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The family of 18-year-old Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz was shocked when they found out that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) had discreetly moved him out of California, according to California congresswoman Luz Rivas, who spoke with his relatives and reviewed federal detention records.Guerrero-Cruz, who was first detained in Van Nuys neighborhood while walking his dog, was transferred late Monday from the Adelanto detention facility in San Bernardino county to a remote holding site in Arizona without any notification given to his family.The next day, Ice prepared to send him to Louisiana, a key hub for deportation flights. At the last moment, however, Guerrero-Cruz was removed from the plane and returned to Adelanto, where he remains in custody, according to Rivas’s office.“The nightmare for him, his family, and thousands in similar situations is not over yet,” Rivas said in a statement. “I will not accept the current reality that ICE shuffles and transfers detainees without notifying their family to inflict psychological pain for all of those involved.“Benjamin and his family deserve answers behind Ice’s inconsistent and chaotic decision-making process, including why Benjamin was initially transferred to Arizona, why he was slated to be transferred to Louisiana afterward, and why his family wasn’t notified of his whereabouts by Ice throughout this process,” the statement continued.Rivas introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require Ice to contact a detainee’s immediate family within 24 hours of a transfer. Current rules only mandate notification in the event of a detainee’s death.According to the Department of Homeland Security, Guerrero-Cruz faces deportation to Chile after overstaying his visa, which obliged him to leave the US by 15 March 2023.The teen was initially arrested on 8 August and held in downtown LA for a week. One of his former teachers, Liz Becerra, visited Guerrero-Cruz at an Ice processing center in Adelanto, an hour and a half north of LA.She said that Guerrero-Cruz spoke about being surrounded by masked men while walking his dog, handed over to federal agents, and then brought to the metropolitan detention center in downtown LA. He was not allowed to shower or brush his teeth for a week, Becerra said.Once he was moved to Adelanto, he said he was being kept in a small cell with about two dozen other men with little access to food and water.This pattern of detainees being shifted between multiple sites reflects a broader practice under what the Trump administration is touting as the largest deportation initiative in US history.An analysis of Ice data by the Guardian found that in June this year, average daily arrests were up 268% compared with June 2024. It also found that, despite Trump’s claims that his administration is seeking out the “worst of the worst”, the majority of people being arrested by Ice now have no criminal convictions.As a result, detention facilities have been increasingly overcrowded, and the US system was over capacity by more than 13,500 people as of July. More
The Trump administration is cancelling another $175m in funding for California’s high-speed rail, marking another setback for the state’s much-delayed project.The US transportation department said on Tuesday it was withdrawing funding the $175m for grade separation, over-crossing and design work and to build a high-speed rail station in Madera. The move follows the cancellation earlier this summer of $4bn in federal grants for the state’s ambitious but long-overdue plans.California in July sued to challenge the withdrawal of funding, calling the decision illegal.The funding cuts are another hurdle for the 16-year effort to link Los Angeles and San Francisco by a three-hour train ride, a project that would deliver the fastest passenger rail service in the United States.The rail system, whose first $10bn bond issue was approved by California voters in 2008, has built more than 50 major railway structures, including bridges, overpasses, under-crossings and viaducts, and completed 70 miles (113km) of guideway.The project has also faced numerous delays and spiraling costs, with no section of the railway currently operational and a completion date still years away.The San Francisco-to-Los Angeles route was initially supposed to be finished by 2020 at a cost of $33bn; the projected cost has since risen from $89bn to $128bn, with the start of service along a portion of the line in the Central valley only expected by 2033. On Monday, state lawmakers suggested the project would require a $1bn-per-year investment to continue in light of the federal funding cuts.The move also marks the latest clash between Donald Trump and California’s governor Gavin Newsom – widely viewed as a contender for his party’s 2028 White House nomination. The two leaders have repeatedly clashed since Trump took office over issues ranging from transportation to immigration to transgender rights. Earlier on Tuesday, the transport department threatened to cancel $33m in safety funding for the state after the department said California was not enforcing federal rules requiring truck drivers to be able to speak English.The California High-Speed Rail Authority did not immediately comment, but in July Newsom said termination of the grants amounted to “petty, political retribution, motivated by President Trump’s personal animus toward California and the high-speed rail project, not the facts on the ground”.A previous move by Trump during his first term in 2019 to revoke $929m in federal grants was challenged by the state, leading to a settlement in June 2021 under Joe Biden restoring the full amount. More
After a multi-state lawsuit over Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to freeze more than $6.8bn in education funding to US schools, the Trump administration has agreed to restore the funds for a range of educational services, including after school and summer learning, teacher training, and support for English-learners.The administration did not give a clear explanation as to why it had withheld the congressionally-allocated funds, though a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget had indicated that review found instances of federal education money being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda”.Following a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of California and 22 other states, as well as the governors of two states, the administration released some funding. On Monday, California attorney general Rob Bonta announced that the states secured an agreement to have the funding fully restored.“The Trump administration upended school programs across the country when it recklessly withheld vital education funding just weeks before the school year was set to begin,” Bonta said. “Fortunately, after we filed our lawsuit, the Trump Administration backed down and released the funding it had previously withheld … Our kids deserve so much better than what this anti-education administration has to offer, and we will continue to fight to protect them from this president’s relentless attacks.”In their lawsuit, states accused the administration of holding back money illegally, as the US constitution gives congress the rights to appropriate funding, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 bars the president from unilaterally withholding funds designated by congress.The delayed funds, which were frozen just weeks before the start of the school year this year, had left many communities and school districts uncertain if they would be able to sustain programs. The withheld funds affected after-school and other programs attended by about 1.4 million children nationwide, according to the nonprofit group Afterschool Alliance. Most of the programs benefit low-income families.The funds also covered programs to retain teachers, especially in low-income school districts.Since taking office, Donald Trump has pushed to reshape public education in the US to fit more closely with his rightwing political and social beliefs.He had repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funds from states over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports. It has also separately threatened or cancelled for sex ed over mentions of transgender people from educational materials.The administration has also pushed states to disqualify immigrant students from discounted in-state tuition reserved for state residents. More
In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, Gavin Newsom wagered that peacemaking was best: a tarmac greeting for Air Force One, an Oval Office visit and a podcast slot for Maga’s biggest names. But then Trump came for California, and its governor dropped the niceties.With a flood of all-caps social media posts, a counterpunching redistricting proposal and a string of lawsuits challenging the new administration, Newsom is not just taking on Trump, he’s stealing his tactics: fight, fight, fight.“We’ve got to wake up, disabuse ourselves as Democrats,” Newsom said on a podcast last week. “I’m sick of being weak. I’m sick of being effete. I’m sick of being non-consequential. It’s not good enough to say it – it’s time to do.”Newsom has charged on to the national stage as a recast political brawler willing to wield power as ruthlessly as the other side. On Thursday, he signed redistricting legislation establishing a special election to ask voters to temporarily redraw the state’s congressional boundaries and give Democrats as many as five additional US House seats in next year’s midterm elections.The ballot measure is a direct attempt to “neuter and neutralize” Texas’s partisan gerrymander, engineered at Trump’s behest, to safeguard Republicans’ fragile House majority. At a bill-signing ceremony on Thursday, Newsom cited the president’s claim that he was “entitled” to five additional congressional seats in the Lone Star state: “That should put chills up your spine.”Now the California referendum transforms an off-cycle election year into a high-stakes national showdown that could determine control of Congress – and set the stage for 2028. For Newsom, who’s term-limited and widely viewed as a presidential contender, the success – or failure – of this 11-week sprint could carry major consequences for his political future.The November special election gives voters in deep-blue California a chance to strike back at Trump, who has relentlessly tormented the state since returning to the White House. But by temporarily overriding California’s independent redistricting commission – long a point of pride in the Golden state – Democrats are being asked to “compromise their own values,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento.“That’s been a guiding light for a lot of Democrats – the whole ‘they go low, we go high’ idea,” she said. “One of the risks is that the Democratic party – and Newsom himself – become associated with this all-out brawl, no-holds-barred fighting, rather than having a particular set of political principles that they stand by no matter what.”How Californians will decide remains uncertain. A Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released on Friday shows 48% of registered voters in the state support Newsom’s redistricting plan, compared with 32% who oppose it. Another 20% are undecided, providing an opening for either campaign to make their pitch.“If Proposition 50 passes, and Californians succeed in adding more House seats, and is partially, if not completely, responsible for flipping the House next year, he’s a hero, plain and simple,” said Bill Whalen, a Hoover Institution fellow who was a speechwriter for Pete Wilson, the former Republican governor of California.Even if the initiative falls short in November, Whalen believes Newsom still benefits. “He still gets credit among those same Democrats for fighting the good fight,” he said. “I don’t see how he fails.”The all-out political war between the president and California’s governor erupted earlier this summer, when Trump seized control of California’s national guard and deployed US marines to Los Angeles, over Newsom’s objections, to suppress protests against the federal immigration crackdown. The raids are ongoing, and Trump has targeted the state in other ways: an attempt to strip federal funding from UCLA, and tariffs that threaten California’s economy – the fourth largest in the world.Newsom has argued that Trump was not just a threat to his state – but to the entire 249-year-old American project. While his approach might offend virtue-minded Democrats, he says the moment demands it.“Yes, I’ve changed,” he said recently in a local news interview. “The facts have changed. We need to change.”In recent weeks, as Newsom has stepped up his attacks on Trump as a “weak” and a “failed” leader, his social media team has trolled the president online – unleashing a jumble of unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness rants, AI-generated political fan art and schoolyard taunts, some of it signed with the governor’s initials, GCN, meant to parody the president’s own chaotic posting style.View image in fullscreenNewsom says he’s simply holding up a mirror. “If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out,” he told reporters last week, “you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president.”The posts have gone viral – racking up millions of views, thousands of comments and driving a flood of engagement. They’ve also caught the attention of the right. Fox News hosts, Kid Rock, JD Vance and even Trump himself have all taken the bait, provoking what the governor’s staff gleefully dubbed “Maga meltdowns”.“JESSE WATTERS KEPT CALLING ME ‘DADDY’ (VERY WEIRD, NOT INTERESTED, BUT THANK YOU!)” his office clapped back, in an 188-word tweet about Fox News’s breathless coverage of Newsom’s furious posting streak.“Gavin Newsom can mimic Donald Trump all that he wants to,” Vance told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, “they’re still going to lose unless they get better policies that actually serve the American people.”Trump, for his part, weighed in on his own social media platform, Truth Social, vowing to save “the Once Great State of California” from “Newscum”.“Triggered?” Newsom replied with a wink.The Berkley poll suggested that California voters back his gloves-off strategy with the president by a nearly two-to-one margin, with just 29% saying they’d prefer a more cooperative approach. The tougher posture lands especially well with younger voters: 71% of Californians under 30 say they approve.In a blitz of media appearances last week, Newsom escalated his rhetoric.“We’re fighting fire with fire,” he said on The Siren podcast. “And we’re going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”The response was telling: no Democratic moralizing, no rebuke from party leaders, no pressure on Newsom to apologize. Instead, his team promoted the interview to his legions of new followers and supporters replied with MAGAesque AI images of the governor as a superhero.“People are just not used to seeing this kind of rough around the edges, non-poll-tested messaging coming from Democrats,” said Olivia Julianna, a 22-year-old Democratic activist from Texas and social media influencer who interviewed Newsom for the episode. “It’s real, it’s raw, it’s authentic, and it shows that he’s a fighter.”As Democrats brace for the loss of up to five US House seats in her state, under the redistricting plan approved by the Texas legislature on Saturday, Julianna said voters alarmed by Trump’s increasingly brazen power grabs are desperate for leaders who offer more than just fighting words.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We want to feel like someone is standing on the frontlines ready to go to battle for us,” she said. “And that’s what it feels like Gavin Newsom is doing.”Newsom’s new fight-fire-with-fire strategy isn’t always trained on Trump.When the Bed Bath & Beyond chair announced on Wednesday that he wouldn’t reopen stores in the state, calling it “overregulated, expensive and risky”, Newsom’s press office fired back. “After their bankruptcy and closure of every store, like most Americans, we thought Bed, Bath & Beyond no longer existed,” it said. “We wish them well in their efforts to become relevant again.”He’s also taken on his own party. Earlier this year, Newsom declared the Democratic brand “toxic” in an interview with provocateur Bill Maher – a diagnosis backed by polling and voter registration trends, but striking language for the leader of the largest blue state who could seek that same party’s nomination.He enraged progressives – already wary of his record on housing and homelessness – when he questioned the fairness of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. The comments, during a conversation with rightwing agitator Charlie Kirk on the inaugural episode of the governor’s podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, marked a split from other top Democrats on the issue and rattled some of his LGBTQ+ allies.In response to a Guardian story about the loss of care for trans youth in California, a Newsom spokesperson said critics should point the finger at Trump, not at a governor whose “record supporting the trans community is unmatched”.“Everyone wants to blame Gavin Newsom for everything. But instead of indulging in Newsom derangement syndrome, maybe folks should look to Washington,” the spokesperson said – invoking a pejorative phrase, “derangement syndrome”, used by Trump supporters to mock the president’s detractors.While his sharper tone has angered some on the left, the redistricting gambit has managed to unite progressives and establishment Democrats – sending Newsom’s once-stalled approval rating soaring.His redistricting plan has drawn praise from across the party, including Barack Obama, who called it “a responsible approach”, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the entire congressional delegation of California Democrats. With the ballot initiative in motion, he challenged other blue state leaders to follow suit, laying down the gauntlet for fellow Democratic governors with presidential ambitions as Trump expands his push to secure Republican advantages in states such as Indiana, Ohio and Missouri.That aggressive posture – in effect becoming an “anti-Trump troll” – has been cathartic for many Democrats, Nalder said.“Democrats nationwide have been feeling like the Trump administration has been punching their values and their party and democracy itself in the face repeatedly day after day and they’re just ready for somebody to punch the bully back,” she said. “And Newsom right now looks like he could be that guy.”View image in fullscreenNewsom’s campaign faces mounting opposition from Republicans, including those not in Trump’s Maga camp. The popular former Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a longtime Trump critic and advocate of independent redistricting, has promised to TERMINATE GERRYMANDERING”.Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has also vowed to pump money into what some observers predict could quickly become one of the most expensive contests in Golden state history.“The voters of California have a say,” he said in an interview on CNN. “If you truly believe in your power of your own vote, you should vote against this.”Newsom has raised more than $6.2m from 200,000 donations in the week since he officially launched the ballot campaign at a rally in Los Angeles last week, according to his team.There, Newsom stood side by side with labor leaders, members of the teacher’s union and the head of California’s Planned Parenthood. His redistrticting plan even earned the endorsement of Sara Sadhwani, a Democrat who served on California’s 2020 independent redistricting commission. Making the case for tossing out her work, she declared: “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures”.As Newsome spoke at the Japanese American National Museum’s National Center for the Preservation of Democracy earlier this month, federal agents, armed and masked, fanned out across the complex. Newsom said their presence could not have been coincidental, though a Trump administration official called the accusation “misinformed”.The next day, the governor’s office filed a freedom of information request seeking details on the administration’s involvement in the decision to send border patrol agents to that location.It was just more fuel for Newsom’s argument: his campaign is not just about congressional districts, but a referendum on Trump – and American democracy.“Donald Trump, you have poked the bear,” Newsom says in a new ad for the redistricting campaign, as the camera flashes to the grizzly on the state’s flag. “And we will punch back.” More
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding to 34 “sanctuary cities” and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration law enforcement, significantly expanding a previous order.The order, issued on Friday by the San Francisco-based US district judge William Orrick, adds Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Boston, Baltimore, Denver and Albuquerque, to cities that the administration is barred from denying funding.Orrick, an Obama appointee, previously ruled it was unconstitutional for the Trump administration to freeze funding to local governments with “sanctuary” policies, limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).The April ruling came after cities including San Francisco, Sacramento, Minneapolis and Seattle sued the administration over what they claimed were illegal executive orders signed by Donald Trump in January and February that threatened to cut off funding if Democrat-controlled cities do not cooperate.Cities and counties suing the administration contend that the executive orders amount to an abuse of power that violate the constitution. The administration argues that the federal government should not be forced to subsidize policies that thwart its control of immigration.The administration has since ordered the national guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC, both cities with sanctuary designations, under a law-and-order mandate. On Friday, Trump said Chicago is likely the next target for efforts to crack down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration.“I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding: “And then we’ll help with New York.”The number of people in immigration detention has soared by more than 50% since Trump’s inauguration, according to an Axios review published Saturday, reaching a record 60,000 immigrants in long-term detention or around 21,000 more than at the end of the Biden administration.Separately, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, last week issued fresh threats to 30 Democrat-led cities and states, including to the governors of California, Illinois and Minnesota, and the mayors of New York, Denver and Boston, to drop sanctuary policies.Bondi said in the letter that their jurisdictions had been identified as those that engage “in sanctuary policies and practices that thwart federal immigration enforcement to the detriment of the interests of the United States”.“This ends now,” Bondi wrote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrat leaders uniformly rejected the Trump administration’s assertion. Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said in response that Bondi’s order was “some kind of misguided political agenda” that “is fundamentally inconsistent with our founding principles as a nation”.The accelerating confrontation between the administration and Democratic-led jurisdictions comes as the Pentagon began ordering 2,000 national guard troops in Washington to carry firearms.US officials told NBC News that the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had authorized national guard members who are supporting local law enforcement will probably carry weapons but troops assigned to city beautification roles would not.The official said troops supporting the mission “to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training”, according to the outlet. More
Earlier this year, Liam Elkind seized an opportunity to ask his longtime congressman, Jerry Nadler, what everyday New Yorkers like himself could do to help Democrats stand up to Donald Trump. Nadler’s response, according to Elkind, was to “donate to the DCCC” – the group that helps House Democrats keep their seats. Deeply unsatisfied, the 26-year-old decided to run for office against the 17-term incumbent.In Georgia, Everton Blair also sought answers from his long-serving congressman, David Scott, at a panel event earlier this year. When Blair asked him about Democrats’ legislative strategy, the 80-year-old lawmaker was dismissive. “I don’t know who sent y’all,” he said. Blair, 34, is now making a bid for Scott’s seat.Jake Rakov began to worry when he noticed his former boss, 70-year-old California congressman Brad Sherman, repeating the same anti-Trump talking points he’d deployed eight years prior. To Rakov, 37, it was a sign that the Democratic party’s ageing establishment “wasn’t going to learn”. He is now one of two millennial-aged Jakes challenging Sherman.View image in fullscreenA year after Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office emerged as a major liability in the 2024 presidential election, followed by Trump’s return to power , demand for generational change has reached a fever pitch. A wave of younger, social-media savvy candidates, frustrated by what they see as an ossifying, out-of-touch Democratic establishment, is launching primary challenges against some of their party’s most senior incumbents.The insurgents charge that party elders have failed to act with urgency as Trump targets Democratic cities, voters and values, and they say they’re no longer willing to wait their turn.“If what happened last year was not a wake up call for the Democratic party that we need to do things differently and that we need to let some new voices in, then we should all be deeply worried about the future of the Democratic party,” said Luke Bronin, a 46-year-old who is running against Connecticut congressman John Larson, 77.The 119th Congress is the third oldest in US history, and three members – all Democrats – have died in office this year. More than a dozen House Democrats who will be 70 or older by election day 2026 are facing challengers, according to an analysis by Axios, though not all have said whether they plan to seek re-election.But the push to replace longtime incumbents isn’t just about age, says Saikat Chakrabarti, 39, a former chief of staff to New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is running for the San Francisco congressional seat long held by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.They say it’s about energy, vision and, crucially, how hard they’re willing to fight – which could explain why octogenarian brawlers like Maxine Waters haven’t faced calls to step aside while some relatively younger members, such as 50-year-old André Carson, have drawn challengers.“It’s being a part of a system for so long you just don’t actually think it’s your job to renew it,” Chakrabarti said.View image in fullscreenPelosi, 85, who stepped down from her leadership position to make room for a new generation in 2022, has not yet said whether she plans to seek re-election. A spokesperson for Pelosi declined to comment.While their campaigns are textured by local issues and cultural references – Elkind touts his go-to bagel order (un-toasted everything with whitefish salad) and Chakrabarti pitches a publicly owned utility for San Francisco – their broader messages chime: Democratic elders have grown complacent, clinging to a broken status quo – with devastating consequences.Democrats’ popularity has cratered to record lows and the party has bled voters – especially young people, first-timers, and Black and Latino Americans.But the incumbents are pushing back. They argue their years of experience have delivered tangible results. “These guys would start off with zero seniority, just when the district needs the most help,” Sherman, the California congressman, said in an interview. He dismissed claims he’s been timid on Trump, noting he introduced articles of impeachment against him in 2017 and, earlier this year, confronted the president at an in-person briefing on the Palisades fire that devastated parts of his district.“The key to fighting Donald Trump is beating him in the 2026 election,” Sherman said. “If we don’t take the House back in 2026 we may not have elections in 2028.”Many challengers align politically with the incumbents they’re trying to unseat – several have voted for their opponent in the past. They argue the intraparty divide is not left-versus-center but a clash between “the fighters and the folders” – those who see the Trump era as a troubling but passing chapter and those who see it as a constitutional emergency that will determine the survival of American democracy.The younger candidates say the party needs to “meet voters where they are” – on social media, on podcasts, at red county diners and rambunctious town halls. They want leaders who can speak plainly about the ways the Trump administration is hurting working-class Americans – and how Democrats would help.But they also say it can’t only be about Trump. The party needs a full-scale reimagining of what Democrats stand for and how they communicate that to voters – a type of messaging they’ve struggled to articulate in the Trump era.Democrats haven’t always embraced primaries. They can be costly and time-consuming, and create headaches for general election races. But in the midst of deep party introspection and generational friction, more are embracing the contests as a way forward.Groups such as Leaders We Deserve, led by former Democratic national committee vice-chair David Hogg, are actively backing young candidates challenging “asleep-at-the-wheel” incumbents. The effort sparked an internal firestorm and ultimately led Hogg to step down from his role at the DNC.Republicans are watching the primary battles unfold with glee. “Democrats are engaged in a battle between the socialists and the party dinosaurs – and it’s only getting uglier,” Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the national Republican congressional committee, said.Next year’s elections will test Democrats’ desire for generational change but it may not resolve their identity crisis. Some districts will elevate centrist candidates, while others might embrace a democratic socialist. Some crave an anti-establishment streak, ideology aside.And some veteran lawmakers have already chosen to relinquish power. In May, Democratic congresswoman Jan Schakowsky announced that her 14th term representing Illinois’s ninth district would be her last, saying in a statement: “It is now time for me to pass the baton.” Before she made the decision public, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive political influencer, had already launched a campaign for the seat, asking Democrats: “What if we didn’t suck?”Primed for Congress, but not waiting for an openingAmong the contenders in Democratic primaries are local and state political leaders for whom Congress makes sense as a next logical step. In years past, they might have opted to wait for a retirement and then seek an endorsement from the outgoing congressman. Not any more.View image in fullscreenAt 46, Luke Bronin has a lengthy résumé of service: a lawyer, former Obama administration official, navy reserve intelligence officer and, most recently, mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. But he stresses that he’d also bring “an outsider’s commitment to making some bigger changes”.Bronin has spoken with Larson, the longtime incumbent in Connecticut’s first district, including an hourlong conversation in recent months. What was missing, he said, was any recognition that the job has fundamentally changed since Larson arrived in Washington in 1999.“I didn’t hear a sense of urgency that we need to hear from every single member of Congress,” Bronin said.Bronin thinks Democrats need to be “relentless and clear” about the ways Trump is making life worse for Americans, and “equally relentless and clear” about the Democratic party’s vision for improving their daily lives. He wants to see “an intense focus on issues like housing and healthcare and childcare”, and for Democrats to spread these messages in friendly and unfriendly forums.In a statement, the Larson campaign said the district needs a “proven fighter” to protect against Trump’s attacks on social security and Medicare.“That’s Congressman Larson. That’s why he’s backed by progressive groups, labor, and working people alike,” the campaign said. “What they don’t need is someone pretending to be a new voice who’s actually been in politics [for] decades that’s always been more focused on running for higher office than delivering results.”Chakrabarti, who has spend much of his political career working to elect progressives to Congress, said he began to seriously consider a run himself after listening to a New York Times podcast interview with Pelosi just days after the November election. He had expected Democrats’ crushing defeat to trigger a reckoning – but instead heard a defense of the status quo.It confirmed for Chakrabarti what he had long feared: the Democratic party was “sort of sleepwalking into this dystopia”.But progressives like Chakrabarti take hope from the success of state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary this summer.“When I look at the moment today, the appetite for change, it completely dwarfs what I saw in 2018,” Chakrabarti said, referring to the election year in which Ocasio-Cortez toppled one of the most senior House Democrats as a political unknown.“We’re at the point of a dawn of a new political era.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe crowded primariesSeveral candidates have filed to run in Georgia’s 13th district, a solidly blue area in the Atlanta suburbs, a sign of the vulnerabilities among older members and the enthusiasm to replace them. Scott, who has served in Congress since 2003, has not yet announced whether he will run again. Questions over his health and fitness for office have become public fodder – he lambasted a photographer for taking a photo of him in a wheelchair last year.Some are younger than the average age in Congress (58.9); all are younger than Scott, 80. One contender, state senator Emanuel Jones, is 66. In 2024, Scott fended off a crowded field of primary challengers to keep his seat.Jasmine Clark, 42, was first elected to the state house in Georgia in 2018. She has a PhD in microbiology, an expertise that has served her well in analyzing bills and communicating during the pandemic. If elected, would be the first woman with a science PhD in Congress.View image in fullscreenShe wants the district to have a fighter who can call out the rampant misinformation and disinformation coming out of the Trump administration. The Atlanta area is feeling the consequences of this information environment, she said, pointing to a shooting earlier this month at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by a man alleged to be fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine.“When you have the same people in the same place for a really long time, that stagnation leads to stagnation of ideas as well,” she said. “There should be a healthy turnover, where you still have institutional knowledge while ushering in new ideas. But for whatever reason, we don’t really see that in Congress.”View image in fullscreenEverton Blair, who served on the Gwinnett county board of education, is touting his deep ties to the district where he was born and raised. He sees a lot of opportunities left on the table because of inactive representation.“There’s a general sense of despondency and just apathy right now that we address and we combat by bringing those very voices and people back into the conversation and making sure that they feel represented well,” Blair said.“The leaders who got us into this mess are not the leaders who can get us out of it,” he added.Scott did not respond to a request for comment.In California, Jake Rakov, who served as a deputy communications director for Brad Sherman, the 15-term incumbent he’s challenging, is making a similar case. He hasn’t spoken to his old boss in years, but he has been talking to the congressman’s constituents. Many, he said, are shocked that any member – let alone their own – has been in Congress for nearly 30 years.“We’ve got people in office who’ve been there since the 1990s and are still legislating like it’s the 1990s,” he said, adding: “It is so antithetical to our idea of a representative democracy that it just is immediately offensive to people when they hear about it.”Sherman has also drawn a challenge from Jake Levine, a veteran of the Biden and Obama administrations whose mother lost her home in the January fires. “It’s time for something new,” Levine says in his campaign launch video.Sherman argued that calls for generational change aren’t new. Estimating that he’s taken about 5,000 votes in Congress over the past decade, the overwhelming majority of which his challengers would agree with, Sherman asked: “If you did something right 5,000 times in a row – 100% of the time – is there any chance that you should get fired?”The upstartsUpstart candidates traditionally face steeper challenges against incumbents, but, with the help of slick online content, they’re finding new ways to gain traction. In an Arizona special election earlier this year, Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old influencer and activist, came in a distant second behind a longtime Democratic official whose father held the seat until his death – but she still managed to win more than 22% of votes.Katie Bansil, a 34-year-old political newcomer who works in finance, is challenging congressman Frank Pallone, 73, in New Jersey’s sixth congressional district over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Since launching her campaign, Bansil, who immigrated to the US from the Philippines and grew up in New Jersey, says she’s seen a growing desire for new leadership.View image in fullscreen“I started calling him ‘the asterisk’, because a lot of people have told me, ‘Oh, I just vote for the guy that is labeled as the incumbent,’” she said. “But I think people are actually waking up to the truth about what’s going on.”A spokesperson for Pallone said the congressman has “proven himself to be an effective champion of progressive causes”.“With daily assaults from the Trump administration on our democracy and institutions, Pallone will continue to use every tool to stop the Republican authoritarian agenda of stealing from the poor to give to the rich,” the spokesperson said.Liam Elkind, the challenger to Jerry Nadler, announced his campaign with a splashy video that opened with dirt being shoveled into a grave and his voiceover: “The Democratic party is dying.”“Our system often tells people to wait their turn,” Elkind said. “And look where we are.”A Rhodes scholar, Elkind founded the non-profit food delivery service Invisible Hands during the pandemic. He says that work – along with own experiences as a young person living in one of the most expensive cities in the world – would shape his approach to the job.Like many his age, Elkind doesn’t have health insurance. When he recently went to get a vaccine and was told it would cost $500, “I turned my ass around,” he quipped. “But look, that’s the day-to-day lived reality of a whole lot of people in this country.”View image in fullscreenA spokesperson for Nadler emphasized the congressman’s political strength, noting that he won his most recent election with 80% of the vote.“But this is the great thing about America, it’s a democracy – hopefully still – and anybody can run,” Robert Gottheim, the spokesperson, said, adding that Nadler would “put his over-30-year record of accomplishments against anyone including someone who appears to have no record of accomplishment to speak of”.Elkind said he voted for Nadler and respected his long record as a progressive voice for New York. But, he argued, the moment demands new energy and a break from the past.“The house is on fire, and we need leaders who can meet this moment,” he said. “We deserve to know that the next time a child is kidnapped off of our streets, that our congressman will be on that street in the next hour with a megaphone demanding that child’s release and then will travel to whatever foreign gulag the president has decided to stash that kid in.” More
Arnold Schwarzenegger brags in his X profile that “I killed the Predator”, but even he was shocked when, as the freshly elected governor of California more than 20 years ago, he saw how unfairly the state’s electoral boundaries were carved up.One district in the eastern part of the state had such a long, thin middle section it was nicknamed the “swan”. Another was known as the “Jesus district” because you had to walk on water to get from one side to the other. Yet another, in LA’s San Fernando Valley, was memorably described by the Stanford law professor Pam Karlan as “a ghastly-looking, multi-headed, insect-like polygon with 385 sides”.This was the time-honored dark art of gerrymandering, practiced in state after state by whichever party happened to have a majority in the state legislature and wanted to keep things that way. To Schwarzenegger, though, a political neophyte after his long career as a Hollywood action hero, it looked a lot like election-rigging.“For a long time I thought that was something that happened way back in the 1800s,” Schwarzenegger said in a 2005 address to the state, “but the practice is still alive and well today.”What shocked Schwarzenegger was not that Democrats, then as now in control of the state legislature, were stealing seats from Republicans. (Decades earlier, Republicans had done much the same in the opposite direction.) It was, rather, that gerrymandering neutered the power of people’s votes. The year before his speech, in 2004, not a single one of California’s 153 congressional and state legislative seats changed party hands.“What kind of democracy is that?” he asked.It was an unusual question for any US politician to ask – most elected officials, of both parties, accepted gerrymandering back then as part of the price of doing business – and it set Schwarzenegger on a reformist path he has never relinquished.First, he proposed appointing a panel of judges to take over from the state legislature in redrawing district lines. When that was rejected by voters, he advocated instead for an independent redistricting commission, which began redrawing state legislative lines in 2008 and congressional district lines in 2010 – a reform that has proved enduringly popular with voters and has made California one of the most competitive states in the union for seats in the US House of Representatives.It’s a legacy Schwarzenegger has no intention of relinquishing, not even now that Texas Republicans, acting on the orders of Donald Trump, have redrawn their state maps to add another five Republican-leaning congressional districts, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has vowed to “fight fire with fire” with an initiative to suspend California’s independent commission and add five Democrat-leaning districts in the Golden state.“I’m not going to go back on my promise,” Schwarzenegger told the New York Times last week. “I’m going to fight for my promise.”Schwarzenegger, a rare moderate Republican in an increasingly radical party, is an outspoken Trump critic and said he hated what the president had asked the Texas Republicans to do.But, he said, sinking to the same level in California was no answer, and it made no difference to him that Newsom was pitching his plan as a temporary arrangement. “We are not going to go into a stinking contest with a skunk,” he said. “We are moving forward.”To underline that he meant business, Schwarzenegger appeared for the interview – and later in a post on X – in a T-shirt that read: “F*** the politicians, terminate gerrymandering.”Thus the stage is set for a showdown between the current California governor, who will take his emergency redistricting proposal to voters in November, and the formidable former holder of the same office.Already, Schwarzenegger has started tapping into his old political networks to set up a campaign and fundraising machine to thwart Newsom, and according to his staff he is planning a major policy address – in effect, a campaign launch – sometime in September.The issue is energizing Republicans across California. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, has ambitions to raise more than $100m to defeat Newsom’s Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act. Charles Munger Jr, the billionaire son of Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner Charles Munger Sr, is reported to have pledged $30m towards the same effort.The California Young Republican Federation has described Newsom’s initiative as a “dangerous power grab” – echoing almost exactly Democratic rhetoric about the Trump-inspired gerrymander in Texas – and Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate running to succeed Newsom next year, is helping to spearhead a legal challenge.Hilton argues that the independent redistricting commission was already skewed unfairly in favour of the Democrats, since Republicans won a little under 40% of vote in California last November but hold just 17% of California’s 52 House seats.“If we had truly independent districting and fair representation, Republicans would have an extra 12 House seats today,” Hilton says, rounding the number in his party’s favour. (Commissioners would counter that he is overlooking a handful of highly competitive races in Republican-leaning districts that Democrats won by narrow margins.)View image in fullscreenThe first polls on Newsom’s initiative are inconclusive, with voters seemingly split between liking independently drawn districts and a narrow plurality – especially Democrats – understanding the desire to counter what the Republicans are doing in Texas. Independents and Republicans are far more skeptical, if not outright hostile.Still, the campaign to stop Newsom will start at an inherent disadvantage, since Democrats have not lost a statewide election since 2006 and California voters, while not as liberal as Republican politicians sometimes like to portray them, have consistently shown a visceral dislike of all things Trump.Schwarzenegger is likely to be the most powerful weapon in the anti-Newsom arsenal, because he has no fondness for Trump and because his embrace of independently drawn electoral boundaries transcends any partisan allegiance. Since leaving office in 2010 he has campaigned in favour of independent commissions around the country – in states that lean both blue and red – and has spoken outside the supreme court when the justices have considered gerrymandering cases.He is also likely to serve as a bridge between Republican partisans and civic groups like the League of Women Voters of California, which views Newsom’s initiative as a slippery slope from which there may be no easy recovery.“Temporary exceptions rarely stay temporary,” the League warned in a statement. “Once you break a safeguard, you don’t just risk one or two or three elections, you set a precedent that future politicians can and will use again … Long-term damage to democratic norms will outlast any short-term gain.”California’s state legislature voted on Thursday to put Newsom’s initiative on the ballot but, after Texas voted to finalize its own maps, stripped out language that would have automatically abandoned California’s proposed partisan gerrymander if Texas chose to reverse course. Democratic lawmakers argued the escape clause was unnecessary because the Texas legislature had already acted. But scrapping it may also create the perception that Democrats, who enjoy a supermajority in the state legislature, have lost interest in playing fair – exactly the scenario Schwarzenegger warned against back in 2005.“The system is rigged to benefit the interests of those in office … not the interests of those who put them there,” he said then. “And we must reform it.” More
