Graham Platner lays out what kind of senator he would be: From the Politics Desk

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In today’s edition, Sahil Kapur talks to Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner about he sees himself as an heir to Bernie Sanders’ legacy. Plus, Andrea Mitchell breaks down the on-again, off-again negotiations with Iran.

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— Adam Wollner

Graham Platner lays out what kind of senator he would be

By Sahil Kapur

YORK, Maine — Graham Platner says he will push Democrats to rethink their vision of power and pursue an aggressive agenda if he’s elected the next U.S. senator from Maine.

In a recent interview, Platner called for replacing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; organizing an anti-war movement; removing two conservative Supreme Court justices; potentially expanding the court and weakening the filibuster.

He also said he sees himself as an heir to the legacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has endorsed him in the competitive Democratic primary.

“When you listen to how we talk about organizing, when you certainly look at our theory of politics around wealth inequality, our theory of politics around how the system has been structured to benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of working people — I very much feel like I do fall in the legacy of Sen. Sanders,” Platner told NBC News. “I very much want to see this politics continue into the future. That’s why I’m doing this.”

He said if Democrats win control of the Senate, they must use subpoena power to investigate the Trump administration.

“I want to shut the White House down,” Platner said. “I want us to, for the next two years, be dragging every single person in the White House, every single person in all these agencies that have been conducting themselves in illegal and unconstitutional ways. They need to be dragged by subpoena in front of Senate committees over and over and over again.”

Platner, notably, leans to the right on one issue: He said he’d oppose a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, a goal that Democrats have pursued for years.

“We need to have a much more holistic approach than simply banning types of guns that we already have uncountable numbers of in the United States already,” Platner said.

Read more →

For subscribers: What America’s revamped election maps mean for the midterms and the balance of power in Washington

By Jane C. Timm

Virginia voters signed off yesterday on a plan to gerrymander their state to boost Democrats in the midterms, making it the seventh state to draw new maps as part of a redistricting arms race that has altered the fight for the House majority coming up in November’s elections.

Here is a state-by-state look at where things stand →

➡️ Related: GOP navigates ‘regret’ and recriminations after redistricting loss in Virginia

Negotiating war and peace on social media

Analysis by Andrea Mitchell

The Trump administration’s on-again, off-again negotiations with Iran have been taking place mostly on social media. And President Donald Trump’s swings on whether to negotiate or order more military strikes sound more like the art of not reaching a deal.

In a lengthy telephone interview today with Fox News, Trump said there is “no time pressure” on the ceasefire, asserting that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz “scares them even more than the bombing,” adding, “They’ve been bombed for years but the blockade they hate.”

Extending the ceasefire again yesterday just before the deadline expired, Trump sounded infinitely patient, despite Iran having stood up Vice President JD Vance and the other U.S. negotiators who were poised to fly to Islamabad for another round of talks. The uncertainty over negotiations, now possibly resuming at the end of the week, was a departure from what sounded like the president’s misplaced confidence last Friday when he suddenly declared that all outstanding issues with Tehran had been resolved.

In a series of interviews and posts on social media, Trump claimed Iran’s enriched uranium would be removed, the Strait of Hormuz jointly demined and never closed again, nuclear enrichment suspended indefinitely, Iran would stop backing its foreign proxies, and no money would be exchanged.

Iran immediately denied all those claims, posting “The US President made 7 claims in one hour, all 7 of which are false,” adding that “with these falsehoods, they did not win the war and certainly will not achieve anything in negotiations either.” It wasn’t the first time the effort to narrow the gaps was influenced by online posts or Trump telephone interviews. As of Monday, NBC News had tallied 134 published calls between reporters and Trump since the start of the war on Feb. 28 — many of which drew contradictory responses from different elements in Tehran.

Any effort at conciliation seemed to explode over the weekend when Iran fired at two freighters in the Strait of Hormuz they claimed violated their strict controls over which favored nations could sail through. On Sunday, the U.S. Navy fired at the engine room of an Iranian container ship and then boarded and seized the vessel, later saying it had been sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2020 for illegal activity.

Iran was also sending contradictory signals, with some senior officials confirming Monday that Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf would go to Islamabad for talks if Vance would show up. In anticipation of the talks resuming, Vance’s plane was fueled and ready to take off from Joint Base Andrews yesterday morning. But Iran then said its representatives would not be traveling after all. Vance returned to the White House for meetings.

Diplomatic efforts have been plagued by distrust on both sides. The U.S. is wary of Iran’s reputation for dragging out nuclear talks for months and years. Iran has been burned twice by the Trump team launching military strikes in the middle of scheduled negotiations — once last June during the 12-day war, and again with the surprise joint U.S.-Israel attack at the end of February.

Still, despite Trump’s claim that he is in no hurry to get the war over with, NBC News has reported he is eager to have reached an agreement before his planned visit to Beijing for a summit with President Xi Jinping next month. And while he said today he is not hurrying to end the war because of the midterms, he is known to keep a close eye on oil prices, the financial markets, and his poll numbers — all of which are taking hits because of the war.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.

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