Americana

1. Texas starts a gerrymander war
2. Policing Mamdani’s past
3. Kamala’s next steps
4. Thune’s 2026 plans
5. Beshear on fixing the Dems

Also: The surreal conspiracy comedy I can’t stop watching.

Democrats have become the quiet party. And Republicans have been happy to grab the bullhorn.

The switch happened fairly quickly. After Kamala Harris’ defeat, her digital strategist Rob Flaherty wrote that Democrats had lost the cultural conversation, and relied too much on the old media. Conservatives were served by a “network of influencers, personalities, podcasters and TikTokers who both inflame their bases and push messages into nonpolitical subcultures.”

Liberals and leftists — not the same thing — do have their own influencers, who operate outside the old media and talk about whatever’s trending. But Democrats have become far more timid about when to talk about some buzzy topic that’s not obviously political. And Republicans have never been so ready to fill the gap. Ten years of watching Donald Trump has taught them to swing at everything, and that the only bad take is the one you don’t put on social media.

There were two prime examples this week, only one of them involving the actress Sydney Sweeney. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring,” she says in new ads for American Eagle. “My jeans are blue.” The joke was that the attractive actress had “good genes,” and this was offensive to the sort of people who refuse to call the largest bedroom in a home “the master bedroom.”

Those people weren’t Democratic politicians, who had nothing to say about the campaign, ceding the ground to Republicans, who gleefully used the backlash to paint them as hypersensitive. “The crazy left has come out against beautiful women,” wrote Sen. Ted Cruz. “This warped, moronic, and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024,” wrote White House spokesman Stephen Cheung.

The Cruz/Cheung mockery wasn’t baseless, and a campaign like this probably couldn’t have been approved five years ago, the height of “woke-washing” in mass media. More interesting was how Democrats had walked off the field. Hillary Clinton once asked Americans to take “the Rutgers pledge” and stand up to bigotry, like the Rutgers women’s basketball team did in a fight with Don Imus. But when does a non-political story deserve their input? They are not so sure anymore.

The second story they skipped out on, while Republicans turned on klieg lights, was a brawl between white and black people at a Cincinnati music festival, caught on video. Fight videos with race angles have been appointment viewing on Elon Musk’s X. This one, in a city where Vice President JD Vance’s brother is running for mayor, got full attention from the administration; Sen. Bernie Moreno got the DOJ involved, while gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy warned that “leftists like to lecture about ‘systemic injustice’ while thugs turn our cities into war zones.”

The power to get the country interested in a local crime story, and get politicians talking about it as a symptom of a universal problem, is vested in every politician. You may notice that Democrats stopped using it. They are far less likely now to comment on police shootings of unarmed black people, or on the dismissal of charges against the police.

Earlier this month, in Louisville, the Trump administration announced that it would seek no prison time for a police officer who shot into the home of Breonna Taylor, a black woman whose name Kamala Harris once said we should “never stop speaking.” Democrats largely did not speak her name, were mostly mute about the new sentencing memo, and none joined a protest outside the courthouse. (A judge ignored the sentencing memo and put the defendant in prison.)

Do Democrats want to wrest back their old control of the news cycle, their ability to surf the culture? Their conventional wisdom, right now, is that they’re better off wrestling the news back to Medicaid cuts — maybe the Jeffrey Epstein story, though they don’t even all agree on that. Republicans have the remote control now.

Texas GOP tries to lock up 2026 House

Texas Republicans rolled out their plan to delete five Democratic House seats, a power move that Democrats aren’t quite sure how to combat.

“What they’re doing is wrong,” Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., told Semafor, when asked about the Texas gerrymander — and about Democrats who want blue states to gerrymander their own maps in response. “It’s this win-at-any-cost devolution of our political system. But I don’t think the response is to undo the good work that’s been done.”

On Wednesday, the GOP majority in Austin released a mid-decade revision of its congressional map. It delivered on President Trump’s request for five new GOP seats that would make it harder for Democrats to gain the House next year, or for the rest of the decade, by doing two things: Making GOP-trending seats in the Rio Grande Valley much redder, and packing urban Democrats in Austin, Houston, and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex into fewer seats.

That would push several Democrats out of Congress, a possibility that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries flew to Austin to condemn. “We have to make clear to the people of Texas what’s taking place, because it’s unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American,” he said on Thursday, flanked by fellow legislators. The state party was weighing options to delay a vote; the national party was already considering how to sue over a map that would reduce the number of majority-minority districts.

Outside of Texas, Democrats were considering whether to copy the GOP. Led by California’s Gavin Newsom, who is threatening to undo the work of the state’s non-partisan redistricting commission, they have called the Texas plan an authoritarian threat to democracy, a way to put one party beyond voter accountability.

Mamdani explains his shift on cops

Zohran Mamdani returned from a wedding celebration in Uganda to fresh criticism of his police reform plans — both in 2020 tweets he’s retracted and campaign promises he had to explain again.

Mamdani was out of the country when a gunman killed four people in a Manhattan office tower. His opponents quickly asked how a Mayor Mamdani would have handled the aftermath, or if his policies could have made it worse. “This is a reality check,” Andrew Cuomo told Politico, as Mamdani was on his way home from Uganda.

The Democratic nominee’s first stop back was at the home of Didarul Islam, an NYPD officer killed by the gunman. His second was a press conference where he echoed other Democrats in calling for national restrictions on semi-automatic weapons, criticized Cuomo for being “comfortable in the past,” and partially walked back his 2020 tweets about policing, including one that mocked a police officer for being seen crying in his car. (“Nature is healing.“)

“My statements in 2020 were ones made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd, and the inability to deliver on what Eric Adams of all people described as the right for all of us to be able to enjoy safety and justice,” Mamdani told reporters.

Kamala Harris’ post-California planning

Kamala Harris ended speculation that she would run for governor of California, announcing instead that she would publish a campaign memoir in September and look for other ways to help her party.

“For now, my leadership — and public service — will not be in elected office,” Harris wrote in a Wednesday statement. “I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people.” That started with her first post-election interview, a 20-minute conversation with Stephen Colbert where she condemned the “capitulation” of major institutions to the Trump administration.

Harris’s decision freed up Democrats in California who’d already been running for governor; some, like Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, said they would end their campaigns if Harris ran. Polls that had excluded Harris had put former Rep. Katie Porter ahead in the March 2026 primary; a poll this spring for Porter’s campaign gave her 36% of the vote from Democrats and no-party preference voters, with Kounalakis and every other Democrat in single digits.

Talking with Colbert, and promoting her 107 Days memoir, Harris neither quashed nor endorsed speculation that she’d run for president again. “I think it is a mistake for us who want us to figure out how to get out and through this and get out of it to put it on the shoulders of any one person,” she said, when asked who was the leader of the Democratic Party in 2025. Democrats’ enthusiasm for Harris will be tested in this year’s races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia; Harris, as a rising star senator eight years ago, was invited to campaign in Virginia, but has not appeared with any candidate since leaving the Naval Observatory.

John Thune versus the midterm map

After winning the race to succeed Mitch McConnell, John Thune didn’t just claim the job of Senate majority leader. He assumed control of a campaign machine that his predecessor meticulously built over two decades. That included the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC that won a years-long battle with Tea Party groups to help McConnell’s preferred candidates win primaries, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee itself, run by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. but shaped by McConnell.

“Mitch had a brand, and people trusted him,” Thune told Semafor in a Thursday interview at the NRSC. “There are big shoes to fill.”

The machinery was visible this week, when Republicans cleared the field for their choice in North Carolina’s open Senate seat. Democrats, after heavy lobbying, recruited former Gov. Roy Cooper for the race, a decision that convinced other candidates to leave the field. Thune instantly endorsed Michael Whatley, the former RNC chairman who led the NC GOP in its battles with Cooper. The tangled GOP primary that Democrats hoped for was unlikely to happen, days after Republicans consolidated around ex-Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s primary.

But Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision not to run against Sen. Jon Ossoff, the only Democrat seeking re-election in a Trump-won state, left the GOP with a wide-open Senate primary. Already Reps. Buddy Carter and Mike Collins are in the race, and former college football coach Derek Dooley is looking at it. Thune is not looking to make a call yet.

Andy Beshear on immigration and more

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Andy Beshear came to South Carolina to tell his fellow Southern Democrats that they were right. They did have a great offer to make to the voters who drifted away decades ago: Saving Medicaid. Their party had lost ground by using “advocacy language” that alienated normal people. And “bless your heart” was not a blessing.

Toward the end of the trip, Beshear sat down with Semafor for a conversation about the party, its strategy, and where he differed from the Democratic status quo. He would defend trans rights, but did not disagree with the Trump administration’s move against gender surgeries for minors.

“Number one, we do have to make sure that our borders are secure. And number two, we have to enforce our laws. But then we have to solve the math problem. We need to sit down and say: How many workers do we need, where? And make sure the math of what we’re offering people actually lines up with the needs.”

Emily Maitlis got one of the biggest scoops in the Epstein story when she interviewed Prince Andrew about his involvement in 2019. She was then a longtime presenter for the BBC, but has since moved onto hosting one of the UK’s top podcasts, The News Agents. This week, Ben and Max bring on the British broadcaster-turned-podcaster to discuss how she approaches her new medium, whether it affects the kind of journalism she does, and if she could still land a Prince Andrew–level interview on a podcast. They also dive into the renewed media attention around Epstein, why the story continues to captivate people, and whether, six years after her historic interview, she believes Prince Andrew was guilty.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Polls

The last time that the Wall Street Journal’s pollsters found such low approval of the Democratic Party, Zohran Mamdani hadn’t been born yet, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was too young for daycare. It’s the latest in a string of abysmal Democratic polls, all of the numbers driven by Democratic anger at their own party, and its nine month run of defeats. A large share of those voters intend to vote Democratic anyway, as shown by the party’s small lead on the generic ballot. But the party’s lead was larger eight years ago — eight points, not three — and both Trump and the GOP were less popular.

Republicans scoffed at the first post-primary poll of New Jersey’s race for governor, which put Ciattarelli 21 points behind Sherrill. Democrats didn’t buy that, either. The first FDU poll looks more like what both parties see: A competitive race with both candidates holding onto their partisan bases, and Sherrill ahead because Democrats outnumber Republicans. (She narrowly leads with independents, but 41% of them are undecided.) Republicans see this as a strong starting position for Ciattarelli, who was underrated by polling in his 2021 campaign. Democrats see his support here as closer to a ceiling than a floor: He never really stopped running, but is campaigning as a loyal Trump ally this year, and the president’s popularity has dipped since November, when he got 46% of the vote in New Jersey.

Pollsters uniformly missed Zohran Mamdani’s first-round primary victory, but that hasn’t stopped his enemies from dreaming. The first wave of post-primary polls found Mamdani’s opponents getting about half of the combined general election vote, encouraging anti-Mamdani donors, who wondered if all but one of the alternative candidates could drop out. Only one of them — Walden, a little-known attorney — has suggested that he could quit before November. In this poll, most voters say they’ve already ruled out a vote for any non-Mamdani candidate. Sixty-eight percent say they “would not consider” supporting Adams, around 60% wouldn’t consider Sliwa or Cuomo, and a plurality don’t know who Walden is.

Ads

• American Action Network, “Tips.” The House GOP’s political nonprofit has been running ads all year to rebut Democratic attacks on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and to thank Republicans who voted for it. (Political nonprofits must spend a share of their resources on “educational” ads that share numbers where viewers can thank politicians for their votes.) The negative ad, the same in every targeted Democratic district, puts a bartender, a forklift driver, and a senior citizen together to share their disbelief that the incumbent voted “against American workers” by not supporting tax cuts on tips and overtime.
• Winsome for Governor, “Sandwich.” There’s a sort of ad you will never see on TV, but can hear in certain states and cities on the radio. It’s a mini-play, a dialogue between two people in some normal-seeming setting who have strong opinions about the election, and are conversant in at least one candidate’s talking points. Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears put out four ads aimed at non-white voters — ersatz conversations in barbershops and supermarkets where black and Hispanic voters discussed how good Earle-Sears was and how Democrats would wreck the state if they beat her. “Higher taxes on workin’ folks, boys playin’ girls sports, who knows what else?” The black Democratic leadership of Virginia’s House and Senate condemned the ads as “tired stereotypes.”
• Miyares for Virginia, “Lindsey.” The best-funded Republican candidate in Virginia’s elections this year is Attorney Gen. Jason Miyares. He’s the first up with a negative ad, starring Mindy Applewhite, the mother of a Richmond nurse whose daughter was killed by a driver who t-boned her car as it left her driveway. The driver will get out of jail in 2027, and she blames Jay Jones, the Democrat running against Miyares, for supporting criminal justice reforms in 2020, which put limits on sentences. The message: He is just “too soft to be attorney general.”

Scooped!

The Trump administration’s rollback of “the Johnson amendment,” a tax policy that discouraged churches from endorsing candidates, flittered through a busy news cycle at hummingbird speed. I never stopped to follow up on a generational conservative achievement that I’d covered a decade ago, when some religious organizations attempted to bait the IRS into a crackdown that they could mobilize against. (The baiting happened, but not the crackdown.) Elizabeth Dias and David Fahrenthold put the whole story together, and got ahead of the next story: How pro-Trump groups will use their new freedoms.

Next

• 39 days until the special election in Virginia’s 11th congressional district
• 53 days until the special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district
• 95 days until off-year elections
• 456 days until the 2026 midterm elections

David Recommends

Conner O’Malley put out “Pipe Rock Theory” in March, before the Epstein scandal recurrence, before the administration started declassifying documents from the 2016 campaign and suggesting that Barack Obama could be prosecuted for treason. That’s added depth and richness to what was already a seamless parody of the new media landscape: Podcasters who’ll believe anything, amateur pedophile hunters, elite conspiracy theories that actually pan out. It’s a little more ribald than the material I usually recommend here. But to get the moment right, I think it had to be.

After the high-profile Manhattan slaying of a CEO last year, this week’s killings in a midtown office tower have reignited the debate among corporate executives on how to best protect the employees in their charge, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami and Andrew-Edgecliffe Johnson reported.

“These types of events galvanize focus,” said Jake Silverman, CEO of security firm Kroll. Fears that workplaces aren’t safe will complicate what has so far been a hard-fought battle to bring workers back into the office, particularly on Wall Street.

“People don’t want to work in a police state, but they want to feel safe,” one security consultant and former Homeland Security official told Semafor.