We know polling errors are unpredictable, October surprises happen, and even without those, the Senate is far from a sure thing.

But the odds are that Hakeem Jeffries will be the new Speaker of the House in January, and with a functional majority behind him.

If voters reject the Republicans in November, it will be in part because they are crying out for Congress to take some action: this is a group of people with a 16% approval rating (it fell to a jaw-dropping 10% in April), and just had its least productive session since at least 1973.

And while current House leadership should be held accountable for that, less than a third of Americans have approved of Congress for decades. There were around as many Democrats presiding over the House as Republicans over those years.

Whatever happens in November, the Democrats have a big opportunity to get something done for a public that is desperate for that to happen.

The next question is what? And the good news for Democrats is that the Wall Street Journal just laid out a complete agenda for the left on three major economic items: healthcare, taxes, and affordability.

They come from a survey that the Journal conducted last week, and it’s the single most important policy document for Democrats to hold on to through 2028.

Today, we’re exploring that agenda, and the Democrats who want to do it justice.

Programming note: Raging Perspective is back on Wednesday. Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. And as always, we’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.

Healthcare: Voters want better coverage, lower prices, and Medicare for All

Republicans kicked 13 million people off Medicaid in their “Big, Beautiful Bill” last year, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Tightened eligibility and enrollment requirements, messing with states’ taxes and payments, and lower Obamacare subsidies were also major parts of the package.

Undoing those policies is key to most Democratic candidates’ pledges this cycle. Just about all the major candidates are all campaigning on undoing Medicaid cuts, and some want to repeal the bill altogether.

Some candidates are targeting specific parts of our broken healthcare system. Sherrod Brown, for example, is focused on drug prices. In a campaign stop in July, Brown compared drug prices in Ohio to nearby Canada: “You pay more than that same drug, the same dose, the same maker of the drug does overseas in another country.” He wants comprehensive reform of that system.

As the Journal’s poll reveals, that’s something Americans want too: around nine-in-ten voters want to ban surprise medical bills, require health insurers to cover doctor-prescribed medicines and services, and impose caps on drug prices.

Trump’s “TrumpRX” drug discounting website gets positive marks from voters – three quarters say they want a service like that – but Americans want to go further.

Nearly six-in-ten say they want Medicare for All, a sweeping health policy reform that Democrats are increasingly embracing. Maine’s Troy Jackson, Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, and Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan are at the top of the heap this cycle, and it’s bound to be a hot issue in the 2028 primaries.

Taxes: Higher taxes for the wealthy were surprisingly popular

It’s been more of the same on taxes during Trump’s second term: an extension of the 2017 tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy (not just us saying it: Trump’s tax law was “skewed to the rich, expensive, and failed to deliver on its promises, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

Democrats have been clear-eyed on this topic. James Talarico told attendees at a rally in August that it was “time to repeal the Big Ugly Bill’s tax breaks for the top 1%;” he is running on a fairer tax system that would impose higher taxes on large corporations, including when they announce stock buybacks, and on billionaire tax loopholes.

There is surprisingly broad support for going after billionaires in the Journal’s poll: 73% of voters said they wanted higher taxes on people making over $1 million, and 61% wanted a new tax on Americans with a net worth above $1 billion (that idea will be tested in a California ballot measure this November).

And yes, even taxing people’s second homes is broadly popular: 59% said they’d like to see a tax on “luxury properties” when they’re used as a vacation or second home.

Affordability: Voters want help on housing, interest rates and child care

Then there’s housing, which remains the biggest hidden issue in this election.

Republicans made some progress towards increasing housing supply with their 21st Century Road to Housing Act (you’ll recall that this was the bill enacted with bipartisan support in the Senate, only for Trump to call off a signing ceremony because they wouldn’t pass his “SAVE America” Act with it).

That bill aims to increase housing supply by reducing regulatory barriers, modernizing housing programs, and expanding access to housing. All good things, and something the Democrats can point to as Republicans try to paint their opponents as the “party of no.”

Democratic candidates are making the case on day-to-day affordability issues, led by gas and groceries. Josh Turek in Iowa is a great example. He’s telling voters he’s “laser-focused on costs, corruption, kitchen table issues;” Mary Peltola wants to focus on these costs plus Alaska’s already-expensive utility bills.

That certainly makes sense for their campaigns.

Voters, again, are receptive to an even bigger range of reforms: restricting institutional investors from buying up homes, capping child care costs, limiting rent increases, and raising the minimum wage to $20.

And a quick note on what’s not working: $5,000 checks. Yes, the “populist” idea that Trump floated at his national convention this summer is not even vaguely popular with voters. Only 23% agreed with the idea at all.

That’s voters’ agenda for Democrats. This January, they’ve got a chance to enact it.

• The Wall Street Journal puts Trump’s approval rating at 37%, the “lowest of any president heading into midterm elections in Journal polls dating to 1990.”

• CNN has the Democratic advantage on the generic ballot at 8 points, and Marist at 12.

• The New York Times had Abdul El-Sayed with a five-point edge in Michigan (49%-44%) and Chris Pappas ahead in New Hampshire (50%-45%).

• Despite all the headlines you saw about the Times’ poll in Maine (Jackson 46%, Collins 49%), it wasn’t the only survey out of that state last week: UNH found Jackson up four points at 51% to Collins’ 47%.

It fits with what you’ve been hearing: Democrats have a strong lead in the House, and the Senate looks close (in a year that should’ve been a “fat guy layup” for the GOP… whatever that means).

Exciting stuff, and we know that’s where most of the country’s attention will be in November.

But this is also a huge year on the gubernatorial side. Democrats have a chance to govern the majority of states for the first time since 2010. If they do, it’ll likely come from Texas, where Gina Hinojosa is running an outstanding campaign against Greg Abbott.

This week, we looked at what makes this race special. It starts with Hinojosa herself, but she’s getting a helping hand from an unpopular Abbott, and data centers, an issue that refuses to go away for Texas voters.

Programming note: Raging Perspective is back this Wednesday. Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. And as always, we’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.

Meet Gina Hinojosa: Civil rights lawyer and mom who couldn’t care less about the culture wars

We keep hearing the same story that Democrats are out-of-touch coastal elitists. Gina Hinojosa isn’t one of them.

Born in the working-class Rio Grande Valley, she got her start as a local civil rights lawyer, then ran for a school board in Austin.

In 2019, she ran for a state seat to secure better education funding for Texas kids, and won the seat another three times before she jumped into the gubernatorial primary.

That start in the “RGV” has clearly informed her priorities, which she says are about getting her party “back to basics.” She wants to give Texans a “corruption tax refund,” ban companies from swapping their prices when they know you’ll pay more, stop private equity from buying more houses, and crack down on health insurers.

And as she told Politico last week, she’s not taking the GOP’s bait on the culture wars. In one of her latest ads, she says her pronouns are “mom, Texan, and soon to be governor,” in another, she tells a heart-wrenching story about the loss of her first daughter, emphasizing that she “chose” to take her pregnancy to term.

She’s pro-choice and pro-equality, but she says her campaign is about delivering for Texans.

Greg Abbott is unpopular and won’t get any help on the ticket

Over on the other side sits Greg Abbott, who has seen better electoral days. In a new Marist poll, 51% of voters say they view him unfavorably, including nearly six-in-ten non-white voters.

That’s not so surprising. Let’s start with an issue that has defined both candidates’ careers: education. For years, Abbott has pushed voucher programs in Texas, but locals are divided. Higher income families aren’t first-in-line on eligibility, but they are, and as one Texas Democrat put it, that means “billionaires can use it, and there’s just no explanation of why.”

Then there’s the national environment. According to the same Marist poll, Trump’s approval rating is underwater in Texas by 11 points (54% disapprove, 43% approve). That deficit grows to 34 points among non-white voters.

Abbott and Trump are inseparable, with the governor embracing Trump over everything from ICE coordination, to redistricting, to deploying the National Guard (despite, as the Texas Tribune notes, his longstanding views on state sovereignty).

He’ll also share the top of the ticket with Ken Paxton. Mark our words: he will be a drag on Abbott’s vote this November.

And it’s not just because of the corruption, the scandals in his personal life, the debate-dodging, or his trips to London.

It’s also because both Abbott and Paxton have had a long time to make life better in Texas. This will be the fourth election cycle where both men appear on statewide ballots (Abbott first ran for governor in 2014; Paxton first ran for attorney general the same year). At some point, voters just get tired of seeing the same names.

Data centers define the race

There’s one more elephant in the room here. We’ve talked about data centers before. Well, as the saying goes, everything’s bigger in Texas.

With 537 active data centers, Texas has more of them than any other state in the country, and they’ve given Abbott a real fright.

After years of encouraging data center investment, he flipped his position in August, saying the state would stop approving data centers until his agencies could audit their power use. Last week, he stepped up his moratorium, expanding it to environmental approvals through the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

We know where the national polling stands on this issue: earlier this month, a Fox News survey revealed that 71% of voters were opposed to building a data center in their area. Support increases when voters are asked if they’d support a data center in “remote locations,” but as Texas voters will tell you, that has too-often meant their own backyard.

Hinojosa has made her case against data centers the centerpiece of her campaign, mentioning that in 2015, Abbott signed a bill that gave “hyperscale” data centers 20-year tax breaks.

Yes, James Talarico is getting a ton of national attention, and for good reason. But watch this governor’s race in November. A great night for the Democrats could put the Lone Star State in the party’s hands for the first time in over thirty years.

The New York Times and Siena had Democrats up eight points among likely voters. Fox News had the Dems up 11 among voters who say they’re “certain to vote.” There were others who put this race into double-digit territory as well.

We’re always cautious about predicting big Democratic victories. We’ve all been burned one time or another by misinterpreting polls or forgetting that things can change between now and November.

But as Nate Silver pointed out over the weekend, this latest set of polls shows that – at least with six weeks left until election day – we’re “deeply into wave territory.”

You’ve read a lot about the competitive states, some of which are generally Republican-leaning: Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Texas.

Where else might Democrats have a chance?

According to Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, that list includes Kansas and Mississippi. You don’t need to look too far back to see Florida as competitive. Independent Dan Osborn is back at it again in Nebraska. And with newly-appointed Senator Darline Graham on the ballot, some Democrats want to take a look at South Carolina too.

We looked at all five this week to sort out the long-shots from the no-shots.

Programming note: Raging Perspective is on again this Wednesday. Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. We’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.

Kansas: More competitive than it looks with a great candidate

Kansas hasn’t voted for a Democrat for Senate since 1932 and Trump last won here by 16 points. The state is 90% white and more than half its voters don’t have a college degree. In any given election, this state shouldn’t even be on the map.

But the story isn’t as simple as that: while it’s been nearly a century since Kansas voted for a GOP senator, the state elected a Democratic governor twice in the last eight years: the incumbent, Laura Kelly.

Then there’s the matchup. The incumbent is Sen. Roger Marshall. He’s joined at the hip with President Trump, so much so that a large crowd “booed, jeered, and heckled” him during a debate that focused on Iran and tariffs on his home turf earlier this month.

The challenger is Adam Hamilton, a man who is walking proof that not all Democrats are coastal elites. He’s a well-funded megachurch pastor with over 25,000 weekly churchgoers who’s running on the basics: reversing Trump’s tariffs and health cuts and ending the war in Iran.

It’s the most winnable of the Dems’ ‘stretch’ states.

Nebraska: After making it close in ’24, Dan Osborn is back under better conditions

He lost, but Dan Osborn still did something unthinkable in 2024: he got Nebraska’s Senate race down to 6.7 points while Trump improved his own result by more than a point to 20.5.

The independent is back for another turn in 2026, this time with the benefit of the weak political environment for Republicans, and much better name awareness.

That could be a negative for Osborn too: the GOP didn’t have much time to define him as a liberal candidate in 2024; this time it’s the main attack they’ve been using against him.

Osborn is the right kind of candidate for Nebraska, focusing on corruption, social security, and a better standard of living for rural communities.

Nebraska’s similar political profile puts it in the same league as Kansas, so it’s a close second on the list.

Florida: Last time there was a blue wave, the Dem lost by under a point

It’s easy to look at Florida’s recent political trend line and think it’s out of reach for the Democrats.

But remember, it was less than a decade ago that this state elected Republican Senator Rick Scott by a razor-thin 10,033 votes or 0.1 points.

Two years later, at the presidential level, the Democrats kept it close: 3.4 points separated Trump and former President Biden.

A lot of Florida’s rightward shift came thanks to Ron DeSantis, the popular governor who’s not on the ballot this year, and Hispanics, who have soured both on Trump’s signature economic policies and his unprecedented crackdown on immigration.

The Democratic establishment didn’t get the candidate they wanted in the primaries: it’s Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. There are big parts of the state where socialism is unpopular, even with Dem-leaning voters.

Still, it might be closer than people think in November.

Mississippi: Locals believe in Colom, but Democrats must climb a steep hill

Chuck Schumer seems weirdly excited about Mississippi.

He told Semafor in August that incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith was an “extremely weak” candidate, and talked up the Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, describing him as a “tough prosecutor who’s won elections in a tough district.”

It’s true: Colom was the first Black District Attorney elected in a majority white district in Mississippi and won reelection twice.

The problem for Democrats? Demographics. The state is 55% white, most of that vote is rural, and Republicans have a stranglehold on it. Mississippi’s Black population comes in around 35%, leaving them short of the votes they needed.

It would take an extremely good night to flip the Magnolia State.

South Carolina: If it’s in play, it comes down to Darline Graham

On the surface, South Carolina offers a lot of the same storylines: too much white rural vote to be truly competitive, and it hasn’t voted for a statewide Democrat in more than a decade.

Much like Mississippi, this race also features a weak Republican: Darline Graham, who we last heard saying at a Republican primary debate that she’s “not that informed on national security,” prompting a state representative to call her “woefully unprepared” to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Whether you think this state is winnable comes down to how poorly Republicans in the state think about her candidacy.

The Democrat in the race, Dr. Annie Andrews, is a pediatrician and mom with a great set of policies for the Palmetto State: she calls healthcare a right, not a privilege, and wants to keep the state’s underfunded hospitals open.

Like Colom, she’s in a tough battle. Still, it’s not impossible. South Carolina rounds out the states that Democrats might have a shot in if everything goes our way in six weeks.

(I say Americans, but very few tuned in. That was partly thanks to competition from two NFL games, but you have to ask whether voters just didn’t want to hear more of the same from a president disliked by two-thirds of the country.)

You’ve seen the headlines about Trump’s pledges and bribes, JD Vance’s ascension to heir apparent, the obsession with red balloons.

What stood out to me was just how bad the politics of this event were.

I’ve spent the last year writing I Disagree, a book that I hope will inspire better political conversations. It’s about – among many other things! – being honest with the people you care about, finding common ground, and maintaining a little optimism even when times are tough.

We didn’t see any of that in this convention. In fact, we saw the opposite. We saw Trump lie his way through two speeches, play the hits for his base, and above all else, demonize Democrats.

This week, the three rules of better political conversations, and how Republicans broke them all.

– Jessie

Programming note: Raging Perspective is on again this Wednesday. Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. We’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.

1. Be honest with voters

The most important part of any political conversation is pretty simple… tell the truth!

As I write, “audiences respond best to honesty, specificity, and proof you’re being genuine about fixing problems.” You don’t have to get everything right, but when you get it wrong, be willing to say that. Audiences will be more forgiving if you’re seen as an honest broker who can adjust to a new set of facts.

More broadly, you also have to build trust with people. And you do that by walking through your reasoning. If you’re launching a major policy, explain what problem you’re solving and why your solution is best.

Seems simple, but clearly not for Trump. The major policy item that came out of this so-called “Trumpapalooza” was a $5,000 “dividend” to voters, delivered only if Republicans keep the House and Senate.

A bribe, yes, but what made that announcement so dishonest was that we’ve been here three times already just in the last year. First, a DOGE dividend that evaporated into thin air. Then a tariff dividend that did the same. Then a health rebate that was supposed to make up for the cuts to healthcare spending, but that we haven’t heard about since December.

People don’t like being lied to, and that’s all Trump is doing here.

2. Meet people where they are, even in enemy territory

I also believe in showing up in uncomfortable spaces. That’s something the Democrats struggled with a lot over the last four years: Trump went everywhere: not just to people like Joe Rogan, but to politically homeless podcasters like Theo Von, and even did a sit-down with Bloomberg. Kamala Harris did one interview on Fox News; otherwise she stuck to safe territory.

The lesson for Democrats was to get comfortable going into new places. As I write, candidates have to be “both revelatory and personal when they’re in these uncomfortable spaces. And they have to return to keep the conversation going.”

How the tides have turned.

Holding a convention like this is the equivalent of hiding in a bunker. It’s two days where you don’t have to confront the press, like you’d expect all candidates to do in the middle of a campaign, or an opponent, like the many he’s faced before at debates. All you have to do is put on a show and speak to your most devoted followers.

And it’s not just this RNC! Over the last month, Trump hasn’t spoken to anyone outside of his comfort zone. No “mainstream media.” No podcasts. A few appearances on local news and some sports talk are about as far as he got.

3. Stop treating everything as the apocalypse

One of my favorite lessons in the book is about treating politics a little less seriously. Sounds strange coming from me, right? I’d like to think I take politics seriously, and you probably do too. But Democrats have hurt themselves in the recent past by being sanctimonious and glum.

In other words, “Lighten up. It exhausts people when you treat every issue as apocalyptic. And that makes it harder to persuade them.”

Here again, the Republicans haven’t gotten that message. Throughout the convention, Trump and his acolytes kept telling viewers that the Democrats are about to “destroy the country.” That if you don’t vote for the GOP, “you will be going through hell just like you did two years ago.” That Democrats are going to let criminals loose to “rob, rape, and kill like we had.”

The messaging will work on the people Trump needs least: the core MAGA voters who will show up for him no matter what.

I’m very skeptical that it will work on anyone else.

I truly believe that politics doesn’t have to be this way. We can tell voters the truth, venture outside our comfort zones, and make the case without predicting Armageddon.

Democrats have forgotten those lessons in the past, but this time, it’s the GOP ignoring them in Dallas. Seven weeks from now, we’ll see how costly that is.

We’re not here to rain on the parade. But we want you to cast your mind back two years to November 6th, 2024. Trump completed his comeback with his biggest haul of Electoral College votes to date. He swept all seven swing states. And Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Back then, the Dems were a dying breed, who, after nearly a decade, hadn’t figured out how to talk to Trump voters. Even then, though, some Democrats managed to score a victory in the same places that wanted four more years of President Trump.

You’ve heard of a few of them – this is not another column about Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, though we appreciate her service! – but today, we’re introducing you to five more you might not have met before.

Remember these candidates on election night. We’ll be tracking them too. Did they fare worse with progressive voters for their moderate stances? Or will they prove again that being a boring centrist is exactly what some voters are looking for?

Programming note: Raging Perspective is back on Wednesday. Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. And as always, we’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.

Rep. Don Davis

North Carolina’s 1st District

Life in politics is tough for Don Davis. The North Carolina congressman won his first race in the northeast part of the state in 2022, then had his district boundaries chopped up to make them more favorable for Republicans the very next year. He won anyway. Then the GOP did it again, drawing new boundaries in October last year that made it even harder to win.

Despite all of that, he still has a real chance of winning this year. Nate Silver puts his odds of a win at 63%, Fox News’ ratings say it’s a toss-up.

Davis is an Air Force veteran and a maverick: he’s fourth among Democrats for voting against his own party. His most high-profile dissent came in 2024, when he voted with the GOP on a bill condemning Kamala Harris’ management of the border.

Rep. Nellie Pou

New Jersey’s 9th District

A lifelong New Jerseyan, and the first Latina from the state elected to the U.S. House, Nellie Pou has a split personality. She’s in the New Democrat Coalition, known for its pro-capitalist, centrist ideas. She’s also in the Progressive Caucus, chaired by Rep. Greg Casar… which has a different view of the world.

How does she manage both? In her view, it’s simple: “I take every issue individually.” That has meant voting against GOP budgets that raise healthcare costs, while writing bipartisan legislation with New Jersey Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew that mandated better training for DHS staff.

Pou won her general election by five points in 2024, despite Trump’s 1-point win in the same territory, which includes several heavily Hispanic suburban areas. If you’re looking for a candidate who can speak to the kind of voters who have shied away from the Democratic Party, Pou is your woman.

Rep. Susie Lee

Nevada’s 3rd District

Susie Lee was one of the 93 female Democratic candidates who won a congressional race in 2018. She has been undefeated in south Las Vegas ever since. That includes 2024, when Trump pulled out a GOP win in Nevada for the first time in two decades.

Lee isn’t afraid to call out her side when it makes sense. She is ranked the seventh-most bipartisan member of Congress and has stayed true to that course even as Democratic primary voters march to the left. She was one of the few dozen Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act in 2025, and a year later, signed the Promise to America, a pro-capitalist letter organized by Democratic moderates.

She also has expertise in winning close races around the country: after the last midterms, she created a new leadership position for battleground candidates, then won the job herself after a vote two years later.

Rep. Adam Gray

California’s 13th District

Five hundred and sixty-four votes separated Adam Gray from a win in 2022, the first time he ran for this district in the heart of California. That was despite Gray facing a majority-Hispanic electorate, one that had shifted six points away from the Democrats over the last two years.

Gray won over voters two years later in an even tougher environment by focusing on his record as a pro-farm Democrat. He’d spent years fighting his state over a push to divert water away from rural communities and told voters that working across the aisle was the most important tool he had to protect his constituents.

It took a month to decide the race thanks to California’s slow counting, but it was enough for him to win the race by an even thinner 187 votes.

Gray continues bucking his party in important moments. He was one of just six House Democrats who voted with the GOP to end the government shutdown, saying “I am not here to win an argument. I am here to actually help fix problems with people in my community.”

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

Texas’ 34th District

As we’ve talked about before, you can define “moderate” in a million different ways. It doesn’t have to mean that you abide by the old rules of politics, as Vicente Gonzalez proved in 2022.

When Gonzalez ran for election that year, he faced a crowded field of candidates in his primary, but still refused to take money from corporate PACs. In the end, he came away from the race with two-thirds of the primary vote, and scored a 20-point win in November.

Since then, he’s been one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, and currently serves as the co-chair of the center-left Blue Dog Coalition.

He’s also outspoken on social issues. Take ‘defund the police.’ Most Democrats took years to call out that movement for its extreme ideas on crime and safety. Gonzalez did it in 2020, telling the New York Times: “Defund police, open borders, socialism – it’s killing us.”

Nobody here gets any headlines for unseating a longtime incumbent or calling for a political revolution. They just get the job done: advancing Democratic causes, calling out the party when they need to, and winning elections. However well the Democratic Party does this November, we think you can count on them.

Back in 2022, inflation looked like not just the dominant issue, but the only issue going into the midterms. Then, in June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe, tearing up the rights of millions of women. It was the biggest reason those midterms didn’t turn out as poorly for President Biden as people assumed earlier that cycle.

Four years later, and here comes another pivotal election issue at the last minute: data centers. They’re being built at an unprecedented rate, chewing up land and energy, and leaving voters very unhappy.

That part is clear. What we should do about them is a lot muddier. It’s become another fault line in the Michigan Senate race. It was enough to make the NRSC send an emergency memo in Ohio.

Meantime, three governors have announced actual major reforms on data centers… and two of them look like they’re panicking.

The other is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who – true to form – has come out the other side with a nuanced approach: recognize the economic potential without leaving communities in the dark. No wonder he’s on track for a victory in November.

Programming note: Raging Perspective is back! Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live every Wednesday at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. As always, we’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.

It’s early, but voters really don’t like data centers

Let’s start with the cold, hard truth: voters don’t want data centers near their homes. Gallup asked about the topic earlier this year, and found:

• Seven in ten Americans oppose constructing data centers for AI in their local area

• Nearly half of all Americans said they were “greatly” worried about their environmental impact

• Americans were most worried, in order, about their effect on resources, quality-of-life concerns (land, construction, and health impacts), effect on costs, and pollution.

Data center advocates have some messaging work to do here. Yes, data centers consume a lot of water and energy. Berkeley estimates show that they’ll consume 10-15% of U.S. electricity by 2030, and they already use about 17 billion gallons of water per year. But that’s less than other industries, including cattle, power plants and even residential water use.

They’ve also delivered significant economic benefits to communities. Check out Loudoun County, Virginia, which has fast become the “data center hub of the world.” The county has opened two new schools, a park, and a $102 million recreation center over the last few years, all thanks to data center tax revenue. Or Richland Parish in Louisiana, where teachers are getting $51,000 bonuses this year thanks to tax revenue from a new Meta data center.

One issue they can’t address is the land use. These things are BIG. The same county, which has more than 250 warehouses, is losing a lot of space. Those centers use 53 million square feet, or about 920 football fields of land.

The scale of construction is also probably making voters uneasy. There are already 537 data centers in Texas, the most of any state. There are hundreds more on the way, and construction is accelerating: the number of centers there has more than doubled since July last year.

Pennsylvania and New York have a combined 309, and have also doubled their total number over the same period.

Moratorium mania has left two big-state governors panicking

Given those statistics, it’s easy to see why some people on the left say a moratorium is the only path forward.

What’s interesting is how much impact the “moratorium” advocates have had in two states that are otherwise diametrically opposed: New York and Texas.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul became the first governor to impose a one-year moratorium on the largest data centers (“hyperscale”), on the grounds that they are asking for more power than the state can handle. According to one state legislator, Mayor Mamdani’s request for New York City residents to turn up their thermostats in July has also weighed on lawmakers.

(Mamdani hasn’t commented on whether he supports a data center moratorium.)

Then there’s Texas, where – we can’t believe we’re saying this – Republican Governor Greg Abbott has taken a similar approach. In early August, he announced the state would stop approving data centers until his agencies could audit the amount of power that they’re seeking. It’s effectively an open-ended moratorium.

Abbott got himself into this mess by letting data centers spread without much oversight up until this point. That’s something he’s been willing to admit, telling This Week on Sunday that data center builders “dug their own grave” and are getting “backlash they deserve.”

Another big reason for that was Gina Hinojosa, his Democratic rival in this year’s gubernatorial race. She has been calling out Abbott for his previous lack of oversight on this topic all year; in particular for the tax incentives the state has been giving out, which she calls the most generous of any state in America.

It’s a strong argument from a VERY strong candidate, and it looks like it’s working: she has the support of 49% of Texas voters compared to Abbott’s 50% in a recent Fox News Poll.

Shapiro’s solution

So, Hochul’s announced a moratorium. Abbott, after months of letting data centers spread without the oversight they need, has now done the same.

Where does that leave the rest of us? Those of us who get the real economic advantages that these centers bring, but also want to live in communities that house more than just giant power-hungry grey boxes?

Enter Josh Shapiro, our friend in Pennsylvania.

On the surface, he should be just as vulnerable as Abbott or Hochul. Pennsylvania has about a third as many data centers as Texas, but with only 17% of the land area, and as we mentioned above, its number of centers has also more than doubled.

Some locals in the Keystone State are even taking to the streets to make their voices heard, including in Limerick and Plymouth.

Shapiro has come up with a solution. Instead of a blanket ban on data centers, he signed an executive order last week cracking down on “irresponsible” and “predatory” proposals. Under the order, data center developers must get support from local officials first, and they have to adhere to a set of good citizenship guidelines: they must pay for power, conserve water, hire local workers, and be transparent about their impact.

Under Shapiro’s plan, locals get a voice. He’s even set up a website asking Pennsylvania residents to tell him about their local proposals.

At a press conference last week, Shapiro told voters he wouldn’t be bullied by big corporations or bulldozed by lawyers. Years of polling on working-class communities shows that is an important message to send. And with his order, voters get something to back it up.

So no, don’t panic about data centers. There is a way forward that keeps the economic wins without the local losses.

There are real differences between these candidates, especially over Medicare for All and the situation in Gaza, which are already shaping up to be the defining progressive litmus tests in 2028. Those are big, thorny debates, and the Democrats probably won’t resolve them until they have their next presidential candidate. Fine!

There are also differences in how these candidates are polling: a new set of Fox News polls revealed last week that Abdul El-Sayed is the weakest link so far, running within the margin of error in Michigan, while former Senator Sherrod Brown, in right-leaning Ohio, leads his Republican opponent by eight points.

What you’re not hearing about – and what we think matters a whole lot more in these midterms – are all the policy areas where these candidates agree.

We get that these policies don’t drive headlines. Factional infighting gets more clicks! But that coverage gives the impression that Democrats don’t have a unified agenda.

Today, we’re laying one out. It covers five major issues: the war in Iran, cuts to healthcare funding, reproductive rights, the minimum wage, and stock trading. It’s a top-five list of what Dems across the country are offering, and we brought receipts, so you can see their exact positions.

Democrats may have disagreements. But we also have a plan to rein in President Trump and fix this country.

End the war in Iran

“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” “I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war.” “No new wars.”

That’s what Trump told voters again, and again, and again in the 2024 presidential campaign. It all fell apart in February, when he started a war with Iran that has ticked over to its 170th day and $37.5 billionth dollar.

To nobody’s surprise, it’s proven to be a political disaster for the Trump administration. In a recent survey, his approval rating on the war is down to 30%; his approval on gas prices has plummeted to just 21%.

Five of the six Democrats running the closest races this cycle have made their positions clear, and we’d suggest that unlike Trump, you can trust them to do what they say.

• Josh Turek, Iowa: “I will put an end to forever wars and will always put Iowa and Iowans first”

• Troy Jackson, Maine: “Susan Collins handed Trump a blank check for his illegal war in Iran, jacking up costs at home. Mainers won’t forget.”

• Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan: “This war must end. This aggression must stop… and Trump must be held accountable.”

• Sherrod Brown, Ohio: “We need to end this war and stop this chaos.”

• James Talarico, Texas: “Suspend the gas tax. Suspend the diesel tax. End the war in Iran.”

Oppose cuts to healthcare funding

Trump’s cuts to healthcare in his “Big, Beautiful Bill” were supported by all but three Senate Republicans (Susan Collins was one of those three). The scale of the pain that they inflict is mind-boggling: $1.1 trillion in spending cuts that would see 12 million Americans lose their health insurance over the next eight years.

As we’ve pointed out before, voters say that healthcare ranks above the cost of housing, food, gas and electricity as the most important cost on their mind heading into this election. There’s a reason Obama made it his signature issue in 2008, and it will likely be a critical issue in the next presidential race.

There are big differences between the battleground candidates on Medicare for All, a topic that Hakeem Jeffries waded into on Meet the Press yesterday, telling Kristen Welker that he didn’t support the legislation (he previously did).

But there’s universal agreement that Trump’s cuts to healthcare were an abomination. Opposing these cuts is the unity ticket Democrats can run on in ’26:

• Mary Peltola, Alaska: “Dan Sullivan threatened healthcare for one-third of Alaskans and gutted the funding our rural hospitals depend on.”

• Turek: “Because of the Big Beautiful Bill, we’re looking at 110,000 Iowans losing their healthcare.”

• Jackson: “People in this country deserve to have healthcare.”

• El-Sayed: “I will push to immediately repeal Medicaid and ACA subsidy cuts.”

• Brown: “I’ll always fight to protect Medicaid and Medicare because they protect hardworking Ohio families.”

• Talarico: “Protect and improve the ACA and reverse the Trump administration’s dangerous cuts.”

Codify Roe to protect reproductive rights

It’s hard to believe that this time only four years ago, the future of reproductive rights was a top issue in a major election cycle. It’s fallen off the map since then, but remember, that’s a product of voters feeling hopeless, not that the issue doesn’t matter anymore.

Abortion is still a major topic at the statewide level, where voters have turned out in droves to support constitutional amendments guaranteeing reproductive rights.

Ohio, home to one of the most competitive Senate races this year, is the perfect example: despite voting for Trump by an average of nearly ten points over the last decade, voters supported an amendment restoring Roe protections in the state by 14 points.

It’s a winning issue for Democrats, and a big-ticket item where the party’s battleground candidates are totally aligned:

• Peltola: “I would codify Roe v. Wade.”

• Turek: “The very first thing that we’ve got to do, and what I give you my pledge on, is that in the United States Senate, I will work to codify Roe.”

• Jackson: “It’s time we fight to codify Roe into federal law”

• El-Sayed: “I’ll fight to codify the rights once protected by Roe into federal law.”

• Brown: [Campaigning in 2022] “By this time next year, the Senate… will have codified Roe.”

• Talarico: “Restore reproductive freedom with federal legislation to codify Roe”

Raise the minimum wage

Raising the minimum wage is another issue that doesn’t get the attention it deserves – especially since voters have supported it by large majorities for years.

It still sits at just $7.25 per hour (good luck getting a burrito with that money), and nearly half of all states stick with that baseline, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Again, like most big economic issues, Democratic candidates differ in the approaches they’ll take to support low-wage workers. But the overall message is clear and consistent: increasing the wages of American workers.

• Peltola: “Push for real wage increases for Alaska workers” (with tax incentives for companies that pay fair wages)

• Turek: “I think that we need to raise it to a $15 minimum wage [and] attach that to a cost of living adjustment to make sure it is going up with inflation”

• Jackson: Has already voted to increase the minimum wage in Maine

• El-Sayed: Has long advocated for a $15 federal minimum wage

• Brown: An original sponsor of legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15

• Talarico: “It is time to raise the minimum wage and expand overtime pay”

Ban congressional stock trading

Which brings us to the swamp, fuller than ever under Trump. Putting a stop to corruption and cronyism is about as unified as Democrats get on any issue.

They’re not just targeting Republicans. One of the broadest areas of agreement we could find would affect everyone in Congress: banning congressional stock trading.

• Peltola: “Anyone with common sense would ban congressional stock trading”

• Turek: Has called for a ban on members of Congress owning or trading stocks

• Jackson: “Ban members of Congress from trading stock”

• El-Sayed: “I’ll always fight to ban stock trading in Congress and kick dark money out of our politics”

• Brown: “Ban congressional stock trading”

• Talarico: “Ban Members of Congress from trading individual stocks, engaging in insider trading, and profiting from their positions.”

Democrats aren’t going to agree on everything. They shouldn’t have to. Regardless, from Alaska to Texas, its candidates are offering voters a strong agenda: end Trump’s war, protect healthcare and abortion rights, raise workers’ wages, and clean up Washington.

How are things looking on the other side of the fence?

That’s something Jess was thinking about as she records the audiobook for I Disagree. (Out September 15th, get your preorders in now!)

If you’ve been following what the Republicans have been up to this week, you’ve heard about Anthony Fauci, inflation under President Biden, the 2020 election, and even… *checks notes*… President Obama?

If that sounds like a blast from the past to you, you’re getting the message: the GOP wants to re-litigate the controversies of yesteryear because that’s a lot easier than making things better for the American people now.

Poll after poll, issue after issue: this GOP is losing badly.

F-bombs for Fauci as voters grow skeptical of RFK’s agenda

It’s been just shy of four years since Dr. Anthony Fauci stepped down from his positions in the White House and NIAID. No problem for the Republican-led Senate, which spent three hours on Wednesday dragging his name through the mud in a hearing about his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sen. Rand Paul led the charge, saying Fauci had abused his power and lied to the American people for decades. Sen. Bernie Moreno raged at Fauci – literally – asking him “who the fuck do you think you were” over a story about a family who were arrested at a football game for refusing to wear masks.

(Fauci, of course, recommended mask mandates; he had no role in arresting anyone over refusing to comply with them.)

Let’s be clear: Fauci’s decisions during the crisis weren’t perfect. Hindsight is 20/20. But this is a man whose tireless pursuit of a vaccine helped save millions of lives and whose calm, dispassionate explanations and recommendations helped save millions more.

His record stands in stark contrast to that of RFK, Trump’s answer to Fauci, who is too busy hosting cooking shows to see how unpopular his agenda is.

RFK is underwater with voters by nine points, 54%-45%, in a recent Fox News survey. His anti-vaccine crusade is faring much worse: only about a third of voters favor eliminating vaccine requirements for public school children; a cornerstone of RFK’s agenda as health secretary.

At Trump’s rallies, it’s still Joe Biden’s fault that prices are high

President Trump has been back on the campaign trail in Georgia and Michigan, where Democrats must defend two high-profile Senate seats this year.

Georgia, in particular, looks like it’s staying in Democratic hands this year: a new AARP poll has Sen. Jon Ossoff up a whopping nine points against Republican Congressman Mike Collins, 52%-43%.

You’d think that would motivate Trump to address persistent inflation. It’s the single biggest electoral problem he has on his hands, with 88% of voters calling it a very serious or somewhat serious problem.

Trump has addressed inflation at both of those rallies. But take a guess on how he brings it up:

18 months ago, we inherited a catastrophe from Biden and from the radical left Democrats. They created the worst inflation in 48 years…

And how is it faring under Donald Trump?

We’ve brought down prices last week. It was announced that inflation’s gone down faster than at any time in the last six years.

Fact check: it’s not. It’s been hovering around 3-4% in recent months, around the same rate it was under the last two years of Biden’s presidency (it peaked at 9% in mid-2022).

Voters know the reason why inflation hasn’t moved is because of Trump’s tariffs and

his war with Iran, which have driven gas prices to more than $4 per gallon. They also know the president has no plan to end either.

The White House is doubling down on its 2020 interference claims

Trump’s primetime address about voting security, where he claimed China worked to influence the results of the 2020 election, landed like a thud after he delivered it two weeks ago.

Republicans seemed to move on from it almost immediately. The Washington Post reported that within days, Trump and GOP surrogates had “moved on” from the speech, while Senate and House candidates in competitive states were campaigning on anything-but-2020, from the economy to public safety.

Well, the White House didn’t move on. As CBS News reported last week, the Trump administration doubled down on its election interference allegations, asserting that it had information that China obtained “non-publicly available” information about voters, without specifying what information was obtained or from whom.

Voters haven’t been swayed by these efforts in the past. In April, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that less than a third of voters felt that the 2020 election was stolen.

And while support has been higher for election security reforms, like showing ID while voting, as we’ve discussed before, that’s a far cry from what Trump is proposing with the “SAVE” Act.

Even Obama is still on Trump’s mind

We’ve saved the best for last: Trump debuted a new nickname for former-former-President Obama this week.

Frankly, it’s not his best work.

In a post pressuring Senators Cornyn and Tillis to vote for Todd Blanche for Attorney General, Trump said that without their support, he’d “push hard” to bring back his “anti-weaponization” fund, a $1.8 billion fund for his allies that was unpopular even within Republican circles.

Trump still likes the idea because, in his words, someone needs to take care of “those who have been so badly treated by the Crooked Joe Biden (and Obuma!) Administration.”

We’re not sure we even get it. O-bummer?

Whatever the nickname, voters like him a lot more than Trump. A recent CNN poll revealed that while Obama is viewed positively by 57% of Americans, only 34% had a favorable opinion of Trump.

The Obama insult is a small piece of this puzzle, but it says something. Here we are, two years into the second Trump administration, and the president is acting like it’s 2015.

Then again, when your approval rating is somewhere in the mid-30s and you haven’t got a path out of a war you started, maybe you’d be feeling nostalgic too.

You know who’s checking even more often than we are? Republican members of Congress.

They had to sift through a whole lot of bad news last week: down seven points on the generic ballot in one poll, six in another, and multiple surveys showing President Trump down by up to forty points on the economy and Iran. Not great.

You can tell they’ve seen the polls, because they’re making it clearer that they’re not happy with the direction of this administration. On Iran, on elections, and on a growing number of issues, Republicans are almost starting to horseshoe their way toward arguments Democrats have been making for years.

On Iran, we saw multiple GOP senators publicly doubt War Secretary Hegseth and his Iran strategy, plus four House Republicans voted against Trump on war powers.

On elections, we’ve seen pushback from the Republican Senate Leader on the “SAVE” Act, and even a few comments from GOP election officials around the country about how ridiculous Trump’s election conspiracies really are.

We’ve all been unhappy with Trump since the beginning. Looks like Republican leadership is starting to feel the same way.

It was a bad polling week for Republicans

By now, you might’ve seen the disastrous numbers for the GOP in this week’s Fox News Poll. Republicans are down seven points on the generic ballot, with 53% of voters backing a Democratic candidate in their House district versus Republicans’ 46%.

As Fox noted on Wednesday, 53% is “the highest percentage either party has received on the generic House ballot in Fox News polling since 1996.”

There were other results in that poll that don’t just speak to the midterms, but how toxic the GOP brand is altogether:

• When asked which party would do a better job on top issues, Republicans were underwater by double digits on inflation (-10), healthcare (-21) and income inequality (-22).

• Seven-in-ten voters said they felt the Republican Party was “closely tied to elite interests.”

• And 41% of Republicans said they had been betrayed by their own political party, mainly for being “too corrupt” and “selling out.”

This poll wasn’t an outlier, either. The venerable Pew Research Center had Democrats up six points in their generic ballot poll, or 43%-37%.

It’s only July. An unhelpful Senate map and Republicans’ redistricting wins will make flipping either chamber a tough task. But whatever happens in November, the GOP brand looks really weak right now.

The GOP caucus knows the Trump brand is toxic

Nobody pores over polling data more than the people who are directly impacted by it. Judging by the way they’ve been acting this week, Republican leaders have spent a lot of time digging into those new surveys.

Senators are making their doubts on Hegseth public

First, Iran. Pete Hegseth arrived at the Capitol this week as he prepared to ask for another (gulp) $95 billion to fund the military, along with other White House priorities.

Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, started on a different tack. She opened by mentioning a story in the New York Times that revealed more than half of senior officers who had been fired or removed by the Department of War were female or Black, and that no active duty female Naval officers were likely to be promoted to admiral this year.

Collins said she found it “deeply troubling,” but not a word from Hegseth, who according to the Times, blocked those promotions.

You can say that’s nothing new from Collins, but what about Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), one of Trump’s most loyal defenders? He twice asked for “straight answers” when asking Hegseth if Iran would try to start developing a nuclear warhead again, or if the U.S. has the ability to destroy what’s under Pickaxe Mountain.

(He didn’t get straight answers: Hegseth praised Trump’s courage to answer the first question, and said U.S. capabilities were “classified” to the second.)

Not exactly a vote of confidence in Hegseth’s strategy, as we near the five-month mark of a war of our own choosing.

The most revealing exchange was with Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, another Trump loyalist who had this question about Hegseth’s funding request:

Is this enough money to get the job done? Or is this going to just get us far enough until we’ve got to come back in here, and in the meantime, we may very well not have these young men and women out of harm’s way yet? That’s my question.

Republicans see the polling, the lack of direction in this war, and right through Hegseth’s bluster.

Four House Republicans voted to restrict Trump’s war powers

In the House, four Republicans continue to vote with Democrats on restricting Trump’s war. Reps. Tom Barrett (R-MI), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) all supported a motion this week that would stop the conflict without congressional approval.

(Two of those four dissenting Republicans – Barrett and Fitzpatrick – are vulnerable against Democratic opponents this November. Massie lost his seat to a pro-Trump opponent in a primary earlier this year.)

Barrett said he remains “ready to work with anyone to eliminate hostile threats to our nation without getting us into another endless war.” That’s about as sharp a rebuke as you’ll ever find from a House Republican, and he’s using Trump’s own words to do it.

Thune pushed back on the “SAVE America” Act

Senator Majority Leader Thune is starting to get tired of Trump’s pressure campaign on the “SAVE” Act. While talking with reporters at the Capitol last week, Thune said it was time for the White House to stop “pointing the finger” at Republicans and figure out how to get the votes.

Now, to be clear, Thune is no moderate on this extreme piece of legislation. He supports the SAVE Act, and has mischaracterized it as a common sense bill, when in reality, it would require roughly half the country to either buy a passport or present a birth certificate with a matching name on it just to register to vote.

At the same time, it’s telling that Thune isn’t letting himself get bullied by the White House over finding the votes. We’ve read time and time again that Trump surrounds himself with sycophants; Thune is smart enough to realize that strategy is a loser.

Instead, he’s trying to be blunt, knowing full well that it will put him on a collision course with the president. You probably wouldn’t do that if you thought your president was on track to deliver an expanded majority in November.

Some Republican officials are going on the record about Trump’s election conspiracies

Finally, we talked about Trump’s election conspiracies last week. Well, even here, some surprising pushback from Republicans.

CNN obtained on-the-record comments from several GOP election officials this week who were willing to call out the lies.

Take Matt Crane, a Republican who runs the Colorado County Clerks Association: he said a group chat with colleagues was filled with comments like “you got to be kidding me” and laughing emojis.

Another GOP official told the network that Trump’s new documents were old news, while a third said “We all know elections aren’t rigged.”

Trump might not read any polls where his approval rating is anything less than 100%, but the rest of his party does, and they’re looking at a destructive and directionless administration. No wonder they’re starting to squirm.

Every time this man loses, he’ll tell you why it was rigged. Every time he senses he’s about to lose, he’ll tell you it’s going to be rigged.

It wasn’t even a “speech” so much as it was a threat that unless the Senate passes a bill that would suppress the votes of millions of Americans, he won’t accept the results.

But that’s also what makes this speech so revealing. If the President wasn’t underwater by 32 points on the economy, a gobsmacking 40 points on Iran, and even 19 points on immigration, then we doubt he would have delivered it.

He’s living in his own reality inside the White House, because outside it, the world looks different.

Voters see that surging oil prices, wages that are barely keeping up with inflation, two more deadly ICE shootings, tariffs that are both expensive and useless, and even job cuts at the CDC are taking their toll on the country, and Trump won’t fix it.

His voter suppression bill won’t pass – he is further from his goal than ever now that Sen. Lisa Murkowski is out – so sowing distrust in the system is his only option.

1. Oil prices are surging

This weekend, American military forces conducted a new wave of strikes for the ninth consecutive night. It culminated in tragedy: the Pentagon announced three members of the military died in incidents linked to the conflict.

The attacks also sent oil prices skyrocketing again: around 3% from the latest strikes alone.

The biggest challenge, though, is not the drumbeat of daily price hikes. It’s what oil markets are saying about the future.

Take these scary sentences from the Wall Street Journal:

“Oil markets and Middle East producers appear to be aligning around a new reality: The Strait of Hormuz is no longer expected to return to a prewar norm.”

…“The chance of the region and Hormuz going back to the old normal is effectively zero,” said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

It will take several years and billions of dollars to secure alternative pathways for oil supply. No amount of “Freedom Fuel” can solve that problem.

2. Wages are barely keeping up with inflation

The economic pain is broader than that. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed this week that wages are just barely keeping up with inflation.

June’s average hourly wage gain was 3.5% from a year earlier; exactly the same as the 3.5% inflation reported over that year-long period. According to a Washington Post analysis of the data, workers’ paychecks are up a mere 27 cents per hour in today’s dollars since Trump took office in 2025.

In simpler terms: if you got a raise this year and it was less than 3.5%, then you fell behind in Trump’s economy.

Think about what this means for the average American worker: your work brings home the same income that it did at the end of the Biden administration, when Trump won on the economy by 10 points.

3. ICE is killing more immigrants

It’s an extraordinary sentence to write, but the government’s chief immigration enforcement agency is now responsible for four deadly shootings and another seven non-fatal shootings this year.

Two of those fatal shootings happened this week, ending the lives of a Mexican immigrant who lived in Texas for 35 years, and a young Colombian father in Maine.

It was enough to make the administration briefly suspend most vehicle stops so it could retrain its agents. Trump himself had other ideas, saying a day later that he’d overrule the agency.

With questions surrounding the use of force in ICE shootings, border czar Tom Homan said he thinks “body cameras are the way to go,” but DHS has already been granted $20 million for those cameras, and all the way back in February, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the department would “rapidly acquire and deploy them.”

So here we are again: a president who refuses to retrain his border force, and promises on body cameras that – in the very recent past – haven’t been kept.

4. New data shows tariffs aren’t even effective

Tariffs have been expensive for the American worker: according to a Tax Foundation report this year, they raised the retail price of imported goods by about 7 percentage points compared to the pre-tariff trend.

In Trump’s world, they were all worth it to hammer the economies of our biggest rivals, forcing them to soon crawl back to the negotiating table.

We got news this week that shows this simply isn’t happening. Another scary sentence from the Journal’s reporting:

“China’s exports surged more than expected, defying forecasts of a slowdown and providing a vital boost to an economy still weighed down by weak domestic demand.”

Outbound shipments rose 27% from a year earlier in June, nearly 10 points higher than the growth forecast by economists the newspaper surveyed.

It was such a strong increase that Robin J Brooks, the former chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, declared that “China is winning” the tariff war, with exports almost back where they were during the Biden administration and “no indication US tariffs had any discernible effect.”

So for those keeping score: the cost of living is way up, and so is China’s economy.

5. Job cuts at the CDC are coming back to haunt us

That brings us to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, which you’ve hopefully only heard about in the news this week.

Food safety is a perennial problem in a country as large as the US, and of course outbreaks occur, even when the agency tasked with preventing them – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – is firing on all cylinders.

But the agency has lost as many as 4,300 employees since DOGE wielded its axe last year, leaving it between 22% to 33% short of its previous workforce.

There are mixed views on the impact of jobs cuts on the outbreak, but it’s more than zero. The cuts, according to one official who quit last year in protest over Secretary Kennedy’s policies, don’t necessarily impact the current situation, but make it harder to track the problem and its scale.

And as Wired reported this week, the CDC’s purpose-built cyclospora lab got a DOGE downsizing last year, forcing outbreak responses to be “greatly diminished,” according to a former lab director.

We’ve said many times that DOGE’s “savings” were minuscule in the scale of government spending; that’s more clearly the case than ever in the wake of billions of dollars in Iran war spending. So it makes even a small impact on an agency like the CDC hard to digest.

It’s easy to see why Trump is living in a dangerous fantasy land. If he was even half the leader he says he is, he’d stop denying reality and start fixing the country.

Politics moves fast. And it reminds us of an important point: it’s easy for BIG stories to disappear overnight.

Which brings us to Maine.

Over the weekend, the state Democratic Party detailed its process for selecting a new U.S. Senate nominee: 601 delegates including state committee members and delegates appointed by each county party will come together on July 25 to conduct multiple rounds of voting until a candidate gets a majority.

Our congratulations to the Maine Democrats for putting together such a transparent process under these circumstances. Whoever the new candidate is, they’ve got time to win this thing in November. Godspeed!

That’s also the last time we’re mentioning Maine in this column.

Because while we were melting down over this, a lot happened that matters for November. Yes, there was room to talk about Trump: his plane snafu and his on-again-off-again war in Iran dominated headlines too. But we’re talking about the other issues: new reporting on Republican cuts to healthcare. The bipartisan housing bill that Trump won’t sign. And even in the world of elections, some great news for Democrats that came and went without the fanfare it deserved.

We get why folks are anxious about finally defeating Susan Collins. But let’s not miss the forest for the pine trees.

1. Republicans’ cuts to healthcare are already hurting families

You remember the GOP’s healthcare plan: slash $1 trillion in healthcare funding – the “biggest rollback in federal support for health coverage ever” – but hide it in provisions of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that don’t kick in until 2027 so you can stay in power after the midterms.

Brutal but brilliant, right?

Well, it’s not really working out that way.

We saw headline after headline this week about how Republican cuts to healthcare are already being felt by patients and doctors:

• New CMS data showed Obamacare enrollment is plummeting in states like Arizona, Ohio, and Michigan, part of a national drop of 13%, or 3 million people, since last year.

• A KFF analysis revealed that ACA premiums could increase as much as one-third over the next two years. That’s coming after premium tax credits expired last year, leading to a 58% average increase in premiums and deductibles of about $1,000 more per person.

• Reuters reported on rural health clinics that are already shutting down before the cuts kick in, including in battleground Iowa, and pointed to a recent poll showing healthcare was the cost voters most wanted Congress to address.

This is not acceptable. It is outrageous. But don’t take our word for it – that’s what Nancy Pelosi wrote in USA Today this week. She pointed out that these Republican cuts will see 16 million Americans lose their health insurance by 2034, and that while people suffer, Trump is focused on tax breaks and Iran. She sees what the rest of us must: that this is a top, maybe even the top, midterm issue.

2. Trump refused to sign an important housing bill

Housing affordability keeps defining elections: 80% of voters said they were concerned about housing costs in the 2024 election; it was the centerpiece of Mayor Mamdani’s win in New York City last year; it even became a top issue in New Jersey and Virginia.

Trump was literally elected on promises to “make America affordable again” and “get the prices down.”

That brings us to June, when Congress approved the 21st Century Road to Housing Act by a 358-32 vote. The AP called it the “broadest federal effort in decades” to address housing affordability: it aims to lower the cost of housing by reducing regulations, streamlining environmental reviews, speeding up construction and reducing the influence of corporate landlords.

Is it a silver bullet for housing costs? Absolutely not. But it’s a huge step in the right direction, and one the president could’ve taken credit for – had he not thrown a tantrum over it. First he canceled a ceremony for it, then, this week, he said he’d refuse to sign it altogether, in “PROTEST” over his stalled voting bill.

(The bill will become law anyway, because under the Constitution, bills that pass both houses of Congress become law without a presidential signature or veto within 10 days).

It is an extraordinary own-goal: a president refusing to sign a landmark housing affordability bill that more than 200 Republicans in Congress sent his way. Dems have a pretty obvious argument to make: the President is more interested in meddling with elections than he is with getting you into a home.

3. Democrats are breaking fundraising records

Healthcare and housing should be top of mind for Democrats this November. But even if you just want to talk about winning the race… team blue had a good week on that front too!

Two of our most important Senate candidates smashed through fundraising records:

• In Alaska, a must-win flip for a Democratic majority, former Rep. Mary Peltola raised $7 million. Her campaign called it a record second-quarter haul for any Senate candidate in the state.

• In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico has a record of his own: a whopping $30 million, the most any U.S. Senate candidate has raised in the second quarter of an election year, and more than triple Ken Paxton’s sum.

Both these candidates have recent polling news to celebrate too: Peltola is within the margin-of-error in the NYT/Siena poll in Alaska (45% to Sullivan’s 47%) and, from the same pollster, Talarico is dead even with Paxton in Texas (47%-47%).

Good news at the national level too, as the Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Sen. Chuck Schumer, had its best-ever second quarter at $147 million. As the New York Times reported this week, Dems are still playing catch up with the GOP, but the party is far along that road.

These races are winnable. The House and Senate are winnable.

But in order to get that victory, we need to stay focused on what matters. $1 trillion in Republican healthcare cuts. A president who cares more about holding onto power than he does about housing or inflation. And yes, even when it comes to elections, we have to remember we’re playing to win in nearly ten states, including Alaska and Texas, where our candidates are crushing it.

Good luck to our Democratic friends up north. We’ll talk again later.

But spare a thought for the new members down at Mar-a-Lago, whose initiation fee is double what it was before President Trump came back into office. It costs a record $1 million to join Trump’s Florida resort.

Of course, joining Trump’s club comes with unique perks. In addition to access to the 20-acre private estate and “award winning” tennis courts, you might also get dinner with the President.

We already knew Trump has attended several fundraisers at the venue since his inauguration, and reportedly offers one-on-one dinners for $5 million per plate.

Now we know this: Trump earned a whopping $575 million from Mar-a-Lago and his other real estate investments last year. And that was just a fraction of his $2.2 billion in total business income, according to disclosures released this week.

It’s enough to make you feel like America is drowning in a big, murky swamp.

The good news is that voters have noticed and Democrats are acting on it. But as we’ve learned before, it’s not enough to complain about Trump. We have to show voters how we’re going to fix it as well. To win this issue, Democrats should follow our three C’s of corruption: call it out, use Congress, and be credible.

Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest

Where to even begin with Trump’s conflicts of interest? It’s an essay in and of itself, but here’s the top five:

1. Crypto

Trump has repeatedly used the presidency to enrich himself and his family through his crypto ventures. The chief culprit is World Liberty Financial, which the Trumps have heralded as a way to “democratize” finance but whose tokens ($WLFI) have crashed in value since launch. Add in $TRUMP, the infamous “memecoin” that has also collapsed in value, and Trump alone has pocketed $1.4 billion just in the last year.

2. Foreign money

You can attribute part of that $1.4 billion to Trump’s sale of equity in World Liberty. As the Wall Street Journal first reported in January, this week’s disclosure is the first acknowledgment of a secret $500 million deal between Eric Trump and an Abu Dhabi royal who has been knocking at the door for access to American AI chips.

That’s not the only foreign money flowing into Trumpworld. His real estate and licensing income has skyrocketed as the Trump Organization expands throughout nations in the Middle East and India; the same countries have been negotiating with the US over tariffs, military aid, and more.

3. The jet

Trump accepted a $400 million Boeing 747 from the Qatari government last year, shrugging off security and ethics concerns by promising to donate it to his presidential library. He took his first flight on it this week, calling it the “greatest commercial plane ever built.” Need we say more?

4. Pay-to-play

Major donors, corporations, and allies keep getting what they want from the Trump administration: lucrative contracts, favorable regulatory decisions, dropped lawsuits, or an appointment to the Cabinet. The Campaign Legal Center, who have been tracking Trump’s pay-to-play transactions, say it’s clear that this administration is “available for a price.”

5. Pardons

Then there’s the pardons. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance who was jailed over his willful failure to maintain an anti-money laundering program. Imaad Zuberi, the Trump backer convicted on campaign finance charges. Trevor Milton, the electric vehicle founder jailed for defrauding investors. The list goes on.

Voters have noticed and they’re not happy

We have a surprising lack of high-quality polling that directly addresses voters’ feelings on the issue. But Pew surveyed Americans about it last year, and the results should send a shiver down White House spines: 61% of Americans say Trump has definitely or probably improperly used his office to enrich himself or his friends or family. Even 31% of Republicans agree with that statement.

In the same poll, Pew found Americans had broader misgivings about how Trump is running the government: 59% said he hasn’t improved the way the government works, 60% said it wasn’t open or transparent, and 64% said he hadn’t set a high moral standard for the presidency.

The real struggle for Republicans isn’t just from questions about Trump and corruption – it’s the wider perception that the economic system is stacked against them. In a June survey from Fox News, only 12% of voters said they thought they were getting ahead financially; while 54% believed Trump’s economic policies mostly benefited people with more money.

(Another 15% said his policies benefited “no one” at all.)

The stories about Trump’s conflicts of interest and the billions he has gained in personal wealth tie directly into results like that. When we’re talking about the “economy” these midterms, we should be talking about how – amid tariffs and a war – Trump is getting much, much richer.

Democrats are making it a core issue, but they must walk the walk

Step one of capitalizing on this issue is calling it out. Here, Democrats are succeeding.

The poster child for this is possible 2028 contender Sen. Jon Ossoff, who’s been calling out the “Mar-a-Lago mafia,” building on years of experience he’s had as a corruption watchdog (both in politics and journalism).

Other Dem hopefuls are also focusing on corruption in their own states. Rob Sand, the Iowa gubernatorial candidate, has been telling local news anchors that “everything going wrong in Iowa right now can be summed up in two words: costs and corruption.”

It’s a good start. But as we’ve said, the Democrats need to show how they’re going to act. It’s a midterm year, so talk about how Congress can address these issues.

We’re encouraged by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who launched the End Corruption Caucus with two moderate Dems, Reps. Jason Crow (CO-6) and Mike Levin (CA-49). Another three Congressmen are now on board.

They’ve already made clear in a resolution what Democrats must denounce:

• insider trading, foreign licensing deals, gifts from foreign nations, and the sale of various cryptocurrencies

• promising industries favorable policies, tax incentives, and an end to regulatory oversight in exchange for extensive campaign donations

• providing pardons to individuals who have provided millions of dollars in donations to associated political action committees (PACs), special projects, and inauguration funds

Okay, good. We can all agree on that. But it brings us to the third C: be consistent.

Democrats have never engaged in the kind of brazen dealmaking that Trump has, but the party raked in $1.2 billion from dark money groups in 2024, they’re still not on the same page about stock trading bans, and rely on a small group of billionaires to get through election season. It muddies our message and – to be blunt – big money hasn’t even helped us win elections.

In 2020, the last time Democrats had an open field in a presidential election, Roll Call pointed out that between billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, and multimillionaires John Delaney, Michael Bennet, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, the field looked more like the “makings of one blockbuster hedge fund” than representatives of the working class.

These are the inconsistencies that make it hard for voters to enthusiastically vote for team blue. Stock trading, alone, should be a slam dunk for Democrats in Congress, and it’s past time for us to turn the page on the shadowy dark money groups that we used to criticize the right for running.

Everyone knows Democrats stand against Trump’s gross misuse of the White House. We have to show voters how we’ll do better.

You’ve seen the stories: Three Mamdani-backed candidates. Three wins. Two incumbents taken out along the way. It was an embarrassment for the Democratic establishment, which counted those losing incumbents as two of its most important members.

But it wasn’t the only battle happening in New York. Upstate, in the picturesque Hudson Valley, moderate Democrat Cait Conley delivered a convincing win against her opponents – including a progressive – and will now go head-to-head with Rep. Mike Lawler in November. Here, the establishment wing scored a crucial victory.

Ultimately, it’s wins like those that will matter in November. The battle over Democratic socialism vs centrism will rage on, but the war to flip the House ends in November. In that fight, the establishment is winning. Not only did they get Conley, they also won primaries across the state map this week – and even in Utah – that could make the difference between a Democratic and Republican majority next year.

Programming note: Every Wednesday at 12PM ET, Jessica and Aaron Parnas host Raging Perspective, a weekly livestream for all our Substack subscribers. Submit questions you’d like answered live on the show in the comments section below.

Moderates took a huge loss in the city this week

Would you believe us if we told you that two Democrats who support Medicare for All lost their primaries in New York on Tuesday? That’s exactly what happened. Both Rep. Dan Goldman (10th district) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (13th district) voted in favor of the legislation this year. And they weren’t just progressive on healthcare. Both were card-carrying members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Espaillat even served as deputy whip!

But the hunger of young progressive voters in New York City knows no bounds. Primary voters sent them packing in favor of Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who saw that Israel was the fault line. They both called Israel’s military actions in Gaza a genocide, pledged to end financial and weapons support to the country, and rejected money from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group.

A socialist economic and anti-Israel message got them both across the finish line. You’ll notice, though, that one win didn’t look like the other. While Lander delivered a thumping 32-point victory over Goldman, Chevalier only eked out a 3.5-point win. Geography played a key role in that difference, but consider also her far-left positions on immigration, police, and prisons… her anti-American social media posts… the list goes on. Those were clearly off-putting to some Democratic voters in her own district; more importantly, they’re going to be catnip for the GOP, who will make them a centerpiece of their national strategy.

In any case, this was a giant loss for the establishment wing of the party, who are down two members to the Democratic Socialists of America (which endorsed Chevalier and another progressive candidate, Claire Valdez).

But the establishment got their candidate in one of the most important races of the cycle

It’s a different story upstate. In the 17th district, about 20 miles north of the city and stretching up the Hudson River Valley, it’s a battle of the ‘burbs. That’s true even for a primary, and this district was home to one of the most competitive Dem-on-Dem races this cycle.

On Tuesday, Cait Conley, an Army combat veteran and former national security official, beat two competitive candidates, including Effie Phillips-Staley, a local official in Tarrytown who ran firmly to the left of the field. Conley won her race by 18 points and will now try to flip the seat from Republican Mike Lawler, who, thanks to the district’s swingy suburban voters, is one of the most vulnerable incumbents this cycle.

You can win Manhattan and Brooklyn on an ultra-progressive message. Our view is that in the Hudson Valley, you can’t. That’s why Conley, who enjoyed the support of establishment groups like VoteVets and EMILYs List, and endorsements from neighboring Rep. Pat Ryan and former 17th district Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, is an ideal candidate to take out Lawler. The establishment notched a clear win here.

Importantly, it wasn’t the only victory for the establishment – or the wider pragmatic left – in New York last Tuesday.

In competitive New York races, the moderate wing is fielding high-quality candidates

Let’s start with New York’s 3rd district, out on Long Island. It’s currently held by Rep. Tom Suozzi, who wrestled the seat away from (gulp) former Rep. George Santos in a special election two years ago. The congressman, who co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus, is a perfect fit for the kind of wealthy, suburban district this is. Suozzi took home a whopping 79.6% of the vote in his primary on Tuesday; he faces his former rival Mike LiPetri in November.

Moving up to the 4th, also on Long Island, you’ll find a similar mix of voters and a similar Democratic candidate: it’s Rep. Laura Gillen, who flipped this seat from the GOP in 2024 with 51.1% of the vote. Gillen is a pragmatist’s dream: a former attorney, town supervisor, and New Democrat who was endorsed by House Democratic leadership. Her primary was uncontested, while Cook Political Report calls the general election, where she’ll face Republican Jeanine Driscoll, a toss-up.

Finally, head way up to the 19th district, from the Hudson Valley through the Catskills and into the Southern Tier. Moderate Rep. Josh Riley flipped this seat by just two points in 2024; since then, the former attorney has emerged as one of the strongest bipartisan legislators in Congress. Like Gillen, he’s a New Democrat and has the support of the DCCC.

This is just one state, in just one night. Even on the same night last Tuesday, moderates scored a win in Utah with Ben McAdams, the former congressman and county mayor. He defeated several progressives in the state’s newly redrawn (and heavily liberal) 1st district, where he’s favored to beat his Republican opponent a few months from now.

Yes, you read a lot about the socialist takeover of the Democratic Party last week. Yes, that wing got more powerful after scoring three victories in the city. No, that doesn’t mean the establishment is dead. Between Conley in the hotly competitive 17th district, and moderate Dem candidates across the state, pragmatism is still alive and well. That’s a relief for the midterms.

As of this morning, shipping has stalled through the Strait of Hormuz; meanwhile, “constructive but tense” talks between the US and Iran were held in Switzerland. That came after a rollercoaster of a week:

• Eight days ago, President Trump announced “The Deal” with Iran was complete, with a 60-day deadline for a final agreement. Trump instructed ships to let the oil flow immediately.

• By Wednesday, we saw the substance: a memo outlining 14 vague areas of agreement.

• On Friday, that was on life support over what Iran described as ceasefire violations; Trump threatened retaliation.

• On Saturday, Iran said it had closed the strait.

Those 60 days loom large, and as the memo made clear, Trump has capitulated on just about everything compared to President Obama’s Iran deal: the stockpile, enrichment, sanctions, and beyond.

As you’ll see below, that’s the story of so many Trump “deals.” From the $10 billion investment in Wisconsin that wasn’t, to underwhelming trade, nuclear, and arms agreements, Trump’s negotiating skills just aren’t worth much to the American people.

Programming note: Every Wednesday at 12PM ET, Jessica and Aaron Parnas host Raging Perspective, a weekly livestream for all our Substack subscribers. Submit questions you’d like answered live on the show in the comments section below.

Foxconn’s Wisconsin plant

Economists were always skeptical that Trump could revive American manufacturing, but in the summer of 2017, he’d seemed to prove them wrong. Flanked by Gov. Scott Walker and Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump announced the biggest economic “deal” of his first term: Foxconn would spend $10 billion to build a 20 million-square-foot plant in Wisconsin and add 13,000 new manufacturing jobs. In exchange, the iPhone manufacturer would receive $4 billion in state and local economic incentives. Trump called the plant, set to open by 2020, the “eighth wonder of the world.”

Less than three years after the groundbreaking ceremony, Foxconn had mostly abandoned its project. In April 2021, the Taiwanese tech giant reduced its investment down to $672 million, a 93% drop, and the number of new jobs to 1,454; an 89% drop from its original goal. Labor costs ran too high and suppliers the plant needed were nowhere near the Mount Pleasant campus. In 2024, President Biden announced a deal with Microsoft to convert it into an AI data center; that project is ahead of schedule.

“Phase One” trade deal with China

The COVID-19 outbreak made it a footnote in 2020, but Trump’s “Phase One” trade deal with China was another big bust. In January that year, the president announced a new trade deal with President Xi, broken up into phases, but beginning with a $200 billion purchase of additional US exports before the end of 2021. Trump called that number an understatement – “it’s much more” than that figure, he said – and called it a historic agreement.

The two-year deal called for China to buy that $200 billion on top of its existing 2017 baseline levels of purchasing, for about $502.4 billion total. In the end, China bought only 58% of the total commitment it offered, and therefore none of the additional $200 billion, according to a 2022 analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The think tank labeled it a historic failure.

The USMCA

Trump made NAFTA’s shortcomings central to his 2016 campaign. He called it “the worst trade deal ever signed in this country” and put the renegotiation or withdrawal from the deal in his 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. Once in office, he chose the former. Negotiations got off to a contentious start (shocker!) between Trump, President Nieto of Mexico, and Prime Minister Trudeau. But by October 2018, they’d negotiated the USMCA; a new agreement that Trump said was the biggest trade deal in U.S. history.

The USMCA made several incremental changes: automotive parts sourcing, labor laws, dairy market access, and intellectual property all saw rewrites in the agreement. It won broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. But ultimately, the deal was “less an overhaul of NAFTA than a modest adjustment.” One trade expert said it was “really 90 percent NAFTA.”

Trump himself doesn’t even like what it accomplished. At last week’s G7 Summit, he said America would do better without it.

Afghanistan withdrawal agreement

President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal has gone down in the history books as a blunder. But for the Biden administration’s very poor execution of the plan, the plan itself was Trump’s fault.

In 2020, the Trump administration made a “peace deal” with the Taliban that saw the US withdraw from the country by May 2021, provided the Taliban entered into talks to form its own peace agreement with the Afghan government. Both Trump and Biden followed through on that agreement by gradually withdrawing troops (Biden altered the timeline by a few months).

That deal was “incredibly flawed,” per the Brookings Institution, which argued that it was poorly negotiated, gave the Taliban everything it wanted, and asked for “very little in return” beyond a few promises. By excluding Afghanistan from the deal, the deal “emboldened the Taliban and weakened the Afghan government.”

Nuclear deal with North Korea

In the summer of 2018, Trump decided to take on a North Korea nuclear deal. He actually went a step further than that, saying “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

That declaration came after a meeting with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, where the two countries agreed to “commit to establish” new bilateral relations and build a lasting peace. North Korea would “commit to work towards” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, while the US would suspend US-South Korea military exercises that Trump dismissed as war games.

As the Wilson Center acknowledged, the deal was worth a try. The problem was that from the outset, the implementation was flawed. North Korea made no real concessions, the deal had little substance beyond that, and by 2020, Trump had “little more to show for his efforts than a drawer full of flattering letters.” Yikes.

Saudi Arabia arms deal

There’s failed deals, then there’s flat out lies. Our last entry belongs in the latter category. In June 2017, Trump announced a $110 billion arms sales deal with Saudi Arabia. At a signing, he called the deal “tremendous;” he also said it would bring in billions of investment and jobs to the US.

It simply wasn’t true. As Brookings reported just one month later, there was never any $110 billion figure. Instead, the White House had reached its number on a wish list of what the US would like to sell. Further reporting found that even “proposed” or “potential” sales only came out at $23.7 billion.

Whatever agreement Trump reaches with Iran, it’ll be “historic” and “magnificent” in his eyes – it might not be worth much in anyone else’s. Keep an eye on the details over the next seven weeks. Capitulation is better than conflict, but it’s a long way short of what the American people deserve.

First, it’s been thirteen days since the state held its elections, and the vote still hasn’t been fully counted (between 92 and 98% of the votes are in, depending on the race).

Second, California has four or five competitive districts on the map this November, and control of the House could come down to any – or all – of them.

We’re lucky to have safe and secure elections in America, and that includes California.

The problem is that with those midterms just a few months away, we think Trump will take advantage of a slow count to undermine confidence in the results. That would be a disastrous outcome for our democracy.

It’s not too late for our friends out West to solve this, but time is of the essence.

Programming note: Every Wednesday at 12PM ET, Jessica and Aaron Parnas host Raging Perspectives, a weekly livestream for all our Substack subscribers. Submit questions you’d like answered live on the show in the comments section below.

Why California’s count is so slow

California is a remarkably slow-counting state. In the 2024 primaries, it took two weeks to count 99% of total votes, and the state is on track to take about as long this time around.

It boils down to three factors: mail elections, a slow verification and curing process, and state resources.

California is one of eight “all-mail” voting states, which means every one of the state’s 23 million registered voters gets a ballot in the mail (more than any other state). Crucially, the state allows voters to post their ballots as late as Election Day, so long as they’re received within a week after polls close. That’s later than every other state except Washington. No matter how fast California counts the ballots it’s received, this rule means it will always take at least a week to tally them all.

What makes matters worse is the ballot verification process. To some extent, this is a necessary evil of mail voting: when you vote in person, you verify your identity when you vote. When you vote by mail, that process only starts once officials receive your ballot. California’s process can be especially slow because voters get 22 days to “cure” their ballot (i.e. fix any errors). That naturally makes it harder for the major networks to project a winner.

Then there’s a lack of resources. Some counties lack the staff, space, and equipment to process ballots quickly. Jesse Salinas, the registrar of voters in Yolo County, near Sacramento, has been vocal about this in local and national media:

“If I had more space, if I have more staff, and I had more equipment to scan, I could pick up some of the speed… there’s a capacity issue and a resource issue.”

He also described having knocked down a wall in a storage building a few years ago just to make space for the growing number of ballots.

There are also staff and scheduling issues, and labor agreements play a role too: on the first weekend of counting, only a “fraction” of California’s 58 counties updated their vote totals at all, according to the New York Times.

How Trump is taking advantage

When Trump ‘sat down’ with Kristen Welker last week (he couldn’t get through the interview without storming off), he lied again about the 2020 election, and made California’s slow count exhibit A in his claim that it’s “happening” again in 2026:

The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it’s happening again right now in California.

Then, on Fox & Friends last Thursday, he doubled down and offered a prescription:

You know, they announced that they wouldn’t have the results for a week to two weeks… I just want to say to the public, it’s a rigged election. We need the SAVE America Act, period.

The SAVE America Act is the worst possible solution to this problem. It would do nothing to speed up ballot counting in California, but it would make voting a whole lot harder: the act requires voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering and photo ID when voting. For most people, that means registering with either a passport or a birth certificate plus ID.

That will make it more difficult for millions of Americans to vote. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, 52% of registered voters don’t have a current passport in their name, and 11% don’t have access to a birth certificate. Even if you have a birth certificate, you might’ve changed your name, rendering it useless in satisfying the requirements of the bill. It would be an unmitigated disaster. We’re fortunate that the bill doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate, but the longer California takes to count, the more Trump and the Republicans keep pushing it.

What this means for November

This is not a new issue. Governor Gavin Newsom is aware that his state is behind the curve on counting. As he wrote in a letter addressed to election officials in May:

We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes, the more mis- and disinformation spreads. That means we must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately. Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.

In a piece written by its Editorial Board, the Times was even blunter. The newspaper said California’s slowness is a “failure of governance,” and that none of the officials’ myriad excuses were persuasive.

These calls are understandable. If nothing changes between now and November, California could become the epicenter of another false “stop the steal” campaign. The race to control the U.S. House could come down to four or five seats, and California alone has at least as many competitive districts. If the “218th” win comes from California’s 13th, 21st, 22nd, 45th, or 48th district, and a call doesn’t come on election night, get ready for more “rigged” rhetoric from the White House.

It’s not too late to fix it

The ‘simplest’ fix to this problem is to change the ballot receipt deadline to election day, as several other states require. That could only be accomplished by passing an urgency statute, which requires a two-thirds vote in each house, plus Newsom’s signature. It’s possible, but a tall order.

The second solution is giving more funding to local officials to speed up the count. That has already happened in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The former counted 77% of its ballots a week after Election Day in 2022. Thanks to better equipment, it counted 97% of its ballots in the same time frame in 2024.

If all else fails, officials will have to nudge voters to return their ballots earlier. The people most frustrated by slow counting will undoubtedly be the voters in those districts. Making them aware that their ballot return date impacts a call is better than nothing.

California’s elections are safe, but they’re too slow. A glacial count has already given Trump room to lie and it leaves voters room to doubt. California can and should act now to close the gap.

It comes days before a primary election that could put Platner on the top of the ballot in the Pine Tree State this November.

There’s a lot to unpack about what standards Democrats should accept in their candidates, whether flawed people can redeem themselves, and how much lecturing we should take from a GOP that couldn’t care less about the moral failings of their candidates (our view: none at all).

Today, we’re focusing on the cold, hard math. Maine has, after all, been thought of as a must-win state for Democrats this cycle. Do these revelations immediately change the Senate math? And what does that math look like without Maine? Answers, below.

Programming note: Every Wednesday, Jessica and Aaron Parnas host Raging Perspectives, a new weekly livestream for all our Substack subscribers. This week, we’re back in our regular time slot at 12 PM ET. Submit your questions in the comments section below that you’d like answered live on the show.

The easiest road still goes through Maine

Redistricting has made the House map complicated. In the Senate, it’s simple: if Democrats can pick up four seats without losing any they have now (more on that later), they get the majority.

The first and best opportunity is in North Carolina, a state that has been inching bluer thanks to population growth in city and suburban centers. Democrats might have had a real shot at this in the last midterms, and they certainly got close in 2024: Harris lost by 3.2 points, making it as competitive as Nevada and more Democratic than Arizona. In this environment, it’s ripe for picking. Democrats have their ideal candidate in Gov. Roy Cooper, the twice-elected governor who defeated a sitting Republican in 2016.

We got an indication of how strong the national environment is for Democrats in Ohio this week, when a new Fox News Poll showed former Sen. Sherrod Brown up eight points on Republican incumbent Sen. Jon Husted; 53%-45%. That’s an exceptional lead in a state that voted for President Trump by 11 points in 2024 and sent Brown packing in the same election (though only by 3.6 points). Trump’s favorability is underwater by 15 points in the state and could sink further as inflation continues to rise.

We have less information about Alaska, where Democrats hope former Rep. Mary Peltola can do the heavy lifting: while the state voted for Trump by 13 points in the last presidential cycle, Peltola won her House seat with a statewide pool of voters by 3 points in 2022 (and only lost by 2.4 in 2024). Peltola has carved out a local issues lane in that state and, thanks in part to the state’s geography and culture, has avoided the national spotlight. She’s well-positioned to make a close race out of it this year.

Easier than both Ohio and Alaska, though, is Maine. The math speaks for itself: this is a state that supported Harris by 7 points in 2024, and the most recent polling available had Platner clearly leading at 51% to Sen. Susan Collins’ 42%. Yes, Collins has over-performed some polling in the past, and of course, we don’t have any fresh surveys since the latest stories about Platner. The wisest course of action, therefore, is to wait at least two weeks to see to what extent – if any – voters have changed their tune. Barring a crash in his support, Maine is still one of the top pickup opportunities for the left.

If Maine is off the map, it’s Iowa or Texas

If Democrats move their attention elsewhere, their next best chances are in the Midwest or down South.

The fifth pickup opportunity is in Iowa, where Democrats got two gifts last Tuesday. First, a win for the nomination by state Rep. Josh Turek, a Paralympic gold medalist who currently represents the 20th District, including parts of Pottawattamie County. That’s a bigger deal than you think: according to Mother Jones, the county hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1968. On the governor’s side, moderate state Auditor Rob Sand will meet “MAHA” farmer Zach Lahn in the general after Trump’s preferred candidate lost.

Right after that is Texas. We’ve talked about the Lone Star State extensively, and especially the Democrats’ candidate, state Rep. James Talarico, both an impressive man and talented communicator. He has a record of politically correct comments that – as absurd as we’ve argued this is – might be a liability of its own; call it a “reverse Platner” problem. There are two questions in Texas: first, is the political environment so bad for Republicans that it allows Dems to take a state they haven’t won in 38 years? And second, will voters see that Paxton’s disturbing history is worse than Talarico’s “woke” baggage?

Democrats must also play defense

Winning any four of the six states above gets the job done – but only if the party doesn’t lose any seats either. In this cycle, the three to watch are Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

Based on the 2024 cycle, Georgia is the toughest of the three, so Democrats can take comfort in star incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff. He’s been leaning into corruption (not exactly difficult with this White House, even after AG Blanche killed the Trump slush fund) and the billions we’re spending in Iran. He’ll likely compete against controversial Rep. Mike Collins or former football coach Derek Dooley in November.

In Michigan, another state Trump flipped in 2024, Democrats don’t yet enjoy the unity that they have at the top of the ticket elsewhere. It’s a three-way race for the nomination between Rep. Haley Stevens, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, and the progressive favorite, Abdul El-Sayed, who has endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, among others. The Republicans have this race buttoned up with presumptive nominee Rep. Mike Rogers.

Finally, there’s New Hampshire. Democrats should feel confident about this state in a Trump midterm cycle, but there’s an asterisk: yet another Sununu is on the ballot. This time, it’s the former Gov. Chris Sununu’s brother, John. That family still has enormous sway and fundraising power. It’s one to watch.

Maine’s already messy. It could get messier. But if Democrats are serious about taking back a majority this November, it stays on the board until we see any data that says otherwise.

He’s the Attorney General who’s been indicted on securities fraud charges, impeached by a GOP-dominated House for corruption, and whose wife filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds.”

As you’ve no doubt seen, Democratic candidate and State Rep. James Talarico has been dealing with some so-called ‘baggage’ of his own around comments he’s made about transgender rights, a “welcome mat” for immigrants, and his views on privilege and masculinity.

Texas is a conservative state, and even with moderate stances on issues like energy, Talarico has a steep hill to climb. He’ll need a lot of help both from Paxton and Trump, who presides over a poor economy.

For now, we looked into the facts on what each candidate is alleged to have said and did. When you compare the two, it’s pretty clear who’s got the worse record heading into this race.

Programming note: Every Wednesday, Jessica and Aaron Parnas host Raging Perspectives, a new weekly livestream for all our Substack subscribers. This week’s episode is at 2PM ET. Comment below to submit questions that you’d like answered live on the show.

Did Talarico say “God is non-binary?” What about his comments on ‘six genders’ and loving trans kids?

Talarico is a longtime ally of the queer community. One of his first breakthrough moments in national politics came after he spoke out against a bill that would have required the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

He’s made a number of comments about transgender Americans, in particular, that have caused a stir:

• “God is non-binary:” During a Texas House debate over an anti-trans bill in 2021, Talarico said that God has both masculine and feminine elements, so is ‘non-binary.’ Last week, on CBS, he said he was being “intentionally provocative.”

• Six genders: During another debate over the bill, Talarico said “modern science recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes – in fact, there are six.” Talarico backtracked on that statement in the same CBS interview, saying that he knows there are two sexes, but that a small number of people have chromosomal abnormalities.

• Loving trans children: The right is also drawing attention to a 2023 podcast with Talarico where, asked about what he loves besides family and friends, he says “the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state capitol to advocate for their humanity.” Talarico was referencing a group of protesters who were speaking out against a trans health care bill; which he’d mentioned earlier in the episode.

Was Paxton really indicted on securities fraud?

Yes. In 2015, Paxton was indicted on three counts of securities fraud and related charges. They were over an alleged scheme to mislead investors in a technology company. The indictment accused Paxton of recruiting investors to that company without saying that the company was compensating him.

In March 2024, after many years of delays, prosecutors agreed to drop the charges against Paxton – but not without him performing at least 100 hours of community service, 15 hours of legal ethics courses, and $271,000 in restitution. Paxton originally faced up to decades in prison, so as the Texas Tribune reported, it both “baffled and enraged” his critics to see him come out nearly unscathed. (Some legal experts called it “rare” to see a felony of this nature prosecuted.)

Did Talarico say that the border should have a “welcome mat” for immigrants?

Yes, but Talarico’s comments have been taken wildly out of context. He’s been asked about his views on the border many times in many places, including before his Senate campaign, and his full commentary paints a different picture. When talking about immigration with Politico’s Dasha Burns last year, for example, Talarico said:

We should have a giant welcome mat out front, and we should have a lock on the door. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You have a right to know who’s coming into your home and providing that hospitality.

Republicans love to slice and dice Democrats’ words, but this might be the most egregious example of the year.

Was Paxton impeached for corruption?

Yes. By the end of 2023, Paxton faced a whopping 20 articles of impeachment. Per the AP, they ranged from bribery to abuse of public trust; most of them related to Paxton using his office to benefit a wealthy donor named Nate Paul. One article alleged that Paxton asked his office to write an opinion protecting Paul’s properties from being sold in foreclosure and then tried to cover it up.

State legislators in the House voted to impeach Paxton by an overwhelming 121-23, including 61 Democrats and 60 Republicans. He hung on after his trial in the Senate thanks to far-right Republicans, but it was a close call: on most of the charges, including the most serious, he was acquitted 16-14 (with 21 votes needed).

What about Talarico’s comments on “whiteness” and “toxic masculinity”?

One anti-Talarico ad also points to comments he made about “whiteness” and “toxic masculinity,” but here again, the full answer is much less ‘woke’ than the ad implies. During an appearance on an evangelical podcast in 2024, Talarico said this about, in his words, the “privilege” of white men like him:

[There’s] no need to sit and cry over your ‘whiteness’ or your ‘masculinity.’ Use it. Use it to do something. Let’s be productive.

He referred again to his ‘privilege’ minutes later, but used it in a different context: here, he discussed his “religious privilege,” saying he felt a responsibility to speak out against the “perversion of our faith.”

Did Paxton’s wife divorce him for cheating?

Talk of Paxton’s adultery has been flying around in Texas for years. It was even part of the 2023 impeachment trial, with staffers testifying that Paxton’s affair with an employee of Nate Paul’s “took a toll” on employees who had to work odd hours. At the time, Paxton’s lawyer tried to argue it was irrelevant, saying, “If we impeached everyone in Austin who had an affair, we’d be impeaching people for the next 100 years.”

Less than two years later, Angela Paxton, who is a State Senator in Texas, filed for divorce. She said in a statement that she was doing so on “biblical grounds” and “in light of recent discoveries,” adding on X that marriage is a sacred covenant. A divorce petition included adultery as one of the grounds for the split. Paxton himself denied the allegations in his own filing.

Unless an agreement is reached, a public divorce trial between them begins in late June.

One candidate who, by his own admission, has said some “cringey” things about social issues (or in some cases, has been taken completely out of context). The other has a securities fraud indictment, was impeached on corruption, and has been accused of cheating. We’ll leave you to do the math.

But that narrative is an illusion fed to throngs of pro-Trump influencers who are blind to the reality on the ground.

For one thing, while Trump is picking off his enemies, he still needs them to pass legislation, and he may end up with fewer allies next year. More importantly, a large share of GOP voters are unhappy and don’t trust this administration. And while the Republicans in Congress are too afraid to say it in public, new reporting says they’re getting antsy.

The good news for now is that it puts Trump’s worst ideas at risk, including the outrageous $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund announced this week and his billion-dollar White House ballroom. And as we approach November, it could make him less powerful than ever.

Happy Memorial Day. This Wednesday, May 27 at 12pm ET, Jessica and Aaron Parnas debut Raging Perspective, a new weekly livestream for all our Substack subscribers. It’s the politics you know and love from Raging Moderates with nothing held back, and it’s interactive! Submit your questions in the comments section below that you’d like answered live on the show.

Trump controls the primaries…

Trump has an iron grip on GOP primary voters. In more than 100 U.S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial races held so far this year, candidates he endorsed have won 100% of the time. Yes, Trump endorses in many uncompetitive races to pad his percentages, but it’s his highest endorsement success rate in a midterm election. He’s lost a handful of state legislative races, mainly in Indiana, but overall, the Trump endorsement machine is firing on all cylinders.

His hold over primary voters is so strong that he can use them to oust antagonists, as we’ve seen in two high-profile races this month. It began in mid-May after Trump endorsed a rival to Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his February 2021 impeachment trial. Cassidy ended up in third place in his primary, taking just under a quarter of the total votes. Then, last week, it was libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie’s turn. Trump endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein in Kentucky’s 4th district, who beat Massie by 10 points, in a race that saw $32 million in ad spending.

Republican congresspeople stay in line with Trump because they know the fate that awaits them if they speak out. That is truer now than ever before.

…but he’s unleashed the outcasts

The problem with using primaries to defeat your enemies is that they’re still in office until the election cycle is complete. Even with 53 seats and a VP to break ties, Trump doesn’t have a MAGA majority in the Senate.

• Mavericks: First, there’s Sens. Murkowski and Collins, who also voted to convict Trump and like their independent reputations.

• Retirees: Sens. McConnell and Tillis are no sure thing either. McConnell slammed Trump’s 1776 fund this week, calling it an “utterly stupid, morally wrong” slush fund, and Tillis said it was “beyond the pale.”

• Ousted: Right after he lost his primary, Cassidy also slammed the slush fund, and flipped to support limiting Trump’s war powers in the Senate.

• Another libertarian in Kentucky: Massie wasn’t the only anti-war headache from Kentucky. Senate stalwart Rand Paul also voted to limit Trump’s war powers and has been a consistent critic on Iran.

Put that together, and Trump only has up to 47 votes for his worst ideas. And that’s before the midterms, where he’ll need to hold on to seats in Ohio and Texas, among others, to keep steady.

Republican voters are starting to doubt him

The MAGA crowd loves to dismiss people like Tillis and Cassidy – and even McConnell! – as a group of rejects who are out of step with Republican voters.

The polls tell a different story. On the defining issues of the midterms, a significant share of GOP voters is expressing dissatisfaction with the president. In the latest Fox News Poll, 1 in 5 Republicans said they disapproved of Trump’s performance. On foreign policy, it’s 1 in 4 GOP voters. On inflation, it’s just ticked over to a majority. Primary voters might still be with him, but the wider Republican base is not.

We already know that Republicans face a turnout issue during the midterms, so this is a liability. Some of these voters will “come home” to the GOP, but these are big numbers. They’re worse among independents and moderates, who Trump and the Republicans relied on to win in 2024.

Fox also asked about whether the assassination attempt against Trump in April was real or staged, and 10% of Republicans said they thought it was the latter.

Trump seems willing to let his voters leave. It’s not just the revenge tour stuff – though the fund and the ballroom will prove to be unpopular – but the deeply unpopular big ticket items, especially tariffs and Iran. As Democrats come to accept that Biden and Harris were flawed, they should welcome these potential new voters with open arms.

The backrooms are getting antsy

Finally, while Republican congresspeople know better than to complain about Trump in public, they’re starting to speak up privately. Politico reported this week that in GOP backrooms, congresspeople are starting to “squirm” about Trump’s revenge tour. A meeting between senators with Attorney General Blanche this week about the “weaponization” fund went poorly; and it’s likely that they’ll remove the billion dollars Trump wants for his ballroom from a new bill.

This is still the Trump Party. The problem is that a surprising number of Republican voters aren’t happy with it. Knowing they’re about to face that electorate, GOP congresspeople are growing more anxious about their fate. When you look at those factors together, Trump doesn’t seem so powerful anymore.

For years, you wouldn’t use a word like that to describe the average Democrat, who campaigned on economic centrism and had a reverence for institutions and compromise.

That’s how our wing of the party ended up with a set of rules. Defend the private health care system. Preserve the court. Keep the filibuster. Never raise taxes.

The era that advice was built for no longer exists. Today, Republicans use power aggressively, institutions are crumbling, and voters are furious about the price of everything. It’s no wonder Democrats are changing too.

They’re starting to accept that you can’t just make a case for the status quo when voters are crying out for something to believe in. You can stay moderate on a wide range of economic and social issues while recognizing that the biggest challenges of our time require better solutions.

If you’re a Democrat who wants to stay relevant, it’s time for a new version of moderation. It’s time to rage.

From ACA to M4A

We remember when calling for “Medicare for All” was radical. At the time, Obamacare was still in its first decade, and Democrats were proud of what it did. The goal for most moderates was to defend and expand it. Putting health care in the hands of the government seemed like too big a move for the electorate.

That was more than a decade ago. Things change. And on health care, the data are clear.

1. Health care costs are exploding: Spending on health care has grown astronomically under a corporatized system, from $452 billion in 1970 to $4.9 trillion in 2023. As the chart below shows, even major reforms have not changed this trajectory. Out-of-pocket costs have steadily risen too.

2. Americans say the government is responsible for health care: In 2015, Americans were split on what role the government should play in health care. 51% said yes, the federal government should make sure that all Americans have health care coverage, 47% said no. Today, two-thirds say it’s the government’s responsibility.

The idea isn’t that controversial anymore. The latest version of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill has 16 cosponsors in the Senate and 104 in the House, where it was introduced by bipartisan pragmatist Rep. Debbie Dingell alongside Rep. Pramila Jayapal. Among the cosponsors: Dan Goldman, Sara Jacobs and Ritchie Torres.

Medicare for All is the litmus test of Democratic politics, and more members of the party than ever before have decided it’s time to make health care a human right.

Expanding the Court

The Supreme Court still isn’t as partisan as the rest of our politics, but it’s been getting pretty damn close. We’ve already talked about the court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act, which will ultimately eliminate Black representation in huge parts of the South. It’s just the latest in a long line of right-wing rulings impacting everything from regulatory oversight to racial diversity.

Democrats are still reeling from two decisions, in particular, that have already done untold damage: Dobbs v. Jackson, of course, which ended a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, and Trump v. US, where the court decided to give presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

You can believe, as many elected Democrats do, that the Supreme Court is an important institution while also being clear that its decisions are out-of-touch and its members have little oversight. On average, the current justices are 65 years old and have each served for 14 years on average. It’s even worse at the extremes: Clarence Thomas is 77 and has sat on the court since 1991. The president who appointed him passed away nearly a decade ago.

Some moderates are going all the way. James Carville said earlier this year that Democrats should expand the court to 13: “Don’t run on it, don’t talk about it, just do it.” Others are getting a lot louder about strict retirement ages and term limits. Whatever it is, “win elections and restore balance” doesn’t cut it anymore.

A New Approach to the Filibuster

For institutionalist Democrats, the filibuster remains the ultimate check on power; a tool that forces compromise. Again, things have changed. Of course there is still compromise in the Senate, but it’s come at the expense of productivity: last year, both the House and Senate set a modern record for the lowest legislative output in the first year of a presidency.

It has let the minority party block voting rights bills, abortion access, climate legislation, and anything else that can’t be squeezed into a reconciliation bill. It’s getting more and more difficult for Democrats to explain that an archaic legislative procedure is more important than a woman’s right to choose.

It’s especially hard to make the case when, as Brookings’ Molly Reynolds documented years ago, Congress has created more than 160 exceptions to the filibuster’s supermajority requirement since 1969.

Kamala Harris backed a filibuster carve-out to protect abortion rights in 2024, and moderates like the retiring Sen. Tina Smith are saying they feel stymied by the Senate rules, and would like to reform the filibuster at least to the point where you have to stand and talk to prevent the passage of a bill, instead of just saying “I don’t like this, so I’m gonna object and then go out for dinner.”

(Fairly) Taxing the Rich

Finally, while Democrats still believe in the spirit of entrepreneurship that drives this country, the rhetoric is shifting on taxing high earners.

It’s no longer enough just to say you’ll raise corporate taxes and close a few loopholes. For many members of the party, it’s a lot more direct: if you’re earning a lot of money, you should pay what you owe.

Analysis from the Yale Budget Lab shows why the argument has legs: it found that among the top 1% of earners, effective tax rates can vary as widely as 45% to a paltry 3%. The analysis argued that eliminating complex tax provisions that contribute to these gaps would raise another $560 billion in 2026, or exactly 400 times what Politico said were the total savings of DOGE last August.

Many Democrats are going a step further and calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Biden and Harris called for a minimum tax on households worth more than $100 million; billionaire Tom Steyer is igniting real excitement in his campaign for California governor by supporting a billionaire tax and ending a major corporate tax break.

This is the new Democratic moderation: calling out systems that don’t work and focusing on getting them to work for the American people. It starts with making health care a human right, but it’s also about good governance, a Supreme Court you can rely on, and a tax system that doesn’t let the ultra-rich off the hook.

This year might be different. Redistricting battles aside, the environment is really heating up for the Dems. Collins is no rubber stamp on Trump’s agenda, but she voted for most of his cabinet, including Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, and RFK (she was a no on Hegseth). More importantly, she still has an R next to her name, and this GOP is deeply unpopular with voters.

Graham Platner, set to become the Democratic nominee after Governor Janet Mills dropped out last week, is a flawed person. The Nazi tattoo is bad enough; lying about it is both morally wrong and dumb. At the same time, he has things the party desperately needs: working-class values, the right age bracket, and a platform worth watching.

He is the highest-profile test case for a new kind of Democratic politics.

Maine is competitive, and Platner enters the race with real momentum

It’s early, but we know Platner is competitive in Maine. There isn’t much reliable polling in the state so far, but a University of New Hampshire survey in February makes the case: Platner led Collins in a general election matchup 49% to 38%, or an 11-point gap. With Mills on the ballot, the same survey had her just about even with Collins at 41% to 40%. He’d also opened up a nine-point lead with independents, while Mills was six points behind with the same group. It’s the best snapshot we have so far and makes a compelling case for Platner.

This is a bigger deal than you might think. While independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, has won three elections in Maine, the state hasn’t voted for a self-described Democrat for Senate since 1988. While it supports Democratic presidential candidates, it’s not an easy state to win: 57% of voters are white and working-class; that bloc drifted toward President Trump in 2016 and hasn’t looked back.

These folks look and sound like Platner, but more importantly, they can relate to key parts of his background, which includes almost a decade as an oyster farmer and three tours in Iraq. Conservatives point to other parts of Platner’s life and cry hypocrisy, including his private school upbringing and family members who worked in architecture and law. So yes, as others have pointed out, his story cuts both ways. But based on the data, Maine voters aren’t yet dismissing him as just another “elite.”

The tattoo problem

Those polls were conducted several months after stories about Platner’s tattoo had already come out. We still think it’s a problem.

Here’s the background: Platner says he got a tattoo in 2007, in his 20s, after a night of drinking while on leave from the Marine Corps. The image, which he asked for “off the wall” because it looked like a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones,” resembles a specific symbol of Hitler’s SS. In October, he said he wouldn’t have gotten the tattoo if he knew what it meant, and weeks later he covered it up.

It would be one thing if that were the only cover-up. The problem is that Platner seemingly tried to cover up the truth about his awareness as well. In an interview on Pod Save America, Platner said he wasn’t aware what the symbol meant until recently, but according to a CNN investigation, he’d both been aware and defended use of the symbol on Reddit years before the scandal, and that acquaintances had heard him refer to it as a Nazi symbol many years ago.

Platner says he’s “not a secret Nazi,” and that is very believable. His story about the symbol? Not so much. And that could be a liability for a candidate who has branded himself as a no-bullshit guy.

“A 79-year old freshman”

As far as we know, Janet Mills has no incriminating tattoos, and as the winner of two statewide races for governor, seemed like the safe choice for the Senate. But she also would’ve been a 79-year-old freshman in the Senate, as The Atlantic pointed out earlier this year; a chamber that already has an average age just shy of retirement at 65 years old. Mills tried to address this by promising only to serve one term, but those promises don’t always pan out. Susan Collins said she’d only serve two terms; she’s running for a sixth. On this issue, the Mills campaign was a godsend to Collins.

Asking voters to represent them until you’re 85 years old is an absurd idea on its own. It’s especially absurd for a Democrat to attempt it just two years after the party was forced to swap out its 81-year-old presidential candidate. Democrats are already the slightly older party in the Senate (with an average age of 66 vs 65). It’s time for the party to prioritize age when it recruits candidates. Platner will be 42 if inaugurated next January, and he says he will vote for a two-term limit. That is the path forward.

Platner’s platform

The midterm electorate is not the same as the presidential, but Democrats should use these elections to experiment with a new platform. Platner is a fascinating example: he’s running on economic populism in a state we think of as center-right. It starts with affordability, where Platner says he’ll fund federal housing programs, but it goes deeper: support for Medicare for All, a tax on billionaires, and a cost-of-living tax cut for everyone else.

On social issues, Platner runs to the middle, even when it’s controversial. Take immigration. He calls Trump’s mass deportation tactics “unconscionable,” but also says big corporations exploit the system so they can pay “slave wages” to illegal workers. It’s the same with guns, where Platner told a progressive news outlet that he supports background checks but not a ban on assault weapons. His case: if we cared about gun deaths, we’d get people out of poverty and improve healthcare.

There’s also a heavy focus on local politics. Platner emphasizes that he’d be a “friend to Maine’s working waterfront” by expanding storage facilities, fund workforce expansions, and prevent invasive species from threatening fisheries. Here, he’s borrowing from Mary Peltola’s playbook. She talked up local issues extensively on the trail in 2022 (including fishing, specifically) on the way to a statewide win in Alaska. Whatever debate there is about economic populism, listening to voters about local issues is always smart politics.

The future of Democratic politics, or a tattoo too far?

We have our issues with Platner. And it’s not just the tattoo: he’s made a number of abhorrent comments on social media about rape victims, women, the police, and rural Americans (he has apologized for them).

Still, he’s the candidate we’ve got, and he has key strengths: he connects with voters who have lost faith in the left and will bring generational change to the Senate.

Meanwhile, his platform, which blends economic progressivism with social centrism, is intriguing and will offer the Democrats important data about what resonates with voters.

Platner can win this race. It depends on whether his economic message and story are strong enough to overcome his baggage. Either way, it’s the most interesting of the four states that Democrats are looking to flip this November. You’d be wise to watch this race closely.