On Our "Virtual Route 99" Around America: On the Week That Was

 Our team pulled together a retrospective for the Week as we present thoughts courtesy of Politico and Ann Tellares on Donald Trump, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, the Institute for Policy Studies, Heather Cox Richardson, Shenaz Kermali on a Canadian Perspective on the passing off former US Vice President Dick Cheney and the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York and other thoughts  as we look forward to the continued privilege to serve: 

President Donald Trump welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House today, where Orbán sought to ingratiate himself with the U.S. president. | John McDonnell/AP

With help from Phelim Kine   Hungarian Prime Minister VIKTOR ORBÁN arrived in Washington hoping to win a carveout from new sanctions President DONALD TRUMP imposed on Russian oil companies. He got far more. Not only did Trump tell reporters at the White House, “we’re looking at it” on oil sanctions relief, but he mirrored Orbán’s assessment of the war in Ukraine. Asked by a reporter what kind of pressure he and Orban might apply on Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN to end the conflict, Trump demurred. “We agree that the war’s going to end. Sometimes people have to fight it out a little bit longer,” he said. Orbán described the U.S. and Hungary as the only “pro-peace” governments working to end the Russia-Ukraine war — a decidedly Moscow-friendly posture — and said that other European nations are “misunderstanding” the conflict. Trump asked his counterpart whether he thinks Ukraine can win the war, to which Orbán responded, “Miracle[s] can happen.” The two leaders sang off the same hymn sheet, from Russia sanctions, to energy, to immigration and even the EU, a frequent frenemy of Trump. “I’m not here to ask President Trump to manage my conflicts or our conflicts with the European Union,” Orbán said. “What we need is a golden age — to open a golden age of the United States-Hungary relationship.” Endorsement from Trump — the world’s standardbearer for conservative populism — could help bolster Orbán as he faces elections in April. Orbán arrived in Washington weeks after Treasury Secretary SCOTT BESSENT announced new sanctions against Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil. That marked the latest of Trump’s frequent dramatic swings on Russia and Ukraine. The Hungarian leader nearly presided over a Budapest meeting between Trump and Putin; however the U.S. scrapped that confab last month. Orbán played his part to ingratiate himself with Trump today, arriving with an offer to buy U.S. nuclear fuel and technology, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister PÉTER SZIJJÁRTÓ. He also brought along a 180-member delegation of business leaders. Trump’s comments in the Oval suggesting Hungary needed sanctions relief because it has no sea access could put him at odds with Russia hawks in his own party. On Thursday Senate Armed Services Chair ROGER WICKER (R-Miss.) and Sens. THOM TILLIS (R-N.C.), CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-Iowa), JOHN CORNYN (R-Texas), JOHN CURTIS (R-Utah) and MITCH McCONNELL (R-Ky.) joined a resolution led by Senate Foreign Relations ranking member JEANNE SHAHEEN (D-N.H.) blasting Hungary for increasing its dependence on Russian oil. No GOP signatories responded to NatSec Daily’s request for comment. DAVID PRESSMAN, who served as U.S. ambassador to Hungary, said landlocked Czech Republic and Slovakia reduced their own Russian gas imports. “The reality is Hungary has options for non-Russian crude, it just hasn’t pursued them because of its patronage relationship with Putin,” he told NatSec Daily. This afternoon is a setback for Ukraine. The embassy didn’t comment to NatSec Daily on the Orban meeting but pointed to a new memorandum of understanding to supply American natural gas to Ukraine via Greece. Kyiv’s U.S. Ambassador OLGA STEFANISHYNA said the deal shows that “Ukraine is not looking for excuses or easy solutions — unlike some European politicians who are calling for the easing of sanctions against Russia.”

MAGA Priorities: Golden Dome Over Hungry Families President Trump and the MAGA regime are weaponizing hunger against millions of Americans by refusing to fund SNAP. The Day Cheney Died, and Mamdani Rose A Canadian perspective on the recent death of the architect of the post-9/11 security state, and the rise of the son of a famed academic and critic of U.S. imperialism as New York City's new mayor. Shenaz Kermalli Nov 7 ∙ Guest post It felt like a quiet form of poetic justice: the death of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney—chief architect of the 2003 Iraq War, “enhanced interrogation” (torture) policies, and the post-9/11 security state—coincided with the election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. Zohran is the son of Mahmood Mamdani, the famed academic and critic of U.S. imperialism, who has spent decades exposing the narratives that justified wars like Cheney’s. That his son rose to power on the very day Cheney’s era effectively ended felt like history correcting course. North American news outlets have responded to Cheney’s death with sanitizing language by characterizing his bloody legacy as “remarkable” and “controversial.” Yet it is impossible to forget that he spearheaded one of the most disastrous U.S. foreign policy blunders of the last century, culminating in the deaths of at least half a million Iraqis. The trillion-dollar U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was launched on the false premise that Saddam Hussein was harboring nuclear weapons (of course, none were ever found). It was a war that gave rise to Daesh, or the Islamic State (ISIS), and one that sanctioned waterboarding—a CIA interrogation method that simulates the experience of drowning—as an “acceptable” form of torture. “I’d do it again in a minute,” Cheney said about waterboarding during a Meet the Press interview in 2014. Notably, there was and still is no evidence that the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques produced reliable intelligence or prevented any terrorist attacks. And yet, Cheney’s influence didn’t end with the Iraq War. His company, Halliburton, which he led before becoming vice president, went on to win billions in no-bid government contracts for reconstruction and oil-field services in Iraq. The arrangement exposed how the war blurred the line between public duty and private profit. Keeping figures like Cheney in our collective memory is critical, but not merely to relitigate the past. Remembering his horrific legacy is about recognizing how the political narratives about “security” and “terrorism” he helped create have traveled across borders and become normal features of policy and public discourse without our noticing. If, for example, Canadians fail to acknowledge the origins of certain security instincts, we risk assuming they are “naturally Canadian,” rather than ideas imported from a particular era and ideology. One of the biggest misconceptions about our foreign policy independence post-Iraq is that, because Canada didn’t officially go to war in Iraq under then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, we are somehow cleaner or less entangled in the violence inflicted upon others. Yet through the Kandahar combat mission, civilian casualties, PTSD legacies, and the Afghan detainee scandal, including government secrecy about detainee abuse, Canadian policy echoed the same geopolitical moment Cheney helped define. Ottawa’s decisions were shaped by fear, militarism, and deeply entrenched notions of an “us versus them” politics built on lies. That history makes Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City’s new mayor all the more profound. His victory is more than political; it is symbolic of a complete shift in worldview. Where his father gave voice and dignity to Muslims navigating suspicion in the aftermath of 9/11, Zohran now embodies that legacy. There is a reason why his campaign, which centered on challenging oligarchs and affordable housing, resonated with millions across New York City and the world. In a climate shaped by the policies and paranoia of Cheney’s era, Mamdani’s win is proof that leaders with integrity can rise to power, and that a different politics is not only imaginable, it is arriving. November 7, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson Nov 8   The repercussions from Tuesday’s vote, in which Democratic candidates were victorious across the country, continue to echo. Since Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump has tried to reinforce the idea that he is, in fact, in control of the country, no matter what voters say. He has doubled down on his demand that the Republican senators end the government shutdown by killing the Senate filibuster, enabling them to pass legislation without any Democrats. Then they could pass the continuing resolution the House passed on September 19, the last day the House was in session to work. But Republican senators don’t want to get rid of the filibuster. It serves their ideology of slashing the government. Democrats want to pass legislation that changes society, while Republicans want to stop such legislation. The current exceptions to the filibuster enable Republicans to fund the government and even to get tax cuts, but the wide swath of legislation that can be stopped by the filibuster generally neuters Democratic policies. The filibuster also protects Republican senators from having to take painful votes on the hot-button cultural issues important to the Republican base but hated by the general public: things like abortion bans, for example. The filibuster means they can trust the Democrats to stop such measures before Republican senators have to go on record as either for them or against them. Today, speaking during a meeting at the White House with Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, Trump demanded again that Republicans end the filibuster. He tried to assuage Republican concerns that if they nuke the filibuster, Democrats in power in the future would use a simple majority to pass whatever legislation they wish. Trump said there was no need to worry about future Democratic control because by getting rid of the filibuster, Republicans could pass legislation that would guarantee they would “never lose the midterms and we will never lose a general election” again. As House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he is keeping the House out of session again next week, for the eighth consecutive week, and as Trump pressured Republicans to rubber-stamp his wishes, the Democrats today offered a compromise to end the shutdown. Senate Democrats have stood firm on the principle that they would not vote for the continuing resolution the House passed on September 19—the last day it held a vote—without the Republicans agreeing to extend permanently the premium tax credits that support the Affordable Care Act markets. Without those credits, millions of Americans will lose healthcare coverage, and healthcare premiums for millions more will skyrocket. About three quarters of Americans want those premium tax credits extended. Today, on the floor of the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the Democrats would vote to end the government shutdown in exchange for a one-year extension of the expiring premium tax credits and the establishment of a bipartisan committee to figure out how to revise the tax credits so they could continue past next year’s open enrollment period. This would have answered the short-term problems of the increasingly painful government shutdown and skyrocketing premiums and left the question of extending the premium tax credits to voters next year. If Republicans took the deal, the Democrats could claim they had negotiated an end to the shutdown that put into place the popular extensions of the premium tax credits and that called for next year’s midterm voters to decide if they wanted them extended further. But if Republicans rejected it, Democrats would be in the position of having offered a reasonable—even a popular—deal that Republicans refused because Trump insisted they must not negotiate. Such an outcome would make the Republicans own the ongoing shutdown. Republicans rejected the offer outright. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) called it a “nonstarter” that “doesn’t even get close, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called it “political terrorism.” The rejection put the Republicans in the awkward position of rejecting the reopening of the government because they are determined to kill a measure that is popular with three-quarters of the American people. After a closed-door Republican conference meeting, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) told reporters: “What we have here is an intergalactic freak show.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said it was “insane” that President Trump and Republican congressional leaders have refused to talk to Democrats to negotiate a deal. “They refuse to engage,” he told Jordain Carney, Katherine Tully-McManus, and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico. “It’s killing the country.” Tonight Trump appeared to be trying to keep pressure on the Republicans to kill the filibuster or the Democrats to cave by tightening the screws on the American people. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to stay the order of U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell to distribute Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by the end of today. This puts the administration in the position of going to the Supreme Court for permission to stop the distribution of food benefits for 42 million Americans. While senators say they will stay in Washington and work to end the shutdown, Trump is following House Speaker Johnson’s lead and getting out of town, heading to Florida for the weekend.

On Our "Virtual Route 99" (Special Edition): On This Remembrance Sunday

 

On Our "Virtual Route 99" Around America On Election Day 2025 (Updated with Thoughts From the Bulwarks' JVL)

     

It is Election Day in America.  

Our team pulled together the four key elections around America:  Proposition 50 in California, the New Jersey Governor's Race, the Virginia State Election, and the New York City Mayoral Race, as we also captured thoughts from Mr Mamdani.

Our team will release guidance later in the week when we assess the elections, as we note that President Trump has threatened to deport the New York City mayoral candidate, Mr. Mamdani, if he's elected as the Mayor-Elect of New York City:  

 

Here are the thoughts from JVL as voting has begun:

Election Day 2025: The Resistance Strikes Back A data-driven case for what to look for in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York City. Jonathan V. Last Nov 4   Voters cast their ballots at the old Stone School, used as a polling station, on election day in Hillsboro, Virginia on November 3, 2020. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) 1. The Jerz Let’s start with a recent history of elections in New Jersey, because the story is more complicated than you might guess. That’s a pretty swingy electorate, yes? In four of the last seven statewide elections Democrats have won by about +15. In two of them Democrats were +3/+5. And in one of them the Democrat lost by 22 points. The obvious story we might tell is that Trump has slowly turned Jersey purple-ish with his no-nonsense working-class shtick. But I don’t buy that. At all. Let me explain why. Share Trump has been directly on the ballot in Jersey three times and indirectly (via the gubernatorial race while Trump was the sitting president) once. Three of those four races (2016, 2017, and 2020) were the best results Democrats have had in the state aside from Obama’s 2012 blowout. Now look at two weakest Democratic performances, the 2021 gubernatorial election and the 2024 presidential. In 2021, President Biden had just crossed over from being net favorable to net unfavorable. Biden was net -8 in November of 2021.¹ So why was the 2021 election close? A few reasons: Yes, Biden was a small drag on the incumbent Democrat, Murphy. Murphy actually increased his raw vote totals from 2017 to 2021. But the pandemic anti-incumbent wave was still rolling through the electorate. And most importantly, the Republican candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, was pretty good. In New Jersey, candidate quality matters a great deal in gubernatorial elections. Just look at what happened to Barbara Buono in 2013: She earned about half of the raw number of votes a Democratic candidate for governor usually gets. So what about 2024? Do you believe that 2024 showed Trump winning over New Jersey voters? I don’t. Here are Trump’s raw vote totals in his three NJ elections: Trump 2016: 1,601,933 Trump 2020: 1,883,313 Trump 2024: 1,968,215 The big jump is from 2016 to 2020, but that’s an artifact of elevated turnout nationally. Trump actually lost Jersey by a bigger percentage margin in 2020 than he had in 2016. Trump then closed the gap by 10 percentage points from 2020 to 2024, despite only a modest increase in total votes. Which tells me that there was a candidate-quality problem. Kamala Harris got 400,000 fewer votes in 2024 than Biden had gotten in 2020. Put it all together and I expect tonight’s race to be fairly close. Ciattarelli is in a tough environment for Republicans, but he has the rare advantage of being a non-incumbent incumbent: He’s not the sitting governor, but he is on the ballot for a second consecutive time. That means that he has the dual-benefit of running an insurgent campaign but simultaneously working with a base of people who pulled the lever for him four years ago. And Mikie Sherrill—who I suspect would be a good governor—has not been a great candidate. If it is close, I do not believe it is a sign that Trump is transforming the state. It’s a sign that Ciattarelli is a good candidate and in Jersey, Democrats need good candidates to hit their numbers. One last thing: The single most important marker I’ll be looking at is the Hispanic vote. In 2024, Trump performed so well with Hispanic voters that people thought there might have been a realignment. I’ll be looking at how Ciattarelli does overall with Hispanic voters in the exit polls but specifically at the returns in Union City, which is 76 percent Hispanic. Here’s how Trump grew his vote share in Union City over the last three elections, courtesy of Equis Research: Does Ciattarelli stay at 41 percent in Union City tonight? Or does he collapse back to some much lower number?   2. Old Dominion Virginia is closer to a proxy on Trump for three reasons: (1) Gov. Glenn Youngkin has governed like an aspiring MAGA. (2) Northern Virginia has been significantly impacted by the Trump administration’s war on the federal government. (3) The Republican candidate, Winsome Earle-Sears, is (unlike Ciattarelli) running a Trump proxy campaign. Four polls dropped in the last few days and most of them had Abigail Spanberger at or near 55 percent. I’m sure there’s a candidate effect going on in Virginia, too: Spanberger has been a good candidate and Earle-Sears is, uh, not good. But a Democrat hasn’t hit 55 percent of the vote in Virginia in a long time. It’s possible that Spanberger could be on track for the biggest Virginia Democratic landslide in a generation. If that materializes, it would be hard to see it as anything but a temperature check on Trump.   3. Cali Style The least important election today is the one people will talk most about: Mamdani in New York City. Here’s the deal: Will Mamdani be a good mayor? I dunno. But quick: Who was the last good mayor of New York? The current mayor is only avoiding jail because he sucked up to Trump. The guy before him was so unpopular he didn’t even run for re-election. Seems like Mamdani could be sub-replacement yet still be better than either of those guys.² But most importantly: The New York City mayoral election has fork-all to do with American politics. Just ask the presidential campaigns of Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani. Please, I beg you, don’t get sucked up into thinking that Mamdani is the future of anything except New York City.   The most important vote is the one no one will talk about: California’s Proposition 50 on redistricting. We don’t have great polling on this initiative. Because it’s in California we won’t have a clear sense of the result until late-late tonight (at best). But this is the one that will have national repercussions If Prop 50 passes, it will likely result in a five-seat swing, so the effect on the House totals of the Texas redistricting would be counteracted. Which means the Democrats’ chances of flipping the House next year increase pretty significantly. Also, if Prop 50 passes, it’s a significant boost to the Gavin 2024 Project. And finally, if Prop 50 passes, it will incentivize Democrats in Illinois and Virginia to redistrict, too, making a Democratic takeover of the House next year even more likely. Prop 50 is the big one today. We are unlikely to know the result for sure tonight. But this is the one where America strikes back against Trumpism.   1 By contrast, when Phil Murphy won the governor’s race in 2017, Trump was net -17 approval. 2 Or Mamdani could be a good mayor! Anything is possible in the greatest city in the world.