| | | |  | | By Eli Okun with Bethany Irvine and Rachel Umansky-Castro | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Ali Bianco Good Sunday afternoon. It’s Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Rachel Umansky-Castro, teaming up today. Get in touch. INTRODUCING … THE POLITICO POLL: POLITICO has teamed up with Public First for a brand new monthly poll to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. The first edition is out today. The exclusive new poll, conducted nearly one year after the 2024 elections, finds a fading American brand, POLITICO’s Erin Doherty writes. “In a bitterly divided country, pessimism and cynicism reign supreme: Two-thirds of Americans say it is at least probably true that the government often deliberately lies to the people. That distrust cuts across partisan lines: Strong majorities of Donald Trump voters (64 percent) and Kamala Harris voters (70 percent) agree. Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say that the best times of the country are behind them, according to The POLITICO Poll by Public First. That’s greater than the 41 percent who said the best times lie ahead, underscoring a pervasive sense of unease about both individuals’ own futures and the national direction.” HAPPENING TONIGHT: Trump’s interview with Norah O'Donnell for CBS’ “60 Minutes” is set to air at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. “The interview is ‘double-length,’ which is ‘60 Minutes’ parlance for a story that wins two of the three coveted slots on the weekly broadcast,” CNN’s Brian Stelter notes. Trump on Taiwan: In a preview clip released by CBS, O’Donnell asks Trump whether he would order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan if China invades. “You'll find out if it happens. And he understands the answer to that,” Trump said, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Pressed on what that means, Trump held back: “I can't give away my secrets.” Watch the clip
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
The governor’s race has gotten very nationalized: It was rare to encounter much specific excitement for Democrat Abigail Spanberger or Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, as many voters focused more on Trump and the national parties. | Robert Yoon/AP | CHESAPEAKE, Virginia — Outside a Food Lion here last week, a military veteran and mom named Jenny was feeling “really appalled” by Trump and the government shutdown. She was concerned about whether her husband, an active-duty service member who’d had to attend a pep rally-esque event with Trump, would get paid — and she was voting all Democratic in next week’s election. In nearby Virginia Beach, where jet noise (the “sound of freedom”) periodically boomed overhead, a fellow military wife and realtor named Tracy had just voted straight Republican. She’d personally read the text of and supported the GOP’s “clean” continuing resolution, and she was proud of Trump’s accomplishments, especially as her husband prepares to deploy next year. “He’s ended eight wars,” she said of the president. “Eight.” Ahead of Tuesday’s gubernatorial election, the Playbook team fanned out from our Arlington home base across Virginia and interviewed 110 voters to capture an anecdotal snapshot of the places and people whose votes — or decisions to stay home — could be determinative. We found an electorate alternately passionate and disillusioned. Some people, like Jenny and Tracy, felt the effects of politics intimately, while others stood at a far remove from it. And the governor’s race has gotten very nationalized: It was rare to encounter much specific excitement for Democrat Abigail Spanberger or Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, as many voters focused more on Trump and the national parties. On the issues: Worries about the government shutdown, especially the SNAP funding cliff and pay for troops and federal workers, arose more than some recent polling would indicate. But the cost of living, education and safety remained paramount for many Virginians. Abortion and transgender issues, which Spanberger and Earle-Sears have respectively focused on, came up as well — but mostly among staunch partisans. Ticket-splitting was rare, as Democrats largely stuck by Jay Jones for AG despite reservations about his scandals. And plenty of voters, especially younger ones, said they planned to sit this election out, even after casting a ballot for Trump or Harris. Where to watch Tuesday: Can Earle-Sears re-create Glenn Youngkin’s gangbusters 2021 turnout in rural southwest Virginia? Will Democrats erase recent underperformance in some college towns? Many areas and demographic groups could be crucial, but after talking to both gubernatorial campaigns and several nonpartisan analysts, Playbook reporters traveled to a few key hotspots to take the temperature of voters, some of whom provided only their first names. THE D.C. EXURBS: Once a Republican stronghold and now one of Virginia’s most competitive suburbs, Loudoun County remains a test of how the state’s electorate is shifting. Its map looks mostly purple, split between fast-growing, diverse suburbs and more rural stretches that still lean red. After 2024, Loudoun holds an outsize place in the minds of political obsessives: Its fast-reporting results were one of the first signals last year that Republicans were on track for a good night. It’s also one of five Northern Virginia counties in a battle with the Trump administration over transgender students, which Earle-Sears has emphasized and which weighed heavily on some voters’ minds on both sides. And a large population of federal workers has been affected directly by the shutdown and Trump’s cuts. Republicans have made some recent inroads in Asian American and Latino communities in the eastern portion of the county. For Democrats to have a good night, they’ll hope for lots of people like Raghav Modur. The fiscally conservative, socially liberal Aldie resident switched from Youngkin in 2021 to Spanberger this weekend, citing abortion and the desire for change. “The Republican candidate was just a little too conservative,” he said. Or take Jose Saldaña, a federal contractor at risk of being furloughed during the shutdown. “In today’s climate, the smaller fights don’t matter as much as the big ones,” he said, “so I went straight party blue, which is not normally what I do.” James, a federal employee who recently lost pay due to the shutdown, said both parties share the blame. “I wish Congress would get off their butt,” he said. Though raised in a Democratic family, he votes Republican, unless he dislikes both candidates. “Then I just won’t vote,” he said.
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Learn how Optum is redefining pharmacy care at optum.com/redefineRX. | | | | THE I-95 CORRIDOR: Voters trickled into Stafford County’s only early polling station on Wednesday under gray skies, eager to beat the morning drizzle. In a county with a high concentration of federal workers just between Quantico and Fredericksburg, which swung 12 points toward Dems from 2021 to 2024, residents who spoke to Playbook felt the weight of the government shutdown and incoming election. “This is the first time I went Dem across the whole board because of everything going on … the hot-mess express that is the world right now,” said Anne, a local educator. “Normally I’m an issue voter.” Across the county, residents from both parties described feeling similarly anxious about the direction the country is going in and frustrated with local changes — including an incoming Buc-ee’s gas station and the spread of AI and data centers. Zia, an Uber driver who lost his nonprofit job when USAID shuttered, said he felt like the election was more about Trump and his agenda than the party as a whole, adding that many of his passengers in the past few months have shared their stories of facing job loss: “People are frustrated,” he said. “The only reason they want to work for the government is job security, but now a government job is the most uncertain and the most unstable job.” HAMPTON ROADS: This vote-rich region contains large, politically mixed cities that Earle-Sears likely needs to win to pull off an upset, like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. The federal government looms large here, with a high concentration of both military families and civil servants (some of whom groused to us about not getting paid). But keep an eye on Black turnout too, from cities like Portsmouth to rural areas, which could be crucial for Democrats to get Jones across the finish line — this is his home base. Spanberger has an opportunity with voters like Manuel Solano, a retired realtor whose attempted stroll on a pier at Norfolk’s northern tip had just been thwarted by stormy weather. In the parking lot, the Trump voter — concerned about taxes and housing/medical costs — said he was undecided but might switch to the Democrat this year. And Spanberger has work to do with those like Brian Ruffin, who leans Democratic and works in the print shop at Tidewater Community College. He was concerned about affordable health care and frustrated with the SNAP lapse: “You take that away like you just don’t care. I think that’s wrong.” But without following politics closely, Ruffin found it hard to know whom to believe and wasn’t sure whether he’d vote. AROUND RICHMOND: The large and fast-growing suburbs here, full of many college-educated new arrivals, could be pivotal for Spanberger: Henrico should be her turf, and ancestrally conservative Chesterfield swung from Youngkin +5 to Harris +9. Democrats will want to boost turnout in areas with large Black populations like the Southside of Richmond and the nearby city of Hopewell, where the party has sometimes lagged recently. “At the end of the day … does the voting really matter?” Danielle Moore, a young Hopewell native who works at a call center, wasn’t so sure. But she’d turned out for Spanberger at her mom’s behest nonetheless. A few blocks away, Terry Williams had just gotten off work at a manufacturing warehouse — and hadn’t yet researched to determine how he’d vote. Also raised Democratic but increasingly wavering, he said the economy, crime, poverty and safety were top of mind. At the Chesterfield Towne Center mall, University of Richmond student Gabriel Halatchev was backing Earle-Sears: Spanberger is “just too radical,” he said. But Lydia Lopez, a 19-year-old Amazon worker getting her bachelor’s degree online, was sitting this one out after voting for Trump. Politicians “always say stuff, but it doesn’t usually happen,” she said.
| | | | A message from Optum: Optum is redefining pharmacy care, providing real-time pricing, personalized support, and over $1 billion in savings last year alone. Learn more at optum.com/redefineRX. | | | | SUNDAY BEST … — Speaker Mike Johnson on Trump’s call to end the filibuster, on “Fox News Sunday”: “We, on our side, traditionally, have resisted that because the worst impulses of the far-left Democrat Party, they would pack the court. … The filibuster has traditionally been a safeguard against those worst impulses, but we'll see what the Senate does.” On the administration’s strikes against alleged drug-trafficking vessels: “We have exquisite intelligence about these strikes. … They're taking it seriously and Congress will continue to have oversight. We'll have more of these hearings, but thus far the intelligence that we have is very reliable.” — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on whether Zohran Mamdani is the future of the Democratic Party, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “No, I think the future of the Democratic Party is going to fall, as far as we're concerned, relative to the House Democratic Caucus and members who are doing a great work all across the country.” — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the trade truce with China, on “Fox News Sunday”: “We had maximum leverage against the Chinese, and we could threaten the tariffs again, and we have plenty of things that we can hold back too. Over the next 12 and 24 months, we’re going to be moving at warp speed. … I think and I hope after the agreement and the goodwill between President Xi and President Trump in Korea, that we can depend on them to be more reliable partners.” — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Trump’s actions as president, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “What the hell do we need to tell people to get them off their couch, to say, ‘Well, hold on, I may have liked his bluster, I may not have liked the last guy, but I didn’t sign up for this?’” More from POLITICO’s Cheyanne Daniels TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
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➡️ Sign up for West Wing Playbook | | | | | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. TWO DAYS TO GO: Early voting is showing positive turnout for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia, with numbers rivaling Harris’ lead in those states. In the New York City mayoral race, Andrew Cuomo is posting a better showing than in the primary, but young voters are surging to the ballot box in support of Mamdani, CNN’s Edward Wu writes. Going to California: Newsom’s last two campaigns “featured a star-studded roster of celebrity and Silicon Valley donors, from Steven Spielberg to Ron Conway and Priscilla Chan. But most of the California governor’s past top donors — at least 54 of them — have not reopened their checkbooks for Tuesday’s ballot measure that would redraw California House districts to favor Democrats,” POLITICO’s Christine Mui reports. “With just days before the vote, their dollars are conspicuously missing from the Proposition 50 fight, an absence that, as of Friday, extends to the wealthiest Californians and titans across industry.” A New York minute: Mamdani is targeting Cuomo’s Black voter base in his final campaign stretch, POLITICO’s Jason Beeferman writes. Meanwhile, Cuomo told MSNBC yesterday that diversity is a “strength, but it can also be a weakness,” while denouncing Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani. Host Eugene Daniels pressed Cuomo to clarify what he meant by calling diversity a weakness. “‘Diversity can be a weakness if you have antipathy among groups, Jonathan,’ Mr. Cuomo said, mistaking Mr. Daniels for his co-host Jonathan Capehart, both of whom are Black,” per NYT’s Andy Newman. 2. 2026 WATCH: Working-class voters see Democrats as “woke, weak and out-of-touch,” and six in 10 have a negative view of the party, according to a new research assessment scooped by POLITICO’s Elena Schneider. “Working-class voters don’t see Democrats as strong or patriotic, while Republicans represent safety and strength for them. These voters ‘can’t name what Democrats stand for, other than being against [Donald] Trump,’ according to the report. … The Democratic brand ‘is suffering,’ as working-class voters see the party as ‘too focused on social issues and not nearly focused enough on the economic issues that impact every one, every day,’ the report said.” Poll position: The latest NBC News poll has a silver lining for Dems — they’re 8 points ahead, 50 percent to 42 percent, in the generic congressional ballot matchup ahead of the midterms, “the largest lead for either party on the congressional ballot in the NBC News poll since the 2018 midterms.” 3. FOR YOUR RADAR: “Trump threatens to deploy the military ‘guns-a-blazing’ to Nigeria,” by POLITICO’s Ben Johansen: “Trump on Saturday threatened U.S. military intervention in Nigeria and the withholding of all foreign aid if its government continues ‘to allow the killing of Christians.’ … Trump said in a post to social media that if Nigeria does not halt the persecution of Christians he may send U.S. troops ‘guns-a-blazing’ to ‘completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.’ … Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, pushed back on social media, arguing that to characterize his country as religiously intolerant ‘does not reflect our national reality.’” 4. SHUTDOWN SNAPSHOT: A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Trump administration “must make” full SNAP payments by tomorrow or partial payments by Wednesday, while pushing federal officials to find other alternative funding sources to alleviate the “irreparable harm” of losing the benefits, NYT’s Tony Romm reports. It’s unclear what the administration will do, or if it will appeal the ruling — but the lack of intervention “has laid bare the shutdown strategy at the White House, where Mr. Trump has been willing to shield only some Americans from the harms of a fiscal standoff that he has made no effort to resolve,” Romm writes. Pulse check: This shutdown is on pace to break 2018’s record for the longest in history this week. Senators left town for the weekend, still gridlocked as some bipartisan rank-and-file members engage in talks. But privately, both parties are saying they need a deal within the next week or two to avoid even worse consequences, CNN’s Sarah Ferris and Adam Cancryn report. House and Senate GOP members are now thinking Democrats will fold after Tuesday’s elections. But polling continues to show the GOP shouldering much of the shutdown blame, the latest NBC News poll today reporting that 52 percent blame Trump and Republicans and 42 percent blame Democrats.
| | | 5. DANCE OF THE SUPERPOWERS: More details on the trade truce between the U.S. and China were announced yesterday. POLITICO’s Phelim Kine and Megan Messerly break down how China will issue licenses for exports of rare earths but also “gallium, germanium, antimony, and graphite,” which are essential for tech manufacturing. China also promised to stymie the flow of fentanyl by stopping the shipment of “certain designated chemicals to North America.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that he’s working with his Chinese counterpart to open lines of military communications to prevent any misunderstandings in the future, Phelim reports. 6. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: Eight Palestinian factions including Hamas are meeting in Egypt today for closed-door discussions on the future governance of Gaza, and they’re working to get an agreement settled on the details of interim leadership as soon as this week in Cairo, WaPo’s Gerry Shih and colleagues report. But the plan will inevitably have to get the rubber stamp from Israel, which may object to an agreement formed without their negotiators. That also comes as the problem of how to establish Trump’s peace plan’s international security force is coming into view, with questions over whether other countries will actually put boots on the ground that could face conflict with Hamas, WSJ’s Summer Said and Robbie Gramer write. 7. LAW AND ORDER: The FBI forced out Steven Palmer, a 27-year agency veteran and head of the critical response incident group, after FBI Director Kash Patel “grew outraged about revelations of his publicly-available jet logs indicating he’d flown to see his musician girlfriend perform,” Bloomberg Law’s Ben Penn scoops. Palmer is “the third head of the critical incident response group — which includes FBI pilots — to be fired or removed in Patel’s short regime.” The FBI also pulled Patel’s jet from flight tracking database FlightAware. Trouble for Trump: Multiple federal courts have ruled that Trump’s moves to install untested federal prosecutors — who are now bringing cases against his well-established political foes — violated the law and could lead to U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s disqualification, POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney and Erica Orden write. 8. ROCKING THE BOAT: U.S. military carried out yet another strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, killing three people, per AP. The latest strike comes after the DOJ told Congress this week that the administration will continue its strikes in the Caribbean with no time limit, arguing it doesn’t rise to the “hostilities” constrained by the War Powers Resolution, NYT’s Charlie Savage and Julian Barnes write. Timely read: Ankush Khardori speaks with an expert on international law about the legality and global implications of the Trump administration’s drug boat killings in his latest Rules of Law column for POLITICO Magazine: “‘At What Point Does This Cross a Line Into International Criminality?’” 9. TECH CORNER: “Michael Grimes helped tech companies get rich. Doing the same thing in Washington will be harder,” by POLITICO’s Yasmin Khorram and Sam Sutton: “Michael Grimes, the top tech industry banker who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter, is taking on what could be the most complicated assignment of his career: managing a first-of-its-kind investment program that will direct the flow of hundreds of billions of capital, known as the investment accelerator. … Eight months since his arrival, the accelerator remains a work in progress, with many details still to be ironed out and unresolved questions surrounding the underlying capital. It’s also unclear whether the vehicle is even legal.”
| | | | Global Security is POLITICO’s new weekly briefing on the policies and industrial forces reshaping transatlantic defense. From Washington to Brussels and beyond, we track how decisions ripple across borders — redefining the future of security and industry. Sign up for the free preview edition. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | IN MEMORIAM — “Former Kentucky Gov. Martha Layne Collins has died at 88,” by AP: “Martha Layne Collins, the first and only woman elected governor of Kentucky, died on Saturday. She was 88. The Democrat’s most visible legacy is a sprawling Toyota auto assembly plant — arguably the biggest industrial plum of its day and the linchpin of her economic-development strategy. She also worked for years to overhaul the state’s public education system.” MAGA INFIGHTING — Under fire for defending Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has reassigned his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg scoops. EVP Derrick Morgan is stepping in as chief of staff. PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION — “A Shutdown Reality Check, From 1 Federal Worker,” by Michael Schaffer in his latest Capital City column for POLITICO Magazine: “[Ron] Dunmore’s last paycheck came on October 11. It was light: It covered a pay period that included three days of the shutdown. ‘I was able to pay my bills, but it left me with about 22 bucks,’ he said. That was still a lot better than October 25, when he checked his bank statement and confirmed that the biweekly direct deposit from his employer contained exactly zero dollars.” HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Playbook’s own Eli Okun and Bethany Irvine … Pat Buchanan … former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker … Makan Delrahim … Jonathan Stahler of Sen. Chris Coons’ (D-Del.) office … Jen Dlouhy … Roger Dow … Fox News’ Cam Cawthorne … AARP’s Bill Walsh … John Sampson of Workday … Melanie Tiano of T-Mobile … BBC’s Anthony Zurcher … Kevin Cirilli … The Free Press’ Jay Solomon … Catherine Lyons … Matt Bisenius of Procter & Gamble … NYT’s Adam Kushner and Celeste Lavin … National Marine Manufacturers Association’s Nicole Berckes … Aaron Weinberg of Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) office … WaPo’s Ava Wallace 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.
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