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)
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Voters punished ruling parties across the globe in 2024. They are doing it again now.
The same voters who rejected their rulers without mercy on both sides of the Atlantic — throwing out Britain’s Conservatives after 14 years in power and humbling Democrats in the United States — are now poised to deliver resounding defeats to the very leaders they elected two years ago.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces the prospect of being ousted later this year if a key rival in Manchester can pull off a win in a special parliamentary vote next week. President Donald Trump, while locked into power until January 2029, appears to be barreling toward lame duck status with Democrats growing increasingly bullish about their midterm prospects in November — particularly in winning back the U.S. House.
And The POLITICO Poll suggests Western voters’ desire for political bloodletting hasn’t abated.
Building on previous work by Public First, the London-based firm that conducts the survey, a new analysis of May Blue Light News Poll results show large shares of voters in both the United Kingdom and United States express deep cynicism about politics and a constant desire for radical change — suggesting the forces behind the backlash may still be potent, and that power switching hands this year may not be enough to quell them.
In America, 71 percent of adults say politicians only look out for themselves, including 79 percent of those who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and 71 percent who voted for Trump. In the U.K., voters are similarly angry at politicians, who they blame for being unable to address a variety of issues, including cost of living and immigration. New results from The POLITICO Poll, conducted over the weekend, show a 56 percent majority of U.K. adults said the bigger problem with politics in the U.K. is the politicians who do not do the right thing, while just 15 percent blame the system itself.
That deep dissatisfaction has metastasized into a perpetual anti-incumbent frustration in recent years. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party had its worst result in a national election in several decades, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau stepped down amid growing voter frustration. Just since February of last year, the rulers of Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have all been ejected at key elections.
Now the U.K. is watching the vote in Makerfield next week, which may determine whether Starmer gets to keep his job amid public outrage at his handling of fallout from the Epstein scandal, and voter concerns about immigration, the economy and law enforcement. If Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, succeeds in being elected back to Parliament next week, it will almost certainly trigger a series of events that could end in the removal of the deeply unpopular Starmer as the head of the Labour Party — and prime minister.
The result could ripple across the Atlantic as Republicans face their own political headwinds ahead of the crucial November midterms in the United States.
“What we’re seeing is a cross-Atlantic disconnect between voters and electeds,” said Kevin Madden, a longtime GOP communications strategist in Washington and senior partner at Penta, a consulting firm.
“Voters in the U.S. are squarely focused on at-home domestic priorities and kitchen-table concerns like food, health care and housing costs. So when the headlines are focused on foreign conflict and disruptions to global markets, those will reinforce the disconnect.”
Deep cynicism in the UK spells trouble for Starmer
In 2024, the rejection of incumbents came amid a growing frustration over the cost of living and broader economic anxieties. Whether that backlash was a temporary response — or reflects an engrained dissatisfaction with political institutions — is a question now confronting leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, as affordability concerns continue to spiral.
In the U.K., the analysis from Public First finds a deep sense of political disillusionment. The firm developed a series of measures to understand that feeling of “anti-politics”, and cynicism stood out: Voters who believe politicians are self-serving, that political talk rarely leads to real action and that the public has little influence over what politicians actually do.
Nearly half of British adults — 45 percent — scored high on Public First’s cynicism scale; so did 37 percent of U.S. adults.
The findings underscore the challenge facing Starmer. New results from The Blue Light News Poll conducted last weekend show nearly two-thirds of U.K. adults — 64 percent — said they don’t think Starmer will remain as prime minister until the next general election.
The center-left U.K. leader has suffered the most dramatic plunge in popularity of any prime minister in British history. Since winning a landslide victory just under two years ago, Starmer has seen his Labour Party fall to historic lows in opinion polls, while the nationalist right-wing Reform U.K. of Nigel Farage has stormed into the lead in polls and local elections, mirroring the success of insurgent populists across Europe.
Three-quarters of highly cynical voters in the U.K. hold an unfavorable view of Starmer, the Public First analysis of a May Blue Light News Poll found — far higher than the national average.
The Makerfield by-election on June 18 will determine whether Burnham, Starmer’s chief internal rival, is elected as Labour’s representative, giving him the chance to challenge Starmer for the party leadership and potentially replace him as prime minister. Burnham’s main rival in the by-election is the Reform U.K. candidate — whose victory would likely end Burnham’s leadership ambitions, plunge Labour into unprecedented turmoil and send the national government into fresh disarray.
But Makerfield looks likely to be terrible for Starmer, whoever wins. Either it will be Burnham, who will then go to London to try to oust the prime minister, or it will be Reform U.K. — fuelling claims that Starmer has toxified his own party beyond repair.
Why Trump should be watching closely
It’s a cautionary tale for Trump, the Public First research found.
As Starmer confronts dropping favorability ratings, Trump’s own numbers have also plummeted — and the segment of cynical Americans may be as dangerous for the president as their British cohort is for the prime minister.
Among this group, 57 percent hold an unfavorable view of Trump and his agenda, compared with 48 percent nationally.
That could pose a challenge for Republicans heading into the midterms. Elections in the U.S. historically punish the party in power, and many Republicans are bracing for an even more difficult than anticipated midterm landscape, fueled by the mounting economic concerns and an unpopular war in Iran.
“The biggest mood shift is taking place among voters in the big middle,” Madden said. “These are the same voters that migrated toward Trump and the GOP in 2024 because they were nostalgic for a Trump economy and they rallied around a message focused on tackling inflation.”.
Sizable shares of cynical Americans hold negative views about the economy. Among these respondents, 52 percent say their financial situation has worsened since Trump took office in 2025 and 59 percent say Trump has spent too much time focused on international affairs rather than domestic issues.
Trump, who rode to power in 2024 in large part over voter dissatisfaction to the economy during the Biden administration, is now confronting a similar challenge. Recent polling finds voters increasingly blaming Trump for their financial pressures, even as he continues to cast blame to his predecessor.
Part of the problem for incumbents is that many people blame politicians — not the broader system — for their dissatisfaction, underscoring the challenge for the leaders as voters begin to turn on them. Nearly half of British adults, 45 percent, say the country keeps changing prime ministers “because none of them are any good,” while just 26 percent blame “big problems that not even a good PM could solve.”
As soon as leaders are elected by a frustrated, dissatisfied electorate to turn things around — as both Starmer and Trump were in 2024 — the clock begins to tick.
“Elections are so often now about which candidate can channel the frustrations of a cynical electorate,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, Blue Light News’s polling partner.
“Republicans and Democratic candidates alike should pay attention to what is happening in the U.K.,” he said. “It is far harder to win over an antipolitical voter base when you represent the ‘politics,’ and given how fast Britain is working through Prime Ministers cynical voters seem to be getting more common and less patient.”
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