Politics
Watch live: Screening Saves Lives — Closing the Gap in Breast Cancer Care
Despite remarkable progress in the fight against breast cancer over the past four decades, the disease continues to take a devastating toll. This year alone, Susan G. Komen estimates more than 300,000 women in the United States are expected to be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer…
Read More
Politics
Democrats are running pastors for office. Republicans are attacking their religious comments.
A slate of Democrats are running for Congress leaning on their Christian bona fides. Republicans are trying to portray them as wolves in sheep’s clothing.
In Texas, Republicans are running ads blasting seminarian James Talarico for saying he’s “a Christian who hates Christianity.” In Iowa, they are going after a pair of clergy in key House races as “PINOS” — “pastors in name only,” because they “don’t profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ.” In Kansas, Republicans pan megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton as “too woke and too weak.”
“His sermons are essentially a carbon copy of the Democrat National Committee platform,” said Brent Robertson, chief of staff to Hamilton’s opponent, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), pointing to a past sermon in which Hamilton urged followers to reduce their carbon footprint.
The closing arguments on these Democrats — as evidenced by the most recent ads — shows a concerted effort to turn their preaching against them to paint them as fake, corrupt or even blasphemous.
In Texas, MAGA Inc. is on air painting Talarico as a “liberal weirdo,” clipping Talarico’s controversial statements, like “Jesus Christ Himself was a radical feminist” and “God is non-binary.”
The Trump-aligned No Going Back PAC is on air in Iowa’s 2nd District hitting Presbyterian minister and Democrat Lindsay James as inauthentic: “When the cameras are on, Lindsay James goes into a character, a caring pastor who says what you want to hear, but when there’s no spotlight, Lindsay James shows just how radical she can be.”
And in Kansas, GOP Sen. Roger Marshall’s campaign is on air slamming Hamilton as a “slimy,” “millionaire megachurch CEO,” saying he “used faith to fatten his wallet” and “asked churchgoers to pony up for God, then use church resources for his own campaign.”
“The swamp’s got enough money changers,” the ad says.
The attacks are coming precisely because these candidates have proven to be formidable candidates in purple to red areas, using their faith backgrounds to bolster themselves against GOP accusations that they’re out of their state’s mainstream. Talarico poses Democrats’ best chance to flip a Texas Senate seat in nearly four decades. Hamilton has turned deep-red Kansas into a battleground. And James and Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister, are running tough in a pair of Iowa districts Trump won in 2024.
Voters “understand and appreciate authenticity, and they know that faith without works is dead,” said Chaz Molder, the Democratic nominee in Tennessee’s deep-red 2nd District who leads a Sunday School class with his wife. “And just posting scripture on Sunday morning to point out that they went to church is not enough.”
But with Democrats’ clerical credibility comes a practical challenge: years and years of on-camera sermons, a treasure trove for oppo researchers. It’s become a challenge in Hamilton’s race, where Vice President JD Vance joined the pile-on earlier this month: During a visit to Iowa, he took a shot at Hamilton as having “kind of a ‘gee whiz, I’m a nice pastor’ vibe,” but said he “tells his congregation not about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that they need to repent for their white privilege while eating beef.”
Democrats have largely brushed off the attacks. Talarico has said he’s “missed the mark” on some of his “cringey” past comments, but has doubled down on his sermonizing: “When I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I’m doing it on biblical grounds,” he said in a sermon last weekend. A James spokesperson criticized Republicans for “desperately attacking Lindsay’s deeply held faith commitments. If it wasn’t so insulting to other Iowa Christians, it would be laughable.” Hamilton has seen clergy run to his side: 120 fellow Methodist ministers across Kansas wrote an open letter to Marshall telling him to stop attacking Hamilton’s pastoral ministry, saying the attacks “tear at the fabric that is the body of Christ.”
“We’re not the first Christians to be attacked for our faith, and we won’t let smears and lies from a couple of Washington politicians stop us from living out our values in the world,” Hamilton said in a video after Vance’s speech.
In many ways, this election marks something of a faith resurgence for the Democratic Party. While only half of Democrat- and Democrat-leaning U.S. adults identify as Christian (a 24-percentage-point decline since 2007), Democrats this cycle are running clergy, Sunday School teachers, chaplains and other devout Christians across the map.
“As a person of faith, I think that it’s time for the Democratic Party to reassert that Democrats are a big tent, and we have many elected officials from different faiths for whom faith is something very important to them,” said Ben McAdams, the Democratic nominee in Utah’s 1st District and a volunteer Sunday School teacher in his Latter-day Saint congregation in Salt Lake City. “The Republican Party of Donald Trump does not seem to be reflecting the Christian values that I grew up with.”
Doug Pagitt, executive director of progressive group Vote Common Good, counts nine clergy running for federal office this cycle as Democrats — something he hasn’t seen before.
“The idea that a faith leader, especially a white faith leader, would run as a Democrat and be forthright about it … it’s really unusual,” Pagitt said. “We’ve had candidates [in the past] whose moms were pastors, and they were nervous about mentioning that in the Democratic Party circles. But that seems to have shifted and changed.”
CITY HAL 9000: Amid a mad dash to try to regulate artificial intelligence, City Council Speaker Julie Menin is looking to make her mark.
The Manhattan lawmaker is planning to hold a hearing with all 51 members of the legislative body next week, and today confirmed the attendance of four major AI firms to discuss both the dangers the technology poses and a suite of Council bills that seek to protect New Yorkers.
“Leading experts and AI executives themselves are warning about the potentially grave risks of rapidly advancing AI, and governments have a responsibility to act,” Menin said in a statement announcing she issued a subpoena to SpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence company owned by Elon Musk, to compel the firm to attend.
Council hearings — even those run by lesser-known committees — are not known as concise affairs. And the notion of having all 51 members in the room to pepper AI executives with questions can only mean a marathon day with plenty of news coverage. (Remember Randy Mastro’s general counsel nomination hearing in 2024? No? You didn’t tune in for all 11 hours?)
Between the White House’s opposition to any type of AI regulation and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s desire for federal guardrails — though he has enacted an AI ban in elementary schools — a lane has opened for Menin to have her say in what has become one of the defining debates of the political moment.
Her muscular posture — her office dangled the possibility of subpoenas in front of the companies she sought for Monday’s hearing — shows she is not going to let it go to waste.
The package of bills being pursued by the Council includes a “kill switch” requirement and a new private right of action that would make it easier to sue AI companies. Menin is hoping to get input on that package Monday from artificial intelligence purveyors who agree that something needs to be done to slow the development of frontier AI models.
Google, which plans to be there Monday along with Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta, has released a white paper calling for a regulatory body that could develop safety standards along with audits for frontier AI models that are pushing the bounds of the technology. Separately, the firm has called for a regulatory framework for AI models like chatbots, which are already being used widely by the general public, and for the government to mitigate disruptions to the economy and workforce.
None of the firms have weighed in formally on the Council’s AI package, but one person with knowledge of the bills said there are early questions about how a “kill switch” activated in New York would affect a company’s services elsewhere around the globe, how the private right of action might interact with existing tort laws and whether there are downsides to retaining AI chat histories with consumers for extended periods of time.
Separately, there’s also the question of how the city’s AI bills would mesh with a separate AI regulation framework being pursued by Gov. Kathy Hochul. — Joe Anuta
From the Capitol
GATEWAY DREAMS: The long-awaited Gateway project reached a new milestone today: the start of tunnel boring under the Hudson River.
Hochul gathered with officials from New York and New Jersey to celebrate the latest stage of the development — which comes after more than a decade of planning and almost three years of construction work.
Following the “ceremonial launch” this morning, two hard-rock tunnel boring machines will be deployed this fall to construct a new rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York Penn Station. The machines are anticipated to clear about 30 feet of earth per day.
“We fought and beat efforts from the Trump administration to halt the Gateway project and today, that dream becomes a reality, with state of the art machinery operated by expert union workers starting their journey through soil and bedrock under the Hudson to Penn Station,” Hochul said in a statement. “This is a historic day for New York and a clear demonstration of our ambitions to once again be a state that dreams and builds big.”
Construction on Gateway began in late 2023, but the project previously faced a near-shutdown and temporary work stoppages after the Trump administration froze federal funds for it. The project resumed following legal action from New York and New Jersey. — Janaki Chadha
DON’T TRUST THE FILINGS: Hochul’s campaign is preemptively casting doubt on the accuracy of a disclosure report due to be filed by Republican opponent Bruce Blakeman on Friday.
If the past is any guide, the report won’t contain the definitive list of his financial activity. The campaign finance filing Blakeman submitted on July 15, for example, has since been amended on July 22, Aug. 13, Aug. 25 and Sept. 14.
As a result, a significantly different financial picture has formed compared to what was widely reported a couple months ago: Blakeman initially identified $3 million worth of contributions and $1.8 million in expenses over the spring; the latest amended version shows $4.5 million in contributions and $5 million in expenses. The total number of transactions disclosed went from 25,534 to 41,724.
Blakeman similarly resubmitted his March disclosure report four times and his January filing thrice.
“Either Blakeman wants to trick the press into reporting an inaccurate state of the race, or this guy sucks at math,” state Democratic Committee spokesperson Addison Dick said.
The Nassau County executive’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. — Bill Mahoney
FROM CITY HALL
‘NOT IN AN INSHALLAH TIMELINE’: Mamdani said today he’ll release a plan “soon” for disbanding the controversial NYPD unit he pledged to get rid of last year as a candidate — and he’s leaving god out of it.
“I will fulfill that promise. The only question is the timeline of it … It’ll be not in an inshallah timeline, but an actual one,” he told reporters at a press conference in Manhattan, using the Arabic phrase for godwilling. “The critical point of it is just how to ensure we’re doing so while protecting New Yorkers’ rights and keeping New Yorkers safe, and that’s something that we’re going to share more information about soon.”
Mamdani made the comments after Playbook asked what’s causing the holdup on breaking up the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, especially in light of the unit being deployed Thursday to arrest activists, including politicians close with the mayor, protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As a candidate last year, Mamdani was adamant that he would, if elected, abolish the SRG over concerns about its heavy-handed responses to protests.
But since taking office in January, the mayor has dragged his feet on the pledge. When asked about the status of it, he’s typically just said he’s continuing conversations with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch — making today’s comments stand out.
A spokesperson for the NYPD declined to comment on Mamdani’s remarks. But the spokesperson did note that video posted to social media showed the SRG officers who effected arrests at last week’s anti-Netanyahu demonstrations acted peacefully and were joined by NYPD Community Affairs personnel who informed protesters they would be detained.
A political moderate, Tisch has defended using the SRG, once even cracking a joke that seemed aimed at highlighting the static between her and the mayor on the topic.
The fate of the SRG is among a number of issues Tisch and Mamdani have clashed on. They also hold divergent views on the issue of the NYPD’s gang database, with Mamdani promising last year to abolish it while Tisch calls it a critical tool that her department uses “every day.” — Chris Sommerfeldt
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Hochul picked up an endorsement today from Planned Parenthood’s PAC in her bid for a second term.
In receiving the endorsement, Hochul touted her work in declaring the state as a “safe haven” for reproductive health care, creating a first-in-the nation paid prenatal leave program and increasing the child tax credit. Planned Parenthood Empire State Votes PAC Chair Robin Chappelle Golston said that the governor “understands what is at stake during relentless federal attacks.”
The group also backed Hochul, the first female governor of New York, when she ran for a full term in 2022.
Hochul’s opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, has described himself as a “pro-choice Republican.” — Madison Fernandez
IN OTHER NEWS
— ZOHRAN’S SHADOW: Hochul is counting on Mamdani to stump for her reelection campaign, but the governor’s advisers are still figuring out the best way for him to do that. (The New York Times)
— SEX ED: A new study from the New York Civil Liberties Union found that many school districts have selected an abstinence-only sex education curriculum. (Times Union)
— JOB HUNT: As New York City government continues to reel from staff vacancies, Mamdani is opening a walk-in municipal jobs center to speed up hiring. (amNewYork)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
Battleground Republicans across the country are on defense as ICE operations keep finding their way into local headlines.
A flurry of ICE activity in four rural Kansas towns this week prompted businesses to shutter and public schools to urge families to identify who could pick up children from schools in case their parents were detained. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) — a normally staunch MAGA defender who finds himself in a tougher-than-expected election — took to social media to say he was “closely following” the situation, signaled his displeasure that ICE wasn’t working more closely with local law enforcement, and said he had phoned Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Later, he complained that ICE’s failure to communicate with local law enforcement caused “mass disruptions to local communities and businesses.”
“We must keep our communities safe, but it has to be done in a responsible and secure manner,” he said in a statement Thursday evening.
Mullin took over DHS in March with a mandate to keep immigration enforcement out of the news following a public outcry over the killing of two Americans by immigration agents during enforcement operations in Minneapolis. No subsequent incidents have generated the same type of national attention — but ICE’s recent record-high arrest rate is still landing hard in some communities.
“It does cause quite a disruption in the community,” said Scott Fischer, the GOP chair in Ford County, one of the counties where ICE activity was reported this week. “We don’t want our community disrupted.”
In Florida, local officials are warning about the impact of ICE raids on businesses, and a Republican incumbent is on air with a Spanish-language ad denouncing Trump’s crackdown. In Michigan, Democrats are calling for an investigation after a man crashed his car and died while fleeing ICE. In Maine, the fallout from a fatal ICE shooting of a 25-year-old from Colombia continues to loom over GOP Sen. Susan Collins’ reelection race. In Texas, last week’s nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan in Austin is just the latest of several highly publicized ICE operations that have fueled wall-to-wall media coverage.
“There’s already been some blowback associated with what people feel is a little bit of a heavy hand when it comes to immigration enforcement,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Obviously, border security is critical, but I think the administration maybe has miscalculated a little bit. … It is going to be one of the factors people are weighing in the election.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the department “is focused on delivering the most HISTORIC mass deportation campaign in American history—exactly as President Trump promised.”“The men and women of ICE are enforcing the laws passed by Congress. We do not pick and choose which laws to enforce or where to enforce them,” the statement continued. “We will continue to enforce our nation’s laws and remove illegal aliens from American communities. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The Trump administration’s deportation spree is not widely popular. A new Blue Light News Poll finds that a plurality of U.S. adults, 49%, think the mass deportations campaign is “too aggressive,” while 26% find it “about right” and just 14% think it is “not aggressive enough.” And in an election cycle where cost of living is atop voters’ list of concerns, ICE enforcement has become an economic issue too: Immigration raids are affecting workers, from construction sites in Texas to meatpacking plants in Kansas, frustrating business leaders.
In Kansas, where Democrats aim to win a U.S. Senate seat for the first time in nearly a century, ICE’s activity this week has provided another political opening.
“This is not how Washington should be treating Kansans,” Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for Senate, said on social media Wednesday.
“It impacts these operations economically,” said Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, whose organization released a joint statement Thursday noting the “massive chilling effect” of ICE enforcement on “the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the cattle supply chain moving.”
“We’re all for getting the bad actors out of our communities,” Teagarden said. “The method by which they do that has an impact. We’ve seen it.”
Mullin said in a statement Friday that “ICE is not conducting worksite operations in Kansas” but “operations targeting heinous criminals including murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers and illegal aliens with final orders of removal.”
Some of Marshall’s allies downplayed the possibility that the immigration activity could have political ramifications.
“Senator Marshall has nothing to do with when ICE decides to do a surge, and I think most people understand that,” said Danedri Herbert, chair of the Kansas Republican Party.
But others winced at the way ICE conducted itself, even those who say enforcement is necessary to remove criminals.
“I’d sure ask that we go back to some of the concepts of working with local law enforcement who actually know the area better, and I think that might have improved things tremendously,” said Kansas State Rep. Jim Minnix, a Republican who represents Scott County, where some of the ICE activity occurred.
Texas has become the epicenter of ICE activity: One in five ICE arrests nationwide this year has occurred in the Lone Star State. Sunday’s Austin shooting came on the heels of a fatal ICE shooting in July. In South Texas, local news is consumed with a story of two teenagers who were stopped by ICE agents en route to a military recruiter’s office, one of whom was beaten on the side of the road. After17-year-old Luis Ochoa spoke out to say he was pepper sprayed and detained, his mother was quickly deported.
Bobby Pulido, the Democrat running in Texas’ 15th District, said his campaign has received more than 80 requests from South Texans asking for immigration help. The campaign passes those requests to pro bono attorneys, he said.
“Every single day we’re having people reach out. And it’s very frustrating, because we can’t help everybody,” Pulido said. “I’m not a congressman.”
His opponent, GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz, has attempted to separate herself from the administration’s immigration crackdown: She hit the airwaves with an ad this month featuring a woman touting De La Cruz’s work getting her husband, who had legal status, released from immigration custody.
“I have been very direct with the White House, with leadership, that enforcement policy should be focused on the criminals and on the cartels that are terrorizing our communities,” De La Cruz said during an appearance on a conservative radio show Thursday. “They should not be on hardworking immigrants that are navigating the immigration process.”
Maine Democrat Troy Jackson has made Duran Guerrero’s death a key focus of his Senate campaign, hosting a town hall in the city where he was killed earlier this month and frequently criticizing Collins for voting to fund the Homeland Security Department. In response, Collins has emphasized she supports guardrails for ICE officers like body cameras and deescalation training.
In South Florida, public pressure is growing this week against policing partnerships with ICE as businesses report a dropoff in sales. GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar released an ad — in both English and Spanish — that criticized the Trump administration for going “too far” on immigration. In the ad, she claims that half of the people detained in July “had no criminal record” and says Hispanics who backed Trump in 2024 feel “betrayed.”
Liliam López, president of the South Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Hispanic Women’s Chamber of Commerce, said that her communities “are really, really hurting” from the ICE crackdown.
“All elected officials of the Republican Party that think that their constituents are being affected in an adverse manner should speak up, like Congresswoman Salazar did,” she said. “You can’t do what this administration is doing because it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.”
The concerns from vulnerable Republicans come as Mullin seeks to balance pressure from immigration hardliners with public backlash. When he took over the department in the spring, the administration moved to make its arrests of unauthorized immigrants more discreet, but the dip in visible deportation operations — coupled with messaging missteps wherein Mullin seemed to indicate an openness to some legal pathways for would-be immigrants — prompted considerable pushback from some of the loudest anti-immigration voices in Trump’s coalition.
DHS then recalibrated its messaging to highlight increased deportations and project continued operational toughness, in an effort to shore up support from that section of the president’s base.
The reported lack of body camera footage in the Austin shooting in particular has frustrated even some of Mullin’s defenders, given consistent pledges from DHS that the technology would be deployed and operational by the end of September.
“If the public report is accurate, that’s unacceptable,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “Markwayne needs to pull these folks in and say, every piece of equipment you have, whether it’s a camera, a handgun or a mace canister, you show up to work with it every day or you’re failing to do your job.”
Voters’ concern seems to be building again with the election looming.
“Obviously for Hispanics, but I think just all voters in general right now, their main issue is overreach. They feel that there’s been abuse of power from everywhere,” said Sofia Kinzinger, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary during the president’s first term, and the wife of Trump-critical former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “Either you speak firmly against it, or you try to justify, which right now is the opposite of what people need.”
Jessica Piper contributed reporting.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words