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The Banks Job

A candid chat with Indiana freshman Senator Jim Banks about tariffs, midterms, and not repeating the G.O.P.’s 2017 mistakes.

Jim Banks Puck Power Breakfast
Jim Banks was an early endorser of Trump’s 2024 run for the White House, and he told me onstage that he remains steadfast in his belief that the G.O.P. needs to maintain its status as the party of the working class. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Leigh Ann Caldwell
May 8, 2025

Just before President Donald Trump announced a new trade agreement with the U.K.—really more of an outline of a framework of an agreement, but one that Trump allies are nevertheless portraying as part of the greatest negotiation in the history of negotiations—I sat down with Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks, who is all in on Trump’s tariff policy. Banks, a freshman from Indiana, has an umbilical relationship with the president. He was first elected to the House in 2016, during Trump’s first turn at the top of the ticket. He long ago embraced the latter’s populist tendencies as the future of his party. All this made him a perfect guest for the inaugural Puck Power Breakfast, which took place at the Waldorf on Pennsylvania Avenue… yes, the site of Trump’s former hotel.