Lawmakers have been waiting all year for the Supreme Court to save them from President Donald Trump’s unprecedented moves to suspend funding Congress already approved. But they might not get closure anytime soon.

Trump began freezing federal cash the day he was sworn into a second term as president. Seven months later, the courts are littered with legal challenges to his administration’s abrupt, massive and often indiscriminate cuts to spending, contracts and personnel. None of these lawsuits, however, have yet risen to the Supreme Court in a way that would give the justices the necessary opening to settle longstanding disagreements about Congress’ control of the federal pursestrings — and whether the administration’s actions violate the law.

In recent weeks, several of the leading cases that have a shot at reaching the Supreme Court were set back due to two technical tripwires: Who can bring the lawsuits and what courts have to hear them first.

That means the high court’s justices are unlikely to wade into the substance of the issue, if they choose to at all, until at least next year. In the meantime, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill will have to navigate tense funding negotiations to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1 and beyond without any assurances that Trump will be forced to spend the money as stipulated.

“Whatever your prediction is about when we get a full-year appropriation … we won’t have heard from the Supreme Court — in any way that anyone can count on — when that is done,” said Georgetown University law professor David Super.

For a few days last week, one prominent case challenging Trump’s withholding of funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development seemed like it might get an emergency decision by the Supreme Court in short order. That case could have sent strong signals about how the justices view the broader question of impoundment, which refers to the president’s act of withholding congressionally appropriated cash.

But on Friday, the Trump administration dropped its request for the justices to rule in the case after a lower court effectively sent the issue back before another judge.

Meanwhile, Trump added new urgency on Friday for the high court to weigh in on impoundment of foreign aid funding: He advanced his assault on Congress’ funding power by declaring a “pocket rescission,” the seldom-used maneuver to cancel federal dollars in the final days of the fiscal year without requiring an up-or-down vote.

Many lawmakers and Congress’ top watchdog argue the gambit is illegal. But the courts won’t necessarily see the “pocket rescissions” tactic championed by White House budget director Russ Vought as meaningfully different from the other actions the Trump administration has taken this year, according to Super.

“It’s a cute term that Mr. Vought came up with. But it is essentially just sitting on the money, and that’s what they’ve been doing now,” he said.

Still, Trump’s latest attempt to assert more control over federal spending has made lawmakers of both parties desperate for certainty, even as they’re jittery over the prospect that the justices could side with Trump and erode their funding power.

After all, the court has repeatedly ruled in the president’s favor of late, including allowing the Trump administration to cut off health research grants, proceed with mass layoffs at the Education Department and implement sweeping elements of his mass deportation agenda.

“I’m worried,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in an interview.

“They’re inventing what they thought was good policy,” Merkley said of the Supreme Court justices. “That’s not their role. And so they’re violating their oath of office through the Constitution. So we’re in deep trouble when this comes to the Supreme Court.”

To some lawmakers, the Supreme Court’s eventual, inevitable role in resolving these interbranch fights could be a clarifying inflection point for the nation.

“My prediction is: When we look back on this administration, there’ll be more Supreme Court decisions defining separation of powers than in the 250-year history of the country,” said Sen. Rand Paul in an interview.

The Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in charge of vetting Trump’s nominees to top budget posts, told a White House official earlier this year that he doesn’t think the president “can impound direct funds indefinitely.”

“It’s a reasonable question to ask. And it’s never been all the way to the Supreme Court,” Paul said. “And of course, everybody has to adhere to what the final decision will be.”

But even then, the Supreme Court could skirt the overarching argument many lawmakers are hoping the justices settle.

“The biggest question for the next few months is whether the court has the appetite to squarely take on the basic issue — the fundamental issue — which is the administration’s broad claim that it can refuse to spend appropriated funds for policy reasons,” said Gregg Nunziata, a conservative lawyer who served as counsel for Senate Republicans and now heads the Society for the Rule of Law.

Already, the Supreme Court has dealt a major setback to lawsuits over funding the Trump administration has withheld for grants and contracts. Late last month, the justices signaled such cases need to start over in the slow-moving Court of Federal Claims, which has jurisdiction over cases involving financial damages and breached contracts.

And the USAID case — in which humanitarian groups are challenging Trump’s decision to withhold billions of congressionally appropriated dollars — now faces several new twists in its path to Supreme Court consideration too.

On Friday, a White House official said the Trump administration sees revoking USAID funding as its strongest case for canceling federal cash at the end of the fiscal year, arguing, “there’s nothing that we can do within these accounts, because of the way they’re written, to shift them to things that the president would support in the foreign aid space.”

The administration “wanted to make the case as clean as we possibly could, as we navigate the different critics that we know would arise,” the official added.

Last month, in the USAID case, a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only Congress’ top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, can sue the administration over breaking impoundment law. That ruling has derailed the effort by humanitarian groups to sue directly.

University of Michigan administrative law professor Nicholas Bagley described the courts as taking a “lawyerly, careful, minimalist” approach in their decisions on Trump’s funding moves. “And the vice is the courts don’t appear to be registering the full depth of the concern about the erosion of the appropriations power,” he added.

But the fact that those lower-court issues are hindering lawsuits from making it to the Supreme Court isn’t necessarily a failure of the judicial system, argues Zachary Price, a law professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

“It’s just a kind of mismatch between litigation timelines and the way the appropriations cycle works,” Price explained. “It’s a process that works a lot better when it’s a matter of push and pull between the branches.”

Those so far reluctant to exert real pressure on the administration to back down from its funding moves are congressional Republicans. GOP lawmakers could take steps like barring funding for White House operations if the Trump administration doesn’t spend federal cash as lawmakers mandate or reject Trump’s proposals like the $9 billion rescissions package they passed earlier this summer.

But most Republicans don’t want to appear antagonistic of the president, and they’re hoping instead that the legal system will settle a messy fight on their behalf.

“Is Congress determined to protect its own power of the purse or not?” said Philip Wallach, who studies the separation of powers at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “Congress has a very bad habit of relying on the courts to rule and make everything clear, and fix everything for them, so that they don’t have to do it.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler, the former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped spearhead President Donald Trump’s impeachment, announced in an interview with The New York Timeson Monday that he won’t seek re-election next year.

The 78-year-old Democrat from New York, who has served in Congress since 1992, cited Joe Biden’s loss last year in his decision.

“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” he told The New York Times.

Nadler’s decision to retire comes amid a broader push for generational change in the Democratic Party after the election. He said other senior Democrats could consider stepping aside.

“I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” he said. “But I think a certain amount of change is very helpful, especially when we face the challenge of Trump and his incipient fascism.”

Nadler had already relinquished his role as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee amid private concerns among House Democrats about his ability to stand up to Trump, prompting a challenge for the Judiciary job from a younger colleague, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). Nadler achieved national prominence when he served as a manager of Trump’s first impeachment, though his handling of the impeachment probe leading up to it drove conflict with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Nadler’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nadler already faced a 2026 primary challenger who was trying to turn his age against him. The deep-blue seat is now likely to face a Democratic free-for-all to succeed Nadler.

The White House budget office said Friday morning that President Donald Trump has canceled $4.9 billion in foreign aid by using a so-called pocket rescission — furthering the administration’s assault on Congress’ funding prerogatives.

The move raises tensions on Capitol Hill as lawmakers face an Oct. 1 deadline to avoid a government shutdown. Many lawmakers from both parties, as well as Congress’ top watchdog, view the maneuver as an illegal end-run around their “power of the purse.”

The Trump administration boldly embraced the strategy on Friday. “Congress can choose to vote to rescind or continue the funds — it doesn’t matter,” an official from the White House budget office said in a statement. “This approach is rare but not unprecedented.”

The White House is allowed to send Congress a clawbacks request and then withhold the cash for 45 days while lawmakers consider whether to approve, reject or ignore the proposal. Because there are less than 45 days left before the end of the fiscal year, Trump’s top budget officials — led by budget chief Russ Vought — argue that they can employ the so-called pocket rescission to withhold the funding until it lapses at month’s end, ensuring its cancellation regardless of what Congress decides.

The pocket rescission request was first reported by the New York Post.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Two top Justice Department officials are expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks amid fallout over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, according to two people granted anonymity to share scheduling information not yet public.

FBI director Kash Patel is set to give testimony Sept. 17, with attorney general Pam Bondi on tap to appear Oct. 9. Both have been invited as part of the Judiciary Committee’s general oversight work, and each will have an opportunity to outline some of the pieces of a crime bill President Donald Trump wants Hill Republicans to produce in the coming months.

But the hearings will likely focus most heavily on how the DOJ has maneuvered around the release of files related to the late, convicted sex offender.

Senior Republicans have continued over the August recess to press the Trump administration to unseal more Epstein documents after a mutiny over their release caused chaos in the GOP-controlled House, running the chamber aground before lawmakers left town early in late July.

DOJ started transmitting some of the so-called Epstein files last week in compliance with a subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And Alex Acosta, President Donald Trump’s former labor secretary who singed off on Epstein’s previous plea deal as a then-U.S. attorney in Florida, will separately sit for a transcribed interview with the Oversight panel Sept. 19.

However, lawmakers otherwise have so far received scant new information during the month-long district work period, with members of both parties promising to continue to press the issue when the House is set to return to session next week.

Bondi has, in particular, been the subject of Republican consternation over allegedly withholding documents she at one point promised to reveal.

Baseball star Mark Teixeira launched a campaign to fill an open Texas House seat Thursday, the latest celebrity athlete to dive into politics.

Teixeira is running as a Republican in a safe red seat being vacated by GOP Rep. Chip Roy. And he’s already appealing to President Donald Trump in search of a home run on the campaign trail.

“As a lifelong conservative who loves this country, I’m running for Congress to fight for the principles that make Texas and America great,” he wrote in a post on X. “It takes teamwork to win — I’m ready to help defend President Trump’s America First agenda, Texas families, and individual liberty.”

Teixeira was a superstar on the diamond, going yard 409 times in a career that spanned 14 seasons and saw him play for four big league outfits, including the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees. He last played in the 2016 season.

He reached baseball immortality when the Yankees won the World Series in 2009. He was included on the 2022 Hall of Fame ballot but failed to get enough votes from sportswriters to either get elected to the Hall or return to the ballot in future years.

Should he win the seat, he could be a major boon for Republicans in the Congressional Baseball Game, the annual charity event that pits Democrats against Republicans. The GOP has dominated the game in recent years, a gap that a former major leaguer would likely only widen.

Teixeira is leaning into his baseball bona fides.

“In Congress, he’ll bring the same grit, preparation, and competitive spirit that made him a champion in Major League Baseball to fight for Texas—and win,” reads his campaign website.

Roy, a Freedom Caucus member who has served in the House since 2019, is leaving Congress to run for the Texas attorney general post.

Senators will soon get a chance to question Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about Wednesday’s sudden shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy is expected to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 4, a person granted anonymity to describe the plans told POLITICO.

The hearing, which will focus on President Donald Trump’s health agenda, is expected to be formally announced later Thursday, a second person confirmed.

Kennedy’s appearance before the Finance panel was in the works before the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, who is now challenging her ouster. Three top CDC leaders resigned minutes after news of Monarez’s ouster broke.

Numerous Democrats have sharply criticized the CDC moves. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, where the agency is based, said “putting a quack like Bobby Kennedy in charge of public health was a grave error” and that the Trump administration’s “extremism and incompetence are putting lives at risk.”

The hearing will be senators’ first opportunity to question Kennedy face-to-face since May, when he appeared separately before the Senate HELP and Appropriations committees to discuss his department’s fiscal 2026 budget request.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who chairs the HELP Committee and is also a member of the Finance panel, said Wednesday night that “these high profile departures will require oversight” by his committee.

Kennedy defended the CDC shakeup during a Fox News interview Thursday. Though he declined to talk about “personnel issues,” he added that the “agency is in trouble, and we need to fix it … and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”

President Donald Trump is envisioning a sweeping crime bill and billions of dollars in new funding for the nation’s capital. His Republican allies in Congress are largely in the dark on the details.

Multiple times this month, Trump has said he’s working on crime legislation with GOP congressional leaders. His latest comment came early Wednesday morning when he posted on Truth Social that he is working with Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other Republican lawmakers on a “Comprehensive Crime Bill” with “more to follow.”

There have been some early conversations between White House officials and House GOP leadership aides about legislation related to Trump’s public-safety crackdown in Washington as well as certain other crime provisions.

But Trump’s latest comments have puzzled Republicans, including members of leadership and key congressional committees, who don’t know what “comprehensive” measure the president is talking about, according to seven Republicans granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Trump, who speaks frequently with Johnson, discussed the president’s Washington crime campaign with the speaker on a call Tuesday morning, including extending his current temporary control over the D.C. police, according to two other people granted anonymity to describe the private conversation. Johnson was supportive of an extension, they said.

The House Oversight Committee, which has jurisdiction over D.C. issues, is already planning to advance a slate of bills in September, spanning efforts to crack down on juvenile crime in Washington, overhaul the city’s education system and unwind certain policing policies enacted by the D.C. Council. But it’s the Judiciary Committee that would have to advance any crime-related bills that are national in scope.

Trump’s request to extend his 30-day D.C. police takeover is adding a wrinkle to the House GOP’s plans, since his authority is set to expire Sept. 9 — just one week after lawmakers return to Washington. Republican leaders will need to advance it quickly — likely in a resolution they will put directly on the floor — leaving a broader package for later.

Even if the House quickly passes the extension, its fate in the Senate is uncertain. Trump said during a marathon Cabinet meeting Tuesday that he’s planning to speak with Thune about the matter. But because of the chamber’s filibuster rule, Republicans can’t act alone to approve the measure, and Senate Democrats have signaled they’ll block any attempt to do so.

Still, Republicans are eager to force Democrats into tough votes on crime, which they see as advantageous political ground — especially with House GOP leaders facing ongoing headaches over the Jeffrey Epstein case and the administration’s handling of it.

Republicans are also still waiting on details on what Trump has described as a $2 billion bill to “beautify” Washington. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Katie Britt of Alabama are taking the lead on the D.C. funding bill, and Trump spoke with Graham, who is currently traveling overseas, about the president’s plan for the capital city earlier this month.

“I’m going to try to find him the money to repave the roads, take the graffiti off the building, refurbish the parks and give homeless people some place to go other than a tent,” Graham said at a South Carolina event last week.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference Wednesday that she, too, was sketchy on the details of what Trump is proposing with the federal funding infusion. But she said “we will be supportive of the president’s $2 billion request to improve infrastructure, especially federal infrastructure, in the District.”

But Trump is now making clear he wants a major crime bill, too — and fast.

The president has spent weeks bashing Democrats on crime, particularly governors who are seen as key 2028 presidential race contenders, and he’s eager to leverage a winning and unifying issue for Republicans on Capitol Hill.

But just how ambitious the crime bill ends up being remains an open question. Even the D.C.-focused legislation stands to be a significant undertaking on Capitol Hill next month — with GOP leaders already scrambling to hammer out plans to fund the government, pass a defense authorization bill and a litany of other items this fall.

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow the president to withhold billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign aid before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal with the high court Tuesday, asking the justices to pause a federal district judge’s order that requires the administration to come up with a plan to lay out the money by the deadline next month.

Solicitor General John Sauer argued in the new filing that groups representing aid contractors have no legal basis to force such spending and that it’s up to Congress to challenge executive branch spending shortfalls under a 1974 law, the Impoundment Control Act.

“Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” Sauer wrote. “Any lingering dispute about the proper disposition of funds that the President seeks to rescind shortly before they expire should be left to the political branches, not effectively prejudged by the district court.”

While Sauer’s submission is framed as an argument to defer to Congress, he also makes clear that the administration believes Trump has authority to engage in so-called pocket recissions that would occur so late in the fiscal year that it would be impractical for Congress to reverse them.

It’s the latest escalation in Trump’s effort to wrest the power of the purse from Congress, one that has alarmed lower courts and rankled even some Republicans in Congress.

Trump and his budget architect Russell Vought have long sought to challenge the 1974 law, which establishes strict procedures when the president intends to cancel spending authorized by Congress. Though the president can briefly pause some spending, he must get congressional permission to cancel it altogether through a process known as “rescission.”

Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, 2-1, that only Congress’ comptroller general — the leader of the Government Accountability Office — has the power to challenge allegedly unlawful impoundments by the president. Groups that rely on foreign aid funding and claim the right to sue over withheld grants are asking the full bench of the D.C. Circuit to reverse that conclusion, but the full court has not yet acted.

For now, an earlier order from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in favor of the aid groups remains in effect. Ali, a Biden appointee, mandated formal obligation of the funds by the end of September. That order is presently due to be set aside unless the full D.C. Circuit steps in — but the Trump administration seems eager to get the issue in front of the Supreme Court quickly.

Sauer asked the justices to rule by Sept. 2 or to put in place a temporary order that the government need not comply with Ali’s directive.

An official with one of the groups challenging the funding holdbacks, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, said it wasn’t surprising that the administration is rushing the dispute to the high court.

“Time and again, this administration has shown their disdain for foreign assistance and a disregard for people’s lives in the United States and around the world. But even more broadly and dangerously, this administration’s actions further erodes Congress’s role and responsibility as an equal branch of government,” the coalition’s executive director, Mitchell Warren, said in a statement. “The question being put to SCOTUS is whether they will be complicit in further eroding the constitutional commitment to checks and balance.”

Carmen Paun contributed to this report.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley isn’t caving to pressure to end the precedent of deferring to home-state senators on district court and U.S. attorney nominees — even after being called out over the weekend by President Donald Trump and his thwarted pick for top prosecutor in New Jersey.

“As chairman I set Pres Trump noms up for SUCCESS NOT FAILURE,” the Iowa Republican wrote in a social media post Monday.

“A U.S. Atty/district judge nominee without a blue slip does not [have] the votes to get confirmed on the Senate floor & they don’t [have] the votes to get out of cmte,” he added.

Trump has tried to pressure Grassley for weeks to get rid of the so-called blue slip, the practice that allows senators to block a home-state district court or U.S. attorney nominee they don’t support.

Republicans got rid of the same precedent for appeals court nominees during Trump’s first term, but they have so far rebuffed Trump’s calls for them to do the same for district court and U.S. attorney nominations. Many GOP senators believe that if they bend to Trump’s demand now, it would only come back to bite them later, when they find themselves back in the minority and unable to stop nominees from a Democratic administration.

But the conflict with the White House got new fuel poured into it late last week when U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann ruled that Alina Habba “is not lawfully holding the office of United States Attorney” in New Jersey and has been in the position without legal authority since July 1.

Trump had tried to keep Habba in charge of the office after her interim appointment expired. That effort included withdrawing her Senate nomination, which was already stalled because of opposition by New Jersey Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim.

In a Truth Social post Sunday night, Trump doubled down on his attempts to pressure Grassley to nix the blue slip, which the president called an “old and outdated ‘custom.’”

Trump continued: “The only candidates that I can get confirmed for these most important positions are, believe it or not, Democrats! Chuck Grassley should allow strong Republican candidates to ascend to these very vital and powerful roles, and tell the Democrats, as they often tell us, to go to HELL!”

Habba also criticized Grassley and Sen. Thom Tillis by name Sunday morning, calling on them to revisit the blue slip precedent and allow her nomination and others to go through.

“This tradition that Senator Grassley is upholding effectively prevents anybody in a blue state from going through into Senate to then be voted on,” Habba said on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

“I would say to Senator Tillis and Senator Grassley, you are becoming part of the issue,” she added. “You are becoming part of the antithesis of what we fought for four years.”

Tillis, a North Carolina Republican and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said recently that he would continue to honor the blue slip for district court and U.S. attorney nominations even if the precedent was rescinded. That means he would oppose all relevant nominees who lacked support from their home state senators.

Grassley also noted in a subsequent X post Monday that the administration had withdrawn Habba’s nomination and that the committee “never received any of the paperwork needed for the Senate to vet her nomination.”

Spokespeople for Grassley and Tillis didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

As Republicans look to flip House seats through redistricting in Texas and other red states, they have a pickup opportunity in what was once deep blue North Jersey, without having to redraw any lines.

In the state’s heavily Hispanic 9th Congressional District, the Democrat who was widely thought to be a shoo-in won by just five points last year, and President Donald Trump narrowly won the district after losing it the last two cycles. Yet, even amid talk of New Jersey becoming a purple state, just two Republican candidates have stepped forward to run in the district.

By contrast, in the one Republican-held seat Democrats have a realistic opportunity to pick up, in Central Jersey’s 7th District, Democrats are practically falling over each other to challenge two-term Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. Nine Democratic candidates — including several with a proven ability to raise funds and made-for-campaign bios like former Navy Black Hawk pilot, physician and climate scientist — have declared their candidacies with nearly a year to go before the primary.

“Democrats in New Jersey feel like the stakes are existential — literally existential — in these midterm elections,” said Hunterdon County Democratic Chair Tom Malinowski, a former 7th District representative whom Kean ousted in 2022. “I’m not sure Republicans feel quite as strongly.”

Trump’s remarkably narrow six-point loss in New Jersey last year was widely seen as a sign one of the bluest states in the nation was turning purple. And there are other indicators that Democratic dominance is fading in the state. Since the 2020 election, Republicans have shaved Democrats’ statewide voter registration advantage from more than 1 million to 864,825. And in the 2021 election, Republican Jack Ciattarelli — yet again the GOP nominee for governor this year — came within just three points of ousting Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

But presidential elections turn out more lower-propensity voters than midterms. And wealthier suburban districts like the 7th have had higher turnout than the more working-class 9th. Candidate recruitment and fundraising are some of the few tangible measures of where the political winds are blowing. And in New Jersey’s 2026 House races, Democrats are so far dominating on both fronts.

“Republicans are calling the 9th a swing district. They’re talking about a potential investment,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “But I think they understand they’re not going to get the turnout they’re looking for in a midterm. I think it’s a different kind of priority than the 7th District, where turnout is not going to be as dependent on the presidential race.”

The heavy interest from Democrats seeking to oust Kean is reminiscent of the blue wave 2018 midterms, when Democrats flipped four New Jersey Republican-held House seats. Back then, seven Democrats lined up to run for the 7th District seat — and that was when the district boundaries made it slightly easier for Democrats to win it.

Even in South Jersey’s 2nd District, where Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew won reelection last year by 17 points, three Democrats have filed to run in 2026 — more than Republicans in the 9th District. The same goes for North Jersey’s 11th District, where three Democrats have already filed with the FEC to replace Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor, in case she wins the governorship this November and vacates the seat.

In the 9th District, Republican Billy Prempeh is running again in his fourth straight campaign for the seat since 2020, and just one other Republican has so far come forward: Rosemary Pino, a councilmember in Clifton. No one else has even teased a candidacy yet to take on Democratic freshman Rep. Nellie Pou, though Republicans are optimistic other candidates will emerge.

While national Republicans POLITICO spoke to had yet to commit to any candidates, Prempeh — who narrowly lost in 2024 — believes he can be their man.“I feel supported by the Republican Party. I think they see the same things that I see: This district is very winnable. I think I’m making the right choice,” he said in a phone interview.

But Prempeh, never a strong fundraiser, has barely raised anything for his next race. His last campaign finance report, filed mid-July, showed a balance of negative $634.

“We ran that race with under $50,000, while my opponent spent close to $500,000 against me,” Prempeh said. “I’m very good at running a race, even with small resources.”

Pino, as a Hispanic woman, could be a demographic ideal for a Republican candidate in the district. But she’s already demonstrated vulnerability. Shortly after she declared her candidacy, Prempeh pointed out that a group she led last year endorsed Pou against him.

Passaic County GOP Chair Peter Murphy, whose county makes up much of the district, said that it’s a tempting target for Republicans and that he sees more candidates emerging, including from next door in Bergen County. “I really do believe more Republicans are going to be coming out of the 9th district. I think you’re going to see a lot more coming. By the primary I could see four or five,” he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans are pointing to Central Jersey’s 7th District race as a potential mess, while noting Pou in the 9th District could face her own primary challenge.

Many of the Democratic candidates in the 7th live just outside the district, including Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy Blackhawk pilot and the first to declare. So far, she has captured the most attention from national Democrats. But several rivals have already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Republicans warn that in such a large primary, the candidates will work to drag the field to the left, hurting the eventual nominee’s chances in the general election.

Bennett said she felt called to run. “I can’t explain it any other way that a switch flipped in my brain, and I told my husband, ‘I have to run for office now,’” she said. “I really love this country. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution.”

Republicans see Pou as a potentially weak incumbent, never having had competitive general elections during her time in the state Legislature and already facing buzz about potential primary challengers, including from the mayor of Paterson, by far the largest city in the district.

Kean, by contrast, is a two-term incumbent with a family name that goes back generations in New Jersey. His father, Tom Kean Sr., is the state’s most popular former governor.

“Whoever prevails will be wearing the progressive crown, completely broke and too battered to even compete against Rep. Tom Kean Jr.,” said Maureen O’Toole, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Harrison Neely, a campaign consultant for Kean, said the field is “a clear signal of Democrat party chaos and disarray. They can’t unite behind a candidate because they have no organization, no vision and nothing to offer.”

In addition to Bennett, the 7th District field includes: Tina Shah, a medical doctor; Michael Roth, a former top official at the Small Business Administration; businessman Brian Varela; former Summit councilmember Greg Vartan; criminal justice professor Beth Adubato; attorney Valentina Mendoza; and little-known Michael Garth. Megan O’Rourke, a former Biden administration climate scientist, became the latest to declare her candidacy this month.

Democrats see echoes of the 2018 Democratic wave, when seven candidates filed to run in the district’s primary. Eventually, the field narrowed down to three, and the nominee — Malinowski — ousted Leonard Lance that November after 10 years in Congress.

Recent polling shows Trump is unpopular in New Jersey — between 11 points and 18 points under water, according to two recent polls. Still, that’s more popular than he was at this point in 2018.

The 7th and 9th Districts both encapsulate a shift in the Democratic and Republican coalitions. The wealthier, suburban and whiter 7th has many traditional Republican voters who began shifting left after Trump’s first election. That’s in contrast to the more working-class, Hispanic-plurality 9th, which has recently moved towards Republicans.

But so far, the signs point to a tough time flipping the 9th District in a midterm, said Rasmussen, the Rebovich Institute director.

“Republicans realize that their success in the 9th depends on presidential-level turnout that they’re not going to get in 2026,” he said. “They could get it again in 2028, although presumably Trump isn’t going to be on the ballot.”