Meet the Democrats trying to flip the script on gun rights: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily 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, Frank Thorp V and Ryan Nobles speak with Democratic candidates who are touting their gun credentials. Plus, Andrea Mitchell digs into President Donald Trump’s potential next moves on Iran.

— Adam Wollner

Meet the Democrats trying to flip the script on gun rights

By Frank Thorp V and Ryan Nobles

A group of Democratic candidates on the ballot next week are hoping to start a new conversation around guns as part of a strategy to win back rural voters in red-leaning areas.

Wisconsin’s 1st District: Democrat Mitchell Berman’s ads have portrayed him as a proud gun owner and hunter. One shows him fishing while wearing a handgun in a holster; another shows him skeet shooting with clay pigeons labeled “Data Centers.” After the target explodes in the air, his 6-year-old daughter yells, “Great shot, Dad!”

“That’s who I am,” Berman told NBC News. “When I go fishing up north — where I’m from we have wolves. We have — in spring trout season, we have bears that are coming out of their dens with cubs. We’ve even had a mountain lion on our trail camera. So, you know, when I go out into the woods, I carry a sidearm with me for protection.”

His race against GOP Rep. Bryan Steil was not expected to be close. President Donald Trump carried the district in 2020 and 2024, and Steil won re-election two years ago by 10 points. But polling has shown the race is within reach for Democrats.

Texas’ 15th District: Bobby Pulido, a Tejano singer-turned-Democratic congressional candidate, is not shy about his love for guns and hunting. He’s posted videos of him shooting a target a mile away, and his rec room is lined with the trophies he’s gathered on hunts. He even named his oldest son Remington.

“Listen, in the rural areas, firearms are a way of life,” Pulido told NBC News, saying that fundraisers in the Rio Grande Valley are more common at skeet shooting events than at golf courses.

Pulido is also running in an area that Trump won in the last two presidential elections. The district was redrawn earlier this year to make it more favorable for Republicans, but a shift in the Latino vote away from Trump mixed with a struggling economy has put Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz at risk of losing her bid for re-election.

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The big decision awaiting Trump after the midterms

Analysis by Andrea Mitchell

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump has been confidently promising that oil prices will drop like a rock after the midterms — especially skyrocketing diesel fuel critical in farm states that could decide which party wins the Senate. Implicit is that he will attempt to do something decisive after next week to end the war against Iran and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

His not-so-subtle hints are backed up by new reporting in The Wall Street Journal and other publications that the U.S. has told Gulf partners it will resume intense, brief strikes against Iran after the midterms. And Israel’s hawkish Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu has at least temporarily retained a caretaker role as prime minister while he and his rival, former Army Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, jockey for a majority. In Israel’s complex parliamentary system, a decisive outcome could take weeks or months, or even lead to another election.

That places Netanyahu in control of a potential resumption of the war, a position he had advocated for before Israelis went to the polls, according to The New York Times and other outlets. According to those reports, Israel’s military and intelligence leaders effectively vetoed that option, saying it would politicize their decision-making.

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As flawed as Israel’s democracy has been in many respects, according to many of its own citizens and even many longtime U.S. supporters, it still has the virtue of a largely independent military. But in the U.S., critics fear that may not be the case with the civilian leadership of the military in the second Trump administration.

For Subscribers

FOR SUBSCRIBERSTrump says Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate should be prosecuted over Dan Sullivan ballot dispute

FOR SUBSCRIBERSHow California prison reforms helped free a serial rapist called ‘America’s creepiest heir’

FOR SUBSCRIBERSTrump’s final campaign swing is taking on a darker tone

FOR SUBSCRIBERSMel Robbins has midterms advice for you

FOR SUBSCRIBERSFlorida cop charged with possessing dead man’s house had history of misconduct

FOR SUBSCRIBERSDHS hack exposes 40,000 employee names and undercover ICE agents, activists say

FOR SUBSCRIBERSRising diesel prices hit school districts hard ahead of the midterm elections

FOR SUBSCRIBERS‘There goes Texas’: The swing county that could determine the state’s next senator

FOR SUBSCRIBERSThey were deported to Costa Rica, but that won’t stop them from trying to come back to the U.S.

FOR SUBSCRIBERSIsrael’s election has no clear winner — but Benjamin Netanyahu looks far from defeated again

FOR SUBSCRIBERSDemocratic? Republican? Most new young voters register as neither

FOR SUBSCRIBERSDavid Crowley rushes to shore up support with Black voters in Wisconsin governor’s race

FOR SUBSCRIBERSDOJ’s ‘shocking’ flurry of pre-election activity breaks precedent, former officials say

FOR SUBSCRIBERSElectronic machines aren’t flipping votes, despite online claims, election officials say

FOR SUBSCRIBERSDemocratic candidates emphasize their support for gun rights in tight midterm races

Slide 1 of 1

In past administrations in both political parties, secretaries of defense and their top deputies were usually experienced foreign policy or former military leaders, willing to offer independent opinions to the presidents they served in a formalized National Security Council interagency system. Conflicting options were debated in a deliberative process before they were presented to the commander in chief.

Yes, on occasion, chief executives were misled by false narratives, like those delivered during the Vietnam War by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Or, during the Iraq quagmire, when the chain of command was short-circuited by a powerful personality like President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Notably, Rumsfeld was forced out of his role the morning after Bush’s party got hammered in the 2006 midterms.

Now, whether his party wins or loses in next week’s midterms, Trump faces what could be the most consequential decision of his second term: whether to “finish the job” and resume attacking Iran.

Such a decision would fly in the faces of European leaders who counsel that renewed strikes would lead to higher oil prices and a potential economic downturn and not produce a more compliant regime in Tehran. At the same time, there is now a growing consensus in Riyadh and other Gulf capitals that they need to find some accommodation with Iran to get the regime to try to restrain its Houthi proxies, who threaten to become an existential threat to their economies.

The question for Trump is whether to follow the advice of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News personality who has purged many of the Pentagon’s most experienced top generals and has privately advocated for resuming military action against Iran.

The hawks could be right that a weakened Iran could be felled by a decisive blow, though skeptics note that such a strategy has not yet proved successful. The U.S. and global economy — to say nothing of Trump’s legacy — may well depend on what he decides in the next few weeks.

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

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