Politics

Democratic governors (and 2028 hopefuls) gather to chart path under a Trump administration

Published

2 years ago

December 9, 2024

BEVERLY HILLS, California — Still reeling from the party’s electoral losses last month, the country’s Democratic governors descended on a plush Beverly Hills hotel on Friday and Saturday for a series of closed-door meetings with donors, interest groups and advocacy organizations. Officially, the event was a time to chart a path forward under a Trump administration.

Unofficially, it also served as a preview of the next Democratic primary.

“You’re witnessing the kickoff to the 2028 presidential primary, live and in-person,” said one adviser to major Democratic Party donors, granted anonymity to speak candidly. He added: “This is the audition for the next president to a room full of donors, operatives, reporters, etc.”

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, emphasized that the meeting was focused on the near term: keeping New Jersey and flipping Virginia in 2025, and on the “huge contingent of governors races in ’26.”

“Trust me, we’re not thinking beyond ’26 at this point,” she said.

But it was hard to ignore the weekend’s guest list stacked with potential 2028 contenders, including Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tim Walz of Minnesota, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Roy Cooper of North Carolina. And for two days here, in this state that has long served as a bastion of Democratic politics, the Beverly Hilton was teeming with donors, strategists and lobbyists eager to land meetings with the rising stars.

Asked about the jockeying for 2028, Cooper told Blue Light News: “I’ll just say that there are a lot of great governors across this country who will make great leaders in the future.”

Democratic governors are preparing to thread a fine line between standing up to President-elect Donald Trump’s Republican trifecta in Washington and collaborating with the incoming administration.

Immediately following the election, some Democratic governors launched plans to “Trump-proof” their states, and in a memo released this week, Meghan Meehan-Draper, DGA’s executive director, wrote that Democratic governors would be the “Last Line of Defense” against the incoming GOP trifecta in the federal government.

Blue-state governors have been explicit that they intend to try to block some Trump policies — efforts that will also likely raise their own profiles. Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are leading an organization to “back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend upon” — and although the privately-funded group is non-partisan, the implications are clear.

“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker told reporters last month in a warning to the incoming administration.

In deep-blue New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James created an initiative to “address any policy and regulatory threats that may emerge from a Trump Administration.” In California, Newsom called a special session of the legislature to lay the legal groundwork for the state to lead its second Trump resistance.

And Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said, “We’ve already taken from the last rodeo considerable efforts that have been considerably successful to prevent him from abusing our state financially and taking away our resources [and] targeting us.”

“You can’t say we’re ‘Trump-proofed,’ because he still has some levers to pull, but we’ve already done that considerably,” Inslee added.

But with the election loss still smarting, the event implicitly raised the question of who might have the right formula for the next one. Inslee said the governors are “focused on the election cycle for governors right now.” Still, he acknowledged that “the day after every election is the beginning” of the next one.

While the positioning for governors in 2017 was more stridently opposing Trump, this time around they seem to be hedging their bets. Newsom has promised he would offer an “open hand, not a closed fist,” to the incoming administration and other governors signaled a willingness to work alongside Trump on some issues.

Whitmer, who said her state “played a role in supporting president Trump” also said she hoped she would find ways to work with the president-elect. She emphasized “I won’t abandon my values, but I’m going to work hard to find common ground everywhere I can.”

“I’ve got two more years, and my goal is do everything I can for the state,” Whitmer added.

Cooper — who will be replaced as North Carolina governor in January by Democrat Josh Stein — said it would be “really important” for his successor to work with the federal government to help the state recover from Hurricane Helene.

And many acknowledged that the demands of their job required them to pick up the phone when the Trump administration calls. “We will continue to do what we do, which is work with whoever we need to work with to get what we need for our states,” Kelly said.

Politics

The clock is ticking on an Iran talks. Here’s what still has to get done.

Published

2 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

As talks loom between the U.S. and Iran, negotiators face a simple and daunting task: turning a 14-point memorandum of understanding into a comprehensive nuclear deal within 60 days.

The ticking clock was set in motion on Thursday, according to Vice President JD Vance, following the signing of the MOU one day earlier. That signing brought an official end to military hostilities. What it did not do is resolve the conflict that caused them.

Some agreements took effect immediately upon signing: a cessation of hostilities, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade, the issuing of oil waivers and initial steps to unfreeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

But those were the easy parts.

What remains are the metaphorical landmines — the unresolved questions the MOU largely deferred rather than decided, each with the potential to blow up any prospect for a nuclear deal. On Thursday evening, the White House announced that Vice President JD Vance will not attend talks in Switzerland that had been planned for Friday — a decision that may well be read as a signal of just how far apart the two sides are. A White House spokesperson acknowledged in a statement that while the U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity, “the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.”

Here is what the negotiators will actually have to solve:

The future of the Strait of Hormuz

The MOU ensures safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz “with no charge for 60 days only,” and outsources the negotiating responsibility for ensuring long-term toll-free passage to Gulf allies — ceding responsibility for a key outstanding issue.

“We don’t ever want this to happen again — that’s not about tolling, that’s about ensuring that the Straits are never used as a choke point for the global economy ever again,” Vance said at the White House on Thursday. “If that’s not reflected in the final deal, there’s not going to be a final deal.”

Recognizing the Iranians will “assert their rights as aggressively as they can,” a senior U.S. official was confident Gulf states would preserve their own self-interests and press Iran to allow toll-free passage.

There’s also the matter of demining the waterway. Iran has 30 days for “removing the technical and military obstacles and demining,” but mine removal could take weeks or even months — potentially testing U.S. patience if ship traffic doesn’t recover quickly.

In a joint statement following this week’s G7 summit in France, leaders said a defensive initiative led by France and the UK could help by “protecting merchant vessels, reassuring commercial shipping operators, and supporting verification that all mines are removed.”

Sanctions and frozen assets

Senior U.S. officials have said sanctions relief for Iran would be tied to its performance — but haven’t yet indicated what those benchmarks will be.

“As they dial up their good behavior, we can dial up the economic relief,” Vance said in broad terms on Thursday at the White House. “If they dial down their good behavior, we can turn it off.”

The MOU commits the U.S. to ending all Iranian sanctions — including those imposed by the U.N. Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency — “in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal.” How quickly the U.S. is willing to provide this economic relief could become a sticking point.

Complicating matters further: whether lifting of sanctions would require congressional action, and how the State Department’s designation of Iran as a State Sponsor of Terrorism factors in.

Then there’s the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets. Though the Trump administration insists any release would be tied to Iran’s performance, the MOU’s own text undercuts that: Paragraph 13 says the process of releasing assets must begin before negotiations even start, handing Iran an upfront incentive rather than one to earn.

“It’s clearly a huge loophole and a potential for disagreement,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East advisor and negotiator for the State Department, calling the text’s language “destructive ambiguity.”

The Lebanon front

The MOU calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

“We expect Hezbollah is not going to be firing rockets and firing drones at the Israelis, and we also expect that the Israelis are not going to be going wild in Lebanon, right? Both sides have to honor their end of the deal,” Vance said at the White House on Thursday.

Yet Israel did not sign the aforementioned “deal.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said it’s “unnecessary” for Lebanon to have been included in an agreement between the U.S. and Iran, pouring cold water on the idea that Israel would cease its offensive against Hezbollah and occupation of southern Lebanon — even if Iran says that’s a dealbreaker for negotiations.

“This is something that we simply can’t live with,” Leiter told NPR on Tuesday. “We can’t have jihadi terrorists on our border. … We’re not going to withdraw from South Lebanon, and the mad men of Tehran have no business poking their nose into Lebanon.”

A U.S. official confirmed that U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and Lebanon will continue as planned next week at the State Department. Whether the Lebanon provision holds will depend on Iran keeping Hezbollah in check and Trump keeping Netanyahu in line.

Iran’s reconstruction

The MOU promises that within 60 days, the U.S. would work “with regional partners” to develop a plan guaranteeing at least $300 billion for Iran’s “reconstruction and economic development.”

Trump has insisted that there “is no 300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.” using taxpayer money. That may technically be true, but the U.S. has still committed to delivering that sum in the form of investment. That means convincing private corporations and Gulf allies — many of which are dealing with economic disruption and rebuilding costs after facing strikes from Iran — to invest in a country the Trump administration is still threatening to attack again if Iran reneges on its end of the deal.

Vance said there is a “great desire from the Arab world and from outside the Arab world to actually get involved in Iran if they behave properly.” Pressed by MS NOW whether private money would be included, Vance said he assumes countries like the United Arab Emirates would be part of the picture.

But Gulf leaders expressed concern to MS NOW about the agreement’s financial provisions that could strengthen Iran economically at a time when many Gulf states believe pressure should have been maintained.

Iran’s highly enriched uranium and nuclear program

For the duration of negotiations, Iran will “maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program,” per the MOU. What happens after that is the central outstanding question — the one that led to war in the first place.

The MOU provides no consensus on what to do with Iran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium, only an agreement to “resolve” the matter. It doesn’t distinguish between the roughly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium — material close to bomb-grade — and the 11 tons enriched to various levels above the 3.67% threshold set by the JCPOA, which Trump withdrew from during his first term.

A senior U.S. official said downblending the stockpile would be the minimum standard, with Washington pushing for “more than that” during negotiations. Vance alluded to “gentlemen’s agreements,” noting that Iran has “promised that they would allow inspectors in to destroy that highly enriched stockpile, and then, of course, it’s not usable anymore, you take it somewhere else.” Iran has not formally agreed to anything beyond a general promise to resolve the issue.

Whether Iran will be permitted to enrich in the future, and to what extent, remains an open question. The MOU commits the two countries to discussing “the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters,” promising a “satisfactory framework” related to Iran’s “nuclear needs” in a final deal.

Notably, the U.S. has already backed down from one of its previous red lines, dropping Trump’s earlier demand for zero enrichment forever in favor of allowing Iran to maintain a civilian nuclear program.

“We’re not bothered at all by the idea of civilian power plants in Iran,” a senior U.S. official said. “What we’re bothered by is the type of infrastructure that would allow them to jump from civilian power generation to nuclear weapons development. … We feel quite confident that if they meet their obligations under this agreement, they’re not going to have that infrastructure to build a nuclear weapon.”

A senior administration official insisted Iran has committed to dismantling its nuclear weapons program, including its nuclear site, noting that the countries would “figure out how to do that in the technical negotiations that will follow.” But abandoning its nuclear program will be a tough domestic sell for the Islamic Republic to make.

Inspections and implementation

Trump has repeatedly hammered the Obama-era JCPOA for not having a strong enough verification and inspections system. But his own MOU offers little clarity on what will replace it, only a vague commitment that “an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MOU and the future compliance of the final deal.”

Given that Iran blocked IAEA inspectors from accessing its nuclear facilities under the JCPOA, a stronger inspection system represents perhaps the most important potential U.S. win in final deal talks — if Washington can secure one.

“If we feel comfortable with the inspection and enforcement regime, that is when they will get some of the benefits of negotiation,” a senior administration official told reporters last week, without providing specifics of what that verification regime would entail nor confirming the role of the UN or IAEA.

Miller, the former State Department negotiator, compared the MOU to Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan — a document that pushed the conflict out of the headlines but left unsolved problems on the humanitarian, disarmament and reconstruction fronts.

“I see very little chance, without significant flexibility on the part of both sides, that 60 days is going to be enough” to bridge the “Grand Canyon-like gaps that separate Tehran and Washington,” Miller said.

And though the MOU’s 60-day deadline allows for extension “with mutual consent,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military is “prepared to restart if we need to” if Iran does not show progress in complying with U.S. demands.

Trump, speaking at the G7, was blunter still.

“If it doesn’t get done in 60 days, that’s all right,” Trump said. “We go back to bombing.”