Politics
The Democratic leaders stepping up as Trump’s biggest foes
Democrats are deeply divided on how aggressively to resist President-elect Donald Trump and his allies. While some are taking a conciliatory approach to the incoming Republican trifecta, others are vowing to thwart their policies with every legal and legislative tool available.
It’s a moment those in the resistance camp — many with grander political ambitions — have been preparing for behind the scenes for many months.
Those preparations were aided by Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that outlined a policy wish-list for the next Republican administration, from slashing environmental regulations to issuing a national abortion ban.
Blue states began “Trump proof-ing” programs anticipated to be under attack by the federal government and beefing up teams of lawyers who will battle the new administration in court.
Now, those resistance Democrats — including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — have a message for the latest installment of the Trump era: Bring it on.
“Violating the law, that is something [Trump] cannot find his way to stop doing — it’s part of his brand, it’s part of what he does,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is expected to run for governor in 2026, said in an interview. “If he doesn’t break the law, there is nothing for us to do, and he will be a law-abiding president. But we don’t expect that.”
These hostile counterforces represent just one segment of the Democratic Party, as its leaders strategize how to confront Trump when he reenters the White House backed by full GOP control of Congress. Some governors are taking a less combative approach, expressing a willingness to cooperate with the president-elect on certain fronts — at least for now.
Here’s a look at the pillars of the movement assembling to undercut Trump and his allies, a collection of Democratic governors, attorneys general and aligned interest groups.
Governors
Expect to see Newsom cement his standing as the lead Democrat fighting the feds. Newsom and Trump are old foes — and that rivalry is guaranteed to flare up as Trump reenters the White House and Newsom lays the groundwork for a potential 2028 presidential run.
Newsom has already begun to position California as the bulwark against the incoming Republican trifecta. Two days after the election, he called a special session of the state Legislature to protect California initiatives likely to be targeted by Trump, like civil rights protections and climate policies.
Beyond Newsom, keep an eye on the newly-formed nonpartisan group focused on countering “threats of autocracy” that was launched by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. The pair of governors say they’re talking to other Democrats and Republicans about joining the effort, which will have its own staff and researchers.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker warned Trump in a post-election press conference.
Polis set up that group even as he heaped praise on Trump’s provocative pick for Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking to the complex balancing act governors must face these next few years with Trump in power.
Don’t discount the newcomers, either. Governors who entered office after Trump’s first term are joining the ranks of the resistance effort — though they’re doing so less overtly than some of their longer-serving peers.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul launched a program aimed at addressing “policy and regulatory threats” from the Republican administration and pledged to beef up coordination with her state’s attorney general to protect “New Yorkers’ fundamental freedoms.” But she also phoned Trump to press her case for federal funding for key projects across the state.
Then there’s Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who burnished her profile by repeatedly suing the Trump administration in her prior role as the state’s attorney general but largely retreated from the national spotlight after he left office. After Trump’s election, she roared back onto MSNBC with calls to “hold the line once again on the rule of law” and vows that state police would not comply with Trump’s mass deportation plans.
Attorneys General
When Trump issued the ban on Muslim travelers to the U.S. in the initial days of his first presidency, Democratic attorneys general offices were caught off guard. They scrambled to join together to file a multi-state lawsuit — kicking off an era of intense litigation between the states and federal government.
Those same offices don’t intend to be surprised again.
“We’ve now had some more time to reflect on this, and it’s not as new as it was before,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who successfully took on the first Trump administration for withholding law enforcement grant money after the state objected to immigration-related stipulations that were attached to it.
“We’ll be more ready for this work,” Weiser said in an interview. “We know a little bit more the nature of what’s coming.”
Watch California’s Bonta, Minnesota’s Ellison, New Jersey’s Matthew Platkin and New York’s Letitia James as likely leaders of the litigation movement. “I didn’t run for attorney general’s office twice so that I could sue Trump. That’s not what I’m here for,” Ellison said at a recent press conference. “But if he violates the rights of people, we’re gonna sue, it’s simple as that.”
Also keep an eye on the new crop of attorneys general from states that played a big role in prior lawsuits against Trump, like Dan Rayfield in Oregon and Nick Brown in Washington.
These offices will leverage their large staff of attorneys to likely challenge nearly every move from the Trump administration. In the days since the election, some offices have issued an open casting call to expand the ranks of their litigation attorneys, posting on Linkedin that “the need for the best and brightest lawyers to join us has never been greater.”
But while those attorneys general may be more practiced suing Trump this time around, they face more institutional and political challenges that could make it difficult to prevail in court, namely a more conservative Supreme Court that Trump has played a major role in shaping. The president-elect also has the backing of more Republicans in Congress who will likely look to use their majorities in both chambers to pass legislation superseding state laws.
Interest Groups
While Democratic governors worried about their own political futures might not want to be the face of fighting Trump on every front, interest groups that have that as their sole mission will be more than happy to practice scorched earth tactics to stymie the administration.
Democracy Forward, a liberal legal organization launched during the first Trump administration, intends to continue its work challenging federal rules — and this time is armed with a much larger staff and multi-million dollar war chest. Its board members include Democratic legal bigwig Marc Elias and Ron Klain, former chief of staff to President Joe Biden.
There will be plenty of conflict in the abortion space. Trump pledged to veto a national abortion ban should one hit his desk. But Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the vice president-elect, suggested on the campaign trail that the Republican administration would defund Planned Parenthood, telling reporters that “we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions.”
A slate of political groups supporting abortion rights — EMILYs List, National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Reproductive Freedom for All — issued a post-election memo in which they vowed to hold Trump and “all anti-abortion politicians accountable for what they have already done and what they plan to do to destroy reproductive freedom.”
In the immigration arena, the American Civil Liberties Union fired its initial warning shot against the Trump administration by filing a lawsuit on Monday seeking more information about how authorities might quickly deport people from the U.S.
Trump officials are thinking about how to construct executive actions aimed to withstand the legal challenges from immigrants’ rights groups — a strategy intended to avoid the pitfalls of the first Trump term, like when civil rights groups and state attorneys general successfully delayed implementation of various versions of the Muslim travel ban.
Watch the activities of climate organizations like EarthJustice and the Sierra Club, who are bracing for the continued reversal of dozens of environmental rules dealing with everything from air pollution limits to drilling in protected areas.
“We are even stronger now, and we’re ready,” EarthJustice, which sued the Trump administration more than 130 times and won the vast majority of court decisions, said in a statement after the election was called for Trump. “We will see Donald Trump in court.”
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
Democrats may be discovering the political power of calling something rigged.
They’re leaning hard into anti-corruption messaging in the final weeks of the campaign as new research suggests that linking corruption to Americans’ economic struggles can boost Democrats into the home stretch.
Messaging from Democrats that tied corruption to housing, health care and the cost of living increased voter support for Democratic congressional candidates by about 3 percentage points, according to a national survey last month conducted by Blue Rose Research and Democratic-aligned Winning Jobs Narrative Action, which was obtained by POLITICO.
The findings align with a shift in how Democrats are talking about corruption — and help explain why that message has exploded on the campaign trail. From Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia to James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Democrats have zeroed in on a common argument: Washington is rigged to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyday Americans.
“We have a corruption crisis in this country, and it is leading to an affordability crisis,” Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek said during his Senate debate against Rep. Ashley Hinson last week.
It’s a message that is reverberating across campaigns. In a recent presentation delivered to Democratic groups on Capitol Hill, longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson offered a succinct playbook: “Corruption is why your costs are high,” according to the presentation viewed by Blue Light News.
His presentation also encouraged Democrats to lead with the acknowledgement that costs are high and then go into corruption, acknowledge that it happens across parties and avoid making President Donald Trump the sole focus of their attacks. “Trump works as an example of corruption that raises costs, not as the whole case,” the presentation said.
Since April, Democratic candidates and outside groups in House and Senate races have spent roughly $104 million on advertising mentioning corruption, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans, meanwhile, have spent $36 million across House and Senate campaigns over the same period.
“It’s not just like, ‘oh, look at what’s happening with the ballroom,’ or ‘boy, Donald Trump’s made a lot of money on crypto,’” Democratic strategist Chris Meagher said. “You have to be able to tie it to the impact on people’s lives.”
“The narrative works best when it’s an outsider candidate who is linking a rigged economy to a rigged political system,” longtime Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said of the anti-corruption messaging.
Running against corruption is not new. But as Democrats looked for a way out of the political wilderness after 2024, they began turning a familiar attack — anti-corruption — into a broader message tied to voters’ economic pain. What once was an attack largely focused on Trump has become a more expansive argument for candidates trying to connect it to why Americans are struggling financially, potentially providing a blueprint for the party beyond November.
“Democrats used to talk about corruption as a crime. Now corruption is the explanation for costs,” Ferguson, the Democratic strategist, said.
The issue — and messaging around it — is also coming to the fore in a cycle when anger over the suppression of Epstein files hit a fever pitch and public pressure to ban Congress from trading stocks continues to mount.
And it’s not just the research by Blue Rose that shows the potential potency of that message.
In another recent survey from the Democratic group Navigator Research, obtained by Blue Light News, the vast majority of Americans — both Democrats and Republicans — say corruption is driving up their costs. That same survey of registered voters, conducted in August, found majorities, including roughly a quarter of Republicans, say Trump is bringing more corruption to Washington than fixing it.
And new results from the nonpartisan Center Square’s Voter Voice Poll, conducted this month by Noble Predictive Insights and shared first with Blue Light News, show 10% of voters ranking government corruption as the second most important issue facing Americans, tied with the economy and jobs, and only behind inflation and price increases.
In some instances, Democrats have wrested the word “rigged” away from Trump who has used it in the context of unproven election fraud and turned it into a mobilizing political talking point. That’s a departure from March 2024 when Democrats criticized then Rep. Katie Porter for accusing special interests of spending money to “rig” the California Senate race after she lost in the state’s primary. But now some Democrats are embracing that language as a way to rail against what they see as a corrupt system.
“They’re rigging the rules to benefit their wealthy donors and corporate special interests,” former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said in a message to supporters announcing the launch of his campaign to return to office.
But the corruption resonates across parties. Republicans who spoke with Blue Light News said Democrats do not own the issue — voters everywhere are animated by it. While polling shows that voters in both major parties believe the government is corrupt, Republicans accuse Democrats of lacking credibility on the issue.
“Americans have been disgusted by the level of self-serving corruption that spread like herpes through the slimy politicians who run the Democrat Party, and now they’re suddenly changing their tune because it’s an election year,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Voters see through the facade, and they know Republicans are cleaning up the rot left behind by Democrat leaders.”
On the Senate side, National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Bernadette Breslin pointed Blue Light News to a poll in Minnesota — a rare offensive opportunity for Senate Republicans this cycle — that shows there are just about as many voters who blame Democratic Gov. Tim Walz for widespread fraud of federally-funded government programs in the state as there are who blame the criminals. Walz’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, is running for Senate against Republican Michele Tafoya, and corruption under Democratic rule is a key theme for Republicans in the race.
“The overwhelming majority of Minnesotans blame the Walz-Flanagan administration — and the criminals it aided and abetted — for plundering their hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” Breslin said. “They’ll vote for Michele Tafoya to right the ship this November.”
Steve Pierce, executive director at Winning Jobs Narrative Action, said one of the biggest shifts for Democrats this cycle on corruption has been a move away from a message largely rooted in concerns over democratic norms, which have struggled to break through in a way that moves voters in past cycles.
“You’ve seen Democrats, rather than connecting corruption to democracy, connecting it to affordability, connecting it to the top concern that voters have,” said Pierce. “It’s connecting it in a way that’s meaningful to voters around the things that they are thinking about every day.”
The anti-corruption message has played out across the country, and as an explanation for frustration against different economic pain points, including rising electric bills and local data center projects.
A recent memo on data centers from House Majority PAC, the main super PAC working to elect House Democrats, noted the “message environment in the 2026 election cycle has been dominated by costs, with an important secondary theme around corruption that began to emerge last year.” The group’s spokesperson, CJ Warnke, told Blue Light News that “every single poll and every single focus group shows affordability to be voters’ number one issue, and they specifically point to corrupt politicians as being responsible for driving up prices.”
Next month’s midterms will offer the clearest test yet of whether Democrats can turn this message into votes. But Democratic operatives increasingly see anti-corruption messaging as more than just a short-term political weapon — as long as they try to do something about it if they win control next year.
“I think the thing for Democrats, if they do want to keep it on the radar heading into 2028, and I think they should because I think it is a really potent issue for them, they are going to have to also deliver on it,” said Pierce.
“They have to be able to show up to get caught trying,” he said.
MAGA Inc. is planning to trim the map in a homestretch bid to cling to power in November.
The President Donald Trump-aligned super PAC, with several hundred million dollars still in the bank, is planning a series of major money moves coordinated with other leading GOP super PACs in the final three weeks before Election Day. The push includes cutting off spending to a group of less attainable House races, piling in money to shore up others and training its focus on key Senate seats to salvage Republicans’ Senate majority.
Ohio, Alaska and Iowa are the Senate races that Trump officials view as increasingly critical to keep their majority in the chamber, according to three GOP officials familiar with MAGA Inc.’s strategy, granted anonymity to candidly assess the midterms.
One of the people said MAGA Inc. and a leading House GOP super PAC would pull spending out of Michigan’s 8th District by the middle of this week. The move effectively acknowledges Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet’s strength over GOP challenger Tom Smith. They have similar plans for a group of other House races in the coming days that are trending away from Republicans.
The official stressed the tacking would amount to “re-allocating, not cutting” the total planned spend.
MAGA Inc. and its affiliates are still competing in all of the Senate battlegrounds, including Texas, where they expected to add at least $5 million and potentially more in the coming days, according to the official.
For the Senate, winning two out of those three states of Ohio, Alaska and Iowa would make it “hard” for Democrats to take the Senate, one of the senior GOP officials projected, adding that a three-state sweep would decisively put it out of reach for Democrats. That, however, would require Republicans to win Texas and a handful of other at-risk red states, while also flipping Michigan or another blue state. The same senior Republican official said there’s confidence GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson “probably pulls through” in the Iowa Senate race.
Texas, however, remains a massive headache for Republicans — and the GOP official is pointing to Ken Paxton as the problem.
The senior Republican official said MAGA Inc. would do what it can to help candidates and vowed to “unload the tank” — a promise the group has been making for months even as it’s only spent more than half of the half-a-billion-dollar war chest with three weeks to go.
But the onus for standing up a winning campaign is shifting. Ultimately, the official said, “it’s up to the candidates, not the outside groups” to “bring it home and have a reason to get a few more points of swing voters their way.” They also need to maximize their votes with Republicans, this person said.
“Over the next week to 10 days you will see a lot of moves — a lot of coordinated moves — that are around trimming the map for the home stretch,” the senior GOP official familiar with MAGA Inc.’s plans said. “It’ll be all over the place. It’ll just just be moving on from districts that we don’t think it’s the right time for, and piling in further on ones we think it is the right time for.”
That would force top House GOP groups to decide whether to shift their own cash to take over key spending from MAGA Inc. as they work to defend a host of once-safely red House seats Trump won by more than 10 points in 2024 that are now at risk. That includes key districts across the Midwest, North Carolina, Nevada, along with a seat in Kentucky, which Trump won by 15 points.
In Ohio, where Trump is traveling for a rally on Monday, Republicans have privately worried about GOP Sen. Jon Husted for months. The former lieutenant governor, who was appointed to serve out Vice President JD Vance’s Senate term, has been trailing former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in public and private polling for months. The top Senate GOP super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, has unloaded close to $100 million in Ohio and a slew of outside groups have joined, making it one of the most expensive Senate contests in the country. Just in the last week, Husted notched his first narrow lead over Brown in one recent poll.
“We want a maximum spend,” Ohio GOP Chair Alex Triantafilou, who played host to Vance on Friday in Lima and will reprise that role as the president lands in Youngstown, said in an interview. “We want as much attention. I mean, the president’s coming, the vice president. Look, I’m the chair of the Republican Party — I want full resources in this state. We welcome it very much.”
And while Texas has emerged as an unexpectedly expensive headache for Republicans, another GOP operative familiar with MAGA Inc.’s thinking suggested Ohio could end up costing Republicans more spending from all sides, despite its smaller size.
Democrats see the same final battlefield taking shape. Senate Majority PAC, the top Democratic-aliied PAC, is injecting $2.5 million in Iowa and $7 million in Ohio for television ads, according to plans shared first with Blue Light News, “injecting new resources to help close the gap in those battleground states,” a spokesperson said. They’ll also continue to back aggressive digital campaigns in each state. This comes on the heels of SMP dropping $5 million in Kansas.
Beyond Ohio, other senior Republicans are busy trying to staunch the bleeding in red states across the map.
Top Senate GOP groups have already cut off spending in North Carolina, where Republicans are struggling to defend a GOP-held seat. They have also pulled some money back in Georgia but are still planning to unload millions more in the Peach State.
Senate Leadership Fund expects to keep spending broadly across the map in the final weeks. The group plans to pour even more money into Texas as a potential lifeline to Paxton, hitting a total of nearly $200 million. They’re also dropping dough in Kansas to defend Sen. Roger Marshall, whose tough race against Democrat Adam Hamilton blindsided top Republicans in the final weeks, along with a crop of other endangered GOP incumbents, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge of the plans. And, SLF is expected to keep unloading money into the Michigan Senate race, which Senate Republicans view as their top flip opportunity.
The senior GOP official familiar with MAGA Inc.’s strategy defended the group’s spending decisions, despite waves of criticism from some Republicans who wanted it to unleash all its $400-million-plus war chest, and sooner. So far, MAGA Inc. and its affiliates have spent just over $200 million this cycle, including future ad reservations, according to data from AdImpact.
The cash the wider MAGA Inc. operation deployed last month, which was close to $100 million, shielded candidates from further losses as the environment worsened for Republicans, the official argued.
“The money’s working,” the official said. “The money stopped everybody from getting killed in September when the environment rapidly deteriorated further. The money held the line.”
The campaigns that received the September spending were able to “stay afloat,” one of the other officials said. “There are more candidates in a position that they can still win their race today that wouldn’t have been had that not happened.”
Many of those GOP candidates, however, privately argue it was Trump’s poor approval rating and his decisions around the ongoing war with Iran, tariffs and sky-high fuel prices that are sparking voter backlash.
It was during that September panic that GOP officials became increasingly worried about the growing map.
At one point, Trump officials believed they may need to start intervening to boost even Sen. Ashley Moody in ruby-red Florida as warning signs shot up across the Sunshine State, according to two Trump officials with direct knowledge of the matter.
But recent internal polling for Moody has turned a corner, alleviating many of those concerns and prompting Trump officials to stand by plans for the president to visit the state — but more as a way to boost Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running for governor, and several key House races that Republicans are worried about, according to the people.
Jessica Piper contributed to this report.
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