Good evening. Several major political story lines are coming to a head as the end of the year approaches, and tonight, I’ll guide you through the big ones. We’ll also tell you what to watch for in an unusually high-profile House race in Tennessee tomorrow. Lastly, a colleague of mine will explain why he went to a rural Georgia zoo for a politics story. Let’s jump in.
4 story lines to watch at year’s end
OK. You’re back to work. The tryptophan has worn off. And the political world — unlike you, perhaps, or me — did nothing to unplug for the holiday. It was just over a week ago that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Trump fan-turned-frenemy-turned-outright-foe, announced her resignation from Congress, laying bare the rifts in her party. President Trump has ordered a new immigration crackdown after the deadly attack on National Guard troops in Washington last week. The economy is creaking under the weight of persistent inflation and an uncertain labor market. It’s a lot, and it’s not going to let up. So, dear readers, I spent the morning talking with my colleagues around the newsroom about the major themes they’ll be following as we speed toward the end of the year. The economy — and the affordability warsThe message from voters last month, when Democrats ran the table in a series of off-year elections, was clear: People feel economically squeezed, and they’re blaming the party in power. Trump insisted that he planned to focus on the issue. That hasn’t exactly happened, and the rest of the year looks likely to be dominated both by the realities of the uncertain economy, and by Democrats’ efforts to mine it for political gold. They are hoping to flip the script on Trump and Republicans, who pinned the nation’s economic malaise on President Biden last year. The economy itself has sent mixed signals. Consumer spending over Black Friday weekend was through the roof. Labor data — delayed by the government shutdown — shows that hiring was up in September, but so was the unemployment rate. And, perhaps most worryingly for Trump, prices remain stubbornly high, in part because of his tariffs. Democrats are calling it an affordability crisis, and they’ll be talking about it tirelessly for the rest of the year and in the run-up to the midterms. The question is whether they have ideas to fix it — or just complaints. Republican upheaval on Capitol Hill and beyondThis time last year, Republicans seemed to have it all: a popular president-elect and guaranteed majorities in the House and the Senate. Actually governing, though, has been harder, and some of the party’s tensions are bursting into view. With their poll numbers tanking and worries escalating about how they will fare in the midterms, my colleague Carl Hulse explained, “Congressional Republicans are beginning to watch out more for themselves, and it is creating intraparty turmoil.” They are divided over what to do about the rising health insurance premiums that Democrats successfully forced into the spotlight during the government shutdown — an issue the Senate is supposed to vote on by the middle of the month, according to the deal that reopened the government. They feel uneasy, Carl said, about Trump’s focus on foreign affairs at a moment when costs loom so large for voters. And some of them are starting to tell Trump no on issues like tariffs, the filibuster and the deadly boat attacks in the Caribbean. “The distance with the president,” Carl said, “could increase next year as primaries pass.” All of this comes amid signs of broader fissures in Trump’s MAGA coalition, which has been rived by his turn away from populism, and as Republicans begin to reckon more directly with what their party will stand for in a post-Trump era. A new conflict overseas
Trump rose to power, in part, by railing against Republican hawks who he blamed for entangling Americans in decades of war. But his administration’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean — and his pressure on the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro — are becoming a defining image of his second term. Some Republicans in particular have expressed unease after a Washington Post report that said two survivors of a boat attack ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were killed in a follow-up strike. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have suggested the act could have been a war crime. Trump has justified the legally dubious attacks by saying they target drug cartels, which he describes as one of the greatest threats to the country. But he has also said he plans to grant a pardon to a former president of Honduras who prosecutors said had allowed bricks of cocaine to flow into the United States. Trump’s attention overseas won’t stop there. He has dispatched his Middle East envoy to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin as the Trump administration makes an end-of-year push to end the war in Ukraine — an accomplishment that would burnish the president’s ongoing campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize. Testing Trump’s powerThe Supreme Court has a busy month, hearing big cases involving immigration, the death penalty and campaign spending, among other things. But next Monday, the justices will hear one case in particular that will pose a major test of the president’s power, and the court’s willingness to limit it, according to Ann Marimow, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. It concerns the president’s authority to fire independent regulators, for any reason, despite laws meant to protect them from politics. “The court is being asked to overturn a 90-year-old precedent,” Ann explained, and a decision in the president’s favor could flatten another longstanding guardrail on executive power. There are other decisions to watch from the court, too, including whether the Trump administration can deploy National Guard troops to Chicago over the objections of state and local leaders. Yet another decision will tell us whether the court will allow a key aspect of Trump’s central midterm strategy to move ahead. “As soon as this week, the court could decide whether Texas can use its new Republican-friendly congressional voting map ahead of the midterm elections,” Ann said. And as several of my colleagues recently reported, time is running out on the redistricting fight:
Got a tip? WHAT WE’RE WATCHING All eyes on Tennessee
Tomorrow, the political world will turn its attention toward a surprisingly competitive special House election in Tennessee that might hold some hints about the midterms. I asked Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent who recently traveled to the district, for a quick cheat sheet on the race between Matt Van Epps, a Republican, and Aftyn Behn, a Democrat. Shane, Trump won this district in 2024 by more than 22 percentage points. Is the outcome really in doubt? Why is this race garnering so much national attention? The short answer is that the outcome shouldn’t be in doubt. But Republicans have consistently performed very poorly in special elections this year. So even a seat that is very Republican is not seen as a slam dunk for Republicans. The fact that this is the first race that President Trump’s super PAC has spent money on this year, and that Speaker Mike Johnson traveled to Tennessee on Monday, tells you how important it has become. It’s partly about avoiding an even narrower House Republican majority. But it is also about the political narrative. Trump and Republicans don’t want Democrats to be emboldened headed into 2026. What will you be looking for in tomorrow night’s results? The margin. In my conversations, Republicans have been more nervous than Democrats have been confident of an actual victory. But while an outright win would be groundbreaking for Democrats, the final margin may be more important in terms of revealing just how much support for Republicans has slipped since Trump’s 2024 victory. This is a seat that was gerrymandered for a Republican, so for the Democrats to have any chance, turnout in and around liberal Nashville needs to be big. One wild card is the weather: It is forecast to be unusually cold on Tuesday (for the area, at least). NUMBER OF THE DAY
$800For decades, consumer goods at or below this amount were exempted from customs duties when they entered the U.S., through a loophole on cheap imports. Last year, over one billion packages entered the country this way. But Trump closed that loophole this summer, saying it had given foreign companies an unfair advantage against American businesses and made it easier to smuggle fentanyl into the country. Now consumers are getting hit with tariffs on things like clothing, yarn and handmade items from Etsy. My colleague Peter Eavis reported on how shoppers are reacting.
ONE LAST THING What my colleague learned at the zooOne of the most unexpected Democratic upsets of last month’s elections came in Georgia, and my colleague David Chen, who covers state politics and policymaking, found an interesting force behind those victories: fierce local opposition to data centers. He sent us this postcard from his reporting. I never thought that I would end up at a zoo in rural Georgia to get a better handle on why two Democratic challengers posted landslide upset victories for the Georgia Public Service Commission. The Republican incumbents lost significant ground in several Trump-friendly areas, including Troup County on the Alabama border. A Facebook group had recently formed to oppose a proposed data center, and some residents, self-described Republicans, had written that they had voted Democratic as a protest. I visited several towns to learn more. One place abutting the 437-acre parcel being eyed for a data center is the Georgia Untamed Zoo in Hogansville, whose cackling lemurs and other animals are popular with children on school field trips. And sure enough, the Payton family, the cattle ranchers who run the zoo, told me that they were among the many Republicans who had crossed party lines for the first time because of the data center. They also told me they’d be attending a city council meeting later that night. So I went as well, and talked to other voters who said the data center was their biggest concern. It was a reminder that for all the talk about politics being nationalized these days, a very local issue can sometimes make all the difference in a statewide race. |
