Independent candidate Bill Hill is threatening to unseat Trump ally Nick Begich with a message of affordability
As Republicans fight to maintain their narrow majority in Congress, they face a unique challenge in Alaska – not from a Democrat, but from an independent commercial fisher and first-time candidate running to flip the state’s lone House seat.
Bill Hill, who is an Alaska Native and has worked in education and construction, has positioned himself as a working-class candidate who will fight to make life more affordable for people like himself and his family.
The nation's major political parties are at a crossroads. Win or lose Tuesday, the end of the 2026 midterms marks the beginning of a high-stakes fight over the direction of the Republican and Democratic parties as the Trump era nears its end.
The surge is especially pronounced in Texas, where voters are deciding closely watched Senate, House and governor's races. More than 6.3 million Texans had voted early as of Wednesday, compared with 4.2 million at the same point four years ago, a 50% increase.
Immigrants at Texas detention facility, protesting against harsh conditions, say they face threats of force-feeding
Members of Congress sent a scathing letter to federal immigration officials this week demanding answers about conditions inside a Texas immigration jail, as detained immigrants on a prolonged hunger strike claim officials are retaliating against them and threatening them with force-feeding.
A group of seven congressional Democrats sent the letter earlier this week to Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, and David Venturella, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director, protesting about the treatment of hunger strikers.
Endorsement not always full-throated but party backing marks major turn after bitter split over nomination
Facing a barrage of extreme attacks from Donald Trump and his allies, the Democratic establishment is finally rallying around progressive Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s candidate in the closely watched US Senate election in Michigan. But the endorsement is not always full-throated, and often even omits his name.
At a rally in Port Huron on Sunday, the US president launched the latest in a wave of Islamophobic rants against El-Sayed, erroneously branding him a “jihadist” and “Muslim Brotherhood member” while invoking 9/11.
Democrats are favored to take the House in November, but the size of their potential majority could hinge on a handful of competitive races. Four are in Pennsylvania, where President Trump and Republicans made significant gains in 2024. Now, Democrats are betting that the president's low approval ratings and frustration over high prices will shift the political landscape. Lisa Desjardins reports.
As candidates make a final push to win over voters ahead of Election Day, Lisa Desjardins takes a deep dive into the battle for the House of Representatives.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is unlikely to act before the end of the year on a House-passed bill that would make daylight saving time permanent, defying President Donald Trump and dashing the hopes of Americans who don't like having to change their clocks twice a year. As daylight saving time ends early Sunday and much of the country turns the clocks back an hour, several senators are holding up legislation that would eliminate the...
Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign allegedly collaborated with party operatives to confuse voters in midterms
The US justice department on Thursday is reported to have issued subpoenas in response to a report that the Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign collaborated with party operatives to get a challenger with the same name as the Republican senator Dan Sullivan on the midterm ballot.
ABC News and the Associated Press reported the subpoenas, citing sources familiar with the matter. The federal investigation comes a day after the New York Times found that the effort to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the Senate race set to be decided on Tuesday was led by Peltola’s campaign, which had for months denied involvement.
Michigan US Senate candidate signaled support for Egypt’s pro-democracy movement in 2012, not Islamist group
The Republican campaign to defeat Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the MichiganSenate race by casting him as an Islamic extremist is based on a false claim first made by the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer eight years ago, a Guardian review of the evidence reveals.
Loomer, an influential outside adviser to Donald Trump who calls herself “a proud Islamophobe”, has claimed since El-Sayed entered politics in 2018 that an open letter he signed in support of democracy in Egypt in 2012 was a public endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood. The text of the letter, however, does not even mention the Muslim Brotherhood, and is not, as Loomer maintains, “a pledge” of support for the Egyptian Islamist group.
Michigan US Senate candidate signaled support for Egypt’s pro-democracy movement in 2012, not Islamist group
The Republican campaign to defeat Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the MichiganSenate race by casting him as an Islamic extremist is based on a false claim first made by the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer eight years ago, a Guardian review of the evidence reveals.
Loomer, an influential outside adviser to Donald Trump who calls herself “a proud Islamophobe”, has claimed since El-Sayed entered politics in 2018 that an open letter he signed in support of democracy in Egypt in 2012 was a public endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood. The text of the letter, however, does not even mention the Muslim Brotherhood, and is not, as Loomer maintains, “a pledge” of support for the Egyptian Islamist group.
Ahead of Election Day, our politics crew takes a closer look at what to watch in the 2026 elections and take your questions around election security and voting rights.
It’s an anxious moment for American voters: Will we have a free and fair election — or not? | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Election Day is almost here — but even after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the election won’t really be over. The vote count will take days or even weeks in some states. President Donald Trump seems certain to raise objections to results he doesn’t like — he’s already getting started in Alaska — and he has threatened to marshal the forces of the federal government in his efforts.
It’s an anxious moment for American voters: Will we have a free and fair election — or not? Luckily, says Eliza Sweren-Becker, deputy director in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, there is still one thing that every American 18 and older can do to make sure their voice is heard: vote.
“I think that is the intent. It’s to create a lack of confidence. It’s to discourage voters from participating,” Sweren-Becker told Vox’s Astead Herndon on America, Actually. “But the only way that that campaign to undermine our confidence and to sow distrust actually works is if voters stay home. The way to defeat that attempt to shake voters’ trust in democracy is just to participate.”
Sweren-Becker spoke with Astead about what states could do to speed up their vote counts and ensure everyone has a chance to cast their ballot, the need to restore the Voting Rights Act, and the long-term impact of Trump’s election denialism.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
Let’s start with Election Day. More than a dozen states count late-arriving ballots. President Donald Trump has used the shifting vote counts as pretense to further his own election interference claims.
How prepared should folks be for a long wait in November for results? And how that could impact confidence in the results?
You’re absolutely right that we may get results out of states or in certain races in the days following Election Day. Voters should not expect to have the final result on Election Day.
And when you hear reporting on the news that somebody’s ahead or somebody’s behind, remember: They haven’t counted all the votes yet.
The critical thing is we need to count every vote, and every person’s vote needs to be counted.
So while it is true that some states allow ballots to arrive after Election Day, they all have to be cast by Election Day. The Supreme Court just this year said that it’s totally appropriate for states to set their own ballot receipt deadlines. We have to be patient, as an American electorate, to get the proper results to count every ballot and make sure all the voices are heard.
But isn’t it kinda wild that we can’t get results on election night? I saw Donald Trump cite the Brazilian presidential election, and while I know he’s doing that from a self-interested place, I did think for a second: Why does it take so long for us to put these results together?
I could totally understand why people would prefer the results faster. And candidly, could states do better at preparing and counting faster? Sure. But they have limited resources. They are working their butts off to prepare for the election with the staff that they have, and then they work tremendously hard to count properly, accurately, as fast as they can.
Could states change their policies to allow them, in some places, to pre-process ballots, to allow them to get to results faster? Sure. I’m not saying states shouldn’t change their policies to create more efficiency here. But given the rules of the road that we have, we need to make sure that every properly cast ballot is counted.
If I’m someone who is concerned about election security and free and fair elections, what should I be looking out for?
So, for example, I have heard that there is some anxiety about mail voting.
If you want to cast a mail ballot, just know that you probably have a bunch of options in your state as to how you can cast it. You can certainly rely on the mail and have USPS deliver that ballot, but of course, we know occasionally mail gets delayed. Your state may have ballot drop boxes. You may have ballot drop-off at election officials’ offices, or even at polling places.
Find out your options.
Yes, definitely find out your options. Voters should also check their voter registration status. Make sure it’s up to date with their current address. Of course, if you’re not registered to vote and you still have time in your state to register, please do register.
Everyone should participate. Our democracy works best the more of us that can participate. If your registration date has not passed, don’t forget to register to vote. Vote with your friends, vote with your community, vote with your family. Voting should be joyful. It’s a civic experience that I think is really fun.
I try to take my kids with me to vote because it’s exciting. They get stickers. Everyone loves stickers.
It’s half the reason I go.
It’s also a reminder. You get your sticker, other people see you, they know it’s Election Day, maybe they go out to vote.
It’s a way to be part of your community and invest in your community and to choose who you want to be a leader of your community.
What about after Election Day?
Earlier this year, Democrats and Republicans in Congress circulated a letter asking members to commit to recognizing state-certified winners and “oppose any attempt to refuse or delay a seating of a member-elect.” We saw House Speaker Mike Johnson delay the swearing-in of an Arizona representative last year,
That seems to me like maybe a preview of what might be to come. How fearful should we be of these post-election attempts to block members from being seated?
I think those scenarios are highly unlikely. I understand why folks are worried about them, but the reality is, states have their own certification processes, which are laid out in state law and that are mandatory for them to follow. It is not discretionary whether states certify their elections. So once there is a new Congress, we have confidence that they will be seated according to how the voters actually cast their ballots.
I want to end by thinking about Trump’s consistent questioning of the integrity of our election system. If he ultimately doesn’t try to actually steal the election, what is the long-term impact of his relentless focus on it and support for policies like the Save America Act?
Just because we have won in many courts against this administration doesn’t delude me into thinking that this administration is just going to stop in this years-long campaign to sow doubt in our election systems.
I think that is the intent. It’s to create a lack of confidence. It’s to discourage voters from participating. And to some degree, I think the administration has succeeded in creating some confusion about the rules or a lack of confidence. But the only way that that campaign to undermine our confidence and to sow distrust actually works is if voters stay home.
The way to defeat that attempt to shake voters’ trust in democracy is to participate in our democracy and to turn out and to make their voices heard regardless of party, regardless of candidate. To say that we will not be made to fear participation in our democracy, but we are going to continue to seize it and take joy in it and show that we deserve a stronger representative democracy that serves all Americans.
What are things that could happen to inspire trust in our electoral system? Are there reforms that you think might make the public feel a reinvigorated sense of confidence?
There are certainly things that Congress could do to create a national floor of voter access and ensure that someone’s right to vote doesn’t depend on what state they live in. That includes basic reforms like same-day registration, online voter registration, universal access to mail voting that doesn’t require strict satisfaction of certain excuse requirements, which still exists in many states.
I think it’s time for Congress to ban partisan gerrymandering. I also think it’s time to restore the Voting Rights Act, and Congress can enact a statutory right to vote that is meaningfully enforceable so that voters can go to court if their voting rights have been burdened, and they can get a real remedy.
That has been really undermined by the Supreme Court, but Congress can and should respond. They have it within their power. The Constitution gives Congress the power to set rules for elections. They should.
President Donald Trump and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) at a campaign rally in Wasilla, Alaska, on October 13, 2026. | Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is getting a head start on litigating the midterms.
What’s happening? The administration is asking a federal district court in Alaska to potentially block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate race, should incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, lose to his Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola.
It’s the first major lawsuit of the 2026 midterms aimed at directly challenging the results, and very likely a sign of things to come after polls close on November 3.
What is the administration arguing? Sullivan is currently in a close race against Peltola, a former US representative who polls suggest may hold a slight lead. But the race is complicated by the presence of a second Dan Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan, on the ballot (no relation).
According to the lawsuit, which names Alaska’s state elections director and several state elections entities as defendants, the election could be “tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan.”
The suit asks that “Defendants not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion,” which it defines as a loss by the incumbent Sullivan in the event that the other Sullivan attracts enough votes to alter the outcome of the election.
What’s the context? The second Dan Sullivan’s appearance on the ballot has already been litigated. After he was initially disqualified from the ballot, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that he should be included, and he finished third in the state’s August primary (the top four vote-getters appear on Alaska’s general election ballot).
How worried about this should I be? For now, not very. Trump filing lawsuits disputing election results was all but inevitable, even if it’s surprising to see him start this early.
None of that means he’ll succeed: Trump and his allies filed dozens of election lawsuits in 2020 and were largely laughed out of court. (Plus, this particular lawsuit has been assigned to a judge appointed by President Barack Obama.)
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Hi readers, happy Friday! Here’s some good news to add to a recent string of encouraging headlines about cancer treatment: A new vaccine may reduce the risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, by more than 40 percent, according to the Washington Post. You can read all about it here with a gift link.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you on Monday!
Pro-Palestinian Jewish American demonstrators rally outside AIPAC’s the Manhattan headquarters in February 2024. | Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Israel felt inescapable in the midterm primaries, especially for Democrats, where centrists and progressives clashed — memorably! — over military aid, Gaza, and (of course) AIPAC.
But with the Election Day almost upon us, the subject seems less prominent. When I Googled “Israel US elections” this morning, all the top results concerned next week’s Israeli parliamentary elections.
In less than two weeks, however, Americans will also head to the polls. They’ll decide which party controls Congress, along with a slew of state and local offices. The stakes are arguably unusually high: Voters will choose whether to check the power of a president who has bulldozed over historical norms and limits.
As we count down to that momentous and potentially messy day, I’m partnering with my colleague Astead Herndon and Vox’s The Midterms, Actually team for weekly editions on the biggest issues shaping the midterms. We’re breaking down one issue each week and suggesting further reading and races to watch in November.
You know the first part of this story already, because we’ve discusseditquitea lot: Americans’ views of Israel have nosedived over the past 18 months.
That shift helped shape the Democratic primaries and will likely figure prominently in the coming presidential contest. But how much Israel matters in a general midterm election, to people outside the political left…well, November will really test that.
Voters rarely rank Israel policy among their top priorities. In a poll that the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted earlier this month, about 80 percent of registered voters said Congress should highly prioritize the cost of living during its next term, and roughly 70 percent said the same about ending the Iran war. By comparison, less than a third of voters said they prioritized cutting off aid to Israel.
There’s another way that Israel factors into US elections, of course — and that’s in fundraising. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has become one of the biggest spenders in US elections and a repeat flash point in this year’s Democratic primaries.
But in the general election, even AIPAC has been overshadowed by the GOP’s big-business donors, many of them in tech, who have given Republicans a historic spending advantage in this year’s contests. On Wednesday, the lobbying group actually announced it would no longer endorse political candidates or make direct campaign contributions.
In either case, whatever happens in the midterms won’t likely transform US policy toward Israel. President Donald Trump is still in charge of foreign policy, after all, and even if Democrats take back the House, they’ll have little ability to reverse his agenda.
But a Democratic majority would gain “new congressional tools to act on Israel-Palestine issues,” Hady Amr, the former US Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, wrote in a new analysis for Chatham House. Those tools aren’t flashy (think: hearings, funding restrictions, and reporting requirements), but they could certainly set the stage for a broader policy shift under a Democratic president.
Races to watch:
Florida’s Senate race, where Democrat Angie Nixon has criticized her party’s ties to the pro-Israel lobby;
➨ Gather ye roast spuds while ye may. Vegan restaurants appear to be experiencing a downturn of sorts: According to one online directory, the number of establishments fell from 1,717 last October to 1,509 now. But the news isn’t entirely or unambiguously bad. One added pressure on plant-based restauranters, for instance, is growing competition from mainstream restaurants that have started offering vegan dishes.
Before you go…
Did you know…that North America’s largest wind farm has more than 900 turbines, each as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and encompasses an area roughly the size of Chicago? It just came online in June.
Today’s trivia: What’s the plural of Prius, as in Toyota’s hybrid hatchback car? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked after the definition of the word “cartomancy.” That’s the practice of fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards. Witchy!
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a press conference at the US Capitol on January 13, 2026, in Washington, DC. | Heather Diehl/Getty Images
President Donald Trump has been attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) since she first entered Congress in 2019. At various points, he’s called for Omar — a progressive lawmaker who came to the United States as a child refugee from Somalia and who is one of Trump’s most vociferous critics — to be investigated, arrested, and deported.
Now, Trump’s Justice Department is seemingly trying to make good on his threats. Last week, Omar’s Washington, DC, home was raided by federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the raid was part of an investigation into her immigration paperwork with the explicit goal of denaturalizing and deporting her.
The timing alone would make the raid unusual — it’s rare for the Justice Department to take action in political cases so close to an election — and as Washington Post immigration reporter Ted Hesson explains, it also feels uncomfortably pretextual. “It’s almost as if the outcome of the investigation has been stated before anything has taken off,” he told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram.
Hesson joined Sean to talk about the long history of Trump’s attacks on Omar, what the agents might have been looking for, and whether the administration could actually undermine Omar’s citizenship or even deport her.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What do we know about what federal agents were looking for in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, DC, residence?
What we’ve learned through our reporting is that the investigation has looked at both her birth date and whether [Omar or her father] may have lied about it on the naturalization application.
A second piece is whether, looking at her father’s military service, she was born in Somalia and was there during the civil war and fled with her family as a young child to a refugee camp in Kenya and was there for years before they eventually came to the US as refugees.
This is the president of the United States and his administration entering a sitting representative’s home to figure out what her original birthday is. What is the motivation here, to the best of our knowledge?
For years, President Trump has criticized Rep. Omar and made unsubstantiated accusations related to immigration fraud.
There have been theories circulating on the far right — again, unsubstantiated — that she had married her brother as part of an immigration fraud scheme. President Trump himself has repeated that. And several top Trump administration officials in the last few months have said that they believe that there is fraud in her background. They’re making these statements prior to there being an investigation, prior to there being evidence put forward. And it’s almost as if the outcome of the investigation has been stated before anything has taken off.
One thing I should say is that while it does appear that they’re looking at her birthdate, when refugees come into the US, it’s extremely common that their birth records are unreliable because people are fleeing countries that are often in disarray, whether it’s due to civil war or other reasons.
Often, nations like Somalia don’t maintain accurate birth records. So it’s common that refugees who’ve left their country as children, spent time in refugee camps, and then come to the US don’t have a solid understanding of when exactly they were born. I don’t know for sure that that’s the case here, but I know that generally when you’re dealing with refugees, that is true.
I know there’s a lot we don’t know here, but investigators enter Rep. Omar’s home. Potentially they’re looking for some documents that may list her birthday. If they find some information that’s maybe contrary to official government records, what could that mean, in theory?
It’s unclear what sort of charges could be brought from this. And part of the question is, was she 17 and a child at the time of that application or was she 18?
Even if it was determined that she was not a child, I don’t believe they would be able to, say, launch a denaturalization process based on that fact alone. And even if they did attempt to do something like that, these things are not taken lightly and it’s a long involved legal process and very uncommon to pursue something like this over something as simple as this sort of paperwork discrepancy.
The president has a long history of hating on Somalia and Somali immigrants to this country.
How does this investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar fit into the president and his administration’s broader efforts to take away American citizenship?
In the past year especially, we’ve seen President Trump use really inflammatory and derogatory language to refer to Somali Americans and Somali immigrants in the US. Even for someone who frequently employs anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the president has in his past, some of the things he said went beyond even that. He does seem to have particularly targeted Somalis in the US and Somali Americans, and Rep. Omar has been part of that.
I think what’s interesting here or what could be interesting is that this case wades into different territory of taking somebody who’s a naturalized citizen, who’s been in the US for decades as a citizen, and saying, “We’re potentially going to reopen that and go back and look at your file and see, do we find anything that might be out of line?”
The idea that you could do that with someone who’s a sitting lawmaker could mean that you could potentially do that to any other person who may have applied.
Now, one thing we’ve learned is that in the case of Rep. Omar, the administration has looked at the idea, in the event that criminal charges can’t be brought, of potentially canceling her citizenship certificate. It’s almost like a fast-track way to disrupt someone’s citizenship.
It doesn’t remove it. You remain a citizen, but you lose the document that is the underlying proof of that, which could then cause problems with federal government documents, and it could even lead to immigration proceedings where the government tries to make the case that you should be deported.
In regard to the search, they’ve actually said that there was a court-ordered guideline that should have been followed, and that involved consulting the counsel for the House of Representatives before the search happened. They said that never happened, and if it had, it would’ve given Rep. Omar perhaps time to prepare for this or some sort of legal recourse.
They’re saying that not only is this continuation of President Trump’s attack on her politically motivated, but also that the actual legal guidelines that were outlined in that search warrant were not followed.
The interesting part is that President Obama does not often weigh in on public debates like this or is at least measured in the opportunities when he does. So it comes with more gravity to hear him stepping in and raising concerns about this.
I think it speaks to the fact that he thought this was very significant. And if you remember, President Trump’s political career was built on the narrative that Barack Obama was not born in the US.
I do remember, Ted.
And the hunt for his birth certificate. You can imagine that former President Obama saw a parallel here and realizes that this mirrors the sort of attacks that were made on him when he was in office.
We’ve talked about President Trump a bunch in this conversation, and he’s made no secret of his disdain for Rep. Omar and the country from which she comes. What has he explicitly said about this investigation?
He’s saying that the Justice Department is acting independently. That said, he has been extremely critical of Rep. Omar in his public statements and continues to be. And the president himself and other top officials have said that it should be investigated.
We’ve had, for months now, a sort of public encouragement of top officials and saying that they should be looking into this. So whether he’s directly liaising with them or whether they’re just reading his social posts, it may be kind of a nuanced distinction. He’s publicly saying he wants this to be pursued.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) at a news conference in the US Capitol on June 18, 2026. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The 2026 midterms are less than two weeks away, which means we’ll soon have a better idea of what the next two years of American politics could look like. If Democrats win at least one chamber of Congress — and they’re comfortable favorites to control the House — they’ll enter 2027 with oversight power for the first time in Donald Trump’s second term. If they win the Senate, too, they’ll have even more power.
“Particularly in the era of Trump, I think it is fight versus flight,” she said. “Regardless of your persuasion, do you believe that we need to think differently about how we exercise power and oversight in the era of Trump and if we don’t, we’re at risk of losing our country as we know it?”
Slotkin, who says she’s on “Team Fight,” discusses what that Day 1 Democratic agenda should look like, how she plans to hold the Trump administration accountable, whether she’s considering a presidential bid, and more.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
How does Congress reassert its role so that people believe in the kind of checks and balances that Trump has washed away?
When I think about, hopefully, Democrats doing well in a few short weeks here, the election is the end of one phase, but a much more important phase then comes into focus, and that’s what you do with the power that you’ve won.
If we manage to win the House and especially the House and the Senate, there’s three things that we need to do. One, we need to pick two or three big pieces of legislation that speak directly to people’s pocketbooks and go hard on those — I would say housing and healthcare.
Number two, we do have to have accountability for the unbelievable corruption that we are living under right now. But you can’t just make that your whole personality. You have to pick signature cases, and you have to go after people and projects that are super egregious.
Everyone knows the East Wing of the White House, and people feel that in a way that’s different from a nameless contract at the Pentagon or whatever. So you need to pick those signature cases and go hard on accountability, not just Trump. Because of course, there will be moments of, “Let’s go after Trump himself.” As someone who voted to impeach him twice, he’s still there, right?
But the people around Donald Trump who are doing his bidding and enabling this have no such immunity. They have no immunity the way the president does. And to me, he couldn’t do any of this stuff without all of those people saluting and supporting it. So you go after the people who do his bidding.
Third, we have to Trump-proof the government going forward so that no president of any party can ever abuse the system the way he did, because we figured out under Trump that a lot of the stuff that we thought were laws were actually just norms, standards, habits, expectations, good citizens.
And shame was required.
Shame was required. And when you have a president who has no shame, they just walk all over that. And then even for things that were laws, the penalties, the teeth are not there. So you make an ad that plays during a football game, a political ad paid for by US taxpayer dollars, your dollars. The penalty is like, you have to pay a fine.
Well, if they have the money and they have all the keys to the government, they’re going to pay that fine and not worry about it. So how do we get teeth in the things that were laws and strengthen those other laws going forward?
You mentioned Trump-proofing the government. At this point, he has stacked the courts with a lot of favorable folks. He controls the Republican Party, has installed people who do his bidding on each of those levels.
Is that possible? It does seem a little hard to figure out how the government becomes Trump-proof when it’s beyond an individual at this point.
One of the things I think is changing about politics is that there is a groundswell of energy around certain issues that is not partisan. The groundswell going on in the Midwest about data centers or Flock cameras or AI in general is not like, “I’m a Democrat, I’m a Republican.” It is organized and grassroots.
Data centers went zero to 60 faster than any issue I’ve seen out there. And I think harnessing that outrage — and that outrage also, I think, is growing on the corruption side — so how do you harness that for an ethics package?
And look, I don’t agree with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri on almost anything, but he has a bill to get rid of corporate PACs and money in politics. Working with strange bedfellows, I think there is still a lot we can do because of that upward pressure.
The other piece I was going to ask about — you mentioned the impeachment efforts, and I feel like one of the things that came from those was a lack of belief from the public about the effectiveness of those efforts.
Let’s say Democrats were to take back the House and possibly the Senate. Should impeachment be a focus of a potentially incoming Democratic House?
I will say, because I still see him on the floor, that if Sen. Mitch McConnell had done the right thing, then Donald Trump would have been impeached after January 6, but he did not. And his legacy, along with his health issues, will be how he is remembered.
I am into effectiveness, and if we have the House but not the Senate, I don’t have a ton of faith that my Republican colleagues are going to have any more strength. I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him.
I want young people coming out of school to say, “Should I go work for the Trump administration? That sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.” I want them to be like, “Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.” I want that deterrence message sent.
I have to ask about [2028]. A number of Democrats have said already that they’re thinking about running for president. Is that something you’re thinking about?
I have been open that I’m looking at it. It does not need to be me. I just need someone who understands the mission. And if that person comes out of the big process, I will be the first gal to get on whatever team they’re on and help them win in the parts of the country that I know well.
But I think what is clear to me is that the American public is looking for something different — that generational shift. And I think that there’s hopefully going to be lots of opportunities for lots of people who you might not be thinking of who haven’t been sitting waiting their turn who are going to get in the mix. And I think that’s a good thing.
I wanted to ask about something on the 2028 front. One thing that we have heard consistently over the last year, and I think this is a consequence of Democratic trauma from 2024 and also 2016 — people’s fears about sexism when women run. I’ve heard so many people, including women voters, tell me they think it needs to be a white guy.
I find it to be a kind of depressing takeaway of those elections. It’s wrong, and I know it’s wrong because this very question is what we’ve been digging into as I’ve traveled around the country. What I think is happening is right now, is the public is so in search of something different from the traditional. If you’re a good communicator, if you’re exciting, if you’ve got big ideas, you can surmount what are thought of as traditional deficiencies or traditional weaknesses.
So if you’re a woman, if you’re African American, if you’re Muslim American, if you’re whatever, those things forever have been thought of as negatives. But if you’re the right person with the right energy, you can surmount that. I think we’re seeing that around the country already.
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