Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
We hope you enjoyed your federal holiday on Monday. Today, we’ve got the latest on how orders from President Donald Trump’s appointees are cleaving off career government officials who are uneasy about carrying them out. Plus, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul faces political peril and political opportunity over the question of what to do about New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
— Scott Bland
Veteran federal prosecutor resigns over bank freeze order from Trump appointee
Another Justice Department resignation on Tuesday continued a theme in President Donald Trump’s second administration: concern over orders coming from the top.
A veteran prosecutor in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in her resignation letter that she’d been asked by superiors to take actions — specifically, telling a bank there was probable cause to seize assets under potential investigation — that she saw as unsupported by evidence, Ryan J. Reilly reported.
“As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified,” Denise Cheung, a 24-year Justice Department prosecutor who was the chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, wrote in the letter to Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, a Trump appointee.
“Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation,” Cheung wrote.
The Justice Department responded via a spokesperson that “refusing a basic request to pause an investigation so officials can examine the potential waste of government funds is not an act of heroism — just a failure to follow chain of command.”
It’s the latest in a string of departures from the Justice Department stemming from concerns about orders. Last week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office handling the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the Public Integrity section at the Justice Department in Washington saw a round of resignations, as attorneys refused to comply with acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s orders to dismiss the charges against Adams.
What to know from the Trump presidency today
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the U.S. and Russia had agreed to re-establish “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow,” as top officials from the countries met in Saudi Arabia building toward talks over ending the war in Ukraine.
- Trump appeared to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the Russian invasion of his country in 2022. “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited,’” Trump said of Ukrainian concern about U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia. “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it — three years. You should have never started it.”
- Trump signed two executive orders and a presidential memorandum. One order, on in-vitro fertilization, directs White House advisers to study how to make IVF and other fertility treatments more affordable, while the other directs the Office of Management and Budget to take on a stronger “oversight” role of independent agencies in the executive branch.
- The memorandum directs “the heads of executive departments and agencies to take all appropriate actions to make public” details of the “waste, fraud and abuse” that the Trump administration is uncovering.
Kathy Hochul’s political dilemma over Eric Adams
By Steve Kornacki
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is in a politically dangerous moment as she considers what to do about New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
A decision to remove the mayor from office would mark the first time a New York governor has ever exercised this power. It would spark a furious outcry from Adams and his backers, who are now seeking to rally support from Black voters — a group that helped propel Adams to office in 2021. And it would risk a broader backlash from Black leaders who might object to the removal of a duly elected Black mayor by a unilateral action.
Alienating Black voters would threaten Hochul’s standing in her own potential Democratic primary next year, in which 20% to 25% of the electorate will be Black.
But there may also be a significant political opportunity for Hochul here.
First, it’s actually uncertain whether a move against Adams would incur this kind of blowback, with recent polling showing Adams broadly unpopular among New York City voters — including Black voters.
The numbers could shift if Hochul actually goes through with ousting Adams, but right now, there’s not much residual goodwill toward the mayor among what had been his political base.
Moreover, Hochul’s 2026 challenges extend well beyond the Democratic Party, and taking decisive action against an unpopular figure like Adams could give her a badly needed boost among general election swing voters.
In 2022, Hochul scored a decidedly underwhelming victory, beating her Republican foe, then-Rep. Lee Zeldin, by just 6 points — two years after Joe Biden carried New York by 23 points. Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo also won the state by 23 points in 2018.
Hochul’s position hasn’t improved since 2022. A Siena College poll two weeks ago showed her with a 44% job approval rating and upside-down personal popularity (39% favorable, 47% unfavorable). Already, a potentially formidable Republican candidate, Rep. Mike Lawler, is laying the groundwork for a campaign against her next year.
One way of measuring Hochul’s weakness is to compare the results of three recent elections in New York: the Biden landslide in 2020; Hochul’s much narrower win in 2022; and Kamala Harris’ surprisingly modest (11 points) victory last November. Here are the results from New York’s seven largest counties.
A major story in New York last November was the shift of Hispanic, Asian American and some Jewish voters toward Donald Trump. This can be seen in the numbers for the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, where Harris badly underperformed compared to Biden’s 2020 showing. Notably, though, outside of the Bronx, Hochul also experienced the same decline in 2022.
What stands out here are the three counties where Hochul’s drop-off from Biden was far worse than Harris’: Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk.
All three of these counties are majority-white, with large suburban swaths. And in all three, the share of the white population with a college degree is at or above the statewide average. Both in New York and nationally, this demographic — white suburbanites with college degrees — has been the most dug in against Trump. But the results suggest that a chunk of them were willing to vote against Hochul and for the Republican in the 2022 gubernatorial race.
A recent Siena poll showed that Hochul’s standing in the suburbs and among white voters hasn’t improved since that election. If she is the Democratic nominee next year, Hochul’s fate could be in the hands of voters who deeply dislike Trump but are also troubled by New York’s direction and Hochul’s leadership.
We obviously don’t know how these voters would react to her removing Adams. Polling outside New York City is scant. Perhaps they’d see it as overreach. But if a decision to remove Adams is going to resonate anywhere, the Trump-phobic suburbs would be an obvious place to look.
🗞️ Today’s other top stories
- 🗣 In discussion: As the Trump administration begins preliminary talks with Russian officials about ending the war in Ukraine, intelligence from the United States and close allies shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wants to control all of Ukraine. Read more →
- ⛔ Employee exodus: Jim Jones, head of the food division at the Food and Drug Administration, resigned, following a wave of federal workforce cuts from the Trump administration last week.
- 🥶 Funding freeze fallout: Sweeping layoffs, funding freezes and executive orders have provoked outcry among federal researchers and their university partners, who fear that science itself is under siege. Read more →
- 🚶♂️ One of Biden’s last official acts: Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist who was convicted over the killing of two FBI agents 50 years ago, but has maintained his innocence, was released from a federal prison in Florida this morning, following the commutation of his two life sentences by former President Joe Biden. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Scott Bland and Faith Wardwell.
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