Missourians protest in favor of abortion rights in 2022 (credit: Planned Parenthood Great Rivers Action Facebook)
Leading Off
MO Ballot
Republicans in the Missouri Senate invoked the legislature's "nuclear option" to place a measure on the ballot that would repeal an amendment voters adopted last year enshrining the right to an abortion in the state constitution.
Opponents, however, are likely to file legal challenges to the new amendment, while Democratic lawmakers have warned that the GOP's decision to ram its measure through will wreak havoc on future legislative business.
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After intense legal battles to overcome obstructionist tactics by Republican officials, organizers succeeded in putting an initiative before voters in 2024 that asked them to repeal the state's near-total abortion ban and permit the procedure until fetal viability. Missourians agreed, passing the amendment by a 52-48 margin even as they backed Donald Trump in a 58-40 landslide.
Republicans almost immediately began looking to undo the choice voters had made by putting forth their own amendment to reinstate Missouri's ban on abortion with only very limited exceptions. However, they were stymied by Senate Democrats, who used the chamber's unusually powerful filibuster—which requires participants to actually stand and speak continuously—to prevent the amendment from advancing despite the GOP's 24-10 supermajority.
That stalemate ended in dramatic fashion on Wednesday, however, when Republicans deployed a seldom-used procedural tactic known as "calling the previous question" to break the Democratic filibuster.
The maneuver was last used in a special legislative session in 2020 and had not been invoked in a regular session since 2017. But even though it requires only a simple majority vote, it's rarely been employed because of the bitterness it inevitably engenders.
"If they were to invoke that PQ or that nuclear option, everyone also understands that that's the end of the session, no other bills pass, and that it would have serious and long-lasting implications for the next session," then-Sen. Lauren Arthur explained on The Downballot podcast last year.
At the time, Arthur was participating in a record-breaking Democratic filibuster that forced Republicans to back off a plan to make it harder to amend the state constitution.
On this occasion, however, Republicans did not back down—and Arthur's prophecy proved accurate. After the GOP called the previous question on Wednesday, Democrats reacted with white-hot fury and promised to grind the Senate to a halt.
"Republicans have made up their mind what they're going to do here. They're going to destroy the Senate," warned Minority Leader Doug Beck in remarks on the floor reported by Missouri Scout. "I will guarantee you nothing will happen. Nothing. The banner year that everybody had in this place, that is over with."
Sen. Stephen Webber went further, suggesting that Democratic hostility could last well beyond this year. A "response has to happen," he said. "And it has to be painful."
The end result could prove still more painful for Republicans. Mindful that voters approved last year's initiative during a favorable election cycle—and that the midterm environment is likely to be much harsher—the GOP added what Missouri politicos like to call "ballot candy" to their amendment in the hopes of winning over new voters.
The sweetener in this case is a separate provision that would add a ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors to the state constitution, even though such care is already against the law in Missouri.
That cynical confection could, however, expose the amendment to a legal challenge arguing that it violates the state's "single-subject" rule, which, as the name suggests, limits amendments to just one topic.
The amendment's ballot description also presents another infirmity: It doesn't say that it would ban abortion at all.
Rather, it promises to, among other things, "[g]uarantee access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages; [e]nsure women's safety during abortions; [and] [a]llow abortions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest." It also claims to "[p]rotect children from gender transition."
State courts, including the Supreme Court, have struck down misleading descriptions in the past—including last year, when then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote a summary of the abortion rights measure claiming it would allow "dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth."
It's not clear when exactly voters would get to weigh in. Normally, the amendment would appear on the ballot in November of next year, but Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe could hold a vote on an earlier date.
Whatever unfolds, though, Republicans could ultimately find themselves in the worst of all possible worlds, with the well poisoned in the legislature and their repeal rejected by voters—if the courts don't reject it first.
Three days after Rep. Robin Kelly publicized a list of endorsements from fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus that included one member from Illinois' delegation, Rep. Jonathan Jackson, Jackson is backing away
"I have decided it is better not to make endorsements during Democratic primaries," Jackson told Politico. "I understand that this primary season may have raised questions, and I sincerely apologize for any confusion."
It's not clear why Johnson, who represents a Chicago-based district right next to Kelly's, had an apparent change of heart, but as Politico notes, at least one other House colleague, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, is also running for the Democratic nod in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Dick Durbin. Krishnamoorthi, however, launched his bid before Jackson's name appeared on Kelly's list.
But Morgan can't really wait until he knows who the Democratic and Republican nominees will be, even though he told reporters, "I'm going to wait to see those horses coming down the backstretch."
That's because all gubernatorial candidates, whether or not they're affiliated with one of the two major parties, must submit paperwork to qualify for the ballot by June of next year. It's possible that Morgan could file as a candidate and only later decide whether to run, but at such a late date, it might be impossible to remove his name from ballots.
IA-Gov
Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra has yet to formally enter the race for Iowa's open governorship, but he's already hitting the airwaves with an ad buy his campaign says is worth $400,000.
"You could say people look up to Randy Feenstra. That's because he's 6'5"," says the narrator, who adds that "Iowa needs a proven conservative to take us to new heights."
KS-Gov
Former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, who all but announced his campaign to reclaim his old job several days ago, has now announced his campaign to reclaim his old job.
We detailed Colyer's political career when he issued his pre-announcement, but the University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier adds a new wrinkle: All nine of the state's one-time leaders who later sought comebacks have failed, dating all the way back to Kansas' very first governor after the territory won statehood in 1861.
As Colyer knows all too well, one of the biggest obstacles he faces is next year's Republican primary, which already features several candidates, including Secretary of State Scott Schwab. In 2018, Colyer lost the GOP nomination to Schwab's predecessor, Kris Kobach, by just 343 votes, which Ostermeier notes was the closest gubernatorial primary in state history.
MN-Gov
Former Republican state Sen. Scott Jensen, who lost to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz 52-45 in 2022, tells MPR that he'll decide on a second bid for governor "by the end of summer." In January, Walz told MPR that he'd make up his mind about seeking a third term "sometime in June, sometime this summer."
A pair of new polls show Rep. Mikie Sherrill ahead in the June 10 Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey.
Sherrill leads Newark Mayor Ras Baraka 25-18 in a survey conducted for the political news site InsiderNJ by StimSight Research, which is run by former Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is in third with 16%, while former state Sen. Steve Sweeney takes 8%. Rep. Josh Gottheimer and New Jersey Education Association president Sean Spiller clock in at 7% and 6%, respectively.
Sherrill's lead over Baraka expands to 31-21 after StimSight presses undecided respondents to say whom they prefer, with Fulop taking 19%. Gottheimer trails with 10%, while Sweeney and Spiller each take 9%.
Emerson College's poll for Pix11 and The Hill, meanwhile, has Sherrill at 28% as Baraka, Fulop, and Gottheimer are in a three-way tie for second with 11% apiece. Spiller is just behind with 10%, with Sweeney taking 5%.
StimSight's survey, which was in the field May 7-10, was largely completed before federal authorities arrested Baraka on May 9 and accused him of trespassing outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement complex in his city. Emerson's poll, by contrast, began on May 11 and concluded on May 13.
Attorneys for both sides said in court on Thursday that they hoped Baraka's trial could take place in July, several weeks after the primary. The mayor said after the hearing that the Trump administration's actions amounted to "authoritarianism."
Emerson also takes a look at the GOP primary and shows Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli easily beating conservative radio host Bill Spadea 44-18. The survey was in the field when Donald Trump endorsed Ciattarelli on Monday.
OH-Gov
Former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who has teased a possible bid for Ohio's open governorship, tells Statehouse News Bureau that he'll make up his mind this summer. Former state health director Amy Acton is currently the only prominent Democrat running.
House
IL-02
Nonprofit head Adal Regis, who previously worked as an aide to Rep. Robin Kelly, announced Thursday that he would seek the safely blue 2nd District that Kelly is giving up to run for the Senate. Regis launched his campaign days after state Sen. Robert Peters became the first notable candidate to enter the primary.
The Democratic field in this sprawling constituency, which stretches from the southern Chicago area into more rural areas, is likely to grow before long. Two officials from the village of Matteson, Mayor Sheila Chalmers-Currin and Clerk Yumeka Brown, both informed the Chicago Tribune this week that they've set up exploratory committees.
Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller has also confirmed that she's considering running to succeed Kelly.
IL-09
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss announced Thursday that he was running to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a fellow Illinois Democrat, in the reliably blue 9th District.
Biss, who taught mathematics at the University of Chicago, was a member of the state Senate when he campaigned for governor in 2018.
He positioned himself as a progressive and middle-class alternative to his main primary opponent, billionaire venture capitalist JB Pritzker—a message that included a spot featuring Biss juggling flaming torches. Pritzker, though, beat Biss 45-27 before unseating GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner in the fall.
Biss returned to office in 2021 when, with the support of Pritzker, he overwhelmingly won the race to lead Evanston, the community that's both home to Northwestern University and the setting of "Mean Girls." Biss backed the successful 2023 expansion of the community's first-in-the-nation program to provide financial reparations for slavery and housing discrimination, though the program is still being contested in court.
Biss, who was easily reelected last month, is the third prominent Democrat to enter the race for the 9th. The field consists of political commentator Kat Abughazaleh, who began running before Schakowsky announced her retirement, and state Sen. Laura Fine, who holds Biss' old legislative seat.
Several other Democrats are also considering getting in, and Evanston Now says that state Rep. Kelly Cassidy is one of them, though she does not appear to have publicly discussed her plans.
MN-02
Marine veteran Tyler Kistner on Thursday became the first serious Republican candidate to announce a campaign to succeed Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, the Democrat who defeated Kistner in both 2020 and 2022. The 2nd District, a suburban Twin Cities seat that Craig is leaving to run for the Senate, backed Kamala Harris 52-46.
After Craig flipped this seat during the 2018 blue wave, Kistner hoped to quickly return it to his party.
Their matchup attracted national attention in September of 2020 when Minnesota election officials announced that the death of Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks so close to Election Day had triggered a state law requiring the election be postponed until February, an outcome that would have left this seat vacant for the first month of the new Congress.
But while Kistner was more than happy to see the election delayed, the congresswoman successfully challenged the decision in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Kistner mere days before the election, and Craig ended up defeating him by a tight 48-46 spread as Weeks posthumously secured 6% of the vote.
Kistner was encouraged by his showing, especially since Joe Biden had carried the 2nd 52-46, and he soon announced he would run again in 2022. Craig, though, fended him off by a larger 51-46 margin even as Republicans narrowly took control of the House.
VA-11
State Sen. Jennifer Boysko and former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, who had each been mentioned as possible candidates for Virginia's open 11th Congressional District, have instead endorsed Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw. The only other Democrat running so far is state Sen. Stella Pekarsky, though a few other names are in the mix.
House Democrats
At least 17 of the 30 Democrats in the House who are 75 or older tell Axios' Andrew Solender that they'll seek reelection next year, while the rest have yet to announce their plans.
The vast majority sit in safely Democratic seats and could face intra-party challenges, with one unnamed House Democrat saying, "I wouldn't be surprised if a third of our members have primaries, because that's the energy that's out there."
However, one person on this list, 80-year-old Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, says the prospect of winning back the majority next year could entice Democrats to stick around. (Cleaver says he has not made up his mind about whether to run for a 12th term.)
House Republicans have a much smaller 75-plus club, which currently numbers 11. At least two of the GOP's most senior members, though, have said they'll seek reelection: Virginia Foxx, 81, and Hal Rogers, who at 87 is the oldest voting member in the chamber.
Legislatures
ND Redistricting
A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned a lower court decision that found that North Dakota's legislative maps discriminated against Native American voters, holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue.
The new ruling, if it stands, could largely eviscerate what remains of the Voting Rights Act by allowing only the federal government, rather than private individuals, to file suit alleging discrimination under the act.
At issue are districts drawn by Republican lawmakers that Native tribes argued had diluted their voting power by improperly splitting a pair of reservations between two districts. A lower court agreed and ultimately imposed a new map that united the two reservations in a single district, resulting in the election of a trio of Native Democrats.
A different 8th Circuit panel had already barred private suits under the VRA in a case out of Arkansas in 2023, but the North Dakota plaintiffs had sought to bring their VRA claims under a federal civil rights law known as Section 1983. However, in a 2-1 decision, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals said that the tribes could not sue on those grounds, either.
The appeals court rulings only apply within the 8th Circuit, which includes seven states along the western bank of the Mississippi and in the Great Plains. Voting rights advocates, though, have for years been concerned that the Supreme Court might agree, gutting the last vestiges of the landmark law that for decades has been used by private litigants to stamp out discrimination at the ballot box.
Pastor Solomon Kinloch and City Council President Mary Sheffield each received major union endorsements this week ahead of the Aug. 5 nonpartisan primary for mayor of Detroit.
Kinloch won the support of two affiliates of the United Auto Workers, which the Detroit News' Bankole Thompson characterizes as "the dominant labor group in the region." Sheffield, meanwhile, earned the backing of SEIU Michigan.
A recent poll from Target Insyght found Sheffield out front in the summer primary with 32%, while Kinloch enjoyed a 25-19 advantage over former police chief James Craig for the second spot in the November general election. None of the other six candidates took more than 7%.
Miami, FL Mayor & FL-28
Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez is considering entering this year's race for mayor of Miami and will reach a decision by next month, Elaine de Valle reports in Political Cortadito.
Gimenez, whose name first surfaced as a possible candidate back in January, still does not appear to have publicly expressed interest in replacing Mayor Francis Suarez, a fellow Republican who cannot seek a third term. A successful mayoral campaign by Gimenez would set off a special election for Florida's 28th Congressional District, which favored Donald Trump 62-37 last year.
Several other local politicians are already running or preparing to enter the officially nonpartisan race to succeed Suarez. All candidates will compete on one ballot on Nov. 4, and a runoff would take place Dec. 9 unless one of them wins a majority of the vote.
On the Republican side, the only notable candidate in the race so far is former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, who previously served as the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under George W. Bush. De Valle adds that Commissioner Joe Carollo and former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla have been behaving like candidates, though neither has announced yet.
The two Democrats running are Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins and former Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell. Candidate filing doesn't close until Sept. 20, though, so the race may take some time to develop.
Miami, like the rest of South Florida, has veered sharply to the right in recent years. Hillary Clinton set a high-water mark in 2016 when she carried the city by a giant 69-29 margin, but four years later, Joe Biden racked up a considerably smaller 59-40 score. In 2024, when the bottom dropped out for Florida Democrats, Kamala Harris squeaked out just a 50-49 win.
New York, NY Mayor
Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is up with his first TV buy, which his campaign says is worth $500,000. In his opening ad, Stringer calls Donald Trump a "shmuck," but he doesn't take aim at the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has led in all the polls.
State Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, a MAGA hardliner, just became the first Georgia Republican to launch a bid for lieutenant governor. He follows Democratic state Sen. Josh McLaurin, who kicked off a campaign for this powerful position last week. The post is likely to be open next year because Republican incumbent Burt Jones appears all but certain to run for governor.
Starmer’s effort to be reform-lite does not appear to be working out too well for Labour.
65% of Britons have an unfavorable view of Labour, the most since YouGov began asking the question in June 2017. Starmer himself has a -46 favorability. Conservatives are even worse while Reform is a net 20 points better. The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have the best favorability ratings.
Trump's "big, beautiful bill" lost a committee vote 16-21.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/16/house-budget-committee-reconciliation-vote-trump
Question: how likely is it that Trump will now threaten primary challenges to the no votes? He does not seem particularly pleased with this result.
Starmer’s effort to be reform-lite does not appear to be working out too well for Labour.
65% of Britons have an unfavorable view of Labour, the most since YouGov began asking the question in June 2017. Starmer himself has a -46 favorability. Conservatives are even worse while Reform is a net 20 points better. The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have the best favorability ratings.
https://bsky.app/profile/yougov.co.uk/post/3lpbk6hp6r22u