Sep 8, 2025

Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell.

This week is already off to an explosive start: The Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a big win today, reversing a lower court’s decision that had halted ICE raids in California. The majority justices didn’t offer an explanation, which isn’t required when they decide a case on the emergency docket, but the administration will likely interpret the ruling as a green light to deploy ICE to other cities. Shortly after the decision, Trump launched “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ICE operation in Chicago.

Meanwhile, the Court has yet to respond to the administration’s emergency request, filed today, to freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid that had been appropriated by Congress. Trump’s continued determination to stress test Article I of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power of the purse, could reach a boiling point in the coming weeks as government funding expires on September 30.

Today, my partner Abby Livingston has an inside look at the Mamdani agita wracking the Democratic National Committee, where party members and operatives are split along generational lines over whether the democratic socialist mayoral candidate is the next Obama, the next A.O.C., or just 2026 electoral poison.

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Epstein’s return: Trump’s success at shutting down most of the chatter on the right about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is about to be tested now that the late sex trafficker’s estate has turned his infamous 50th “birthday book” over to the House Oversight Committee in response to a subpoena. Committee Democrats wasted no time today in releasing a vulgar, hand-drawn birthday card bearing what appears to be the president’s signature. The image has already been splashed across the home page of The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” Trump told the Journal back in July. “It’s not my language.” This afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down, posting on X, “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. … This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”

The post–Labor Day resurgence of the Epstein discourse received another boost today with The New York Times’s detailed report arguing that JPMorgan Chase coddled their deeply compromised rainmaking client. Will Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna now be able to persuade two additional Republicans to sign their discharge petition, giving them the needed 218 signatures to force a House vote on Epstein transparency?
Republicans propose bundling nominees: Senate Majority Leader John Thune has started the process to change the Senate rules to more easily move nominees through the upper chamber. The change would allow groupings of nominations to move together in a block, instead of individually. This is a response to how Democrats, furious at the president for offering ostensibly unqualified nominees, have ground the process to a halt and dragged it out interminably.

Rule changes are a big deal in an institution that reveres its traditions. But Republicans are moving with caution in this case, pursuing the least controversial option. After all, senators from both parties are frustrated by the 1,200 or so nominees who need to be confirmed, and the Senate floor time it eats up. In fact, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and independent Sen. Angus King proposed a similar measure in 2023, although they proposed moving it through the legislative process. In any case, Democrats are not happy about the change. More “lousy, unqualified” nominees will get confirmed, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put it last week.

I’m told that Thune has given assurances to his party that a nominee will be dropped from the block if even a single Republican doesn’t like them. (The new rule would not apply to judges or cabinet officials.) A Senate leadership aide says that the conference is ready to move. But, there are still outstanding issues to work out, I’m told, and it’s unclear whether all the nominees will have to come through the same committee or not. Republicans are also considering collapsing the two-hour limit currently allowed to debate a nominee, although that would be considered a greater escalation. Thune’s process will take about a week, potentially stretching into next week.

Now on to the main event…

Throw Mamdani From the Train

Pressure is mounting on Democratic leaders to suck it up and endorse aspirant Mamdani, even as the consultant class frets that he’ll hurt their candidates in the midterms. Of course, Republicans are gearing up to make the mayoral candidate the face of ’26 either way.

Abby Livingston

Last week, in between posts about Epstein and R.F.K., the Democratic National Committee did something that wouldn’t be all that unusual in normal times: It approvingly tweeted out a 32-second clip of the party’s nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani. The audio itself was exceedingly anodyne, featuring Mamdani, wearing his trademark navy suit, telling I’ve Had It podcast hosts Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, “We welcome anyone to join this movement.” But on X, the response was explosive. Soon after, Fox News blasted out a news story with the gleeful headline, “D.N.C. again embraces Mamdani despite communist rhetoric, refusal to denounce globalize the intifada.”

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Formally, the Democratic Party is behind Mamdani: D.N.C. chair Ken Martin speaks glowingly of his political skills and declared that Democrats need to be a “big tent party” with room for Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, regardless of his unsparing views on Israel or the economic wisdom of government-run grocery stores. Yes, there’s been some division within the group: At the most recent D.N.C. meeting, there was clear enthusiasm for Mamdani among younger members, according to a person familiar with the conversations, even as his socialist branding gave older establishment types pause. But the D.N.C., unlike other party groups, is supposed to support Democratic nominees. Indeed, I’m told it would be more noteworthy if the party were not backing Mamdani, who convincingly won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June.

Still, it’s telling that some of the party’s biggest power brokers—including House and Senate leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, both New Yorkers—have yet to publicly support Mamdani. Behind the scenes, pressure has been mounting on both men, along with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, to endorse him. “We have a Democratic nominee,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said last week. “Are we a party that rallies behind our nominee or not?” The debate took on more urgency last Wednesday when The New York Times reported that Trump advisors had allegedly dangled an administration job to Mayor Eric Adams if he drops out of the race and clears the field for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the primary earlier this year. (Both Adams and Cuomo have denied having strategic conversations with the White House.)

Of course, there are valid electoral reasons for New York’s senior senator, governor, and the House Democratic leader to worry about embracing Mamdani, a strong critic of Israel, which he has characterized as an apartheid state perpetrating a genocide. While Democratic voters are increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause—according to Gallup, only 8 percent of Democrats support Israel’s military action in Gaza—the party’s pro-Israel faction continues to be a dominant force among many members, operatives, and donors. Party leadership, in particular, is sensitive to the growing rift within their own base. Others just want to avoid a political third rail.

That might be impossible: Mamdani is likely to win the mayoralty regardless of whether Schumer, Jeffries, or Hochul endorse him—and Republicans will be more than happy to make him the face of the party. “You’re going to get tied to the guy one way or another,” New York State Democratic consultant Morgan Hook told me. “Elise Stefanik is already doing it to Kathy Hochul all over the state.” That same tactic could threaten Democratic prospects elsewhere in the 2026 midterms, when would-be Mayor Mamdani will be nearing one year in office. In particular, there are several competitive House seats in the New York media market, including on Long Island and in Westchester County, where the Mamdani experiment will be front and center.

The loudest anti-Mamdani contingent is from Long Island, where Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen have been as critical of him as any Republican. (In recent days, Suozzi went so far as to call on Mamdani and other democratic socialists to leave the party.) Nationally, high-level moderates have told me they are resigned to Mamdani’s rise and the potential baggage that he brings, but relieved that he could share a jubilant election-night split screen with the more centrist Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively. (Spanberger, of course, led the charge to eliminate “defund the police” from the party’s lexicon.)

The Nightmare Scenario

The nightmare scenario, outlined for me by several Democratic consultants, is a world in which everyone in the New York metropolitan area is exposed to endless screaming Post headlines if Mamdani’s policies lead to a rise in crime. New York Democrats still vividly remember the 2022 election, in which Republican gubernatorial nominee Lee Zeldin successfully prosecuted New York City crime against area Democrats and kept his margin with Hochul to an uncomfortably close six points.

But the success of this Republican playbook will depend in part on how Mamdani actually governs if elected, and if he’s “just as zany as we think,” as one Republican consultant put it. “You’re under the impression he’s going to do everything he says he’s going to do, and that could be a disaster,” this person continued. “What if crime keeps on going down? The answer is, I don’t know.”

Mamdani, after all, isn’t just a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s also a generationally talented politician with a laser focus on pocketbook issues, exceptional message discipline, and a demonstrated openness to changing his mind. Since winning the mayoral primary, his campaign has reached out to dozens of the city’s top business and finance leaders with the goal of winning allies on Wall Street. Centrists are already allowing themselves to hope that Mamdani might govern more like Bernie Sanders or Michelle Wu, the technocratic Boston mayor, than the second coming of Saul Alinsky.

Meanwhile, Democrats across the political spectrum are urging their candidates to learn from his messaging on affordability. Republican operatives, too, might need to adjust their expectations if they’re assuming that Mamdani can occupy the same midterm bogeyman role as Nancy Pelosi played in 2010. As the G.O.P. consultant acknowledged, “The guilt-by-association card only works so many times.”

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