Welcome to the online version of From 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.
Happy Monday and welcome to our first newsletter of March. In today’s edition, we talk with Sen. Chris Murphy about how he’s attempting to position himself as the tip of the spear of Democratic Party efforts to oppose President Donald Trump. Plus, Scott Bland notes there are lessons for the party from an election last month across the Atlantic. And we sort through the fallout from last week’s Oval Office spat.
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— Adam Wollner
How one Democrat is placing himself at the center of the Trump resistance
By Ben Kamisar, Julie Tsirkin and Andrew Arenge
What’s Chris Murphy up to?
That’s the question that prompted us to sit down with the Democratic senator from Connecticut last week. Since the start of the new Trump administration, Murphy has traded in a reputation as a behind-the-scenes, bipartisan dealmaker for a new posture as one his party’s most vocal critics of the president.
And he’s spending big bucks to get his message out to the public. Murphy has put more money toward ads on Meta platforms in the last month than he has in the previous five years combined. In many of these ads, he’s asking donors to help him fund a political movement.
It’s a shift even Murphy admitted could “look a little schizophrenic.” But it’s one he says is born from his belief that President Donald Trump represents a threat to democracy that forces people like him to shake free of their old ways of doing things.
“When somebody is trying to grab power, when somebody is trying to destroy democracy, they benefit from people who are static, who refuse to be nimble,” he told NBC News. “This moment is different, that this threat is unique — and to me, you know, we don’t have another year to fight this attempt to destroy democracy. Our democracy might be gone in six months.”
Murphy is also focused on how he believes the Democratic Party should stand up to Trump while not defining itself exclusively through his lens. It’s a trap he said the party fell into in 2020, when he believed a campaign centered on a message of “saving democracy” gave voters the wrong impression that Democrats approved of a broader system he says is slanted against everyday Americans.
“That economic message, the message that speaks to a lot of things that Bernie Sanders talks about, is a unifying message in this country,” he said. “A lot of people in the Democratic Party tried to make it sound like Bernie was divisive, when, in fact, Bernie’s message, still to this day, speaks to a lot of folks that voted for Donald Trump, a lot of folks that we would love to have back in our camp.”
With Democrats desperately searching for their next generation of leaders, Murphy, 51, shrugged off the idea he is setting himself up for a future White House bid.
Being president is “just not in my brain at all right now,” he said, adding that “sounds like a pretty hard, miserable job.”
Read more from our interview →
Meanwhile, in Illinois: Natasha Korecki digs into how Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker is also attempting to carve out space for himself as an oppositional force to Trump.
A lesson for Democrats from an election overseas
By Scott Bland
Among the many questions Democrats are trying to figure out after 2024: How did they lose the massive edge among young voters they had relied on in recent years, and what can they do to fix it?
Election results from an ocean away serve as a reminder that the Democratic Party’s problems aren’t just its problems — that there are broader forces buffeting voters beyond the personalities that often seem to be driving U.S. politics.
Exit polls from Germany’s parliamentary elections last month showed how the traditional political parties in the country’s coalition government saw their support splinter — and, in particular, how young voters rushed to the far left (the Left party) and the far right (the AfD). The two parties combined for 30% of the vote overall but collected nearly half of their support from voters under 25, according to the public broadcasters’ exit polls.
Just as in the U.S., there was also a notable youth gender gap, with 35% of the youngest female voters backing the Left party (versus just 16% of young men), while 27% of young men backed AfD (versus just 15% of young women).
The trends speak to the same polarization by gender and general dissatisfaction with traditional politicians and institutions hitting young voters in the U.S.
John Della Volpe, the polling director at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, noted some of the factors affecting young voters in the U.S. are true throughout other Western democracies.
“The Covid pandemic, but also the global economy, inflation, cost of housing — these are issues that transcend national borders,” said Della Volpe, who directs the Harvard Youth Poll. “Certainly in this country, I don’t feel like the young people I talk to on a weekly basis feel like their leaders understand the challenges a young person faces, or that they care about them. … So they’re looking for other voices, independent voices often, who are able to connect with them.”
Fallout from the Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office clash
The ripple effects from last Friday’s shouting match between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office are still ongoing. Here’s the latest:
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Zelenskyy said over the weekend that he believes his country’s relationship with the U.S. “will continue” and that he’s still willing to sign a rare-earth minerals deal.
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Trump, meanwhile, blasted Zelenskyy on Truth Social for suggesting that an end to his country’s war with Russia is “very, very far way.” Trump wrote: “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy, and America will not put up with it for much longer!”
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It has also led some Republican leaders in the U.S. to suggest Zelenskyy should resign. Critics say that would be a boost for Russia, which has tried to oust Zelenskyy for years.
🗞️ Today’s other top stories
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💲Tariff watch: Trump said that U.S. tariffs are still expected to take effect tomorrow on Canada and Mexico. Read more →
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🛑 Stop the ops: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered U.S. Cyber Command in late February to stop offensive cyber operations and information operations against Russia. Read more →
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🏅 A coveted prize: In the space of a few days last week, no fewer than three senior Trump administration officials or nominees made a case for Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Read more →
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🥊 ‘They’ve radicalized me’: Trump’s efforts to dismantle the federal workforce could be creating a resistance within the government, with workers fighting back in the courts, in protests and online. Read more →
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🗽He’s back: Andrew Cuomo launched his campaign to be the next mayor of New York City over the weekend, four years after he resigned as governor amid sexual harassment allegations. The bid is already bringing him back to a longtime foil: Trump. Read more →
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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
