Democrats/progressives – July 2025

5 things Jeffries said in his record-breaking House floor speech

‘Project 2026’
Jeffries ended his speech with a look ahead at the midterm elections next year and a note of optimism for Democrats, who have vowed to use the unpopular cuts in the GOP’s tax and immigration bill as a way to win back the House majority.
First, though, Jeffries urged people to read the Declaration of Independence, part of which “reads like an indictment against an out-of-control king.” He joked that the framers of the Constitution had been fed up with “Project 1775” and so they implemented “Project 1776.”
“I know that there are people concerned with what’s happening in America,” Jeffries said. “But understand what our journey teaches us is that after Project 2025 comes Project 2026. And you will have an opportunity to end this national nightmare.” – 3 July 2025

Jack Schlossberg, Social Media Provocateur, Gives Politics a Try
As he prepares a congressional run, J.F.K.’s grandson admits, “I’m not for everybody.”
(NYT) The prize Mr. Schlossberg seeks is no less than New York’s glittering 12th district — encompassing the United Nations, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park…

10-12 November
Democrats Sure Taught Trump a Lesson
Jamelle Bouie
(NYT) … Less than a week after winning landslide victories in bellwether races in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats ceded their political advantage to a man who is as unpopular as a president can be in the current era.
To extend a little fairness to Senate Democrats — and I do mean the 47-member caucus and not just the eight defectors — you can see some of the logic of their position. They are in the minority, which in the modern Congress means they have little, if any, power, influence or authority. Yes, they have made great use of the shutdown as a political tactic, but as far as policy goes, they’re still as far away from Republican concessions on the central issue of the confrontation — health care, here taking the form of Obamacare subsidies — as they were at the start of this drama. …
The Moral Cost of the Democrats’ Shutdown Strategy
A party that champions government workers and the poor was willing to sacrifice them.
By Michael Powell
(The Atlantic) The longest-ever government shutdown has ended with a negotiated whimper rather than a glorious Resistance victory, and many Democrats are furious at their leaders. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut argued on Bluesky that the Senate’s vote to end the suspension leaves President Donald Trump stronger, not weaker. Representative Ro Khanna of California wrote on X that leaders must pay. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he argued, “is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
There was, in fact, a strong moral case for ending this shutdown. The Democrats’ decision to back down, however painful, will save tens of millions of poor and working-class Americans who had lost food stamps from going hungry. Millions more travelers will be spared chaos at airports. Federal employees will no longer have to pay mortgages and bills without their salary. Had Democrats refused to make this compromise, which passed on the Senate floor last night and now heads to the House, they would have forced some of the nation’s most vulnerable to shoulder the greatest burden.
What if Democrats’ Big Shutdown Loss Turns Out to Be a Win?
Despite considerable hand-wringing in the party about caving to Republicans in the government closure, some Democrats see potential upsides in the outcome.
At first blush, the deal that paved the way to end the government shutdown this week looked exactly like the kind of feeble outcome many Democrats have come to expect from their leaders in Washington.
(NYT) After waging a 40-day fight to protect Americans’ access to health care — one they framed as existential — their side folded after eight defectors struck a deal that would allow President Trump and Republicans to reopen the government this week without doing anything about health coverage or costs, enraging all corners of the party.
But even some of the Democrats most outraged by the outcome are not so certain that their party’s aborted fight was all for naught.
They assert that in hammering away at the extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of next month, they managed to thrust Mr. Trump and Republicans onto the defensive, elevating a political issue that has long been a major weakness for them.
Ezra Klein: Democrats Were Winning the Shutdown. Why Did They Fold?
Democrats were winning this one. Polls showed that most voters blamed Republicans, not Democrats, for the current shutdown — perhaps because President Trump was bulldozing the East Wing of the White House rather than negotiating to reopen the government. Trump’s approval rating has been falling — in CNN’s tracking poll, it dipped into the 30s for the first time since he took office again. And last week, Democrats wrecked Republicans in the elections and Trump blamed his party’s losses in part on the shutdown. Democrats were riding higher than they have been in months.
Then, over the weekend, a group of Senate Democrats broke ranks and negotiated a deal to end the shutdown in return for — if we’re being honest — very little.

White House Backs Shutdown Deal With Eight Democrats
(Bloomberg) The White House on Monday expressed support for a deal between Republicans and eight Senate Democrats who broke ranks with their party to propose an end to the government shutdown. In doing so, they are giving up on the demand that the GOP lift a deadline that will soon leave millions of Americans unable to afford healthcare.
While Republicans took a victory lap, the eight senators, including Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, were pilloried by fellow Democrats and party leaders for what some called a “betrayal.” Even the daughter of Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Congressional candidate Stefany Shaheen, reportedly assailed her mother’s decision. Democrats have accused President Donald Trump of cutting off food assistance to millions of Americans and reducing domestic air travel as leverage in the longest government shutdown in US history. The administration contends the shutdown forced it to reduce spending and guarantee safe air travel amid staffing shortages.
The proposed deal largely returns matters to where they started, guaranteeing federal employees their jobs back with back pay (Trump’s effort to fire workers and withhold pay are already the subject of litigation). Senate Republicans are promising the eight Democrats a vote on lifting the Affordable Care Act deadline, but there’s no guarantee it will pass or that a similar measure in the House would be approved or that Trump would sign it. —Natasha Solo-Lyons and David E. Rovella

6 November
What Nancy Pelosi is leaving behind in Washington
Now, in her absence, voters can expect a veritable “bloodbath” as the party’s up-and-comers jump at the chance to fill her shoes,
By Dustin Gardner
(POLITICO’s California Playbook) Now 85, Pelosi is retiring as her party reckons with a widening generational gap, pitting Democratic veterans against political newcomers. If Pelosi had sought reelection, she likely would have been subject to a “long and nasty campaign” playing into that generational divide, Gardner says.
She first took office back in 1987. There were far fewer women, people of color — and certainly fewer people advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. Pelosi helped change all of that over the course of decades. Part of her legacy is making the Democratic Party a much bigger tent. She also pushed her party to focus on kitchen table issues like the Affordable Care Act, pandemic relief, federal infrastructure and more. Now, she’s preparing to leave office as the party is struggling to figure out whether it wants to pivot left or tack to the center. Pelosi’s message seems to be simple: Focus on cutting costs for working people, not ideology.
Nancy Pelosi, first woman to serve as US House speaker, to retire from Congress
Pelosi ending four-decade political career
Pelosi spearheaded both Trump impeachments
Obamacare her ‘biggest’ accomplishment
(Reuters) – Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as the powerful Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said on Thursday that she will not run for re-election to Congress in 2026, ending a four-decade career of a progressive Democratic icon often vilified by the right.
The 85-year-old congresswoman, first elected in 1987, made her announcement two days after voters in California on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved “Proposition 50,” a state redistricting effort aimed at flipping five House seats to Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.

5 November
Democrats had a big night.
(NPR) 5 takeaways from the 2025 elections
– It’s still the cost of living, stupid. Prices, prices, prices. Affordability was a through line in most of the races Tuesday. President Trump’s lack of focus on it likely hurt his party, as voters overwhelmingly sided with Democrats on the economy.
– Republicans still have a Trump problem — in two different ways. Republican candidates are in a quandary — Trump is unpopular and a drag with independents, but without him on the ballot, they continue to have problems turning out base voters.
– The Trump slump with Latinos appears to be real. Trump made inroads with Latinos in 2024, but that has slid backward. Latinos chose Democrats in the governors’ races by 2-to-1 margins.
– The redistricting arms race is on, and Democrats got a boost Tuesday on that front. Yes on Prop 50 won big, giving Democrats a chance to counterbalance GOP efforts to squeeze out more Republican House seats. It was a big win for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, too.
– The Democratic Party will have to wrestle with its identity over the next year. From Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York to Abigail Spanberger for Virginia governor, there’s going to be a real debate on how best for Democrats to present themselves to win in next year’s midterm elections
Democrats’ 2025 election wins go beyond big races to places like Georgia, Pennsylvania
(NPR) Democrats flipped two seats on Georgia’s statewide Public Service Commission by wide margins, one of many surprise victories for the party Tuesday up and down the ballot in the handful of races across the country.
Polling shows the Democratic Party is historically unpopular, but at polling places this year voters have helped the party overperform in elections against the backdrop of President Trump’s even less popular policies.
Democrats sweep first major elections of second Trump term
Democratic socialist Mamdani triumphs in New York mayoral race
34-year-old is first Muslim mayor of biggest US city
Democrats win governor races in Virginia, New Jersey
California voters approve redistricting plan
(Reuters) – Democrats swept a trio of races on Tuesday in the first major elections since Donald Trump regained the presidency, elevating a new generation of leaders and giving the beleaguered party a shot of momentum ahead of next year’s congressional elections.
The Anti-MAGA Majority Reemerges
Democrats won up and down the ballot yesterday, riding a backlash to Donald Trump’s second term.
By David A. Graham
Perhaps the only unifying thread was former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Spanberger and Sherrill, endorsed Prop 50, and reached out to Mamdani even as other national Democrats kept their distance. The big lesson may be that Democrats’ best bet is to run candidates who effectively represent and speak to the places they’re running, rather than pursuing a single ideology.

2 November
As Barack Obama stumps for other Democrats, the party gets to see what it lost
Obama dutifully heaped praise on Spanberger and urged Virginians to vote for her. It was a performance of wit and wisdom that reminded America what it has lost – and Democrats what they have never been able to recreate. The party needs someone who will take the fight to Trump. But its best candidate for 2028 is the one who cannot run.
(The Guardian) The former US president spent 2024 sounding the alarm about the horror show that awaited if Donald Trump ever got back to the Oval Office. Trump won the election anyway a year ago on Wednesday.
Among the many unintended consequences is the return of Obama to the political stage. Former presidents used to slink away to running foundations or writing memoirs and avoid criticising their successors but that is one more norm that has bitten the dust.
Obama has had 25 public engagements or remarks in the past six months, according to a list released by his office. He has tackled everything from USAID to redistricting to Tylenol. He is filling the vacuum left by Trump’s most immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, who turns 83 this month.
Now Obama is back on the campaign trail, for Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. It gives him a platform to deliver an alternative State of the Union address. And the gloves are off.

21 October
Are These the Two Women Who Can Turn It Around for Democrats?
(NYT) One thing is clear: If either Mikie Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger loses her bid to become governor in November, the Democratic Party is in trouble heading into the 2026 congressional elections. Both Democratic nominees would appear to be ideally suited to capture majorities in the centrist electorates of New Jersey and Virginia.
“Both gubernatorial contests are tests of the brand that Democrats believe is best suited for their comeback,” Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia and editor in chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, wrote by email:
“The brand Democrats are selling this year is moderate-liberal, national security-experienced politicians who are known more for policy preferences than fiery rhetoric. No Mamdani-like nominee in either state. If this centrist brand can’t sell well in two modestly Democratic states when a G.O.P. polarizer like Trump is in the White House, then Democrats will have to move on to some other brand for 2026.”

19 October
Playbook: The mayoral race Trump is watching
(Politico) [Zohran] Mamdani is a democratic socialist, not a communist. He has represented part of Queens in the state Assembly for nearly five years, and he turned 34 on Saturday. (“I know some of you have expressed concerns about my age,” Mamdani said in one of his recent viral videos. “I’m committing that for every single day from here on out, I will grow older.”)
But he’s certainly caught on, becoming a political sensation the likes of which the Big Apple hasn’t seen since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) became an overnight celebrity in 2018.
Months after he foiled former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s comeback attempt with a shock Democratic primary victory, Mamdani now stands on the cusp of winning the general election. The millennial has a double-digit lead in every poll — up 21 points in a Fox News poll conducted last week — and victory seemed even more likely after Mamdani’s commanding performance in the first debate on Thursday, where he consistently steered the conversation back to affordability, his winning issue.

Obama is back: Former president steps up to fill Democratic Party leadership vacuum
(MSN) Former President Barack Obama has sharpened his criticism of the Trump administration, offering some of his most direct remarks since leaving office. Knewz.com has learned that his recent comments — like describing President Donald Trump’s claim linking Tylenol and autism as “violence against the truth” and condemning the administration’s “dangerous” use of cancel culture — signal a new phase of engagement from the former president.
Obama’s renewed outspokenness
Over the past month, former President Obama has weighed in on several controversies that have dominated political headlines. Following the Trump administration’s shutdown standoff, he accused Republicans of preferring to “shut down the government than help millions of Americans afford health care.” After the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, Obama faulted Trump’s rhetoric for “further dividing the country.” Behind the scenes, advisers say the former president spent months debating how and when to respond publicly to Trump’s actions. According to a former aide familiar with those discussions, Obama “recognizes the gravity of a moment when Trump is seen as stretching the limits of the Constitution.” Still, reports have mentioned that his team has tried to strike a balance between restraint and responsibility. …
Obama’s return sparks new hope for Dems
Many Democrats reportedly see Obama’s renewed visibility as vital in a period of disarray. “The party itself is in the wilderness and I think the last person who can speak with credibility on behalf of Democrats is Obama,” said Ami Copeland, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official. “People don’t want to hear from Biden about anything right now … and the last person who really led a successful campaign that moves the big-tent party is him.” Copeland added that Obama’s remarks appear rooted in duty rather than partisanship, saying, “He still feels a responsibility to not just the party, but more importantly, to the country.” A February Gallup survey showed Obama with the highest approval rating among living presidents, and a Marquette University Law School poll last week found him with a net 17% favorability, compared to Trump’s minus-15%.

10 August
Trump’s Unforgivable Sin
Americans already understood Trump to be corrupt, and proved themselves willing to tolerate that. But now they are coming to believe that he is inept. In American politics, that is an unforgivable sin.
By Peter Wehner and Robert P. Beschel Jr.
(The Atlantic) … These examples are but the beginning; Trump, after all, has more than 1,200 days left in office. There is no evidence that he’s going to get more competent or more compassionate, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. The challenge for Democrats will be to keep up with the cascading horror stories and to tell them in compelling and sensitive ways, conveying the devasting effects of the Trump administration’s across-the-board mistakes.

9 August
The Secret to One Swing State Democrat’s Rise? Wonky TikTok Videos.
Jeff Jackson was elected to attorney general in North Carolina the same year that President Trump won the state for the third time. Supporters see lessons for Democrats in Mr. Jackson’s rise.
(NYT) … With his plain-spoken video explainers on the workings of government largely created during his days in Congress, Mr. Jackson has gained more than two million TikTok followers and almost a million more on Instagram, the most of any state attorney general. Now, Democrats may look to his example as a possible antidote for their problems in reaching voters, especially with midterm elections ahead. Are there lessons in Mr. Jackson’s just-the-facts presentations, which often seem to steer clear of partisan bluster?
.. He says the videos serve as a counterpoint to the outrage that he sees dominating political discourse these days, fueling anger and division and turning off voters.
“People have been fed that cotton candy for so long that they were finally ready for some broccoli, and I was there to be broccoli,” Mr. Jackson said. “If you’re talking about winning competitive elections in swing states, you better be seen as a credible messenger, and I don’t know how you can be seen that way if every time people hear from you, you’re trying to make them angry.”

6 August
What’s Going on With the Gerrymandering Chaos in Texas?
Trump is pushing the Republicans to redraw the congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. Democrats are fighting back
By Ryan Bort, Nikki McCann Ramirez
(Rolling Stone) States are not supposed to redistrict for another five years, but Trump is pushing Texas to do it now. The state’s Republican-controlled legislature has responded by proposing a new map that would likely give them five new seats by drawing conservative voters into districts currently held by Democrats, without endangering any Republican districts. …
Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s Texas Gerrymandering, Says It ‘Undermines Our Democracy’
“We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections,” Obama wrote. “This is a power grab that undermines our democracy.”
(The Wrap) Texas Democrats left the state earlier this weeks in order to stop Republicans from gerrymandering the state in order to redraw the district maps. This has led to outcries from both sides of the aisle including from Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who angrily said that the politicians “abandoned their posts and turned their backs on the constituents they swore to represent.”
The Texas Gerrymandering Fight Could Ignite a National Fire
Ronald Brownstein,
Red and blue states increasingly see each other not as neighbors, but as enemies. That’s dangerous.
(Bloomberg Opinion) … Since Texas Governor Greg Abbott last month called a legislative special session to redraw the boundaries of Texas congressional districts, most analysis has focused on whether Democrats could stop his plan — or offset it by gaining enough seats in other states through their own mid-decade gerrymanders. The answer on both counts is probably no, though Democrats appear determined to try….

Illinois Governor Jay Robert “JB” Pritzker

26 July
A Kennedy Toils in Mississippi, Tracing His Grandfather’s Path
Joe Kennedy III, the grandson of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, says there is work to do in red states. He also has a few things to say about his uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(NYT) … he has formed the Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that seeks to develop a network of grass roots resistance in four deep-red states — Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and West Virginia — that have received little attention from left-leaning organizations. Without any meaningful opposition, Mr. Kennedy said, those states have become havens for right-wing initiatives, ranging from the evisceration of the Clean Air Act in West Virginia to legislation in Mississippi that banned abortions after 15 weeks and led to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. …

24 July
The 2028 Presidential Race Has Begun
The next election won’t take place for another 1,202 days, but we’re already getting a taste of what the Democratic primary may look like.
By Elaine Godfrey
(The Atlantic Daily) Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and adviser to two Democratic presidents, is suddenly all over the news. … This morning, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg went on the podcast The Breakfast Club; he also made a surprise cameo on a Barstool Sports podcast last week to present a jokey “Lib of the Year” award to the internet personality Jersey Jerry, who was wearing a MAGA hat. In an elegant Vogue spread, an old-school and somewhat stiff way to communicate one’s political ambitions, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear bragged about having once been on MrBeast’s show. “We’ve got to do the YouTube shows,” he said, telling the reporter that, unlike Harris, he would have gone on The Joe Rogan Experience. Buttigieg and Representative Ro Khanna of California have both appeared on the comedy podcast Flagrant, co-hosted by Andew Schulz. California Governor Gavin Newsom invited the conservative activist Charlie Kirk to be a guest on the first episode of his podcast.
… Notably, some female potential candidates aren’t yet in the mix—where’s Gretchen Whitmer these days? Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at the center-left think tank Third Way, told me that she didn’t know, but that it’s clear the party’s decline in support from men “has really lit a fire under Democratic dudes.”
Even by the standards of the previous cycle’s incredibly early campaigning, all of this might seem rather premature to discuss. But as Emanuel himself is famous for saying, a good crisis should never go to waste. Democratic presidential hopefuls are well aware that the party’s leadership vacuum is an opportunity—and they’re determined to not misuse it.

10 July
New Democratic Group Says Answer to the Party’s Woes Lies With the States
The founders of the initiative, the States Forum, say they hope to extend successful Democratic policies across states and even to the national level.
Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania arrived Tuesday at an intimate dinner for Democrats thinking about state politics to deliver an urgent message.
They had real power, he said. Use it.
“The states are no longer just our laboratories” for testing policies, Mr. Shapiro told the group of Democratic donors, strategists and state legislators…“Now, they are the bulwarks of democracy.”
The states, he added, are “the most important, consequential counterbalance to Donald Trump’s lawlessness and Donald Trump’s overreach.”
The governor’s remarks were delivered at the kickoff for the States Forum, a new initiative designed to help expand and entrench Democratic state legislative successes across the country at a time when the national party, locked out of power in Washington, remains adrift..”
These Younger Democrats Are Sick of Their Party’s Status Quo
Majority Democrats, a new group of elected officials from all levels of government, has outsized ambitions to challenge political orthodoxies and remake the party.
“We’ve got to lay out the case for what we’re for as a party,” said Representative Angie Craig, a Democrat from Minnesota and a leader of the initiative.
(NYT) A number of prominent younger Democrats with records of winning tough races are forming a new group with big ambitions to remake their party’s image, recruit a new wave of candidates and challenge political orthodoxies they say are holding the party back.
Members of the initiative, Majority Democrats, have different theories about how the national party has blundered. Some believe a heavy reliance on abortion-rights messaging or anti-Trump sentiment has come at the expense of a stronger economic focus. Others say party leaders underestimate how much pandemic-era school closures or reflexive defenses of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election bid have eroded voters’ trust in Democrats.
But the roughly 30 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels who have so far signed on to the group broadly agree that the Democratic Party must better address the issues that feel most urgent in voters’ lives — the affordability crisis, for example — and that it must shed its image as the party of the status quo. Many of the group’s members have, at times, challenged the party’s establishment, something the organization embraces.

6 July
Democrats Need to Understand That Opinions on Israel Are Changing Fast
(NYT) … Mr. Mamdani’s victory illustrates the huge gulf between many ordinary Democrats and the Democratic establishment on one subject in particular: Israel.
… The shift has been national. In 2013, according to Gallup, Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 36 percentage points. Those numbers have now flipped, after more than a decade of nearly uninterrupted right-wing rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the rise to power of crude bigots like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and Israel’s mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: This February, Gallup found that Democrats sympathize with Palestinians over Israel by a margin of 38 percentage points. …

3 July
In Trump’s Bill, Democrats See a Path to Win Back Voters
Top party officials consider the president’s sweeping domestic policy bill to be cruel and fiscally ruinous — and they’re betting the American public will, too.
Hakeem Jeffries took his ‘sweet time’ holding the floor to delay Trump’s tax bill
(AP) — There’s no filibuster in the House, but Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries essentially conducted one anyway.
Jeffries held the House floor for more than eight hours Thursday, taking his “sweet time” with a marathon floor speech that delayed passage of Republicans’ massive tax and spending cuts legislation and gave his minority party a lengthy spotlight to excoriate what he called an “immoral” bill.
As Democratic leader, Jeffries can speak for as long as he wants during debate on legislation — hence its nickname on Capitol Hill, the “magic minute,” that lasts as long as leaders are speaking.

2 July
David Frum: Trump’s Betrayal of Ukraine
Bridget Brink, the former ambassador to Ukraine, on that country’s war with Russia, America’s betrayal of Ukraine, and why she resigned.
Interview with the former ambassador to Ukraine who is now running for Congress for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s Seventh District.