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, Sahil Kapur digs into the eerie parallels between the Maine Senate race and another major election in recent history. Plus, Matt Bradley looks at Israel’s domestic politics — and Donald Trump’s role in that — amid war with Iran.
Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday here.
— Scott Bland
The renewed fighting overnight between Israel and Iran has deepened the political peril in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself just months before elections that amount to the most formidable challenge yet facing his decades of leadership.
Netanyahu had already endured mounting criticism from both his political opponents and allies who are demanding that he escalate Israel’s fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon, even if it meant defying President Donald Trump — Israel’s first-ever wartime ally and a hugely popular figure in the country.
Critics of the Israeli prime minister latched on to Trump’s repeated, public humiliations of Netanyahu, such as last week’s phone call in which the president said he had called the prime minister “f------ crazy” for continuing to launch attacks in Lebanon. Even Israeli military leaders openly complained that American restrictions had tied their hands in Lebanon.
Now, this latest conflagration will test Netanyahu’s ability to navigate the treacherous diplomatic waters between the resolute military victories Israelis crave and the demands of an American president, whom Netanyahu has repeatedly described as “the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House.”
“It puts him in a very delicate situation,” Gideon Rahat, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said of the Israeli prime minister. “I think that Netanyahu was trapped under the claim that he’s serving U.S. interests and doing whatever Trump is telling him and therefore he cannot respond.”
Israeli polls have also reflected the Iran war’s declining popularity. In March, some 60% of Israelis approved of the war’s military achievements so far, according to the Institute for National Security Studies, a figure that declined to 27% by last month.
Maybe you’ve heard this one before: A political novice campaigns as a populist outsider vying to upend the system, challenging an experienced woman who is a quintessential political insider with a long history in government.
He immediately draws big crowds of disaffected voters; she hosts small and curated events.
He speaks off the cuff and has to answer for offensive comments; she speaks cautiously.
He attacks her for voting to authorize the Iraq War.
He dispatches a two-term governor in his primary.
Her allies cast doubt on his working-class bona fides.
His controversies pile up, and some in his party want him to drop out or call on the party to abandon him.
In 2016, that was Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In 2026, it’s Graham Platner and Susan Collins — albeit on a smaller scale, in the vitally important Maine Senate race.
It’s not a perfect analogy, of course. But the parallels are uncanny.
Many Republicans scoffed at Trump in the 2016 presidential primary and again in the general election. Plenty of Democrats are doing the same with Platner, as some establishment-aligned strategists portray him as a walking electoral disaster. In 2016, Trump defied expectations and won, which led to a revolution inside the GOP and changed the trajectory of the U.S.
Platner’s 2026 campaign represents more than a race for one Senate seat — or even the majority for the next two years. It’s also a test of whether an unconventional (albeit flawed) outsider can rewrite traditional rules of politics — and smash the establishment — from the left, as Trump did from the right.
Platner has already vanquished two-term Gov. Janet Mills, the pick of Senate Democratic leadership, whose sluggish campaign failed to gain traction and prompted her to suspend her campaign in April.
That makes Tuesday’s primary more of a formality, with Collins running unopposed for the Republican nomination. Mills’ name is still on the ballot, but she hasn’t been campaigning or asking for votes, even if Platner’s controversies had some supporters pining for her candidacy.
If Platner wins, it could be a signal to other would-be Graham Platners around the country — with the potential to reshape the national Democratic debate as the party looks for its post-Trump identity.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Scott Bland and Annelise Hanson.
If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
And if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。