Dec 8, 2025

Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell, coming to you on a busy news day in Washington, where the Supreme Court seems poised to endorse Donald Trump’s view that the president can fire independent government officials—expanding, once again, his suite of executive powers.

Today, my colleague Abby Livingston has fresh insights into Dems’ blue wave scenario planning and the latest twist in the Texas Senate primary. Yes, Republicans are thrilled with the possibility of running against Rep. Jasmine Crockett instead of Colin Allred. She’ll tell you why below the fold. Mentioned in this issue: Alina Habba, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, J.D. Vance, Neera Tanden, Andy Ogles, Dan Conston, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, and many more…

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But first…

Another bailout for farmers: Today, President Trump announced a $12 billion bailout for farmers, which will come in the form of bridge payments he said he’ll underwrite using revenue from tariffs. Unspoken, of course, is the fact that Trump’s own tariffs are largely to blame for the economic headwinds facing American farmers this year. While Trump blamed Biden for the financial challenges, the president’s import taxes have raised the prices of farm equipment as retaliatory tariffs have reduced the demand for U.S. exports, especially soybeans.Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska agreed that high input costs and low commodity prices are a “double whammy” for farmers. “Some of this existed under the Biden administration, but it has been exacerbated by tariffs,” he told me. “Bad policies are forcing us to provide aid to the farmers, and it’s needed if we want to sustain an agriculture industry for the future in America.” This will be the third farm bailout that Trump has provided so far. During his first term, the U.S.D.A. allocated more than $24 billion for farmers through the Market Facilitation Program.
Blue slip blues: Meanwhile, Trump criticized Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, for upholding the chamber’s tradition of not allowing a nominee to pass out of his committee unless both senators from the nominee’s state return a “blue slip” of approval. “The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves that they allow this to go on,” he said today at a round table on farm relief.The outburst was presumably inspired by the resignation of Alina Habba, who had been serving as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Earlier this month, an appeals court ruled that her appointment was illegal absent Senate confirmation. Naturally, New Jersey’s two Democratic senators didn’t offer a blue slip for Habba.
What’s the point of Congress?: Yesterday, I reported that more than a dozen House Republicans could announce their retirements at the end of this Congress—which has been among the most challenging, and least productive, in modern memory. Today, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace published a New York Times opinion piece echoing those frustrations. “What’s the point of Congress?” she asked.Mace also took a sharp dig at Republican leadership, noting that women have held just one role among their ranks: conference chair, tasked with messaging, which Mace called a “token slot.” As the Times reported last week, some Republican congresswomen have become frustrated with Speaker Mike Johnson for allegedly sidelining or otherwise disrespecting female members. (Rep. Elise Stefanik recently warned that Johnson would not have the support to remain speaker if another vote were held today.) Those grievances may be boiling over.

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The M.T.G. interview: Last night, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene used an interview with 60 Minutes to detail her feud with Trump and the reasons for her exit from Congress. “I will be no one’s battered wife,” she said. The former model MAGA soldier cited the Epstein files dustup as one reason for her split with Trump. “I stood for women who were raped when they were 14 years old,” she said. “And the president that I fought for for five years called me a traitor for that.” She also said that she notified J.D. Vance and Trump about “direct” death threats to her son. She said that Vance responded that someone would look into the matter. Trump’s response, she said, was “not kind.”Trump responded on Truth Social, calling 60 Minutes, which is now the domain of Trump pals David and Larry Ellison, “washed up” and “Trump-hating.” The new ownership, he said, is “NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP”—not exactly an endorsement of the Ellisons as they mount a hostile bid to pry Warner Bros. Discovery away from Netflix.

Now, here’s Abby…

Blue Jasmine

After a string of election victories, Democrats are pondering an honest-to-god blue wave in 2026. But progressive euphoria could be the party’s undoing in Texas, where human attack ad Jasmine Crockett just launched her Senate bid, and the moderate Colin Allred bowed out.

Abby Livingston

Last spring, when Trump’s popularity was still near its post-inaugural peak, political operatives scoffed at the chutzpah of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s early list of districts the party considered “in play” for 2026. At the time, the D.C.C.C.’s targets included more than half a dozen districts that were firmly Republican leaning: Rep. Andy Ogles’ seat in deep-red Tennessee; Rep. Cory Mills’s seat in central Florida; even the Kentucky district Rep. Andy Barr won by 26 points last year.

But the electoral calculus shifted in November—after Democrats ran up the score in California, New Jersey, and Virginia—and again last week, when Democrat Aftyn Behn lost by only nine points in Tennessee’s 7th district, which went for Trump by 22 points in 2024. “The results on Tuesday will make a lot of people run for offices they never thought they would,” said Neera Tanden, the longtime Democratic fixture. “It’s not going to get better than this.” Suddenly, that D-Trip hit list didn’t look so outlandish. Sure, Ogles was reelected by 18 points last year. But after the 13-point swing in Behn’s race against Matt Van Epps, some are asking whether Ogles could be more vulnerable than meets the eye. Indeed, as of September 30, Ogles had only $58,000 in cash on hand, less than one-tenth the war chest of likely Democratic rival Chaz Molder.

Of course, plenty of Republicans say the fight for the House and Senate has just begun. “The looming X factor in every tossup race is candidate quality,” said Dan Conston, a Republican consultant. And the fact that so many Democrats are running for competitive seats could increase the odds that unelectable candidates slip through. “Democrats have a minefield of complicated primaries in some of the most important races,” Conston continued. “In how many races do they nominate the farthest-left candidate, who’s poisonous in a competitive district?”

Champagne Problems

Nowhere is that dynamic more evident than in Texas, where controversial Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett just launched her Senate bid. Crockett, a second-term congresswoman from Dallas, has skyrocketed in popularity on the left with made-for-TikTok skirmishes with Republicans—including a memorable altercation in which she referred to Marjorie Taylor Greene as a “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body.” Her rising national profile and fundraising ability are unquestioned. But she’s also ultra-polarizing among moderates: confrontational, unconventional, and unabashedly liberal.

The Texas Senate race has perpetually frustrated Democrats, who have repeatedly allowed themselves to dream of turning the Lone Star State blue, only to spend mindblowing amounts of cash on losing efforts. Still, despite the defeats of multiple well-funded Democratic candidates in recent cycles, the party is freshly optimistic this year that Republican primary voters will pick the scandal-plagued state attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is polling close to incumbent John Cornyn, as their Senate nominee. Meanwhile, the Democratic field became a little less crowded this morning when former Rep. Colin Allred, the ex-NFL player that Dems nominated to challenge Ted Cruz last year, withdrew from the Senate primary to run for the U.S. House in the newly redrawn 33rd district. Nearly all Democrats I spoke to breathed a sigh of relief over his decision, which will make it easier for the party to avoid a primary runoff—even as the Republican primary battle among Paxton, Cornyn, and Wes Hunt will almost certainly go to a runoff, draining millions from party coffers in the process. (Indeed, establishment donors and groups have already spent tens of millions to push Cornyn through the primary.) But Democratic concerns remain. Their primary will now become a face-off between two social media and fundraising powerhouses: State Rep. James Talarico and Crockett, his former Texas House colleague. Talarico, who is aligned with celebrity Democratic consultant Lis Smith, is somewhat in the Beto O’Rourke mold: He appeals to white liberals, and his online following has given him name recognition in rural pockets of the state. I’ve also heard from several sources that he’s campaigning well in the most crucial part of the state, Hispanic South Texas. “He’ll appeal to a lot of people, but all the Dems who like throwing stones and ‘fighting’ Republicans are in love with Jasmine,” one on-the-ground Texas Dem told me. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” The money picture doesn’t make it clearer: Talarico had $5 million in cash on hand in his first quarter, while Crockett brings $4.6 million from her House account. So far, Crockett’s strategy appears to borrow from the Beto playbook of leveraging star power to boost Democratic turnout around the state. She is also likely to consolidate the Black vote behind her campaign now that Allred is out. But most state and national establishment Democrats I’ve spoken with view her as a far riskier candidate than Talarico. The fear is that Crockett’s polarizing style (she did, after all, refer to the wheelchair-bound Gov. Greg Abbott as “Hot Wheels” last spring…) will ignite turnout among otherwise-depressed Republicans as much as among Democrats. “She’ll be very easy to pick on, to say the least,” said a Texas Republican consultant. Texas, however, is about more than wins and losses. Though Democratic Senate candidates have come up short there for the past several cycles, they’ve still succeeded in nominating competitive-enough candidates to drain Republican coffers in an uber-expensive media market when G.O.P. funds could be better spent elsewhere. The question will be how much Republicans are willing to spend to defend the seat next fall. Then again, it’s still Texas, a mostly red state that went for Trump by 14 points last year. As Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something, put it: “Worrying about whether the Texas Senate race will be competitive is a champagne problem for the Democratic Party.”

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