| | | |  | | By Jack Blanchard with Dasha Burns | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine, Ali Bianco and Rachel Umansky-Castro On today’s Playbook Podcast: Jack and Dasha pick over last night’s election results, and consider what they mean for 2026. Plus — why today’s Supreme Court showdown is the biggest of the year.
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| Good Wednesday morning. This is Jack Blanchard. Get in touch. DOESN’T TIME FLY? A year ago today, tens of millions of Americans were headed to the polls as one of the most dramatic presidential elections in U.S. history reached its climax. As the final votes were cast on Nov. 5, 2024, most pollsters had Kamala Harris narrowly ahead … and then the results began to stream in. No doubt you remember those fateful moments. How quickly the world can change in a few short hours. Well guess what? The world just changed again. Let’s get into it. In today’s Playbook … — Democrats dominate on election night — reversing Trump’s gains across the map. — A huge day at the Supreme Court as Trump’s tariffs face their moment of truth. — And it’s the longest shutdown ever! But could it finally be drawing to a close?
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“Tonight we sent a message,” Abigail Spanberger told a cheering crowd in Virginia on Tuessday night following her victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | A NIGHT FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS: New York City has elected its first democratic socialist mayor. Virginia has elected its first female governor. America has its first muslim woman elected to a statewide post. And New Jersey has (finally) elected a governor who admits pork rolls are totally gross. But you needn’t look too far for the biggest takeaway on a night of extraordinary results: The Republican Party took one heck of a kicking. Tired of so much winning? These were the first major elections since Donald Trump returned to the White House, and there’s no other way of spinning the voters' response: Democrats out-performed expectations in every significant race across America. Zohran Mamdani — the most left-wing Democrat in a big-ticket election in decades — cleared 50 percent of the vote in NYC. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill — once congressional roommates from the Dems’ nat-sec “badass caucus” — both won their governorships by landslides. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s supposedly high-risk redistricting ballot was called within minutes of the polls closing. Everything came up blue. And keep ‘em coming: Dems swept the Virginia House of Delegates. They held all three seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They blocked a GOP assault on absentee ballots in Maine. They won down-ballot races in Trump-supporting Georgia, by big margins. Even beleaguered Virginia AG candidate Jay Jones — facing a barrage of criticism over that text message scandal — won his race. Dems are euphoric: “Tonight we sent a message,” a beaming Spanberger told cheering crowds in Virginia. “Enough with the premature obituaries. The Democratic Party is back,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X. “Breathe this moment in,” a gleeful Mamdani told his fans. “Hope is alive.” Brace yourself for endless Democratic victory laps on your TV screens today.
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Mikie Sherrill celebrates her New Jersey gubernatorial victory in East Brunswick, New Jersey, on Tuesday night. | Getty Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images | And here’s why: The margins of victory were immense. Spanberger won by more than 15 percentage points — far outpacing any recent Democratic win in Virginia, including Ralph Northam’s blowout 2017 victory at the equivalent point of Trump’s first term. In a New Jersey gubernatorial contest billed as a close-run, Sherrill’s double-digit win almost matched her former roommate’s in Virginia. Sherrill flipped at least five Trump-supporting counties back to the Democrats last night. Watch the trend lines: Democrats won in key areas and among key demographics that turned their backs on the party a year ago. As Playbook’s Adam Wren writes in his essential takeaways piece this morning, Dems won across the suburbs, massively outperforming both Northam and Kamala Harris in wealthy areas like Loudoun County in northern Virginia — the very place it became clear her presidential bid had hit the rocks last year. “Northam won it by 20 points — a number no Democrat has beaten since,” Adam writes. “Spanberger won it by 29.” Just as important: The nonwhite voters who turned out en masse for Trump last year either stayed at home, or swung back blue. Check out Hudson County, New Jersey, home to several heavily Hispanic cities, where Sherrill regained all the Democratic margins Harris lost in 2024, as NBC’s Steve Kornacki shows. The exact same story played out in Middlesex County, New Jersey — more than 60 percent nonwhite, per analyst Ryan Matsumoto — and in Manassas Park, Virginia, per HuffPost’s Kevin Robillard.
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Explore our ongoing work. | | | | Don’t get carried away: These are off-year victories for an opposition party, in states that backed Kamala Harris last year. But these numbers do bode well for Dems in 2026. Without Trump on the ticket, and with campaigns focused relentlessly on pocketbook issues — as POLITICO’s Ry Rivard and Madison Fernandez note — Democrats showed they still know how to win. Republicans hoping to buck historical trends next year have reasons to be nervous. The White House isn’t panicking, but the mood is far from jolly. “It's not doomsday,” one White House ally tells Dasha, “but the tea leaves are not good.” Republican strategists spy a Democratic voter base now more motivated than their own, and swing voters who feel the president has not delivered on his cost of living pledge. “The midterms start tonight,” Steve Bannon said on his podcast, “and the warning signs are flashing.” Trump himself does not sound happy. We’ll hear from the president shortly, when he addresses the press at 8:30 a.m. at a breakfast with GOP senators at the White House. But we already have a fair idea what to expect, via Truth Social. “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” the president wrote. A series of diatribes aimed at Hill Republicans swiftly followed. Translation: Trump is angry at his party, and you can expect the presidential blame game to continue today. In fact, it’s already begun: “A Bad candidate and Bad campaign have consequences - the Virginia Governors race is example number 1,” wrote Trump’s elections guru Chris LaCivita on X. “Tonight was a great lesson for the Republican Party,” added Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz. “Running squishy Rs who are lukewarm on Trump and MAGA, even in ‘purple’ states, doesn’t work.” But beyond the damage limitation — and the Trump-is-always-right framing — the central GOP messaging drive today will focus on Mamdani. As Playbook has been telling you, a major Republican operation is planned to frame Mamdani as the dangerous, radical leader of an out-of-control leftist party. “…AND SO IT BEGINS!” Trump wrote on Truth Social as Mamdani gave his victory speech in Brooklyn. Clashes between these two appear set to dominate the year ahead.
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Zohran Mamdani addresses supporters after being declared winner of the New York City mayoral election in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. | Bing Guan for POLITICO | Pushback: Mamdani gave as good as he got in his speech last night — even addressing the president directly, just as he did on Fox News last month. “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani told his fans. “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.” The crowd roared its approval. Sick burn: Mamdani also wrote a swift political obituary for his defeated opponent, Andrew Cuomo. “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best — in private life,” Mamdani said, deadpan. “But let tonight be the last time I utter his name.” Socialists in America — and around the world — are giddy. And already, Mamdani’s making moderates nervous. A new memo sent out this morning — only hours after his victory — from the center-left Third Way sounds the alarm, Playbook’s Adam Wren writes in. It argues that despite “excellent” and “broadly applicable” campaign tactics, Mamdani’s “policies and message, which are radical and politically toxic outside the deep blue confines of New York City, do not translate.” “We therefore urge Democrats at all levels to resist the pressure to align with Mamdani’s politics and agenda,” the memo adds. These are tumultuous times for the Democrats, as POLITICO’s Alex Burns writes in a must-read analysis this morning. A year on from the 2024 election, the party of Joe Biden looks radically changed. A self-declared socialist is the wildly popular mayor of New York City; and on the west coast, Democratic gerrymandering suddenly has mass support. “Politics now moves at such an astonishing speed,” Alex writes, “that it is easy to miss what a revealing shift this is for a party that spent much of the last decade trumpeting contented, self-soothing slogans about how America was already great, and Trump was on the wrong side of history.”
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| | | | Yes to Prop 50: The California result was the other big moment of the night, with Newsom’s redistricting gambit winning at a canter — a genuine triumph for a politician who really is having quite the year. Seeking to maintain his de facto “leader of the opposition” status, Newsom swiftly laid down the gauntlet to other blue states to follow his lead, as POLITICO’s Jeremy White and Tyler Katzenberger report. (Our POLITICO colleagues in California have excellent reads on how Newsom got it done, and how Republicans dropped the ball.) Expect the pressure to crank up in Maryland and elsewhere now. And there’s more: The redistricting news got even better for Dems last night, with Kansas Republicans announcing they are abandoning their gerrymander plans, at least for now, per POLITICO’s Andrew Howard. A new memo from John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, predicts we’ll see that same pattern repeated in red states elsewhere, citing voter “backlash” to map-drawing measures deemed anti-democratic. We shall see. 2028 watch: The early call in California last night meant Newsom managed a victory lap on TV screens before the East Coast settled down to sleep. And other 2028 hopefuls kept popping up too, clearly keen to be associated with the successes of the night. Here was Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on MSNBC; there, Rahm Emanuel bagging an analysts’ slot on CNN. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sent round a memo touting the muscle he put behind the state Supreme Court race in Pennsylvania, POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky writes in. Only three more years of this to go! Politics at ground level: As usual, the election-night parties around the U.S. last night painted the clearest picture of exactly what all this means to hard-working activists who’ve spent the past few months campaigning hard. Contrast the scenes at Earle-Sears’ HQ in Leesburg, Virginia, where POLITICO's Brakkton Booker watched a “quarter-full” room of gloomy faces listening to disco classics and eating beef empanadas as the (disastrous) results rolled in. Across the country in California’s Democratic HQ, every face was grinning ear to ear. “I’m f--kin’ drinking so much,” one Newsom aide was overheard saying by POLITICO’s Jeremy White as the Prop 50 race was called. “And then I’m sleeping.” And who can argue with that?
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| | | | COURT IN THE ACT THE ONUS POTUS PUT ON SCOTUS: Once you’ve shaken off the post-election haze, it’s time to buckle up again for the biggest blockbuster case before the Supreme Court this term. At 10 a.m., justices will hear arguments over whether Trump was within his presidential authority to enact his sweeping tariff agenda. Trump tries to tip the scales: In a Truth Social post last night, the president deemed the case “literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country.” And while Trump won’t be there in person, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he will — and “hopefully in the front row,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Monday. The stakes: “The case is a big test — perhaps the biggest — of the term for a court that has thus far acted mostly as an enabler of Trump and the slew of unusually aggressive executive actions he’s unleashed since returning to office in January,” POLITICO legal ace Josh Gerstein writes in. “While the six-justice conservative majority generally embraces executive power, the tariffs case may prove less clear-cut because of the policy’s major economic impacts. In such cases, the justices have often looked to Congress for some clear delegation of authority to the executive branch, particularly for things that look like taxes.” Some context: “The authority Trump is claiming for his sweeping tariffs is a bit shaky: a 1977 law which doesn’t mention tariffs at all and has never been used by any president to impose tariffs,” per Josh. “And some of Trump’s more erratic moves, like his announcement of 10 percent additional tariffs on Canada due to his irritation at a TV ad, have raised credibility questions about his claims of a global trade emergency justifying the wide-ranging duties.” Three things Josh will be watching for … 1) The scope: Do the justices frame the case as a national security/foreign policy issue or an economic one? If they view the tariffs as primarily economic and akin to a tax hike, Trump is likely to lose. If they see the import fees as a diplomatic negotiating ploy, Trump’s policy is more likely to survive. 2) How are the key justices leaning? Any signals from Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, seen as the most centrist members of the court, could be potent evidence of where the case will come out. (If the liberal justices reject Trump’s arguments, they will need two conservative justices to join them for Trump’s policy to be blocked.) 3) Middle ground: Do any justices signal interest in a compromise outcome? The case actually involves two kinds of tariffs: the global ones Trump imposed to combat trade deficits, and country-by-country ones he deployed to punish specific countries deemed to be uncooperative with the U.S. on fentanyl trafficking or migration issues. A ruling tossing out the broadest tariffs but allowing the narrower ones might allow Trump to save face, but it would still be a big defeat for the administration. The bigger picture: The case kicking off today amounts to an “epic clash between two of the most deeply ingrained tenets of the conservative legal movement,” Josh writes in a must-read curtainraiser on the stakes of the arguments. “The first is that presidents need and are entitled to extreme deference on matters of national security and foreign policy. … On the other hand, an indisputable hallmark of the Roberts court is a deep mistrust for government meddling in the free market,” he notes. On this issue more than any other, conservatives are splintered. Ankush Khardori convened two conservative legal scholars on opposite sides of the issue for POLITICO Magazine to hash out the arguments we might see at the court this morning. The outcome is far from clear. “If all three of the Democratic appointees on the court oppose the Trump administration’s effort, the government can afford to lose only one of the six Republican appointees,” Ankush writes. “If two defect, that would be the whole ball game.”
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➡️ Subscribe to West Wing Playbook | | | | | SHUTDOWN DAY 36 UNPRECEDENTED TIMES: The government shutdown is now officially the longest ever. Speaker Mike Johnson has said he’s “tired of making history,” and 36 days in (and counting), a way out may actually soon be in sight. The president intervenes: Trump is calling GOP senators to the White House for breakfast at 8:30 a.m. Trump’s breakfast get-together marks a step up in the president’s involvement — “a milestone many in both parties have waited for, figuring that it may take a perturbed president to break the logjam,” POLITICO’s Myah Ward and colleagues report. Top of mind, of course, will be the shutdown — plus the president’s ongoing crusade to ax the filibuster. And his pressure campaign will only increase on GOP senators if they don’t follow along, Axios’ Marc Caputo and colleagues report. Yet so far, Republicans have held firm, NYT’s Carl Hulse reports. The view from 1600 Penn: Trump’s angry post-election Truth Socials last night — blaming the shutdown for election losses and urging Republicans to “GET BACK TO PASSING LEGISLATION” — certainly sounded like those of a man keen to move on. So watch this space. But but but: There’s no consensus yet among Senate Democrats about how to end it, POLITICO’s Jordain Carney and colleagues write, with multiple serious bipartisan negotiations in play. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters yesterday that Democrats aren’t yet ready to surrender — but about a dozen Democrats are now saying enough is enough. Some senators are now predicting the shutdown could end this week, per NBC’s Scott Wong and colleagues. Then again, “after Democrats’ sweeping victories Tuesday night, their colleagues are waking up this morning and wondering: Are we really going to cave now?” POLITICO’s Inside Congress team reports.
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Learn more. | | | | BEST OF THE REST ROCKING THE BOAT: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced another strike on an alleged drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing two. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will brief a bipartisan group of lawmakers today on the strikes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday. Sure to come up: The Trump administration is preparing for a slew of scenarios for military action on Venezuela, including potential direct attacks on the military protecting regime leader Nicolás Maduro, NYT’s David Sanger and colleagues report. “Trump has yet to make a decision … Officials said he was reluctant to approve operations that may place American troops at risk or could turn into an embarrassing failure. But many of his senior advisers are pressing for one of the most aggressive options: ousting Mr. Maduro from power.” NOMINATION STATION: Trump has renominated Jared Isaacman to run NASA, “handing the former nominee a remarkable second chance to lead the agency,” POLITICO’s Audrey Decker writes. “The billionaire astronaut has already been tapped once to lead the space agency, but Trump pulled his nomination in May … over concerns about his close ties to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and previous donations to Democrats.” ONE TO WATCH: Erika Kirk’s first televised interview since the death of her husband Charlie Kirk will air on Jesse Watters’ Fox News program at 8 p.m. In a preview clip released yesterday, Kirk told Watters that Sinclair Broadcast Group asked her if she wanted an apology from Jimmy Kimmel or to appear on his show: “I don’t need it,” Kirk said. COMING ATTRACTIONS: The White House is considering a repeal of a major 2019 sanctions law that has blocked rebuilding Syria, ahead of Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit with Trump next week, WSJ’s Jared Malsin and Michael Gordon report. TRAIL MIX: Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced yesterday that he will not run for governor of California next year, per POLITICO’s Cheyanne Daniels and colleagues. … Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley is weighing entry into the Massachusetts Senate race for the seat currently held by Sen. Ed Markey, which would expand a primary field that already includes Rep. Seth Moulton, POLITICO’s Nicholas Wu and Kelly Garrity report. REMEMBERING DICK CHENEY: The White House lowered its flags to half-staff yesterday after the death of former VP Dick Cheney — but Trump remained silent on his death and the White House did not release a statement, per Reuters’ Nandita Bose.
| | | | POLITICO’s Global Security briefing connects the policies, deals, and industrial shifts shaping the global defense landscape. From Washington to Brussels, we follow who’s funding what, what’s being built, and how power moves across continents. Subscribe now for the free preview. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | MAGA WARS — Chris DeMuth has resigned from the Heritage Foundation as a distinguished fellow, National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg reports. “No official reason was given for his departure, but this development comes in the wake of a controversial video in which Heritage President Kevin Roberts defended his friend Tucker Carlson for conducting a softball interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.” Related read: “The GOP Civil War Over Nick Fuentes Has Just Begun” by Wired’s David Gilbert PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION — “It Smelled of Mustard: Sandwich-Thrower Trial in D.C. Focuses on Moment of Impact,” by NYT’s Zach Montague: “There was no dispute from anyone in a federal district courtroom on Tuesday that on one evening in August, Sean C. Dunn pelted a Customs and Border Protection agent with a freshly made deli sandwich after confronting a group of officers patrolling a popular bar district in Washington. There was considerable dispute, however, over whether the act should be treated as a criminal offense.” MEDIAWATCH — McClatchy is shutting down its D.C. bureau and “laying off some staffers, including a few reporters who cover Congress and the White House,” per The Guardian's Jeremy Barr. MEDIA MOVES — The AP is expanding its elections team: Ashlyn Still is now elections news editor, joining from WaPo; Sameul Jens is now an elections data scientist, after working for AP last year; Hannah Recht is now a data journalist, after working as a freelancer; Simran Parwani is now an election data visualization designer, after working as a freelancer; Katie Marriner is now an elections data visualization developer, joining from FiveThirtyEight; and Hyojin Yoo is now an elections data visualization developer, after interning at AP. TRANSITION — Alex Moe Flowers is now a VP at P2 Public Affairs. She is an NBC News alum. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) and Wesley Bell (D-Mo.) … Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers … Valerie Biden Owens … former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu … John Harwood … NBC’s Ken Strickland and Jason Calabretta … Karen Mulhauser … POLITICO’s Camille von Kaenel … Malik Haughton … Bloomberg’s Katy O’Donnell … Justin Muzinich … Reuters’ Nolan McCaskill … Steve Pfister … Benjamin Wittes … Stephen Rubright … WaPo’s Kevin Sullivan … Chris Mewett … America First Policy Institute’s Max Eden … Keith Castaldo of Avōq … Annie Kelly Kuhle of FP1 Strategies … John Procter … Steve Caldeira … Moira Whelan … Accenture’s Matt Nicholson … former Reps. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) … Kristin Bodenstedt … Target’s Molly Cagle … Owen Beal of Rep. Emilia Sykes’ (D-Ohio) office … Dana Jacobson … Virginia Smith of Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) office … Ohio state Sen. Jane Timken Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. Corrections: Yesterday’s Playbook misspelled Ankush Khardori’s and Alanna Durkin Richer’s names.
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