Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell in Washington, where traffic was a nightmare today thanks to the events for Trump’s “Board of Peace,” the Republican Governors Association, and the National Governors Association, where I spent the day watching Democratic and Republican governors rub shoulders as members of both groups face attacks, or just pressure, from the president. I’ll have more for you about that on Sunday.

Until then, I have an update on next week’s State of the Union, Julia Ioffe offers her sharp analysis on how close we are to war with Iran, and Abby takes us deep into Jasmine Crockett–James Talarico primary territory in Texas.

Also mentioned in this issue: Mark Warner, Abigail Spanberger, Katie Britt, Marco Rubio, Alex Padilla, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert, and more…

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Julia Ioffe

The Foreign Desk

Trump’s Iran strike timeline: As the U.S. military gathers its forces in the Middle East, President Trump said today that he will decide within 10 days whether he will strike Iran. The last time he started that countdown clock, using his more-standard two-week decision time frame, he struck Iranian nuclear sites within days.

For the past couple months, of course, the conventional wisdom in Washington has been that it’s only a matter of when, not if, Trump will strike the Islamic Republic again. In part, that’s because Trump has taken the view that Iran must give up its entire nuclear weapons program (“It’s very simple,” he said), whereas the regime is understandably resistant to relinquish one of the few things that could guarantee its survival (even as it insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only). But it’s also because of what Trump has learned from personal experience during his trigger-happy first year back in the White House: Military strikes don’t have to result in full-on war—at least they haven’t so far, not in Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen, or, well, Iran. Trump has ordered so many strikes over the last year—more than in Biden’s entire term—that they are hardly front-page news anymore.

In fact, talk around town is that Trump would have struck Iran sooner—when the protests against the regime were still going strong in December and January—if he’d had the necessary equipment in the region. At the time, though, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier was parked off the coast of Venezuela for a different interventionist adventure. “One of the main reasons that he didn’t have the full options at his disposal that an American president should have is because the aircraft carrier that would normally be in the eastern Mediterranean was part of the 20 percent of the American fleet that’s off the coast of Venezuela, blockading the oil,” Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee, said last weekend in Munich.

Warner added that America’s European allies that have relationships with Tehran were unavailable to ratchet up the pressure on Iran last month because they were busy fending off Trump’s threats to occupy Greenland. “When the president thinks he can do Venezuela this week, and Greenland that week, and Iran the next,” Warner went on, “there is such an interconnectedness there, that I think the military and the intelligence community all realize that he frankly, limits a bit of America’s options.”

Capitol Markets

Democrats’ State of the Union: Democrats are trying to be more organized for next week’s State of the Union address than they were last year, when members were ridiculed for holding up silly signs (“Musk Steals,” “False,” “This is not normal,” etcetera). Several progressive members, for instance, are holding a counter-rally on the National Mall that they’re calling the People’s State of the Union, hosted by activist group MoveOn Action and livestreamed by the podcasters MeidasTouch. Others are simply skipping the speech altogether.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer announced that newish Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger will deliver the Democratic response. This is a tricky assignment (ask Katie Britt), but it’s one that Spanberger, who’s become a reliable Trump foil, can probably pull off. Running as a moderate in Virginia last November, she gained ground compared to Kamala Harris in nearly every county, even the rural ones. Expect her S.O.T.U. rebuttal to focus on affordability.

California Sen. Alex Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, will deliver the response in Spanish, and is expected to target the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. “We refuse to accept a federal government that weaponizes enforcement agencies against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike,” Padilla said in a statement, calling out “rogue federal agencies.”

Now let’s head to Texas…

Jasmine Crockett Counter Theories

For a moment, the Texas Senate primary seemed straightforward for Democrats. But while James Talarico has capitalized on his Colbert media moment and a commanding financial lead, Crockett’s strong polling and social media recognition will keep the party guessing until the end.

Abby Livingston

By every conventional standard, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is running an underwhelming Senate primary campaign. Her Democratic rival, State Rep. James Talarico, has outraised her by a two-to-one margin; she’s getting swamped on television by Talarico ads; and she reportedly did not have a formal campaign manager as late as this month. And that was before Stephen Colbert publicly accused his CBS bosses of yanking his interview with Talarico, creating a Streisand effect that funneled national attention and another $2.5 million to his campaign. (The interview currently has more than 7 million views on YouTube.) In the aftermath, the pro-Talarico social media contingent was all but ready to stick a fork in Crockett’s Senate ambitions.

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But Texans on the ground aren’t so sure. Talarico’s headline advantages notwithstanding, there’s enough credible private and public polling to suggest that Crockett could overcome them and win the primary on March 3. One recent poll showed Crockett up by eight points (with a four-point margin of error). “The fundamentals of the race have not corresponded or correlated with the public polling,” said a Texas Democrat. “Even squinting at them, I can’t really draw a picture of what’s happening in the race.”

Just prior to Crockett’s last-minute campaign launch in December, it looked like the Democrats might be facing a three-way primary and possible runoff. But then Colin Allred, the former congressman and NFL linebacker who’d jumped into the race over the summer, despite losing to Ted Cruz by more than eight points in 2024, dropped out. Since then, the Crockett–Talarico contest has fascinated the national political class, not only because it’s gotten so darn messy, but also because maybe this time Texas really could be in play. (Democratic hopes spring eternal.) The drama has even eclipsed what’s happening on the Republican side, where incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is facing two primary challengers—and the very real possibility of losing to one of them: scandal-plagued state A.G. Ken Paxton.

For his part, Talarico boasts formidable campaign strengths. Having burst into the national consciousness with a Joe Rogan interview last summer, the young seminarian has managed to out-fundraise even Cornyn, a former N.R.S.C. chairman, pulling in $13 million over the course of the race, as reported earlier this month. (He recently reported a $1.5 million cash-on-hand advantage over Crockett.) The campaign and its allied groups have deployed these resources in a massive TV buy, booking $15.3 million in ads, according to AdImpact. Team Crockett has booked only $2.8 million. “She’s not spending to the level she would need to win,” said an unaligned Democratic strategist who handles TV buys. “I’m not saying she can’t win, but I’m saying the conventional wisdom is you cannot be this silent on the airwaves.”

Meanwhile, the Colbert/CBS drama of the past week has boosted Talarico in the earned-media space—where Crockett has traditionally dominated—just as early voting began. “Nobody knows who James Talarico is, but everyone knows who Jasmine Crockett is,” said a Fort Worth Democrat who supports Talarico. “Now that he was on Colbert, people know who James Talarico is.”

The Crockett Path to Victory

Still, there are serious operatives and officeholders in both parties who believe Crockett is on track to win the nomination. The polling has been all over the place, with each candidate in the lead depending on where you turn. That’s partly because there’s no recent historical precedent for a competitive Texas Democratic primary that could help predict turnout. Yes, there are signs that the unpredictable Hispanic voting bloc and suburban white women are migrating back to Democrats. But even the smartest strategists concede that they’re making educated guesses on polling samples, and nobody really knows who will show up to vote on March 3.

Crockett’s hypothetical path to victory would depend on consolidating the Black vote behind her in the big cities and East Texas, combined with other support derived from the high name recognition she’s built up over the years as one of the most bombastically engaged House Democrats on social media. (Lest we forget her 2024 “bleach blonde bad built butch body” comment about Marjorie Taylor Greene, Crockett sells merch with the quote.) The entire reason Talarico is spending all this money, after all, is to introduce himself to Texas Democratic primary voters—something that public polling suggests Crockett has already accomplished. Crockett’s own internal poll from the outset of her launch showed she had 82 percent name ID among Democratic voters, which tracks with internal polling I’m hearing about from other camps.

But can awareness, social media stardom, and a strong Black vote help Crockett overcome the millions of dollars being spent against her on television, digital advertising, and direct mail? The Crockett camp did not comment for this story, but for many outside operatives closely watching this race, Crockett’s campaign is a test of whether the traditional fundamentals of Democratic campaigns still hold in a post-Trump, post-television, social media–inflected era. If she does pull off a victory, it would be a historic development indeed.

Influencers Incoming

Another potential harbinger of Democratic politics to come is the ferocity of online infighting—not so much between Crockett and Talarico, themselves, but among their supporters. State-based and national influencers are building followings in part around their superfandom of candidates, almost like political analogs to Swifties and K-pop stans. Unverified gossip and unsubstantiated personal attacks that have nothing to do with policy show up daily on Threads, TikTok, and X. “I wish this was treated with a little more seriousness,” said a native Texas Dem watching the race from Washington.

But at the heart of the infighting is an issue that members of the Democratic Party take extremely seriously: race. In one of the campaign’s more consequential flare-ups, a Dallas TikToker claimed earlier this month that Talarico had referred to Allred as a “mediocre Black man.” Talarico said in a statement that his remarks had been mischaracterized and that he was merely referring to Allred’s “method of campaigning” as mediocre, but Allred quickly threw his endorsement behind Crockett. Meanwhile, Talarico’s super PAC (which can’t coordinate with him) dinged Crockett with an ad arguing that she’s not electable in a general election, which Crockett called “straight-up racist.”

These jabs are child’s play compared to what the Republicans will throw at the eventual nominee. (Talarico has referred to God as “nonbinary”; Crockett’s greatest hits reel includes calling Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, “Governor Hot Wheels,” though she has insisted it wasn’t a reference to his disability.) But given that Crockett and Talarico served in the state government together, and that there will be five months to heal before the general election really kicks off, there’s some confidence that whichever candidate wins on March 3 will be capable of uniting Texas Democrats.

Influencers, though, may not be so inclined to reconcile, given the incentives for conflict online. “What we are seeing in the Texas primary, with the fight between the influencers and not the just candidates, is a precursor to the 2028 election,” said Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something. “The attention is going to be on influencers, who you cannot control and should not control, but who have a huge megaphone. People should be preparing themselves for how fucking terrible it will be.”

Indeed, this campaign is already testing the patience of national Democrats. “I’m so happy it’s the first primary, because I don’t know how much longer I can take the discourse of the Texas Senate race,” said a D.C. Democratic strategist. Added a national Democratic consultant: “Everybody’s ready for Texas to be over.” Except, of course, it’s not.

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