Americana

1. Post-Kirk tremors on the Hill
2. Missouri’s new map
3. Virginia’s special election
4. The Abundance movement
5. Talarico’s Senate run

Also: A crypto case worth watching.

After Charlie Kirk was killed, as his friends mourned a loving husband and adoring father, the argument over his legacy began.

Liberals — and some conservatives — remembered a debater who believed in reason, persuasion, and electoral politics. “Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way,” wrote Ezra Klein. “He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.”

That column angered leftists, but it wasn’t for them. It was for liberals, who decried what campus political debate had become; the “safe spaces,” the language tangled by critical theory, the protesters who made right-wing politicians look good.

They’d seen how social media censorship of COVID skeptics and 2020 election deniers backfired, even if they’d supported it at the time. Would Donald Trump have won again without Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., spurned by his own liberal family, walking across a Kirk-built stage to endorse him?

“Every time people try to shout us down, tear down our posters, or knock over our display tables, the undecided are reminded which side is trying to foster civilization and which side keeps veering into barbarism,” Kirk wrote in 2020.

That was one Kirk — the one who could and did out-debate the left. He wanted to pull down its temples. Kirk supported the Trump administration’s claw-back of university funding as a way to “blow up some of the fattened-up far-left institutions.” He was thrilled when the president de-funded national public media: “The rebalancing of the American narrative landscape that this would do is remarkable.”

That legacy is being honored, right away.

Liberals were never going to endorse that project, though Kirk believed that the left could find other funding sources to compete with the right more fairly. Liberals also saw danger in the use of government power and resources to punish left-wing academics and organizations — even if they saw their work as harmful to their ideas, and to the Democratic Party.

That’s well under way. In his taped Oval Office address on Kirk’s killing, the president said that his administration would “would find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

The shooter had not been identified, but Trump was talking about the left. Stephen Miller was more direct in a Thursday X post, promising to defeat “this wicked ideology,” and to finish “the indispensable work to which Charlie bravely devoted his life.” Later in the day, Texas Rep. Chip Roy and more than two dozen colleagues asked House Speaker Mike Johnson for a special committee to probe the left.

“We must take every step to follow the money and uncover the force behind the NGOs, donors, media, public officials, and all entities driving this coordinated attack,” Roy wrote. “We must follow the money to identify the perpetrators of the coordinated anti-American assaults being carried out against us and take all steps under the law necessary to stop them.”

What might that mean? Left-liberal institutions that loudly opposed the first Trump administration were already quieter in this one, and worried about exposure and investigations. Left-wing donor trusts like Arabella Advisors and the Tides Foundation may get scrutiny from federal investigators, with bottomless resources. Academics saying cruel things about Kirk’s death are being fired; non-citizens applying for visas are told not to bother if they’re “rationalizing or making light” of it. Violent left-wing organizations were already at war with the government; the president has made that a larger priority.

Kirk’s openness to debate, and fearlessness about saying things that shocked liberals, will be part of his legacy. A crackdown on the left and far-left may be part of it, too.

Plenty of this was happening before Wednesday, and the movement that Kirk was part of was unafraid of doing it. In Unhumans, his 2024 guide to preventing left-wing victory in America, Jack Posobiec wrote that “democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” and it was “time to stop playing by rules they won’t.”

That didn’t mean violence. It meant organizing communities of right-thinking people, and using the tools of government to dismantle left-wing power. Kirk’s successors won’t just honor his commitment to debate. They’ll shrink the reach and power of the ideas he debated against.

Washington after the Charlie Kirk killing

Capitol Hill reacted with fear and anger to the killing of Charlie Kirk, fretting about their own security and trading blame for the country’s bitter political mood.

“People are scared to death in this building,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., telling Semafor that he had round-the-clock protection ever since a constituent tried to kill him last year. “Not many of them will say it publicly, but they’re running to [House Speaker Mike Johnson] talking about security.”

Some Republicans pointed the finger at the media, literally. Outside the capitol, Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., blamed reporters for Kirk’s death; on social media, he said he “would advise my democrat (sic) colleagues to study history and see how the last civil war they started turned out.” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. cited reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which was later retracted, to say that the “shooter was tr*nny or pro-tr*nny.”

Democrats were already fretting about safety, and some believed that the country and press had moved on too quickly from the killing of a former state House speaker in Minnesota this summer — which the president largely ignored. “There were additional resources added after Jan. 6 and I believe that, frankly, member security has not had a change,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “So it’s really much deeper: It’s, ‘How do we think about security in a digital era, in a stochastic-threat environment?’”

Missouri GOP deletes a Democratic district

Missouri’s GOP-led legislature began to re-draw the state’s congressional maps this week, eliminating a Kansas City-based district that’s elected a Democrat to Congress since the 1940s. At the same time, Republicans advanced a ballot initiative that would require any voter-passed amendment to pass in every congressional district — a reform that would have made some progressive victories, like a minimum wage hike, politically impossible.

“The map and the Initiative Petition reform measures will strike a huge blow to progressives and their efforts to turn Missouri into California,” Senate president pro tem Cindy O’Laughlin wrote on Facebook. “There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the opposition but we will ignore the theatrics and do our job.”

Kansas City Rep. Emanuel Cleaver has said he’ll run for re-election anyway, in district lines that have not voted for a Democrat since 2016, when voters narrowly supported Jason Kander’s US Senate bid.

Democrats win a Virginia landslide

Democrat James Walkinshaw surprised no one by easily winning the special election to replace his former boss, Rep. Gerry Connolly, four months after his death from cancer — and narrowing the GOP’s already thin majority in the House.

Walkinshaw, a Fairfax County supervisor, was always the favorite to win the seat. Connolly held it by 34 points to win his final term last year, and Kamala Harris carried it by the same margin. National Republicans didn’t invest in Stewart Whitson, a veteran of the FBI and US Army.

Like gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears, he ran as a would-be ally of the Trump administration, and sided with it in a funding fight with local school boards — Fairfax included — that were maintaining inclusive gender policies in women’s spaces. Walkinshaw kept the campaign focused on DOGE and “defending our democracy,” hitting the GOP for federal job cuts that had disproportionately affected the DC suburbs.

The result was a 50-point Democratic landslide. Walkinshaw built an insurmountable lead in mail-in voting, and election day turnout was light. Whitson won just 36,681 votes, 27% of the GOP total last year; Walkinshaw hit 40% of last year’s vote for Connolly.

After declaring victory, Walkinshaw sent a letter to House Republicans, demanding to be seated right away. They put up no resistance, giving Democrats 213 seats in the House, and putting the bipartisan Epstein files discharge petition one vote away from the majority it needs to reach the floor.

This week, a special episode featuring Josh Spanier, VP of marketing at Google, who you might recognize from our branded segments. In this sponsored episode, presented by Think with Google, Ben asks Josh about how Google thinks about advertising, how he’s navigated the technological changes in that space, and if AI is going to homogenize all of the ads we see. Josh also answers some listener questions about how advertisers work with creators and what the biggest blind spots in marketing are today.

Democrats wrestle with “abundance”

What is “abundance?” At the second annual Abundance conference in DC, there were many answers. None of them had much political oomph.

“I never use the word ‘abundance’ in the South Bronx,” said New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres.

“I don’t use the word ‘abundance,’ either,” said Republican Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy.

Democrats outnumbered Republicans at the two-day conference, which was held behind some extra security this year. The location was not shared with anyone who wasn’t attending in person. Panels at the host hotel were down an escalator that nobody could ride without a badge, once they’d checked in.

All of this prevented the sort of ugliness that marred the first conference, when protesters from Climate Defiance rushed the stage where Matthew Yglesias was speaking, denouncing his support for fracking. “Abundance” was a bigger deal now, with its name slapped on a runaway New York Times bestseller. The problem: Voters wanted politicians who would cut costs and build housing, but they did not associate that with “abundance.”

A Texas Democrat runs on the Gospel

Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who announced a US Senate bid this week, had carved out a unique role in his battered party.

He flipped a suburban district that was trending away from Republicans, then walked its length to win re-election, then became one of the go-to campaigners against the GOP’s post-2020 voting law. When Republicans passed new restrictions on transgender access to healthcare, women’s sports, and women’s spaces, Talarico cited scripture in debates against them.

Talarico’s willingness to talk to new audiences, ones that didn’t like most Democrats, got him a friendly interview with Joe Rogan and encouragement to seek higher office. In an interview, Talarico said that he saw an opening for an anti-Trump politics rooted in kindness and mutual respect. He demonstrated what he meant on Wednesday night, mourning the killing of Charlie Kirk by scaling down a rally in favor of a speech, where he called the MAGA organizer “our brother, a human being endowed with infinite worth.”

In an interview before the launch, Talarico explained some of his answers from the past, and shared the Bible verse he was thinking most about: Matthew 5:5.

“The meek shall inherit the earth,” he said. “It’s part of the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and I think it’s relevant here. I don’t see politics as primarily left versus right. I see it as top versus bottom, and I think the vast majority of us have a lot more in common than the people at the top want us to think. Ultimately, if we can come together, I do think that we can take on these mega donors, and all their money.”

Polls

A wave of post-Labor Day polling in New York has converged on the same picture: A big Mamdani advantage, a divided anti-Mamdani vote, and Andrew Cuomo being unable to convert that vote into a win. If Sliwa and Adams are excluded from the ballot — neither candidate has moved in that direction — Mamdani gains 2 points and Cuomo gains 20 points. White voters move en masse to Cuomo, black voters shift toward him by a smaller margin, and the rest of the non-white electorate sticks with Mamdani. Cuomo leads Mamdani on the question of who would be a more “effective mayor,” but barely — 57% say that of Cuomo and 53% say it of Mamdani. Cuomo trails by a much bigger margin on character and likeability, but this is why he keeps trying to turn the discourse back to Mamdani’s leadership and resume, the only topic where he gets some help from Adams.

Republicans have started to consolidate their vote in Virginia’s elections. Every member of their statewide ticket has improved his or her position since early summer. Outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin has credited a “surging” Earle-Sears campaign, which has pounded Democrats on gender issues in schools. The evidence here is that she, Reid, and Miyares have united Republicans, each getting around 86% of the GOP vote, up from 80% in July. Democrats lead with independents, who are mostly undecided. One sub-group to watch: Black voters, just 6% of whom support the GOP candidates. That’s much worse than Youngkin did four years ago, and Republicans have hoped that Earle-Sears, the first black female gubernatorial nominee for either party, can gain ground there, as Spanberger did not get overwhelming black turnout in her three House races.

For the better part of a decade, since Hillary Clinton lost the state by single digits, Democrats convinced themselves that Texas was winnable in the right year. Their collapse in November 2024 cured them of that optimism. Poll numbers like these now look too familiar: Voters are cool on individual Republicans and their leadership, but the intense Democrats who can’t wait to vote against them are outnumbered by conservatives who’ll turn up no matter how they feel. Abbott was similarly unpopular when Beto O’Rourke launched his 2022 gubernatorial bid, but he won easily. Non-partisan voters don’t have strong opinions about the gerrymander.

Ads

• Spanberger for Governor, “The Pain.” Virginia Democrats have spent the year running on just a few issues: Costs, DOGE-driven job loss, and abortion rights. Republicans pivot to their stronger topics — crime and gender — and Democrats wait out those news cycles to return to the classics. Abigail Spanberger’s first post-Labor Day ads pin weak economic data on the GOP, and go after Winsome Earle-Sears for a fairly rote endorsement of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (“It does so many great things.“) Democrats think this is working, un-flashy as it is, evidenced by Republicans trying to re-brand the bill as a “working families tax cut.”
• John Reid for Virginia, “Too Radical.” The GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia survived attempts to push him off the ticket, and rebooted his campaign as a complete outsider crusade — a fed-up pundit against the radical left. That’s the theme of his first ad, which goes after Democratic nominee Ghazala Hashmi for her Senate votes on criminal justice reform (she “lowered the penalties for criminals”) and for donations from “crazy far-left groups” (unnamed in the ad).
• House Freedom Action, “Jody Barrett Leads the Fight.” There’s just one special election this year in a strongly Republican House seat — the race to replace Mark Green in the Nashville region. The House Freedom Caucus’ ad for state Rep. Jody Barrett thanks him for defending “freedom” by passing legislation that allows motorists to sue if protesters (“Antifa, BLM, pro-Gaza radicals”) block highways, and touts his follow-up bill, which would allow felony charges against protesters that block roads.

Scooped!

Not my beat, and the details have mostly come from court cases, but James Baratta’s reporting on the scams enabled by Bitcoin ATMs ties several major trends together in a vibrant way. What’s the point of the machines that started popping up in lower-income neighborhoods, where crypto investment isn’t particularly high? They’ve been helpful for criminals who convince the elderly to hand over their savings in undetectable currency.

Next

• 11 days until the special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district
• 25 days until the primary in Tennessee’s 7th congressional district
• 53 days until off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and other states
• 414 days until the 2026 midterm elections

David Recommends

Senate Republicans knocked out another one of the minority party’s powers on Thursday, voting to allow presidential nominees to be approved in blocks — not individually. That robbed Democrats of one of the tools they’d been using to slow down the president’s agenda. It’s unlikely to come back if their party wins a majority, and the presidency, in the next few years. There is a lot of new thinking going on about how the democratic rules we’re used to won’t last, and shouldn’t last, and Osita Nwanevu’s book “The Right of the People,” published last month, makes an argument for major majoritarian reform. I expect a lot of Democrats to read it and change their minds.