Republicans face a ferocious ad campaign surrounding Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina was facing the pressure from both sides before he announced Sunday that he wouldn't seek reelection in 2026. Americans for Prosperity, an arm of the conservative megadonor Charles Koch's political network, spent nearly $2 million this month in key media markets such as Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham.
'Trump's tax cuts put money back in my pocket, and they're helping young families save for their first homes,' says a woman featured in one of the ads from AFP. 'Congress needs to save our tax cuts and protect prosperity.'
At the same time, the Democratic-aligned group Unrig Our Economy spent nearly $1 million hammering Tillis over Medicaid cuts in the bill.
'Sen. Thom Tillis could vote to take away our health care and give tax breaks to billionaires,' an ad from the group warns.
Other Republicans in swing districts face the same dynamic heading into a midterm campaign in which they will need to reach at least some voters who don't back Trump without angering the president or his core supporters. In Tillis' case, he announced he wouldn't seek reelection hours after Trump called for him to face a primary challenge because he didn't support a procedural vote on the 'big, beautiful bill.'
'We so often hear of members concerned about their general reelection efforts, but that is all for naught if you can't get through a primary,' said John Thomas, a Republican strategist and ad maker. 'To add even more pressure, the GOP base is extremely supportive of President Trump, much more than their individual federal representative. Break rank with Trump and there is a price to pay.'
Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from a battleground district who last week announced plans to retire, commented Friday on the advertising blitz surrounding the legislation.
'I think the other guys, look, they put $500,000 on me this week saying 'Don Bacon's cutting Medicaid,'' he told CNN's Manu Raju. 'There's a lot of goodness here, but we gotta talk about it and show the voters.'
In June alone, according to data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, a sprawling collection of large PACs and interest groups spent more than $35 million on dozens of ads about the bill, which contains a range of Trump administration policy priorities on taxes, spending and immigration.
Republicans account for about half of that spending, while Democrats account for about a quarter and independent and business PACs for another quarter. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more have been spent on ads not explicitly mentioning the sweeping legislation but referencing looming policy changes and parochial interests, backed by other business and lobbying groups.
Late Saturday night, after intense negotiations, the sweeping bill narrowly cleared a major procedural hurdle in the Senate by a 51-49 vote, backed by several key swing votes — among those buffeted by ad campaigns — in the spotlight, such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.
Major challenges for the giant tax and spending bill remain, however, as it still faces amendments and a final vote in the Senate. The House will have to vote to accept a significantly changed piece of legislation from the Senate after only narrowly approving its own version of the bill weeks ago.
A group aligned with Trump's political network, 'Securing American Greatness,' has spent more than $7.7 million on ads in June, leading all advertisers with a broad campaign, much of it aimed at shoring up support among House members.
'Mariannette Miller-Meeks just voted for President Trump's working family tax cuts that mean higher wages and lower taxes for working families,' says an ad from the group targeting the key battleground representative from Iowa who won her last reelection by 798 votes.
At the same time, the pro-Trump group is hammering congressional Democrats in competitive districts for their opposition to the bill, raising the prospect of higher taxes if an extension of 2017 tax cuts, included in the legislation, fails to pass.
'It's Washington's game, taxing us to bankroll their liberal waste,' says an ad from the group targeting California Democratic Rep. Josh Harder, reelected in 2024 by a margin of about 9,000 votes. 'Tell Josh Harder we can't afford his tax hikes.'
With the key procedural hurdle cleared on Saturday, Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer underscored the political challenges would get easier once the bill was passed.
'Well, it doesn't get easier,' the North Dakota senator said. 'I just think, at some point, you just have to take what you know — all the data, all the analysis, all the discussion, all the hearings — and apply them to a vote. Pass the bill. And the sooner we do that, the sooner all the good things will kick in, and that will alleviate, I think, people's concerns.'
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News Analysis: Newsom's decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party. Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried. Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump's increasingly authoritarian impulses? That's essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign. As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California's own congressional districts to favor Democrats. His goal: counter Trump's drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own. It's a boundary-pushing gamble that will undoubtedly supercharge Newsom's political star in the short-term. The long-game glory could be even grander, but only if he pulls it off. A ballot-box flop would be brutal for both Newsom and his party. The charismatic California governor is termed out of office in 2026 and has made no secret of his 2028 presidential ambitions. But the distinct scent of his home state will be hard to completely slough off in parts of the country where California is synonymous with loony lefties, business-killing regulation and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. To say nothing of Newsom's ill-fated dinner at an elite Napa restaurant in violation of COVID-19 protocols — a misstep that energized a failed recall attempt and still haunts the governor's national reputation. The redistricting gambit is the kind of big play that could redefine how voters across the country see Newsom. The strategy could be a boon for Newsom's 2028 ambitions during a moment when Democrats are hungry for leaders, said Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio. But it's also a massive roll of the dice for both Newsom and the state he leads. 'It's great politics for him if this passes,' Maviglio said. 'If it fails, he's dead in the water.' The path forward — which could determine control of Congress in 2026 — is hardly a straight shot. The 'Election Rigging Response Act,' as Newsom has named his ballot measure, would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state's voter-approved independent redistricting commission. Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans while bolstering vulnerable Democratic incumbent Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, which would save the party millions of dollars in costly reelection fights. But first the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot and then it must be approved by voters. If passed, the initiative would have a 'trigger,' meaning the redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own gerrymandering effort. 'I think what Governor Newsom and other Democrats are doing here is exactly the right thing we need to do,' Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said Thursday. 'We're not bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We're going to bring a bazooka to a knife fight, right? This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party,' Martin said, adding that they shouldn't be the only ones playing by a set of rules that no longer exist. For Democrats like Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who appeared alongside Newsom to kick off the effort, there is "some heartbreak" to temporarily shelving their commitment to independent redistricting. But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president "willing to rig the election midstream," she said. Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground. "The response that I get is, 'Finally, we're fighting. We have a way to fight back that's tangible,'" Friedman recounted. Still, despite the state's Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs. A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state. (Newsom's press office argued that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.) California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state's congressional districts, however. While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a "life and death" battle against "Trumpism" and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California's Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective. "Wake up, America," Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. "Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people." Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself. Much of Liao's group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom's digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice account on the social media site X. The missives have largely mimicked the president's own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the 'caps lock' key. "DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER 'HOT.' FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS 'STEP,' " one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself. Some messages have also ended with Newsom's initials (a riff on Trump's signature "DJT" signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase 'Liberation Day,' or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom's smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month. Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires — in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed. Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative that dominated the president's first term and move away from his party's prior "resistance" brand. Those conciliatory overtures coincided with Newsom's embrace of a more ecumenical posture, hosting MAGA leaders on his podcast and taking a position on transgender athletes' participation in women's sports that contradicted the Democratic orthodoxy. Newsom insisted that he engaged in those conversations to better understand political views that diverged from his own, especially after Trump's victory in November. However, there was the unmistakable whiff of an ambitious politician trying to broaden his national appeal by inching away from his reputation as a West Coast liberal. Newsom's reluctance to readopt the Trump resistance mantle ended after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles amid immigration sweeps and ensuing protests in June. Those actions revealed Trump's unchecked vindictiveness and abject lack of morals and honor, Newsom said. Of late, Newsom has defended the juvenile tone of his press aides' posts mocking Trump's own all-caps screeds, and questioned why critics would excoriate his parody and not the president's own unhinged social media utterances. "If you've got issues with what I'm putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he's putting out as president," Newsom said last week. "So to the extent it's gotten some attention, I'm pleased." In an attention-deficit economy where standing out is half the battle, the posts sparkle with unapologetic swagger. And they make clear that Newsom is in on the joke. 'To a certain set of folks who operated under the old rules, this could be seen as, 'Wow, this is really outlandish.' But I think they are making the calculation that Democrats want folks that are going to play under this new set of rules that Trump has established,' Liao said. At a moment when the Democratic party is still occupied with post-defeat recriminations and what's-next vision boarding, Newsom has emerged from the bog with something resembling a plan. And he's betting the house on his deep-blue state's willingness to fight fire with fire. Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Laura Nelson contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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How the Supreme Court could wind up scrapping high-profile precedents in coming months
The Supreme Court's landmark opinion on same-sex marriage isn't the only high-profile precedent the justices will have an opportunity to tinker with – or entirely scrap – when the court reconvenes this fall. From a 1935 opinion that has complicated President Donald Trump's effort to consolidate power to a 2000 decision that deals with prayer at high school football games, the court will soon juggle a series of appeals seeking to overturn prior decisions that critics say are 'outdated,' 'poorly reasoned' or 'egregiously wrong.' While many of those decisions are not as prominent as the court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that gave same-sex couples access to marriage nationwide, some may be more likely to find a receptive audience. Generally, both conservative and liberal justices are reticent to engage in do-overs because it undermines stability in the law. And independent data suggests the high court under Chief Justice John Roberts has been less willing to upend past rulings on average than earlier courts. But the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority hasn't shied from overturning precedent in recent years – notably on abortion but also affirmative action and government regulations. The court's approval in polling has never fully recovered from its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion. Here are some past rulings the court could reconsider in the coming months. Who Trump can fire Even before Trump was reelected, the Supreme Court's conservatives had put a target on a Roosevelt-era precedent that protects the leaders of independent agencies from being fired by the president for political reasons. The first few months of Trump's second term have only expedited its demise. The 1935 decision, Humphrey's Executor v. US, stands for the idea that Congress may shield the heads of independent federal agencies, like the National Labor Relations Board or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, from being fired by the president without cause. But in recent years, the court has embraced the view that Congress overstepped its authority with those for-cause requirements on the executive branch. Court watchers largely agree 'that Humphrey's Executor is next on the Supreme Court's chopping block, meaning the next case they are slated to reverse,' said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who worked in the Biden administration. In a series of recent emergency orders, the court has allowed Trump – ever eager to remove dissenting voices from power – to fire leaders of independent agencies who were appointed by former President Joe Biden. The court's liberal wing has complained that, following those decisions, the Humphrey's decision is already effectively dead. 'For 90 years, Humphrey's Executor v. United States has stood as a precedent of this court,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote last month. 'Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.' Through the end of the Supreme Court term that ended in June, the Roberts court overruled precedent an average of 1.5 times each term, according to Lee Epstein, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who oversees the Supreme Court Database. That compares with 2.9 times on average prior to Roberts, dating to 1953. An important outstanding question is which case challenging Humphrey's will make it to the Supreme Court – and when. Flood of campaign cash? The high court has already agreed to hear an appeal – possibly this year – that could overturn a 2001 precedent limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates. Democrats warn the appeal, if successful, could 'blow open the cap on the amount of money that donors can funnel to candidates.' In a lawsuit initially filed by then-Senate candidate JD Vance and other Republicans, the challengers describe the 2001 decision upholding the caps – FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee – as an 'aberration' that was 'plainly wrong the day it was decided.' If a majority of the court thinks the precedent controls the case, they wrote in their appeal, 'it should overrule that outdated decision.' Republicans say the caps are hopelessly inconsistent with the Supreme Court's modern campaign finance doctrine and that they have 'harmed our political system by leading donors to send their funds elsewhere,' such as super PACs, which can raise unlimited funds but do not coordinate with candidates. In recent years, the Supreme Court has tended to shoot down campaign finance rules as violating the First Amendment. Obergefell's anniversary A recent Supreme Court appeal from Kim Davis, a former county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has raised concerns from some about the court overturning its decade-old Obergefell decision. Davis is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict – plus $260,000 for attorneys' fees – awarded over her move to defy the Supreme Court's decision and decline to issue the licenses. Davis has framed her appeal in religious terms, a strategy that often wins on the conservative court. She described Obergefell as a 'mistake' that 'must be corrected.' 'If ever there was a case of exceptional importance, the first individual in the Republic's history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it,' Davis told the justices in her appeal. Even if there are five justices willing to overturn the decision – and there are plenty of signs there are not – many court watchers believe Davis' appeal is unlikely to be the vehicle for that review. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, wrote recently that there are 'multiple flaws' with Davis' case. People in the private sector – say, a wedding cake baker or a website developer – likely have a First Amendment right to exercise their objections to same-sex marriage. But, Somin wrote, public employees are a very different matter. 'They are not exercising their own rights,' he wrote, 'but the powers of the state.' Race and redistricting Days after returning to the bench in October to begin a new term, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in one of the most significant appeals on its docket. The case centers on Louisiana's fraught congressional districts map and whether the state violated the 14th Amendment when it drew a second majority-Black district. If the court sides with a group of self-described 'non-Black voters,' it could gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Three years ago, a federal court ruled that Louisiana likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing only one majority Black district out of six. When state lawmakers tried to fix that problem by drawing a second majority-minority district, a group of White voters sued. Another court then ruled that the new district was drawn based predominantly on race and thus violated the Constitution. The court heard oral arguments in the case in March. But rather than issuing a decision, it then took the unusual step in June of holding the case for more arguments. Earlier this month, the court ordered more briefing on the question of whether the creation of a majority-minority district to remedy a possible Voting Rights Act violation is constitutional. The case has nationwide implications; if the court rules that lawmakers can't fix violations of the Voting Rights Act by drawing new majority-minority districts, it could make it virtually impossible to enforce the landmark 1965 law when it comes to redistricting. That outcome could effectively overturn a line of Supreme Court precedents dating to its 1986 decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, in which the court ruled that North Carolina had violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Just two years ago, the court ordered officials in Alabama to redraw the state's congressional map, upholding a lower court decision that found the state had violated the statute. 'Some opponents of the Voting Rights Act may urge the court to go further and overturn long-standing precedents, but there's absolutely no reason to go there,' said Michael Li, an expert on redistricting and voting rights and a senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. The case will not affect the battle raging over redistricting and the effort by Texas Republicans to redraw congressional boundaries to benefit their party. That's because the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 2019 decision that federal courts cannot review partisan gerrymanders. What's at stake in the Louisiana case, instead, is how far lawmakers may go in considering race when they redraw congressional and state legislative boundaries every decade. When soldiers sue Air Force Staff Sgt. Cameron Beck was killed in 2021 on Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri when a civilian employee driving a government-issued van turned in front of his motorcycle. When his wife tried to sue the federal government for damages, she was blocked by a 1950 Supreme Court decision that severely limits damages litigation from service members and their families. The pending appeal from Beck's family, which the court will review behind closed doors next month, will give the justices another opportunity to reconsider that widely criticized precedent. The so-called Feres Doctrine generally prohibits service members from suing the government for injuries that arose 'incident to service.' The idea is that members of the military can't sue the government for injuries that occur during wartime or training. But critics say the upshot is that service members have been barred from filing routine tort claims – including for traffic accidents involving government vehicles – that anyone else could file. 'This court should overrule Feres,' Justice Clarence Thomas, a stalwart conservative, wrote earlier this year in a similar case the court declined to hear. 'It has been almost universally condemned by judges and scholars.' Thomas is correct that criticism of the opinion has bridged ideologies. The Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group, authored a brief in the Beck case arguing that the 'sweeping bar to recovery for servicemembers' adopted by the Feres decision 'is at odds' with what Congress intended. But the federal government, regardless of which party controls the White House, has long rejected those arguments. The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to reject Beck's case, noting that Feres has 'been the law for more than 70 years, and has been repeatedly reaffirmed by this court.' Prayer for relief Prominent religious groups are taking aim at a 25-year-old Supreme Court precedent that barred prayer from being broadcast over the public address system before varsity football games at a Texas high school. In that 6-3 decision, the court ruled that a policy permitting the student-led prayer violated the Establishment Clause, a part of the First Amendment that blocks the government from establishing a state religion. But the court's makeup and views on religion have shifted substantially since then, with a series of significant rulings that thinned the wall that once separated church from state. When the justices meet in late September to decide whether to grant new appeals, they will weigh a request to overturn that earlier decision, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. The new case involves a Christian school in Florida that was forbidden by the state athletic association from broadcasting the prayer ahead of a championship game with another religious school. The Supreme Court should overrule Santa Fe 'as out of step with its more recent government-speech precedent,' the school's attorneys told the high court in its appeal. 'Santa Fe,' they said, 'was dubious from the outset.' It is an argument that may find purchase with the court's conservatives, who have increasingly framed state policies that exclude religious actors as discriminatory. In 2022, the high court reinstated a football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who lost his job at a public high school after praying at the 50-yard line after games. Those prayers, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court at the time, amounted to 'a brief, quiet, personal religious observance.' Kennedy submitted a brief in the new case urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal – and to now let pregame prayers reverberate through the stadium. The school, Kennedy's lawyers wrote, 'has a longstanding tradition of, and deeply held belief in, opening games with a prayer over the stadium loudspeaker.' Solve the daily Crossword
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GOP relishes forcing Dem votes on extending Trump DC police power
Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect that Senate Democrats will vote to block an extension of President Trump's federalization of the Washington, D.C., police force, relishing a chance to tag their opponents as soft on crime. Democrats have been angry over Trump's move, which aligns with what they see as authoritarian impulses from the president. Democrats also widely back the Home Rule Act, which allows D.C.'s local government a form of self-rule. But voting against an extension will definitely lead to attacks by Trump and other Republicans that Democrats are looking away from the problem of crime in cities — which are generally led by Democratic mayors. 'I am slack-jawed at how Democrats are sprinting into another trap set by Trump. This is so clear and yet they can't help themselves,' said Matt Gorman, a GOP strategist. 'Democrats love to quote studies and charts and academics to tell people they're not feeling what they're feeling and Republicans are contrasting that with action, and action is going to win every time.' Democrats don't appear to be all that worried about walking into a trap by voting against extending Trump's power over the D.C. police. 'No f‑‑‑ing way,' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in an interview Wednesday when asked about an extension. 'We'll fight him tooth and nail. … He needs to get Congress to approve it, and not only are we not going to approve it, but there are some Republicans who don't like it either,' Schumer said. Republicans would need at least seven Democrats in the Senate to go along with the vote for the power to be extended. Whether the measure to extend passes or fails, plenty of Republicans are eager for the vote, believing it will backfire on Democrats. But Democrats say there are a number of reasons the vote won't be that hard for their side. 'I don't think it's that hard of an issue — as long as you start by saying, 'Crime is bad and we need to do more to stop crime,'' said Andrew Mamo, a Democratic operative. 'The smart Democrats out there are establishing credibility by starting there and then getting into [how] this is the wrong way to do it,' Mamo said. 'We shouldn't have the National Guard randomly stopping people in the streets. We should be funding our police departments and doing all the investments we know we need to do to keep communities safe.' 'The trap is when you don't start by saying crime is bad, and you try to say, 'Actually, there's no problems here. Actually, people aren't worried,' and you do the same kind of explain-y stuff we failed out on the economy last cycle,' Mamo continued. 'Then you can tie yourself into knots. But it shouldn't be that hard for any Democrat to just say, 'Crime is bad and we need to do more to stop crime.'' Others say most voters just aren't that focused on votes pertaining to local issues in Washington, D.C. 'Most Americans across the country do not feel any connection to the nation's capital — most will never visit, and many don't remember that beyond being the seat of government, more than a half-million citizens call the District home,' said John LaBombard, a Democratic operative at Rokk Solutions and an ex-aide to former Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.). 'That dynamic prevents many everyday Americans from getting worked up about a federal takeover of policing in D.C. — but will probably also help shield lawmakers from criticism who vote against extended federal control.' Polling suggests a large swath of D.C. residents — an overwhelmingly Democratic area — believe crime is an extremely or very serious problem. According to a Washington Post-Schar School poll taken in May, 50 percent of respondents viewed crime as an extremely or very serious problem, down from 65 percent who did so two years ago when homicides and violent crimes were at their recent apex. 'Anyone who thinks crime isn't a problem in D.C. is burying their head in the sand and suffers from serious Trump derangement syndrome,' said Jesse Hunt, a GOP operative who previously served as communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. 'The major problem that Democrats have is that … the crime, the carjackings, the muggings, the threats of violence, the assaults — while maybe not murder — is still spilling into professional areas. Lets be real, no one wants to pay an arm and a leg to go to Nats Park to watch a game when they're concerned or not themselves and their children are going to be the victims of stray bullets at some metro stop nearby.' Schumer has argued that Trump's push to take over policing in Washington, D.C., is intended to distract from calls to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges. 'This is, again, just a distraction. He's afraid of Epstein,' Schumer continued. 'He's afraid of all that, and we are not going to give up on Epstein.' The issue of crime in D.C. has been a problem for Democrats in the past. Former President Biden two years ago blocked a crime bill the D.C. City Council was attempting to codify, citing concerns that it would scrap some mandatory minimum sentences, among other things. It led to criticisms that Biden was stepping on D.C. home rule. Trump on Wednesday said that he is seeking a 'long-term extension' of the federalization of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). He also argued that he can extend that time span via a national emergency declaration. 'But we expect to be before Congress very quickly. And again, we think the Democrats will not do anything to stop crime, but we think the Republicans will do it almost unanimously,' Trump told reporters at the Kennedy Center. 'So we're going to need a crime bill. That we're going to be putting in, and it's going to pertain initially to D.C. We're going to use it as a very positive example' 'You can't have 30 days,' he said. 'We're going to do this very quickly, but we're going to want extensions. I don't want to call a national emergency, but if I have to, I will.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
