The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 36
September 8, 2025
This week:
- Republicans are set up for another election about crime
- Ashley Hinson jumps into Iowa’s U.S. senate race
- A Sununu comeback may be on the cards
Outlook
Another crime election? In 2024, President Donald Trump rode three main issues back to the White House: Crime, inflation, and immigration. He flavored this campaign with the issue of transgenderism, particularly as it applied to men being allowed into women’s sports and prisons.
Since his win, he has nearly solved the problem of new illegal immigration at the southern U.S. border and is rapidly working to repatriate millions who entered under the Biden administration. Inflation is, for the moment, below 3 percent, back down to levels much closer to what the public is willing to accept. This leaves crime as the main issue the administration is tackling, at times in conjunction with immigration.
Between his takeover of the District of Columbia police force and the building, dramatic story behind the videotaped murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte mass transit, the Republican Party finds itself set up to run a crime-focused 2026 midterm campaign. Already, the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina is including a focus on Zarutska, with likely Republican nominee Michael Whatley hammering former Gov. Roy Cooper for signing a “soft-on-crime” executive order in June 2020. Expect to see more about the prosecutors and judges who let Zarutska’s killer continue to menace the public despite more than a dozen arrests.
Republicans were turning in a very different direction circa 2014, but Trump can be said to have made crime great again as a national political issue. He famously began his presidential run in 2015 with a speech that, among other things, blamed uncontrolled illegal immigration for bringing many criminals into the U.S. He was ridiculed and called a racist for even saying such a thing, but time has borne out this electoral strategy.
Future of reform: Criminal justice reform policy — which Trump has not wholly rejected since first taking power — has come full circle. It began last decade as a bipartisan issue with a sensible focus on mercy for first-time non-violent offenders and an end to pointlessly long sentences for trivial offenses, especially in cases where there were better ways to make the victims whole. But in the Woke Era, the reform movement careened into indefensible anti-police and anti-incarceration ideologies that, to put it bluntly, created a situation in many major cities in which violent crazies and career criminals just continuously victimize normal people. Huge gains in public safety that had been made since the 1990s were lost. This is particularly true in blue-Democratic jurisdictions where localities elect their district attorneys and judges.
The older people among us may recognize the pattern. It is as if the U.S. had returned to all the old mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s. And it is now also returning to the policy antidotes that voters looked to at that time: tougher enforcement, more incarceration, more deportations, and perhaps, in some cases, longer sentences.
There is a baby to be preserved in the criminal justice reform space, but there’s also a lot of dirty bathwater that needs to be dumped. Trump’s hints about sending the military into Chicago or Los Angeles are probably dubious. But he finds himself in a position to do both. If he is successful in his continued campaign against crime in the federal district, it will provide him with a lot of ammunition to demand that Democratic leaders in cities and localities clean up their act or face a crippling loss of moral authority. The aim of the D.C. operation should be to demonstrate that acceptance of current levels of criminality in U.S. cities is a choice, not a necessity.
Senate 2025
Iowa: Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) has, as expected, jumped into this open-seat race to replace Sen. Joni Ernst (R), and she has done so to near-universal acclaim. President Trump is one among many to get behind her, and a number of Republican senators (including Republican Leader John Thune) are already backing her as well. With nearly every important Republican political figure in the state preoccupied with something else, she seems likely to win the primary almost by acclamation. Democrats so far have a handful of former state legislators and other local officials expressing interest in the race.
The situation in Iowa has changed dramatically since Trump’s rise in 2015. And even since election 2024, Republicans have added nearly 30,000 net registered voters to their overall margin in Iowa, for a total advantage of nearly 200,000 over registered Democrats.
New Hampshire: Republicans were sorely disappointed that former Gov. Chris Sununu (R) would not be running for the open seat of retiring Sen. Jean Shaheen (D). But the possibility that his brother, former Sen. John Sununu (R), might make a comeback next fall is definitely a welcome one for them. Sununu lost the seat to a popular governor in the blue wave year of 2008. He would also be much more likely to win it this time around than former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R), who could potentially be convinced to run instead for the House seat of the likely Democratic nominee, Chris Pappas (D).
Texas: The favorite for Democrats remains former Rep. Colin Allred (D), but state Sen. James Talarico (D), fresh off an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, is officially in the race and has a poll showing himself close behind at 40 to 32 percent. When respondents were pushed, Talarico took a 38 to 36 percent lead. Republicans will be facing a brutal primary of their own between Sen. John Cornyn (R) and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R).
