A moment of truth for Democrats ahead of this week's DHS shutdown deadline: From the Politics Desk

This is the online version of 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, Sahil Kapur sets up the government funding battle that will play out on Capitol Hill this week. Plus, Adam Edelman and Jane C. Timm dive into the races to be the top election official in four key battleground states.

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— Adam Wollner

A moment of truth for Democrats ahead of this week's DHS shutdown deadline

Analysis by Sahil Kapur

The Department of Homeland Security is slated to run out of funding at the end of Friday, and Democrats have issued a list of demands to win their votes to keep the money flowing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the agencies tasked with carrying President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, so Democrats’ main point of leverage is the Senate, where the GOP controls 53 seats and needs 60 to pass a funding bill.

The political environment is evolving in a way that has emboldened Democrats who want to take a confrontational posture. Recent surveys show Trump’s approval on handling of immigration has tumbled, and that voters are registering high levels of disapproval of ICE.

And a twist last week in a New Jersey’s special primary election highlights the shifting mood within the party. Progressive activist and self-described “agitator” Analilia Mejia leads a multicandidate field, which includes a former congressman and former lieutenant governor, and sits on the verge of a massive upset in a primary that’s still too close to call, per NBC News’ Decision Desk.

Unlike her more moderate Democratic rivals, who took more nuanced positions, Mejia is explicitly calling to abolish ICE. They’re vying for a district that Kamala Harris won by 9 points and was last represented by Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

The political backdrop highlights the dilemma ahead for Democrats on Capitol Hill, where negotiations aren’t going well.

There’s a policy problem — top Republicans are cool to Democratic demands like requiring agents to remove their masks and obtain judicial warrants to conduct raids on private property, among others. And they have demands of their own, like cutting off funds to “sanctuary cities,” which Democrats view as outside the scope of this negotiation.

And there’s a process problem — the negotiating structure is a mess. Appropriators are talking at the staff level, but numerous Republicans are publicly trashing the Democratic policy requests. Democrats say the talks would be better at the congressional leadership level but GOP leaders say they should cut a deal with the White House, like they did on the recent funding package, which had a two-week DHS bill.

In other words, congressional Republicans have little appetite to play ball — the vast majority of them represent safe-red districts or states. If Trump agrees to a deal, recent history suggests they will likely go along. But they have some leverage of their own: ICE has $75 billion in funding under Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that won’t stop in a shutdown. And other DHS functions like the TSA and FEMA would take a hit.

So any deal that can become law would likely be incremental, far short of the opening bid by Democrats.

But if they fail to cut a deal with the White House, the party will face a moment of truth: Do they go along with another stopgap bill or force a DHS shutdown? And will that end differently than the shutdown last fall over the Affordable Care Act, when Democrats ultimately relented without concessions?

Trump's election threats shape this year’s key secretary of state races

By Adam Edelman and Jane C. Timm

President Donald Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections and continued false claims of fraud are defining races this year for offices that oversee the voting process in key battleground states.

Democratic candidates for secretary of state have put Trump’s comments and recent actions by his administration — including lawsuits over state voter rolls and the recent FBI raid of an Atlanta-area election hub — front and center as part of a broader messaging effort focused on protecting elections.

And the Republicans vying to be these states’ top election officials have largely lined up behind Trump’s aggressive approach and unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Here’s a look at how four races in key critical swing states are shaping up:

Arizona: Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is running for a second term this fall. His sole Republican challenger is state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who was part of efforts to file numerous lawsuits that sought to overturn the 2020 results in Arizona, including one that sought to disqualify the state’s electors from casting their ballots for Joe Biden.

Georgia: Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rejected Trump’s plea to “find” more votes in Georgia after the 2020 election, is now running for governor this year. The GOP primary to succeed him features Gabriel Sterling — the chief operating officer in the Georgia secretary of state’s office who emerged as a public face of the harassment and threats that election officials faced following the 2020 election — and Vernon Jones, a Trump ally who has backed the president’s false voting claims.

Also running are state Rep. Tim Fleming and business owner Kelvin King, both of whom have expressed concerns about the results of the 2020 election.

The Democratic candidates include Fulton County commissioner Dana Barrett, who’s been an outspoken critic of Trump and his allies; Penny Brown Reynolds, a former TV judge who served in the Biden administration; and Adrian Consonery, a voting rights activist.

Michigan: Democrats seeking to replace Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is running for governor, include Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Ingham County Clerk Barbara Byrum, both of whom have framed Trump and his allies as threats to democracy.

On the Republican side there’s Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, who has leaned into allegations of noncitizen voting as a major focus of his campaign, as well as Monica Yatooma, a business owner and Trump supporter.

Nevada: Republican Sharron Angle is the only current challenger to Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who won the office four years ago.

Angle, a former member of the state Assembly who has run unsuccessfully for statewide office multiple times, was part of a group in Nevada that sued to block the certification of Biden’s 2020 election win in the state, citing allegations of widespread voter fraud.

Read more →

➡️ Related: State officials say the Trump administration has been absent on election security

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

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