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In this edition: Gavin Newsom’s big bet, Trump’s DC takeover, and what New Yorkers think of their le͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌ 
 
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cloudy NEW ORLEANS
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August 15, 2025
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Americana

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Today’s Edition
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  1. Newsom’s big bet
  2. Republican’s extra-seat dreams
  3. The big DC takeover
  4. The depressed left meet
  5. Minnesota’s AG versus Trump

Also: New Yorkers really don’t like their leaders.

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First Word
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Nobody, or nearly nobody, plans to end his day at the Subway on 14th and U Street. Plopped next to a long-abandoned smoke shop, over a gay bar that will soon host its “Caked Up” pageant, the restaurant stays open 24/7 for people who need hearty, unsurprising sandwiches to pre-empt their hangovers.

The U Street Subway is now the most famous franchise in the country, and Sean Dunn its most famous patron. On Sunday night, a bystander filmed Dunn arguing with federal officers who had been dispatched to the intersection, then hurling a sandwich at one of them, then fleeing in his pastel polo and shorts. Dunn lost his job at the Justice Department, tried to turn himself in, and was instead apprehended by 20 officers, according to his attorney, and to the White House’s fancam video of the arrest.

The “federal takeover” of DC — the scale is being litigated, but that’s good shorthand for it — is likely to succeed on the administration’s terms. According to the president, he had to invoke Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, written a few years after rioting burned down part of the city, to stop the “bloodthirsty criminals” who were making it ugly and unlivable.

Success, on the White House’s terms, would mean residents and tourists going about their day without being victims of crime, or catching sight of a homeless encampment.

To be sure, that was possible even before the takeover. DC staggered out of COVID with a weakened civil society, a ghostly business district, and a surge of car-jackings by teenagers who exploited the well-intentioned errors of criminal justice reform. But the city had visibly recovered since 2023. Homeless encampments that sprouted around Union Station during the pandemic were cleared long before the National Guard rolled in, parking vehicles on land that has always belonged to the federal government.

Urban liberals put up with more crime and disorder than suburban conservatives. The administration knew it could trap them by getting them to defend DC’s status quo, and the fishy data they used to defend it. It surely also knew that the credit for the city not sliding into Death Wish chaos would now belong to the president, not to Mayor Muriel Bowser, or other city officials who had been making progress on crime.

That’s where the sandwich comes in — a mockery of the military presence, so obviously ineffective that it was supposed to make the whole situation look stupid. Trump and his GOP, who argue that liberals can’t govern themselves, have spoken rhapsodically about military crackdowns on cities. “Our military has been in many countries around the world for the past two decades walking the streets trying to reduce crime,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer told Newsmax this week. “We need to focus on the big cities in America now.”

There was no worry there about overkill, or the appearance of overkill, which is what has undermined public support for policing before — and very recently. Just a decade ago, Comer’s fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul was asking if small towns were wasting money on military equipment. It was big and imposing, but it was built to protect Americans overseas, not intimidate teenagers out of misbehaving at a pumpkin patch festival.

That was a popular position in 2014. Not anymore, after so many criminal justice reforms that were sold as common-sense, low-cost corrections to over-policing led to more crime. The Biden administration, and Bowser, favored (and funded) more police officers, as red state governors enticed them to leave blue cities for places where they’d get bonuses, respect, and rock-solid qualified immunity. The Trump administration identified Bowser as a politician who would welcome federal assistance to stop crime, even as protesters complained about it — a lesson re-learned when the administration swapped out a US attorney obsessed with revenge for Jan. 6 defendants with one obsessed with crime.

Now, the administration is putting on a show of force in DC with no fear of backlash. It sees an enormous national constituency not just for crime-stopping, but for humiliating urban liberals with overwhelming force. Cleaning up DC is not enough; engage in anti-social behavior, throw salami at a cop, and you’ll be raided like a drug lord. There’s no concern that it could backfire. Not right now.

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1

California Democrats want a voter-backed gerrymander

California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Carlos Barria/Reuters

California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched his campaign for a new state congressional map that would push Republicans out of five seats, describing it as a break-glass solution to stop a “rigged” election and the rise of an American dictator.

“Wake up, America,” Newsom told reporters after the first rally for the Election Rigging Response Act, the Democrats’ name for a potential Nov. 4 ballot measure that would replace the current California map, drawn by an independent commission, with a map drawn by Democrats in Sacramento. “You will not have a country if he rigs this election. You will have a president running for a third term.”

With the roll-out, Newsom officially joined a battle against Republicans in Texas, whose effort to pass their new map — with five likely GOP gains — has been slowed by Democratic legislators who fled the state. (Gov. Greg Abbott will call a new special session to handle the maps, after Democrats ran out the clock on the current session.)

He began another battle with Republicans in California, who have sued to stop or slow the ballot measure, and with the Voters First Coalition, the group that got independent redistricting passed in 2008. To win over voters who like the commission system, Newsom emphasized that it would remain in place for the 2030 census. The new, favorable Democratic maps would only cancel out anything Republicans drew for themselves in red states.

Newsom described this as an anti-fascist project, invoking the 53 days that Adolf Hitler used to consolidate power. (He numbered the days, but didn’t name Hitler.) The map, first obtained by Politico, would stretch GOP seats across the state into safely Democratic precincts, making it much harder for Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. David Valadao, Rep. Ken Calvert, Rep. Kevin Kiley, and Rep. Doug LaMalfa to win re-election.

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2

Red states prepare to re-map like Texas

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In Missouri, Florida, and Indiana, Republicans continued to wrestle with the idea of mid-decade gerrymanders, egged on by the president.

“We’re going to have a mid-decade redistricting now,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters after the state’s map, challenged under the Voting Rights Act after it eliminated a majority-black seat around Jacksonville, was upheld by the GOP-majority state supreme court.

In 2021, DeSantis had stopped Tallahassee legislators from passing a map that would not have given maximum advantage to the party, and he continued to say that the 2020 census under-counted the state and denied it at least one more seat that could have gone to Republicans. “Even if they don’t revise the current census, I think it is appropriate to be doing it,” he said.

At an annual Ham Breakfast, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe told reporters that he might bring up gerrymandering if he could “make sure that what you’re doing is in the right direction and that you have as many people on board as possible.” That was heartening for Republicans like Rep. Bob Onder, who had wanted the state to eliminate Kansas City’s safe Democratic seat and split the area into safe GOP districts.

Indiana Republicans had been more wary of a re-map, which would most likely turn the northwest 1st District red by stretching into more rural areas. The White House invited Indiana leaders to DC on Aug. 26, after a personal visit to Gov. Mike Braun by Vice President JD Vance didn’t generate much momentum for redistricting.

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3

DC Democrats splinter over takeover

Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Annabelle Gordon/Reuters

President Donald Trump used a template for his takeover of DC policing that’s worked for him before: Move quickly, establish a large and visible security presence — then wait for Democrats to splinter over how to respond.

Democrats in Congress denounced the 30-day mobilization inside the capital, which Trump previewed during the 2024 election, as an “unjustified power grab” and vowed to block an extension. The city’s elected attorney general called it an “unlawful” abuse of emergency powers to lower crime rates that the administration itself said had fallen.

But DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was more cautious, denouncing Trump’s takeover as “authoritarian” while also suggesting that the city could work with him. “What I’m focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the additional officer support that we have,” the mayor told reporters on Tuesday, after meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Hours later, in a video “conversation with community leaders,” Bowser said that the intervention was legal; the president had invoked “a part of the charter that he has the prerogative to invoke.” She acknowledged the city had long-standing problems, like illegal gun trafficking and violence in nightlife areas, and said the federal government could now help with them.

Keep reading for the tightrope that DC Democrats are trying to walk. â†’

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4

Progressives ask if their electoral era is over

Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images via AFP

NEW ORLEANS — For 20 years, progressives have gathered at annual Netroots Nation conferences to share strategies and plan for the next election. In New Orleans, this year’s 3,000 attendees were not so sure that there would be a “next election.”

At one session, after organizers described the tactics of an “authoritarian state,” they considered whether they’d even be allowed to win in 2026.

“There can’t be a free and fair election in 2026, or something resembling one, if we don’t f*ck them up now,” said Evan Sutton, a strategist who helped organize Tesla Takedown protests.

“I don’t do elections necessarily because they’re free and fair,” said Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a progressive organizer in Tennessee. “I do it because once I get someone who is trying to change things [with] an election, and they do it, and it still doesn’t work, they are immediately a leftist.”

The mood at the three-day conference — which began as a political blogger meetup and grew into a stop on the presidential primary circuit — was nervous and grim, despite the traditional karaoke and trivia game.

Come to New Orleans for the whole story. â†’

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5

Minnesota’s attorney general on resisting Trump

Minnesota Attorney Gen. Keith Ellison.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

NEW ORLEANS — The debate over federal law enforcement swooping into liberal cities isn’t new to Minnesota Attorney Gen. Keith Ellison. His first term was consumed by the death of George Floyd, and its aftermath; his office secured convictions of the officers who killed Floyd. He won a second term, narrowly, after criticizing the “defund the police” movement for making long-term reform more politically difficult. And in January, when Donald Trump returned to the White House, Ellison joined his Democratic colleagues in AG offices to slow him down in court.

Ellison spent part of last week at the annual Netroots Nation conference, where he updated progressive activists on some wins and some uphill battles. He sat down with Semafor to talk about where he saw the administration moving next, why he thought the Secretary of Homeland Security doesn’t “know her ass from a hole in the ground” and why he thought mass resistance in the streets was going to be part of an effective Trump response.

“Our democracy was always fragile,” Ellison told Semafor. “It came up through a lot of pain and struggle. Is John Roberts ready to say, here’s where we end the American experiment? We’re now Hungary? We join the ranks of Pinochet and every dictator who ever existed? You’ve got to have a popular struggle, which is informed by the lawsuits.”

Read on for Ellison’s strategies (and smack talk). â†’

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Mixed Signals
Mixed Signals

Mark Cuban is everywhere — and famously accessible. But what might be called overexposure in a previous era is now a strength in a fragmented media world, to the point that many people want him to run for president in 2028. This week, Ben and Max bring on the former Shark Tank “shark” and former majority-owner of the Dallas Mavericks to talk about how he predicted today’s media landscape in 1995, why he hates the media business, and why he thinks AI is the biggest threat to media and politics. They also discuss if he’ll actually run in 2028 and which Democratic candidates have the best shot.

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On the Bus
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Polls

California Democrats are betting the House on a snap referendum to replace maps drawn four years ago by their independent commission with maps drawn by themselves, to squeeze out five Republicans. This poll, which frames the choice as a removal of voters’ power, finds it failing because four-fifths of independents and half of Democrats don’t like the idea. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office responded by accusing the pollster of testing what we are “not doing.” And it’s up to Democrats to define what they’re doing, for voters; Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta, who supports the re-map, controls what language will appear on the ballot, and told Semafor that he’d like the information packet for voters to include the new maps. (The re-map would not repeal the commission, which would still draw maps in 2031.)

Chart showing approval of elected officials in New York.

New Yorkers are mostly unhappy with their leading politicians. They are warmer on Democratic policies than Republican policies, which have helped Gov. Hochul’s favorable rating recover from her early term lows, even though most voters want an alternative next year. (So far, most don’t consider Stefanik an acceptable alternative, and 49% say she’d be bad for the state.) Hochul’s work on banning cell phones in schools was popular, and her support for new nuclear power and allowing non-New Yorkers to get abortion medication. There’s an exception, which Democrats will confront as they combat cuts from the GOP’s tax bill. By a 17-point margin, all voters want the state to cut off non-citizens who receive health care through the state. Just 47% of Democrats support continuing the coverage.

Chart showing approval of Trump policies among US adults

Four years ago, Democrats headed into the summer recess confident that the American Rescue Plan would help them with voters. It eventually became a problem for Democrats, when Republicans tied its spending increases to an inflation spike. The GOP’s economic policy changes start with even lower support, driven — once more — by anger over prices that haven’t dropped. The GOP’s summer sales pitch, touting the most popular parts of the tax law and promising that the tariffs paid by businesses will make tax cuts more affordable, hasn’t yet clicked. Trump’s own approval rating is down, too driven by a 23-point drop among younger voters.

Ads

Abigail Spanberger for Governor/YouTube
  • Spanberger for Governor, “Real Issues.” The big partisan dispute in Virginia is what this year’s elections are even about. Republican gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears spent the week attacking Democrat Abigail Spanberger over her non-answers on trans sports questions and her vote against repealing DC’s criminal justice reform package. Spanberger’s campaign turned Earle-Sears’ first CNN hit, where she refused to answer questions about DOGE layoffs, into its first negative ad. Her insistence that the layoffs weren’t a “real issue,” which went viral after the interview aired, became proof that she “supports Trump, not Virginians.”
  • America First Agriculture Action, “Roaring Back.” Last year, Donald Trump announced that he’d support Florida’s marijuana legalization amendment, which failed when it did not cross the 60% threshold for passage. Most Floridians did vote for Trump and the amendment, and this new PAC, funded with a marijuana industry donation to a 2024 Trump PAC strategist, praises Trump’s record so far and calls decriminalization another “promise” to keep. Ads like these run in the DC market, aiming to reach Trump himself.
  • Keep America Great PAC, “Fake Nate Morris.” In the battle for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat, Nate Morris’s self-funded ads have positioned him as the anti-McConnell, the Republican who’ll ditch his legacy and use the job to help Donald Trump. This super PAC, aligned with Rep. Andy Barr, keeps calling that an act to cover up the woke-adjacent things Morris did when he built his company, like “special employee groups for gay and transgender workers.” Morris has gotten ahead of the attack in his own ads, which are more specific about how he’d roll back transgender medicine than his opponents’ ads. 

Scooped!

Seven Politicos reported this story on Israel becoming a “litmus test” for Democrats who want to be president. I wish I wrote it, but that softens the blow a little — the Politico team fanned out everywhere, covering Pete Buttigieg’s wordy (and revised) Gaza answer, Josh Shapiro’s non-response, an early warning ad buy in Iowa, and more examples of Democrats navigating an issue that, for some of them, is very simple.

Next

  • 25 days until the special election in Virginia’s 11th congressional district
  • 39 days until the special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district
  • 53 days until the primary in Tennessee’s 7th congressional district
  • 81 days until off-year elections
  • 442 days until the 2026 midterm elections

David Recommends

The best profile I read all week was Gabe Kaminsky on Omeed Malik, a former Democrat who has built a financial nexus inside the MAGA movement. There are fresh details in every paragraph: “Covid lockdowns forced Malik and his fiancée Caroline, now his wife, to delay their wedding for about six months.” And there’s an enlightening lesson in the IPO of GrabAGun, a huge success for his “parallel economy” investment strategy despite its decline this year. “Our job is to take the company public and get them cash.” Lots of advanced MAGA economic theory in that answer.

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Semafor Spotlight

Tim’s View: The complex logistics of holding — and attending — COP30 in BelĂ©m, Brazil threaten to undercut the event’s effectiveness. â†’

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