Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell, back in your inbox after some weekend technical difficulties and hoping everyone had a happy Mother’s Day, especially my mom.

Tomorrow, I’m hosting my next Puck Power Breakfast with Republican Rep. Adrian Smith of Nebraska, hosted by the American Chemistry Council. Smith is the chair of the Ways and Means Trade subcommittee, so we’ll talk a lot about trade, tariffs, and the news of the day. If I don’t see you there, you can read about it later this week.

Congress is back in town, where members will face questions about the party-line reconciliation bill the Senate will take up next week to fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection… and $1 billion for Trump’s ballroom. That last item is becoming a political nightmare for Republicans, some of whom don’t want to approve money for a project Trump promised wouldn’t be funded by taxpayers, even if it’s earmarked for security expenditures. Everyone is watching closely to see how the Senate parliamentarian will rule on the provision.

The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to throw out the state’s new voter-approved maps is obviously a major setback for House Democrats, wiping out newly gained seats in the redistricting wars. It also handed James Blair, Trump’s political director, his second big victory in a week. Blair, who recently left the White House to run the president’s outside political operation, suddenly looks resurgent after a string of bruising losses. (I wrote last week about how the Indiana primaries—in which Trump-backed candidates felled most of the state senators who opposed his redistricting plan—were critical to restoring Blair’s standing in Trumpworld.) After Friday’s win in Virginia, Team Trump rallied behind Blair, taunting critics and declaring his strategy vindicated.

In today’s issue, I’ve got new reporting on how the Democratic Party is still struggling to overcome its internal warfare, which reignited this week after the D.C.C.C. endorsed candidates in several competitive primaries in key pickup seats, once again pitting ideological factions against leadership. Plus, our new colleague Marianna Sotomayor got her hands on some exclusive polling, and I have a scoop on Republican Rep. Chip Roy’s Texas attorney general race.

Also mentioned in this issue: Jordan Wood, Randy Villegas, Chris Larsen, Joe Baldacci, Ryan Mackenzie, Jasmeet Bains, Kamala Harris, David Valadao, Suzan DelBene, Josh Shapiro, Ken Paxton, Lamont McClure, Ryan Crosswell, Susan Wild, Mayes Middleton, John Cornyn, Bernie Sanders, Hakeem Jeffries, Carol Obando-Derstine, Chuck Schumer, and more…

If the midterm election hinged solely on the country’s mood, and not the redistricting arms race, Democrats would appear poised to reclaim the House on a wave of anti-Trump emotion. A new poll conducted by center-left think tank Third Way and the public-opinion firm GBAO, and shared exclusively with me, found that voters prefer a Democratic Congress over Republican control by a margin of 48 percent to 40 percent. The biggest movement came from Latinos, who have shifted eight points toward Dems since the fall, and young men, who moved 10 points in that direction. (Third Way, an occasional punching bag for leftists, has become more influential with Democratic leadership following the party’s 2024 shellacking.)

But the headwinds begin the moment Democrats start imagining themselves back in power. One in five voters planning to support Democrats in November still does not trust them to handle the issues they rank as most important: inflation, tariffs, the cost of living, and the economy. Several House Democrats have privately warned me that the party could repeat the mistake it made after the 2018 midterms, when members became so consumed with investigating Trump that voters came to see the party as being defined by opposition alone.

Third Way’s findings captured that conundrum. Overall, voters overwhelmingly said Democrats should prioritize lowering costs over investigations or impeachment—opting for economic relief by a margin of 67 percent to 27 percent. Independents mirrored those results. But among Democrats, 49 percent want investigations prioritized while 47 percent want lower costs. Senior House Democrats tell me they understand they’ll need to deliver on both affordability and accountability, but that’s easier said than done with an ideologically fractured caucus.

The establishment intervention could backfire. Villegas said his fundraising surged after the endorsement of Bains became public, although his campaign wouldn’t put a number on it. In Maine, the party backed State Sen. Joe Baldacci, who comes from a family with deep Maine political roots, over former Hill staffer and political consultant Jordan Wood, who has twice as much cash on hand. Wood immediately blasted leadership: “The fact that the D.C.C.C. would come in and try to decide this primary literally weeks before we vote is just another example of how broken our Democratic leadership is,” he posted on X. Former Rep. Wild told me the Democrats would have “egg on their faces” if the primaries were held today.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has also angered state Democrats by endorsing in a crowded primary to challenge freshman Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania’s 7th district, another top pickup opportunity. Wild told me she warned Shapiro the move would create unnecessary resentment in a swing state where he remains broadly popular ahead of a possible presidential campaign. Still, Shapiro backed Bob Brooks, the head of the state firefighters’ union, a crucial constituency for the governor. “He wants to show that he can deliver a state,” Wild said. “But I just don’t think it was a smart way to go.”

Brooks’s support from both Shapiro and Sen. Bernie Sanders proved good enough for the D-trip. Wild is backing Carol Obando-Derstine, another candidate in the contest, and said that when party officials called her about the Brooks endorsement, they explained they needed to blunt the momentum of yet another candidate vying for the district’s Democratic nomination. Sources told me that the candidate was Lamont McClure, the former Northampton County executive who has the support of a dark-money group that people in the district think is funded by Republicans. (Ryan Crosswell, a former prosecutor and Republican until last year, and new to the district, is also in the race.) “They were paying too much attention to fundraising and D.C. consultants,” Obando-Derstine told me.

The D.C.C.C.’s involvement in primaries is hardly new, and it has always enraged some faction of the party. But the anger feels more combustible now because distrust in the establishment runs so deep. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and the wider party apparatus have already angered activists by aggressively backing preferred candidates in that chamber’s primaries. Until now, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has avoided intervening. But with even more seats to win after the Virginia Supreme Court overruled the state’s new map and the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, the party isn’t thinking twice about picking winners and losers. Democratic leadership is betting that winning the House in November outweighs the fury they’re igniting today.

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