Today’s notice: Political movements look to the future under the GOP. Democracy, still around! And, Democrats send us a number they say shows they’re also still around.
Projecting 2025
Donald Trump’s election and the Republican capture of the Senate give conservative wonks a lot more power, particularly when it comes to reshaping the federal government. NOTUS reporters are starting to get a picture of what Republicans actually want to do and what a Trump administration will look like now that the conversations are no longer hypothetical.
White House: The Trump transition team has a simple litmus test for those looking to serve in the next administration: loyalty. Reese Gorman reports that loyalty will be a key factor in staffing decisions — think: people going through old tweets — and that the Trump team is keenly aware of the House and Senate margin as it looks for cabinet secretaries and administration officials. One person who’s already been selected? Susie Wiles. Trump’s co-campaign manager, who will now serve as Trump’s White House chief of staff, should be an indication of the type of loyalty he’s looking for. (Wiles has been in Trump’s inner circle for years and is said to have been crucial for helping Trump knife her old boss, Ron DeSantis. More on that below.)
Regulatory policy: The next Trump administration could be much more successful in achieving the conservative goals of eliminating or diminishing regulations on everything from the financial sector to tailpipe emissions, NOTUS’ Anna Kramer reports. Trump “will easily thwart Democrats’ efforts to safeguard against a radical reshaping of the executive branch,” experts tell her, potentially eliminating whole departments, converting thousands of civil servant positions into political appointments and ending certain lawsuits Trump and Republicans oppose that the Biden administration brought against certain regulations.
Abortion policy: Republicans largely kept anti-abortion advocates juuuust off camera as they campaigned this year. But with the election over, advocates expect a place on center stage. NOTUS’ Oriana González reports that the anti-abortion movement is urging its supporters to adopt a combative stance against abortion rights supporters, mirroring the posture DeSantis used to keep Florida’s abortion rights referendum from achieving the 60% voter support it needed to pass.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro
Ron DeSantis’ Worldview Arrives, Probably Without Ron DeSantis
DeSantis had an undeniably good night on Tuesday. Both Trump and Sen. Rick Scott won by 13 points. Republicans kept supermajorities in both chambers of Florida’s legislature. And two ballot amendments that DeSantis fought against both failed. The culture war issues the governor has spearheaded since 2022 were used this year by Trump to great effect.
But for all the wins, it remains unclear what role Trump’s one-time GOP primary opponent will have in Trump’s orbit, especially with Susie Wiles as chief of staff.
DeSantis and Wiles have a tumultuous history. She helped him win the governor’s office in 2018, but the two had a falling out so bad that DeSantis lobbied Trump to fire her from his 2020 campaign. On Trump’s 2024 campaign, Wiles helped bring down DeSantis’ primary bid.
DeSantis’ treatment of Wiles was “awful,” one longtime Florida Republican operative told NOTUS’ Claire Heddles. Wiles has “withstood the onslaught,” and now has a “small army of loyal friends, colleagues and allies while no one who’s ever worked for Ron will work with him again.”
Front Page
- Joe Biden Urged Unity as He Accepted Trump’s Victory: “You can’t love your country only when you win,” the president said in an address to the nation.
- The #Resistance Says It’s Plotting Its Outrage More Carefully This Time: “We are not expecting, nor are we trying to build, frankly, a repeat of last time,” one organizer said.
- Eric Hovde Blames a Third-Party Candidate for His Loss: Hovde has not conceded to Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Democracy: Still a Thing
At the White House yesterday, the man who has most consistently warned the potential election of Trump would fracture the foundations of American democracy stood before the microphones and said, actually, the election of Trump was just one chapter in that democracy-is-still-unfolding story.
“The American experiment endures, and we’re going to be OK, but we need to stay engaged,” Joe Biden said. “We need to keep going. And above all, we need to keep the faith.”
The “faith” he’s referring to is faith that democracy works, and when votes are cast, they matter. Democrats need to tell this story now after their crushing defeat, because, well, they still plan to run candidates in the next election. There was a great deal of debate among Trump opponents during the election over how existential a case Democrats should make about Trump. Now, everything appears to be shifting toward convincing people that the system works well enough and that they should participate in it.
Melissa Byrne, a progressive organizer who has seen her fair share of fights lost and gone back to organizing again the next day, said it will be hard to convince people to get back in the democracy game if the Dems don’t have “a long memory of who hurt democracy at hard points.” Surrogates for the Kamala Harris camp — like the Cheneys and Alberto Gonzales — won’t convince people that democracy is functioning well enough for them to get involved.
More democracy talk is not the answer, says one influential strategist who played a central role in fighting Trump’s first term. Anonymity was requested because the take is spicy: Ignore and defund a lot of groups in the Democratic universe and refocus everyone away from existentialism.
“We need a lot of creative destruction,” this person said. “So many of the organizations supposedly working on democracy have nothing to show for the millions of dollars that have been thrown at them.”
—Evan McMorris-Santoro
Number You Should Know
12
As a Democratic source flagged to NOTUS’ Alex Roarty, 2024 looks to be the first time in 12 years — since 2012 — that the Democratic Party is tracking to win four Senate seats in states also won by the GOP presidential nominee. It’s a sign of effective campaigning by the DSCC, even if they lost the majority.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- Climate Skeptics Are Hatching Big Plans for a Second Trump Term by Ari Natter at Bloomberg
- A Spike in Demand, and Fees, for Lobbyists With Ties to Trump by Kenneth P. Vogel and Kate Kelly at The New York Times
- Tom Cotton won’t join Trump cabinet, a scoop from Stef W. Kight at Axios
- Democratic women see a country that is ‘not ready for a woman president’ by Elena Schneider at Politico
Be Social
Dave Wasserman left an Easter egg.
In case you were wondering, yes: Lean R. https://t.co/7BSXVR0dh9
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 7, 2024
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