Politics
At 9/11 ceremony, Giuliani and Mamdani … shake hands?
BEST FRENEMIES: Didn’t see this one coming.
At Friday’s ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani — he of the recent anti-Muslim tirade — shook hands with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the subject of that rant.
The former Republican mayor even offered prayers for Mamdani during their brief exchange, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who was granted anonymity to discuss it.
“Rudy told him he knows it’s a tough job and he’s praying for him,” the person told Playbook.
After attending a memorial service at a church near ground zero later in the day, Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, told reporters he and Giuliani “exchanged pleasantries” when asked what they discussed.
In another unexpected clasp, NBC News reported former Mayor Bill de Blasio was seen hugging and amicably chatting with his longtime tormentor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Republican Vice President JD Vance milled about among Democratic foes including former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. And a Giuliani aide publicly defended both Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from allegations they were laughing throughout the ceremony (they were not).
What does it all mean?
It seems — despite an unprecedented buildup of partisan rancor directed, for the most part, at the current New York City mayor ahead of the Lower Manhattan ceremony — that the gravity of the event and the desire to focus on the 2,983 victims was enough to bring beefing politicians back down to earth, for a few hours at least.
“This is a moment of common humanity and that’s what I saw on display from people who may say things in the moment. But at that moment, we were united,” Gov. Kathy Hochul told BLN.
New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks told Playbook he believes Giuliani was “following in the steps of Jesus” by offering prayers to Mamdani. “He asks us to pray for not only those we love and who we agree with, but to pray for everyone,” he said. “So I just really believe that it’s following in his footsteps, and prayer is a powerful sign of unity, and however that exchange was between them, hopefully it’s a great reflection of Christ.”
The idea that a sitting New York City mayor would skip a 9/11 commemoration ceremony is farfetched, and 74% of New York voters told a pollster recently the mayor should go. But Mamdani was asked to stay away anyhow for reasons ranging from his association with a Twitch streamer who once said “America deserved 9/11” to his own religion. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman urged first responders to turn their backs on the young democratic socialist.
At Friday’s ceremony, however, none of that happened. And in fact, the elected officials were mostly an afterthought.
Family members read out the names of every victim over the course of several hours in a ceremony interspersed with moments of silence to denote milestones in the terror attacks, including the moments when two commercial jets slammed into the twin towers.
All living presidents and mayors — with the exception of President Donald Trump and former Mayor Eric Adams — attended.
Throughout the proceedings, Mamdani and the crowd of officials largely observed the recitation in silence, with Mamdani staying after the event to speak and take photos with several families.
The political comity, however, gave way to an arch warning once the memorial was over.
In an interview following the event, Cuomo said the memorial service should, in part, serve as a reminder to remain vigilant for a younger generation of political leaders like Mamdani, the man who defeated him in last year’s hotly contested mayoral election.
“They should be thinking that this is not a page of history,” he said, pointing to the war in Iran and rising concerns over antisemitism. “This is a present-day threat. It wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. This could happen again. The circumstances for it happening again are much more real than they’ve been in a long time.”
And outside the World Trade Center memorial, a heated clash between two elements of the far-right was a stark reminder of the country’s messy and increasingly fractured political landscape, with white nationalist Jake Lang staging an anti-Muslim rally that was counter-protested by a man shouting “Allahu akbar” and men dressed as Nazis shouting antisemitic slogans. — Joe Anuta, Nick Reisman and Chris Sommerfeldt
From the Capitol
SCHOOL VAX: New York is seeing a spike in parents seeking exemptions from the state’s school vaccine mandates, with one of those challenges potentially headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A mother looking to preserve her unvaccinated child’s kindergarten enrollment at the Waverly School in Eastchester is challenging the state’s vaccination laws, which only allow students with an approved medical exemption to attend school without the required vaccines, according to court documents filed last month.
The Supreme Court declined to intervene in a Sept. 8 order, without offering any explanation. But Patricia Finn, the attorney representing the family, says the case will proceed at the federal trial court level, but the child won’t be allowed in school while the court deliberates. If they lose, they plan to petition to bring it before the Supreme Court.
The case represents a challenge to school immunization mandates that have been in place since 1996. The state Legislature eliminated religious exemptions after a deadly measles outbreak in an Orthodox Jewish community. Those mandates — which apply to all public, private and religious schools — require children to receive all age-appropriate required vaccinations in order to be admitted to or attend a school.
The state Education Department said it received more appeals requesting medical exemptions to required vaccinations during the 2025-26 school year than ever before. Both that agency and the state Health Department declined to provide data backing that claim, though.
However, the Health Department provided a dataset on the state’s school immunization survey. For the 2024-25 school year, 941 of 2,755 public schools outside New York City reported at least one student with a medical exemption, according to the data. Among private schools, 184 of 861 reported at least one student with a medical exemption.
Read more from Blue Light News Pro’s Madina Touré and Katelyn Cordero.
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ENDORSEMENT CORNER: Hochul picked up an endorsement today from Everytown for Gun Safety.
The gun safety group touted Hochul’s work “banning 3D-printed ghost guns, getting illegal guns off our streets, and driving gun violence to its lowest levels in recorded New York history.”
Hochul, who’s running for her second full term this year, has been leaning into messaging about safety and frequently touts drops in crime under her leadership. In 2022, crime was a pain point for New York Democrats up and down the ballot.
In its endorsement, Everytown chided Trump, as well as Hochul’s opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, for “cowering to the gun lobby.”
Blakeman has pushed back against a state law prohibiting guns in sensitive locations, including places of worship. He said he has “always supported the Second Amendment,” and in an appeal to Second Amendment supporters, vowed to “vigorously defend the rights of law-abiding New Yorkers.” Democrats have gone after him for implementing a provisional special deputy sheriff program made up of armed citizens.
But Blakeman has faced skepticism from gun-rights advocates for previously saying he supports “reasonable restrictions” on gun ownership.
While the NRA Political Victory Fund gave Hochul an F rating, it lists a question mark for Blakeman — along with his running mate, Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood, and GOP attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy. The group has not endorsed in any of New York’s statewide races. — Madison Fernandez
PAC IT UP: Major GOP groups are descending on the Hudson Valley to boost Republican Rep. Mike Lawler.
No Going Back PAC, a super PAC affiliated with the president’s political operation, has reserved a $4 million ad buy in the district, according to the ad tracker AdImpact. A separate group called Safety and Affordability PAC placed close to $3 million in ads. And that’s on top of close to $7 million from the Congressional Leadership Fund.
In addition, America PAC, the group backed by Elon Musk, has so far spent around $50,000 on calls and printing, according to Federal Election Commission records. Another group, America First Agriculture Action Inc., put in more than $300,000 for mail and digital advertising.
There hasn’t been significant outside spending in support of Democratic challenger Cait Conley yet.
Outside GOP spending is also ramping up in Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi’s Long Island district. CLF has placed $4 million in advertising, per AdImpact, and No Going Back PAC has put in more than $200,000 to support Suozzi’s GOP challenger, former state Assemblymember Mike LiPetri.
The substantial buys are a sign of which New York districts national Republicans are prioritizing this year. Last week, CLF pulled its reservations in support of state Sen. Peter Oberacker, who’s challenging Democratic Rep. Josh Riley upstate. — Madison Fernandez
IN OTHER NEWS
— MOTOR SKILLS: A version of Tesla’s autonomous Cybercabs — which have been modified to include a steering wheel and an option for a driver to intervene — have hit the streets of New York City. (Gothamist)
— ENDORSEMENT WATCH: On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Hochul secured the endorsements of three major firefighter unions. (City & State)
— BAR FLIGHT: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is among 1,000 lawyers suspended from practicing in New York. (Times Union)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
President Donald Trump’s decision to name hard-line loyalist Stephen Miller as his top aide cemented what many Republicans were already privately fearing: There will be no party-wide GOP reckoning with this week’s midterm bloodbath.
Instead, with Trump still in office for another two years, most have grown resigned to the reality that the president is going to lean in on a confrontational approach with Congress — and is not willing to change course.
Republicans on Capitol Hill and inside the Trump administration are questioning how and whether they can break with the president now after having green-lit much of his agenda, according to more than a dozen GOP lawmakers, senior aides and Trump officials interviewed for this story, some of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the party’s future.
Trump’s decision Friday to elevate Miller, the architect of his unpopular mass deportation policy and an advocate of fierce partisan confrontation, crystallized the frustration.
“There needs to be some self-reflection for Republicans,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) said in an interview about the midterm losses Friday morning. “There should be some heads rolling at the White House because we lost badly.”
Hours later, heads did roll. Trump announced Miller would replace Susie Wiles as his new chief of staff.
“Horrible decision,” Stutzman said in response.
One House Republican, when informed that Trump had named Miller his chief of staff, replied: “Please tell me you’re lying to me right now, just to get a reaction.”
The immediate aftermath of the election has sharpened the GOP’s core issue for the past decade: They are struggling to navigate the man who they reshaped their entire identity around, and whose record low approval with voters helped to fuel generational losses within the party.
The Iran war is another area where some Republicans are having regrets. Vice President JD Vance identified it as the main reason for the party’s defeat in his election post-mortem.
The problem with Vance’s assessment, one senior Hill Republican said, is, “we’ve been fucking voting for the war since March — because they told us to.”
Republicans and Trump advisers expect the president to wield massive influence in the 2028 GOP primaries, another reason many are staying quiet.
“Everyone is staring at each other and wondering who will speak up and blame Trump first,” said one GOP operative who worked on a battleground race Democrats won. They, like others in this article, were granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But we’ve been here before. I’m not holding my breath. He still controls the party and its primaries, at least for now.”
The White House responded to Blue Light News’s request for comment by referring to Trump’s praise for Miller on Friday. The RNC declined to comment.
Miller wrote on social media that he is “honored beyond words to serve as [Trump’s] White House Chief of Staff” and “the mission now is more clear than ever: Fight with all of our soul to support our President.”
How much lawmakers will distance themselves will be put to the test quickly: House Republicans will have an immediate opportunity to break with Trump and the war next week, when Rep. Thomas Massie said in an interview with Blue Light News he will trigger his articles of impeachment against Secretary Pete Hegseth. “There are a lot of questions about Hegseth,” House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said Friday.
Some senior Republicans are privately nudging Trump officials to ditch Hegseth before the vote, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations. The White House is sticking by Hegseth so far, however.
House Republicans will also have a chance to elect new leadership next week, including a new chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. But in a sign of what’s to come, none of the candidates — including Reps. Brian Jack (R-Ga.) and Rudy Yakym (R-Ind.) — nor any other GOP leadership candidates have publicly suggested doing more to break with Trump.
A small group of Republicans on Capitol Hill have privately declared, as of Tuesday night, that “MAGA is over,” and it’s time for a “reset,” as one House GOP aide put it — and yet it’s a sentiment no prominent Republican is willing to say publicly.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), one of the longest-serving members of the House, said he wasn’t going to “blame” others for Tuesday’s losses, which left him as the sole GOP incumbent survivor in his home state. Asked if Republicans were dragged down by the president, Smith replied: “I don’t want to answer that.”
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) went a step further. He declined to name Trump, but he said in an interview that he was tired of GOP leaders “ignoring” voters — a remarkable position for a party that Trump transformed into a working-class coalition.
“We had a lot of Republican leaders out there saying ‘everything’s fine.’ And you kind of had the boomer generation saying, ‘Well, yeah, back in my day, interest rates were 15%, so everything’s good,’” said Davidson, a 56-year-old former Army Ranger. “Well, you had a lot of hardworking young people who felt really ignored, and they they went to the polls and said, ‘Stop ignoring us.'”
Davidson said Republicans need to start discussing their problems quickly, or suffer the electoral consequences again.
“Bad news doesn’t get better with time. So avoiding talking about something doesn’t solve the problem,” he said. He said Vance “walked a pretty good line” by being “candid” in his election post-mortem Wednesday.
Vance and other potential 2028 presidential contenders like Sen. Ted Cruz don’t have much time to waste if they want to chart a new path away from Trump. Cruz issued his own post-mortem that included a call to focus more on voters’ economic concerns. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said “this midterm was a rebuke of the president and Congress.”
French Hill, the powerful Financial Services Committee Chair who narrowly survived a strong Democratic challenge in his own deep-red Arkansas seat Tuesday night, pointed to “President Trump’s unfavorability” which hit “races across the country.” Hill added: “He will be considered a lame duck, and that often has members of both political parties looking out at who will be the standard-bearers in the 2028 presidential election.”
Most others have remained silent in public.
One thing is certain: The utter devastation in deep-red seats is stirring deep anger among many Hill Republicans, who believe something needs to change.
It’s fueling private recriminations at Trump’s political operation that his advisers didn’t take early warnings seriously about the extent of the damage in states like North Carolina. Trump’s now-former chief of staff Susie Wiles will join his political operation, the president announced Friday.
Trump’s team has blamed “candidate quality” for the losses, instead of the president himself.
“Candidate quality matters. Unless you’re running for the U.S. Senate. They apparently don’t care if you would lose to a pinecone,” said a House Republican, referring to Trump’s hand-picked North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee declined to comment.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who leads the Senate campaign arm and saw Democrats flip a Senate seat in his own state, did not answer reporters’ questions on Thursday. The South Carolina Republican has a policy of not talking to reporters in the halls — and he didn’t start when Blue Light News and others asked why Republicans lost so badly.
Back in August, some Republicans in seats Trump won by double digits were already telling the White House to keep the president away from their districts. Others publicly broke from the White House on mass deportations and the Iran war.
NRCC Chair Richard Hudson had largely dismissed those concerns when Blue Light News asked him in a hallway interview on Sept. 1.
“Based on our polling, the president’s a net positive in every district. And I’ve been encouraging him to get out and do events and do rallies. I’m going to continue to do that,” Hudson said. “I think the more he talks about his record and incredible achievements he’s made over the last Congress, I think the better.”
Then, Hudson lost his own reelection bid. He is the first ever NRCC chair in history to be defeated in a general election.
Mia McCarthy, Andrew Howard and Samuel Benson contributed reporting.
Even the head of House Democrats’ top super PAC didn’t fully anticipate the size of their massive midterm wave.
Heading into Election Day, House Majority PAC president Mike Smith told Blue Light News Tuesday’s results, which have netted them a whopping 252 House seats with more yet to be called, was “on the very high end” of the group’s expectations.
The group spent at least $283 million on ads this cycle, per ad-tracking firm AdImpact, making them the largest Democratic spender in House races this cycle and a significant force behind the party’s big night.
As Democrats turn their attention to 2028, Smith remains optimistic the party can hold on to its majority.
His confidence stems in part from a projection that Democrats will respond to the affordability concerns that were the core of the party’s promise to voters.
If Democrats don’t make efforts to address the rising cost of living, “then it’s a totally different story,” Smith said.
Q: How were you feeling in the final days before Tuesday?
Obviously this would have been on the very high end of what we expected. Over the last three months, overall our polling has been pretty consistent. Our whole thought was, with the right environment, if we have the right message and the right types of candidates in, not just the 50-50 districts, but like deeper in the map, that we could put those seats in play and we could potentially win.
Going into Election Day, our whole feeling was there’s a clear path to like 235-plus [seats]. We were playing in districts that, if you were to rank them from like one to 435, some of those districts were like 250, 255, right? And I would throw IN-05, CO-03, KY-06, SC-01, some of the Florida races. SC-01 wasn’t ever going to be seat 225. That was always in the 240s and maybe even 250s. But we took a chance because we saw what the national environment looked like. We saw what the data was coming back in within these individual races. So I think we were optimistic. But to be totally honest, in our heads, you have to play in seat 255 to get to seat 240. You have to spread out the map. You have to force Republicans on their heels, and then you start piecing together how you get to the 240-245 range. Once the numbers started coming back, that was the best case scenario for us. Everything came together.
You guys cut reservations in some reach districts, only to go back up in the final few days. On the outside, it appeared like cutting spending in those reach districts was a bad sign. What went into those last-minute spending decisions?
A lot of the places we made reservations back in April, and then continued to add on to that over the course of the summer. Partners and allies in a bunch of different places took over our reservations. We tried to be smart by locking in the lowest possible rates in very expensive markets, [so that] even if HMP wasn’t the entity spending, we still had partners and allies that were taking over their reservations. In doing all that we saved about $130 million that we could reinvest.
The challenge with some of the races was by a week out, our money was spent. And in some of those districts, there weren’t any partners willing to step up and do it. Florida is a good example of that.
That’s where we just had to make a decision that there weren’t the resources there, and we had to leave the reservations on the table. Around that time, Mayor Bloomberg was like, “We can’t let these races get away from us. We need to do everything we can,” and that’s where we went back into some of those places.
Did you feel the need to adjust your messaging at all once MAGA Inc. and Elon Musk’s PAC joined CLF on the airwaves?
The short answer is no. The messaging was fairly consistent. Early on, our whole feeling was we need to reframe how voters perceive Democrats. When voters think about what Democrats are fighting for, the first thing we want them to think about is cost of living, the economy. At the same time, bringing to light Republican policies that are increasing the cost of living, or focus on things that are anything but that.
Over several months, we did a bunch of battleground research looking at ‘how does corruption tie into that,’ which culminated in what we would describe as the cost of Republican corruption, and how that is impacting your day to day and your cost of living. That’s what we went into Election Day with.
Overall, we ran, I don’t know, 1300 different types of ads, whether TV, digital, direct mail, or whatnot. 76% of those ads talked about the economy. 60% of those ads focused on corruption, because in so many of them, those two things were interlinked in voters’ minds.
Republicans continued to focus on the same thing. It was trying to paint Democrats as out of touch or extremists. And again, the theory of the case from the beginning was us focusing on economic concerns, especially when we figured out we could tie that corruption lens into it. That’s going to be more important to voters than folks talking about socialism or anything else.
Democrats were able to prevent Republicans from capitalizing on their redistricting gains. Are you worried about those gains bearing fruit in a less favorable environment, maybe as soon as 2028?
In a different environment, these races are going to come together in a much different way. So I do think it’s something that we need to be hyper-focused on. That said, I don’t think redistricting is going to go away.
I’m actually pretty hopeful that these huge shifts across every demographic group that we just saw, as long as Democrats continue to focus on the issue that matters most to voters.
If we don’t, then it’s a totally different story.
Are you saying the fate of Democrats’ House chances in 2028 to keep these seats is predicated on Congress passing something, even with the current president still in the White House, that addresses affordability issues?
I wouldn’t say passing. Soon-to-be Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, since we won, his message is that Democrats are focused on three things: costs, care and corruption.
When we come into power, we are going to be hyper-focused on fighting to bring down the cost of living for voters. I think Donald Trump is still this outsized X-factor in everything. He’s still the sitting president in the White House. So I wouldn’t say it’s like, “Oh we have to pass 300 bills. That’s the only way we’re going to be successful.” I think we just need to show voters that we are willing to get stuff done, and in instances where we need to, work across the aisle to pass stuff that’s going to be helpful to voters. I think if we do that, then I think we’re setting ourselves up for success going into ‘28, both with the White House and the House and the Senate. Donald Trump is still going to be this huge factor in all of this, and I don’t think voters are going to be like, “Democrats weren’t able to accomplish this,” and think that that was us. They’re going to continue blaming Donald Trump going into Election Day 2028.
To go back to redistricting, do you want Democrats in these states where they have newly-won trifectas to take up redistricting even if Republicans don’t push for it again?
I think Democrats need to do everything that it will take to win, and if that means that in states where we control the state house, the state senate, a governor’s race, we have an opportunity to redraw the map, I think we need to do it.
What were the seats Democrats flipped that surprised you the most?
I would say NJ-02 [Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s seat], It was a district where we had looked at it — we did not think that it was credibly possible, to be totally honest.
I’d say North Carolina as a whole, probably. We felt good about NC-01, NC-11 for a while…. [NRCC Chair and North Carolina Rep.] Richard Hudson, we looked at that district. There was a clear path to winning it. There just wasn’t money, at the end of the day. NC-13, NC-14, same thing. The makeup of the districts, they’re not bad targets for Democrats. It was just, how much can we spread resources out? But the total implosion in North Carolina by Republicans at the federal level, at the state level — that was probably one of the biggest surprises.
A version of this article first appeared in Blue Light News Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to Blue Light News Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
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