Super PAC aligned with Michelle Wu launches first television ad as spending ramps up in Boston mayor's race

'Michelle Wu — experience money can't buy," it concludes.
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The ad echoes arguments Wu and her allies have made on the campaign trail — that Kraft is trying to buy his way into office and has ties to Republicans who are loathed in Boston. Kraft, for his part, has sought to present himself as his own person, and distance himself from the ties his father,
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The six-figure ad spend by the Wu-aligned PAC is orders of magnitude less than has been spent so far by the rival super PAC backing Kraft. That outside spending group, called Your City, Your Future, has reported spending
Super PACs are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, and, unlike candidates themselves, they can take donations directly from businesses. They are barred, however, from coordinating with any candidates or their campaigns.
New Balance chair and billionaire Jim Davis has already
The top donors to the Wu-aligned Bold Boston PAC include unions and environmental groups, according to campaign finance records and a news release from the PAC.
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Emma Platoff can be reached at

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Boston Globe

22 minutes ago

• Boston Globe

A potential strike on Iran tests Trump's propensity to play to both sides

Since his first campaign for president 10 years ago, Trump has excelled at appearing to favor both sides of the same issue, allowing supporters to hear what they want to hear, whether he's talking about tariffs, TikTok, abortion, tax cuts, or more. But the prospect that the United States might join Israel in bombing Iran is testing his ability to embrace dueling positions with little to no political cost. Some of Trump's most ardent supporters — those who defended him during multiple investigations and ultimately returned him to the White House — are ripping one another to shreds over the idea and at times lashing out at Trump as well. Advertisement The war in Iran is exactly the kind of Middle East entanglement that Trump's anti-interventionist base believed he was bitterly opposed to, because he repeatedly said he was. But he is also the same president who, in his first term, authorized missile strikes in Syria, after its leadership used chemical weapons on citizens, and the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani — two actions he took pride in. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up To Trump, the contradictions are not actually contradictions. 'I think I'm the one that decides that,' he told The Atlantic recently in response to criticism from one of his most vocal anti-interventionist supporters, Tucker Carlson, who said the president's support for Israel's fight in Iran ran against his 'America First' message. Trump was propelled to victory in the Republican primary in 2016 as an outsider, in part because he forcefully condemned the invasion of Iraq, authorized by the last Republican president more than a decade before, and the seemingly endless war that followed. Yet he said the United States should have taken the country's oil, and ran radio ads saying he would 'bomb the hell' out of the Islamic State group. Advertisement He has said he wants to renew the tax cuts he put into effect in his first term, which saved some of the wealthiest earners millions, while also suggesting that congressional Republicans should implement a new tax on the wealthiest. He has said he supports businesses and also wants to deport the immigrant workforce that fuels parts of the economy. He wants to engage in mass deportation and also wants to sell visas for $5 million. He has celebrated the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as a point of pride while also condemning Republican governors who signed bills banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. He has both celebrated and criticized his own criminal justice reform bill of 2018. Despite the contradictions, Republicans for years have been united in support of Trump and what he says he wants, giving him a benefit of the doubt that few, if any, career politicians have ever received. Even when most elected Republicans held Trump at a distance after the deadly attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump still had a tight grip on Republican primary voters. Trump, a celebrity known to the electorate for decades, has obscured long-standing and unresolved foreign policy divisions within the party dating back to the aftermath of President George W. Bush's push to invade Iraq. Advertisement But as Trump decides whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict, his core supporters are splintering. Trump's announcement Thursday that he could take up to two weeks to decide did not sit well with some of his most hawkish supporters. On social media, Fox News host Mark Levin began a lengthy post by suggesting that the president was being pulled back from what he actually wants to do. 'LET TRUMP BE TRUMP!' Levin wrote. 'We got our answer. Iran says no unconditional surrender. Again. And again. And again. They cheat and lie and kill. They're TERRORISTS!' His anti-interventionist supporters, meanwhile, have been equally alarmed by what he might decide to do. 'Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,' Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, posted on social media over the weekend. Trump's advisers say that on the Israel-Iran conflict in particular, the president is dealing with a fast-moving, complicated situation that does not lend itself to simple, black-and-white solutions, despite the fact that he has consistently campaigned that way. 'President Trump considers the nuances of every issue but ultimately takes decisive action to directly benefit American families,' said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson. 'The American people trust this president to make the right decisions,' she said, adding that he 'started the Make America Great Again movement because he represents a new leadership that puts Americans first.' But in 2025, Trump is not the only one who can command media attention. Carlson is no longer on Fox News, but he has a show that streams on the social platform X and is a leading voice among foreign policy 'restrainers' who have argued that Trump would be acting against his own movement should he strike Iran. Advertisement Steve Bannon, an adviser who was exiled from the White House in the first year of Trump's first term, has become one of the dominant voices among the MAGA faithful with his 'War Room' podcast, delivering the same message as Carlson. Yet Trump has found that many of his allies will ultimately come back to him, despite unhappiness with some of his decisions.

Fox News

33 minutes ago

• Fox News

Several provisions fail to pass muster with Senate rules in 'big, beautiful bill'

Several provisions in the Senate GOP's version of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" have run afoul of Senate rules and must be stripped if Republicans want to pass the package without the help of Democrats. The bill is undergoing what's called a "Byrd Bath," when the parliamentarian meticulously combs through each section of the mammoth bill to determine whether policies comport with the Senate's Byrd Rule. The point of the budget reconciliation process is to skirt the Senate filibuster and pass a massive, partisan legislative package. But if provisions are left in that fail the test, Senate Republicans will have to meet the typical 60-vote threshold. Provisions that don't pass muster can still be appealed, however. Senate Democrats vowed to use the Byrd Bath as a cudgel against the Senate GOP to inflict as much pain as possible and slow momentum as Republicans rush to put the colossal bill on Trump's desk by July 4. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., could also overrule the parliamentarian but has remained adamant he would not attempt such a move. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough scrutinized three chunks of the megabill from the Senate Banking, Environment and Public Works and Armed Services committees and found numerous policies that failed to meet the Byrd Rule's requirements. Among those was a provision that would have eliminated funding for a target of the GOP's since its inception in 2008, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would have effectively eliminated the agency. Doing so also would have slashed $6.4 billion in spending. Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., said in a statement he would "remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee's provisions." Attempts to put guardrails on the $150 billion in Defense Department funding baked into the package also failed to pass muster. The language would have required that Pentagon officials outline how the money would be spent by a certain deadline or see the funding reduced. Other provisions on the chopping block include language that cut $300 million from the Financial Research Fund and cut jobs and move the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board under the umbrella of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which would have saved roughly $773 million. An attempt to change the pay schedule for Federal Reserve employees was also nixed, which would have saved about $1.4 billion. Environmental standards and regulations set by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act were also determined to have run afoul of the Byrd Rule, including a repeal of tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles with a model year of 2027 and later.

Politico

an hour ago

• Politico

The gerontocracy gets a big test

SENIOR MOMENT — Keep an eye on the internal election in the House Democratic Caucus next week — it will have far bigger stakes than it might seem. The race to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has important near-term political ramifications since the victor will serve as the foil to Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) on a panel that has seemed as interested in investigating former President Joe Biden's age as current President Donald Trump. But there are also significant institutional implications. The contest will be a test of the future of the seniority system which has been a key feature of how Congress has governed itself for centuries. There are four Democratic contenders, two congressional veterans in their 70s and two congressional newcomers in their 40s. The old guard are 70-year-old Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) was first elected to Congress in 2001 and 76-year-old Rep Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) who has spent 15 years on Capitol Hill in two stints nearly 25 years apart. The upstarts are 47-year-old Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and 44-year-old Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), both of whom were first elected in 2023. The candidates will first try to make their case Monday to the House Democrats' Steering Committee, which will make a recommendation for the full caucus to ratify on Tuesday. At a time when, particularly among Democrats, there is a circular firing squad over issues surrounding age in the aftermath of Biden's presidency and failed reelection campaign, the idea of a system that benefits the old over the young, has drawn scorn in some quarters. After all, some progressives are still embittered over the fact that 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) beat out 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for this position at the end of the last Congress, shortly after Connolly was diagnosed with cancer. Connolly, who was first elected in 2008, had a positive prognosis at the time. However, within months the cancer proved untreatable and he stepped down as the top Democrat on the committee in March. The Virginia Democrat died in May. Seniority, the concept that the longest tenured member of a committee should be its chair, is not written in any formal congressional rules. It's as much a custom whose strength has ebbed and flowed. It only rigidly determined who became a committee chair for a little over half a century —- the period from the overthrow of the iron fisted Speaker Joe Cannon in 1911 to the post Watergate era in 1974, when rebellious House Democrats ousted three veteran committee chairmen, the youngest of whom was 73. Since then, the seniority system has held increasingly less sway on Capitol Hill. Republicans have imposed term limits for committee chairman whereas Democrats have proved increasingly willing to oust older chairmen who are viewed as enfeebled or simply inadequate. Yet the notion of seniority still has a certain persuasive power in internal debates. As former Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.) argued in an essay 60 years ago (written when he had served a mere 38 years in the House and was in his sixth year as chair of the House Judiciary Committee) argued 'the seniority criterion for selecting committee chairmen has the added virtue of being objective. It automatically eliminates the intrigues, deals, and compromises that characterize election campaigns.' It does, though, inherently favor those members in safe seats who face little opposition in primaries or general elections. In the mid 20th century, this made seniority a bugaboo among those reformers in the Democratic Party who wanted to push progressive legislation, particularly on civil rights. After all, the Democrats most likely to be easily reelected year after year were conservative white southerners. Now though, in the third decade of the 21st century, those members of the caucus who most benefit from it are members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who are often in safe districts, many of which are protected from gerrymandering as well by the Voting Rights Act. The question is whether seniority's appeal will continue to dwindle on Capitol Hill next week in the vote. It wouldn't be the first time that Democrats have rejected the committee's most senior member to lead it —- Lynch has already been passed over twice and is considered likely to be rejected yet again. But, of the two top contenders, the difference between passing over Lynch for a veteran like Mfume or newcomers like Garcia and Crockett is significant. House Democrats have elected a number of less tenured members of their conference to top committee slots in recent years but going with Garcia or Crockett, who are only in their second terms in Congress, would set a new benchmark for doing it and further mark the transformation in how congressional power is accumulated and held. After all, for generations, the surest path to power on Capitol Hill was a slow and steady apprenticeship before finally wielding a gavel. More and more, that's not the case. Instead, as Congress has become an increasingly enervated legislative body, the value of playing 'the inside game' has diminished. Seniority's value was that it served as the most objective available proxy to determine legislative gravitas. It was never exact but it was better than the alternatives. No alternative has since emerged for the imperfect system of simply relying on length of tenure. In a social media age, legislative gravitas isn't the only thing that matters anymore — cable news hits and viral posts, both of which are valuable currencies today, can be measured far more precisely. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@ Or contact tonight's author at bjacobs@ or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @Bencjacobs. What'd I Miss? — Judge orders pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil released from jail: A federal judge today ordered pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil released from immigration detention, more than three months after the Trump administration jailed him while attempting to deport him on foreign policy grounds. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz determined that Khalil isn't a flight risk or a danger to the community, and lightly rebuked the government, calling its effort to continue seeking his detention 'highly, highly unusual.' — Parliamentarian nixes key pieces of Tim Scott's megabill proposal: The Senate parliamentarian ruled today that several key provisions in Banking Chair Tim Scott's proposed contribution to the GOP's 'big beautiful bill' violate the upper chamber's rules for the budget reconciliation process, according to Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley's office. Scott's proposals to zero out funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, slash some Federal Reserve employees' pay, cut Treasury's Office of Financial Research and dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are all ineligible to be included in a simple-majority budget reconciliation bill. — Majority of staff axed at Voice of America: The Trump administration today sent out termination notices to hundreds of employees at Voice of America. Included in that group are employees working for the network's Persian-language service who were called back from administrative leave just last week in the wake of Israel's attack on Iran, according to two people familiar with the decision. The move — which makes official what has long been expected since hundreds of contract employees got termination notices in early May — is a part of the Trump administration's sweeping target to downsize the government and remake America's role in the global order. — Supreme Court revives lawsuits seeking to hold Palestine Liberation Organization liable for terrorist attacks: The Supreme Court has revived lawsuits against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority over terrorist attacks that killed and injured Americans. The justices today unanimously overturned a ruling from a federal appeals court that Congress violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process by enacting a 2019 law that expanded the jurisdiction of U.S. courts to hear terrorism-related suits against the PLO and PA. AROUND THE WORLD IN BREACH — Israel's actions in Gaza may have violated the terms of the country's agreement with the EU, the bloc's diplomatic corps found. 'On the basis of the assessments made by the independent international institutions … there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement,' the European External Action Service (EEAS) concluded, according to a leaked document seen by POLITICO. The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, was asked to lead a review after more than a dozen countries requested the European Commission look into the potential political and legal ramifications of the conflict. The EU-Israel Association Agreement establishes close relations between the bloc and the Middle Eastern nation, governing cooperation in key industries and bilateral trade. While tearing up the pact entirely would require unanimous support from all 27 EU member countries, four officials confirmed to POLITICO that interim measures, such as paring back trade ties, are being considered and could be passed by a qualified majority of countries. CRISIS MANAGEMENT — Ursula von der Leyen is facing the biggest challenge yet to her authority as European Commission president after political groups threatened to withdraw support over her decision to cancel climate-friendly legislation. 'We are on the brink of an institutional crisis,' Valérie Hayer, chair of the liberal Renew Europe group, told POLITICO. Von der Leyen is from the center-right European People's Party. Although it's the biggest group in the European Parliament, it relies on votes from the Socialists and liberals to get its way. The Commission's ability to introduce EU laws risks being blocked if the groups refuse to play ball. The Commission announced today that it was pulling the Green Claims directive ― a landmark law that would hold companies accountable for unfounded environmental claims ― even though it has already passed through many stages of the legislative process. That move, which the EPP group in Parliament requested the Commission make on Wednesday, was applauded by the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Patriots for Europe, the group of France's Marine Le Pen and Hungary's Victor Orbán. Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP TRASH OR TREASURE — For centuries, Londoners have combed the banks of the River Thames in search of ancient ceramics and medieval accessories. Known as mudlarkers, they are now documenting their hunts on TikTok. The activity, once done by just a few hobbyists, gained popularity during the pandemic as new enthusiasts began sharing their finds on social media. Now, longtime mudlarkers say they feel pushed out. The permit waitlist now sits at over 10,000 people for just 4,000 spots. Elizabeth Anne Brown reports on the hobby and its future for National Geographic. Parting Image Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.