FRIENDS WITH (SNAP) BENEFITS: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled the latest perk of his chummy relationship with President Donald Trump, announcing a deal today that will give stores across the country more time to comply with changes to federal food assistance rules.

New rules from the Department of Agriculture, which took effect last week, required retailers to stock a greater diversity of products in order to continue receiving SNAP benefits.

Just before they kicked in, Mamdani signed onto a bipartisan letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins urging the Trump administration to delay implementing the new requirements. He warned the rules would threaten the viability of the city’s more than 10,000 bodegas and corner stores, as well as the New Yorkers who rely on them, if the stores could not meet the mandates in time and lost the ability to accept SNAP payments.

Now, after negotiations with Rollins and foe-turned-bro Trump, Mamdani secured a 90-day extension for small retailers to comply with the rules — not just in New York City, but nationwide. The extension starts Friday.

Mamdani said he personally escalated the extension request to President Trump after City Hall reached out to the federal government.

“What I told the president was that this is a rule that, if allowed to be implemented on the timeline as it was scheduled, would be one that would throw the lives of so many working New Yorkers into a real place of anxiety and chaos,” he said. “And the president took that concern seriously.”

Mamdani declined to share how often he chats with Trump — “I’ll keep the cadence of that between the two of us,” he said — but he emphasized their conversations are ongoing.

As the two executives approach the one-year anniversary of their unexpected bromance, today’s announcement serves as a reminder that Mamdani’s Trump strategy has largely paid off.

After a seemingly love-struck Trump emerged from the duo’s first Oval Office meeting on Nov. 21, the threat of an immigration enforcement surge on par with Minneapolis largely evaporated, eliminating a potentially explosive situation that at the time loomed over the mayor’s early days in office.

In February, Mamdani successfully petitioned Trump to release a Columbia University student who had been taken into the custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, as POLITICO reported this week, Mamdani has continued to make those requests privately to the president. The two have also discussed the federal government’s involvement in a massive development project that would span the Sunnyside Yard rail depot in Queens.

The price for these spoils has so far been one Mamdani’s base is willing to accept.

The mayor rarely, if ever, criticizes Trump directly. He demurs when asked by reporters about their private phone calls. And during a joint appearance outside Gracie Mansion in late September, when asked about Trump’s short-lived White House media ban, Mamdani only said that he himself supported having a variety of news outlets covering City Hall. — Molly Reinmann and Joe Anuta

From the Capitol

NVIDIA AND BEYOND: Gov. Kathy Hochul isn’t worried that the scandal engulfing former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will impact the broader semiconductor sector.

“It’s a resilient industry,” she said today. “We’ve already planted the flag in places from Malta and all the way to Syracuse. New York’s economy will continue to be sound and continue to grow. This will not have an effect on meeting our obligations to continue the investments and create more jobs.”

New York has placed a massive, long-term bet on the industry, which has toeholds in the Syracuse area and the Saratoga County town of Malta, where Hochul appeared today to tout the groundbreaking of a new chip manufacturing facility.

Huang resigned amid allegations of multiple affairs, including a relationship with a woman who may be a potential Chinese spy.

The tech boom has helped lift Wall Street and swell New York’s coffers. A slowdown may spell trouble for the economy. — Nick Reisman 

LEADERSHIP MOVES: State Sen. Liz Krueger told Playbook today she isn’t angling to chair the body’s housing committee.

“I’m not going to be the housing chair and I’m not lobbying to be the housing chair,” the Manhattan lawmaker said. “Several other people have voiced active interest and I think that’s great.”

“I actually think that whoever is willing to be the housing chair should recognize they need to probably make a six-year commitment to this assignment,” she added. “And I’m not actually planning necessarily to make an additional six-year commitment to the Senate.”

One member who has voiced interest in the role is state Sen. Julia Salazar, a democratic socialist who represents north Brooklyn. The committee is currently chaired by outgoing state Sen. Brian Kavanagh.

“I’m a huge Julia Salazar fan,” Krueger said. “I think she’s an underestimated young talent in the Senate.”

Decisions on chairmanships will be up to Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, as the Senate navigates leadership turnover and the largest Democratic majority in 150 years.

Krueger has chaired the Senate finance committee since Democrats took control of the chamber in 2019. She suffered a stroke earlier this year but has recovered and was recently elected to serve another full term.

“The finance committee has about three times the workload of any committee,” Krueger noted. “I have told Andrea if she would like me to stay on in finance, I would be happy to do so, but I would need some kind of vice-chair or co-chair arrangement.”

She added: “If nobody wants to give me any chairmanships because we have too many mouths to feed, that’s okay also. This will be my 25th year [in the senate]. I feel like people either know who I am and respect what I try to do or not, and it’s irrelevant what the title is on my door.” — Janaki Chadha

FROM CITY HALL

HE’S NO SCHU-IN: Mamdani pointedly declined to back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s bid to continue leading the caucus when asked about it at a press conference this morning.

“The American people made their voices very clear. They sent a message that they want Democratic leadership across the board that will deliver material improvements for the working class. And as the mayor of New York City, that's exactly what I want to see for New Yorkers across our five boroughs,” Mamdani said. “So I care less about who it is, and I care more about what they do.”

Schumer is facing a leadership challenge from Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who has the support of Mamdani allies like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan.

Mamdani’s hand-off approach to the Senate leadership race stands in stark contrast to the House, where the mayor has backed Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ bid to become speaker. — Joe Anuta

JOGGER PROBE: The New York City Law Department is launching an independent review of the school system’s hiring and background check procedures following revelations that the suspect in the recent high-profile murder of a Brooklyn jogger had worked at an elementary school.

At the request of schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, the Law Department will conduct a review that will include an examination of employee screenings and verifications, how information is shared between government agencies and what safeguards are in place after an individual is hired.

“The Law Department stands ready to conduct a review, follow the facts, and make recommendations based on what we find in order to make sure New York City Public Schools, and all collaborating agencies, continue to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and well-being of students and staff,” Corporation Counsel Steven Banks said in a statement.

Details of the review and the full scope are currently being developed, according to the Department of Education.

Read more in POLITICO Pro from Madina Touré

ULRICH TRIAL LATEST: As former New York City Correction Department Commissioner Louis Molina took the stand today in the trial of former Buildings Department Commissioner Eric Ulrich, a series of wiretapped calls and emails gave a behind-the-scenes peek at how patronage works within municipal government.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has accused Ulrich of using his position as a senior adviser to former Mayor Eric Adams to obtain perks like cash payments and season tickets to the Mets. The former Queens City Council member has pleaded not guilty and is in the midst of a bench trial in Manhattan criminal court.

As part of the case, prosecutors summoned Molina to the stand today to discuss how exactly the daughter of Ulrich’s close friend came to be hired as a policy analyst at the Department of Correction.

“In my mind, it was her job if she wanted it,” Molina told Assistant District Attorney Guy Tardanico at one point during the proceedings.

Shortly after Adams took office in 2022, Ulrich came to Molina with a candidate for open positions at the department. He impressed upon the correction commissioner that the candidate’s father, Michael Mazzio, who is on trial alongside Ulrich, was a friend of the mayor and that hiring his daughter was a top priority.

Molina said that context spurred him to give her an interview and offer her a job — something that might not have happened had she applied via traditional routes.

Defense attorneys for Ulrich and Mazzio, however, cross examined Molina and sought to show that recommendations for jobs from senior City Hall staffers were nothing out of the ordinary. And those attorneys noted that Ulrich never demanded Mazzio’s daughter be hired, nor complained when she was given an entry-level position instead of a loftier job title that came with a six-figure salary. — Joe Anuta

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

HAKEEM’S HECKLERS: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took a victory lap today at the Majority Democrats’ confab in Denver. The welcome he received wasn’t entirely warm.

Right after moderator Jessica Tarlov’s first question, protesters interrupted with demands that Jeffries support the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and an arms embargo against Israel. Tarlov then asked for his response to the criticism that his “leadership is too timid for the moment.”

“As House Democrats, we're honored by the trust that the American people have placed in us to get the job done, and so we’ve got to work hard to deliver,” he replied.

That didn’t quiet the hecklers.

As Jeffries spoke about reversing Medicaid cuts and working to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credit, one tarred him as a “fucking liar.”

“I'm from Brooklyn,” Jeffries said in response. “This is light work.”

During the talk, he said he’s “absolutely a yes” on banning mid-cycle redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.

“I said this when this all started in Texas last July, that Republicans and MAGA extremists started this redistricting war,” he said. “We're going to end it. And last Tuesday, that's what we did, decisively all across the country. So we're not going to unilaterally disarm, but at the same period of time, as we've done in two prior Congresses, we need to ban mid-decade gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering.”

New York Democrats are still mulling a mid-decade redistricting effort. — Madison Fernandez

IN OTHER NEWS

— DOWN WITH THE DSA: Veteran campaign strategist Hank Sheinkopf is repurposing his super PAC to block the DSA’s expansion in New York. (The New York Post)

— NY-21 SHORTFALL: Rep-elect Anthony Constantino received more than 30,000 fewer votes in his district than GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman. (Times Union)

— RIDE OR DIE: Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a longtime advisor to former Mayor Eric Adams, has made frequent cameos in the corruption trial against Eric Ulrich. (Gothamist)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Jensen Huang’s Washington fallout

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Democrats’ long-warring ideological factions have reached a détente, new POLITICO Poll data shows. It may not last.

Half of progressives and moderates now say the party is “somewhat” or “much more” unified since the election, according to the latest survey, conducted last weekend by PF Global. And everyone agrees on what the Democratic-led Congress needs to do first, above anything else: bring down the cost of living.

The size and sweep of Democrats’ midterms romp appears to have temporarily quelled the electability questions that fueled the long-running standoff between the party’s factions. Progressives flipped House districts and snagged Senate seats on plainly purple turf. Many moderate candidates flipped deep-red territory for the first time in decades. Put together, Democrats are now headed for their biggest House majority of the century.

“We’ve got this great big-tent party that’s coming into Congress, and I think that’s what people want,” said Pete Giangreco, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked across House, Senate and gubernatorial races this past cycle. “They don’t want these ideological divisions”

Today, two out of three Democratic midterm voters believe that progressives make their party stronger — considerably higher than the 41% who said so before Election Day, according to polls taken before and after the midterms. Among self-described moderate Democrats, that belief has risen 26 points, from 33% to 59%. Among progressives, it’s risen from 58% to 74%.

“If people are spending more time going after other Democrats instead of figuring out how to work together as a team, then I'm not sure that they've got the right priorities,” moderate Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO.

But it’s not clear how long the unity will last.

The polling reveals cracks are already starting to reemerge within Democrats’ coalition, foreshadowing potential intraparty fights to come on Capitol Hill and beyond into 2028. Democrats agree on the broad strokes of their priorities, but they diverge on the scope of lawmakers’ approach and the kind of presidential nominee they’d like to see.

“Democrats, they don’t need to be getting too big-headed about this quote-unquote blue wave or blue tsunami,” said incoming Arizona 6th District Rep. JoAnna Mendoza. “What they need to focus on is making sure that we’re bringing people relief and that we’re taking action because that’s what people need right now.”

The poll bears out two of Democrats’ near-universal takeaways from last Tuesday that are already shaping the shadow 2028 presidential primary: Voters want to elect fighters — and they want them to cut down high costs.

The overwhelming majority of Democratic midterm voters — 78% — say bringing down the cost of living should be Democrats’ top focus as they come into control of Congress next year. Nearly as many, 71%, of Americans said the same.

But Democratic voters internally disagree on approach. The POLITICO Poll data shows 47% of the party’s midterm voters prefer the next Congress’ agenda be set by Democrats who want major systemic reforms and government intervention to reduce inequality, compared to 39% who prefer Democrats who want pragmatic and targeted economic solutions.

A majority of progressives, 57%, choose systemic reform. Moderates, meanwhile, are split between systemic reform (43%) and targeted economic solutions (44%)

Those splits are poised to spill onto the presidential campaign trail. Even as voters broadly agree on wanting a “fighter” candidate, half of progressives still think someone with their ideology would be among the most electable in 2028, while just over a third of moderates, 36%, say someone in their lane has the best shot.

Several possible White House aspirants are trying to push a public truce, arguing that factional infighting needs to take a backseat for now.

"I don't think any voters think about it that way," Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told reporters when asked by POLITICO whether there was a progressive or moderate takeaway from the midterms at Crooked Media's post-election conference in D.C. "People want to see the results of their government because whether you voted for Trump or Harris in the last election, your prices are still too damn high."

Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna, in a post-election interview, said “we had electability across the board” in the midterms and that the question heading into 2028 is “who has the best vision for America.”

Lauren Fedor contributed to this report.

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

Mark Kelly on Trump, the Iran War and his 2028 decision

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You know you’ve made a good ad when it’s outperforming an endorsement video from Barack Obama.

Ryan Sayles, a 27-year-old Mississippi content creator, is behind arguably the best political spot of the election cycle: Democrat Scott Colom’s viral “pick another protein” ad against GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

You’ve probably seen it by now. The ad featured Mississippi voters’ blunt reactions to Hyde-Smith’s suggestion that people struggling with rising beef prices choose from other protein options.

“Pick another protein? Shiiii-, I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

“Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind. I’d rather pick another senator.”

Sayles was at his nephew’s football game when he realized something extraordinary was happening.

“I was looking at the first numbers when it first dropped, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is about to be a really good video,’” he told POLITICO after Colom’s historic Senate race victory in the longtime Republican stronghold. “We had the Obama endorsement the day before, so that was our biggest video. It was like, ‘Dang, we ain’t ever gonna top that.’”

“And then this ad came, and we posted it, and it outperformed anything we ever did,” Sayles said.

The 30-second spot quickly became the talk of Mississippi and Washington, helping fuel Colom’s longshot campaign to unseat Hyde-Smith and become the first Black senator from the state since Reconstruction. And, it’s given Democrats across the country another blueprint for how to break through online ahead of a critical 2028 presidential race, as the party continues to rethink its strategy.

With the ad — and Colom’s win — Sayles has gone from a newcomer who stumbled into campaigning almost by accident to a name to watch in Democratic digital politics, as the party looks for fresh ways to reach voters ahead of 2028.

“[Sayles] should be considered the breakout-star of this cycle,” Colom wrote in a post on X about the viral ad earlier this month. “He’s going to be a giant in the media consultant game. He did GAME CHANGING work with SO little.”

In an interview with POLITICO, Sayles described how his lack of prior political experience shaped his approach to creating the ad and why he thinks Democrats should listen more closely to the voters they’re trying to reach. He also discussed the unexpected attention he’s received since the ad — and why he hopes Colom’s victory will serve as a wake-up call for the party to invest in the South.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did you get involved with the Colom campaign? 

I did a lot of freelance videography and photography, and they really just needed a photographer for one event they were doing back in October. And I came and did video and pictures for him, and they kept me around.

They were like, "Yeah, we need to work with him,” and then from then on, I never left.

Take me behind the scenes of creating the protein ad. How did it come together? 

Scott and his brother, Andrew, along with [the] campaign manager Gerard, they all plotted the script together, and so they presented it to me.

We filmed it, and I directed and made sure it [felt] like Mississippi. I guess I made it more Mississippi than what it was at the beginning.

You know, [I] just added the entertainment or funny pieces of it, like emphasizing the way he said the words and stuff like that. And then I shot it, edited it, and added the music to it.

I sat there and edited for like five hours. I've heard that man say “shit” a million times.

Did you think it was going to go this viral? 

I had high hopes for it, but I just didn't know what it could do.

A lot of our content was getting around Mississippi, but it wasn't getting around the country. Mississippians knew about Scott Colom’s content and what he was doing, but it wasn't nationwide — and I think that ad really put a national focus on what was brewing in Mississippi.

Why do you think this particular ad took off so much and felt so natural? 

I think the reason it did well nationally is because I think a lot of people are fed up.

A lot of times we don't express the way we feel, we hold it in, but I think this ad was an expression that people felt all around the country, that we just had the guts to put it out there.

For Mississippi, of course it resonated because that's something we say down here. People say “shiiiit” all the time — like you know, that's the normal conversation.

I think the best thing about the ad was it was centering people, centering voters ... You know, Scott was in the ad for about five seconds, but then that was the biggest ad of the cycle. I think it was just a lesson that people matter way more than politics.

Did anybody worry the ad went too far? Do you think Democrats are sometimes too cautious? 

I think the dope part is, we didn't run that ad by anybody. … We didn’t go around getting OK’s from anybody ... we just put it out. But also … I've never worked on a campaign, and I think that I didn't have a sense of what Dems normally did. You know what I mean?

We just did what we liked, and that was one of the big things Scott always talked about. “Man, if we are good with the content, we are good.”

Scott is the best person I could’ve been in this situation with. He has been such a great person. He’s so creative, and he has allowed me to shine in ways that I just can’t believe.

Did you hear from people in the Democratic Party after the ad came out?

Like I said, this is my first campaign, so this is all a blur right now, honestly. But I would say that I've gotten messages, a lot of messages. I don't know who all those messages are tied to at this point, but I have gotten a lot of messages and people saying, “You did great work, we should talk.”

I'm just happy. Mississippi is, we have hope again, man, that's the biggest thing. You know, this is my state.

What could the Democratic Party learn from the Colom campaign’s digital strategy? 

I want to shout out my digital director. Lacy Nelson was the digital director, and she really helped turn things around when it came to just our distribution being able to put stuff out, because at first I was posting, taking pictures, filming, editing, doing everything by myself, and it was the worst headache.

You gotta put your feet on the ground, you gotta understand the area in which you are working to try to get voters, and you gotta let them know that you see them and make them feel seen.

You have to understand what resonates with people. People in Mississippi are not going to care about the things that somebody who lives in New York City cares about, it's going to be different. And that messaging needs to be different. You can't give Mississippi a New York message.

Not that I'm an expert — like I said, this is my first campaign — but I think people should really focus on what that region is listening to.

What does Colom’s victory mean for Democrats’ opportunities across the South? 

For a long time we’ve looked at it as impossible. And with very little resources, we showed that if you really get out and you do the work, you talk to people, you meet voters where they are, it is possible.

Mississippi is one of the hardest places that could have happened. When you look at the investment and you look at what other places have received for that type of thing, it shows that the opportunity was always in Mississippi. … We just needed the investment, and I think that over the years, so many organizations have done the work to get us to this point, and we just seized the opportunity.

There's real opportunity in the South. You just gotta invest.

Palantir’s CEO on why he’s ‘the most popular’ tech CEO

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Democrats’ midterms sweep didn’t solve their ideological civil war — but a number of the party’s potential presidential contenders hope it lets them call a truce.

In the days since Democrats’ sweeping midterm victories, several likely White House aspirants have argued that their party’s factional feuding needs to take a backseat heading into 2028.

“What was clear, no matter where you go, [is that] people are frustrated,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told reporters last weekend at Crooked Media’s post-election conference. “They're not thinking about whether this is about left or middle or right. They're thinking about how to get problems solved.”

“I don't know if the takeaway should be what ideology that people wanted. I think people want results,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at the same event.

Democrats’ midterm tidal wave was powered more by voters’ anger at high costs and the Trump administration than by any one ideology. Candidates won tough races by positioning themselves not as progressives or moderates but as anti-Washington populists and pragmatists — some of them even scoring dual endorsements from both the moderate Blue Dog Democrats and progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“If you see … an elected leader spending valuable time duking it out on whose team won, moderate or progressive, they are missing the actual message of this election,” Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate who campaigned hard for progressive Abdul El-Sayed, told POLITICO. “It’s about people who are wanting to work together as a team on issues like the American dream in the middle class.”Many of the party’s rising stars embraced an ethos like Shapiro’s “get stuff done” and, like Slotkin, called to reject progressive-versus-moderate politics in favor of combative candidates.

“It helps take away the most annoying question that has split our party, and that is the question of electability,” progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in an interview last week. “It turns out that progressives were electable, and centrists were electable. The moderates were electable, and people who were affiliated with the DSA were electable.”

Now, as they pivot into 2028, Democrats are broadly seizing on last week’s results as license to avoid traditional labels as they look to appeal as widely as possible to voters more interested in easing the pinch in their pocketbooks than the political philosophy to which their leaders subscribe. Interviews and conversations with more than a dozen potential Democratic presidential candidates, advisers and operatives reveal that rhetorical shift is as much a rejection of the ideological litmus tests that dominated the 2020 primary as it is a calibration toward the dynamics that will drive the 2028 contest.

“We all lived through the purity tests,” said Adrienne Elrod, a Democratic strategist who advised Joe Biden in 2020, Kamala Harris in 2024 and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run. “What people are now yearning for is authenticity. And they want a fighter and someone who can deliver more than someone who perfectly aligns with them ideologically.”

There are tells in the flurry of postelection memos from potential presidential contenders. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s team positioned her not as a progressive firebrand but as “one of the most effective voices in the country for America’s working class.” Teams behind Moore and Shapiro pushed messages of “common-sense governance” and “delivering results.”

“There has been a reckoning in the Democratic Party, and people in all lanes frankly have come to realize the government in Washington has not delivered for working-class people and they need to,” said Jeff Weaver, a Khanna adviser who managed Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

Or, as one adviser to a potential candidate said: Voters “do not live in the binaries that a lot of political operatives do.”

While last Tuesday’s wave swept Democrats of all stripes into office, it also created openings for each wing of the party to argue that its vision is the way forward. That all but guarantees more proxy battles to come as the party moves from running a raft of candidates across diverse districts to selecting just one to try and win the White House.

The left has seized on strong performances by unabashedly progressive candidates to push Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez to run for president and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for Senate majority leader.

Ravi Mangla, a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, said it’s “undeniable the populist candidates … can win in swing states that are going to be critical in 2028” — and the left lane is “wide open.”

But the centrist group Welcome argued in a new memo shared first with POLITICO that there’s a clear pathway for candidates willing to embrace a more moderate posture.

“In a very large field, you need a base to get you to 15, 20, 25 percent. And it’s very clear in the data you can get there with voters in the middle — center-left voters,” said Welcome co-founder Liam Kerr.

And even as he called for a primary that would battle test a diverse set of ideological views, Khanna, who co-chaired Sanders’ 2020 campaign, leaned into his liberal bona fides: “It would be an honor to be called a Bernie Sanders Democrat; I embrace being a New Deal Democrat with pride.”

“Obviously, I'm a progressive Democrat. I believe that the progressive vision is the best vision. But there should be someone who’s in the center or center-left. Then they can argue for their vision,” Khanna said. “And then it’s for the American people and the primary to decide.”

A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.

Big Tech pivots left

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Mississippi voted blue, in a shock win for Democrats.

Democrat Scott Colom ousted Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a state that went for President Donald Trump by 23 points in 2024. He will be the first Black senator elected in Mississippi since the Reconstruction era — and the first Democrat from the state headed to the Senate in 44 years.

Colom, a Democratic district attorney, ran a scrappy campaign that saw some national money and resources in the final stretch of the race.

Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate in 2018 and had since won election to the seat twice, but she faced attacks from Colom that she was out of touch and indifferent to rising grocery and gas prices during Trump’s second term.

National Democratic groups hadn't paid much attention to the Mississippi Senate race until an October surge of excitement for Colom drew late spending and attention.

Colom's win is a boost to the Democratic Party as it seeks to gain a larger foothold in the South and improve their standing with Black voters. It’s also a major vindication for Colom and other Southern Democrats who argued Mississippi had been neglected for far too long.

A growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill want to draft Marco Rubio for a 2028 presidential bid as they grapple with their midterms wipeout — and look beyond Vice President JD Vance.

The generational losses are sparking new discussions among Hill Republicans about who should lead the party. Many argue the race to carry the mantle is now wide open — including a faction who view Rubio as a better fit, given that voters may continue to tie Vance to the president’s unpopularity, interviews with roughly two dozen GOP lawmakers reveal.

“I hope he runs. I think he's the best person to communicate, to unify,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) said of Rubio in an interview.

“I think he's the most talented Republican by far,” Stutzman said when asked about why he supported the secretary of State over Vance. “We're going to have to continue to re-message, put some new faces up.” The vice president still has his supporters. And he got a boost Tuesday by fellow Ohio Republican Jim Jordan being elected as the incoming House minority leader.

But the election wipeout “certainly makes it harder for Vance,” said one GOP senator, who like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“I think Rubio is our best hope to lead Republicans out of this wilderness, and I hope he makes his break from Trump and JD early next year,” said one House Republican in the wake of the election.

The openness toward Rubio — or any other candidate that’s not Vance — is a complication for the vice president, who was picked by Trump for the role that’s next in line to the presidency. Now, Vance has to grapple with being closely associated with an agenda that even GOP lawmakers argue voters harshly rebuked last week.

Several lawmakers said they’ve spoken to people close to Rubio who have suggested he isn’t interested in pursuing a 2028 bid, even after Tuesday’s results. Rubio himself this week has stood by Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran and told reporters Monday he was “just not going to talk about 2028 anymore.”

A person close to Rubio said the secretary of State is the only person who knows what he will do regarding a presidential bid. Right now, he’s “fully focused on doing his many jobs and isn’t thinking about 2028.”

But some Hill Republicans aren’t giving up hope.

“I’m a big supporter of Marco Rubio, and I’m very excited about the potential of his candidacy,” said Florida Rep. Mike Haridopolos, who has known the secretary of State for nearly three decades. “No question he’s ready to be president if he chooses to pursue the office.”

“Some of us are still hoping we can draft Marco,” said another GOP senator.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment. Vance’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Vance, for his part, has tried to distance himself from the unpopular Iran war, blaming it for the party’s losses in the immediate aftermath of the midterm election. His allies argue that the vice president would’ve always faced some internal opposition, like Trump did within the GOP ahead of the 2016 election.

However, as the Rubio talk swirls, even some of Trump’s top MAGA allies on Capitol Hill are unwilling to publicly declare Vance the presumptive GOP nominee for 2028. “Can I skip this one?” one House GOP hardliner said. “Not wading into 2028 yet.” Some Republican senators also declined to back Vance just yet, citing their own reelections.

GOP Rep. and Sen.-elect Barry Moore of Alabama said he thought Vance would certainly “have a shot” at the presidency in 2028. Moore was the first member of Congress to back Trump for the 2016 race.

But Moore for now is leaving his endorsement up in the air: “We got a great bench," he said. "Whoever steps up, we'll be happy to support.”

Rubio’s supporters say that he’s not as closely associated with the 2026 GOP wipeout as Vance, but he could face his own obstacles. Rubio, unlike Vance, has continued to show strong support for the war in Iran, a conflict he’s tied to as the country’s top diplomat. Some GOP lawmakers have also grown frustrated with the amount of information the Trump administration, including Rubio at times, has been willing to share about the ongoing conflict.

Rubio also has his failed 2016 presidential run to contend with, including an infamous debate performance where he awkwardly repeated the same rehearsed line multiple times.

One thing is clear, the 2028 presidential race is now wide open, many Hill Republicans argue as they process Tuesday’s results. And other potential candidates only appear encouraged after the midterms wipeout.

Several Hill Republicans believe outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been one of the most outspoken Republicans urging a course correction after the midterms bloodbath, will get in the race as well. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) this week also didn’t rule out a presidential bid. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also appears likely to run.

“I think everybody reserves the right to adjust. You know, learn from this,” GOP Rep. and incoming Oklahoma Sen. Kevin Hern said. Asked his favorite candidate of the three he expected to run: Vance, Rubio or DeSantis, he replied with a smile: “Everybody.”

Vance does have ardent supporters, including Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana who said before the midterms he would enthusiastically back him for president in 2028.

“If JD runs, he has my full support,” Banks said in an interview this week. “He continues to lead in all the polls on the Republican side to be the nominee. He's my friend. We come from the same part of the country, the same background, and he's what the country needs. I hope he runs. But I don't know if he's running or not.”

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) called Vance “a friend who I’ve had the honor to work alongside. He’s the vice president, of course he’s a front-runner.”

Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) said in an interview that it was the Republican “party” and not its “policies” that suffered massive losses last week. But he doesn’t blame Vance, and he supports him for the 2028 presidential race.

Vance, for his part, made his own allusion to the situation he’s found himself in. "I wanted to talk, of course, about the devastating loss last week. …There are a lot of people, I think, unfairly criticizing the leader of the team … a lot of staff infighting. … And of course, there's a conversation about whether the No. 2 has what it takes to ultimately lead the team.”

He finished: “I'm talking, of course, about the Ohio State Buckeyes."

Former President Joe Biden would not have run for reelection in 2024 if he had known about his cancer, he said in an interview released Wednesday in which he also sought to downplay the historic debate performance that helped end his political career.

"If I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer, I would have not gone forward because I don't think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running," he said in the interview with People magazine, which was conducted last week following Democrats’ big midterm wins and ahead of his upcoming memoir’s release.

The former president announced his diagnosis — Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer — in May 2025, just four months after leaving the White House. It triggered an outpouring of public support — but it also raised questions about how doctors failed to catch the cancer earlier and whether it might have contributed to Biden’s apparent decline toward the end of his term.

“I think it’s very sad, actually. I’m surprised that it wasn’t, you know, the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to [a Gleason score of] 9, that’s a long time,” President Donald Trump told reporters shortly after Biden’s announcement.

Prior to his diagnosis, Biden hadn’t been screened for prostate cancer since 2014. U.S. guidelines have long recommended that men shouldn't be screened for the cancer once they hit their 70s.

Biden also downplayed his poor June 2024 debate performance against Trump that contributed to his exit from the Democratic ticket a month later.

“To me, it was not very consequential,” he said. “First of all, I thought there would be another debate, which there wasn’t. But notwithstanding the fact that there wasn’t another debate, it didn’t disturb me because it wasn’t consequential.”

Biden’s son, Hunter, has said he believes the cancer was responsible for the performance. His weak showing on the debate stage led to mounting calls within his party for him to withdraw, an effort eventually backed by longtime friends and allies such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The former president’s memoir, “Promise Me, America,” will go on sale next week. Biden wrote Sunday on X that the cancer meant he “won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped.” But he still feels sharp, he told the magazine.

“I’m not saying I’ll live forever, but the point is that, you know, I have all my faculties, I have access to all the things I had before and, you know, I feel good,” he said.

When Annie Andrews announced her longshot campaign for U.S. Senate last May, the Democrat from South Carolina pitched herself as a “busy mom.”

“Lindsey [Graham] is going to tell you I am radical, that I am crazy,” Andrews said in her launch video. “But here’s the thing: I am literally a busy mom and a pediatrician who plays peek-a-boo with my patients, watches Bluey with my kids … and spends most of my free time shuttling them to dance, Tae Kwon Do and football.”

Now, she is one of a record number of women who will serve in the next Congress. And as a 46-year-old mother of three school-aged children, she’s among several Democratic women who flipped seats and governor’s mansions this November with campaign messages centered on parenting and affordability.

It’s a notable campaign shift from previous election cycles: This year, female candidates focused less on the historic nature of their bids, or culture war issues that have long fomented divisions over gender and electability. Instead, they zeroed in on an economic message emphasizing bread-and-butter concerns — like how rising costs were squeezing families, including theirs.

“Moms understand kitchen table issues better than perhaps anyone,” said Jessica Mackler, president of EMILY’s List, the group that recruits and backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. “They understand how to stretch a paycheck. They understand what it is like to walk through a grocery store and have to put something back on the shelf.”

Senate, House and gubernatorial campaigns spent a combined $72 million on ads featuring the words “mom” or “mother” in 2026, according to AdImpact — a 50% increase from the $48 million spent in 2024 and double the spending on these kind of ads from 2022.

In many races, Democrats leaned on their experiences as parents to dismiss the kind of culture war attacks that have been effective for Republicans in recent years.

“They want to run an entire campaign saying that I’m too woke … I plan to spend an entire campaign focused on the fact that working people are too broke,” Democratic Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa said in one of her final TV ads. “My pronouns are mom, Texan and soon-to-be governor.”

Campaign messaging around gender and representation can be fraught: In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s “I’m With Her” campaign slogan fell short as she failed in her pledge to break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.” In 2024, Kamala Harris’ campaign was decidedly less overt in its messaging about the barrier-breaking potential of her candidacy. But debates about gender seemed inescapable as Trump called her “weak” and then-Sen. JD Vance said the Democratic Party was run by “childless cat ladies.”

This cycle was different.

In a 2026 environment driven by concerns about affordability and the cost of living, Democratic operatives said it was an easy decision for women and mothers in particular to lean on their home lives to connect with voters.

At least 159 women will serve in the 120th Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, with Democratic women outnumbering Republicans by roughly five-to-one. Many of the newly elected Democrats are younger moms.

Their victories, especially in battleground districts and states long seen as Republican strongholds, have emboldened Democratic groups dedicated to electing more women, who argue the candidates offer a blueprint for winning races going forward.

Veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said her party’s female candidates “really got points for having the right priorities and being in touch with real people's lives."

"It used to be that women with young children just didn't run, and we were electing all these women who had grown children or no children, and then we were electing women with young children, but they were hiding them, if you will,” Lake said. “Now [candidates] were bringing them out as major credentialers, and that has been changing over time."

Winning Democratic candidates told POLITICO they did not hesitate to talk about their families and personal experiences on the trail.

“I didn’t need anyone giving me talking points on how expensive groceries are,” said Representative-elect Teresa Benitez-Thompson, who won a heavily Republican House district in northern Nevada. “I don’t need anyone telling me how expensive gas is because I am filling up my tank … running kids all around town.”

JoAnna Mendoza, a single mom who flipped a swing district in the Tucson, Arizona, suburbs – said she spent the night before the election in the emergency room with her 10-year-old son.

“That is what parents face. That is what moms go through. Their kids are sick, they have to take time off of work, or they have to leave work,” Mendoza said. “It is important for people to see themselves in their elected leaders.”

Uncomfortable questions surrounding gender and electability nevertheless persist in the run-up to the next presidential election. Some in the Democratic Party at least privately question whether they should nominate another woman at the top of the ticket in 2028.

“My message to people who would say that is: cut it out,” said Mackler. “This election clearly demonstrates that women are the drivers of Democrats' path to power, and we should embrace their leadership at all levels of the ballot.”

Lake, the Democratic pollster, said the surge in female Democratic victors showed how fed up voters are with the status quo, calling it a “Hail Mary for change.”

“It is so bad, it is so failed, we're going to elect these women who will hold people accountable,” she said, adding that voters, particularly women, “were really upset with how out of touch the older white men seemed with their families' lives” after a decade of Trump and Joe Biden running the country.

Democratic candidates do not have a monopoly on talking about family life. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican governor of Arkansas, sailed to reelection last week with a campaign that highlighted her three children and efforts to cut grocery taxes and bring down the cost of living for other families. Messages around motherhood also featured prominently at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, earlier this year.

The messaging is part of a broader shift in the public conversation, said Abby McCloskey, a conservative policy analyst.

“For a long time, to be taken seriously in politics, your professional side went first and your personal side went far after, and that was especially the case for women,” she said. “I think there's been broader cultural shifts that, and probably in a desire for authenticity and connection, why that is no longer necessarily the case.”Democratic campaign veterans said the renewed focus on motherhood gave their candidates an edge as they try to counter swing voters’ deep-seated biases against female candidates.

One Democratic pollster, granted anonymity to speak candidly about voters’ biases, said voters still have “bad reactions” to women running for office who are perceived as “cold.” Talking about motherhood and family life, the pollster said, allowed candidates to come across as warm while pushing back against the idea that their candidates are too radical or left-wing.

“In some of these places where you have to win over a bunch of conservative folks, the candidate can come across as just a regular mom,” the pollster said. “Not a scary, left, woke lady.”

The beginning of Jocelyn Benson’s campaign launch video showed the Democrat hugging her son in their family’s kitchen. Now Michigan’s Democratic governor-elect, Benson told POLITICO she was “very intentional” about inviting kids to join her on stage during her celebration on Election Night.

“I think leaders in this moment, and I think parents, moms in particular, recognize this as an opportunity to show a different way of leading and of being a good person and a good citizen,” she said.

Business leaders and Washington prepare for a Democratic Congress

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