Today’s notice: What we learned in Florida. The Senate runoff in South Carolina is getting spiky. Democrats asking for Republican help. We spoke to the lawmaker who got the most bills passed this Congress. A lot of people have quit on Scott Bessent. And: Rep. Richard Neal vs. the age question.
THE LATEST
#Resistance is over, but there’s a new resistance. The Democrats weren’t likely to win the Senate race in Florida this year, but it’s clear now many of their voters want to cast a different kind of protest vote than expected. Alex Vindman, the former national security staffer whose testimony led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment, lost the Democratic primary to DSA-backed state lawmaker Angie Nixon, despite raising $16.3 million to her less than $1 million.
The shock result led to a lot of online mocking of the #Resistance figures who have struggled this year, like George Conway, who was among the many losers of the Democratic primary to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York). “SleazeBag Vindman loses tonight to a Radical Left Lunatic. How cool is that???” Trump posted.
Trending
A certain subset of Democratic strategists were excited about guys like Vindman because they could easily be billed as the kind of fightin’ Democrat they presume the base wants. That theory appears to have actually been correct in Florida, but it was the fight itself the strategists were wrong about. Nixon is another full-throated critic of Israel, another candidate promising structural change, another one unafraid to say her own party’s leaders have fallen short.
This is the kind of resistance a lot of Democratic voters are interested in — and they want everyone to know it.
But not all of them. It was a good night for other mainline Democrats in Florida. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz absolutely crushed the field in her closely watched primary, while centrist Rep. Jared Moskowitz made easy work of his own DSA-backed challenger.
Republicans basically got the results the party wanted. Rep. Byron Donalds won the gubernatorial primary handily, and the incendiary James Fishback came in a distant third. Embattled Rep. Cory Mills lost his primary. But another candidate Trump endorsed went down, this time in the 19th Congressional District. Local media owner Jim Schwartzel won that primary.
Oh, one other thing: There were very few polls of the Democratic Senate primary, so this time the prediction markets got called out for being Wrong. And wrong they really were.
Open tabs: DOJ Plans to Deploy a ‘Historic Number’ of Midterm Election Monitors (NOTUS); US Navy destroyer with 300 sailors aboard broke down for four days in the Pacific (AP); Arrest warrant issued then dropped for Jill Stein (NY Post); FBI: 2025 had biggest violent-crime drop in 90 years (Axios)
From South Carolina
Going negative: Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina has not been in the job long, but she quipped like a pro last night during the Republican Senate runoff debate. “I think you’re confused because I don’t know if you want to be in South Carolina or Washington, because you said you wanted to go to Washington to clean up the swamp, then you wanted to come back to South Carolina to run for governor,” she said to her opponent, Rep. Ralph Norman. “Now you want to go back to Washington again to clean up the swamp.”
And that was the nice Graham. The debate crowd actually gasped when she said to Norman, “Apparently you hired illegal immigrants,” as part of a back-and-forth about education. Norman appeared rattled, and dismissed it as “a Democrat talking line.”
Also dismissing Graham: many pro-lifers. A rift in the anti-abortion movement is playing out over who its best advocate is in the runoff, NOTUS’ Oriana González reports.
From the campaign trail
First on NOTUS: A Democrat runs against everybody in Montana. “While politicians in both parties get rich on our backs, our problems only get worse,” Democrat Sam Forstag says in a new TV ad hitting the airwaves in Montana’s 1st Congressional District today, NOTUS’ Christa Dutton tells us. Forstag is running to replace Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, and is a big part of Democrats’ hopes of rebuilding a base in rural states.
Trend alert: Democrats with Republican friends. Democratic candidates in red and purple places are turning to Republican validators to help them win statewide contests, NOTUS’ Igor Bobic reports. “Endorsements overall are overrated,” Jeff Flake, the former Republican senator from Arizona who just endorsed Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), told Igor. “But cross-party endorsements can help and have helped in the past.”
From the Hill
Rep. Nick Begich’s big Congress: The Alaska Republican freshman has gotten six bills to the president’s desk so far this Congress, which is more than anyone else in the current session. NOTUS’ Mark Alfred spoke to the 119th’s most successful lawmaker — and Begich had his talking points ready to go: “We’ve received a lot of cooperation and recognition on both sides of the aisle that Alaska-specific issues really belong in the hands of the Alaskan that was sent to Congress to represent Alaska,” he said.
THE BIG ONE
Primary Complaints. “Let’s put this way: I think there’s a tendency for challengers in congressional elections to want the public to come to believe that history started on the day they were born,” Rep. Richard Neal, a Democrat who has represented Massachusetts in Congress since 1989, told NOTUS’ Kate Nocera recently.
It’s a portrait of a party elder who has had just about enough with the Democratic fight about age. Neal has his own young, progressive challenger: high school teacher Jeromie Whalen. Whalen is 39, Neal is 77. Whalen says Neal has become the embodiment of Washington and is MIA in the district.
Neal is unbothered, pointing to the millions of dollars he’s directed to Western Massachusetts. “I mean, it’s what every challenger says,” he told Kate. “There’s not a lot of evidence to support it.”
This posture has worked for Neal when it hasn’t for other longtime Democrats. Will it work this cycle? Whalen’s doing the thing — large social media profile, field-heavy campaigning, generally showing off his youthful energy — but he’s on his own. The national groups that have backed progressive upstarts are leaving Neal alone. Whalen, too, is unbothered. “Look, AOC beat Joe Crowley and only raised $300,000, and that was in New York City,” he said.
Which style of hubris will win out? We’ll have to wait until the Sept. 1 primary. There’s zero public polling of the race so far. Whalen says he can pull it off. Neal has never even uttered Whalen’s name publicly once. When Kate asked him about that, he called her “perceptive.”
NOTUS METRO
Sign up for our local newsletter, written by Martin Austermuhle and Zara Norman.
Local news: Six D.C. Police Employees Arrested in Overtime Fraud Case, by Jenny Gathright
Sports desk: Commanders’ Rasul Douglas Is Good at Getting Up to Speed, by Martenzie Johnson
NEW ON NOTUS
Scott Bessent’s quitters: Seven of 16 Treasury Department appointees confirmed by the Senate — or roughly 44% — have either quit or been pushed out of their positions since the start of the second Trump administration. That alone is a dramatic exodus outpacing the turnover of any other recent administration, NOTUS’ Jeff Stein reports. Add to it that Bessent has gone through at least three separate chiefs of staff so far, and it’s time to start wondering what’s going on.
More: White House’s University Antisemitism Probes Had ‘Predetermined’ Outcomes, Whistleblowers Say, by Jackie Llanos
Preservation Group Urges the Supreme Court to Stop Trump’s Ballroom, by Ben T.N. Mause
Court Declines to Overturn EPA Designation of Two ‘Forever Chemicals,’ by Mara Hoplamazian
Trump’s Anti-Fraud Crusade Casts a Long Shadow Over Minnesota Governor’s Race, by Jenna Monnin
NOT US
- Google Just Made It Easier for Campaigns to Send You Fund-Raising Emails, by Shane Goldmacher for The New York Times
- New Housing Law Boosts Prospects for Factory-Built Homes, by Lily Belle Poling for The Wall Street Journal
- What if America Went Completely Dark? By Christopher Cox for The New York Times
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The newsletter was produced by Thomas Burr and Andrew Burton. Photo by John Raoux/AP.
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