Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann
Caldwell.
The government shutdown is rounding out its fourth week as another payday approaches for troops and federal workers, and food stamp recipients face their first missed benefit. Today, the American Federation of Government Employees released a statement calling on both parties to pass a clean, short-term funding bill and end the shutdown. The statement is being viewed on Capitol Hill as an attempt to pressure Democrats—and yet, according to my preliminary conversations
with many within the party, it’s not working. Democrats insist that they won’t give away their votes for free; Republicans will have to negotiate in exchange. For their part, Republicans continue to insist they won’t negotiate until the government is open. Meanwhile, Trump is in Asia, seemingly unconcerned by any of it.
I’ll have more on the shutdown from the Hill later this week. For today, my colleague John Heilemann sat down with Rep.
Ro Khanna, one of the more interesting Democrats, who is leaning into the populist strain pulsing throughout the country. (He told me a couple weeks ago that he’s working with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on ways to lower the cost of living.) He and Heilemann talk about M.T.G. and a lot more below.
But
first…
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Abby Livingston
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- California’s money
adrenaline: The starkest number of the third-quarter fundraising period has to be the astonishing $86 million war chest assembled by the R.N.C., now controlled by Trump loyalists. Compared to that figure, the D.N.C.’s $12 million in cash on hand looks puny—giving the impression that Dem donors are still sitting it out after the shellacking of 2024.
But the big national committees are mostly relevant during presidential election cycles, and in the committees more directly relevant to
the midterms, there’s evidence of a donor thaw for Democrats. Senate Dems (D.S.C.C.) have been outraising Senate Republicans (N.R.S.C.) since August, and now sit on $16.3 million in cash-on-hand to the Republicans’ $12 million. The House committees are basically seesawing back and forth as to which one’s ahead: In September, the House Republicans outpaced the House Democrats $14 million to $11.5 million, but the Dems have slightly more cash on hand.
Of course, the real Democratic
donor energy is manifesting outside the committees—particularly in California, where a gusher of money has flooded in to support Gavin Newsom’s redistricting project. So far, the state’s move to implement a Democratic-friendly mid-decade redraw (to counteract the Republicans’ redraw in Texas) has raised $139 million to the Republicans’ $86 million—or what one Democratic operative described as “an adrenaline shot” of fundraising.
We’ll see whether the redistricting
initiative is siphoning donor money from other campaigns around the country, or if California donors will give to Dem groups focused on House seats next year, too. After all, the D.C.C.C. has 35 Republican-held seats in its sights, while the new California map is expected to net them just five.
But the campaign has clearly opened wallets. “This is the first battle for the control of the House,” a California Democratic strategist who’s working on the race told me. “Not only is it
picking up five seats for Dems, but it’s shoring up four [other Dem-held seats] that they won’t have to spend on in ’26. They’re saving money by spending up-front.”
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A conversation with the Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley about allying with
Marjorie Taylor Greene, endorsing Zohran Mamdani, defending Graham Platner, and wanting to tax the hell out of his billionaire constituents.
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At a glance, Ro Khanna’s political profile seems rife with ideological tensions, if not
outright contradictions. The Democratic congressman, whose district encompasses much of Silicon Valley, is a voluble capitalist who also happens to have co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign; an avowed progressive who revels in plaudits he’s received from Steve Bannon and speaks admiringly about Marjorie Taylor Greene; and a self-advertised pal of tech bro plutocrats such as Elon Musk and Marc
Andreessen who calls for hiking taxes on the rich while railing against Donald Trump’s administration as “government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires.”
Yet this intriguing admixture, along with a ravenous appetite for the national spotlight and an attraction to cable-news cameras not unlike that of scrap iron to the Central
Solenoid, Khanna has managed to stand out despite the inherent disadvantages faced by any House Democrat in the Trump 2.0 era. He has relentlessly sparred with his fellow Yale Law School graduate and Silicon Valley fanboy J.D. Vance; joined Republican Rep. Thomas Massie to cosponsor legislation that would force the release of the Epstein files; and been an early and steadfast backer of many of the high-profile Democratic insurgents aspiring
to reshape the party, from Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race to Graham Platner in the upcoming Senate primary in Maine.
I spoke with Khanna recently on my podcast, Impolitic, where we discussed why he’d rather stump with M.T.G. than Liz Cheney, how he thinks the shutdown will end, and why he’s sticking with Platner amid a rising tide of controversy about everything from his past Reddit posts to the ink
on his barrel chest. As usual, the following has been lightly edited for clarity and condensed for space; if you’re hankering for the whole enchilada, you can feast on it here.
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John Heilemann: Trump is asking the Justice Department, led by his
appointees, to compensate him for past criminal investigations that, in his opinion, were so illegitimate that they now entitle him to a $230 million check from the government he runs. Even Trump seems slightly amused by what he’s proposing, which effectively puts him on both sides of a lawsuit. So, Congressman, what say you?
Ro Khanna: We have to take a step back and explain it in a bigger picture. Ordinary Americans feel the American
dream is dead for them. You’ve got folks struggling between buying groceries and paying for rent. People are saying [the] governing elite [is] looking out for themselves, for billionaires and multimillionaires, and the country isn’t working anymore for people who are hardworking and do regular jobs and just want to support their families.
When the Democrats just make it another way of attacking Donald Trump, I think it falls on deaf ears because we’ve been doing that since the guy walked
down the escalator. What we need to do is [say], This is a guy who’s not focused on your day-to-day needs and your kids having aspiration and a shot at the American dream. This issue of corruption is central because he ran on draining the swamp. He got there and he forgot. He’s not releasing the Epstein files because he doesn’t want his friends or people in Mar-a-Lago exposed. He’s got his kids making money from [the] U.A.E. on cryptocurrency. Democrats need to make this about a broader
critique of wealthy, powerful people having co-opted government, and that we’re going to return government to ordinary citizens and get the government working for ordinary Americans.
I’d be willing to wager that your district has as many billionaires per square mile as any in the country.
More wealth is being generated in my district, in my ZIP code, than has ever been generated anywhere in the history of humanity. I’ve got five
companies in a 50-mile radius [valued] over a trillion dollars: Apple, Google, Nvidia, Tesla, and Broadcom. East of the Mississippi there’s not a single company that’s close to a trillion dollars.
How do those billionaires feel when they hear their elected representative attacking the notion of government of, by, and for the billionaires?
I have no problem with people becoming billionaires. I have a problem with super PACs, and
them thinking that they’re going to rule America. I have a problem with parts of the nation not having a chance at the American dream. I have a problem that the working class is not sharing it. I have a problem that if you’re a billionaire, you think your opinions matter an iota more than someone who is a plumber or an electrician. It’s not that we shouldn’t celebrate wealth generation. It’s the arrogance of billionaires.
One of the things I don’t understand is if the guy who represents
more billionaires than anyone is saying, Tax them more, and they keep sending me back to Congress, how is this even a questionable vote for 434 other members of Congress? Do you have more billionaires [in your district] than in my district? Then we could talk. But if not, why aren’t you for that?
Marjorie Taylor Greene has been railing against her own party for its failure to press for the release of the Epstein files or do anything about skyrocketing health
insurance costs. “For the love of God, what are we doing?” she asked the other day. I know you agree with her on those issues, but my question is more basic: What hell has gotten into M.T.G.?
I’d rather have Marjorie Taylor Greene on the campaign stump than Liz Cheney. She’s the type of Republican voter we lost that we could win back. She's talking about how Trump is betraying the forgotten Americans who he campaigned for. On the
Epstein files, she’s shown real courage. She met the survivors. There was a picture of her and me hugging after the survivors’ press conference, for which I got some criticism from my own side. You’re hearing women who were raped at the age of 14, and told to recruit their junior high friends to be raped. You would have to be not human to not have any emotional reaction to it. It’s just genuine for her, standing with survivors.
On the broader issue, I think she believed that the system
was corrupt and not working for ordinary Americans—that’s why Donald Trump won—and he hasn’t been focused on those issues. She’s got constituents who are saying, Healthcare insurance costs are outrageous, auto insurance costs are outrageous, grocery prices are too high. Who is Donald Trump for? I think she’s seeing a post-Trump future and recognizes that populism has a place, and Trumpism and populism aren’t synonymous.
Sounds to me like she’s thinking about running for
president in 2028.
I think she thinks she could beat Vance, if it continues along this line. Imagine her in a Republican primary saying I was pushing for the release of the Epstein files. Where was Vance? I was pushing for affordability and tackling people’s daily costs. Where was Vance? I do not believe that it’s going to be a coronation of J.D. Vance. It’s going to be a brawl on their side to see who inherits a [post]-Trump future. And
I would not discount Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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Democrats have held firm in this shutdown, which is testament to, among other things, the fact that
the party is unified over the strategy of framing the fight as being over healthcare. But how do you think the shutdown ends? Republicans seem just as dug in as you guys do.
We’ve been far stronger this time than in the past. People were outraged that we folded in the Senate months ago, and that leaders weren’t standing up with enough spine to Donald Trump. They marched, they organized town halls, and the leadership got the message. I give all the credit to the
grassroots activism for our newfound courage. How does it end? I think that even the Republicans don’t want people’s premiums doubling, and there’s going to be some concession by them. For the $30 to $40 billion they’re giving the corrupt leader in Argentina, you could extend the healthcare tax credits for one year to 22 million Americans. We are literally giving money away to a corrupt leader in Argentina instead of helping keep Americans’ healthcare costs down.
Chuck Schumer
took a lot of heat back in March during the last round of the government funding fight for caving to the GOP; some Dems were so pissed there was even talk of primarying him. Do you think that his performance this time has put that talk to rest?
Anyone who discounts his contributions to getting the Inflation Reduction Act passed, to getting the CHIPS Act passed, to getting the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed, to getting the American Rescue Plan passed,
doesn’t know what they’re talking about. He was obviously a very successful legislator. But as someone said to me, everyone has to know their sell-by date. Politicians, like great athletes, often retire too late, and it would be a tragedy if Schumer doesn’t recognize what is obvious to everyone, [which] is that he’s had 50 years or 60 years in public office, and it’s time to make way for a new generation. But do I think he’s performed better at this point? I do.
Speaker Mike
Johnson was asked about the Epstein files at a press briefing last week and said the American people were getting “maximum transparency” on the issue. My guess is that you disagree.
There’s one way to settle whether what Speaker Johnson said is accurate, and that is to ask the survivors and their lawyers what they want. And Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I had the survivors to the Capitol with their lawyers, and they all said they
want the files released. They haven’t been able to see the files themselves—the lawyers have, but the survivors haven’t—and some of them just want to be able to reconstruct their own memories of the trauma they faced. All the victims identified would be protected under Massie and my bill.
We have shut down Congress because they’re so afraid that Adelita Grijalva is going to sign the 218th signature on the petition. They’re afraid, not just that that’s going to mean the
Epstein files get released. They’re afraid he’s going to lose 60 to 70 Republicans in the MAGA base voting against him, and it’s going to basically signal the beginning of him being a lame duck.
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Graham Platner, the oysterman running against Governor Janet Mills in the Democratic Senate primary
in Maine, has apologized for a bunch of problematic Reddit posts in his past, and now is facing questions about an alleged Nazi tattoo on his chest. You’ve endorsed him and said you’re still backing him. What drew you to him in the first place?
He was willing to speak blunt truths, like taxing the billionaires in my district, being for single-payer healthcare and taking on big insurance companies, saying we shouldn’t be giving a blank check to
Netanyahu in the war in Gaza. So I thought, here is someone who has progressive policies but also kind of a populist sentiment of not looking down on working-class folks.
I vehemently disagree [with] and abhor what he said, especially the points about someone inviting sexual assault, or Black people not tipping. Some of that stuff was crude, and discriminatory, and needs to be condemned. But we have to extend people grace for the culture that they’re part of. If, for our
governing class, we want people who, at the age of 22, are scheming to be president and senator and go to these fancy institutions, then that would disqualify people like Graham Platner. I’d like a governing class that has normal people in it, too.
The larger question here is, is this guy really vetted? Are Democrats going to regret backing him if we have months of embarrassing stories that come out from things that he has said, done, or
worn on his body?
Ultimately, there are two types of candidates who run in American politics: the ones who I call the perfect biography—candidates who kind of list out everything they’ve done—and then the candidates who are more about what they want to do for people in the country. F.D.R. wasn’t perfect. John F. Kennedy wasn’t perfect. Does that mean that you give a pass to Graham Platner? He’s got to be honest
and take responsibility. How about we start to debate what’s actually going to move people’s lives in this country?
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