Molly Jong-Fast is thinking about challenging Jerry Nadler

NEW YORK — Novelist turned political journalist Molly Jong-Fast wants somebody 'serious' to run against Rep. Jerry Nadler in 2026 — so she doesn't have to do it herself.
The Vanity Fair correspondent and podcast host has been talking to political consultants about a run against the 77-year-old Manhattan Democrat. But Jong-Fast told POLITICO she's 'still really on the fence.'
'If someone who is a good communicator and a serious Democrat will run for that seat,' Jong-Fast said in a phone call Friday, 'then I absolutely will not. If there's someone who's an AOC or a Maxwell Frost — if there's someone like that who will run — then I will just be delighted.'
Nadler's profile could hardly be more different than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Frost, the 28-year-old Florida Democrat. The dean of New York's congressional delegation, Nadler has held the office for 32 years, since 1992. But in December he was pushed out of his role as the top Democrat on the powerful Judiciary Committee by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who another member told Punchbowl has 'reenergized' the committee.
'It's not about their age, it's about their ability,' Jong-Fast said. 'And clearly the fact that Jerry has been removed from his committee means that leadership does not have faith in him. If leadership does not have faith in him, then the voters should not have faith in him.'
Nadler has already filed to run for reelection. In fact, he told New York magazine last year he could run for another five terms. His chief of staff, Robert Gottheim, noted that Nadler easily beat veteran Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a competitive primary in 2022 and didn't even face a primary in 2024 before getting reelected in November with 80 percent of the vote.
'He'll put his over 30-year record of accomplishments against anyone,' Gottheim said. 'The district seems pretty happy with his representation and work in Congress. He takes every election at a time and he intends to run for reelection.'
Time will tell if the first midterm election of President Donald Trump's second term results in the same fed-up-with-the-old-guard energy that helped Ocasio-Cortez topple longtime Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018 — and if so, whether a 46-year-old Upper East Sider who's about to release a book about being the daughter of feminist author Erica Jong, is the one to seize it.
Jong-Fast understands that and put the odds of a campaign at 80 percent not running, 20 percent running — down from 50-50 at the start of the interview.
Nadler may already have a well-known challenger in Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has become an unlikely 'resistance' hero for testifying against the president. Cohen decided against taking on Nadler last cycle, but then told New York mag he'd announce a 2026 run the day after Election Day. That day has come and gone with no announcement, but Cohen told POLITICO Friday he is still planning to run.
There are also a handful of Manhattan elected officials who would be eager to jump in the minute Nadler gets out of the race. Among the names in the mix are Assemblymembers Micah Lasher, Alex Bores and Rebecca Seawright, City Council Members Erik Bottcher and Julie Menin and state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
'Jerry has godlike status in the district,' Lasher said.

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Trump Got This One Right

'Why are the wrong people doing the right thing?' Henry Kissinger is supposed to have once asked, in a moment of statesman-like perplexity. That question recurred as Donald Trump, backed by a visibly perturbed vice president and two uneasy Cabinet secretaries, announced that the United States had just bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. It is a matter of consternation for all the right people, who, as Kissinger well knew, are often enough dead wrong. The brute fact is that Trump, more than any other president, Republican or Democrat, has taken decisive action against one of the two most dangerous nuclear programs in the world (the other being North Korea's). The Iranian government has for a generation not only spewed hatred at the United States and Israel, and at the West generally, but committed and abetted terrorism throughout the Middle East and as far as Europe and Latin America. Every day, its drones deliver death to Ukrainian cities. The Iranian government is a deeply hostile regime that has brought misery to many. A nuclear-armed Iran might very well have used a nuclear weapon against Israel, which is, as one former Iranian president repeatedly declared, 'a one-bomb country.' Because Israel might well have attempted to forestall such a blow with a preemptive nuclear strike of its own, the question is more likely when an Iranian bomb would have triggered the use of nuclear weapons, not whether it would have done so. But even without that apocalyptic possibility, a nuclear-armed Iran would have its own umbrella of deterrence to continue the terror and subversion with which it has persecuted its neighbors. There is no reason to think the regime has any desire to moderate those tendencies. In his address to the nation on Saturday night, Trump was right to speak—and to speak with what sounded like unfeigned fury—about the American servicemen and servicewomen maimed and killed by Iranian IEDs in Iraq. It was no less than the truth. Shame on his predecessors for not being willing to say so publicly. When someone is killing your men and women, a commander in chief is supposed to say—and, more important, do—something about it. Trump was also right in making this a precise, limited use of force while holding more in reserve. Israel has done the heavy lifting here, but he has contributed an essential element—and no more. He was right as well (for the strikes were indeed an act of war) to threaten far worse punishment if Iran attempts to retaliate. The rush in many quarters—including right-wing isolationists and anguished progressives—to conjure up prospects of a war that will engulf the Middle East reflected their emotions rather than any analytic judgment. Iran, it cannot be said often enough, is a weak state. Its air defenses no longer exist. Its security apparatus has been thoroughly penetrated by Israeli, American, and other intelligence agencies. Its finances are a wreck and its people are hostile to their rulers. For that matter, anyone who has served in uniform in the Middle East during the past few decades knows that Iran has consistently conducted low-level war against the United States through its proxies. Could Iran attempt to attack shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz? Yes—and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy would die in large numbers in their speedboats or in their bases as they prepared to do so. The United States and its allies have prepared for that scenario for a long time, and Iranian sailors' desire for martyrdom has been overstated. Could Iran try to launch terror attacks abroad? Yes, but the idea that there is a broad silent network of Iranian terrorists just waiting for the signal to strike is chimerical. And remember, Iran's nuclear fangs have been pulled. True enough, not permanently, as many of the president's critics have already earnestly pointed out on television. But so much of that kind of commentary is pseudo-sophistication: Almost no strategic problem gets solved permanently, unless you are Rome dealing with Carthage in the Third Punic War, destroying the city, slaughtering its inhabitants, and sowing the furrows with salt. For some period—five years, maybe 10—Iran will not have a nuclear option. Its key facilities are smashed and its key scientists dead or living in fear of their lives. Similar complaints were made about the Israeli strike on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981. The Israelis expected to delay the Iraqi program by no more than a year or two—but instead, the program was deferred indefinitely. As things go, crushing the facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, following a sustained Israeli campaign against similar targets, was a major achievement, and a problem deferred for five years may be deferred forever. 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He has disproved the notion that he takes his marching orders directly from the Kremlin, for the strikes were not in Russia's interest. He has left prominent progressives, including a dwindling band of Israel supporters, confused, bleating about war-powers resolutions that were deemed unnecessary when the Obama administration began bombing Libya. We live in a dangerous world, and one that is going to get more so—and indeed, in other respects worsened by the president's policies. But Trump got this one right, doing what his predecessors lacked the intestinal fortitude (or, to be fair, the promising opportunity) to do. He spoke with the brutal clarity needed in dealing with a cruel and dangerous regime. The world is a better place for this action and I, for one, applaud him for it.

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Trump Slapped With ‘Impeachment' Threats After Bombing Iran

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30 minutes ago

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Trump ignites debate on presidential authority with Iran strikes and wins praise from Republicans

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