The state of the states’ State of the States
As I mentioned last week, State of the State season is now in full bloom. These annual addresses are often the closest thing we have to political temperature checks in the states and a window into stories that party leadership in D.C. has not yet caught up to — several Democratic governors mentioned the migrant crisis in their 2023 and 2024 addresses before D.C. Democrats had fully realized the extent of their political problem.
What they tell us this year is all the more significant given the approaching midterms. A dozen governors delivered their addresses this week, and some clear themes among the Democrats began to emerge.
1. Affordability, affordability, affordability
With how often Democrats spoke of lower taxes this week, you could have been forgiven for checking their party identity. New York’s Kathy Hochul bragged of “the lowest middle-class tax rates in 70 years.” Colorado’s Jared Polis called for his state to “cut the income tax rate.” Rhode Island’s Dan McKee proposed “lowering the gas tax” and “eliminating the tax on Social Security.” Washington’s Bob Ferguson said his state “takes too much in taxes from hardworking families” and called for it to pass “the biggest tax break for small business owners in state history.”
The focus on lower taxes makes sense in the broader context of the addresses: an aggressive focus on the politics of affordability. Several did shout out other affordability-focused proposals, like expedited housing construction and an all-of-the-above energy approach. But, as both President Trump and Biden have learned over the past few years, high costs are an extraordinarily difficult issue to tame, and the best ideas often take years to bear fruit. For now, cutting tax rates remains the easiest and most immediate lever governors have to address costs, and it’s likely we’ll see Democrats continue to embrace them — continuing into 2028.
2. Democrats are moving on school phone bans — fast
As I wrote in December, bans on smartphones in schools were once almost entirely confined to red states. No more: after multiple blue states passed bans on the use of phones in schools in 2025, the addresses this week underscored just how much the landscape has shifted.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly officially endorsed a bell-to-bell ban in her speech, making the state near-certain to enact a law in the coming weeks. Hochul devoted a significant portion of her address to bragging about the benefits of New York’s 2025 ban, calling the progress “extraordinary.” Outgoing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who just signed a bell-to-bell ban last week, also took a victory lap, and called for the state to “go even further” by emulating Australia’s ban on all social media use for kids under 16 (Gavin Newsom similarly shouted out Australia’s new law in his address last week but didn’t go as far as Murphy).
In his own address this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the country’s first big phone ban back in 2023, nodded to the spread of the laws, saying Florida's measure “was not popular at the time but it sure as heck is popular today.”
3. The seeds of an AI backlash are spreading
The movement towards phone bans matters on its own (in case it’s not clear: I think it’s a great development). But what’s especially significant is that it fits into a broader pattern of renewed Democratic skepticism towards big tech. The addresses gave us further indication that the explosion in AI data center construction is becoming a political issue. Murphy, delivering his final SOTS address, bragged that “New Jersey has [] led the nation in addressing the risks presented by AI.” Hochul decried data centers for “guzzling up tremendous amounts of energy and leaving ratepayers footing the bill,” and pledged that “if they want to build in New York, they’ll have to pay their fair share for the power they use and ultimately generate their own power independently.” She also called for new regulation of AI in political advertisements.
Most notable to me was Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, who has backed the industry in the past and whose state has reaped heavy investment from AI companies. She called for “making data centers pay their fair share for the water they use” and “rethinking our state’s approach to data centers more broadly” by eliminating a tax credit she herself had previously backed. It’s still too early to declare this a top-tier political issue but the movement continues to be notable.
4. Democrats smell blood in GOP-led D.C.
Multiple governors went directly after D.C. Republicans’ record, slamming the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the failure to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Some were from blue state governors like McKee, who hit Republicans for “cutting nutrition benefits,” and Hochul, who argued that “Washington Republicans are waging an all-out war on the middle class.”
But they were also joined by colleagues in far redder territory. The centrist Kelly, who takes great pains to stress bipartisan collaboration, called Republicans’ federal budget cuts “unconscionable,” while Polis, far from a reflexive partisan, accused Congress and the administration of “making life harder and less affordable.” Hobbs, up for re-election this year in a swing state Trump won twice, devoted an entire section to the reconciliation bill, calling it “reckless,” and saying it’s “endangering the future of Arizona’s rural hospitals in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.”
Hobbs’ focus especially makes sense — she’s likely to face an incumbent Republican congressman. But the willingness of so many governors, from across the party's ideological spectrum, to go after the D.C. GOP is a good data point for the political environment we’re in.
Whitmer’s one year check-in
A year ago, Gretchen Whitmer arrived at the Detroit Auto Show to send a message: she was willing to collaborate with Trump. “I’ll work with anyone who's serious about solving problems in Lansing or D.C.,” she declared, the first big signal of the conciliatory approach that would define her relationship with the new administration and distinguish her from other Democrats over the course of the last year.
On Thursday, she returned to the same setting, delivering her last address to the auto show as governor, and while the substance was largely similar, the tone was notably different. She reiterated the same nuanced position on tariffs — saying they “have their place” — but she made no bones about hitting the president this time. On his first year in office: “Costs are up, uncertainty is everywhere, and America stands more alone than she has in decades.” On his trade policies: “This will only get worse without a serious shift in national policy.” She noted the decline of manufacturing under Trump’s second term, an especially sensitive subject for the president, and something the Washington Post published a brutal piece about on Thursday.
The change shows just how much political capital the president has lost over the past year, and, to some Democrats, it may come off as Gretchen-come-lately, a politician scrambling to correct course after making a bad bet early in the second Trump era. But this week also brought some validation for her approach: the Detroit News found her approval rating hitting 60%, which the pollster noted is “the highest poll numbers for any Michigan governor at the end of a second term since George Romney in the 1960s.”
And a wild story to close your week
Most readers will know former Kyrsten Sinema from her colorful stint in the U.S. Senate. Since leaving the chamber last January, she’s stacked corporate and AI lobbying gigs to make a very comfortable life — but there’s apparently still one last loose end from her time in Congress.
Using an arcane law in North Carolina, the ex-wife of one of Sinema’s former bodyguards/Senate staffers is suing Sinema for initiating an affair with her husband. The whole thing is tawdry, insane, and, in my opinion, full of an unhealthy number of concerts. It’s also a genuinely sad story of how D.C. can corrupt people. You can read the piece here and the complaint here.
That’s all for this week, folks — enjoy your holiday weekend.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback on today’s newsletter, shoot me an email at [email protected] — I look at them all.