Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Steve Kornacki dives into the next big election on the 2025 calendar: New Jersey’s primaries for governor. Plus, Katherine Doyle has a dispatch from Riyadh as President Donald Trump kicks off the first foreign trip of his new administration.
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— Adam Wollner
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Trump solidifies one New Jersey prim as the other sees a shakeup
New Jersey’s gubernatorial prim is exactly four weeks from today, but the race for the Republican nomination may have been settled Monday night, when President Donald Trump endorsed Jack Ciattarelli.
Ciattarelli, the party’s 2021 nominee for governor, was already well ahead in the GOP race. A recent Rutgers/Eagleton poll put him 30 points up on his main rival, Bill Spadea. But Spadea, a talk radio host who last year received praise from Trump on his show, had been angling hard for a game-changing presidential endorsement. And if not that, he’d hoped at least for Trump to remain neutral.
The same Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that nearly half of GOP prim voters said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who has Trump’s backing. Now that Ciattarelli does, it’s hard to see how Spadea could gain meaningful late momentum.
There is far less clarity, however, when it comes to the Democratic race in New Jersey.
The favorite remains Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who has built the kind of campaign that has traditionally been successful in Democratic primaries, locking down support from all but one of the party’s major county organizations in north and central Jersey, where most of the votes come from. She’s notched endorsements from prominent party leaders and interest groups as well, and could also benefit from being the lone female candidate in a field of six.
But the value of that county machine support is in question. In the past, it meant that an endorsed candidate’s name would appear atop the county party’s ballot column, making it very official-looking and impossible for voters to miss: Having “the line” in a county translated into victory the vast majority of the time. But a successful lawsuit last year eliminated that special ballot status and this will be the first contested Democratic prim without one in decades.
And while Sherrill did lead the Democratic prim in the Rutgers-Eagleton poll, it was with just 17% support, with her five rivals all garnering between 7% and 12% each. Adding to the uncertainty is that public polling itself has been scarce. The daily newspapers that would have sponsored them in the past have either shut down or are dramatically contracting. And what had been the state’s premier polling outfit, Monmouth University, has pulled the plug on its entire operation.
But the most intriguing wild card involves Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, whose arrest last Friday outside an immigration detention center generated a level of media attention that none of his opponents have come close to attaining during their campaigns. Just as support from Trump will bolster Ciattarelli in the GOP race, being seen as a target of Trump’s administration can only help Baraka with Democratic prim voters.
A Baraka surge would be welcome news for Republicans, who see him as a more inviting general-election target than Sherrill. He has staked out positions far to the left and has only ever won elections in deeply blue Newark. In the Rutgers-Eagleton poll, he had a net-negative favorable rating with all voters. Sherrill, by contrast, was the only candidate from either party with a net-positive favorable rating. And she has already demonstrated an ability to appeal across party lines, flipping a longtime Republican seat when she was elected to Congress in 2018.
But no matter who they nominate, Democrats will have at least one advantage in the general election. New Jerseyans have a tendency to elect governors from the party that doesn’t control the presidency.
Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was the first exception to this since 1985 in the 2021 New Jersey governor’s race, when he eked out a victory over Ciattarelli. So while Trump may have just ensured a prim victory for Ciattarelli, his impact in November could be quite different.
Trump says the U.S. will end sanctions on Syria as he works to deepen diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia
By Katherine Doyle
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would cease sanctions against war-torn Syria “to give them a chance at greatness,” as he seeks to strengthen ties to Saudi Arabia and others.
“Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” Trump said as Mohammed bin Salman, seated in the front row, crossed his arms over his chest in an expression of gratitude.
Trump will meet with Syria’s new president in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, an announcement confirmed by the White House shortly before the president began speaking.
In his speech, Trump presented Middle Eastern leaders with a vision of a future steeped in prosperity, business deals and technological advances, which the president treated as an antidote to historic divisions.
His rhetoric stood in contrast to the words of former President Joe Biden, who deemed the kingdom “a pariah” before taking office and struggled to regain diplomatic footing with Saudi leaders during his presidency.
Instead, Trump offered an image of rising regional powers steeped in homegrown economic self-development, while holding up his host as a model.
“I stood here envisioning a Middle East that would eradicate terrorism and extremism, rising as one of the world’s proudest, most prosperous and successful regions,” Trump declared to a gathering of the world’s business elite and Saudi leaders at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum.
Applause followed Trump’s promise to withdraw sanctions on Syria. But in announcing his “fervent wish” that Saudi Arabia would “soon be joining the Abraham Accords” — the diplomatic agreements Trump’s first administration made between Israel and several Arab nations — the president drew silence from the room.
Read more from Katherine →
Backlash back home: Trump’s first foreign trip of his second term will also take him to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Back in the U.S., he was continuing to receive blowback over his plan to accept a luxury jet from Qatar to be used as Air Force One.
The criticism not only came from Democrats, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., saying he’d place a hold on all Justice Department nominees over the issue, but from Trump’s MAGA allies. Laura Loomer said accepting the plane would be “such a stain” on the administration, while Ben Shapiro slammed the idea as “skeezy stuff.”
Today’s other top stories
Taking stock: The S&P 500 clawed back into positive territory for the year, as investors extended the sharp gains seen in the previous session due to easing U.S.-China trade tensions. Read more → 
Markup time: Three House committees are meeting to tackle Trump’s sweeping budget proposal, as they weigh key questions about Medicaid cuts, taxes and SNAP benefits. Read more → 
‘Big, beautiful bill’ blowback: Anti-hunger advocates are slamming House Republicans’ proposed $290 billion budget cut to SNAP as “unconscionable.” Read more → 
Democratic drama: A Democratic National Committee subcommittee recommended redoing the party’s vice chair elections, which elevated activist David Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta. Read more → 
The Biden chronicles: A new book about the 2024 election reports that Biden’s team was so concerned about his health that they discussed having him use a wheelchair if he were elected to a second term. Read more → - Follow live politics updates on our blog →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.
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