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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is converting reelection ads in the D.C. media market into messages selling voters on a redistricting amendment that’s currently unpopular.
The switch of roughly $750,000 in campaign ads allows Moore, a potential 2028 presidential contender, to portray the redistricting measure as a way to fight back against President Donald Trump, who touched off a national midcycle redistricting war.
The messages will reach voters in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland as well as Virginia, newly designated as an early presidential primary state for Democrats.
Polling released this month showed Maryland’s redistricting effort did not have support to pass.
If approved, the measure would loosen redistricting rules in a way that gives state lawmakers a freer hand in drawing congressional boundaries in 2028 and beyond, allowing Democrats with supermajorities in Annapolis to potentially oust Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s only congressional Republican.
The new ad backed by Moore’s campaign cash features him and several other state Democrats: Rep. Steny Hoyer, Maryland House Speaker Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk, and Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks. It will air starting Wednesday.
A storm approaching the West Coast on Wednesday is set to soak portions of California and the Intermountain West, with unusual severe thunderstorms and rough seas expected too.
Flood watches are in effect for portions of Southern California north of Los Angeles, as well as across much of Arizona, southern Utah, southwestern Colorado and western New Mexico as the slow-moving disturbance is expected to linger over the West through this weekend.
NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center described a “climatologically rare and a concerning/well-above-typical risk for severe storms” across the interior Southwest on Wednesday, with a risk for tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds.
That’s especially the case in a corridor from near Phoenix to Flagstaff in Arizona, where there’s an enhanced risk (Level 3 out of 5) for severe storms.
There’s even a tornado threat for coastal Southern and Central California, including Los Angeles. This latest round of significant weather follows a recent spate of wildfire activity in the region.
“Minor beach erosion and tidal overflows may occur across south-facing beaches especially along the Malibu Coast and in the Long Beach area,” wrote the National Weather Service in Los Angeles. That area was slammed by waves from Tropical Storm Rachel earlier this month — with wave heights and ocean temperatures being boosted by a Kelvin wave.
Record warm seas near Southern and Central California are also expected to add more moisture to approaching storms through winter.
This unsettled pattern is being influenced by a record El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, which is causing winds to strengthen in the upper atmosphere near Hawaii, signaling the emergence of a strong subtropical jet stream pattern that will probably fuel increasingly stormy weather like this across the United States during November.
That’s why the approaching storm is probably just the start of something much bigger.
Last week, Elon Musk became the largest individual political donor in modern U.S. history. His largest donations have gone to Republican-aligned PACs, including the Senate Leadership Fund PAC, America PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, Fight for Kentucky, and Lone Star Liberty PAC, all of which Musk gave over $10 million to.
These groups have poured $431 million into ads across congressional races during the general midterm elections, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact through Oct. 20.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP’s super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the Senate, received Musk’s top donation of $168 million. The SLF immediately transferred the majority of that sum to another PAC, Texas PAC, that supports Republican Ken Paxton. Texas PAC has spent over $140 million on ads in the Texas Senate race.
Musk also gave over $139 million to America PAC, a conservative super PAC founded by the trillionaire. This group has been spending on canvassing and get out the vote campaigns, in addition to ads.
Musk’s third-largest donation of $30 million was to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that aims to elect Republicans to the House. The CLF has spent the most money on ads in Michigan’s 7th, North Carolina’s 1st and Michigan’s 10th districts — all of which are considered “toss-up” races by the Cook Political Report.
Fight For Kentucky, a super PAC that supports Kentucky Senate Republican candidate Nate Morris, received $10 million from Musk. The group spent around $14 million in the primaries, but less than $10,000 in the general election.
Additional Coverage
Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Oct. 21, and 59 years to the day since a protest in D.C. against the Vietnam War produced one of the most iconic images of the era.
Back in the present day, this morning’s edition of The 7 briefing leads with some apparent progress after days of worsening relations between the U.S. and Ukraine.
Yesterday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said U.S. intelligence sharing had been restored. The U.S. denies imposing restrictions in the first place.
The briefing continues with intensifying scrutiny on donations to President Donald Trump’s ballroom. A Post report last week revealed all the major donors to the White House project. Now, congressional Democrats are pressing some donors for more information.
Further down, The 7 covers a new poll showing Americans’ skepticism of AI. We look at the benefits of Sober October. And we meet an 83-year-old man training for his 50th NYC Marathon.
Read today’s edition of The 7 here.
There’s a relatively rare severe-weather risk on Wednesday in parts of Arizona and Southern California.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has outlined a marginal (Level 1 out of 5) risk in an area that includes Phoenix and Tucson.
Separately, an isolated, brief tornado could also occur along the immediate coastline in Southern California. That’s because a few rotating cells could approach the coast with waterspouts. If a waterspout comes ashore, it would briefly produce tornado damage before dissipating within a mile or two of moving inland.
The instigating weather system bringing the risk to the Southwest is an upper-level low — or a high altitude pocket of cold air, low pressure and spin. It was centered offshore from Southern California on Tuesday afternoon, and was pinwheeling warm, moist air northward ahead of it.
The same setup will also bring an influx of Pacific moisture to the Copper State, prompting a flood watch for most of Arizona.
The juiced-up air mass will set the stage for showers and storms, and probably a few severe thunderstorms, on Wednesday afternoon. Storms could drop a quick inch or two of rainfall, leading to localized flash flooding on Arizona’s sandy soils. A few of the storms could become supercells, or rotating thunderstorms.
That’s because the upper-level low-pressure area is causing a kink in the jet stream, which leads to a dip known as a trough. That will introduce wind shear, or changing winds with height. Tall thunderstorm clouds will be affected by those changing winds and rotate.
That will lead to at least some tornado risk — a rarity for this part of the U.S.
Three prominent Latin American political leaders have endorsed Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) in recent weeks, prompting criticism from some Democrats who describe the international support as foreign interference in a U.S. election.
Salazar, who is running for reelection in a district President Donald Trump won by nearly 15 points in 2024, has faced backlash for saying that the administration’s signature immigration enforcement polices have gone too far. Now, as she courts Latino voters in South Florida, she has shared public messages of support from friendly right-wing leaders in Latin America, including Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado.
Last week, Salazar shared a video on X from Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right leader endorsed by Trump who expressed his support for Salazar, calling her “Colombia’s best friend in the United States Congress.” And on Monday, she shared a videofrom Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, speaking directly to Miami and endorsing her reelection, saying she understands Latin America and will confront “socialist leftists.”
The endorsements have drawn condemnation on social media and from some Democrats, in particular Gregory Meeks (D-New York) the ranking Democratic member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who on Tuesday urged Congress to “make clear that any foreign electoral interference is unacceptable.”
“President Milei’s endorsement is an inappropriate intrusion into our democracy,” Meeks said in a statement on X. “American elections are decided by American voters, not foreign heads of state.”
In a statement provided to The Post, Salazar said Meeks’ “attacks are a badge of honor and further confirm the radical socialist agenda my opponent would help advance in Congress if elected.”
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democratic megadonor, is swooping in to help his party retake the House majority, pouring more than $80 million into the midterms over the last two months and leaving the door open to giving more before Election Day, his adviser said.
Bloomberg gave $16 million to the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC. He also gave $24 million to Everytown for Gun Safety, a group he helped found more than a decade ago that is supporting House candidates across the country.
The billionaire also contributed $2.5 million to a super PAC supporting James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas — the only Senate race his money has gone to so far this cycle, said Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg’s political adviser.
Much of Bloomberg’s money is going toward the House with the goal of widening the possible margin of victory for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), who is likely to become the House speaker if Democrats win it back, Wolfson said. Democrats need to net only three seats to win the House.
“There is a meaningful difference between a majority of, let’s say, 219 and 230, right?” Wolfson said.
His spending so far, which has not yet been publicly disclosed, was first reported by the New York Times.
Bloomberg’s investments are a bright spot for Democrats, who are dramatically outpaced by Republicans when it comes to individual political donors.
Around the same time Bloomberg began his spending blitz, Elon Musk was becoming the biggest solo political donor in modern American history. He put $369 million into the midterms to support Republicans.
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