In today’s edition … Conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln are getting Congress’s attention … You sent us some fun songs of the summer … but first …
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Alex Vindman isn’t responsible for the political fatigue many Democrats in Florida have developed over the last decade.
But he is well aware that he has to deal with it as he runs for Senate in his newly adopted home state.
“There is a ‘prove it’ element here,” Vindman told me this week. “That dynamic is at play, and I kind of understand it because there’s lots of scar tissue around Florida with flawed candidates in extremely challenging environments.”
Vindman argued, however, that things are different this year and he can do what no Democrat has been able to do over the past decade: break through Republicans’ hold on Florida. The atmosphere, he said, is in Democrats’ favor. Trump is increasingly unpopular in the state. Vindman has raised a ton of money (over $16 million since launching his campaign). And he is running against Sen. Ashley Moody, someone who is facing voters for the first time as a senator after she was elevated to the role last year to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio until a special election could be held.
Vindman is, despite his buoyancy, a major long shot to win in November and will first have to defeat state Rep. Angela Nixon in the Aug. 20 primary.
Over the past decade, Florida has become a state that Republicans outright dominate, controlling every state executive office, both chambers of the state legislature, both Senate seats and 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts.
And even if 2026 is a blue wave, history doesn’t mean that it will crash in Florida. In 2018, when Democrats won races nationwide and flipped the House, the wave didn’t sweep over Florida, and Sen. Bill Nelson, the last Democrat to represent Florida in the Senate, lost his bid for reelection.
But Vindman is undeterred. He argues Florida is far less red than people have been led to believe.
“Even in 2018, when you had a blue wave that excluded Florida, Trump was above water. He had higher favorability. He’s now underwater,” Vindman told me. “People in Florida across the political spectrum … from ruby red to deep blue, are feeling the same pain, that they’re working harder than ever and falling further behind.”
National Democrats are largely unmoved. Burned by massive spending in Florida’s past U.S. Senate elections — then-Rep. Val Demings raised over $80 million only to lose to Rubio by 16 percentage points — Vindman has not received nearly the level of outside support it would probably take to give Democrats a shot in a state like Florida. Some national Democrats have mentioned Florida as a stretch state this cycle, but it has not received nearly as much attention as states like Iowa and Alaska.
“It’s a tough state. We know that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told our colleague Theodoric Meyer in late April. But he said home insurance rates are so high in Florida, an upset is possible. “It’s going to help us in Florida, and that’s why Vindman is not that far behind even though he’s just starting out. So it’s a tougher state, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”
Vindman is an unlikely political candidate. The son of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union, Vindman was raised in Brooklyn before enlisting as a second lieutenant in the Army. After two decades of service, during which he received a Purple Heart and worked as a national security aide at the White House, he retired as a lieutenant colonel after he became nationally known during Trump’s 2019 impeachment proceedings for testifying about his concerns with a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His twin brother, Eugene Vindman, played a role in Trump’s impeachment and was later elected to Congress from Virginia.
“I’m very much a ball and strike caller, regardless of the personal consequences,” Vindman said. “I’m not kind of an ideologue. I will fight for what’s right, damn the consequences.”
One reason Republicans have grown so buoyant about Florida over the past decade, beyond all the winning, is party registration. Democrats lost their registration advantage in 2021, when the state had 5.1 million registered Republicans and 5 million registered Democrats. That current breakdown is even more dire for the left, with 5.6 million registered Republicans and just 4 million registered Democrats.
“Unfortunately for Vindman,” said a Republican operative working on Senate races, “Florida is a far cry from battleground territory this cycle.”
Vindman argues those numbers ignore another trend in Florida politics: the state’s 3.3 million unaffiliated voters.
People are “feeling the pain of falling further behind,” and others are “leaving the state because it’s getting too expensive,” Vindman said, giving his campaign a “unique kind of magic” where “you’re talking to Democrats, independents and Republicans about the same thing.”
I will admit a level of skepticism about Democrats’ chances in Florida. I covered Hillary Clinton’s campaign for CNN back in 2016 and recall barnstorming the state with the former secretary of state in the weeks between Labor Day and Election Day. Florida, along with Ohio and Pennsylvania, was the state she visited the most during that time. And she lost by less than 2 percentage points. I also covered Florida when the blue wave didn’t crash there in 2018 and for Demings’s much-ballyhooed, yet ultimately failed, race in 2022.
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Vindman, confronted with that, says this time is different.
“The media landscape is missing something. They’re living in the past on a world that doesn’t exist anymore where Trump has higher favorability,” Vindman concluded. “It’s an environment that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Reports of deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are worrying the families of sailors on board, and Senate Democrats are demanding answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The most troubling reports came this week from the Military Times, which reported that at least two sailors have attempted to jump overboard. Earlier reports cited supply shortages, attempted suicides and sewage problems aboard the aircraft carrier that has been deployed since November.
“The reports from the USS Abraham Lincoln about multiple sailors attempting to jump into the sea are disturbing,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) wrote Wednesday on X. “Long deployments are hard. They are a lot harder when the mission isn’t well defined and there is no end in sight.”
My colleague Sammy Westfall reports that the Defense Department downplayed the conditions on Thursday, with Hegseth telling reporters yesterday that the situation has been “completely misrepresented.”
“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth said in Panama, where he is attending a forum. “Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody.”
Read the full story here.
Kentucky Lantern: Mercer County Fiscal Court adopted a one-year moratorium on new data center construction this week. One issue? The moratorium doesn’t impact one Mercer County town that doesn’t have either a planning or zoning body and is considering a huge data center project. It’s a reminder of how complicated these moratoriums can get.
Nevada Current: The states most impacted by the recent federally mandated cuts to water from the Colorado River basin are not giving up the fight. “Nevada’s top Colorado River negotiator said lower-basin states are still pressing for adjustments and attempting to forge consensus-based alternatives before federally mandated water cuts are finalized,” the outlet reports.
Oregon Capital Chronicle: Measles cases in Oregon have set a record. The Oregon Health Authority reported this week that the state has had 45 confirmed measles cases, 14 more than in all of 2024. Nationwide, measles cases are currently at their highest annual count since 1991.
Boston.com: How to tax vacation communities’ temporary residents? It’s a question that communities nationwide are grappling with. And a Cape Cod lawmaker is proposing a tax that would impose an annual surcharge of $2.50 for every $500 on properties assessed at over $1 million.
Your responses capture that the idea of a song of the summer is, well, in the eye of the beholder.
I’ll go first: I’d argue the song of the summer is Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas.” I have heard it everywhere, including my wife’s Spotify. What I have been listening to all summer, however, is Mumford & Sons’ latest album, “Prizefighter,” and specifically their track “Here,” with Chris Stapleton.
Joana Ellis agreed with me, picking Langley’s catchy hit.
Max Bazzani picked “Movin‘ to the Sun” from HUGEL. I had never heard it before.
“It’s so energetic and catchy. The beat just instinctively makes you want to get up and dance, regardless of the space you’re in,” Bazzani wrote.
And he is right! I may or may not have done a little head bobbing in The Post newsroom.
Douglas W. Corkhill shouted out “Backstreets,” Bruce Springsteen’s epic 1975 hit off “Born to Run.” The song does open with “One soft infested summer, me and Terry became friends.”
And Jack Wells went way back with “Summertime,” composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess.”
Our colleagues Steve Thompson, Federica Cocco and Christopher Rowland reported this week that “prescription drug prices recorded the biggest year-over-year drop in more than 60 years in July.” Have you felt that in your personal pocketbook? How much do the costs of prescription drugs worry you? Let your fellow Early Brief readers and me know at [email protected].
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Thanks for reading. You can follow Dan on X at @merica.
