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, Henry J. Gomez explores how Ohio, once a perennial presidential swing state, will be at the center of the 2026 midterm map. Plus, Andrea Mitchell digs into the Trump administration’s shifting messaging on the White House ballroom.
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— Adam Wollner
‘Ohio is back’: Both parties navigate competitive midterm races in a forgotten battleground
By Henry J. Gomez
CLEVELAND — Two hard facts hover over this year’s midterm races in Ohio.
It has been 20 years since the state last elected a Democrat as governor. And it has been even longer since a Democrat not named Sherrod Brown has won a second election to any nonjudicial statewide office.
But party leaders are daring to be optimistic in 2026, encouraged by polls that show their candidate for governor, physician Amy Acton, running close with newly official Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy. They also scored a recruiting win when Brown launched a comeback Senate bid. Brown won the Democratic nomination yesterday to face Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican appointed to succeed Vice President JD Vance. Early polls foreshadow a close race in that contest, too.
“It just feels like Ohio is back,” said state Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Clyde, referring to years in the wilderness when, except when Brown was on the ballot, both national parties retreated from what was once a fiercely contested battleground.
Alex Triantafilou, the Ohio GOP chair, acknowledged a tough political climate for Republicans this year. President Donald Trump’s job approval ratings have fallen to new lows as he takes the rap for an unpopular war in Iran and rising gas prices that have accelerated frustrations with the economy.
“Cautiously optimistic,” Triantafilou replied when he was asked how he feels about his party’s chances this fall. “We recognize the challenge of any midterm when you’re in power. Our challenge is to turn out our voters. If we do that, we’ll win just like we did in ’24 and every year before.”
Just like when Ohio regularly decided presidential elections in past years, its 2026 races have national importance. While the Husted-Brown race could play a role in deciding who controls the Senate next year, several battleground House races could do the same in that tightly divided chamber. And the governorship is a huge prize drawing attention, too.
For subscribers: Trump’s Indiana wins send a stark message to Republicans who defy him
Analysis by Scott Bland
Trump’s dive into local politics delivered a clear warning to his fellow Republican officeholders: If they get in his way, he can end their careers.
It’s not just that Trump’s endorsements helped unseat at least five Republican state senators who thwarted his redistricting plans in Indiana last year, with a sixth race still too close to call. It’s how those results stand out in a broader landscape in which incumbents often run for re-election unopposed and only a handful ever lose primaries.
🗳️ Results recap: In addition to primaries in Ohio and Indiana yesterday, Michigan held a special election in a state Senate district that Kamala Harris narrowly carried in 2024. The Democratic candidate won by more than 19 points, another overperformance that preserves the party’s majority in the chamber. Read more →
How Trump has changed his tune on the White House ballroom
Analysis by Andrea Mitchell
President Donald Trump said at the White House today that his proposed ballroom is “a little bit ahead of schedule, right on budget, but it’s going to be great.” And asked in a separate interview with PBS whether he was concerned about the cost, he said: “It’s a tiny — it’s one one-millionth of a percent of what we do. That’s a small deal. And I’m putting up a lot of money myself.”
What he’s describing has morphed from a modest expansion of the White House historic reception rooms to accommodate more state dinner guests, paid for by private donors, into a billion-dollar addition three times the size of the current White House mansion at taxpayer expense. And what was first described as a room to seat 200 guests soon grew to 400 and is now designed for 1,000 people.
The security enhancements had already been added to the project, but the administration says they are now even more justified by the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
In what critics see as an artful dodge, proposed legislation from Republicans in Congress would not specifically authorize construction of the new ballroom. Instead, it describes “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.”
If it is approved, the legislation could undercut a legal challenge to the project by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which argues the construction is illegal because it was never authorized by Congress. Lawyers for the Justice Department countered that any pause would endanger the lives of the first family. According to the government, the proposed building would defend against “hostile attacks via drones, ballistic missiles, bullets [and] biohazards” and must proceed quickly. A federal judge ruled twice that the administration has not justified its national security argument for bypassing Congress. But the judge permitted the construction to continue below ground pending an appeals court hearing in June.
Historically, there has been a relatively small bunker under the East Wing since 1942, built after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was used most notably in recent decades by Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on 9/11, when there was concern that the third hijacked plane could have been heading for the White House. President George W. Bush, who had been at an event in Florida, was by then aloft in Air Force One. Under national security protocols, that was considered the safest place for the commander in chief in case the White House came under attack. There was also a modest medical unit in the East Wing.
National security experts and historians say the expansive proposal for a massive underground complex to serve as a prolonged presidential retreat in the case of an attack would defeat a long-held directive for the president to go to the bunker for a brief period but, in case of a real attack, be taken by helicopter to one of four secure underground locations where he could survive any potential targeting of the Executive Mansion.
For now, there is no bunker. The original bunker was demolished along with the East Wing. Rubble from the excavation was dumped at a public golf course near the Potomac River, a favorite recreation spot for Washington residents. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes held an emergency hearing Monday on a request by the DC Preservation League to temporarily halt the Trump takeover of the public course. Reyes compared the drama to an episode of the hit TV comedy “Parks and Recreation.”
🗞️ Today's other top stories
- 🗺️ Redistricting roundup: Republican legislative leaders in Tennessee released a congressional map proposal that would carve up the state’s only Democratic-controlled, Black-majority district. Read more →
- 🔎 In the states: The FBI’s search of the office of Virginia state Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas is connected to a long-running public corruption investigation into Lucas, a Democrat, that has roots in the Biden era, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News. Read more →
- 📝 Epstein saga: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick testified before the House Oversight Committee in a closed hearing about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein, including his 2012 visit to Epstein’s island. Lutnick has denied any wrongdoing and has not been accused of any impropriety tied to Epstein. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.
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