NORFOLK, Virginia — Barack Obama reprised his role as the Democrats’ closer-in-chief on Saturday, filling a void for his still leaderless party in the waning days of the closely watched gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey.

The former president’s stops — his first in Norfolk, home to the nation’s largest Naval installation and two historically Black colleges, and later in Newark, the Garden State’s most populous city where nearly half of residents are Black — are nods that Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominees in Virginia and New Jersey respectively, see these voters as key to securing victory in the Nov. 4 election.

But Obama’s reemergence is also a reminder of the rudderlessness of the Democratic Party, which is still reeling from stinging losses in 2024 that left them completely locked out of power in the federal government. Democrats are counting on decisive victories from Spanberger and Sherrill, both of whom are favored to win on Tuesday, to help springboard them into the critical midterm elections next year.

President Donald Trump made gains in both states last year, in part due to an improved performance among Black and Hispanic voters.

Democrats have worked to get these voters back on their side, with the bet that their affordability-focused messaging will demonstrate that Trump failed to deliver on his economic promises that drew so many of them in. But Republicans, too, have been courting these voters in an attempt to replicate Trump’s gains last year.

Obama underscored Spanberger and Sherrill’s focus on the economy as he sought to fire up voters.

“Abigail’s opponent does seem to care a lot about what Trump and his cronies are doing. She praised the Republican tax law that would raise the cost of health care and housing and energy in Virginia,” Obama said without mentioning Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, by name.

“It’s like everyday is Halloween, except it’s all tricks and not treats,” the former president said, drawing laughs from the crowd, before adding: “I did warn y’all.”

Obama also spoke to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, according to a person familiar with the call granted anonymity to confirm the private conversation, underscoring the former president’s involvement in trying to direct an adrift Democratic Party. The call was first reported by The New York Times.

Without a singular figure driving the Democratic Party, Democrats are searching for a message that will resonate with voters. These races will be the latest temperature check on the effectiveness of their rhetoric on the economy — and their blaming of Trump for voters’ unhappiness with it.

“President Obama is somebody who is widely respected across the state,” Sherrill told reporters Thursday. “He's a pragmatic leader who I think cares deeply about rights and freedoms, but also about driving down costs. And I think at this moment, having the architect of the Affordable Care Act — as now everybody here in New Jersey, because of President Trump, is set to see their premiums go up by 175 percent — is really telling.”

Spanberger and Sherrill have sought to tie their Republican opponents, Earle-Sears and Jack Ciattarelli, respectively, to Trump. The Democrats have positioned themselves as a bulwark to the president, whom they argue has made the economy worse since he returned to power — in part pointing to the ongoing government shutdown.

Thousands of federal workers are missing paychecks, and others are out of a job due to the Department of Government Efficiency-related firings earlier this year and more recently through Trump-backed job cuts since the shutdown began a month ago — a dynamic that is particularly acute in Virginia, which has a large number of federal workers.

“You deserve a governor who will work with Democrats and Republicans to grow our economy and not stand by while Virginia’s workforce is under attack,” Spanberger said Saturday.

Saturday brought in a new round of hardship: Millions were placed at risk of losing food assistance as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was forecast to run out of money. Sherrill said her campaign will be “collecting donations for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey as the Trump Administration is letting SNAP funding expire, forcing more families to rely on food banks for food assistance.”

Outgoing Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared an emergency, blaming the “Democrat Shutdown” for the funding fight, and the state is stepping in to help SNAP beneficiaries. New Jersey also declared a state of emergency and is “accelerating” funds to food banks, term-limited Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. Murphy on Friday said “the Trump Administration’s decision to suspend SNAP funding as the government shutdown drags on is both unethical and illegal.”

The same day, federal judges ordered the Trump administration to use emergency money to fund the program.

In New Jersey, which is expected to be a tighter race than Virginia, some Democrats have expressed concerns about Democrats regaining ground with Black voters. Sherrill — who called Black voters a “key part of the Democratic firewall” — is likely to win among this demographic, but as Ciattarelli also attempts to appeal to them, the margin could make a difference in the overall outcome.

Earle-Sears, who is Black, took Obama to task for his comments chastising Black men for not supporting then-presidential nominee Kamala Harris more aggressively, yet urging Black voters a year later to support Democratic nominees who are both white.

It was unclear prior to Obama’s remarks in Virginia whether he would weigh in on the controversy surrounding Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general.

He’s been at the center of scandal surrounding violence-themed text messages he sent in 2022 where he fantasized about shooting and killing a Republican lawmaker that came to light in the closing weeks of the race. It threw the party’s hope for flipping Virginia’s top statewide offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general into question and offered Republicans a rallying cry to hammer Spanberger, who condemned the messages but refused to pull her endorsement of Jones or ask him to drop out of the race.

But Jones appeared early in the rally and made no mention of the scandal that has engulfed his campaign. While other speakers mentioned Jones, including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), neither Obama nor Spanberger did.

While Obama’s return to the campaign trail gave many Democrats a jolt of excitement, his presence has been pilloried by Republicans who suggest both nominees are incapable of leading Democrats into the future and are the reason they’re reliant on “the face of the Democrat Party from a decade ago.”

“Sherrill and Spanberger both lack a cohesive forward-looking agenda to improve the lives of voters in their states, so it comes as no surprise that they're reliant on Democrat nostalgia despite its failed policies that let Americans down,” Courtney Alexander, communications director for the Republican Governors Association, said in a statement to POLITICO.

Obama has been a consistent presence for gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia in recent cycles, regularly serving as the headliner even after he left office.

He, along with a swarm of Democrats — many of whom have an eye on the 2028 presidential election — have come to rally for Spanberger and Sherril in the closing stretch of the campaign. But the party’s more recent standard-bearers, former President Joe Biden and Harris, have largely stayed off the campaign trail.

“There's no bigger voice, a more respected voice in our party, than Barack Obama,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said. “And so having him come in to rally the troops in the final few days, to thank the volunteers and the people who've been on the ground working so hard, and to really create, help remind folks of what's at stake in this election, it never hurts.”

Gergory Svirnovskiy, Adam Wren and Daniel Han contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump on Saturday went after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for her Somali heritage, urging her to leave the country in a social media post, reprising an attack he used several times throughout his time in office.

“She should go back!” he wrote on Truth Social, alongside a video of Omar speaking to a crowd. It was not immediately clear when the event was, but the video of Omar speaking has been circulating among right-leaning social media accounts for at least a couple weeks.

Omar was born in Somalia, fled a civil war in the country when she was 8, and arrived in the U.S. after spending four years in a Kenyan refugee camp in 1995. She became an American citizen in 2000.

Trump’s MAGA allies, including Laura Loomer, were quick to amplify his post across their social media channels.

This isn’t the first time in recent weeks that the president has suggested Omar should be removed from the country.

“You know I met the head of Somalia, did you know that?” he told reporters at the Oval Office in September. “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back. He said ‘I don’t want her.’”

Trump also called out Omar multiple times during his first term, in one instance accusing her of “telling us how to run our country” during the final months of the 2020 campaign.

Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the four-term lawmaker told a radio host Friday that she isn’t concerned by rhetoric around her immigration status.

“I have no worry, I don’t know how they’d take away my citizenship and like deport me,” she said on The Dean Obeidallah Show. “But I don’t even know like why that’s such a scary threat. Like I’m not the 8-year-old who escaped war anymore. I’m grown, my kids are grown. Like I could go live wherever I want if I wanted to. It’s a weird thing to wake up every single day to bring that into every single conversation, ‘we’re gonna deport Ilhan.’”

NORFOLK, Virginia — Jay Jones, the embattled Democratic nominee for attorney general in Virginia, made a surprise appearance at a major Democratic campaign rally Saturday aimed at revving up the party faithful ahead of the high-stakes statewide elections Tuesday.

Jones — whose years-old violent text messages triggered a nationwide GOP backlash and a steady drumbeat of calls for Democrats to push him off the ticket — opened the event, where headliner former President Barack Obama energized voters in support of Abigail Spanberger, the party’s gubernatorial nominee.

Speaking before Spanberger and Obama took the stage, Jones made no mention of the scandal that prompted Spanberger to distance herself from him. He instead focused his brief remarks on Jason Miyares, seeking to cast the incumbent GOP attorney general as a puppet for President Donald Trump.

“Trump has endorsed Jason. … He said ‘Jason will never let us down,’ and what that means is that he'll never let Donald Trump down,” Jones said, with the crowd at the Chartway Arena erupting in boos in response to the mention of the current president.

He cast his opponent as being a “willing enabler” of the president, who has wreaked havoc on Virginia residents, and claimed Trump “illegally fires workers [and] levies tariffs that destroy our regional economies, including the Port of Virginia.”

The overwhelmingly Democratic crowd received Jones warmly, with cheers and applause. He reminded them he grew up in this region, which he said will help Virginia send a message to Trump on Election Day.

Republicans, including Trump, have seized on the text messages from Jones, who in 2022 sent to a colleague messages fantasizing about shooting then-House Speaker of Virginia Todd Gilbert, a Republican. Jones has apologized but refused calls, including from his opponent Miyares, to end his bid for attorney general.

Spanberger criticized those text messages, but like most other prominent Democrats in the state and nationally, did not call on him to drop out.

Speakers who appeared after Jones, including Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, state Sen. Lamont Bagby and Sen. Tim Kaine all urged voters to vote for Jones on Tuesday.

“I met Jay Jones when he was 11 years old. I have known him for 25 years,” Kaine said, before laying into Trump, blaming him for the ongoing federal government shutdown and allowing funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to lapse. He pointed out that several states filed lawsuits against the administration — but not Virginia.

“Virginia didn't participate," he said, "because Jay's opponent wouldn't stand up and say ‘hungry people deserve the money in the contingency fund that was set for them.’ Jay would never do that.”

PASSAIC COUNTY, New Jersey — Both candidates in the New Jersey governor’s race have something to prove here in Passaic. It’s ground zero for the inroads President Donald Trump made with Latino voters — Trump won this plurality-Latino county last year, the first GOP presidential candidate to do so in decades — and it offers the first big litmus test of whether the Latino shift toward the GOP in 2024 will stick without Trump on the ballot.

That is, if Latino voters show up.

With just days left until Election Day, there are concerns on the ground that Democrat Mikie Sherrill’s and Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s campaigns have not done enough to reach the hyperlocal and swingy communities of Latinos in this northern pocket of New Jersey. Strategists and local leaders told POLITICO they’ve witnessed a lack of enthusiasm in Passaic County, where campaign messaging and activation around Latino voters is falling flat.

“It’s not as proactive as they needed to be,” said a Democratic strategist with roots in Passaic, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Around Passaic, there’s a resounding recognition among Latino leaders and some organizers that this bellwether bloc of voters may not vote this year. Latino voters, like other minority groups, historically have lower levels of engagement in off-year elections.

“I’m asking you, please, do not stay home,” Passaic Mayor Hector Lora told a crowd of Sherrill voters at a campaign rally in Paterson last Sunday. “New Jersey is watching Passaic County, and the nation is watching New Jersey,” Christine Tiseo, a local councilmember, said at the same rally.

The signs of lagging enthusiasm are evident on the ground. A trip up Main Avenue, which cuts through the city of Passaic heading into Clifton and Paterson, is devoid of campaign postings or early voting signs. The main library in Clifton, which serves as an early voting site, has been under construction for months and is adorned with large black-and-white signs signaling its temporary closure. Prospective early voters have to make their way around the back of the building to find the entrance available to them.

“How the hell do you expect these people to vote!” Jeannette Mestre, a Clifton voter, told POLITICO on the sidelines of Sherrill’s event.

The most noticeable sign of life from either campaign during the past week came by way of canvassers from Make the Road New Jersey, who’ve been in the city of Passaic for months campaigning for Sherrill and speaking to thousands of residents to remind them to vote. During their third round of door-knocking Thursday in Passaic — which Trump carried with 52 percent last year — two canvassers noted the lack of visibility for either campaign in the neighborhood.

“It’s like they’re literally trying to get people not to vote,” said Lori Gonzalez, a volunteer with Make the Road. She estimated that of 60 voters her group connects with, about 40 will stay home. Knocking on doors of midsize residential buildings in Passaic on Thursday in the pouring rain, a consistent trend emerged: The decided voters — usually younger, all who have already prepared to vote — said they’re going for Sherrill. But many were unsure, and most of the others said they weren’t planning to hit the polls.

That trend is also playing out across the area: Passaic County’s early voting numbers are lagging behind, with Democratic turnout at 13.4 percent — six points below the state average, with a similar lagging trend for mail-in ballots. It’s the manifestation of anxieties ruminating within Latino strategists and local politicians that the community just hasn’t been rallied or motivated enough to vote.

“We fought a good fight for the primary, but now I see an apathy,” a local Democratic leader said about Sherrill’s campaign. “I would have wished to have seen more done in the Latino communities — you know where people are feeling like, ‘Wow, they care.’ And I believe that they care, but I think the campaign — I don't think it's making sure. [Sherrill’s] just out there, just going from space to space, and it's a big state.”

Democrats’ theory of the case is that many voters in Latino strongholds like Passaic County had election fatigue in 2024; the right messaging didn’t reach them, so they chose Trump as a change agent who would help their pocketbooks or they simply stayed home. Winning Passaic back would not only chip away at Republicans’ gains, but also provide Democrats a battle-tested message to take into midterms.

Republicans are betting that their success with Latino voters last year wasn’t just a Trump effect, but rather a budding realignment of Latinos and working-class voters nationwide with whom they share values. Latinos are “waking up to the fact that the current policies have failed us, but also, the Democratic Party has been taking them for granted,” Ciattarelli told POLITICO on his tour bus after his rally in Clifton last Saturday.

Ciattarelli’s campaign has spotlighted him at practically every Latino parade in the state, connecting with Latino churches and small-business owners, said Kennith Gonzalez, who leads the campaign’s Hispanic outreach. Sherrill’s campaign has focused on connecting with local Latino leaders and groups, who can channel her message into their communities, campaign vice chair Patricia Campos-Medina said.

The problem is, with either approach, there’s people who fall through the cracks, according to Rafael Collazo, the executive director of the UnidosUS Action PAC, one of multiple groups supporting Sherrill and working to reach Latino voters across the state. “It’s hard to put a number on it, but a significant amount of Latino voters aren't really touched by those networks on either side,” he told POLITICO.

Despite the millions of dollars in investments in Spanish ads and media outreach, the strategists and local leaders said Sherrill’s campaign has not spent enough time effectively connecting with hyperlocal Latino communities. A Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly said Sherrill’s running a suburban campaign with Latinos: “It’s like they took the strategy that you apply to the suburbs and try to take it statewide.” That comes amid general concerns in the final weeks about the enthusiasm surrounding Sherrill’s campaign, as POLITICO has previously reported.

Immigration is also bubbling as a flashpoint. Of the Passaic residents who spoke with Playbook about the election, all named immigration — ICE raids and deportations, more specifically — as their chief concern. The county is around 42 percent Latino, but cities like Passaic are up to 70 percent Latino, immigrant-dominated areas with some of the biggest concentrations of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Peruvians anywhere in the U.S. Ciattarelli has toed a delicate line by aligning himself with MAGA while softening on some immigration issues, but recent polling suggests that Trump’s sway with Latino voters generally is dropping.

“It’s the first meaningful temperature check since the last election,” Carlos Odio, a Latino analyst and pollster with Equis Research, told POLITICO. “And it’s fitting that it be here, because this is where you saw the biggest shifts from ’20 to ’24.”

Canvassing continues as the final days approach. Ciattarelli’s campaign is knocking doors this weekend in Paterson and nearby Woodbridge, while Make the Road said it’ll keep going for Sherrill in Passaic through Tuesday. Sherrill was scheduled for a get-out-the-vote rally in Clifton on Saturday.

But the campaigns will find out if they walked the walk with Latino voters on Tuesday. Sherrill, for her part, is talking the talk, at least. In a high school gymnasium in Paterson last Sunday, surrounded by Latinos volunteering for her campaign, Sherrill made a heartfelt plea to the community.

“Necesito su voto, familia,” she told the crowd in Spanish: I need your vote.

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A former member of Congress, who pulled off a rare win for a Democrat in Utah, is drawing early support from an influential national political action committee as new political boundaries offer an unexpected chance to pick up a seat in the deep-red state.

Former Rep. Ben McAdams is being touted by Welcome PAC, which backs more moderate candidates over progressives, for what is expected to be a newly created district, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.

“Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. But it’s usually the best clue we’ve got,” says the fundraising email, which was expected to be distributed to Democrats nationwide on Friday. “Ben McAdams is a superstar.”

The email offers the early contours of a race that could help Democrats as they try to retake the House in the midterms — an effort that has been complicated by a nationwide redistricting war set in motion by President Donald Trump’s push to have Texas draw new congressional boundaries.

Democrats could pick up one or two seats under newly drawn lines in Utah under a redistricting fight that was underway before Trump pressured Texas and set off a wave of gerrymandering in states led by Republicans and Democrats, including Indiana and California.

The court-ordered map in Utah would provide Democrats with a somewhat improved chance of victory in the state: A Salt Lake Tribune analysis pegs the most competitive redrawn districts at R +6 and R+11, well below the 23+ point margins Democrats faced in federal races in 2024.

In 2018, McAdams unseated the late Rep. Mia Love, who won her previous election in the district by 12 points. In 2020, he lost by 1 percentage point to Republican Burgess Owens.

McAdams has not launched a campaign, but filed a statement of candidacy earlier this month with the FEC, allowing him to begin raising money. He is expected to announce a bid once a map is finalized, according to two people with direct knowledge of his thinking. The former lawmaker declined to comment.

“He’s clearly the strongest candidate Dems have had anywhere in nearly a decade,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of Welcome PAC. “We want to take this bigger platform we have and clearly say that he should run — and that people who are listening to our view of the party should show that encouragement by contributing to his campaign account.”

McAdams isn’t the only name in the mix. The slate of potential primary candidates includes 2024 Senate candidate Caroline Gleich, state Sens. Kathleen Riebe and Nate Blouin, and 2022 Senate candidate Kael Weston. None have formally entered the race.

Welcome PAC has been making waves in center-left politics since Trump's reelection. Their WelcomeFest conference in June featured swing state and district Democrats like Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Maine Rep. Jared Golden. Earlier this week, they issued an expansive report on how Democrats can rebuild after their 2024 failures.

“People read the report and are like, ‘What should we do?’ And it’s like ‘well, shit, here’s a clear example,’” Kerr told POLITICO, about supporting McAdams.

As a member of Congress, McAdams was part of the Blue Dogs — the PAC and coalition now helmed by Golden and Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, both Democrats serving in districts Trump won — and the New Democrats caucus. Before Congress, he was mayor of Salt Lake County.

Utah’s new congressional map is not yet final. In August, a district judge ruled the current map — which divides blue Salt Lake County between four districts — ignored the intention of a 2018 ballot initiative calling for an independent commission to draw the boundaries. The GOP-controlled state legislature drew a new map that favors Republicans — but still gives Democrats a better shot than the current map.

A district judge has until Nov. 10 to approve the new map for it to be in place for 2026.

“Right now, Democrats are focused on winning,” said a Utah Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak openly. “We realize this is a huge opportunity to get serious.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ripped the Heritage Foundation on Friday, as conservatives clash over the organization’s continued embrace of Tucker Carlson in the wake of his friendly interview this week with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

“Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” McConnell, the former Republican Senate majority leader, wrote in a post on X. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is…”

In the interview, Carlson said Republican supporters of Israel have been “seized by this brain virus.” And Fuentes told Carlson that “organized Jewry” poses the main obstacle to keeping the country together.

But Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation’s president, defended Carlson in a video posted to X Thursday, and even spoke out against deplatforming Fuentes while adding he disagrees with and abhors “things that Nick Fuentes says.”

The real enemy force, Roberts contended, is “the vile ideas of the left.”

McConnell, who has spent the past several months sinceleaving leadership working to safeguard his foreign policy and ideological worldviews within the Republican Party, panned the conservative think tank’s stance.

“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends,” he said.

The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But McConnell isn’t the only Republican senator taking aim at Carlson for his interview.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also went after the former Fox News host while speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit Thursday in Las Vegas. Cruz has long clashed with Carlson over Israel, including on an episode of Carlson’s podcast in July.

"If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil," said Cruz.

The finance director for Graham Platner’s Senate campaign announced his resignation on Friday, the latest in a series of personnel departures for the Maine hopeful’s high-profile bid that has been marred by controversies over old social media posts and his tattoo with Nazi connotations.

Ronald Holmes, who had served as Platner’s national finance director since August, announced in a post on LinkedIn that he’s leaving the operation. He follows campaign manager Kevin Brown, who stepped down after less than a week on the job citing family reasons, and political director Genevieve McDonald, who resigned in a fiery fashion earlier this month, saying she could not look past some of Platner’s previous Reddit posts, where he self-identified as a communist and downplayed sexual assault in the military.

“I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things,” said Holmes in his post on Friday. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign.”

Holmes did not immediately respond to messages Friday morning. His previous work included the campaigns of Michigan Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Swanson and Rep. Josh Riley.

Platner’s campaign was off to a hot fundraising start, raising more than $3.2 million in his first six weeks as a candidate, largely from small-dollar donors.

In a statement, a campaign spokesperson pointed to the campaign’s focus on those small donors and said fundraising efforts will continue.

“Ron helped the campaign reach out to big dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign's fundraising success has come largely from small dollar donors,” said the spokesperson. “Nearly 90 percent of what we've raised has come from small dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director.”

Platner, who went from an unknown oysterman to a high-profile Senate candidate endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in just a few weeks, apologized for his controversial Reddit posts and covered up his tattoo, saying he only learned after launching his campaign that it could be a Nazi symbol.

He has continued to campaign in recent weeks despite the controversies, holding town halls across the state. His campaign launched an ad this week urging voters to reject a voter-identification measure on Maine’s ballot this November.

Recent polls, though wildly different from one another, have shown Platner as a strong candidate in the Democratic primary that also includes Gov. Janet Mills — who is national Democrats’ preferred candidate in the race — along with a handful of other contenders including former congressional staffer Jordan Wood.

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In Wisconsin, Democrats are launching nearly 400 canvassing events this weekend focused on health care. A major liberal advocacy group, Protect Our Care, will push a six-figure digital campaign. Top Democratic governors, including Kentucky’s Andy Beshear and Laura Kelly of Kansas, are holding press calls to “to slam D.C. Republicans for causing Americans’ health care premiums to skyrocket.”

It adds up to a campaign of doomsday messaging aimed at voters’ concerns about health care as premium spikes are due to arrive.

“November 1st is a health care cliff for the American people, and I think it's also a political cliff for Republicans,” said Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care, a liberal nonprofit that has hosted a dozen town halls with House Democrats throughout the country on the impending premium increases. “More and more people are paying attention to it.”

In the coming days, Democrats will launch ad buys, hold town halls and convene media appearances to highlight the Nov. 1 date when Americans must choose to purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace with higher premiums or forgo it altogether, an attempt to ensure Republicans shoulder the blame for rising health care costs.

Some of the tactics, like the DNC holding a call with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are routine. But others are more national in scope, including Protect Our Care is deploying a digital search advertising campaign that targets people who are researching their ACA health care plans online with ads blaming Republicans. Those ads will run in House districts held by vulnerable Republicans in Arizona, Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania, among other places.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also has an upcoming ad scheduled to run in 35 competitive House districts starting this weekend. The four-figure digital buy shows Speaker Mike Johnson on vacation — a reference to the House being in recess for six weeks amid the looming insurance hikes.

In the days leading up to Nov. 1, Democratic governors have described how the hikes could devastate Americans. On Monday, outgoing Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers released the 2026 plan outlining rates for the state’s individual marketplace, which showed that many premiums for individuals and families will double. Some seniors will face an increase of more than $30,000 per year. Nationally, on average, out-of-pocket premium payments for subsidized ACA enrollees will be 114 percent higher without the tax credits, according to KFF, a health care research group.

“Republicans’ reckless decisions are causing prices on everything to go up,” Evers said in a statement. “Republicans need to end this chaos and stop working to make healthcare more expensive. It’s that simple.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill have refused to engage in health care negotiations with Democrats until the government reopens, and many within the GOP are resistant to extending the tax credits at all. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would meet “soon” with Democrats to discuss an appropriations agreement, which would amount to the most high-level meeting to end the shutdown that will soon enter its second month.

In Virginia and New Jersey, where voters will cast ballots next week in off-year bellwether elections, the Democratic candidates for governor have made combating rising costs central to their campaigns — tying that message to the looming ACA hikes. It's an early road test of a message the party will hammer leading up to the midterms: President Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington have made life more expensive.

Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, has highlighted how out-of-pocket costs could be two to more than five times higher for families who purchase insurance through the ACA exchange, and those hikes could force thousands of people to go uninsured. Spanberger this week toured a rural hospital in southwest Virginia that stands to feel the effects of the Trump administration’s tax law that slashes Medicaid.

In Wisconsin, a battleground state that backed Trump by under 1 point last year, Democrats are launching hundreds of canvassing operations focused on subsidy cuts, and are planning messaging billboards as well. This weekend, as Wisconsinites see tangible increases in their premiums, Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker said, “the objective reality is going to hit people in a way that you can't talking point your way out of, if you're the Republican Party.”

Wisconsin Republicans aren’t planning to spend money in response, however. State GOP Chair Brian Schimming says Democrats are going to hang themselves by tying the subsidy cuts to the shutdown.

“I think they're putting a massive, massive bet on not just the shutdown, but on getting people to think that the shutdown is … Republicans’ fault,” he said.

Natalie Fertig contributed to this report.

One Republican candidate in South Carolina’s open gubernatorial primary said Donald Trump would “decide my fate.” Another pledged to send the state’s National Guard troops wherever Trump wants. A third accompanied the then-presidential candidate to his 2024 criminal trial in Manhattan.

In recent interviews with POLITICO, three contenders for the seat being vacated by Gov. Henry McMaster gushed over Trump’s coveted endorsement and described some of their early efforts to secure it as the president plans to attend a fundraiser in the state for the reelection of his longtime ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham.

The winner of next June’s Republican primary is all but guaranteed to become deep-red South Carolina’s next executive. The candidates include the state’s lieutenant governor, attorney general and two members of its congressional delegation — all of whom are thirsting for the president’s support.

A new Winthrop University poll — the first major independent survey of the primary — found Rep. Nancy Mace and Lt. Gov. Pam Evette led the field in a statistical tie at 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Rep. Ralph Norman and Attorney General Alan Wilson followed with 8 percent each.

Though early favorites have started to emerge, the race remains wide open without Trump’s nod.

“He’ll get to decide my fate. He is a kingmaker, and I hope in this case he will be a queenmaker,” said Mace, the third-term member of Congress known for being outspoken on conservative cable news and social media.

South Carolina has a long history of fierce loyalty to Trump. McMaster became the first statewide elected official to endorse the president’s nascent 2016 campaign, and Graham is one of his closest advisers on Capitol Hill and friends on the putting green. Democrats haven’t won the state in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976.

But so far, Trump has stayed out of the race, forcing the contenders to try to define themselves and their candidacies without input from someone who has dominated the party for a decade and remade it in his image. In that way, the race — taking place during a pivotal midterm cycle — mirrors the challenge awaiting the Republican Party, which must begin to grapple with a future without Trump, who is in his final term.

For now, the candidates aren’t willing to explore that future.

“Donald Trump is the gold standard. He casts a very long shadow over state politics here in South Carolina, especially in the Republican primary,” said Wilson. “Anyone who says they don’t want the president’s endorsement is crazy.”

From his perch in Columbia, Wilson has filed nearly 20 briefs across the federal judiciary in support of Trump administration initiatives like federalizing the National Guard or enforcing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, according to a POLITICO analysis. His campaign website features a “Trump Tough” section, which includes a slideshow of selfies and step-and-repeat pictures with the president.

Trump’s only attention to the race so far was a captionless post on Truth Social in mid-August showing the results of a survey that put Mace atop of the crowded field — a poll that the congresswoman shared with the president, according to campaign spokesperson Piper Gifford.

“I absolutely communicate with the White House on this race and provide data and information to them and to those who will be ultimately making the decision,” Mace said in the recent interview.

Wilson has also been in touch with “high level members” of the White House about his candidacy, but has yet to broach the race directly with Trump. “They are aware of my campaign. They are aware of what I have done as attorney general. They are aware that I have defended the president's agenda, that I have defended the president,” he said.

Evette entered the race in mid-July. Though she served two terms alongside McMaster, her foray into gubernatorial contention will be her first time running for elected office on her own ticket. Asked about any behind-the-scenes conversations with the White House seeking support, the state’s second-in-command demurred, while reiterating her loyalty to Trump at his political nadir.

“In January of ‘23, President Trump came to South Carolina, and he was looking for friends,” Evette said, recalling Trump’s brief time in the political wilderness following his 2020 loss and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “Out of all the people that are in this race, I was the only one that showed up for him, stood shoulder to shoulder with him when there were no polls to say that he was going to win.”

She recalled national consultants warning her, “‘You have a bright future, you're killing yourself. Like, why are you doing this? He's going to get indicted.’ And I was like, well, loyalty matters.”

Loyalty to Trump might determine his endorsement, and the candidates are willing to leverage that litmus test against one another.

Unlike Evette, Mace publicly rebuked the president following the attack on the Capitol but has since returned to his side as a faithful ally on Capitol Hill.

Norman might have the hardest case to make in seeking Trump’s endorsement.

As a member of Congress’ hard-right Freedom Caucus, Norman’s deficit-hawk style has at times positioned him against some White House-backed legislation that the group criticised for expanding the national debt. Perhaps worse for his fate: endorsing South Carolina’s Nikki Haley during the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

“Ralph Norman has the best record of voting with Trump of any candidate and is proud to work with him in Congress. He'd welcome the President's endorsement but knows that the President has other friends in this race and he respects that,” Norman spokesperson Evan Newman said in a statement.

Speaking with reporters after a party fundraising event in Columbia earlier this summer, Graham said he told the president to “wait and see” before issuing an endorsement in the governor’s race. South Carolina is at least somewhat on the president’s mind, though. The president will take his first in-person dip into the 2026 midterms when he attends a fundraiser that in part is billed to Graham’s own reelection campaign, POLITICO first reported.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s conversations around a possible endorsement or whether he is communicating with any of the candidates. The lack of endorsement in South Carolina isn’t indicative of a larger trend, though. The president has already thrown his support behind Rep. Byron Donalds to succeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis next year, and his former rival-turned-ally Vivek Ramaswamy got the coveted endorsement not long after his campaign launch in February.

Lacking a race-changing boost from the president, the candidates have touted their own fundraising as evidence of grassroots support and the campaign strength. By those metrics, no runaway favorite has yet to emerge.

The four contenders each reported raising over a million dollars since starting their campaigns, according to financial reports filed with the South Carolina Elections Commission. Evette and Norman led the pack with $1.4 and $1.3 million respectively, though both also gave their own campaigns six-figure sums.

Wilson, who launched his campaign first, has just under $1.3 million. According to a memo released by his campaign, about one-fifth of that haul includes a six-figure transfer from his state attorney general campaign account, with “still more transfers on the way.”

“They believed in him to be Attorney General and now want him to be Governor,” campaign finance chair Barry Wynn wrote.

Mace’s fundraising shows her slightly trailing her competitors, with $1.06 million raised, but other indicators bode well for her campaign. In addition to the new Winthrop poll showing her with a slight lead, she pulled in over 18,500 individual donations, exponentially more than her rivals.

In addition to the candidates’ agreement on the eminence of a presidential endorsement, the emerging issues separating them are decidedly local.

They’re aligned on the perennial sticking points that are likely to define the race: lowering taxes, and specifically eliminating the state’s income tax, and fixing the state’s aging infrastructure as it buckles under population growth.

Judicial reform has also emerged as a salient issue, with South Carolina and Virginia being the only states in the country where judges are selected by a commission and approved solely by a legislative vote. Neither the governor nor voters have a say in who serves on the local bench.

“Many of these folks have cases before these judges and then many of these attorneys fund the attorney generals and the solicitors when they're running for office. Everybody gets paid, and nobody goes to jail,” Mace said.

The candidates don’t seem to agree on how to implement this one: as the state’s top prosecutor, Wilson helped push some recent changes through the state legislature that allowed the governor to appoint one-third of the seats on a selection committee that took effect this year.

“I believe that the governor should have all of the appointments on the [Judicial Merit Selection Committee],” Wilson said, while expressing openness to pushing a constitutional amendment that would embrace the federal advise-and-consent model.

Evette, banking on the relationship she forged with the state legislature alongside McMaster, hopes to move directly to amending the state constitution to have the state mirror federal judicial appointments.

Norman is the only candidate to call for direct election of judges in the state.

McMaster, who has focused on business development in the relatively small state, is preparing to leave his two terms in Columbia with a 46-percent approval rating, matching Trump at the top of the public figures included in the Winthrop University survey.

McMaster has so far demurred on whether he’ll endorse any of his potential successors.

Speaking to reporters recently, he said, “Elections will come and go, and endorsements will be made whenever they’re made.”

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

Jasmine Crockett on Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Her Own Party | The Conversation

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Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts is standing by Tucker Carlson after the conservative podcaster’s friendly interview with Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes drew condemnation from within a GOP grappling with a series of antisemitic incidents.

Roberts, in a video posted to X Thursday, denounced the “venomous coalition” that has criticized Carlson and said “their attempt to cancel him will fail,” though he didn’t specifically name anyone. He said Carlson remains a “close friend” of the highly influential conservative group and “always will be.”

Roberts added that “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer, either.”

Roberts, whose group launched “Project Esther” to combat antisemitism, also said “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned.”

The Heritage Foundation leader’s public support of Carlson comes as the former Fox News host faces backlash from conservatives over an inflammatory interview with Fuentes that was laced with antisemitism. Carlson said GOP supporters of Israel — including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — suffer from a “brain virus,” while Fuentes said the “big challenge” to unifying the country was “organized Jewry.”

Huckabee, who is set to speak at this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership conference in Las Vegas, dismissed the criticism.

“Wasn’t aware that Tucker despises me. I do get that a lot from people not familiar with the Bible or history. Somehow I will survive this animosity,” Huckabee posted on X.

Cruz defended Huckabee in his own post. The former governor “is a pastor and a patriot who loves America, loves Israel, and loves Jesus. I’m proud to be in his company,” Cruz said.

Roberts and Carlson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Fuentes could not be reached for comment.

The furor over the Fuentes sitdown comes as Republicans wrestle with how to respond to a string of antisemitic incidents on the right. POLITICO first reported two weeks ago on an explosive Telegram group chat in which leaders of various Young Republican groups joked about the Holocaust and lauded Adolf Hitler. A day later, a staffer for Rep. Dave Taylor’s (R-Ohio) joined a virtual meeting with a flag featuring a Nazi symbol visible behind him.

And last week, POLITICO reported on another group chat in which Paul Ingrassia, then Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel at the Justice Department, claimed he has “a Nazi streak.” Ingrassia previously appeared at a rally for Fuentes.

Several Young Republican chapters were dissolved and participants in the group chat were fired or resigned from their jobs or public office. Capitol police investigated the flag in Taylor’s office. Ingrassia withdrew his nomination days later amid opposition from within the Senate GOP.

The incidents have broadly divided the GOP. Cruz recently decried what he called “antisemitism rising on the right in a way I have never seen…in my entire life.” Some prominent GOP officials swiftly denounced the racist texts in the Young Republicans group.

But others have followed Vice President JD Vance’s lead in attempting to divert attention onto Democrats as one of their candidates, Virginia Attorney General nominee Jay Jones, became engulfed in his own violence-laced texting scandal. And that was before Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol forced Democrats to confront antisemitism within their party.

Samuel Benson contributed to this report.

Will Rep. Jasmine Crockett run for senate?

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