What to watch in New Hampshire tonight: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to From the Politics Desk , a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Before polls close tonight in New Hampshire’s primaries, Bridget Bowman and Ben Kamisar preview the key races to watch. Plus, Natasha Korecki digs into how Republicans are reviving their anti-trans playbook ahead of November.

Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday here.

New Hampshire primaries test Trump and the left

By Bridget Bowman and Ben Kamisar

President Donald Trump ’s endorsement will be put to the test once again in New Hampshire’s primaries, where liberal Democrats are also looking to cap an ascendant primary season with additional victories.

Democratic Senate primary: Rep. Chris Pappas , who first won a battleground seat in 2018, is considered the front-runner for his party’s nomination in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen . He already appears to be gearing up for the general election, focusing his campaign on addressing high costs and political corruption, while launching an ad attacking a potential Republican opponent.

But Pappas is facing a challenge from the left from Karishma Manzur , a scientist and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who supports progressive policies like “Medicare for All.” Manzur has sharply criticized Pappas over support and funding for Israel, saying he is “enabling genocide.” (For more on this primary, check out the latest edition of Steve Kornacki ’s “Data Dive” newsletter. )

Republican Senate primary: This contest includes multiple candidates, but the race is largely between two former senators: John Sununu and Scott Brown .

Sununu represented New Hampshire in the Senate from 2003 through 2008 after serving in the House. He lost his bid for re-election in 2008 to Shaheen, but Republicans believe his well-known family name could give him a boost: Sununu’s brother and father both served as governors. Sununu is backed by President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Brown held a Massachusetts seat for three years, previously ran for the New Hampshire Senate in 2014, and served as Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa during the president’s first term.

General election preview: Trump lost New Hampshire by just 3 points in 2024, giving Republicans hope about making this open-seat race competitive. The GOP has not won a Senate race there since 2010, but New Hampshire does have a Republican governor, Kelly Ayotte .

🗺️ Senate landscape: Eight weeks from Election Day, there’s an increasing sense in both parties that the Senate is up for grabs this fall, even in red territory, Bridget reports .

Tune in to the Kornacki Cam at 7 p.m. ET to watch Steve break down tonight’s results.

Republicans return to a familiar playbook in Texas

Analysis by Natasha Korecki

The first ad from Elon Musk ’s super PAC in Texas’ competitive Senate race has arrived. And it centers on a go-to topic for Republicans: transgender issues.

The Musk-funded America PAC just released an ad titled: “Non-binary.” It features Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico saying, “God is non-binary,” twice in 15 seconds. The spot also notes that Talarico did not support a bill to ban biological men from playing in women’s sports. As a bookend, Republican Ken Paxton ’s campaign posted on social media this morning an AI-generated ad featuring similar messaging.

With this and other similar ads in races in red-leaning states, Republicans are demonstrating that in their high-stakes endeavor to retain Senate control, they believe their best bet is to return to the well.

Some political observers credited the ubiquitous ads President Donald Trump ran in the 2024 election — “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you” — as an influential factor in tanking Kamala Harris ’ campaign.

Harris’ 2024 loss fueled intraparty soul-searching and feuds over whether it was an error to allow those attacks to go unanswered. Whether the Talarico campaign will directly respond to these anti-trans ads in the future remains unclear.

Talarico has called his past comments “cringey” but said Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, was clipping them to “distract from his career of corruption.”

Talarico has also criticized the media for focusing too heavily on trans athletes and not enough on affordability, and spent months saying that some politicians were attempting to pit rank-and-file voters against one another.

“What I would say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires,” Talarico said in 2025. “Trans people are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. Muslims are 1% of the population. We are all focused on the wrong 1%. Trans people aren’t taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren’t defunding our schools. Muslims aren’t cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians.”

The political climate in America has decidedly shifted since 2024. Democrats have demonstrated, including in Virginia and Nebraska , that anti-trans ads did little to move voters who cared more about cost of living issues.

Poll after poll shows that in the run-up to the midterms, voters are frustrated by the cost of groceries and gas. An unpopular war in Iran drags on. Trump’s popularity is in free fall. Scores of Latino voters, a sizable voting bloc in Texas, are angry over aggressive immigration tactics, while Trump has lost significant ground on support on the issue. In Texas specifically, fury over data center expansion is in full force . And Republicans locally are facing backlash over the administration’s border construction in Big Bend National Park .

That may be why, when asked today, Talarico’s campaign had nothing to say about the new anti-trans ads. Instead, it released an ad featuring an endorsement from the former Texas attorney general’s director of law enforcement, David Maxwell , who served as a whistleblower against Paxton in his impeachment trial.

🗞️ Today's other top stories

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.

If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

And if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here .