D.C. Is the First, but Governors and Mayors Worry There Will Be More Takeovers

Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard troops to occupy D.C. after declaring a (nonexistent) crime emergency. They don't have formal police powers but they are doing other law-enforcement-type duties, including clearing homeless encampments, guarding national monuments (which haven't been threatened by anyone), and "keeping order." All of this against the express wishes of the elected mayor, Muriel Bowser. However, she has no power to stop any of this.

Trump's stunt has given rise to new calls for making D.C. a state. D.C.'s special status makes it easier for the president to commandeer it. If he tries that with a state, the governor is likely to object and the governor could possibly preempt nationalizing the Guard by activating it himself. Can the president seize an already-activated National Guard? That could ultimately be up to a Supreme Court that generally doesn't like to rule that the feds can take away state powers.

At the very least, the occupation of D.C. will put D.C. statehood on the front burner next time Democrats get the trifecta. Republicans are wildly opposed to it because they know that if D.C. becomes a state, it is almost certain to elect two Black Democrats to the Senate. With the Senate so closely divided all the time, that could be just enough to give the Democrats a slim majority.

Trump has given a hint of what is next. He has talked about Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Oakland as crime-ridden hellholes. He seems like a man with a plan: Occupy large blue cities with substantial Black populations that voted against him and take away their power to police themselves. The idea is to intimidate the people there. If there are protests, which is likely, then he will surely order mass arrests to further intimidate the residents of the occupied cities. His rural base has no idea of what life is like in big cities and no doubt swallows whole his lies about crime running rampant and people afraid to go out on the streets.

Sometimes there is a high-profile shooting in a city and Trump then latches onto that as evidence that he needs to take over, always against the wishes of the mayor and governor. Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) said: "[The president] is simply using honorable men and women as pawns to distract us from his policies, which continue to drive up unemployment and strip away health care and food assistance from those who need it most." Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) said: "If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence." (V)

Zelenskyy Is Desperately Trying to Keep Trump from Selling out Ukraine Tomorrow

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is having nightmares about Donald Trump betraying Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Trump could easily concoct a deal in which Russia gets permanent possession of the eastern part of the country and a promise from Trump to stop supplying weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian army in return for a ceasefire agreement that Putin will violate within a week. Remember, Putin's goal is to incorporate all of Ukraine into Russia, but he is a long-range thinker and will take part of it now as a down payment. Trump's goal is a handshake and a photo-op without regard to what the Ukrainians want. Accordingly, Zelenskyy is doing what he can to round up support. Yesterday he flew to Berlin to talk to European leaders both in person and on the phone to get them prepared for what might happen next. He no doubt will be asking for weapons, ammunition and security guarantees after any kind of ceasefire. What he fears is that Putin will make some deal with Trump and then immediately ignore it. Zelenskyy would dearly love to have British, French, German and other troops in Ukraine to raise the cost of breaking the ceasefire for Putin. The Europeans are not likely to be enthusiastic about becoming participants in the war but do want to help in other ways.

But in the end, everything depends on Trump and how much pressure he puts on Putin Friday. In his column entitled "A Half-Baked Alaska Summit" Bret Stephens lays out some things Trump has in his toolbox if he wishes to use them:

• Encourage Europe to seize $300 billion in Russian assets to buy American weapons for Ukraine.
• Put a 500% tariff on all goods from countries that are buying Russian oil or uranium.
• Remove all restrictions on what Ukraine can do with the U.S. weapons it has.
• Pursue a defense pact with Ukraine like the one the U.S. has with Israel.
• Give or sell Ukraine additional squadrons of F-16s.

Will Trump do any of these things? We have our doubts, but one can dream. The location of the meeting has been announced: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. You definitely cannot see Russia from there as it is almost 700 miles away.

One possible bit of good news for Zelenskyy is that Trump teased a possible second meeting, including Zelenskyy, if all goes well Friday. This shows you how Trump is thinking. The meeting with Putin is a show and if the public demands it, there could be a sequel. That is definitely not how Putin sees it.

The Europeans are the ones taking action here. Late yesterday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and other European leaders, along with Zelenskyy, had a video call with Trump. Afterwards, Merz said: "We had a truly exceptionally constructive and good conversation with the president." That could mean anything from "we talked, he was polite, but we didn't agree on anything," to "we actually have a joint plan now." With Trump, even if there was an agreement yesterday, he has probably forgotten it already. Trump also said that if Putin doesn't agree to stop the war "there will be very severe consequences." But as we all know, TACO.

What the Europeans are afraid of is that Putin will sell Trump a deal that Zelenskyy could never approve of and then blame Zelenskyy when he doesn't approve of it. We'll know tomorrow... maybe. (V)

Appeals Court Rules That Trump Can Impound Foreign Aid Appropriated by Congress

The U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. ruled yesterday that the administration can terminate billions of dollars of foreign aid appropriated by Congress, despite there being a law explicitly forbidding the president from impounding funds appropriated by Congress. After Donald Trump froze spending by USAID in January, grant recipients sued. U.S. District Judge Ami Amir ordered the administration to immediately release all the funds. The administration appealed.

Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson (a George H.W. Bush appointee) and Gregory Katsas (a Trump appointee) ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. That seems very artificial, since Trump's decision to violate the Impoundment Act of 1974 caused them not to get funds that they would have gotten if he had not violated it. To have standing, you have to have been injured by the defendant's actions, which is obviously the case here. Judge Florence Pan (a Joe Biden appointee) dissented, saying that the president may not violate the laws just because he doesn't like them. She wrote: "The majority opinion thus misconstrues the separation-of-powers claim brought by the grantees, misapplies precedent, and allows Executive Branch officials to evade judicial review of constitutionally impermissible actions." (V)

The Redistricting Wars Continue

Good government groups like Common Cause have always supported, well, good government, including things like independent commissions to draw districts. The trouble is, blue states tend to go for these things and red states don't. Now even Common Cause has had it and is arguing that blue states should rejigger their maps too, to fight back against Texas and other states that are going for maximal gerrymanders now. This is a huge change of heart for Common Cause. This is akin to some anti-death penalty group saying "This crime is so horrendous that the perpetrator should not only die, but should die in the most painful possible way."

Nevertheless, Common Cause drew up some guidelines for fighting back:

• Mid-decade restricting should be tit-for-tat in proportion to what the red states are doing.
• The public should approve this—for example, via an initiative.
• Redistricting must not dilute the voice of minorities.
• Leaders should pursue advancement of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
• Leaders should endorse independent commissions nationally in the long run.
• All maps must expire when the 2030 census data comes in.

It should be noted that not diluting the voice of minorities is in fact a call to use race when drawing districts—that is, a racial gerrymander, something the Supreme Court has already outlawed. We would like to have seen two other criteria. First, that districts are compact. Mathematically, that means the ratio of the perimeter to the area is as small as reasonable. For a circle of radius r, that ratio is 2/r. For a square with side s, it is 4/s. For a salamander-shaped district it is much higher. Second, counties should not be split up unless that is unavoidable. With 330 million people and 435 districts, the average district should have about 760,000 people. If a county has 600,000 people, it will be necessary to add in 160,000 people from some neighboring county. But in rural areas, putting entire counties in districts is desirable.

If the battle goes to the absolute max, it will favor the Republicans, because some blue states are already almost maxed out, like Illinois and Maryland. Squeezing another seat out there will be difficult, whereas Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Ohio can potentially each deliver one or more seats, in some cases many more. The only blue states that are treasure troves are California and New York, and the latter can't do it for 2026 but can do it for 2028 (because two sessions of the legislature have to approve). So if redistricting now becomes a thing and every state that can does it, it will probably mean a net gain for Republicans. Here is a map showing which states have trifectas. These are the states where redistricting is theoretically possible:

Redistricting could happen even in states where one party controls the entire House delegation. For example, Iowa has four representatives, all Republicans. Their districts are R+4, R+4, R+2, and R+15, respectively. One of them, IA-01, is R+4 but was extremely close last time. The Iowa legislature could redistrict and make them all about R+6 so none would be competitive.

Maximum redistricting would also mean that only a handful of districts will be competitive and those would be in states where neither party has the trifecta and the current map has such seats. The House could become like the Senate, where 43 states are irrelevant and all the fighting is in seven states. Only in the House, it could be 25 competitive seats and 410 seats that the other party would simply concede. Here are the competitive seats (R+5 to D+5) in states where neither party has the trifecta, so the map can't be changed right now.

District	PVI	Incumbent
NC-11	R+5	Chuck Edwards (R)
PA-08	R+4	Rob Bresnahan (R)
PA-10	R+3	Scott Perry (R)
VA-01	R+3	Rob Wittman (R)
MI-10	R+3	John James (R)
WI-03	R+3	Derrick Van Orden (R)
MI-04	R+3	Bill Huizenga (R)
WI-01	R+2	Bryan Steil (R)
PA-07	R+1	Ryan MacKenzie (R)
MI-08	R+1	Kristen McDonald Rivet (D)
NC-01	R+1	Don Davis (D)
AZ-01	R+1	David Schweikert (R)
MI-07	EVEN	Tom Barrett (R)
AZ-06	EVEN	Juan Ciscomani (R)
VA-02	EVEN	Jen Kiggans (R)
NV-03	D+1	Susie Lee (D)
PA-01	D+1	Brian Fitzpatrick (R)
NV-04	D+2	Steven Horsford (D)
KS-03	D+2	Sharice Davids (D)
VA-07	D+2	Eugene Vindman (D)
NV-01	D+2	Dina Titus (D)
PA-17	D+3	Chris Deluzio (D)
MN-02	D+3	Angie Craig (D)
MI-03	D+4	Hillary Scholten (D)
AZ-04	D+4	Greg Stanton (D)

This is clearly where we are heading. One problem with it is that independents hate it, but it is hard to tell who they will blame. Democrats could campaign on: "Trump started this," but that is kind of inside baseball and might not stick. (V)

It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Democrats still haven't figured out what they stand for as a party, but various other groups are at least talking to voters to find out what they want. Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark has run hundreds of focus groups since 2020, this year focusing on Biden-to-Trump voters. She says most of them see all of Trump's flaws, so pointing them out is useless. The voters already know them. The problem is that they believe Donald Trump is fundamentally for them whereas the Democrats are for minorities, gay people, and trans people, and not for ordinary white working people. What they want above all else is for prices to go down. Trump can't do it, but Democrats don't even talk about it. No one can do it, of course, but an alternative would be to raise wages and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is probably the only Democrat harping on that—and he isn't actually a Democrat. Longwell's conclusion is that Democrats have to drop all the identity politics stuff and also drop attacking Trump and instead focus on making life better for working people.

The New York Times didn't run large-scale focus groups, but did interview 30 working-class Biden-to-Trump (B2T) voters individually to see why they switched sides. The bottom line was a message to the Democrats: "Just because we don't like Trump doesn't mean we like you." A recent Wall Street Journal poll shows that only a third of the electorate has a favorable view of the Democratic Party. It is hard to win elections outside of very blue areas when most voters don't think much of you.

Some B2T voters didn't like the idea of Kamala Harris being foisted on them without a primary. Of course, that is tacitly a criticism of Joe Biden for not dropping out in Jan. 2023, when there would have been time for a primary. A number of voters didn't understand or trust Harris whereas Trump was clear that he would focus on lowering prices and deporting illegal immigrants. Harris didn't promise the former because she knew she couldn't (although she could have made a $15/hr minimum wage her big issue) and was afraid to tackle the latter due to internal divisions in her party.

A lot of the B2T voters saw the Democrats as focused on DEI, LGBTQ, and trans issues, none of which spoke to their economic uncertainties at all. In fact, this focus made them feel the Democrats didn't care about them at all. No one who listened to Trump at a rally would get the impression all he cared about was DEI, LGBTQ and trans issues. The Democrats couldn't shake that perception.

Voters are also very inconsistent. Many of them said the Democrats are too old. They seem to have missed the fact that Trump was 78 on Election Day 2024 and Harris was 60. They also seem to have missed the departure from the leadership of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Maybe the Democrats need to nominate someone really young next time, say in his or her 40s, especially if they are up against J.D. Vance, who will be 44 on Election Day 2028.

Some other evidence suggests Trump voters are inconsistent in other ways that are hard to combat. For example, Brad Bartell's new wife is from Peru. She overstayed her visa but applied for legal status. They went to Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, on their honeymoon. Their flight back from Puerto Rico to the mainland was a domestic flight and no passport was required. Still, his wife was arrested and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. He still supports Trump and his policies. What would it take to get him to change his mind on Trump? Having Trump arrest and execute his first-born? Probably nothing could change his mind.

Similarly, many Trump-supporting farmers have been hit hard by his tariffs but still support him. They believe other countries are taking advantage of the U.S. and that has to stop. Examples like this raise questions for the Democrats. Voters say one thing but don't always mean it. Still, cost of living does come up a great deal in many contexts. It is clearly on many minds. (V)

Trump Is Working to Censor Smithsonian Museums

Here is a little math puzzle for you. How much is 2026-1776? If you guessed 250, you nailed it. Next year America will celebrate its something-or-other. Big party. Donald Trump wants to show off how great America was. Then he will make it great again. But first he has to show how great it was.

Specifically, Trump signed an executive order for the Smithsonian museums to remove Badthink ("improper ideology" in Trump's terminology) and is now pushing the Smithsonian to comply. What this means is removing those parts of American history Trump does not like, such as "divisive, race-centered ideology." We suspect that exhibits that mention the fact that there was slavery in America for about 250 years are probably not welcome. Exhibits about how the slaves were treated also probably not. And certainly the fact that quite a few of the founding fathers from the South (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc.) were slave owners is also not the kind of thing Trump wants to see when strolling around a Smithsonian museum. And let's not even start on how the Native Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans and other groups have been treated over time.

Here is Anderson Cooper discussing Trump's directive:

Democrats in the House have called Trump's moves cowardly and unpatriotic. A letter written by the Democrats on the House Administration Committee said: "Unfortunately, we now stand at the brink of seeing the Smithsonian at its worst: shaped solely by the views and ideology of one individual as a means of expanding his political power."

This is not the first time Trump has played politics with the Smithsonian. In May, he tried to fire the director of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet. He was informed that he didn't have that authority and was enraged. Nevertheless, 2 weeks later, under pressure, she resigned. And you thought art was not political? Silly you. (V)

Poll: Hochul Leads Stefanik by 14 Points

Donald Trump nominated Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be U.N. ambassador. In anticipation, she gave up her leadership role and it was filled by someone else. Then Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) asked Trump not to do it because the House margin is so small, every vote counts. Stefanik was not happy being demoted to a backbencher, so she floated the idea of running for governor of New York against the not-terribly-popular Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). Stefanik probably thought she actually had a chance.

Now we have some polling from Siena College. Most Democrats are behind Hochul and most Republicans are behind Stefanik. The problem for Stefanik is that there are more Democrats than Republicans in New York. Among registered voters, 45% will vote for Hochul and 31% will vote for Stefanik. The rest will vote for someone else or are undecided. Oh, and 41% of the voters don't know who Stefanik is. She had better define herself before Hochul does.

Stefanik has preannounced but not officially announced, so maybe she can move up from 31% if she has a great introduction. But once she is in, Hochul will tear her apart for her hypocrisy. She used to be a moderate, but then decided her career would be improved if she became a super-Trumper. There will be ads showing her express her opinions "before" and "after" her epiphany. She's changed her mind on almost everything. That's not going to look good. And being a super-Trumper now probably won't play well in New York, where there are still many normie Republicans in the state.

Hochul is not home-free by a long shot, but with a big lead over someone she can tie closely to Trump, she is probably feeling good right now. (V)

Beshear Wows Democrats at Fundraiser

Presidential campaigns have historically not started until after the midterms, but they are in full swing already. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) just visited the Iowa State Fair. Maybe he has never had a pork chop on a stick and always wanted to try it. Now Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) showed up at a big fundraiser in California. After all, Torrey Pines, CA, north of La Jolla, is just a hop, skip, and a jump from Frankfort, KY. He might even have gotten lost on the way to the barbershop and ended up there by accident.

He wowed the big donors and vulnerable House Democrats by telling them they needed to stick to their values. Faking it doesn't work. He told them that when the Kentucky legislature passed one of the nastiest "bathroom bills" in the country, he vetoed it and went on to win reelection later in the year by 5 points anyway. The message was that voters value authenticity, even if they don't like your position on something.

Another point he made is to speak like a normal person, not like someone whose speech was written by a carefully vetted politically correct campaign consultant. Like if someone has an addiction, don't talk about substance abuse disorder. It turns people off and makes you look like a phony.

Beshear is clearly testing the waters, meeting donors and Democratic muckety-mucks. All of them are well aware that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were moderate small state governors nobody ever heard of until they were suddenly president. The older ones may remember that from time to time the Democrats have run progressives for president. George McGovern was very progressive and also a World War II combat veteran. He was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972 and carried Massachusetts. Richard Nixon won the other 49 states. In 1984, the Democrats ran the progressive Walter Mondale. He didn't even win Massachusetts. Fortunately, he did win his home state of Minnesota, so it wasn't a shutout. Ronald Reagan won the other 49 states. Expect to hear these stories often as Beshear travels around the country in the next couple of years.

Other speakers at the gathering were DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene, Joe Biden's NSA Jake Sullivan, and Susan Rice, a top Biden adviser. Even more important was Democratic pollster David Shor, who told the donors that their priorities didn't always align with the voters'. He also told them that young people (especially male noncollege young people) and minorities are fleeing the Democratic Party in droves and they better get the message soon. (V)

Truck Manufacturers Get Out of Emissions Deal with California

California has been trying to "Trump-proof" its state in various ways for years. One of them was a deal in 2023 with four heavy-duty truck manufacturers to voluntarily continue to meet the state's zero-emission standard, even if federal law doesn't require them to. On Tuesday, the FTC declared the agreement unenforceable.

This doesn't mean that California doesn't have any other weapons at its disposal. It could ban state agencies from buying gasoline-powered trucks after a certain date and could offer incentives for private companies to buy electric trucks. It could also impose a sales tax on gasoline-powered trucks but not electric ones. Many states have sales taxes with various exemptions. If all the blue states were to do this, their market power would go a long way towards encouraging truck companies to provide a wide variety of electric products, even without an enforceable agreement. But this would require the blue states to act together and quickly. (V)

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