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Kevin Smith was a truck driver who found himself out of work during the pandemic, so he began organizing car caravans in support of Donald Trump and other conservative causes. | Photos by Mark Peterson for POLITICO | | For all the post-mortems on the red wave that never was, there’s another lingering question still festering from last year’s midterms: What the hell happened in New York? It’s been decades since the GOP came within 15 points of carrying the state in a presidential election. They hadn’t won a single statewide race since 2002 — the longest losing streak in the country. But then something remarkable happened: New York Republicans flipped four U.S. House seats, providing almost all of the margin that handed Kevin McCarthy the speakership. They shaved incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul’s vote down to just over 53 percent. And they did it all with a style of politics centered around a figure many Democrats had written off as utterly radioactive in New York: Donald Trump. Which is why David Freedlander found himself at a New York Young Republican Club party in Little Italy, where such luminaries as “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli and minor Succession star Dasha Nekrasova showed up. The theme was “Martinis and Cigars with Roger Stone.” The longtime political “dirty trickster” would be pouring Richard Nixon’s favorite martini recipe for the crowd. Once a redoubt for Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush supporters looking for a blip of red in Manhattan, the century-old club that used to support figures like Thomas Dewey, Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay has taken an overwhelming dose of the red pill. And it’s indicative of how the GOP made electoral gains the state hadn’t seen in decades. “Like much else in our politics, the shift comes down to Trump,” Freedlander writes. Trump drove away the upscale suburban areas where the GOP used to have a foothold, giving Democrats an opportunity to forge awkward alliances between economic elites and fervent liberals. “But as Trump’s time in office faded, those ties frayed.” And the consequences would change everything we thought we knew about New York politics. Read the story.
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| “Jared Kushner has an IQ of 70.” Can you guess who wrote this about Donald Trump’s son-in-law back in 2020? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.** | | | |  | | 
Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis speaks during a campaign event on May 30, 2023, in Clive, Iowa. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo | Autism Advocates Decry Insinuations About DeSantis … Much has been written about Ron DeSantis’ awkward personal affect. But some political figures are twisting those criticisms into stereotypical armchair diagnoses. Last week, Trump hatchet man Steve Bannon said that DeSantis is “a little bit on the spectrum.” And he’s not the only one. All this has created a growing cloud of dread for autism advocates, who fear that ableist ideas about autistic people will get a megaphone as the GOP primary heats up. In this week’s Capital City column, Michael Schaffer talks to experts about the potential fallout. “My reaction is that, oh, here we go again, perpetuating false bits and negativity about the concept of autism and being on the spectrum,” says Barry Prizant, a University of Rhode Island professor and author of Uniquely Human, a bestselling book about autism. “It’s obviously trying to adhere a black mark to DeSantis. … I think there has to be major pushback against that because it’s perpetuating the stigma.”
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| | This week, Congress passed a deal cut by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling and avoid the unprecedented catastrophe of defaulting on America’s debts. Not exactly sure what all this is about? These talking points will get you through when it comes up in conversation. (From POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein.) — The conventional wisdom is that progressives are pissed — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) all voted against the deal. But many are grateful that Biden took several of the GOP’s original, more conservative demands — like a 20 percent-plus reduction in non-defense spending or a rollback of clean-energy incentives — off the table. — But the GOP scored major wins on some of its favorite policy proposals, including massive changes to work requirements for federal food aid, which they argue will bolster the workforce. There’s a silver lining for Democrats, though. Biden managed to get expanded work-requirement exemptions for the homeless and vets into the deal. As a result, the CBO estimates that 78,000 more people will enroll in the program in an average month. But some experts and the GOP dispute that notion. — Who’s this MVP everyone’s talking about? That would be the Mountain Valley Pipeline, also known as Joe Manchin’s favorite pipeline. It’s a natural gas project in Appalachia long tied up in litigation. The deal includes a provision to complete the pipeline, leaving climate advocates — a key part of the coalition that delivered Biden to the White House — furious. — Yep, student loans are also part of the deal, which terminates the suspension of payments and interest instituted in March 2020. But remember: This doesn’t totally destroy Biden’s student debt relief plan, which could erase up to $20,000 of student debt for millions of borrowers. That’s up to the Supreme Court. | 
| |  Animation by Rafael Alejandro for POLITICO | The Perfect Campaign Playlist … You know that one friend who never, under any circumstance, ever gets to control the aux cord on a road trip? Would you vote for that friend to be president? Of course not. You want a chief executive who knows how to pick a banger. But this year’s crop of candidates — some of whom have a history of stepping in musical (and, consequently, legal) holes — could use some help. So Ella Creamer has compiled a step-by-step guide to building the ultimate campaign playlist. Hot tip: Don’t leave it up to your Gen Z staffer. They are 100 percent too hip for you.
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POLITICO illustration/Photos by AP, Getty Images | Hunter Biden vs. History … Hunter Biden’s teetering tower of scandals has Republicans eager to pull a Jenga block and watch the whole thing topple down on the president. And they’re not subtle about it. “You look at the polling, and right now Donald Trump is seven points ahead of Joe Biden and trending upward; Joe Biden’s trending downward,” says Rep. James Comer, GOP chair of the House Oversight Committee investigating alleged financial chicanery in the Biden family. “And I believe that the media is looking around, scratching their head, and they’re realizing the American people are keeping up with our investigation.” But this isn’t the first time family troubles have opened a president up to partisan attack. Jimmy Carter’s brother, Richard Nixon’s brother, FDR’s son — to say nothing of the whole Trump gaggle — have all caused pain for the White House. And if Biden wants to get around conservatives’ offensive on Hunter, he should look to that history; it has a thing or two to teach him, writes Jeff Greenfield.
| | | **Who Dissed answer: That would be conservative political consultant and former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, who was fuming after Trump neglected to offer him a second pardon after Jan. 6. politicoweekend@email.politico.com | | | | Follow us | | | | |
