In today’s edition … Kamala Harris has history against her … Trump is deep in the heart of Texas … but first …
The big news
President Donald Trump backtracked late yesterday, announcing that he would stop using taxpayer money for ads promoting himself and his administration’s goals.
The ads, notably similar to Trump’s campaign messages but with the disclaimer that they were “Paid for by the U.S. Government,” aired nationwide and drew bipartisan criticism, with many calling them government-funded propaganda.
“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” Trump wrote. He said his outside political organization, MAGA Inc., would run them instead.
My colleague Natalie Allison has more on this.
Democrats’ Kamala Harris conundrum
It has been seven decades since Democrats nominated someone four years after losing a shot at the presidency.
That’s the issue facing Kamala Harris: Can she break that drought? Should she even try?
I joined Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Praveena Somasundaram to explore this idea in a story that was published this morning on both the obvious opening and the clear problem facing another Harris bid.
We found considerable admiration for Harris, but also some reservations that if she does run again, she could stifle the field and prevent the party from having a fulsome conversation about what it wants to be.
Jamal Simmons, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked as Harris’s communications director in 2022, captured this dynamic well when he told Cleve that while Harris is very popular among Democrats, that won’t necessarily directly transfer into support for another campaign.
“She’s extraordinarily popular in the party and people are very fond of her and want her to be treated with a lot of respect and deference — given all the due of someone in her position,” he said. “Many people see it as a service what she did in 2024, where she really stepped up for the party, stepped up for Joe Biden, stepped up for the country. There’s a lot of respect for her. But it’s yet to be seen how much of that becomes support for another presidential run.”
If Harris runs in 2028, she would likely become the race’s front-runner immediately.
She has already struggled in that position, too. During the 2020 nomination fight, Harris entered the race in 2019 with huge attention and arguably as the frontrunner to take on Trump the next year. But she couldn’t sustain the big crowds and considerable fanfare, and her campaign ended in December 2019 before a single vote was cast.
“She is instantly the front-runner because she was our nominee the last time, she has an infrastructure that was in place that she can turn on quickly,” Clay Middleton, a former senior adviser to the Biden-Harris campaign in South Carolina and a longtime Democratic operative in the state, told me. “But can you stay up through the course of the entire cycle?”
The key question here is why repeat Democratic nominees for president almost always fail.
For those wondering, the last Democratic presidential nominee who lost a general election four years earlier was former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Stevenson ran in 1952, won the Democratic nomination and lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower. He ran again in 1956, won the Democratic nomination and again lost to Eisenhower.
Other Democrats have tried it. Hubert Humphrey won his party’s nomination in 1968 and lost the general election to President Richard M. Nixon. He tried to run again in 1972 and lost in the primary to George McGovern, who later lost to Nixon. McGovern later tried but failed to win the nomination again in 1984.
A lot has changed since these failed candidates, and no one issue sank them all. But one universal truth applies to this group and Harris: Most voters want to forget their party’s losses quickly, not relive them.
Of course, scores of prominent Harris supporters would like to see her run. They point to her clear personal advantages, and the reality that South Carolina, a bastion of support for the former vice president, will be the first primary state in 2028. And L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), the first woman and first Black person to serve as president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, said rejecting Harris in 2028 could hurt the party with Black women, a key Democratic constituency.
“There’s no question that people would be upset because you see what happened last time,” Lucas said.
You can read the full report here — and I would urge you to; there is a ton of additional reporting in the full piece.
I also wanted to give a shout-out to this newsletter’s readers. I asked a question about the potential 2028 nomination process last month, and some of your answers about Harris — her strengths and weaknesses — spurred this fuller report. I even called one reader, David Wilson, and quoted him in the piece.
“I think she is a great candidate, but I don’t want to see Harris run,” he said. “She already lost, and I don’t think there is a practical purpose when you have a lot of good candidates to put up a loser a second time around. I want new ideas.”
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From across the newsroom
- GOP is at risk of significant state legislative losses, Post analysis finds, from Eric Lau and Ben Binday.
- U.S. officials seeking details of reported Russian plague death, quarantines, from Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond and Mary Ilyushina.
- White House blocks Politico from Air Force One trip, cannot secure replacement, from Scott Nover.
- How JD Vance tried to ease diesel pain as the GOP faces midterm woes, from Natalie Allison and Katherine Doyle.
- Barack Obama to campaign with El-Sayed in Michigan race’s final stretch, from Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
- Dennis Hastert, ex-House speaker whose sex abuse admission upended legacy, dies at 84, from Mike DeBonis.
What I’m watching
Donald Trump is really focused on Texas.
The president will travel to the state for the third time in a month on Wednesday, where he will rally in San Antonio. Trump previously attended the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas last month and rallied with workers at a Peterbilt truck manufacturing plant in Denton, a town outside Dallas, last Thursday.
Texas, arguably the home of the modern conservative movement, is also home to numerous highly competitive races this cycle, an oddity for a state that has been dominated by Republicans for years. Democrat Gina Hinojosa is pushing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in a race that has slowly moved towards Democrats in recent weeks, while Republicans are increasingly worried that Democrat James Talarico could defeat Republican Ken Paxton in the state’s closely watched Senate race. Polls have both races close.
It would be highly damaging to Trump if Republicans lost statewide races in Texas this year. Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, and Trump’s political operation specifically pushed a scandal-tarred Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn because of the latter’s perceived disloyalty. If Paxton loses, much of the blame will fall on Trump.
Trump’s travel has been interesting. The president is largely traveling to solidly red states and districts, signaling that the midterm elections are largely being fought on Republican turf as candidates struggle with an unpopular president. Yesterday, Trump traveled to Nebraska to stump for Sen. Pete Ricketts.
Trump told reporters before the trip that he plans to rally supporters in Michigan and, surprisingly, Maine.
“I think we’re going to Maine, too, but I’m going to Michigan in a week and a half,” Trump said.
The plan to visit Maine surprised Republicans in the state, who had not heard of any Trump trips when asked after his comment.
I asked Maine Sen. Susan Collins, in arguably the most difficult reelection bid of her career this year, what she would say if Trump called her and said he was coming to do a rally in Maine. She doubted that would ever happen.
“I don’t think I’m going to get that call,” she said. “I don’t think that call is going to occur.”
A White House spokesperson referred questions about the possible event to the Republican National Committee. A committee spokesperson did not respond when asked about Trump’s plans.
In your local paper
Tennessee Lookout: The increase in immigration arrests and detention at the state level has been particularly compelling in Trump’s second term. In Tennessee, “nearly 15,000 immigrants have been detained over the first 19 months of the president’s term.”
New Hampshire Bulletin: Conservationists want Congress to do more to protect roadless wilderness areas, particularly in New England, where New Hampshire has 235,000 acres in the White Mountain National Forest.
From you
We asked about your experiences with the Trump administration’s promised $500 Obamacare rebate check. None of you said you have received one yet.
“The rebate check’s in the mail! … Um, nope. Hasn’t arrived yet,” said Mary Ciriello.
“He may try to make people think that they need the money and vote on his empty promises, but surprise, he doesn’t have the authority or power to do that unless of course he is using his own money,” wrote Laura Techentin.
And Bob Miller added: “Smells like a cash payout for my vote, which is obviously illegal. But talk of checks highlights a problem with our electoral process; too much money being spent to sway the votes.”
Send a reply
My colleague Justin Jouvenal wrote a great piece on a Supreme Court case heard on Monday that asked whether Big Oil should pay for climate change. The case centers on the 2025 Lee Fire in Colorado and how it forced Kathleen Kelley’s family to sell her 400 cattle. So I will ask you: Should Big Oil pay for the damage caused by climate change? Should they be culpable, or should the court, as the companies argue, throw out the suit? Let me and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
Thanks for reading. You can follow me on X at @merica.
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