Welcome to the online version ofFrom the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today s edition, national political reporter Ben Kamisar examines how House Republicans are growing increasingly aligned with Donald Trump. Plus, Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker looks back at how Trump s Cabinet announcements from right yers ago compare to now.
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Democrats won ‘highly engaged’ voters and struggled with everyone else in 2024
By Mark Murray
Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats convinced frequent voters and highly engaged voters to stick with them in the 2024 presidential election.
Their problem: They lost with most everyone else.
According to thefinal NBC News poll of the 2024 race, 76% of registered voters said they follow public affairs and politics closely. The poll showed Harris winning among that group by 5 points over Donald Trump, 52%-47%.
But among the remaining quarter of voters who said they don t follow politics closely, Trump was ahead by a much great margin 14 points, 54%-40%.
These less-engaged voters were disproportionately younger, more Republican-leaning and less likely to have college degrees all groups of voters theNBC News Exit Pollshowed Democrats struggling with in the election results earlier this month, especially compared to past presidential races.
After their defeat in 2024, Democratic strategists tell NBC News that the party must do a better job communicating with these less-engaged voters and prevent itself from getting trapped in a bubble.
One of the main takeaways from this cycle is that the Democratic Party has a lot of work to do on how we re reaching voters, Democratic strategist Christina Freundlich said. We lost the persuasion game.
Steve Schale, a veteran Florida-based Democratic strategist who worked on Barack Obama s presidential campaigns and for a pro-Joe Biden super PAC in the 2020 campaign, takes the criticism of his party even further.
We don t have authentic messengers, he said. We avoid the communication channels where many of these voters get their information.
And, fair or unfair, our brand among many of these voters is defined by the most extreme voices in our party, Schale continued,echoing a point recently made by Sen. John Fettermanand others.
Republicans push a big spending bill down the road for their narrow House majority
By Sahil Kapur, Syedah Asghar, Ryan Nobles and Kyle Stewart
Congress faces a Dec. 20 deadline to fund the government and avert a shutdown, andSpeaker Mike Johnson says House Republicans will probably push the fight into early 2025rather than reach a full-year funding deal this year.
We re running out of clock. Dec. 20 is the deadline. We re still hopeful that we might be able to get that done, but, if not, we ll have a temporary measure, I think, that would go into the first part of next year and allow us the necessary time to get this done, Johnson, R-La., said on Fox News Sunday.
That would extend the deadline into early in President-elect Donald Trump s second term. By then, Republicans will have taken control of the Senate from Democrats while maintaining a narrow House majority, giving them more power over federal funding for the rest of the fiscal year, though government funding legislation is subject to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, which top Republicans have promised to preserve.
That would be, ultimately, a good move because the country would benefit from it because then you d have Republican control, and we d have a little more say in what those spending bills are, Johnson said.
It s one more thing a narrow House Republican majority will have to work through early next year. While NBC News has projected the GOP will hold the House, five races are still uncalled leaving, so far, a net change of zero seats compared to before the election, with some small wiggle room depending on the remaining races.
But that s before accounting for former Rep. Matt Gaetz s resignation and the coming resignations of Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz after all three were selected for Trump administration posts. (The timing on those is not yet clear.) And remember, the threshold for passage of a House vote is always based on attendance, so an illness or family emergency could impact any vote on any given day, complicating the vote counting for both sides given how tight the margins are.
The remaining House Republicans are going to have to summon a different level of unity than they have managed recently to move the party s legislative agenda.
Trump transition watch
-
The House Ethics Committee
plans to meet
Wednesday to discuss its report into Gaetz, Trump s pick for attorney general, after its recently ended ethics probe of allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
-
An attorney for Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who is Trump s pick for defense secretary,
confirmed he paid
a woman an undisclosed amount after she accused him of sexual assault but maintained that the woman lied.
-
Trump announced that
he has selected
Brendan Carr to be the Federal Communications Commission s chairman. Carr, the top Republican on the commission, also wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the regulatory agency.
-
Johnson
left the door open
Sunday to adjourning Congress so Trump can appoint his Cabinet nominees outside the usual Senate confirmation process if necessary.
Today s other top stories
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Tossing a hat in the DNC race:
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O Malley, a onetime presidential candidate, announced he d enter the race for Democratic Party chair, but many more names are already circulating.Read more
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Banking on blue:
Working-class voters moved further than ever from the Democratic Party in this year s election, and union leaders say it s time for it to rethink its approach to win the middle-class vote.Read more
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Trial watch:
A New York judge delayed the start of the criminal trial of Steve Bannon, a close ally of Trump and his former White House adviser, who faces numerous charges of defrauding donors who believed they were giving money to build a wall at the southern U.S. border.Read more
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Race for the Garden State:
EMILY s List, a national group that backs Democratic women running for office, endorsed Rep. Mikie Sherrill s bid for governor of New Jersey on Monday hours after she announced her campaign.Read more
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Victory dance:
Athletes like San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa and UFC champ Jon Jones have busted out dance moves in apparent homage to Trump.Read more
That s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback likes or dislikes email us [email protected]
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