Politics
The 6 most urgent policy questions we have for America’s governors
Governors are scrambling to figure out the most effective way to respond to the seismic changes unleashed in the opening weeks of the Trump administration.
The basic calculus is clear: Democrats are searching for ways to thwart the White House’s most sweeping actions, while Republicans are desperate to show they’re fully on board with the MAGA agenda.
But beneath that crude dynamic, the deliberations happening in state capitals are far more nuanced and politically fraught.
Democrats are wary of simply mounting a scorched-earth resistance to President Donald Trump’s policies given the GOP’s sweeping victories on Election Day. That’s especially true on immigration, where the president’s hard-line tactics have resonated even with voters in deep blue swaths of the country.
Republicans, meanwhile, must navigate their own political tightrope in responding to the administration’s efforts to slash federal spending. That’s particularly tricky with regards to the massive packages enacted during the Biden administration that Trump has vowed to unwind — but that have disproportionately benefited red states.
These calculations are shifting on a daily basis — with legal fights creating even more uncertainty — as state executives face the toughest budget conditions since before the pandemic led to huge pots of federal cash swelling state coffers. Governors’ ability to traverse this choppy terrain will play a big role in determining which of them emerge as national political figures heading into 2028.
As the relationship between the federal government and state capitals gets upended, Blue Light News on Thursday is convening six state leaders for its 2025 Governors Summit, a series of one-on-one interviews on the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting in Washington.
The gathering will feature some of the country’s most influential state executives answering questions from some of Blue Light News’s top reporters and editors. The lineup includes Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Republican Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma. The program starts at 8 a.m. EST.
To frame those conversations, we’ve assembled a list of the most urgent political and policy questions governors — and, by extension, the country — face in 2025.
1. How should Democratic governors, with an eye on 2028, work with Trump — or not?
It’s a raging debate among Democrats in Washington and across the country: how much to cooperate with Trump — and how much to resist?
For a party still sorting through the wreckage of its 2024 losses, it’s still an open question. But for Democratic governors, many of whom have an eye on 2028, it’s an even more urgent political balancing act. They’re under pressure from the party’s progressive base to resist Trump at every turn, while also offering a positive vision for the future that’s not centered exclusively on attacking the president.
At the same time, these Democratic governors must find ways to work with Trump when it comes to federal spending, especially after natural disasters. Look no further than California Gov. Gavin Newsom greeting Trump on the tarmac after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires last month.
So, how do they walk that political tightrope?
This isn’t limited to the Democratic governors. Both parties are facing open presidential primaries in 2028, so GOP governors may be looking for their own ways of standing out. Right now, however, there’s little evidence that Republicans want to put distance between themselves and Trump. For example, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp recently told Blue Light News that the government “can stand a little right-sizing,” when asked about 1,300 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees, based in Atlanta, who were fired.
But how long does that line hold? (Elena Schneider)
2. What role, if any, do governors have to play in navigating a new era of trade war?
Trump’s tariff threats and protectionist ideology have pushed some of America’s closest trading relationships to the brink — and disrupted state economies in the process. Trump’s crackdown on trade with Canada, alone, has cast a shadow over the states: Michigan leaders fear layoffs in the auto sector, New York’s power supply could be imperiled, and Beshear of Kentucky has warned that Canadian retaliation could damage the liquor industry.
So, what is the responsibility of a governor in this moment? How much can a state leader work around Trump’s trade policies — or brace their state’s economy for impact? Should governors be building bridges to foreign countries, even at the cost of undermining federal policy? Or appealing directly to the White House for help, even at the risk of angering Trump or crossing their own party?
During the first Trump administration, governors in both parties stepped up their international travel and economic development efforts, effectively launching a new, sub-federal form of diplomacy aimed at offsetting protectionism in the White House. But Trump is moving faster and more aggressively with his policies this time, with the confidence of a more emphatic electoral mandate. Can governors keep up? (Alex Burns)
3. How should governors navigate abortion issues that stretch across state lines?
The fall of Roe v. Wade was supposed to send abortion back to the states. But more than two years later, so many cross-border conflicts are flaring up that assertions from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and Trump that each state should be allowed to decide its own policies are being strained to the breaking point.
Louisiana and Texas are attempting to prosecute a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine to patients in those states. Idaho and Tennessee have vowed to go after anyone who assists a minor in obtaining an abortion out-of-state. Idaho, Kansas and Missouri are also arguing in a Texas court that federal rules allowing abortion pills to be prescribed online and shipped by mail violate their sovereignty. And Alabama medical groups and activists are locked in a legal battle with their attorney general over what information, if any, they can provide to patients about terminating a pregnancy outside the state.
The nation has been a patchwork for abortion access for decades, but those divisions are only getting deeper, and neither side in the abortion war is satisfied with the current situation.
How much federalism and state-level experimentation should be allowed in the abortion space, and what baseline protections should be guaranteed nationwide by Washington? How concerned are governors that policies restricting the movement of people or medications across state lines could have repercussions beyond abortion? With the Trump administration rolling back its enforcement of the FACE Act, the 1994 federal law criminalizing the obstruction of abortion clinics, will governors push for state-level protections? (Alice Miranda Ollstein)
4. How will states cooperate with — or attempt to thwart — Trump’s immigration policies?
Failure to pass sweeping immigration changes in polarized Washington has led to state governments taking up their own policies. Blue state governors, including New York’s Kathy Hochul, face federal lawsuits over allowing undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses, while red state governors dispatched National Guard troops to the southern border during the Biden administration.
But Trump’s November victory and subsequent push to carry out an aggressive deportation policy has scrambled traditional alliances.
Stitt, the Oklahoma Republican, blocked his state’s top education official from collecting the immigration status of public school children. Democrats, including Hochul and Polis of Colorado, are supportive of deporting undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes.
And the Trump Justice Department’s decision to drop New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case, as he aligns himself with the administration’s immigration czar, has intensified calls from fellow Democrats for him to step down. The Adams saga highlights the extraordinary steps Trump is willing to take to push local and state governments to enact his immigration plans.
What resources are governors willing to provide Trump to potentially deport millions of people? What will be the impact on state economies and employment? How will crucial, Republican-leaning sectors like agriculture absorb the loss of workers? (Nick Reisman)
5. As Trump downsizes Washington, do Republican governors have a line he can’t cross?
Trump’s slashing of the federal government at the hand of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency is bound to have immediate trickle-down effects on the states, which heavily rely on federal funding to keep the lights on and federal employees to provide critical services and expertise.
State and federal government functions are so closely entwined that a shuttering of federal agencies stands to transform the daily lives of Americans, from where they go to school to what food gets put on the table.
The Trump administration has already laid off thousands of federal workers across agencies, from the Education Department to the Forest Service to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The cuts are expected to escalate in coming weeks and months as Musk and his allies work with surgical precision to downsize government.
Therefore, the question for GOP governors, whose enthusiasm for DOGE’s mission has prompted some to create their own copycats, is: Can DOGE go too far? What would it take for them to stand up for their state’s economic interests and demand that DOGE back off? For Democratic governors, in the absence of congressional pushback to Musk, how do they intend to fight a dramatic reshaping of Washington?
6. What role should governors play at the dawn of artificial intelligence in state government?
Lawmakers have spent the last few years trying to understand the revolutionary implications of artificial intelligence systems while developing guidance on state government use. They still have a long way to go.
What they’ve discovered so far is that there is great promise, many risks and no easy answers. While AI has the potential to transform government operations across the state agency spectrum, the perils are equally eye-opening. For all the efficiencies to be gained in the delivery of services — in critical areas such as education, health care, law enforcement and transportation — there is also the prospect of privacy violations and the inadvertent incorporation of bias or discrimination into algorithms. Recent elections, which have been buffeted by deceptive, AI-generated content, are already offering many officeholders an all-too-personal glimpse into some of the darker applications of artificial intelligence.
What role should governors play in this pivotal moment — the dawn of artificial intelligence in state government? What responsibility do they have to ensure ethical principles are being developed and ethical practices are being followed? How can governors ensure that the government datasets powering this revolution are reliable and unbiased? What steps are being taken to guard against unforeseen consequences?
All of these considerations must be balanced against current fiscal and budgetary constraints, especially the Trump administration’s efforts to slash federal spending. But what price do you put on the potential leap forward in government efficiency, or on the vast opportunities for economic development that will flow from the adoption of AI technologies?
Decisions made today will echo for decades to come. (Charlie Mahtesian)
The Clyburn test
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Abdul El-Sayed ran well behind other Michigan Democrats in places with more Jewish voters, according to a detailed Blue Light News analysis of precinct-level results.
Statewide, the progressive senator-elect only ran two points behind Democratic Gov.-elect Jocelyn Benson, getting 52.5% of the vote compared to her 54.5%. But the gap was much larger in heavily Jewish communities: In Huntington Woods, a Detroit suburb that is roughly two-thirds Jewish, El-Sayed ran nearly 15 points behind Benson, getting 65.3% of the vote compared to Benson’s 80%.
In West Bloomfield, the site of the March synagogue attack that shook the Senate primary and a town where roughly a quarter of residents are Jewish, El-Sayed ran 8.8 points behind Benson.
El-Sayed faced blowback from some Jewish Democrats during his campaign, particularly over his calls to end U.S. military support to Israel and his remarks after the synagogue attack that “hurt people hurt people,” for which he later apologized.
El-Sayed, who will be the first Muslim senator in U.S. history, told Blue Light News on Wednesday that he hoped he could “earn support” from Jewish voters who hadn’t backed him in this election.
“One of the big issues of disagreement that kept showing up when it came to the Jewish community was my position on Israel,” El-Sayed said. “I’m not going to change my position, but …I intend to lead on all the issues that we agree on — whether it’s the right to a union or the right to health care, clean air, clean water, or religious pluralism, and respect for the Constitution — and I hope that over time I can earn [their] support on those issues.”
El-Sayed had worked to make inroads with Jewish voters over the course of his campaign, pledging to stand up to antisemitism and for Jewish safety. Still, some Jewish leaders and activists in the state urged voters to blank their ballots in the Senate race, or back Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers.
His former Democratic primary rival, Rep. Haley Stevens, also switched her endorsement from El-Sayed to Rogers days before the election, citing concerns over antisemitism and the Democrat and his allies’ views and rhetoric around Israel. She pointed to an ad put out by a prominent El-Sayed supporter tying high grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel, which El-Sayed and his campaign distanced themselves from.
Jewish voters, who make up roughly 1.4% of the Michigan electorate, have historically backed Democrats by large margins. But disagreements over support for Israel and how the party should respond to rising antisemitism are testing that voting bloc — both in Michigan and across the country.
A poll of Jewish early voters in the state found that a majority still backed El-Sayed, but roughly one in four who had supported Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024 switched to back Rogers.
With Michigan in Democrats’ early primary window for 2028, El-Sayed said his statewide win showed voters were aligned with his positioning on Israel — and that he hopes the next presidential nominee takes note.
“If you want to be where the voters are, if you want to be on the side of peace and on the side of justice and transparency, I believe that that is around holding Israel accountable to its war crimes and on making sure our tax dollars get used to do good things here rather than bad things somewhere else,” he said.
In a post-election memo, El-Sayed’s campaign touted an outside analysis finding that he only ran slightly behind Slotkin’s 2024 performance in predominantly Jewish precincts. The memo also noted he was outspent heavily in both the primary and general elections, including by “MAGA billionaires, AIPAC, Elon Musk, and corporate interests determined to elect candidates who would defend the status quo.”
But he won in a blue wave while Slotkin, who is Jewish, overcame a tough year. El-Sayed’s margins were far better than Slotkin’s numbers across nearly all of the state, suggesting Jewish voters moved in the opposite direction of most Michiganders.
On the other hand, El-Sayed particularly surged in areas with more Muslim voters, who make up roughly 2.4% of Michigan’s electorate. In Dearborn, for example, he won 82.5% of the vote compared to 78.7% for Benson. Two years ago, Slotkin won 41.4% in the city while former Vice President Kamala Harris received just 36.3% of the vote.
Lansing Mayor Andy Schor, a Jewish Democrat who supported Stevens in the primary and did not endorse El-Sayed, said he was unsurprised by that split screen. He expressed hope about El-Sayed’s relationship with the Jewish community going forward, but also said Jewish leaders should continue to raise their concerns to the incoming senator.
“Everybody has to keep talking to him. His views aren’t going to change, and we know what they are,” Schor said. But, “I hope he’s open to hearing the concerns of some of his constituents.”
Nonnegotiable Michigan, a group of Jewish activists that pushed El-Sayed on issues of Jewish safety and Israel, also said in a postelection statement that it was “prepared to work with” El-Sayed “even as we continue to hold elected leaders accountable when antisemitism enters our politics or political discourse.”
El-Sayed made clear he has no plans to change his views on Israel, but said he will be straight with voters — and that he’ll “show up for you when you need me” regardless of their differences.
“With me, what you see is what you get. And I’ve never once gone and told somebody that I was anything but what I am,” El-Sayed said Wednesday. “We’re going to disagree. I’m going to be honest, specific and direct. And over time, I hope that I can earn support for leading on the issues on which I hope to lead and [by] serving everybody.”
In 2016, two populist revolutions threatened to remake American politics. Donald Trump’s conquered the Republican Party and delivered him the presidency. Bernie Sanders’ fell short against Hillary Clinton, but introduced a populist economic vision that, at the time, much of the Democratic establishment dismissed as politically impractical.
Ten years later, Trump and MAGA were hit with a devastating midterm repudiation, as candidates across the country in blue and red states echoing versions of Sanders’ message broke through in places that once seemed beyond Democrats’ reach.
Sanders, as cantankerous as ever, isn’t surprised.
“If you’re asking me, am I shocked by that? That the argument about economic justice and taking on oligarchs and fighting for the working class is working in Texas, is working in Ohio, is working in Montana, is working in Florida, is working all over the country — no, I am not shocked,” Sanders said in an interview Wednesday, fresh off over 20 rallies in October alone. “That is what I’ve always believed.”
Sanders’ laser focus on economic populism in 2016 faced criticism from his own party during his contentious primary against Clinton for being too dismissive of identity politics — often couched as his lack of support among Black voters. Now, his brand of relentless focus on corporate and billionaire election interventions and income inequality proved a winning formula not only for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, but for James Talarico in Texas, Sam Forstag in Montana and Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin.
“Bernie normalized the kind of campaigning that really is about making a direct appeal to working people,” El Sayed told Blue Light News. “Wherever I went in Michigan, there are people who remember Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020 — we stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Given the booming results on Tuesday and the breadth of wins for the left, Democrats will test whether they can avoid the same pitfalls that ultimately dogged them following their last major win in 2020 with Joe Biden’s blue-collar charm at the top of the ticket, after which the party gradually slipped back down the culture war slope.
To avoid that, Sanders said the party can do both, but that Democrats need to have the “courage” to focus on the day-to-day needs of working families, no matter what the billionaires funding the Democratic Party say.
“It’s not either or. You can fight against bigotry and discrimination, but you have got to have the courage,” he said. “The courage now to say to the billionaires who are funding the Democratic Party: ‘Thank you very much for your help, but right now we are going to focus on the needs of the working families of this country, whether you like it or not.’”
Sanders’ reach is perhaps nowhere more evident than in New York City, which has emerged as the mecca of American progressivism, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani — once a Sanders-endorsed local official — is now perhaps the heir-apparent to Sanders’ progressive mantle.
The man behind Mamdani’s seismic rise, progressive wunderkind Morris Katz, had more than most on the line this week. After his top client Graham Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine earlier this year amid scandal, Katz worked this cycle for Gina Hinojosa in Texas, Randy Villegas in California and Brian Poindexter in Ohio, while his firm, Fight Agency, worked with El-Sayed and Pennsylvania’s Bob Brooks.
The day before the election, The Atlantic published a 3,500-word piece that put “Katz’s theory of politics” on the ballot.
“A lot of people wanted to know what I’d say if we lost,” Katz said, referencing an infamous Kanye West quote on Wednesday and running on 45 minutes of sleep. “I guess we’ll never know. That’s about how I feel today.”
Like Sanders, Katz sees a progressive future laser-focused on economics as the clear way forward — and nowhere is that more clear than in Texas.
“Hundreds of millions were spent against James and Gina trying to tag them on a trans issue,” he said. “It failed in epic fashion because there was no room for misunderstanding or ambiguity over what they stood for, because they had grounded themselves in such affirmative and positive economic messaging.”
“Those attacks have succeeded in the absence of an affirmative message,” he added. “Once you’re able to define yourself and provide a message, it’s just a lot harder for that to work.”
It’s the same formula Mamdani rode to Gracie Mansion — and, Katz argues, the lesson Democrats finally absorbed. “For a long time, politicians accepted the realities of how people felt about the economy but refused responsibility for having to take an active role in changing it,” he said. “There’s no room for that anymore.”
Katz sees his and Sanders’ theory of politics as having won out across the Democratic spectrum — not just on the left flank, but among the moderates who once resisted it.
“The more moderate wing of the party has changed the definition of what a moderate is. I think that’s great,” he said. “We should be a big tent party, but you are seeing a big tent that is unified in opposition to the oligarchy, that is unified in opposition to corruption, and that is united in a pursuit of fundamental and structural change. And that’s going to be really encouraging if that can carry over to 2028.”
For Sanders, it’s vindication of an argument he’s made for years and that Democrats have ignored — despite what he says is its simplicity.
“Focusing on the needs of the vast majority of American people who are struggling in the richest country on earth, while the very rich are getting richer, man, you don’t need a Ph.D. in economics or political science to figure that out,” he said. “That is the issue. How do we create a decent standard of living for all of our people? How do we end the corrupt campaign finance system? That is exactly what Democrats have got to do.”
At 85, Sanders campaigned this cycle like a man running out of time.
In the wake of Trump’s historic return to power in 2024, Sanders launched the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, which came when many democrats were on the sidelines but provided a lot of the arguments, and even helped discover actual candidates, who a year later would swamp races earlier this week. Since the tour, Sanders has held 58 rallies during the midterms, endorsed more than 150 candidates across the primaries and general election, spent north of $16 million on organizing and deployed staff and volunteers into key Senate states including Michigan, Minnesota and Florida, an adviser to Sanders told Blue Light News.
“People say, ‘you know, Bernie, you’re not 21 years of age. What keeps you going?’” Sanders said. “What keeps me going is you look at the people who we have just elected yesterday, and look at the hundreds of other people who we have elected in school board and city council. You have wonderful people, black and white and Latino, coming from rural areas, urban areas.”
“I hope the Democratic leadership has seen what’s happening around the country,” he added.
Looking ahead to 2028, progressives see Tuesday as evidence the left’s economic politics can win anywhere — and that any doubt from moderates that a progressive should run for president should be laid to rest.
“I think we’ve got to rethink politics,” Sanders said. “We can win over millions of Republicans and independents who are struggling economically if we focus on the issues that are important,” he added, pointing to Villegas in Bakersfield, “a Republican town,” along with Forstag, Cooke and others who flipped Republican-held seats.
“These are people who ran on a progressive agenda, taking on a Republican district, and they won,” he said.
Katz said Tuesday was proof that heading into 2028, voters want candidates who look nothing like Washington — the kind he’s helped elect from Texas to California.
“You saw a hunger for a different kind of candidate — on congressional [level], teachers and waitresses and firefighters and iron workers and smokejumpers. And on the Senate level, pastors and doctors and teachers,” he said. “This hunger for expanding who is in Congress, who’s in the positions of power, feels real.”
What progressive candidate can pick up the left’s momentum heading into 2028 remains a question, but Katz said he viewed Tuesday’s results as more evidence that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who closed out Villegas’ campaign in California a week before the election and stumped in Michigan, Montana and Pennsylvania — should consider running for president.
“You’d be hard pressed to look at the results of the election and say they’re anything other than encouraging in the context of her ability to win nationwide,” Katz said.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
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