While the Democratic Party’s most high-profile personalities have been vocal in decrying President Donald Trump’s policy advances, their less-publicized activity tells a different story — the story of a party quietly moderating its progressive stances on popular issues like border security and government waste in a bid to rescue the Democrats from their moment of floundering electoral viability.
Among these first-string officials are figures like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and other more minor players — some are figures regularly floated as potential names at the top of 2028’s Democratic ticket — and all of them have served, or been portrayed, as pioneers on their party’s more progressive frontiers. But following Trump’s November victory, with its substantial electoral gains across virtually every demographic, these figures are quietly trying to push their party’s pendulum closer to the middle — especially on policies surrounding immigration and wasteful government spending.
“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” Pritzker said at Pennsylvania’s State of the State address last week. “But I know the history intimately … I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac, and suggests, without facts or findings, that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash.” He went on to invoke the specter of Nazis in criticizing the president’s comments on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, his slashing of certain federal programs and other advances Pritzker considers precursors to totalitarianism.
Third Reich comparisons aside, the governor’s address — which simultaneously served as a budget proposal speech — contained nuggets of concession to Trump’s policy agenda. The proposed budget, despite being the most expensive in Illinois history, freezes hiring of state employees, slashes $629 million in benefit programs for illegal aliens and guts the state’s “welcoming center” by $100 million too — an apparent page taken out of the Department of Government Efficiency’s book.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Shapiro is forced to walk a narrower tightrope, grappling with a GOP majority in the state Senate and one-seat Democratic majority in the House. When U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi paused federal funding to Philadelphia, a “sanctuary city,” after Democrats worked to stymy the president’s deportation policy there, the governor seemed to side with the president and not with his party colleagues in the dispute, despite challenging the funding pauses in court.
Shapiro told Fox News on Feb. 6 that he wants “criminals who are here illegally out of our communities.”
“I want to see that happen,” Shapiro said. “I don’t want people who are wreaking havoc on our communities or claiming lives in our communities to be here.”
Further, the governor announced an audit of every space owned or leased by state government as part of an initiative to “save the Commonwealth tens of millions of dollars over the next several years” — another page seemingly from DOGE’s book.
Whitmer, the Michigan governor remembered for her heavy-handed approach to COVID lockdown policies, said she desires to “find common ground” with the president, her longtime rival, in an interview with Bridge Michigan. In a more substantial reach across the aisle, she signed bipartisan legislation Friday to stunt minimum-wage growth for tipped workers and cut sick-leave regulations for Michigan businesses.
Directly to the west, Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers — despite his 2025 budget advocating for the replacement of “mother” with “inseminated person” and “paternity” with “parentage” in state law terminology — has also quietly promoted some conservative budgetary measures. His biennial budget message for 2025 to 2027 proposed cutting nearly $2 billion in income, sales and property taxes — though his resistance to cooperating with the president’s immigration enforcement agenda remains unchanged.
Meanwhile, even California’s Newsom — a longstanding disciple of frontier progressive policies such as aid programs for illegal aliens, barring schools from informing parents about their child’s increasingly creative ideas about gender, legislation against gas stoves, launching a statewide initiative to mull racial reparations — has taken steps to rein in the Democratic stance on immigration. The governor promised to veto Assembly Bill 15, a bill that would block California’s prison system from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, Newsom’s office confirmed to Fox News.
Newsom also announced a $920 million initiative to quash California’s longstanding and widespread homeless encampment problem, even launching a website Monday for citizens to track its progress — despite still signing a bill in February that allocates $25 million for illegal aliens’ legal defenses in immigration court.
Similarly, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he was “collaborating” with Trump’s deportation agenda in a Feb. 14 interview on “Fox & Friends,” appearing alongside border czar Tom Homan. The mayor agreed to allow ICE agents into the Rikers Island jail complex to assist in criminal investigations, a significant pivot from the city’s sanctuary policies.
“New York City has been forced to shoulder the burden of a national humanitarian crisis where more than 230,000 migrants have come to our city seeking support, at a cost of approximately $7 billion, with little help from the previous administration … We are now working on implementing an executive order that will reestablish the ability for ICE agents to operate on Rikers Island … in particular those focused on violent criminals and gangs.”
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul echoed Adams’ support for expanding ICE operations and aligning state policies with federal immigration enforcement efforts in the city, calling for violent offenders to be “removed from the state of New York” in a January press conference.
“I want to be clear. There has always been ICE raids in the state of New York, even in the past, and this is not a new dynamic,” Hochul said. “My understanding is that they had specific names of people who committed crimes, serious offenders, and those are exactly the people that we want removed from the state of New York.”
It is unclear who will lead the Democratic Party through 2028’s presidential election, and it’s unclear whether the nominee will consider concessions like these necessary — but these Democratic officials, who appear to represent their party’s best chances for nationwide electoral success, seem to think they are.
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