization to POLITICO as “unfair.” This June, in San Diego, he spoke to SHRM25, a conference of human resource managers, telling them “thanks to you, the people in your workplace feel secure and respected. I think you underestimate what you do.”

In official Washington, there is little such expression of appreciation for the former president.

The former president still casts a long shadow over his party. In recent days, his former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to answer for whether he said all he knew about Biden’s cognition in office. (“I told the truth, which is that he was old,” Buttigieg told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “You could see that he was old.”) And had his former Vice President Kamala Harris actually run for California governor, the NYT noted, she would “have faced difficult questions about how much she knew about President Biden’s decline and whether she participated in shielding his diminished health from the public.”

Hours before Biden speaks in Chicago, Mike Donilon, his trusted aide of some four decades, will go behind closed doors to offer transcribed testimony for the House Oversight Committee.

That comes one day after former Biden aide Steve Ricchetti’s hourslong testimony in which he attacked Republicans’ “efforts to taint President Biden’s legacy with baseless assertions about President Biden’s mental health,” calling them “an obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this Administration’s first six months.”

Oversight Republicans were unfazed by the Biden aide’s accusation. In an appearance last night on Fox News, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) turned the focus back to Biden world’s insistence that the former president hadn’t experienced cognitive decline. “It’s almost like they’re a cult,” Comer said.

Biden, a son of the Senate who is respectful of congressional authority, has kept himself at a remove from the Oversight proceedings and the former aides who are testifying, receiving briefings from lawyers and aides after each session, two people familiar with Biden’s thinking told POLITICO.

“He’s really keeping himself at a distance — deliberately and intentionally — because he honors the oversight process,” one of those people said.

A Republican source familiar disputed this, telling POLITICO that during Wednesday’s transcribed interview, Ricchetti stated he had recent conversations with Biden regarding his legal strategy before the transcribed interview.

A person close to the Biden side outside the investigation said “being updated and being kept abreast on the investigations is far from being involved or putting pressure for a specific tactic for former staff.”

Still, Biden’s orbit views the Oversight Committee’s efforts as not having rated in the news cycle.

“It really hasn't been meaningfully breaking through for a wide array of reasons,” said the first person familiar with Biden’s thinking. “They're more or less trying to make the damning case that Joe Biden is and was old in office. … Everybody that has been interviewed knows there is no smoking gun. Everything that happened or didn’t happen was reported in the books. The reputational damage to some folks was already baked in, and there's nothing new.”

A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee disputed this. “Americans have witnessed President Biden’s cognitive decline with their own eyes, yet his inner circle continues to claim that everything is fine,” Jessica Collins told POLITICO. “The American people see through these denials, especially now, as President Biden’s doctor and some of his closest aides are pleading the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination. The Oversight Committee is currently conducting a thorough investigation to gather information through depositions and transcribed interviews, and will release a report of its findings upon conclusion."

Biden’s allies have also sometimes grimaced at his son Hunter Biden’s recent incursion into the news cycle, as when he sat down for more than three hours with Channel 5, went on an expletive-laden tear and suggested that his father’s disastrous debate performance in June 2024 was attributable to Ambien.

Was Hunter acting as his father’s anger translator, saying what the elder Biden wishes he could say but can’t?

“He probably thinks he is and thinks he is doing what is best and defending his father,” a former Biden White House official told POLITICO. “But it’s not helpful.”

A storm of clinical and critical tell-all books mostly behind him, Biden is now regularly writing his own book, according to an aide.

But he’s not doing it with Mark Zwonitzer, the writer who helped Biden with 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and 2017’s “Promise Me, Dad,” and decades earlier worked as a research assistant on Richard Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes.” A Biden Foundation spokesperson declined to say who was helping him craft his memoir this time around.

Biden’s smaller entourage now often includes just Annie Tomasini, Biden Foundation spokesperson Kelly Scully and a Secret Service detail.

That smaller footprint allows for some genuinely unscripted moments, members of Biden’s team tell POLITICO. While waiting for flights at major airports, he has posed for photos with other passengers and took the time to handwrite an encouraging note to a Boy Scout during one such interlude in Philadelphia.

Last month, at a Juneteenth celebration at the Reedy Chapel-AME Church in Galveston, Texas, the president who made it an official federal holiday celebrated with congregants, lingering for hours — doing a photo line, speaking with church leadership.

“We were there for three, four hours — it was a long program. And he wanted to stay,” a person traveling with him said. “Anyone who wanted to talk to him had the opportunity to talk to him.” Biden and his small entourage didn’t arrive back at their hotel, the Marriott Marquis in Houston, until after 11 p.m.

All of it recalls that vivid scene in Cramer’s book — the swirl of activity around Biden, the typists upstairs and the gurus present for consultations, the money bigs with suggestions and the people who called and asked “Is Joe there?"

The answer is yes. Joe is still here. But fewer people are around him now, and it’s far closer to the end of a political life than the beginning of one.

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U.S. President Donald Trump once again threatened to suspend trade talks with Canada, this time over Ottawa’s promise to recognize Palestinian statehood.

On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country intends to recognize a Palestinian state ahead of September’s United Nations General Assembly, joining France and the U.K. on that path.

But Trump, despite acknowledging there is “real starvation” in Gaza on Monday, remains a staunch Israel ally. He argued earlier this week that recognizing Palestinian statehood would reward Hamas, the militant group behind the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!” the president wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday night.

With a Friday deadline looming to strike a deal or face steep U.S. tariffs, negotiations between Canada and the U.S. have stalled, and no deal framework has been set.

POLITICO reported this week that U.S. officials have been recycling grievances at trade talks without offering a path forward, according to Canadian officials. In June, the White House pushed Canada into rescinding its planned digital services tax to unfreeze the talks.

Israel has been losing its international support over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is “on the brink of famine,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Tuesday.

Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,000 people and abducted 251 in their Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war. Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed around 60,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Canada, as well as France and the U.K., cited the suffering of civilians in Gaza as one of the reasons for recognizing Palestinian statehood now. All three countries also argued that Hamas must disarm and can play no role in any Palestinian state.

Since Trump returned to office, he has frequently trolled Ottawa by calling Canada the 51st state, threatening to annex it and referring to the former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau.”

With help from Amira McKee

‘OUT OF STEP:’ Zohran Mamdani distanced himself from “defund the police” posts he made in 2020, saying today they were made “amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd.” He said multiple times that the posts were “clearly out of step” with his current view of policing and his campaign platform.

The Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City was speaking at a press conference held hours after he returned from an 11-day vacation to Uganda.

Mamdani has faced backlash over his past comments critical of the NYPD following the city’s deadliest mass shooting in 25 years, where four people, including an off-duty police officer, were killed in Midtown Manhattan.

“I am not defunding the police; I am not running to defund the police,” Mamdani told reporters today. “Over the course of this race, I’ve been very clear about my view of public safety and the critical role that the police have in creating that public safety.”

There was little the NYPD could have done to stop the shooter, who drove in from out of state and was in public only briefly before he began pulling the trigger. Still, the tragedy has resulted in an outpouring of support for the department and its members, and has raised questions about how Mamdani would lead the force as mayor, POLITICO reports.

Mamdani is returning to a city where polling shows him as the clear favorite, and he’ll try to maintain that lead through the tumult of a crowded general election in an unpredictable city. His opponents have homed in on his relatively limited political and management experience, and the past few days have served as a test of how the democratic socialist frontrunner would respond to a crisis — and the pressure that entails.

During the news conference, Mamdani stood with the Bangladeshi American Police Association, of which slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam was a member, and building service workers union 32BJ, which represented Aland Etienne, an office security guard who died in the attack.

Like other Democrats, Mamdani placed blame for the shooting on easy access to firearms.

“No matter how strong our gun laws are in this state, they are only as strong as the weakest laws in our nation,” he said. “I echo the call from Governor Hochul for a nationwide ban on assault rifles.”

Mamdani also slammed his opponent Andrew Cuomo for criticizing his prior calls to defund the police in the aftermath of the shooting, saying it was a way for Cuomo to “score such cynical political points.”

“We want to honor the New Yorkers who have been taken from us far too soon,” Mamdani said. “And yet, here we have a former governor calling every reporter he can find to speak about tweets. What kind of leadership is that?”

Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said it was fair game.

“I liken that to every time there is a mass shooting, Republicans say it’s not the time to talk gun control,” he said in a statement. “This is very much the time to talk about what our candidates for mayor said then vs. now.” — Jeff Coltin & Jason Beeferman

A LONG FIGHT AHEAD FOR REDISTRICTING AMENDMENT: On the same morning that Texas Republicans unveiled a potential gerrymander to create five new Republican-friendly congressional seats, New York Democrats officially introduced a constitutional amendment that would let them make mid-decade changes to the Empire State’s maps.

But don’t expect any imminent or drastic action in New York, POLITICO Pro reported today. Any amendment couldn’t be approved any earlier than November 2027. That means any new lines wouldn’t take effect until 2028, even if they can avoid legal hiccups and court-ordered stays that spring.

And the new maps would still need to adhere to existing prohibitions on gerrymandering — so don’t expect districts combining Staten Island with Plattsburgh, as you might see in other states.

The amendment is sure to be at the center of an extremely expensive battle at the ballot box if it moves forward. A different proposal to change the redistricting process was defeated as a referendum in 2021 — a year with mayoral races that drove out more Democrats than can be expected in 2027.

“It’s the perfect type of legislation to beat at the ballot box,” state Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar said. “Frankly, it’s likely to turn out the vote and help us elect other officials.”

Democrats are hopeful they’ll be better prepared this time around, though.

“I would hope for a campaign from the national party, from the state party, from other interested parties,” Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris said. “This is something with national implications, so I would hope there’d be a huge effort.” — Bill Mahoney

MAP FIGHT: Despite the severely limited menu of options for New York Democrats to redraw House lines before the 2026 midterm elections, Hochul today signaled she’s in ongoing talks over the issue.

In a statement to Playbook, Hochul blasted Texas GOP lawmakers for revising their House lines — a change that will add five additional seats Trump carried by double digits.

“We’re not going to sit by while Donald Trump and Texas Republicans try to steal this nation’s future,” she said. “I’ve been in active talks with local and national leaders, and in the coming days we’ll meet to align on our next move.”

Hochul has spoken with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffires about redistricting in New York, as red states — including Texas and Ohio — move forward with changing their maps this year.

Two state lawmakers have proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow New York to redistrict mid-decade, but such a change would not be in place soon enough to impact the high-stakes House races next year. — Nick Reisman

CHILD HEALTH CARE ROLLBACK: A new federal policy slated to take effect in 2027 will jeopardize health insurance coverage for more than 750,000 children in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said today.

The Democratic governor bashed President Donald Trump’s administration in a statement, calling the rollback of programs that provide continuous Medicaid coverage a “misguided policy” that “threatens the progress we’ve made in keeping young children connected to care,” POLITICO Pro’s Katelyn Cordero reports.

The federal government last year approved New York’s proposal for continuous Medicaid and Child Health Plus coverage for enrollees up to the age of 6. The state is now required to roll back that policy by 2027.

New York’s continuous coverage policy was implemented this year under a federal waiver. It requires continued access to health care for children regardless of changes to family income.

The waiver will not be revoked, but the Hochul administration received a letter from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services indicating that it will not be renewed in 2027.

“We will use every tool at our disposal to protect access to Medicaid and Child Health Plus for the more than 750,000 young children across New York State who depend on it for a healthy start in life,” Hochul said in her statement. — Katelyn Cordero

QUIT POLITICKIN’: Senate Republicans are decrying one of Hochul’s commissioners for using government resources to promote attacks against Republicans in D.C.

“We understand Governor Hochul is gearing up for a tough re-election, but the use of state resources to amplify partisan messaging must cease immediately,” the GOP state lawmakers wrote in a letter to Barbara Guinn, commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

Guinn, who was appointed by Hochul to lead the office in 2023, penned an op-ed with Democratic state Sen. Roxanne Persaud criticizing the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Her agency — which is tasked with overseeing food, heat and cash assistance programs — then shared the opinion piece on its government website.

“If you are struggling to put enough food on the table and also struggling to find gainful employment, Republicans in Washington, including seven representing New York State, say you are on your own,” Guinn wrote in the piece, adding that the federal bill “cruelly slashes SNAP in ways that were previously unthinkable.”

In a separate letter sent to state lawmakers under government letterhead, she also decried how “actions by the federal GOP will likely lead to limited benefit access,” she wrote.

While Hochul freely uses her taxpayer-funded communications team to slam Republicans in Congress and the White House, many unelected commissioners in Albany steer clear of partisan attacks.

Senate Republicans are arguing that Guinn crossed a line: “These talking points are best left to the Democratic National Committee, not parroted by a state agency that performs vital public service,” they wrote in their letter.

Guinn’s office did not respond to a request for comment. — Jason Beeferman

— ALL AGAINST MAMDANI: Five separate groups have emerged, all planning to raise millions of dollars to defeat Mamdani. (The New York Times)

— OLD VS. NEW: 26-year-old Liam Elkind is launching a primary challenge to 78-year-old Rep. Jerry Nadler, saying he no longer has the energy nor mindset for the job. (CNN)

— BRONX CASINO BID IS ALIVE: The mayor vetoed a measure from the City Council that some thought permanently ended the chances of a Bronx casino. (POLITICO Pro)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Texas Republicans would create five House seats that President Donald Trump carried by 10 or more points in November through a redrawn Congressional map to be released Wednesday, according to a person close to the process who was granted anonymity to discuss a map not yet public.

Four of the GOP’s pickup opportunities reside in majority-Hispanic districts.

The new map — created at Trump’s urging — stands to upend the midterms next year and give Republicans an opportunity to cling to their razor-thin House majority. The GOP’s success depends on the party maintaining its gains among Hispanic voters, a demographic shift that helped Trump reclaim the White House. The contours of the new map were first reported by Punchbowl News.

The 30 -day special session called by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to end on Aug. 19, which gives state lawmakers a few weeks to finish the process.

Congressional maps are redesigned at least once a decade, in response to the U.S. Census in what is typically a politically rife process. Ohio is also redrawing its maps ahead of 2026, and Democrats across the country are mulling ways to fight this existential threat as they grasp for control over the House next year.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies will be in Austin on Wednesday to meet with Democratic Texas lawmakers to discuss how to respond to the GOP‘s redistricting project. Democrats are debating walking out of the 30-day special session, which would deny Republicans the quorum necessary to approve the maps.

Though incumbent-versus-incumbent battles are often a result of redistricting, the person said the pending map is not expected to create any Republican primaries. The person added that the new map creates smaller geographical districts and splits fewer counties than the one in place.

Republicans are expected to reveal the Congressional lines as early as Wednesday afternoon. Trump would have carried three of the new GOP districts by 10 points, and the other two by more than 15, the person said.

Democratic governors are also threatening their own mid-cycle efforts, which they have promised to carry out if Texas pushes forward. California and New York are the states most likely to take action, but they face legal and political obstacles. Democrats are expected to mount legal challenges once the legislature approves the new map, and the party is already working to raise funds to combat the process.

So far the House Majority PAC — the leading fundraising arm for Congressional Democrats — has committed to spend $20 million fighting the effort and former President Barack Obama is headlining a fundraiser next month in Martha’s Vineyard alongside his former attorney general, Eric Holder, to defeat the GOP’s redistricting plans.

With help from Amira McKee

CUOMO CONUNDRUM: Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani looks to be cruising toward victory, capturing 50 percent of the vote in a new general election poll of the mayor’s race paid for by his allies.

In the five-way contest, Andrew Cuomo trailed him with 22 percent, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa came in third at 13 percent and Mayor Eric Adams captured 7 percent of the vote among likely voters. Attorney Jim Walden received 1 percent.

“Our independent poll — the first in this cycle to be offered in four languages and to drill down into national origin and religious denomination — makes one thing clear: Black union households, young Jews, South Asians, East Asians, Latinos, and New Yorkers in every income bracket are all on the same Zohran Mamdani bus, and it’s headed in the direction of the Democratic Party’s future,” said Amit Singh Bagga, the principal of Public Progress Solutions and a veteran of federal, city, and state government.

Bagga’s firm designed and analyzed the poll along with Adam Carlson’s Zenith Research. It was funded through private donations to Bagga, who advised Mamdani’s campaign during the primary on setting up an administration, and was fielded by Verasight.

It quizzed 1,453 registered voters — 1,021 of whom were “likely” voters — and was conducted between July 16 and 24, concluding four days before a gunman walked into a Midtown Manhattan office building on Monday and killed four people, including one NYPD officer.

Mamdani was celebrating his wedding in Uganda at the time. He’s scheduled to be back in the city Wednesday morning.

According to the poll, even if the former governor could achieve his unlikely goal of neutralizing the rest of the field to face Mamdani one-on-one, the democratic socialist assemblymember is still up 52-40 in a head-to-head matchup with likely voters. But Mamdani’s head-to-head lead shrinks to just 3 points with registered voters.

And it’d be worse for Adams — Mamdani clocks him 59-32 with likely voters and 55-32 with registered voters.

Three months out from the Nov. 4 election, Mamdani is in a commanding position. Just 32 percent of likely voters say they would not consider voting for him, while Cuomo is at 60 percent and Adams at 68 percent.

“With a majority of voters saying they wouldn't even consider voting for Cuomo, Adams' net favorability being lower than Trump's, and Sliwa mired in the low teens, it's hard to see how anyone can put a serious scare into Mamdani in a split field,” Carlson said in a statement.

The survey is the first significant public poll after the ex-governor announced he’d mount a campaign after losing the primary.

Respondents were surveyed via a hybrid online panel, the firms said. The poll had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

Cuomo took issue with the poll’s model assumption that Mamdani’s campaign would boost turnout among younger and college-educated voters as it did in the primary.

“The only thing that I think is material for accuracy is what the poll says about the registered voters,” Cuomo told Playbook. “As we learned in the primary, when you’re assuming turnout levels, there are many variables. In the primary, they underestimated the number of young people. You have to make another set of assumptions on the general. Some people will assume you’re going to see a young voter surge. Some people believe you’re going to see an anti-socialist surge. Some people think you’re going to see a pro-Israel surge. So who knows?”

Mamdani still holds a 16-point lead over Cuomo among registered voters, according to the poll. Mamdani gets 42 percent in a five-way race, followed by Cuomo at 26, Sliwa at 12, Adams at 7 and Walden at 1. — Jeff Coltin & Jason Beeferman

HEASTIE WILL VOTE DEMOCRAT (WE ASSUME): Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie implied he is likely to vote for Mamdani — but continues to avoid explicitly saying the democratic socialist will earn a spot on his ballot.

“Do we ask people who they vote for?” Heastie quipped when a reporter asked him this afternoon who he would vote for in the general election. “Listen, I'm a Democrat, and I support Democrats. I've never voted for someone that’s not a Democrat.”

The speaker was in Schenectady today for a visit to a local musical theater in need of state investment.

When asked if his record of voting strictly along the Democratic line could change for the upcoming mayoral election, Heastie chuckled. After a brief silence, his press aide cut in to solicit other questions from reporters.

The speaker did say he is in frequent contact with the mayoral nominee.

“Zohran and I have had loads of communications,” Heastie said. “What people have to understand is that when I'm the speaker of [a] body, I have to communicate concerns of the body, and Zohran and I have communicated what I think he needs to do to get me there.” — Jason Beeferman

GUN CONTROL PLEAS: New York Democrats pleaded for Congress to approve tighter gun control laws in the wake of a Midtown shooting that left six people dead — including an NYPD officer.

There’s little chance any measures will pass given Republicans holding all levers of power in Washington.

Yet Gov. Kathy Hochul and Heastie on Tuesday urged national action — a tacit acknowledgement that the state’s comparatively strict gun laws can’t stop someone obtaining a weapon in another state. The alleged shooter reportedly traveled to New York from Nevada.

“We need a national awakening here. People need to be talking about this once again and it shouldn't just happen in the wake of a tragedy like this. It should be an ongoing conversation where we force the Republicans to understand lives could be saved if we only do what's smart and common sense,” Hochul told CNN.

The governor pushed through a package of gun law changes after the U.S. Supreme Court determined New York’s concealed carry measure was unconstitutional. In the wake of a Buffalo mass shooting in 2022, Hochul won approval of tighter restrictions on gun ownership, including raising the age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21.

Heastie echoed Hochul’s sentiment with reporters in Schenectady.

“When is this country going to wake up on allowing citizens to have these military-style weapons?” he said. “No other industrial nation in this world allows the citizens to do it.” — Nick Reisman

AMEND TO THAT: Heastie is ready to change New York’s redistricting laws as red states move this year to redraw their House lines.

“At this point we should look to try to see what we can do to counteract Republican actions,” Heastie told reporters today.

There are very few options for New York Democrats to impact next year’s election, though, even as Hochul last week signaled she is open to making changes to the state’s House lines.

One potential long-term response is a constitutional amendment — a multi-year effort that ends with a voter referendum — that would allow New York to redistrict in the middle of the decade if another state undertakes the process.

Heastie said he is open to passing the measure, which was introduced by state Sen. Mike Gianaris and Assemblymember Micah Lasher, POLITICO first reported on Monday.

“It doesn’t have to be done now; it can be done in the following year,” he added. — Nick Reisman

DELGADO WANTS SPECIAL SESSION: Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, a gubernatorial primary candidate, is calling for the state Legislature to hold a special session to protect against incoming federal cuts — but Heastie indicated an early return to Albany for lawmakers is unlikely.

Delgado is slated to appear with state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez and Assemblymembers George Alvarez, Amanda Septimo, Phara Souffrant Forrest and Claire Valdez on Thursday in Manhattan to make a public plea for a special session.

It’s a sign of support from the group of lefty lawmakers even as the vast majority of Democratic lawmakers are leery of backing the lieutenant governor over Hochul.

The event is organized by Citizen Action, VOCAL-NY, Make the Road and other left-leaning advocacy groups.

Still, Heastie indicated this afternoon a special session is unlikely.

“We haven't had any discussions about that,” he said.

While it’s early, Heastie said his “biggest priority” for the upcoming legislative session will be to “limit as best we can the damage that Republicans have done to us that they keep trying to sugarcoat.” — Jason Beeferman

— SINCE 2000: The mass shooting in a Midtown building Monday night was New York’s deadliest shooting in 25 years. (New York Times)

— CONTESTED BALLOTS: The New York City Board of Elections is set to certify the results of a GOP primary for a Brooklyn City Council seat Tuesday amid allegations of voter fraud. (New York Daily News)

— ‘YOU AND YOUR EGO’: Cuomo slammed Adams as a “spoiler” driven by his own ego while speaking with reporters at the Columbian Day Parade. (New York Post)

— MTA OUTAGE: A slew of subway lines were delayed and suspended today as a power outage wreaked havoc on the system. (Gothamist)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Sometimes name recognition isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Just ask Geoffrey Epstein.

Epstein, who’s running for mayor in Framingham, Massachusetts, is — obviously — a different one from the disgraced late New York financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is back in the headlines as Republicans wrestle with each other over the release of documents related to his trafficking of underage girls.

But the shared name does draw some comments from people online pleading with him to “show us the list,” Geoffrey Epstein said. Take one Redditor, who recently posted a photo of an Epstein for Mayor mailer under the header, “Is this guy for real?” Other commenters, familiar with the former Framingham School Committee member, offered support: “He’s got good ideas about the city’s finances,” wrote one.

The Framingham mayoral hopeful — who goes by Geoff — says it’s not much of an issue among locals, who know him from his work with public schools.

“No one locally cares about that at all,” said Epstein, a former theoretical physics professor who moved to the U.S. from Australia decades ago. Among the abundance of differences between the two: “He's a dead American, and I'm an alive Australian,” Epstein said.

Epstein, who served on the school committees in both Newton and Framingham, both major Boston suburbs, got in the race to tackle problems he sees the city facing. His campaign, he said, is focused on education, infrastructure and environmental action, and he has no shortage of solutions he’s pitching — from expanding solar installations on school roofs and in school parking lots, to shifting more of the city’s budget toward education.

He’ll face a demanding fight against incumbent Mayor Charlie Sisitsky, who had more than $61,000 in his campaign coffers as of last month, compared to Epstein’s roughly $5,000.

Luckily for Epstein, a tough name doesn’t necessarily tank a campaign. Look at Harvey Epstein, the New York state assemblymember, whose name unfortunately evokes two of New York’s “most notorious sex perverts,” as comedian John Mulaney put it in a spoof campaign ad on “Saturday Night Live.”

That Epstein recently won the Democratic primary for a New York City Council seat, spoiling the attempted political comeback of former Rep. Anthony Weiner— yet another notorious sexual miscreant — in the process.

Harvey’s tip: “My advice to Geoffrey would be to lead with your values and who you are as a candidate,” the New York Epstein said over the phone. “People will support you if you do the work and follow through.”

This reporting first appeared in Massachusetts Playbook. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday.

Roy Cooper raised $3.4 million in the first 24 hours of his Senate campaign — a record-breaking sum for the former North Carolina governor in one of the most competitive upcoming Senate races.

The fundraising haul, shared first with POLITICO, includes more than $2.6 million raised directly to Cooper’s campaign account, with 95 percent of those donations totaling $100 or less, according to his team. The former governor raised another $900,000 into joint fundraising committees with the party, which allows for bigger contributions.

Cooper is likely to face Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, who will launch his own Senate bid in the coming days with the backing of President Donald Trump. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced his plans not to seek reelection last month, after clashing with Trump over passage of his megabill that Tillis voted against.

North Carolina represents Democrats’ best offensive opportunity for the Senate, a battleground state the former governor has won twice with Trump on the ticket. Cooper, the party’s top recruit, was expected to bring in big cash for the race, after growing a national fundraising network during his stint as Democratic Governors Association chair. Whatley, who took over the RNC last year, has built his own national donor relationships, raising expectations that the race will be one of the most expensive in 2026.

Cooper’s first-day total cracks a Senate Democratic candidate record set by Amy McGrath, a fundraising juggernaut, who nonetheless failed to unseat Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2020. McGrath raised $2.5 million in her first 24 hours as a candidate.

Project 2025 architect Paul Dans on Monday is launching a bid to primary Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, joining an increasingly crowded field.

“What we’ve done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era,” Dans told the Associated Press. ”If you look at where the chokepoint is, it’s the United States Senate. That’s the headwaters of the swamp.”

Dans on Monday morning also reposted the Associated Press’ story announcing his South Carolina senate primary challenge, saying “Have some news this morning.”

Dans worked in the White House during President Donald Trump’s first term. His bid may present a unique challenge for Graham, who — though he has already secured Trump’s endorsement — has found himself at odds with the president on several occasions. In 2024, after Graham urged Trump to focus more on policy during his reelection campaign, Trump responded he doesn’t “care what he says.”

“Lindsey wouldn’t be elected if I didn’t endorse him,” Trump said.

One of the leading voices on Project 2025, Dans told the AP he expects to have the support of the project’s allies as well as some of Trump’s supporters.

Graham is seeking his fifth term as Republicans attempt to hold onto their 53-47 majority in the Senate during the 2026 midterms. Dans said it’s “time to show him the door.” Graham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dans will officially announce his campaign at a Charleston event Wednesday.

Project 2025, the 900-page set of conservative policy proposals, dominated conversations during the 2024 presidential election. Though Trump insisted the plan — created by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation — was unrelated to his campaign, many of its architects, including Dans, have been involved with the Trump administration at some point or another.

Food dye and ADHD: FDA commissioner says listen to parents | The Conversation

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FDA's Makary on 'male-dominated' culture of medical research | The Conversation

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Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Martin Makary is getting lobbied by the MAHA movement to restrict food dyes and ultra-processed foods, as well as by the food, agriculture and pharmaceutical industries to reduce government oversight.

“We want to go bold and there are a lot of things to do,” Makary tells POLITICO’s Dasha Burns. “But we also want to find common ground and work incrementally.”

At the same time, he says, “The amount of pressure I feel from industry or other branches of government is zero.” Makary also discusses how the agency is addressing women’s health and access to mifepristone, what he calls a “child vaping epidemic,” and explains the rationale behind FDA staffing cuts as well as some controversial hires.

Plus, White House reporter Jake Traylor joins Burns to discuss the mood inside the White House amid the fallout over the Jeffrey Epstein story, why President Trump is “itching” to get back on the campaign trail ahead of the 2026 midterms and whether GOP candidates in swing districts will welcome him.

Listen and subscribe to The Conversation with Dasha Burns on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

FDA head Marty Makary on food dyes, ultra-processed foods and the MAHA agenda | The Conversation

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Democratic leaders are feeling pressure to join a brewing redistricting battle that is threatening to upend the midterms landscape — an effort that is likely to slam into legal and political reality.

As Texas Republicans pressed forward with a redistricting blitz designed to increase the number of red seats in the state, officials in the biggest Democratic states scrambled for a response. In New York, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke with Gov. Kathy Hochul in recent days to discuss what a counter-effort could look like. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration talked to state election officials about the logistics and timing of a special election to overturn its nonpartisan commission. And Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker joined Newsom in meeting with Texas Democratic lawmakers on Friday about a strategy for stalling the GOP’s brazen attempt to carve out five new seats, per President Donald Trump’s demand.

The problem is Democrats don’t have many options. In conversations with more than a dozen state lawmakers and redistricting experts, Democrats' best shot at redrawing a map lies in California, a heavily blue state with a huge number of congressional districts. They see the second-best option in New York, which saw Democratic gerrymandering efforts sputter in recent years, and Illinois, which is already a heavily pro-Democrat gerrymander. Far less likely options lie with Maryland and New Jersey, which have just four Republican-held seats between them.

Discussion of these options come as a debate rages within the party over whether to play hard ball to the same degree as Republicans.

“At this moment, it seems very clear that self defense is something we have to put as a priority,” said Maryland House Majority Leader David Moon, who introduced a bill this week that would force open Maryland’s redistricting process if another state pursues redistricting ahead of the U.S. Census. “If that’s where we are, and that’s where we’re forced to go, then I think that’s where Democratic states need to be prepared to go.”

Trump is pushing Republicans in an aggressive effort to redraw maps in hopes of holding onto the House in a potentially unfriendly midterms cycle. Efforts are already underway in Texas, where Trump wants to draw five additional GOP seats, and in Ohio, where Republicans hope to draw additional red districts during a legally mandated redistricting. Punchbowl News recently reported Trump is pressuring Missouri to rip up its own map ahead of the midterms, too.

All of this has sparked outrage from the Democratic base, but Republicans feel bullish about a midterms map that is reshaped by partisan redistricting.

“In an arms race where there’s a race to gerrymander the most, there’s not a scenario where they have more seats than we do,” said a GOP operative, granted anonymity to speak about party strategy.

Newsom has been the most strident of all the Democratic governors who lead trifectas in his vow to counter Texas Republicans, vowing on Friday to “put a stake into the heart” of the Trump administration by preventing Republicans from retaining the House.

But the obstacles are steep: Redrawing California’s map would require either calling a special election and convincing voters to return line-drawing power to politicians after they specifically voted to entrust a nonpartisan commission with that authority, or simply having the Legislature draw maps and effectively daring the courts to stop them.

“I don’t think it’s doable. I think there are too many constitutional constraints,” said Bruce Cain, a Stanford political scientist who was deeply involved as a staffer in the partisan gerrymanders from a prior era of California politics.

It's not just a legal obstacle. Undertaking redistricting would open up a huge "political fight" within the party by redrawing districts some politicians have run in for multiple cycles, he said. “You’d be borrowing from different kinds of Democrats and sticking them into other seats and the politics of that would be very complex,” Cain added.

But Newsom, who has his eye on running for president in 2028, has been steadily laying the groundwork anyway. He hosted Texas Democrats at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento on Friday, doing his part to project a united national front against Republicans, and told reporters he was weighing several options to expand Democrats’ margins beyond their current, disproportionate hold on 43 of 52 House seats.

“The question I imagine many folks are asking here in California is: what do the politics of Texas have to do with the politics here in California?” Newsom told reporters on Friday, flanked by Texas lawmakers. “The answer is everything.”

Lawmakers and operatives who were initially caught off guard or skeptical of Newsom’s proposal are increasingly becoming convinced California has the authority and the political will to respond to Texas in kind. Sharing maps of a potential Democratic gerrymander has become a favorite pastime.

“I’ve seen a map that's legal, upholds the Voting Rights Act, and produces 49 to 50 Democratic seats,” said Matt Barreto, a pollster and director of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project who polled for the Harris campaign and advised the Biden White House. California currently has 40 Democrats and 12 Republicans in Congress. “This is something lawmakers should consider if Texas goes first.”

In New York, Jeffries’ staff spoke with Hochul’s office recently to discuss redistricting New York’s House seats, two people with direct knowledge of the conversation said. On Thursday, Hochul declared that “all’s fair in love and war” regarding returning to contentious congressional map redraw.

“If there’s other states violating the rules and are trying to give themselves an advantage, all I’m going to say is, I’m going to look at it with Hakeem Jeffries," she said.

Even if state lawmakers plow ahead with redistricting, something the state Constitution says can only be done once per decade, the process would likely take more than a year to complete and may not be finished in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

New York tried an aggressive gerrymander that got blocked by the courts in 2022, and a court-drawn map was used instead. Democrats later drew a new map that is far less aggressive.

Hochul’s political allies believe there is little upside to drawing new lines.

“I understand those in New York who are watching what’s happening in Texas and Ohio want to offset their unfair advantage,” said New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs. But “the constitution seems pretty clear that this redistricting process should be done every 10 years. I don’t know where someone could interpret it as something you can do every two years.”

Beyond Texas, Republicans have their eye on picking up seats in other states like Missouri and Florida — which would put Democrats in a tough spot, given they don’t have as much leeway to squeeze out extra seats.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was noncommittal when asked by reporters earlier this week if he plans to pursue redistricting, noting that it’s “too early to make any definitive statement about it.” But he echoed what many other Democrats across the country have said when talking about the possibility of early redistricting: “Never bring a knife to a gunfight.”

New Jersey has its own constitutional impediment, which states that congressional districts, which are drawn by an independent commission, “shall remain unaltered through the next year ending in zero in which a federal census for this State is taken.”

Even if they were able to circumvent the state constitution, Democrats already have the majority in the New Jersey congressional delegation, and just two seats — the 7th, held by Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr., and the 9th, held by Democratic Rep. Nellie Pou — are considered battlegrounds.

Even some other Hail Mary options seem off the table. State lawmakers in Washington, Minnesota and Colorado balked at the suggestion they should pursue drawing new maps in the next few months.

“It’s just not in the cards,” said Washington House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, citing the requirement that a two-thirds majority is needed in both the state House and Senate to reconvene the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission.

And Minnesota State Sen. Aric Nesbitt shut down the idea quickly: “We're not power-crats, we’re Democrats. We should do things that improve democracy, even if that means sometimes we don't get our way.” Democrats hold the governorship and state Senate in Minnesota, but Republicans narrowly control the House.

In Colorado “there’s really no debate,” said former Senate Leader Steve Fenberg, who helped create the state’s independent redistricting commission in 2018.“We’re at a juncture right now where the threat is so overwhelming that I don’t think Democrats should rule out responding in kind,” he said. “But in a state like Colorado, I don’t think it’s really in our DNA to do this kind of action and it's not constitutionally allowed.”

Still, with a potentially tougher cycle ahead of them than they were anticipating given all of Trump's strategy, redistricting is sure to be a hot topic of conversation as Democratic governors gather at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend in Colorado.

“I suspect as the Democratic governors get together for a drink or a coffee, this will be high on the agenda,” Murphy said.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains underwater. But Democrats are faring worse, according to a new poll from The Wall Street Journal released Saturday.

The new survey, conducted by Democratic pollster John Anzalone and Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, found Democrats’ popularity at its lowest point in three decades of WSJ polling, with 63 percent of voters holding an unfavorable view of the party.

Only 33 percent of voters hold a favorable view of Democrats, with a meager 8 percent holding a “very favorable” opinion, for a net negative favorability of 30 percentage points.

While voters still have significant concerns over the president’s and the Republican Party’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy, the majority of respondents nonetheless say they trust Republicans more to handle those issues in Congress.

Despite criticism of the administration’s handling of inflation — disapproval outweighed approval by 11 points in the poll — the Republican Party, by 10 points, is trusted more than Democrats to deal with inflation.

That’s the same case when it comes to thoughts on the president’s drastic tariffs policy.

By 17 points, voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of tariffs, while still trusting Republicans more on the issue to Democrats by 7 points.

Health care and vaccine policy are the only two policy issues in which respondents favor Democrats to Republicans on.

Both Trump and the Republican Party at large are also disliked by more Americans than liked, but by far lower margins than Democrats in this survey. The president has a -7 point net unfavorability, while the GOP is at -11 in the WSJ survey.

The Journal poll has found Trump’s favorability rating to be relatively stable through the beginning of his second term. But other recent surveys have found far lower approval ratings for Trump.

“The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,” Anzalone told the newspaper. “Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems.”

Despite widespread irritation of Democrats, voters still said that if an election was held today, they would back a Democrat for Congress over a Republican by 3 points, 46 to 43 percent. It’s still a drop from this time in 2017, six months into Trump’s first term, when Democrats held an 8-point advantage in that category.

The Journal polled 1,500 registered voters, conducted from July 16-20 by landline and cellphone. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

FDA commissioner Marty Makary defends Vinay Prasad | The Conversation

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White House struggles to shake off Epstein files storm | The Conversation

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