Ready or not, here comes the 2028 presidential campaign
Advertisement
But her presence there pointed to a larger, albeit quiet truth: the 2028 campaign has essentially begun.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, visited Badger, a skin care product company in Gilsum, N.H., with Representative Chris Pappas, a New Hampshire Democrat running for senator, on July 11.
Holly Ramer/Associated Press
Last Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom launched a
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance was across the country in San Diego, making the rounds
The following day, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego announced
Advertisement
That same afternoon Klobuchar was in Keene, it was announced that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker would headline the North Carolina Democratic Party's annual dinner, another move in a key swing state. He already spoke at a similar event in New Hampshire earlier this year.
Six months into Donald Trump's second term, he's enjoying a high point. He just signed a sweeping tax cut into law ahead of his self-imposed July 4 deadline. He's pressured NATO countries to boost defense spending. And he's continuing to rack up wins in court, like Monday's ruling from the Supreme Court that he could
But beneath the surface, a campaign to replace him is already taking shape. The 2028 election could feature the largest field of candidates in American history. That's why hopefuls are already trekking to early primary states and cozying up to donors, they know that in a crowded race, early attention is critical.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has also begun to make moves toward a more national profile. He'll travel to South Carolina to speak at an AFL-CIO conference in Greenville, then to a Democratic event along the coast. Asked on NBC's Meet the Press whether he's considering a run, Beshear said: 'We'll see... I will not leave a broken country to my kids or to anyone else's.'
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin greeted people during the grand opening ceremony of the first Buc-ee's location on the East Coast on June 30 in Mount Crawford, Va.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
As for the Republicans, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin will be in Iowa this week and in South Carolina next month to both headline events for local Republican parties. Texas Republican Representative Wesley Hunt, and former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo visited New Hampshire in June. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was also supposed to appear in the state in late June, but the event was postponed due to Senate votes.
Advertisement
Not wanting to be overshadowed by other states, a group of New Hampshire Democrats announced Monday they're launching a town hall series featuring potential 2028 contenders. The effort, backed by longtime Democratic figures Jim Demers (an early backer of Barack Obama) and Billy Shaheen (Senator Shaheen's husband), will kick off next month with Representative Ro Khanna of California in Manchester.
Of course, all of this is unfolding more than a year before the 2026 midterms, which can be a vehicle for potential presidential candidates to curry favor. Democrats haven't even filled out slates for major gubernatorial or congressional contests across the country.
Still, none of that is slowing the race ahead.
James Pindell is a Globe political reporter who reports and analyzes American politics, especially in New England.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Magazine
19 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
Oklahoma to Roll Out 'America First' Test for New Teachers
Oklahoma's education department has announced plans to introduce an 'America First' certification test to ensure that teachers moving from liberal states align with its values. "One of the things that we wanted to do is, first of all, make sure that they're great teachers, right? And No. 2, make sure we're not getting these woke, indoctrinating social justice warriors in the classroom," the state's Superintendent Ryan Walters said in an interview with Fox Digital. Walters said that every teacher moving to work in Oklahoma must pass the test in order to begin teaching, and that Conservative think-tank PragerU will assist in the development of the test. 'We put the Bible back in our history standards," Walters said, adding that the 'America First' test would include questions based on American history and 'common sense.' Walters said the teaching of gender identity in other states was one motivation for the test, which will roll out in time for the upcoming school year. 'We started seeing states like California, New York, Maine as well, that are putting out directives… saying 'In this state you've got to teach your 27 genders',' he said. California state law requires students to be taught about 'gender, gender expression, gender identity, and explore the harm of negative gender stereotypes… schools must teach about all sexual orientations and what being LGBTQ means,' the state's Department of Education says. None of the Education Departments in California, New York, and Maine make reference to teaching students about 27 genders. Maine has pushed back against President Donald Trump's directive to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls' sports. At the start of his second term in office, Trump issued an executive order saying that there are only two recognized genders. 'We love President Trump in Oklahoma,' Walters said, adding that the MAGA agenda is 'saving education.' Walter also claimed teachers coming into Oklahoma were "fleeing the teachers unions, the grip that they've had on them in these blue states.' In 2023, Walters announced a maximum $50,000 bonus for teachers moving to the state with more than 5 years of experience, and for those in the top ten percentile in the United States. Smaller bonuses were offered depending on length of experience and what districts teachers had previously worked in. A spokesperson for PragerU said: 'We fully understand why superintendents of education, like Ryan Walters, feel compelled to protect their students from the extreme left-wing ideologies being promoted in schools through teachers who often do not even realize the damage caused.'
The Hill
20 minutes ago
- The Hill
Virginia GOP candidate, CNN host tangle on air over Trump questions
Virginia gubernatorial nominee and Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) clashed with CNN reporter Manu Raju over her past criticisms of President Trump on Friday. Raju pressed Earle-Sears over the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce this year, which have had a significant impact on Virginia given its large population of federal workers. 'Do you support the president's purge of the federal workforce, yes or no?' Raju asked the lieutenant governor. 'Oh, okay. If this is the way you want to go, then go ahead. I'm just not going to participate because I want to talk about real issues,' Earle Sears responded, adding that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and his administration have tried to bring more jobs to Virginia. Earle-Sears accused Democrats of blocking the jobs. 'If they want to work together with me, we can get it done,' she said. Raju also pressed Earle-Sears about her previous criticism of Trump, specifically pointing to a 2022 interview with Fox Business, in which she referred to Trump as 'a liability.' 'Do you stand by those comments?' Raju asked. 'I voted for the president the first time around. I voted for him the second time around and I voted for him the third time around,' Earle-Sears responded. 'I am going to vote for somebody who understands how everything works.' 'I'm talking about who has brought us economic prosperity in the past,' she continued. 'I'm talking about somebody who understands how business works, who understands that the rogue nations of the world have to be told that we're not going to let them fool around with America, that we will protect America, and that's what President Trump has done.' The GOP hopeful added, 'Now because of your politics I suppose, you wanted to keep talking about the past when I've already told you the president and I have been in the Oval Office, we have had discussion, and I'm going to talk about things that should be held private.' Trump has yet to formally endorse the lieutenant governor to succeed Youngkin, who is term limited. Virginia Republicans have raised red flags about their chances in the state's gubernatorial race, pointing to Earle-Sears significantly trailing her Democratic opponent Abigail Spanberger in fundraising and polls.
The Hill
20 minutes ago
- The Hill
Colleges must speak up for their Chinese students
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said all the right things last week after Hong Kong issued arrest warrants for 19 pro-democracy activists in other countries, including in the U.S. 'The extraterritorial targeting of Hong Kongers who are exercising their fundamental freedoms is a form of transnational oppression,' Rubio declared in a statement. 'We will not tolerate the Hong Kong government's attempts to apply its national security laws to silence or intimidate Americans or anyone on U.S. soil.' But we already tolerate the transnational oppression of one large group on our soil: Chinese students. And for the most part, our universities have kept silent about that. That's because of the billions of dollars that Chinese students bring to American colleges, of course. We're already facing an expected decline in Chinese enrollment because of the Trump administration's threats against international students, which higher-education leaders have rightly condemned. But if we really cared about those students — and not just their tuition fees — we would also speak out against the Chinese government's extraterritorial targeting of their fundamental freedoms. Anything less makes us look petty, scared and small. In a report issued last year — titled 'On my campus, I am afraid' — Amnesty International showed how Chinese and Hong Kong students in the U.S. and Europe faced surveillance and intimidation from Chinese authorities. Students reported being photographed and followed at protests, and that their families back home had been harassed. At Georgetown, for example, a Chinese law student who handed out pamphlets denouncing China's 'zero-COVID' policies was videotaped by members of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, an organization sponsored by the Chinese government. They told him that the pictures would be sent to security officials in China. And soon after that, his family was interrogated and warned that they could face penalties if he continued to speak out. None of this is news, unfortunately. In 2021, ProPublica reported that Chinese intelligence agents were using local informants to threaten and harass students in America. Some Chinese students said they avoided taking courses with other students from their country, because they did not know who was working for the government — and who might report on them. And in 2020, when COVID forced universities to move online, the Wall Street Journal revealed that some professors had told Chinese students that they wouldn't be evaluated on class participation. The faculty didn't want their students to feel the need to speak up and risk getting on the wrong side of Chinese security officials, who were likely monitoring them on Zoom. 'There is no way I can say to my students, 'You can say whatever you want on the phone call and you are totally free and safe,'' one Harvard professor admitted. But most of our university leaders are keeping quiet about the matter. They don't want to take any risks, either, with so much money at stake. A welcome exception is Purdue University, which denounced Chinese spying after ProPublica revealed that one of its students was harassed by security agents for posting a letter about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. That's a taboo topic in China, which has prohibited public discussion and commemoration of the event. 'Any student found to have reported another student to any foreign entity for exercising their freedom of speech or belief will be subject to significant sanction,' declared Mitch Daniels, Purdue's president at the time. 'We regret that we were unaware at the time of these events and had to learn of them from national sources,' Daniels added, referring to the 2021 ProPublica report. The rest of us have no excuse, especially now. Everything we have learned over the last four years confirms the same fact: China is intimidating students at our institutions. And so is the Trump administration, of course. It has arrested and deported international students who made pro-Palestinian comments. And it has been screening the social media accounts of student visa applicants to find 'any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.' Nobody knows what that means, so applicants have been scrubbing their accounts of material about Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and anything else that might put them in the administration's crosshairs. To me, that sounds more like China than America. Our most important founding principle is freedom of expression. And we are flouting it by harassing our international students, even as we accuse them of being hostile to it. But we can't make a persuasive case against Trump's assault on freedom if we ignore the Chinese attacks on it. Anticipating that many international students won't be allowed to come here, some universities — including my own — are creating online courses and programs to serve them. That's a great gesture, but it also leaves the students even more vulnerable to harassment by internet snoops back home. And that's why we have to speak up for the students and make it clear that we won't tolerate intimidation of them, just as Rubio said. Thomas Jefferson — who knew something about America's founding principles — swore 'eternal hostility against every form of tyranny.' He didn't care where it came from. Neither should we.
