Americana

1. Crypto’s Senate stumble
2. Joe Biden’s media tour
3. Elise Stefanik’s power play
4. Democrats versus their poll numbers
5. JB Pritzker speaks

Also: The on-camera demolition of a fake campaign “insider.”

Back in November, when DC started processing the fact that Donald Trump would return to the presidency, I heard one note of optimism from some liberals. They said it very quietly, and without much confidence. But they figured that Trump, at least, would appoint a US attorney who prosecuted more criminal cases than Matthew Graves. Crime was falling when his term ended, but the low conviction rate in his first years was a disaster for the city’s life and politics. When Republicans took the House, they cited the city’s car-jacking wave to blow up a criminal code reform that took years to write.

DC did not get an Eliot Ness prosecutor. It got Ed Martin, a conservative movement lawyer and activist whose 120-day appointment will end this month, because he didn’t have the Republican support to get confirmed. Other reporters have told the Martin story, but a quick summary: He represented Jan. 6 defendants before getting the job, punished and demoted their prosecutors when he got it, and launched a series of ideological investigations (wokeness in medical journals, a five-year old Chuck Schumer gaffe) that went nowhere.

It took too long for MAGA to realize that Martin might not get confirmed to a full term. Martin tapped a “sherpa,” a strategist who might help him through the nominating process, just three weeks ago. This was after a heap of reporting on Martin’s pro-Trump commentary — much of it not disclosed to the Senate — and some elementary mistakes he’d made that threatened cases. Before Thursday afternoon, when Trump pulled the nomination, his supporters tried to reframe the confirmation as a fight for DC’s safety. “It ought to be the best place to visit in our country,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told Steve Bannon on Tuesday.

DC’s anti-Trump citizens (hard to find another kind) don’t disagree with that. Martin arrived in a city that was winding back some of the reforms of the post-Ferguson, post-George Floyd era, from the light touch on juvenile car-jacking and gun crimes to the decriminalization of fare evasion. A less political DA wouldn’t have converted the electorate into MAGA voters. But that’s what D.C. gets; Trump’s replacement for Martin will be former New York judge and district attorney Jeanine Pirro, who has far more relevant experience, but got the job because she defends the president on Fox News.

If criminal justice reformers like Larry Krasner are right, the post-2020 crime spike in cities was due to COVID and closures of public spaces, not prosecutorial discretion. That would set up Trump and his justice system for four years of success, as Martin was ready to do. Instead, he acted for a national audience of MAGA conservatives who wanted Jan. 6 prosecutors punished and liberals humiliated, while not restoring $1 billion of DC funding that was basically cut by accident. It’s a good way to anger people who hate Trump, but a strange way to prove that they were wrong about him.

This feels like a good time to check in with readers and ask what you think — the 100 days are over, the summer primaries are about to kick off. If you have a question you want me to answer soon. Send it to dweigel@semafor.com, and put “mailbag” somewhere in the email subject.

Democrats balk at crypto bill over Trump concerns

Senate Republicans failed to pass legislation creating a legal structure for “stablecoins,” a temporary defeat for crypto industry lobbyists. It was driven, in part, by Democratic anger at the $TRUMP coin that has vastly increased the president’s wealth.

The GENIUS Act, a top crypto priority for this Congress, started the week with enough Democratic support for cloture. (Republicans needed a unanimous vote in their caucus, plus seven Democrats.) They included new senators like Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks, who won last year after assuring the industry that they would work to create “rules of the road” for digital currency — positions that kept crypto PACs like Fairshake from spending in their races.

That peace was disturbed by $TRUMP, and specifically a fundraiser that offered special access to the president for the top holders of his meme coin. In the House, top Democrats on the Financial Services committee bolted a hearing on the issue over what Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) called “the corruption of the president of the United States and his ownership of crypto.” (Minnesota’s Angie Craig, who is running for US Senate, did not join the protest.)

By the end of the week, some Senate Democrats were demanding bill language that would prevent elected officials from benefiting from their own meme coins, and protesting the lack of time they got to read the final text. Two Republicans joined them in voting “no,” as did Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who voted that way in order to resurrect the bill next week.

Biden’s media blitz

Joe Biden sat for his first post-presidency interviews this week, with the BBC and ABC’s “The View,” re-litigating his legacy and saying he could have won had he remained on the ticket.

“A lot of people didn’t show up,” Biden told “The View.” He pinned Harris’ defeat on the party’s struggle to defend their record (“We weren’t quite as good as he was about advertising”) and on sexism. “I’ve never seen quite as successful, and a consistent, campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country,” Biden said.

Democrats, on the record, had nothing to say about the former president’s interviews. The White House mocked them, ignoring Biden’s specific criticism of the administration to suggest that Jill Biden, who joined her husband on “The View,” was taking advantage of an invalid. In his BBC interview, Biden suggested he was more optimistic now that democracy was not in danger — a theme of his campaigns — because “the Republican Party is waking up to what Trump is about.”

Democrats didn’t have anything to say about that, either. They eschewed comment about Biden’s tour, just as they’d ignored Kamala Harris’ first post-campaign political speech. There’d be time to talk — or to ignore this again — when the next inside account of Biden’s botched 2024 campaign is published on May 20.

Stefanik muscles out GOP competition

Rep. Elise Stefanik got a boost from the president as she explored a race for New York governor — at the expense of Republicans who’d been building their own campaigns before her nomination for UN ambassador was withdrawn.

“We are in the best polling position in the primary by an overwhelming margin, and we’re polling the best in the general election as well,” Stefanik told Semafor this week.

Rep. Mike Lawler, who flipped a Hudson Valley swing seat in 2022 and defended it in 2024, had been putting together a potential bid against Gov. Kathy Hochul when Stefanik seemed headed for the Trump administration. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, seen as a potential candidate if he wins re-election this year, had worked more closely with Trump, even holding an umbrella for the president when, as a presidential candidate, he attended a police officer’s funeral in the county.

But on Truth Social this week, Trump endorsed both Lawler and Blakeman for re-election — and Stefanik re-shared the posts. The implication: The president wanted them to stay in their jobs, he was interested in her getting a new one, and they could not beat her if Trump endorsed her. As Rep. Nicole Malliotakis told Semafor, the keys to victory in a GOP primary were polling, county chair support, money, and “President Trump’s endorsement.”

Trump’s polls fall, but Dems don’t benefit

Democratic leaders love talking about the president’s flagging poll numbers. Their own numbers, not so much.

When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked recently to react to a colleague who worried that the party was too focused on El Salvador, he pivoted: “Our reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest public approval rating of any president in modern American history.”

One day later, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer boasted that “Trump has the lowest 100-day approval rating since they started polling 80 years ago,” CNN’s Manu Raju turned the question back on him. Schumer’s own approval rating was 17% in CNN’s poll, much lower than Trump’s. “Polls come and go,” said Schumer. “Our party is united.”

Polls nonetheless put Democrats in a notably weak position for a party aiming to win back Congress next year. In special elections held since Trump took office, Democrats have usually beat expectations, holding their Wisconsin Supreme Court majority and winning a slew of down-ballot races. But the party’s image has not recovered from 2024, and its marks in the spring of 2017 were higher than today.

JB Pritzker talks oligarchy

The spotlight keeps falling on Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — not that he minds. This week, he and two other Democratic governors accepted invitations from House Republicans to testify on “sanctuary” immigration policies in their states in June. They accepted right before Chicago-born Robert Prevost was elected as Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead the church, a moment of non-partisan pride for Pritzker’s biggest city.

Pritzker talked with Semafor before his recent speech to New Hampshire Democrats in Manchester, where he condemned both “do-nothing Democrats” and the “tyrants and traitors” of the GOP. He had more to say than that, some of it on topics that will be fought over in next month’s high-profile hearing — and some of it, about the meaning of “oligarchy,” being fought over every day.

“Would you put me in the same category politically as Elon Musk?” he asked. “I would not.”

Clay Travis started his career with a stunt on his blog involving a pudding strike and NFL streaming rights. From roots in new media, he founded OutKick, a conservative sports and politics site that Fox Corp acquired in 2021. This week, Ben and Max bring on the outspoken media entrepreneur to discuss how sports and conservative politics have become intertwined, how gambling and sports media have become intertwined, and how to attract an audience of men. They also ask about his current role as a Fox News personality and his 11 interviews with Donald Trump. Plus, he and Max duke it out over the NBA’s ratings.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Polls

One month out from New Jersey’s primaries, and after tens of millions of dollars of ad spending, the numbers in the Republican and Democratic races haven’t budged. Jack Ciattarelli continues to dominate the GOP race, courting Trump and cutting off a potential opening for Bill Spadea, who’s staked his campaign on his post-2016 support for Trump. Sherrill continues to lead just outside the margin of error. With one exception — Newark’s Ras Baraka, who’s needled Sherrill for saying she’s a “fighter” without effectively fighting the Trump administration — Democrats haven’t gone negative on each other. The result, over six months of campaigning, was each candidate slightly improving their personal favorable ratings, and that’s it.

Michigan’s benchmark pollster found a slight Trump lead at the end of the 2024 campaign, driven by nostalgia for his first term. That didn’t last. Michiganders are split 48-48 on whether Trump’s immigration changes have been successful, but they are grim about the economy. Fifty-eight percent of all voters disapprove of how he’s handling that, 62% disapprove of how he’s handled inflation, and 52% disapprove of his use of tariffs. Republicans and non-college educated men support all of it, but the rest of the electorate has cooled on Trump. Still, Democrats haven’t benefited from the changing mood.

More than any other politician, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott won the immigration debate for Republicans during Joe Biden’s presidency. Bussing asylum-seekers from his state to liberal cities changed the politics around “sanctuary” policies, to the GOP’s benefit. With Trump back in office, and asylum-seekers being turned away, worries about the border have vanished. Trump’s overall and economic approval ratings in Texas are down since Jan. 20, and while Texans approve of his handling of the border, they think about it less. Just 35% of Republicans now say immigration or the border is the state’s biggest problem. (Republicans and other voters named twenty-four other problems in this open-ended question, each of them getting 1 or 2%.)

Ads

• Lander 2025, “Corruption Crusher.” It had to happen, but New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander did it first: Crush a Tesla in a campaign ad. His first spot, which contrasts his greatest hits as city comptroller with the “corruption” of Andrew Cuomo and Donald Trump, puts Lander on a wheel loader, driving around an impoundment lot as two sedans are destroyed. One represents the taxpayer bill for Cuomo’s defense from his sexual misconduct allegations; the Tesla represents the Trump administration clawing back FEMA money that had been paying to house migrants. (New York hasn’t gotten that money back.) There’s no mention of Zohran Mamdani, the left-wing candidate wedged between Cuomo and Lander in the polls.
• American Action Network, “Protecting Seniors.” Democratic and Republican nonprofits have been at war all year, trying to message the “big, beautiful” Trump spending package. Democrats warn that Republicans are making Medicaid cuts inevitable; Republicans say they’re only tackling “waste” in the programs. The twist in the main GOP group’s ad, on TV and in direct mail, is promising that each Republican House member will start fixing “the Biden pill penalty” if they win. That’s a negative term for the Inflation Reduction Act’s provision that lets the federal government negotiate prices for pills after they’ve been on the market for nine years – a provision only some Republicans want to roll back, and Trump has not opposed.
• Winsome for Governor, “Seven Quarters.” On social media, Virginia’s lieutenant governor Winsome Earle-Sears sometimes contrasts her story — migrating to America from Jamaica, joining the Marines — with Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger speaking about “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The message: Democrats have to talk about what the Republican candidate actually lived. Her first TV ad is all biography, with a photo of her with Gov. Glenn Youngkin serving as the only reference to her job. “I’m a grandma, first-generation American, and proud Marine,” she says.

Scooped!

Tara Palmeri’s interview with Lindy Li, a former Democratic fundraiser who’d rebranded herself as a MAGA escapee from the liberal “cult,” is a 42-minute surgery lesson. Li was a little notorious among Democrats, an aggressive self-promoter who claimed to have insider information on how the Biden and Harris campaigns really worked. She’d done a series of podcast interviews with hosts who didn’t ask follow-up questions, or really know how Democratic campaigns worked. Palmeri, who’d noticed that Li didn’t offer “anything outside of what’s been published by the flood of Biden books,” simply read the book pitch she was shopping and pressed her for details. What part of the White House did she have “free rein” of? Did she really make fundraising calls from the Lincoln Bedroom? Li’s answer — that “I didn’t write that line,” a ghostwriter did — is one of many claims she can’t back up.

Next

• 32 days until primaries in New Jersey
• 39 days until primaries in Virginia
• 46 days until primaries in New York City
• 179 days until off-year elections
• 542 days until the 2026 midterm elections

David Recommends

I missed “Venomous Lumpsucker” when Ned Beauman first released it, but the premise gets stronger all the time. Ten or so years in the future, more chemicals have sunk into the ecosystem, flavorful food is a luxury item, and the plan to reverse mass extinction fails: A computer virus burns through the archive of extinct animal DNA. A worse version of this story would be preachy, but Beauman’s world and characters are just exhausted, losing money in the “extinction credits” market and striking out as they search for earth’s smartest surviving fish. Fun even for a skeptic of the bleak-future genre.

Bill Gates said he’s “horrified” by the cuts to US foreign aid and that even his plans to give away most of his $200 billion fortune, which he discussed in an interview with Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke, won’t be enough to compensate.

“I’m still quite optimistic about what we can do in the next 20 years, even though I’m horrified about where we find ourselves with these aid reductions,” Gates said, referring to both the dismantling of USAID and belt-tightening by wealthy European nations that are now turning inward.