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Tony Meola knows the pressure of competing in front of his home fans. Back in 1994, when the United States hosted the FIFA World Cup, Meola, the national team’s starting goalkeeper, and his teammates had not one but two jobs: beat the competition and help grow the game.

“It was relentless,” he told NBC News. “Twenty-four hours a day for a year leading into the World Cup. Promotion of the game, events. We never stopped.”

His team did its part off the field — the event shattered attendance records even though soccer wasn’t the most popular sport at the time — and it made it out of the group stage before it lost 1-0 to eventual champion Brazil. Though it wasn’t the result it wanted, that squad is credited for helping generate major interest and participation in the sport stateside.

Meola had dreams of one day seeing the U.S. men’s national team become perennial contenders. But more than 30 years later, with the country (along with Canada and Mexico) hosting the 2026 World Cup next June, he says there’s still as much up in the air as there was two decades ago.

“I don’t feel like we’re ready right now,” Meola, now an analyst for CBS Sports Golazo Network, said of the current U.S. team. “I want to see progression over the next year and go into [the World Cup] with as few question marks as possible, not going in there sort of fearing what’s going to happen.”

Meola is far from the only former USMNT player to share some skepticism one year out. His co-hosts on the soccer podcast “Call It What You Want,” Charlie Davies and Jimmy Conrad, also expressed concern. So did Fox Sports, MLS and Apple commentator Maurice Edu.

Taylor Twellman, the lead soccer analyst for Apple TV, put it more bluntly.

When he was asked how the United States stacks up right now with the top countries in the world, he told NBC News: “They’re not in the conversation with any of them. … They don’t see themselves as a contender.”

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When North America was awarded the rights to the 2026 World Cup in June 2018, Carlos Cordeiro, then the president of U.S. Soccer, called it a “rare and important moment to demonstrate that we are all truly united through sport.”

It also guaranteed more eyeballs on the host countries. According to FIFA, the average global live audience for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was 175 million viewers. The final between Argentina and France drew 1.5 billion viewers, dramatically more than the most recent Super Bowl (127.7 million).

And with the 2026 World Cup final taking place at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, this was the perfect time to showcase just how far the U.S. men’s team has come. Especially with the “Golden Generation” of players entering their prime.

That term — attached to rising stars like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Sergiño Dest, Gio Reyna, Timothy Weah, Antonee Robinson, Matt Turner and Tyler Adams — recognizes what was expected to be the best core in program history.

They showed glimpses of brilliance during the 2022 World Cup, a run that ended in the Round of 16, but they were all young. Now, four years older, with experience both internationally and for European clubs, they are expected to help lead a deep World Cup run.

But some remain hesitant to say this group can pull it off. To this point, it lacks a true signature win and has come up short in recent competitions. In last summer’s Copa América, which the United States hosted, the USMNT failed to get out of the group stage after losses to Uruguay and Panama.

The result raised questions about whether this roster was talented enough to get over the hump.

“You can’t be a ‘Golden Generation’ until you do something that hasn’t been done before,” Davies told NBC News.

Edu said: “I felt like the ‘Golden Generation’ tag was coined based on the potential. And now some of these guys are coming into their prime, so that potential has to be realized. Everything, to me, now revolves around what happens next summer.”

To help them reach their potential, the program moved on from longtime coach Gregg Berhalter and replaced him with Mauricio Pochettino. His hiring was seen as a huge deal, as Pochettino, who is Argentine, has managed on some of the biggest stages of world soccer: Tottenham Hotspur, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea.

So far, the results have been mixed.

He has five wins and four losses in nine games, but the team disappointed in March with two losses in the CONCACAF Nations League Finals. The team has also dropped four games in a row — including a 4-0 loss to Switzerland on Tuesday — though the lineups were far from full strength, with certain stars, like Pulisic, not playing.

U.S. Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker said Pochettino’s “reputation stands for itself.” It’s far too early in the process to critique the job he’s done.

“We have a great generation of young players that we want to turn potential into performance, and we couldn’t have had and asked for a better coach to come in and have the ability to do that,” Crocker said. “Now, he just needs to have the time with the players and the games and the experiences to hopefully be ready for next summer, which is our objective.”

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One year away from the biggest tournament in sports, the USMNT’s on-field product is still far from sorted.

The most important position to be decided may be goalkeeper.

Turner, who started in the 2022 World Cup, is once again expected to have that role. But after a year when he played sparingly as a backup for Crystal Palace, some wonder whether his lack of playing time will have him fit for next summer. Reports this week say Turner has agreed to join the French squad Lyon.

Nobody knows goalie play better than Meola, who said, “There are a lot of questions.”

“In general, we’ve gone into World Cups either knowing who our No. 1 is or two or three guys battling for the position. That’s been the rotation since 1990. This particular group, I think we’re unsettled in that position,” he said.

If Turner gets consistent action at Lyon, he should be that guy again in 2026. Patrick Schulte, Zack Steffen and Matt Freese are the likeliest next options.

Meola’s other position group to watch is center back. Out wide, Robinson and Dest are near locks, but the middle of the field is still anyone’s guess. Candidates include Chris Richards, Tim Ream, Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson or Cameron Carter-Vickers.

“There’s just too many question marks in the middle of the field at the moment,” Meola said. “If I’m going to focus on one, that would be it.”

Edu and Davies said they want to see how the next 12 months play out at center forward. The USMNT won a hard-fought battle with England to get Monaco’s Folarin Balogun (who has dual citizenship), but after him there are many names to consider in Ricardo Pepi, Patrick Agyemang, Haji Wright, Damion Downs and Josh Sargent.

“Even if there’s question marks in other positions, if we feel good about the No. 9 position, I think that gives us a hell of a chance,” Edu said.

Conrad is similarly focused on the middle of the field, this time at center midfield. Pochettino could go with McKennie, Yunus Musah, Johnny Cardoso, Tanner Tessman, Diego Luna or Malik Tillman.

He had one prediction that might shock fans.

“Gio Reyna … I’ll throw him in there, but at this moment I don’t expect him to make the team. That’s my big shock,” Conrad said. “I’ll put my flag in the ground and say he’s got a lot of work to do to get into this team for 2026, which would probably be a surprise to many, but I just think there’s other players that are playing well and could fit the system a little bit better at this current moment.”

Even though questions abound in the middle, Conrad said he feels great outside.

“I would put our outside backs internationally against anybody,” he said. “Our strength, in terms of our starters, is Antonee Robinson, Sergiño Dest and then into Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah. I feel confident going up against any nation with our outside players.”

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This summer, the USMNT has CONCACAF Gold Cup matches followed by friendlies in September, October and November. Players will then compete for their clubs, either in Major League Soccer or abroad, and then return for more friendlies before the World Cup.

The final roster, capped at 26 players, will be set 10 days before the tournament.

Nobody is more important in that decision than Crocker, the technical director. Previously with English club Southampton and the England national team, he’s focused on getting the best product possible on the field by next June.

He said questions around particular positions don’t really matter because nobody is truly locked in at this point.

“I don’t think that exists 12 months out from a World Cup,” he said. “You’re trying to build depth in the squad but also continue to monitor players’ performances. We need to know who the best three players are at every position. In the build-up to a major tournament, there will always be a player that hits form; there might be a player that gets an injury. So you’ve got to be ready.”

Twellman, a forward on the national team from 2002 to 2008, said his concerns aren’t based solely on the talent level in specific position groups. It comes down to results, and the team simply hasn’t gotten enough of them for him to be confident heading into a World Cup.

“There’s just a sense of apathy around the United States men’s program,” he said. “And I don’t think that’s a hot take.”

Crocker said he has heard some of the negative discourse around the program but “can’t control the outside noise.”

“Our job, both as staff and as players, is to almost sort of look within ourselves, to continue to work as hard as we possibly can, continue to try and improve in training every day to put the performances in that we need to every day,” he said. “We would love everybody to be great supporters and start to talk positively about the team, but we’d also know that we have a responsibility through our performances to control that narrative, as well.”

A trio of states with Democratic governors viewed as potential 2028 presidential candidates have taken steps in recent weeks to freeze or cut government-funded health care coverage for undocumented immigrants.

Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Tim Walz of Minnesota have largely attributed the proposals to budget shortfalls stemming from original plans to expand health care to immigrants without legal status.

But the moves also occur against the backdrop of broader debate within the Democratic Party over how to handle immigration, an issue that dragged it down in the last election and that President Donald Trump and the GOP have continued to try to capitalize on.

The plans, which would scale back health care coverage for undocumented immigrants in the three Democratic-led states just years after it was expanded, have angered progressives and immigrant advocacy groups, who warn the party risks alienating its base — particularly as protests against Trump’s deportation plans break out around the country.

The latest development came in Minnesota on Tuesday, after both chambers of the Legislature passed a bill to end state-funded health care for undocumented adults.

The bipartisan effort advanced through the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate as part of attempts to balance the state budget. It now goes to Walz, who has said he’ll sign it.

The bill would end undocumented adults’ eligibility for MinnesotaCare — the state-funded health insurance program for low-income residents — effectively reversing one of the signature policy wins Walz secured during a landmark legislative session in 2023, when Democrats were in full control of state government. Undocumented children would remain eligible to enroll in the program under the legislation.

In California, Newsom unveiled a budget plan last month that would cut back on health care benefits for undocumented immigrants — a stark reversal from his promises of universal health care for all the state’s residents, regardless of their immigration status.

Newsom’s plan in his 2025-26 budget has called for freezing enrollment for undocumented adults to receive the full scope of the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. Newsom’s office has said the changes would apply only to new applicants over age 19, that existing enrollees wouldn’t be kicked off their plans and that the freeze, which would begin next year, wouldn’t apply to people enrolled in limited plans.

Newsom’s proposed changes also included a new $100 monthly premium for adults 19 and older with “unsatisfactory immigration status” beginning in 2027.

His expansion of Medi-Cal has cost far more than his administration anticipated. Newsom has said the changes will help to balance the state’s budget, which has run a multibillion-dollar shortfall that he has blamed on Trump’s tariffs, as well as growing costs from higher enrollment in Medi-Cal.

Meanwhile, Illinois remains on track by the end of the month to end a program — called Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults — that provides state-funded health care coverage for more than 30,000 low-income adults who are living in the state without documentation.

Similarly, the program in Illinois was more expensive than expected when it was created in 2021. Pritzker’s latest budget, which the Democratic-led Legislature passed last month, proposed eliminating it by July 1.

While the moves would help those states recalibrate their budgets, a sweeping Trump-backed domestic policy bill moving through Congress proposes slashing Medicaid funding for states that provide health care coverage to undocumented immigrants. Trump also signed an executive order this year targeting undocumented immigrants’ access to government assistance programs.

In response to questions from NBC News, Newsom spokesperson Elana Ross reiterated his statement in his initial announcement of the changes last month that “instead of rolling back the program — meaning cutting people off for basic care — we’re capping it.”

Pritzker’s office said in an email that “this year, passing a balanced budget required the difficult decision that reflects the reality of Trump and Republicans tanking our national economy and attempting to strip away healthcare.”

A Walz spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about Minnesota’s plan, which was the result of a compromise after Republican lawmakers had pushed to end the entire MinnesotaCare program.

“No one got everything they wanted,” Walz said last month after he reached a tentative deal with Republicans on the budget, which was finalized in a special session this week. “There were very difficult conversations about issues that were very dear to each of these caucuses. But at the end of the day, we were able to come to this agreement.”

Blowback from the left

Immigrant advocacy groups have panned the moves, saying they risk further imperiling the broader health care system, and blasted Democrats for succumbing to Trump’s attacks.

“We urge state leaders to build on their progress, rather than placing the health of their residents at risk,” said Tanya Broder, the senior counsel for health and economic justice policy at the National Immigration Law Center. “Particularly as extremist politicians scapegoat and target immigrants, we are counting on state officials to do the right thing and hold the line.

“As states increasingly have recognized, a community’s health and well-being depend on ensuring that everyone has access to health care. Immigrants pay billions of dollars in federal, state and local taxes, yet many are excluded from critical health care programs,” she added. “Terminating state coverage for immigrants will compromise our collective health, as well as the health care infrastructure that serves all of us.”

Some progressives questioned whether the moves were part of a broader strategy by the three governors to move to the right on the broader issue of immigration, which polling has shown still remains one of Trump’s strongest issues.

They said they could face a backlash from their base by departing from positions on supporting immigrant communities and expanding health care.

“It really feeds into the conservative narrative that undocumented immigrants are a drain on our communities,” said Jennifer Driver, a senior director at the State Innovation Exchange, a progressive legislative policy group. “This assumption that by moving more to the middle or to the right that you’re going to recruit some people back — I think it’s a miscalculation.

“The frustration that you’re seeing in the Democratic base is due to this kind of this waffling, this kind of idea that ‘OK, yes, we are progressive — but only in some moments,’” Driver added.

Other strategists suggested it remained too early to gauge whether a broader shift was in play as governors and other lawmakers positioned themselves for potential 2028 White House bids, and they emphasized that the threats blue states face from Trump are serious.

“The Trump administration is squeezing the hell out of states,” said Jeff Blodgett, a Minnesota-based Democratic strategist who was a campaign manager for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and the state director for both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “There’s just a lot of concern about current and future budgets given what the federal government is doing to states.”

Austrian authorities were searching Wednesday for answers to why a 21-year-old gunman shot dead 10 people in a rampage at his former high school before killing himself, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country’s modern history.

Police said the man, armed with a shotgun and a pistol, acted alone. They are scouring his home and the internet for clues to why he opened fire on the school in Austria’s second city of Graz on Tuesday, before shooting himself in a bathroom.

The incident was hard to properly take in, said a religious studies teacher at the school, Paul Nitsche, who left his classroom before the gunman tried to enter, and briefly saw him trying to shoot the lock off another door.

“This is something I couldn’t even imagine before, that’s what the situation was like as I ran down the stairwell, I thought to myself: ‘This wasn’t real,’” he told national broadcaster ORF.

Some Austrian media have said the young man, who has not been identified, apparently felt bullied, though police have yet to confirm this. Austrian authorities said the suspect never completed his studies at the school.

He left a farewell note that did not reveal the motive for the attack, police said, adding that a pipe bomb found at his home was not functional.

Franz Ruf, director general of public security, said investigations into the motive were moving swiftly.

“We don’t want to speculate at this point,” he told ORF on Tuesday night.

Around 17 minutes elapsed between the first emergency calls received by police about shots being fired at the school and the scene being declared safe, Ruf said.

Details of the attack have emerged slowly.

Austrian police said victims were found both outside and inside the school, on various floors. About a dozen people were injured in the attack, some seriously.

Austria declared three days of national mourning, with the shootings prompting a rare show of solidarity among often bitterly divided political parties. Parents of pupils and neighbors of the school struggled to make sense of the event.

Hundreds came together in Graz‘s main square on Tuesday evening to remember the victims. Others left flowers and lit candles outside the school. Dozens also queued to donate blood for the survivors.

JERUSALEM — Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway said Tuesday they have imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers for allegedly “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The decision by Western governments friendly to Israel was a sharp rebuke of Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank and of settler violence, which has spiked since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, key partners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, are champions of Israeli settlement who support continuing the war in Gaza, facilitating what they call the voluntary emigration of its Palestinian population and the rebuilding of Jewish settlements there.

They could now face asset freezes and travel bans.

In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the five countries said Ben-Gvir and Smotrich “have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. Extremist rhetoric advocating the forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous.”

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the two men “have been inciting violence against Palestinian people for months and months and months” and “encouraging egregious abuses of human rights.”

“These measures are directed at individuals who directly contribute to extremist settler violence,” said Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand. “The measures are not directed against the state of Israel itself.”

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Wednesday that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir “have severely and deliberately undermined” prospects for peace and security while “inciting violence and forced displacement.”

“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages,” Peters said in a statement. “Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”

Smotrich wrote on social media that he learned of the sanctions while he was inaugurating a new West Bank settlement. “We are determined to continue building,” he said.

Ben-Gvir, also writing on social media, said “we overcame Pharoah, we’ll overcome Starmer’s Wall,” referring to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. condemned the sanctions and urged their reversal.

“We reject any notion of equivalence: Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed unspeakable atrocities, continues to hold innocent civilians hostage, and prevents the people of Gaza from living in peace,” he said in a post on X. “We remind our partners not to forget who the real enemy is.”

Israel’s government also condemned the announcement, which came as traditional allies of Israel escalate denouncements of Israel’s actions in Gaza, from the high civilian death toll to a monthslong blockade that led to famine warnings.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the sanctions decision “outrageous.” He said he had discussed it with Netanyahu and that they would meet next week to discuss Israel’s response.

He said the move threatened to harden Hamas’ stance in ongoing negotiations to end the war in Gaza and to cut short Israel’s operation in Gaza before it achieves its goals.

Benny Gantz, a centrist Israeli lawmaker and political rival to Netanyahu, wrote that he “vehemently” disagreed with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, but said the move was a “profound moral mistake and sends a dangerous message to terrorists around the world.”

Netanyahu is the target of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last year over alleged war crimes in Gaza, part of a global wave of outrage at Israel’s conduct during its 20-month war against Hamas. Netanyahu has denied the allegations and accused the court of being biased against Israel.

The Biden administration took the rare step of sanctioning radical Israeli settlers implicated in violence in the occupied West Bank — sanctions that were lifted by President Donald Trump.

Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer who spent years campaigning for the sanctions on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir — along with violent West Bank settlers — described Tuesday’s move as “historic.”

“It means the wall of immunity that Israeli politicians had has been broken,” he said. “It’s unbelievable that it took so long for Western governments to sanction Israeli politicians, and the fact that it’s being done while Trump is president is quite amazing.”

Mack added: “It is a message to Netanyahu himself that he could be next.”

Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state.

Successive Israeli governments have promoted settlement growth and construction stretching back decades. It has exploded under Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, which has settlers in key Cabinet posts.

There are now well over 100 settlements across the West Bank that house more than 500,000 settlers. The settlers have Israeli citizenship, while the territory’s 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal, and Palestinians see them as the greatest obstacle to an eventual two-state solution, which is still seen internationally as the only way to resolve the conflict.

At a used car market in Beijing, salesman Ma Hui said he fears China’s electric vehicle industry is in a race to the bottom.

EV makers, led by the country’s market leader, BYD, have been engaged in a bruising price war, depressing profits for the brands, as well as sellers such as Ma.

“All of us were losing money last year,” Ma said about his fellow used car sellers in the market. “There are too many companies making too many new energy cars.”

China’s trading partners have often accused the country of flooding the global market with cheap Chinese EVs. These days, similar accusations are flying within China, raising concerns about financial stress in the industry.

The official Communist Party paper, the People’s Daily, for example, published a commentary on Monday, titled “The ‘Price War’ in the Automotive Industry Leads Nowhere and Has No Future.”

“Disorderly ‘price wars’ squeeze profits across the chain, impacting the entire ecosystem and risking income declines for workers,” the paper warned. “Long-term, this ‘race to the bottom’ competition is unsustainable.”

BYD is drawing the most fire after it announced price cuts in late May for many of its models. Some of the discounts are as steep as 34%. Its cheapest car, the Seagull mini hatchback, now costs only about $7,700, down from about $10,000.

The intense price war has led high-profile auto executives to sound the alarm — with the head of Great Wall Motor calling the industry “unhealthy.”

In an interview with Chinese news outlet Sina Finance on May 23, Great Wall Motor Chairman Wei Jianjun drew parallels to China’s moribund property sector and its now defunct poster child, developer Evergrande.

“An ‘Evergrande-like’ crisis already exists in the automotive industry,” he said. “It just hasn’t erupted yet.”

A government-backed industry group has also called on companies not to “dump” vehicles below the cost of production. In a statement, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers took a veiled swipe at BYD.

“A certain automaker has taken the lead in launching significant price cuts and many companies have followed suit, triggering a new round of ‘price war’ panic,” the group said.

BYD dismissed Wei’s comment as alarmist and said it believes in fair competition in response to CAAM’s criticism.

In a sign of further strain, sellers at the Beijing used car market told CNBC about a phenomenon known as “zero mileage used cars,” which is meant to help auto manufacturers and dealers inflate sales volumes. This happens when cars are registered and plated and then marked as sold, but haven’t ever been driven.

Ma said he is worried about where the fierce competition leads. He told CNBC he sees the impact of the intense competition on consumers who are already shy about spending in the down economy.

“With the price dropping like this, a lot of buyers might wait,” he said.

The matchup in New Jersey’s race for governor is officially set — and Tuesday’s primaries also laid down big indicators about the state of both political parties after the first major intraparty contests since the 2024 election.

Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state legislator, easily won his party’s primary with President Donald Trump’s endorsement, underscoring Trump’s significant sway over the GOP electorate.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill won the crowded Democratic primary, pitching herself as the candidate with the best shot at holding on to the governorship and steering past ideological and antiestablishment sentiment simmering in her party. She defeated candidates who were to her left and to her right.

The race to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, one of two governor’s races this year, is expected to be competitive. Trump lost the state by 6 percentage points in November, a 10-point swing in his direction compared with his 2020 margin.

Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries:

Democrats revive 2018 playbook

Sherrill won as many Democratic voters were weighing which candidate would be most electable and as each Democratic candidate pitched a different path forward for the party.

Sherrill’s victory suggests some Democratic voters want to dust off the party’s successful playbook from the 2018 midterm elections, when she flipped a longtime Republican-held House seat. In that campaign and in her primary run this year, Sherrill stressed her background as a Navy helicopter pilot and a former federal prosecutor and pitched “ruthless competence” as a counter to Trump.

“It just seems so obvious to me what the path forward is. It’s effectively govern,” Sherrill recently told NBC News. “And this is what I’ve been doing since 2018 when I first ran, right? … I say to people, ‘What’s keeping you up at night?’”

“I tell people it’s not maybe the sexiest tagline, but ruthless competence is what people in New Jersey want to see in government,” Sherrill added later. “And that’s what I’ve always provided, and that’s what I think stands in stark contrast to the most incompetent federal government we’ve probably ever seen in this nation.”

Still, while Sherrill won with over a third of the vote, the results revealed a fractured party.

Two candidates who pitched themselves as more progressive, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, won a combined 36% of the vote. Two of the more moderate candidates, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, got 20% combined, while teachers union president Sean Spiller won 10%.

Trump boosts Ciattarelli with the MAGA faithful and shows his hold on the GOP

After having come just 3 percentage points shy of defeating Murphy in 2021, Ciattarelli made one thing clear in his bid four years later: He’s all in on Trump.

Like many prominent Republicans, Ciattarelli wasn’t always on board — he criticized Trump as a “charlatan” in 2015. And while he embraced Trump during his previous bid for governor, he didn’t campaign with him.

That led Ciattarelli’s opponents, including his top competitor, former radio host Bill Spadea, to try to frame him as insufficiently loyal to Trump. (Spadea had voiced criticism of Trump before he fell back in line.)

But Trump’s endorsement of Ciattarelli cemented his front-runner status, helping hasten the end of the campaign. And in a nod to Ciattarelli’s past criticism, Trump tried to inoculate him from any attempt to undercut his Trump bona fides.

“Jack, who after getting to know and understand MAGA, has gone ALL IN, and is now 100% (PLUS!),” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post announcing his backing.

Tuesday’s result suggests that Trump’s seal of approval was good enough for most GOP primary voters. By late Tuesday evening, Ciattarelli was carrying all of the state’s 21 counties.

Ciattarelli’s vote share was at 67% by late Tuesday evening, compared with just 22% for Spadea. State Sen. Jon Bramnick, who had been critical of Trump, had won just 6%, followed by two other candidates who had each won less than 3% of the vote.

Ciattarelli thanked Trump in his victory speech for his “endorsement and strong support,” making a joke about his being a “part-time New Jersey resident.” (Trump owns a home and a golf course in Bedminster.)

But Ciattarelli spent most of his speech focused on a general election argument, not on shoring up his base — indicative of the line he’ll have to walk in a state Trump lost three times, even after the improvement he showed last year.

Old-school political machines still have some sway

Both parties are grappling with antiestablishment sentiment, wondering how to handle it, channel it or just avoid getting run over by it. But Tuesday’s results were also a reminder that political institutions still have some staying power.

New Jersey’s traditional political machines were dealt a blow last year following a lawsuit from Democrat Andy Kim during his Senate run, when a court ordered that county parties could no longer give advantageous ballot positions to their preferred candidates.

That diminished the sway those parties had Tuesday, but they still demonstrated some power.

Ciattarelli was the only Republican who competed for county party endorsements. Fulop didn’t compete for Democratic county party endorsements, and Gottheimer sat some out, as well. Some county parties split between the candidates, with Sherrill earning the most endorsements from 10 of the 21 counties.

While Sherrill was carrying 15 of the state’s 21 counties late Tuesday, Gottheimer was winning his home county, Bergen, which endorsed him. Sweeney, the only candidate from South Jersey, fared far better in the six counties that backed him. He was winning 40% of the vote in Gloucester County while garnering 7% of the statewide vote.

The county party endorsements were no guarantee of victory: The Essex County Democrats, for example, endorsed Sherrill. But as of late Tuesday evening, she was trailing Baraka in Essex County, where he is mayor of Newark, the state’s largest city.

Even in that instance, though, the party endorsement may have helped Sherrill cut Baraka’s margins in his home base.

Both parties frame the November fight

Tuesday night’s victory speeches were also important table-setters, indicative of how each party is looking to frame the general election. And New Jersey’s general election this year may foreshadow much of what we see on the campaign trail around the country in the 2026 midterms.

Outside of a quick thanks to Trump, Ciattarelli kept his focus tightly on Sherrill and New Jersey Democrats in his victory speech. He criticized her as “Phil Murphy 2.0,” arguing that she has “enabled every extremist and costly idea Phil Murphy has put forth,” and he even revived a key criticism of Murphy from his 2021 campaign.

He also criticized Sherrill’s focus on Trump as a deflection.

“Mark my words: While we focus on these key New Jersey issues, my Democratic opponent will do everything in her power. Trust me … if you took a shot every time Mikie Sherrill says ‘Trump,’ you’d be drunk off your ass every day between now and Nov. 4,” he said.

“But every time you hear her say ‘Trump,’ I want you to know what it really means: What it really means is Mikie doesn’t have a plan to fix New Jersey,” he continued.

During her victory speech, Sherrill leaned heavily on her biography but also emphasized a dual mandate — a fight against New Jersey Republicans and also against Trump, a recipe that Democrats have successfully leaned on in past midterm elections.

Calling Ciattarelli a “Trump lackey” who shouldn’t lead the state, Sherrill criticized “Trump and MAGA Republicans in D.C. [who] want to raise your taxes and take away your health care and education dollars.”

“This country is too beautiful to be beholden to the cruelty and self-interest that Jack and Trump are trying to hoist on her,” she said.

“The future is built on hard work and hope, and here in New Jersey, we’re known for our grit, our tenacity — maybe a little bit for how loud we are — but it’s going to take a strong voice to cut through the noise from Washington and deliver for the people,” she said. “So I stand here tonight doing just that. And as a mom of four teenagers, you guys know I’m not going to put up with the incompetent, whiny nonsense coming from aggrieved MAGA Republicans.”

The power and limits of money

Tuesday’s results showed how money matters in campaigns — and how it has its limits.

On the Democratic side, Sherrill won despite having been outspent by some of her opponents whose outside groups dropped millions of dollars on the race.

The largest outside spender was Working New Jersey, a super PAC funded by the state’s teachers union, which Spiller leads. The group had spent a whopping $35 million on the race as of May 27, according to the latest campaign finance reports, while Spiller’s campaign had spent $342,000. As of late Tuesday, Spiller had about 10% of the primary vote.

Gottheimer and Fulop were also boosted by outside groups that spent millions of dollars on the airwaves. (Gottheimer drained his congressional account to fund the outside group supporting him.) Sherrill got support on the airwaves from One Giant Leap PAC, which spent less than either Gottheimer’s or Fulop’s groups but spent most of its funds in the final weeks of the race.

Ciattarelli and an aligned outside group, Kitchen Table Conservatives, outspent the other Republicans. And Ciattarelli touted his strong fundraising as proof that he would be a formidable general election candidate.

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