President Donald Trump won’t be representing the U.S. at the opening ceremony of the Italian Olympic Games in Milan’s famous San Siro Stadium. But his shadow will surely loom over the two-week-long sporting spectacle, which kicks off Friday.

The president’s repeated jabs at longtime partners, his inconsistent tariff policy and repeated plays for Greenland have shown just how much he's shifted the traditional world order. The resulting international “rupture,” as described by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Davos last month, has turned beating the Americans in Italy from a crowning sporting achievement to an even greater moral imperative for the president's rivals.

“This is life and death,” said Charlie Angus, a former member of Parliament in Canada with the New Democratic Party and prominent Trump critic. “If it’s the semifinals and we’re playing against the United States, it’s no longer a game. And that’s profound.”

The Trump administration has big plans for these Olympics, according to a State Department memo viewed by POLITICO. It hopes to “promote the United States as a global leader in international sports” and build momentum for what the White House sees as a “Decade of Sport in America,” which will see the country host the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2028 and the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2034, as well as the FIFA World Cup this summer.

But a combative administration may well complicate matters.

He’s sending Vice President JD Vance, a longtime critic of Europe’s leaders, to lead the presidential delegation in Milan. Then there’s ICE. News that American federal immigration agents would be on the ground providing security during the games sparked widespread fury throughout the country.

Trump has also clashed with many of the countries vying to top the leaderboards in Milan. Since returning to the White House in January, he’s antagonized Norway, which took home the most medals in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, over a perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub and clashed repeatedly with Canada, which finished fourth.

“We’re looking at the world in a very different light,” Angus said. “And we’re looking at a next-door neighbor who makes increasingly unhinged threats towards us. So to go to international games and pretend that we’re all one happy family, well, that’s gone.”

Trump has also sparred with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, (the 13th-place finisher in Beijing) and threatened a military incursion in pushing Denmark (a Scandinavian country which curiously hasn’t medaled in the Winter Olympics since 1998) to cede Greenland.

All while seeming to placate Russia, whose athletes competed under a neutral flag in 2022 due to doping sanctions and secured the second-most medals in the Beijing games, which ended just days before President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

The Olympics have long collided with geopolitics, from Russia’s ban in response to its war in Ukraine to South Africa’s 32-year-long exclusion as punishment for apartheid. And Beijing’s time in the limelight was marred by a U.S. diplomatic boycott over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump’s political agenda of putting America First is paying off.

“Fairer trade deals are leveling the playing field for our farmers and workers, NATO allies are taking greater responsibility for their own defense, and drugs and criminals are no longer entering our country,” she said. “Instead of taking bizarre vendettas against American athletes, foreign leaders should follow the President’s lead by ending unfettered migration, halting Green New Scam policies, and promoting peace through strength.”

When reached for comment, the State Department deferred to the White House about the political ramifications of the games. A State Department spokesperson also highlighted the role that its Diplomatic Security Service would serve as the security lead for Americans throughout Olympic and Paralympic competition.

Hockey, arguably one of the winter Olympic Games’ highest-profile sports, has already been roiled by Trump’s global agenda. Just look at last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off, which pitted the U.S. and Canada against each other in preliminary play and then again in the final.

Canadian fans booed the American national anthem mercilessly when the two sides faced off in Montreal. Trump called the U.S. locker room on the morning of the final and showered the Great North with incessant 51st state gibes, and then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded boisterously when Canada won the championship in overtime.

“You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game,” he wrote.

The American men’s team will play Denmark in Milan — fittingly — on Valentine’s Day, and could see the Canadians at the medal rounds.

“I'm sure they'll concentrate on the events they compete in rather than get involved in politics,” Anders Vistisen, a member of the European Parliament from Denmark, said of his compatriots in a statement. “Maybe Trump's antics will give them even more motivation? Who knows?”

Elsewhere in Italy, Americans Sean Doherty, Maxime Germain, Campbell Wright, and Paul Schommer will match up against 2022 champion Quentin Fillon Maillet from France in biathlon throughout the games. And Canadian short track speedskater and medal favorite William Dandjinou will look to hold off multiple Americans at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.

“With the current American president, no one knows what he will do or say tomorrow,” said legendary goaltender Dominik Hasek, a gold medalist with Czechia in the 1998 Nagano Games and a one-time rumored presidential candidate in his home nation. “If he doesn't make negative comments about athletes from other countries in the coming weeks, everything will be fine. But that could change very quickly after one of his frequent hateful attacks.”

Hasek, a frequent critic of Putin’s war in Ukraine, said Trump “has antagonized most of the people of the democratic world with his attitudes and actions.”

That doesn’t exactly scream “Faster, Higher, Stronger — Together,” the Olympic motto revamped by the IOC in 2021.

“It was personal,” Angus, the former Canadian lawmaker, said of the tense Canada-U.S. showdown in the 4 Nations Face-Off last year. “This was deeply personal. We were at the moment of people brawling in the stands, and that was because of Donald Trump and the constant insults. He turned that game into war.”

But now at the Olympics, the U.S. is just one of more than 90 nations competing. And Trump’s international critics say they’re determined to not let their anger with Trump ruin the games — if just not to give him the satisfaction.

“People are done with Donald Trump’s flagrant attempts to goad us and poke at us and insult us,” Angus said. “It’s like water off our back. We’re a much tougher people than we were last year.”

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

Virginia’s state Supreme Court will decide whether state Democrats’ gerrymander push can proceed after an appeals court on Wednesday pushed the case to the high court.

The state Circuit Court of Appeals, in a motion, stated that the case is of “such imperative public importance as to justify the deviation from normal appellate practice and to require prompt decision in the Supreme Court.”

The move comes after a court in Tazewell County last week blocked Virginia Democrats from going forward with gerrymandering, ruling that the Democrat-led Legislature had wrongly approved a constitutional amendment that would allow for mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts ahead of the midterms this fall.

The move is a potential bright spot for Democrats, who had been stymied by the lower court ruling blocking the party’s attempt to gain upwards of four seats in the midterms through redistricting. Currently, Democrats hold six seats in the state while Republicans control five.

The Republican-backed group Virginians for Fair Maps, one of the main organizations against redistricting in the state, declined to comment.

Virginians for Fair Elections, the Democrat-affiliated group launched last month to urge voters to approve the measure, declined to comment on the record.

Last October, Democratic lawmakers began the process of redrawing maps in the state, an effort that only gained traction after voters elected Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger in the November election and the GOP lost 13 seats in the House of Delegates.

Virginia Democrats had been so confident prior to the Tazewell County court ruling that party leaders vowed to unveil new maps it wanted Virginia voters to approve by the end of last month, with promises of unveiling a map that goes as far as 10-1 in favor of their party.

Virginia is seen as the top prize in Democrats’ redistricting push, especially if Republican-led Florida redraws its maps under Gov. Ron DeSantis. More GOP-led states could also move to draw more red-leaning states if the Supreme Court rules to strike down portions of the Voting Rights Act.

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has made his ability to navigate a sharply divided Legislature a core part of his national sales pitch. But as 2028 approaches, what he really wants is a Democratic trifecta in Harrisburg.

Shapiro helped Democrats flip the state House in 2022 when he won the governor’s mansion. But the Republican-controlled Senate has been his Achilles' heel since, stymieing his attempts to pass core Democratic policies like raising one of the lowest state minimum wages in the country. And the split Legislature left Shapiro mired in a monthslong budget standoff last year that held up billions of dollars in state funding for counties, schools and nonprofits.

Now, Shapiro is leading the charge to help Democrats wrest back the chamber from Republican control by a slim 27-23 majority and expand their single-seat majority in the House — part of an aggressive down-ballot push the governor is undertaking alongside his own reelection bid.

Shapiro has repeatedly voiced his desire to win unified control of the commonwealth both in private conversations with donors and in public. He’s touted what he could do with it — outlining a policy agenda rooted in increasing affordability that includes raising the state’s minimum wage and boosting energy production, including through renewables.

When asked his second-term goals and whether he needs unified Democratic control to achieve them, the governor said his record proves “I can bring the Republicans and Democrats together to get stuff done.”

“There are some things, though, that the Republican Senate has blocked me on that I would like us to be able to get done,” he said at an event in Washington last week. “And certainly, having a trifecta would allow me to do that.”

During his state budget address Tuesday, Shapiro unloaded on Senate Republicans who’ve stood in the way of his priorities, saying they’ve “refused to act” on raising wages and needling them to “stop making excuses” on advancing his energy plans. His voice ringing with emotion, he accused them of “cowering to … special interests” and “tying justice for abused kids to your pet political projects” over stalling enhanced protections for sexual abuse victims.

Shapiro’s effort to secure unified control of Harrisburg will serve as a critical test of his coattails in the nation’s largest swing state. And it’s a prerequisite for him to be able to score some big-ticket liberal policy wins he can brag about on a 2028 presidential primary stage that could be jam-packed with governors who already have their own achievements to tout.

“If he can add to the appeal he already has with things like a higher minimum wage, with other pieces of the puzzle that state government can do to make things more affordable, it just gives his candidacy and his message that extra spark that is missing right now,” said longtime Democratic strategist Pete Giangreco, who worked on Barack Obama’s and Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaigns but is not working for any likely 2028 contenders.

But Pennsylvania Democrats haven’t had a trifecta in three decades. And they face a narrow path to achieving it even in a year when national Democrats are bullish on a blue wave.

Just half the Pennsylvania Senate is on the ballot this year, and operatives on both sides say the battlefield is even smaller, pointing to a handful of districts in the Philadelphia suburbs through the Lehigh Valley and more rural swaths of the state. Prognosticators say the Pennsylvania Senate “leans Republican.”

“If you look at the Republican map on who needs to be defeated, it’s a lot of more rural, red areas,” said Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant Josh Novotney. “Nothing’s impossible in such a bad year for Republicans. But it’s going to be tough.”

But Keystone State Democrats are emboldened by last year’s elections. The party swept judicial retention races for the state’s highest court and flipped a state Senate seat during a special election in a district Democrats said President Donald Trump carried by 15 percentage points in 2024. They’re encouraged by Democratic wins and overperformances across the country over the past year.

And, top Democrats say, they have Shapiro.

The governor remains highly popular, with an approval rating that’s cracked 60 percent in some surveys. He’s a fundraising juggernaut who has amassed a $30 million war chest to unload against likely GOP rival Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer, who raised just a fraction of that amount.

Democrats rode to power in the Pennsylvania House in 2022 on what one top lawmaker described as “Shapiro’s landslide coattails,” and they credit the governor for helping them hold their razor-thin majority in 2024, even as Trump won Pennsylvania and Democrats lost every statewide election.

“He is a huge part of the reason we have the majority. He’s a huge part of the reason that we were able to hold the majority in 2024,” said state Rep. Mike Schlossberg, the House majority whip. “I have no doubt he will lean in very, very heavily to making sure that we not only expand our majority in the House, but hopefully take control of the Senate — something that’s realistically in play for the first time probably in my entire career.”

Shapiro poured $1.25 million into the Pennsylvania House Democrats’ campaign committee in 2024 and helped raise another $1 million toward defending their majority that year. He also donated $250,000 to state Senate Democrats’ campaign committee. And he cut ads and hit the campaign trail in key legislative districts.

Last year, Shapiro gave the state party $250,000 to fund infrastructure improvements heading into the midterms, with a promise of more to come. His political team is in “regular communication” with Pennsylvania Democrats’ campaign arms, said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Philadelphia Democrat who chairs the party’s Senate campaign committee.

The governor’s political operation declined to share an estimate of how much Shapiro plans to spend down-ticket this year, or where he plans to campaign. Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said the governor “has a long track record of working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot” and will “continue to focus on” that alongside his reelection bid.

Shapiro and his allies have repeatedly lamented Republican roadblocks to an agenda that includes raising wages, boosting housing and energy production and securing sustainable funding for public transportation. House Speaker Joanna McClinton, a Philadelphia Democrat, accused the GOP of “political gamesmanship” in an interview, claiming the opposition is trying to “keep down the productivity” to hurt Shapiro and state Democrats in 2026 and beyond.

Senate Republican leaders signaled more friction to come as they fired back on several fronts after Shapiro’s speech Tuesday, skewering his plan to overhaul the state’s energy sector, accusing him of being “more interested in the political talking point” on hiking wages to $15 an hour (while indicating they’re open to compromise) and saying there are “different paths” to helping victims of abuse.

As 2028 looms, Democratic legislative leaders and political strategists acknowledged the potential political benefit of a trifecta for Shapiro, who could get a boost from both turning a purple state blue and passing policies that could pad a potential presidential platform.

“If he can help us win the trifecta, and then use it to actually govern and get good results — or as he likes to say, ‘get shit done’ — that looks really good at the national level,” Schlossberg said.

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick to succeed him in the state Assembly cruised to an easy victory Tuesday night. But Diana Moreno’s win in that Queens special election is likely the last cakewalk we’ll see from a Mamdani-backed candidate in the near future.

The new mayor has endorsed Brad Lander in his quest to unseat Rep. Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District and Assemblymember Claire Valdez for the NY-07 seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia Velázquez.

The pair of Democratic congressional primaries is expected to be far more competitive than Moreno’s race, raising a central question: How far can a Mamdani endorsement get you?

“We’re testing that out,” said Grace Mausser, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, which has endorsed both Moreno and Valdez, but not Lander. “He has a lot of hard resources that come with an endorsement: his impressive volunteer and donor lists, his strong reach on social media … There’s also the soft power that we’re testing out now, right? Who is the leader of left and progressive politics in New York right now?”

Mamdani has so far been more involved in boosting Valdez than Lander.

The mayor appeared with Valdez — a Queens lawmaker, former United Auto Workers union organizer and the first elected official to stand with Mamdani in his campaign for mayor — at an event the day after she launched her bid. He also filmed a whimsical social media video set in a subway station to boost her fundraising.

Valdez is running against Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president who Velázquez has endorsed as her preferred successor. Queens City Council Member Julie Won also recently entered the race in the progressive Brooklyn and Queens district.

The mayor has been largely hands-off in Lander’s campaign after endorsing the former city comptroller on the day of his launch for Congress. Lander, who cross-endorsed Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race, is running in Brooklyn and Manhattan against an incumbent with more than three times as much campaign cash on hand and the backing of Democratic House leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

A political adviser to Mamdani said his team is still assessing how much to get involved in the two congressional contests and cautioned against reading anything into the fact that the mayor has been more involved in Valdez’s race so far. The adviser said the Mamdani team is waiting to make major moves in NY-10 pending the outcome of a court case that could scramble the lines of the district in such a way that Goldman may run in the neighboring 11th District instead.

Regardless, the Mamdani adviser, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said the mayor simply lending his name to Lander and Valdez “already carries a lot of weight that these campaigns can make the most of.”

“His direct involvement is always going to be second to governing,” said the aide. “Ninety-nine percent of his energy is going to be focused on running the city.”

The politics-versus-governance balance is part of Mamdani’s clash with Velázquez, the highly respected progressive who effectively warned him in a New York Times interview to stay in his lane.

And the mayor does have a lot of work to do at the helm of the country’s largest city. June’s congressional primaries fall around the same time he and the City Council will be putting finishing touches on the city budget amid serious fiscal headwinds.

“I don’t know if that was the wisest thing for him to do because the job of being mayor is so big,” Democratic strategist Lupe Todd-Medina said, arguing Mamdani could end up in a situation where he's not able to stump for Lander and Valdez as much as they want and need him to due to the sheer burden of governing New York City.

As June's primaries still loom more than four months away, a Lander campaign official, granted anonymity to share sensitive considerations, said his team is also still waiting to see if a court decision could rip up the lines of NY-10.

But if the race ends up competitive, the Lander aide said his team is confident Mamdani will help fundraise and campaign for the former comptroller. The fact that Mamdani hasn’t done so yet, the aide said, is understandable since the mayor has been focused on governing in his first month in office.

The two House primaries have different dynamics but they’ll determine whether Mamdani can replicate the magic that catapulted him from relative obscurity to the nation’s second toughest job.

“He has a lot at stake by pushing in some chips on two fronts, but I think he has more at stake in the 7th District,” said Michael Lange, an analyst who specializes in progressive politics. Valdez “is a really close ally who comes from his political movement and his political home.”

What to know about Trump’s $12 billion critical minerals strategy | Energy Pod

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Democrats are launching a new program Wednesday to try to reach voters in their corner who opted to stay home in 2024 instead of voting against then-candidate Donald Trump, as the party continues its search for its identity in the second Trump era.

The Democratic National Committee program — details of which were shared first with POLITICO — targets over a million voters they view as likely Democrats in battleground House districts who voted in 2020 but didn’t vote four years later.

The large-scale voter contact operation called “Local Listeners” is a tacit acknowledgement of one of the ways Democrats fell short in 2024, when then-Vice President Kamala Harris failed to engender enough enthusiasm from likely Democrats frustrated with the Biden administration’s economic agenda and its handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

“We didn’t lose to Donald Trump. We lost to the couch,” DNC Deputy Executive Director Libby Schneider said in an interview. “We saw our voters, many of our important voters, stay home. Obviously, that is a trend that cannot continue.”

A key element of the strategy, according to the party, will be training volunteers to engage infrequent voters with a “listening first” approach that prioritizes “active listening” and “having difficult conversations about politics.”

Part of President Donald Trump’s winning strategy included engaging with unlikely voters his campaign identified as being potential Republicans. Trump aggressively courted people who had skipped previous elections, focusing predominantly on young men, and ultimately defeated Harris among voters who skipped the previous midterm and presidential elections.

“If we want to keep earning back the trust and support of voters, we have to listen to them,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “The Democratic Party is done with waiting until the last minute to engage voters — these conversations need to happen early and often.”

Rima Mohammad, an executive board member of the Michigan Democratic Party and a former delegate who represented the “Uncommitted” movement at the Democratic convention in 2024, said she welcomed the attempts to engage voters who remain disenchanted by Democrats.

“I saw the level of disengagement, the frustration from people about the party, starting with Gaza and now with what's happening now with ICE, what's happening with all these corporate Dems,” Mohammad — who said she ultimately did support Harris — said in an interview.

“I'm glad that the DNC is doing this. I don't know if it's too late. I think that work should have happened right after Kamala lost,” she added.

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of liberal donor group Way To Win, said the DNC’s push to win back unreliable voters is supported by her group’s December analysis of the party’s shortcomings in 2024 and the lessons that can be learned ahead of the midterms.

“They weren’t uninformed, right?” Ancona said of potential Harris voters who stayed home. “They just didn't like what they heard. So that's why I feel like it's so important for any engagement plan to recognize how kind of burned and cynical these voters are.”

The outreach to 2024 skippers marks one of the few public strategy shifts acknowledging the roots of Democrats’ electoral defeat to Trump, following a year of heated internal debate over the direction of the party. In December, the DNC announced it would not be publicly releasing an autopsy report diagnosing the causes of the party’s losses, in part to redirect focus to Democrats’ electoral victories in 2025.

Schneider said the outreach to voters who stayed home in 2024 is an extension of the introspection party organizers undertook following Trump’s victory.

“The work started immediately after we lost, and it was sort of a self-reflection of ... what can we do differently and what is within our control?” she said. "This is one of those things that it's a no-brainer that it should live with the DNC, and that we should have been doing it for a lot longer.”

Republicans are in full-out panic mode over their plunging support with Hispanic voters after losing a special election in a ruby-red Texas district over the weekend.

On Saturday, a Democrat posted a 14-point victory in a Fort Worth-based state senate district President Donald Trump had won by 17 points in 2024, a staggering swing that was powered by significant shifts across the district’s Hispanic areas.

It's the clearest sign yet that the GOP’s newfound coalition that propelled Trump’s return to the White House may be short-lived. Many Republicans are warning the party needs to change course on immigration, focus on bread-and-butter economic issues and start pouring money into competitive races — or risk getting stomped in November.

Polling already showed that Republicans were rapidly losing support from Hispanic voters. But the electoral results were a confirmation of that drop.

“It should be an eye-opener to all of us that we all need to pick up the pace,” U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican from a majority-Hispanic district in South Texas, said in an interview. “The candidate has to do their part, the party has to do their part. And then those of us in the arena, we have to do our part to help them as well.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters Tuesday that the election was a “very concerning outcome.” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick posted on X that the results should be a “wake-up call for Republicans across Texas. Our voters cannot take anything for granted.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said “a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed.”

Taylor Rehmet, the Democrat who flipped the state Senate seat over the weekend, made huge gains with Hispanic voters amid national pushback to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and widespread economic frustration across demographic groups.

Ahead of the election, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — an immigration hardliner who bused migrants to Democratic-led cities during the Biden administration — said the White House needed to “recalibrate” on its immigration crackdowns following the shooting of Alex Pretti by an immigration officer in Minneapolis.

“That imagery coming out of Minnesota in the last few days has had a huge impact on not only Hispanic voters, but swing voters, independents in Texas and around the country,” said Texas GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser. “What's transpired there has definitely led to a bit of a political backlash.”

As Republicans panic, Democrats are feeling a renewed jolt of optimism after they swept statewide races last year in Virginia and New Jersey. They believe they found a winning formula with Rehmet, whose working-class biography as a union leader, Air Force veteran and Lockheed Martin machinist resonated with voters, along with his narrow focus on local issues like maintaining public school funding.

Tory Gavito, president of Democratic donor network Way to Win, said she received excited texts from several major donors over the weekend after the win. “Knowing it's a wave year, this just adds a little bit of more wind in our sails,” she said. “It's not just a question around Texas, it's a question around Texas and Mississippi and Alabama and what does this mean for lots of places.”

Texas Republicans have the most to worry about of any in their party about a major Hispanic snapback towards Democrats.

Hispanics are now the largest ethnic group in Texas, making up 40 percent of the population. Trump carried Latinos in the state in 2024, exit polls showed, a massive swing from earlier elections, and Republicans had been making especially strong gains with rural, more conservative Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley. But as Texas Democrats look to win a U.S. Senate election for the first time since 1988, they’re eyeing an opportunity to pull those voters back in.

“They are leaving in droves and going in the opposite direction,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council. “This is a warning sign.”

And Texas Republicans also banked on retaining at least some of their newfound Hispanic support when they redrew their Congressional map last year, creating several majority-Hispanic districts that Trump would have carried by double digits last year. That includes rejiggering district lines for two top GOP targets, Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, as well as a third district outside San Antonio.

“They've banged three of these five new Republican seats on a demographic that Democrats were never able to turn out for 30-40 years, " said GOP consultant and Trump critic Mike Madrid, referring to young, Hispanic male voters. But now, Trump’s hardline immigration policies have “angered and upset them.”

Samuel Benson and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.

D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro appeared to walk back a previous threat to arrest anyone who brings a gun to Washington amid an uproar from Second Amendment groups.

The backtrack came after Pirro’s initial comments sparked fierce criticism from GOP members of Congress and gun rights advocates. It’s the latest in a series of statements from the administration that have rankled many in the party’s pro-Second Amendment base.

“I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else — you bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back” Pirro said during a Monday appearance on Fox News, where she previously hosted the show “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”

But less than 24 hours later, Pirro attempted to reframe her earlier comments, writing in a social media post that she is “a proud supporter of the Second Amendment.”

“Washington, D.C. law requires handguns be licensed in the District with the Metropolitan Police Department to be carried into our community,” she wrote in a Tuesday morning post on X. “We are focused on individuals who are unlawfully carrying guns and will continue building on that momentum to keep our communities safe.”

She also referenced the response in a video posted to her social media page, acknowledging that “some people are concerned about something I said yesterday” before further clarifying her position.

The conservative National Association for Gun Rights swiftly came out in opposition to Pirro’s stance, calling her remarks “unacceptable and intolerable comments by a sitting US attorney.”

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the administration’s most frequent critics in the House GOP Conference, also denounced Pirro, writing on social media: “Why is a ‘conservative’ judge threatening to arrest gun owners?” Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) criticized the U.S. attorney, too, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said “Second Amendment rights are not extinguished just because an American visits DC.”

Washington does not recognize concealed carry permits from other states, and local law requires all firearms in the district to be registered with local police.

John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association's legislative arm, said Pirro's remarks "highlight the need for Congress to pass H.R. 38, the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act." That bill, introduced last year by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), would allow anyone with a state-issued concealed carry license to carry a firearm in any other state.

"Law-abiding citizens' right to self-defense should not end simply because they crossed a state line or entered Washington, D.C.," Commerford said in a statement to POLITICO.

The backlash to Pirro’s comments comes as the Trump administration faces uproar from Second Amendment advocates for its rhetoric following the killing of U.S. citizen Alex Pretti by federal immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis.

Just days after the fatal shooting, President Donald Trump criticized Pretti for carrying a firearm, saying: “I don’t like that he had a gun.”

Other members of the administration also disparaged Pretti, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt contending that carrying a weapon raises “the assumption of risk” during interactions with law enforcement and FBI Director Kash Patel saying “you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.”

Those remarks triggered fury from Second Amendment groups like the NRA, which called federal prosecutor Bill Essayli’s response to the shooting “dangerous and wrong.” The rhetoric has also fueled concern that the administration could be harming the GOP’s chances of defending its slim majority in Congress in this fall’s midterm elections.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is investigating use of force by ICE agents, according to a letter sent to the watchdog by congressional Democrats.

The probe comes as the Trump administration faces intense scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown, which has at times turned violent in recent weeks, sparking concern from a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

The letter, sent Monday to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, cites the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month. The letter says the inspector general launched a review on Jan. 8 of the tactics undertaken by ICE and Customs and Border Protection, urging the watchdog to speed up the timeline of the probe.

“Given the urgency of this situation — with communities facing severe, and sometimes fatal, harm from ICE’s tactics on American streets every day — we request that your office conduct this review expeditiously and share any preliminary findings with Congress and the public on an expedited basis,” the Democrats wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by POLITICO.

Democratic Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey — who led the letter along with Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) — first requested the probe in June.

Thirty-six of their colleagues across the House and Senate signed on to the letter, which was first reported by The New York Times.

The inspector general’s office is conducting an “audit of ICE’s Processes for Investigating and Addressing Allegations of Excessive Use of Force,” per the office’s list of ongoing projects.

The probe seeks to “determine whether ICE investigates allegations of excessive use of force and holds personnel accountable in accordance with applicable Federal laws, DHS policies, and ICE directives.”

Spokespeople for the inspector general’s office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the probe.

The lawmakers asked the watchdog to prioritize its review in light of the fact that the office routinely misses its own goal of completing audits within 397 days, according to a January report from the Government Accountability Office.

The Trump administration has signaled a willingness to soften its approach to immigration enforcement in recent weeks, with Democrats threatening to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and withhold funding for the department over its aggressive tactics.

In a move seen widely as an attempt to tamp down tensions in Minnesota, the White House pulled Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino from the state and dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis last week.

Following meetings between Homan and Democratic leaders in the state, Noem announced on Monday that ICE and CBP officers in the city will begin wearing body cameras during immigration enforcement operations there — a key demand from congressional Democrats in their push for reforms of the agencies.

And White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — a central figure in the administration's immigration enforcement campaign — conceded that CBP agents may not have been following protocol during the fatal shooting of Pretti, which is under review by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and DHS.

Still, President Donald Trump has aimed to downplay the shift in strategy, rebuffing suggestions that his administration is retreating from its aggressive deportation operation last week and continuing to disparage Pretti.

Increasingly violent threats toward and harassment of public officials — from county clerks up to the president — are driving more and more of those figures out of their jobs, a particular concern among local election officials, who have struggled with attrition for years.

In the years since the 2020 election, roughly 50 percent of top local election officials across 11 western states have left their jobs since November 2020, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan organization that tracks election issues and supports campaign finance reforms.

The election administration world has been grappling with a significant brain drain since the one-two punch of the 2020 pandemic and threats arising from conspiracy theories surrounding that year’s election. But the new report — which focuses on election offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — is particularly concerning because it shows departures haven’t tapered off, marking a 10 percentage point uptick since the group’s 2023 report survey.

The new data on election officials comes at the same time as another report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue — shared first with POLITICO — found a more than 200 percent increase in violent rhetoric toward public officials when comparing Oct. 2021 to Sept. 2022 with Oct. 2024 to Sept. 2025.

Taken together, the two reports portend a potentially bleak future for an American democracy that counts on its engaged citizenry to do everything from count votes to make laws.

“There's a real problem here,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue CEO Sasha Havlicek told POLITICO, adding that violent rhetoric online is increasingly becoming normalized and accepted. “People feel emboldened to speak in certain ways because of the anonymity of online environments that perhaps wouldn't mirror the way that they behave in their daily lives.”

Election officials across the country are taking notice and are taking new levels of precaution to protect themselves and their staff.

“It definitely raises some concerns when people are using threatening and violent language and know where I live. And it just takes one, right?” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who recently faced doxxing and death threats after she paused undercover license plate requests for ICE agents in Maine, told POLITICO last week.

The threats are not limited to members of a particular party. In fact, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found in its report that “Republican leaders, particularly President [Donald] Trump, were disproportionately targeted,” by violent rhetoric and threats.

The July 2024 failed assassination attempt targeting Trump led to a rapid uptick in threats online, according to ISD’s report. And it hasn’t slowed much since.

Republicans have seen a 364 percent uptick in threats online in the time period ISD studied, a number that “far outpaced” the 124 percent increase for Democrats.

Despite repeated calls to tamp down violent rhetoric in the wake of events like Trump’s assassination attempt, there’s often an opposite effect, Havlicek said. “Instead of inspiring some sense of compassion or a deescalation, they do the opposite,” Havlicek said. “Those acts of violence in the real world really push much much more [online] activity in this violent direction, which is quite depressing.”

Taken together, the uptick in violent threats coupled with election officials leaving their posts is worrying elected officials.

“I'm always concerned when people feel like their personal safety is at risk, and when they can't stand to do a job that they want to do anymore because of circumstances outside of that job, that sucks,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, told POLITICO.

The turnover among election officials is especially high in competitive areas that are subject to the most scrutiny, per Issue One’s report.

Across the West, 80 percent “of counties with close margins in the 2020 presidential election have experienced turnover among their chief local election officials,” while just 40 percent of counties with a margin of 50 percent or more saw turnover.

It’s a problem election officials have long tried to quell. Many officials say that while the departure of longtime officials is concerning, there has been a next generation of workers willing to step up.

In Arizona, where all 15 of the state’s counties have experienced turnover from top election officials since 2020, according to Issue One’s report, Fontes said he is using a fellowship program to bring new blood into election administration.

“Instead of just kind of only being concerned, we're actually doing stuff about it,” he said.

A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.

The tense Texas Democratic Senate primary has been roiled by yet another online firestorm after an influencer accused state Rep. James Talarico of calling a former opponent a “mediocre Black man” — a claim he said was a “mischaracterization of a private conversation.”

The influencer, Morgan Thompson, who posts under the username @morga_tt on TikTok, posted the accusation in a video on Sunday in which she claimed that Talarico told her in a private conversation after a Jan. 12 town hall in Plano, Texas, that he had “signed up to run against a mediocre Black man, not a formidable, intelligent Black woman.” That reference was allegedly to former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who was in the Senate race until December, when he dropped out right before Rep. Jasmine Crockett joined. Both Allred and Crockett are Black; Talarico is white.

Talarico pushed back on Thompson’s description of their conversation.

“In my praise of Congresswoman Crockett, I described Congressman Allred’s method of campaigning as mediocre – but his life and service are not. I would never attack him on the basis of race,” Talarico said in the statement.

Thompson said in a video Monday that she has no recording of the conversation but laid out evidence that she had been in contact with Talarico’s campaign to arrange it, including a photo of her standing with Talarico at the event, along with multiple texts she says were exchanged with an unnamed campaign staffer to plan the interaction. She had endorsed Talarico but said she now supports Crockett.

In an interview with POLITICO before Talarico issued his statement, Thompson said she anticipated that not having a recording of the conversation with Talarico would raise skepticism of her account, but she still “felt like it was important enough to bring forward, given the nature of everything.” She declined to provide the name and contact information for that staffer so that POLITICO could verify their connection to the campaign.

The alleged exchange threatens to upend a primary in which polls show voters are sharply dividing along racial lines, with most Black voters supporting Crockett, and majorities of white and Latino voters supporting Talarico.

Allred fired back. “James, if you want to compliment Black women, just do it. Just do it. Don't do it while also tearing down a Black man,” he said in a video he posted to Instagram on Monday.

“When you make an accusation, you often have a bit of confession in it,” continued Allred, who is now running for Congress in the 33rd District against Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas). “Maybe you use the word mediocre because there was something creeping into your mind about yourself.”

Crockett, in a statement, said that by posting his response video, Allred “drew a line in the sand.”

“He made it clear that he did not take allegations of an attack on him as simply another day in the neighborhood, but more importantly, his post wasn’t about himself,” she said. “It was a moment that he decided to stand for all people who have been targeted and talked about in a demeaning way as our country continues to be divided.”

Thompson said in the video that she had been offered the chance to talk to Talarico because she was unhappy that Talarico’s campaign had sent out fundraising messages from Democratic strategist James Carville given Carville’s calls for Democrats to move away from “woke” politics. She had previously endorsed Talarico and said she worked with his campaign as part of its content creator outreach program but now supports Crockett.

It’s the latest online explosion related to the primary. Last month, the hosts of popular podcast “Las Culturistas” urged people not to send money to Crockett because she had a history of “making it too obviously about” herself, a comment from host Matt Rogers that cohost Bowen Yang agreed with. That some of her supporters said the remarks were racist and misogynist, setting off off a fierce debate about what type of Democratic candidate can do well in red states like Texas. The hosts later apologized.

A spokesperson for Allred, Sandhya Raghavan, said in a statement that his response to Talarico’s alleged remarks “speaks to a frustration that resonates far beyond this moment.”

“When a former NFL player, civil rights attorney, and former congressman can be dismissed as ‘mediocre,’ it reveals the impossible standards Black candidates are held to,” she said. “Colin refused to accept that disrespect in silence — and in doing so, he stood up for every Black professional who has had their qualifications unfairly dismissed.”