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    5 Democrats Visit Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk in Louisiana

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    Five congressional Democrats on Tuesday traveled to Louisiana, where they met with two graduate students who have been detained by federal immigration officials and have become high-profile examples of the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses.The lawmakers’ trip was an effort to bring further attention to the cases of Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, and Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, who were detained under a rarely used legal provision that allows the secretary of state to deport noncitizens deemed a threat to American foreign policy. The students’ lawyers have argued that their detentions violate their rights to free speech.The visit to Louisiana was the latest attempt by Democrats to use the congressional recess to draw attention to what they see as violations of due process during President Trump’s second term. Over the last week, Democrats have made two visits to El Salvador to highlight the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whom Trump administration officials have admitted to erroneously deporting.In Louisiana, Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Representatives Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Troy Carter of Louisiana and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi met with Mr. Khalil and Ms. Ozturk and toured the facilities where they were detained. Both had been transferred hundreds of miles away from their homes and from where they were originally detained.In a news conference outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, La., where Ms. Ozturk is being held, the lawmakers argued that the government had violated the students’ constitutional rights and that both had been targeted for their political views.“Neither of them committed any crimes,” Mr. McGovern said. “They’ve been charged with nothing.”Mr. Markey criticized immigration officials for sending the two students to facilities in Louisiana, arguing the government did so to secure a more favorable hearing for their deportation proceedings. Louisiana has one of the most conservative appeals courts in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘National disgrace’: US lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jails

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      Congressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.“We stand firm with them in support of free speech,” the Louisiana congressman Troy Carter, who led the delegation, said during a press conference after the visits on Tuesday. “They are frightened, they’re concerned, they want to go home.”Öztürk, a Tufts University PhD student, and Khalil, a graduate of Columbia, have been detained for more than a month since US immigration authorities took them into custody. Neither have been accused of criminal conduct and are being held in violation of their constitutional rights, members of the delegation said.The delegation included representatives Carter, Bennie Thompson, Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Senator Ed Markey, and Alanah Odoms, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. They visited the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, where Öztürk is being held, and traveled to the Central Louisiana Ice processing center in Jena to see Khalil.They met with Öztürk and Khalil and others in Ice custody to conduct “real-time oversight” of a “rogue and lawless” administration, Pressley said.Their detention comes as the Trump administration has staged an extraordinary crackdown on immigrants, illegally removing people from the country and seeking to detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech that it considers adverse to US foreign policy.“It’s a national disgrace what is taking place,” Markey said. “We stand right now at a turning point in American history. The constitution is being eroded by the Trump administration. We saw today here in these detention centers in Louisiana examples of how far [it] is willing to go.”McGovern described those being held as political prisoners. He said: “This is not about enforcing the law. This is moving us toward an authoritarian state.”Late last month, officials detained Öztürk, who co-wrote a piece in a Tufts student newspaper that was critical of the university’s response to Israel’s attacks Palestinians. The 30-year old has said she has been held in “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane” conditions in a Louisiana facility and has had difficulty receiving medical treatment.Öztürk was disappeared when she was detained, Pressley said, adding that she was denied food, water and the opportunity to seek legal counsel. Khalil missed the birth of his first child, she said. She described Donald Trump as a dictator with a draconian vision for the US.“They are setting the foundational floor to violate the due process and free speech of every person who calls this country home, whatever your status is,” she said. “It could be you tomorrow for suffering a miscarriage. It could be you tomorrow for reading a banned book.”Those in custody are shaken and were visibly upset and afraid, the delegation said. They have said they are not receiving necessary healthcare and that the facilities are kept extremely cold.“We have to resist, we have to push back. We’re a much better country than this,” McGovern said.Earlier this month a judge ruled that Khalil, who helped lead demonstrations at Columbia last year and has been imprisoned for more than a month, is eligible to be deported from the US.The Trump administration has argued that Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the US and child of Palestinian refugees, holds beliefs that are counter to the country’s foreign policy interests.On Monday, Senator Peter Welch of Vermont met with Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia student who was detained while at a naturalization interview. More

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      American women and children are in crisis. Republicans are about to make it worse | Karen Dolan

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      Women and children are under threat in America.Jocelyn Smith of Roswell, New Mexico, knows this too well. “I’m disabled, taking care of my disabled daughter. I work, and I volunteer to help feed and house my community,” she told me. “Yet I need assistance affording meals for my family. Something is broken.”Smith knows, but did you know, that in the United States, nearly 43% of women – and almost half of all children – are poor or low-income? And that last year, families with children experienced the largest single-year increase in homelessness, with nearly 40% more people in families with children experiencing homelessness?And what if I told you that Donald Trump’s agenda – expressed through his more than 100 harmful executive actions, Elon Musk’s Doge cuts, and his budget making its way through his Republican-majority Congress – will make things even worse for women and children?I bet you’ll be pretty angry. Smith is.“Is Congress working on any of this?” she asks about the struggles of working families. “Unfortunately, no.” As she wrote in a recent op-ed: “they’re doing the opposite right now.In fact, the GOP budget proposal could slash $880bn from Medicaid and $230bn from food assistance. They’re also cutting government agencies that assist with affordable housing, transportation, safety, veterans, and children with disabilities.”The final amounts of those cuts will vary, but the numbers stand to be huge and devastating. Why? Because the GOP is looking for at least $4.5tn in more tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. “They are reaching into my very shallow pockets, into my daughter’s life-saving medical care to pay for it,” Smith says.A new paper I co-authored for Repairers of the Breach and the Institute for Policy Studies tries to reckon with what these costs would mean for working Americans. For women and children, we found that some of the harshest blows will come in healthcare access and in help putting food on the table.Nearly one in five women and almost half of all children rely on Medicaid or its Children’s Health Insurance Program for healthcare. The House Republican budget resolution calls for potential cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid – as much as $880bn by 2034, as Smith points out.And a shocking 9 million people, disproportionately women and children, could lose all food assistance under the proposed supplemental nutrition assistance (Snap) cuts. Children could also miss out on food at school, since the Republican House budget proposal also calls for a $12bn cut to public schools’ free and reduced meals programs. This would eliminate 24,000 schools – serving 12 million students – from the program.Beyond food and healthcare, these cuts and proposals would also harm women and children in countless other ways.Nationally, women are already paid 18% less than men, which contributes to their higher likelihood of poverty. But now, nearly 3 million pregnant workers are at risk of losing their jobs amid doubts that Trump will properly enforce the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which provides worker protections for pregnant women.That’s especially egregious when you consider that 22 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where their reproductive rights have been either eliminated or significantly eroded since justices appointed by Trump helped overturn Roe v Wade.Trump’s budget cuts could also lead to 40,000 children losing their childcare – and affect 2.4 million children’s access to childcare and early childhood education. That could have negative effects that follow those kids around the rest of their lives, in addition to imposing greater hardships on their parents.Other cuts target funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) research on health disparities, including Black maternal and fetal health, as well as $11.4bn in state and community health department grants. And of course all this comes alongside Trump’s anti-DEI executive actions, which target anti-discrimination protections for transgender children and transgender women.One of the few winners in this budget is the mass deportation system, which is poised to see significant increases. Yet the immigration raids and deportations this will fund will separate families – including up to 4.4 million US citizen children with an undocumented parent and another 850,000 undocumented minors.None of this is popular. By large majorities, Americans across the political spectrum oppose cuts to Medicaid, Snap and other safety net programs, as well as deportations that separate families and target Dreamers who came here as young children. It’s no wonder that countless women and children were among the millions who turned out for 5 April’s “Hands Off” rallies.I agree with Jocelyn Smith, who asks: “I don’t think this is fair. Do you?”

      Karen Dolan is a federal safety net expert and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. More

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      US House panel drops inquiry into Northwestern’s law school clinics

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      The US House education and workforce committee withdrew an investigation into Northwestern University’s law school clinics after professors there sued and alleged that the inquiry violated their constitutional free speech rights.The professors secured what amounted to a legal victory for them on Thursday, when the House committee withdrew its investigative requests with respect to the university and its law school’s Bluhm Legal Clinic program on Thursday.Citing reports of antisemitism on campus, House committee members had sought budget and personnel records over claims that the university was using “taxpayer-supported institutional resources for troubling purposes”.The mention of reported antisemitism on campus was contained in a 27 March letter that the committee sent to justify the investigation and was addressed to Northwestern University’s chairperson, Peter Barris, as well as its president, Michael Schill.“The Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law (Northwestern Law) is providing free legal representation in a civil suit to the organizers of an anti-Israel blockade of highway traffic to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport,” the House committee’s letter said. “This blockade resulted in the arrest of 40 participants. The fact that Northwestern, a university supported by billions in federal funds, would dedicate its resources to support this illegal, antisemitic conduct raises serious questions.”The letter also alluded to “broader concerns about the institutionalization of leftwing political activism at Northwestern Law”, adding that the school’s Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic, led by the law professor Sheila Bedi, was using “Northwestern’s name and resources to engage in progressive-left political advocacy”.According to the letter, the House committee demanded that the university provide all written policies, procedures and guidance related to the function of the law school’s legal clinics, a detailed budget for the Bluhm Legal Clinic, and a list of its sources of funding. The committee also demanded the university turn over a list of all the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic’s payments to people or groups not employed by Northwestern and any of its clinics and centers since 2020.In addition, the committee asked to review all hiring materials and performance reviews for Bedi.In response, Bedi and a fellow law professor, Lynn Cohn, sued the committee, asserting that its investigation violated their and their clients’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process, among others.The committee subsequently withdrew its request – a move that a Thursday press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights described as a “victory for academic freedom, the rule of law, and bedrock constitutional principles”.In a statement accompanying the press release, Bedi said: “I filed this suit to defend my clients’ rights to representation, my students’ rights to learn, and my right to teach. But today’s decision won’t stop the federal government’s attacks on universities and the legal profession.“Educators and institutions must stand united to protect our students, our communities, and each other … We teach, we advocate, and we stand with communities demanding justice. That’s why Congress is targeting us.”Echoing similar sentiments, Cohn said: “Uniting to support the fundamental rights of all people can still be done even in these turbulent times. We hope others will join this effort – this legal challenge is far from over. Clinical legal educators won’t back down. We will keep doing what we do best: centering students, defending our clients, and standing firm in defense of justice and the rule of law.”Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday froze $790m for Northwestern University as part of the president’s increasing crackdowns on students and faculty members across US colleges who have expressed their opposition toward Israel’s deadly war on Gaza.In response to the federal crackdowns, more than 1,000 faculty members, alumni, students and attorneys have signed letters expressing their support for Northwestern University.One letter signed by hundreds of alumni in part said they were troubled “that the federal government would target legal scholars who have dedicated their careers to upholding constitutional liberties”, WWTW reports. More

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      in Elections

      House Passes G.O.P. Budget After Conservative Revolt Collapses

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      The House on Thursday narrowly adopted a Republican budget blueprint for slashing taxes and government spending, after hard-line conservatives concerned that it would balloon the nation’s debt ended a revolt that had threatened to derail President Trump’s domestic agenda.Approval of the plan, which was in doubt until nearly the very end, was a victory for Republican leaders and Mr. Trump. It allowed them to move forward with crafting major legislation to enact a huge tax cut, financed with deep reductions in spending on federal programs, and pushing it through Congress over Democratic opposition.“It is time for us to act so that we can get on with the real work,” Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, said during debate on the floor. “In passing this budget framework, we are unlocking the process to deliver on unleashing American energy production, permanently securing our southern and northern borders, and making tax cuts permanent for small businesses and working families.”But approval came only after a mutiny on the House floor on Tuesday night that underscored the deep divisions Republicans still have to bridge in order to push through what Mr. Trump has called his “big, beautiful bill.” It forced Speaker Mike Johnson to delay a planned vote on the measure after he spent more than an hour Wednesday night huddled with the holdouts, trying without success to persuade them to support it.The vote on Thursday was 216 to 214, with two Republicans opposing the measure. All Democrats present voted against the plan, which they said would pave the way for cuts to Medicaid and other vital safety net programs that would harm Americans, all to pay for large tax cuts for the wealthiest.“You target earned benefits and things that are important to the American people, like Medicaid,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said, addressing Republicans. “And what are you doing it for? What is it in service of? All to pass massive tax breaks for your billionaire donors like Elon Musk.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Tariff Reversal Calms Some G.O.P. Nerves, but Questions Linger

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      President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policy has prompted bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are outraged and Republicans are caught between their deep opposition to tariffs and fear of criticizing Mr. Trump.The president’s abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would halt most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days just a week after announcing them allayed the immediate concerns of some G.O.P. lawmakers, many of whom rushed to praise Mr. Trump for what they characterized as deal-making mastery.But behind those statements was a deep well of nervousness among Republican lawmakers who are hearing angst from their constituents and donors about the impact of Mr. Trump’s trade moves on the financial markets and the economy. Some of them have begun signing onto measures that would end the tariffs altogether or claw back Congress’s power to block the president from imposing such levies in the future.“I’m just trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke if it’s wrong, and who I put up on a platform and thank them for the novel approach that was successful if they’re right,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said of the sweeping tariffs on Tuesday during a hearing with Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official.On Wednesday, after Mr. Trump pulled back most of the tariffs but retained a 10 percent tariff rate for most countries and announced additional penalties on China, Mr. Tillis still sounded anxious. He said the move was likely to “reduce some of the escalation,” but added that there was still considerable work to be done to prevent another market meltdown.“We’ve got to get a deal before we get rid of uncertainty,” he told reporters soon after Mr. Trump announced the change in a social media post.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats’ problem isn’t just messaging – it’s the electoral math | David Daley

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      It’s much worse than the usual disarray. Even after hopeful election results last week, Democrats are shut out of power in Washington, bewildered over the 2024 election, and staggered by Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s blitz to rapidly assert power over the media, universities and the courts, while dismantling huge swaths of the federal government.Exiled to the political wilderness, Democrats have blamed their messaging and messengers. They have sought different ways to talk about trans rights, abortion, immigration and populist economics. They have sought their own network of social media influencers and podcasters so that they can talk to young or occasional voters.None of this will make the difference. Democrats could spend as much time as they like fine-tuning the perfect pitch on trans women and high school sports. They could develop an army of faux-Joe Rogan podcasts for future candidates to make their case. They could even win the occasional upset special election. And they will still remain powerless.That’s because while Democrats might have a messaging and messenger problem, they have a much larger issue: math. And it’s a cruel math, where just coming close to a majority doesn’t count.A captured supreme court, gerrymandered legislatures, a radically malapportioned Senate, and the electoral college mean that the basic math that paves any road toward 270 electoral votes, 218 members of the House, 51 senators and five members of the supreme court is tilted dramatically against Democrats. All of it is likely to get much worse before it gets any better. Before the midterms, Republicans seem determined to pass new voting restrictions that will place new barriers before tens of millions, make registration and voting itself decidedly more difficult, and call into question the very possibility of free and fair elections. Until Democrats fully recognize that the structural barriers before them could doom them to opposition status even if they reassemble a majority coalition, they are not grappling with the cold reality of this moment. Politics and public opinion could move in their direction. The structural math might only get worse.The House mapStart with the US House, the heart of the party’s midterm dreams. Republicans hold seven seats more than Democrats, and history suggests that the opposition party often gains that many seats in a midterm off anti-incumbent frustration alone. Listening to Democrats, you get the sense that they feel it’s almost a given they will take back the House. The conventional wisdom suggests the national House map is balanced. Neither is the case. Better balanced, perhaps, from the last decade, but Republicans still benefit from a gerrymandered advantage of 16 seats, according to the non-partisan Brennan Center.Getting close to a majority, as Democrats did in the current House, is one thing. Getting over the top is harder than it looks. On a map that is nearly maximally gerrymandered to eliminate competitive seats – only 37 of 435 races were within five points in 2024 – flippable seats are rare and difficult to target. Democrats won, and must defend, 22 of those – which leaves just 15 competitive seats to provide the necessary yield. Only four of those districts are in states carried by Kamala Harris in 2024.Beyond that, one might start by identifying vulnerable GOP members from districts that also backed Harris. There are only three of those: Nebraska’s second, New York’s 17th and Pennsylvania’s first. These have been Democratic targets for some time. The incumbents remain safe and Democrats would have a lot of voters to persuade; those aren’t among the 15 competitive districts. Nebraska’s Don Bacon and New York’s Mike Lawler won by seven percentage points. In Pennsylvania, Brian Fitzpatrick won by nearly twice that, 13 points.Democrats meanwhile must defend 13 districts carried by Trump where incumbents have, thus far, managed to outrun national trends of partisan polarization. What that means is that in many ways, Democrats are overextended on the current map; they’ll need a strong year simply to defend what they already hold.But the operative phrase is “current map”. That’s not the same as “2026 map”. The other challenge comes from redistricting and from the US supreme court. In Ohio, where Democrats have narrowly held two Trump-leaning districts, the GOP will be able to redraw the congressional map ahead of the 2026 elections. Two of the competitive seats carried by Democrats in 2024 are in the Buckeye state. The GOP will probably gerrymander those seats so that they are uncompetitive for even an incumbent Democrat, pushing a 10-seat to five-seat GOP edge in the state to a 12-3 advantage. More redistricting dominos could fall. A potential decision by the US supreme court in a racial gerrymandering case from Louisiana could lead to Black-majority seats there as well as in Alabama and Georgia being wiped off the map. Suddenly Democrats don’t face just a seven-seat gap; they need to find their way to several more on a difficult map.The Senate mapThe Senate map looks even harder. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority. Democrats need to gain four seats to win the chamber – if, that is, they successfully defend one seat in Georgia, as well as open seats in purple New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota, where Democratic incumbents have announced retirements. Democrats will once again target the Maine senator Susan Collins. Beyond that, it’s a tough road: they will need to hold the four purple seats, defeat a popular survivor in Maine, and then take three more from this unforgiving, unlikely list where the best bets are North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa or South Carolina.Ouch. The longer-term Senate trends don’t look much more favorable given how nationally polarized these races have become. In 2024, there were 24 solid red states that Trump won by double digits. There were 19 blue ones. Republicans now hold all 48 Senate seats in the red states. Democrats (or independents who caucus with them) hold 37 of the 38 from blue states. Democrats would need to defeat Collins and then win 13 of the 14 from seven swing states – which means maintaining two in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan, and finding a way to win in North Carolina. Otherwise, they need inroads into states where Democrats have had almost no statewide success for more than a decade.Political realities can change. But the road to 51 seats requires challenging the current math and maps in quite dramatic ways. Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa and South Carolina is change that is difficult to believe in.Population changesPopulation shifts don’t favor Democrats, either. By 2035, experts suggest, 70% of the nation will live in the 15 largest states, with just 30 senators. Right now, two-thirds of Americans live in the largest 15 states, according to census data. They are represented by 30 senators – 21 Democrats and nine Republicans. The other third of us? These smaller 35 states aren’t only whiter than the nation at large, they tilt decisively to the Republican party, represented by 46 Republicans and 24 Democrats.Those population shifts will affect the House as well when it is reapportioned after the 2030 census. Early Census Bureau estimates suggest that California will lose four seats, New York two, and Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin one apiece. Maybe Democrats will find a way to gerrymander Illinois so completely that a red seat is lost. But on balance, this will almost certainly cost Democrats several current blue seats. Those seats would each shift to states where Republicans have locked in huge advantages via controlling the redistricting process, and where they have long drawn lines that outpace demographic trends: four each to Texas and Florida, and one for Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina and Utah.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe presidency and supreme courtElectoral college power will shift as well. The projected 2030 reapportionment would have cost Joe Biden in 12 electors in 2020; in 2024 it would have been a loss of 10 for Harris. That shifts the fight for the White House. This decade, a Democrat could win the White House simply by carrying the reliably blue states, as well as the once-mighty “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Omaha, Nebraska, elector. But subtract those 12 electors and that’s not close to enough. Beginning in 2032, if these projections hold, Democrats would have to win the blue states, the “blue wall”, plus either North Carolina or Georgia, or both Arizona and Nevada.One place where conservative power won’t shift any time soon: the supreme court. The Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last nine presidential elections, yet they are in a terrible position. The 6-3 Republican supermajority should prove enduring for decades. If Trump replaces Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with younger justices, the advantage could last even longer. In order to break this hold, Democrats will not only need to control the White House when openings arise, but also the Senate. Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland was stonewalled by a Republican Senate in 2016; the chamber has only become more aggressively ideological – let alone tougher for Democrats to win – in the decade since. It is easy to imagine a Republican Senate simply refusing to consider any Democratic president’s nominee.So what do Democrats do?None of this is intended to be oppressively bleak. It is to paint a realistic picture of what Democrats face and to explain where they must win to pry back any levers of federal power and sustain it.Of course, nothing is static. Plenty of events over the next two and four years, from a recession to further national security embarrassments, could scramble American politics. Democrats have already flipped some 2025 state legislative races few expected them to win. Still, winning November races when turnout and polarization are at the highest is much more difficult – and picking up double digits in the US House with limited targets is a demanding task. Last week’s results in Florida, where Republicans easily held the congressional seat that belonged to the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, despite Democratic energy, breathless coverage in the national press, and a massive fundraising advantage, should be a brutal reality check. And that’s assuming free and fair elections, and before factoring in the extreme, voter-suppressing Save Act making its way through Congress that would make it more difficult for tens of millions of Americans to vote.It’s tougher still to see the road to a Senate majority near term. Hoping for polarization to ebb, or the Maga grasp on the GOP to ease, is coming to a gun fight with good vibes and crossed fingers.Messaging and messengers are not unimportant. They’re crucial. Especially if Democrats hope to change a brand that is toxic in many states where they must find a path to victory if they want any hope of reaching 270, 218 or 51. But math remains the far bigger challenge – and even perfect messaging crashes against structural and geographic realities. Too many Democrats, and the party’s polling/consulting complex, want to bleed the ActBlue accounts of supporters on lost causes like the Florida special election.The focus for Democrats must be on something different: defending free and fair elections, and building a coalition right now behind reforming redistricting, the courts, statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, and imagining the Senate reapportionment that Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned 30 years ago we would soon desperately need.That’s what needs to be communicated: structural reforms represent everyone’s only hope to create a level playing field, meaningful elections and an accountable democracy for all.The good news is that these reforms are already popular with Americans: 70% back supreme court term limits and ethics codes. Gerrymandering is loathed in red, blue and purple states. It’s time to make the same serious case for reapportioning the Senate, adding states, a more proportional House, ranked choice voting, and additional judicial reforms. The National Popular Vote interstate compact keeps getting closer to revamping presidential elections so that every vote is equal. “A more perfect union” fundamentally means that American democracy must evolve with the times.Call it the Contract to Reform America, or Project 2029, or “make American politics fair again”. Get all the influencers and future podcasters onboard. Until Democrats fix the math and reform the system, the few will control the many for decades to come.Messaging that basic unfair reality is something even these Democrats should be able to do. If they can’t, we are in the kind of authoritarian fix that no election will be able to undo.

      David Daley is the author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

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      Republicans trying to change rules to avoid House vote on Trump tariffs

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      Republicans are quietly pushing a procedural rule that would curb the power of the US Congress to override Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policy.The House of Representatives’ rules committee on Wednesday approved a measure that would forbid the House from voting on legislation to overturn the president’s recently imposed taxes on foreign imports.The sleight of hand was embedded in procedural rule legislation setting up debate on a separate issue: the budget resolution that is central to Trump’s agenda.If adopted, the rule would in effect stall until October a Democratic effort to force a floor vote on a resolution disapproving of the national emergency that Trump declared last week to justify the tariffs. This mirrors a similar tactic used previously to shield Trump’s earlier tariffs.The move came as Trump announced a major reversal on Wednesday, with a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries while raising them to 125% for China.Despite concerns that Republicans were set to endorse another potential expansion of presidential power, Mike Johnson, the House speaker, asserted the tariffs were an “America First” policy that required space to be effective.He told reporters: “I’ve made it very clear, I think the president has executive authority. It’s an appropriate level of authority to deal with unfair trade practices … That’s part of the role of the president is to negotiate with other countries … and he is doing that, in my estimation, very effectively right now.”Republicans moved against a resolution introduced by Gregory Meeks of New York, along with other House Democrats, seeking to end the national emergency declared on 2 April. This declaration was used by Trump to implement sweeping new tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.Republicans’ blockade specifically targets the expedited process for reviewing national emergencies outlined in the National Emergencies Act. It stipulates that the period between 9 April and 30 September will not count towards the 15-day window that typically allows for fast-tracked floor votes on disapproval measures.Democrats strongly condemned the action, accusing Republicans of obstructing debate and prioritising Trump over the economy and congressional oversight.Teresa Leger Fernandez, a congresswoman from New Mexico, said: “We only need four Republicans, only four Republicans to vote with Democrats to review the tariffs and stop this madness … Do you support tariffs that are throwing our economy into recession? Do you support tariffs that are hurting our families? … Then get up on the floor and debate that. But don’t prevent us from having that debate.”Congresswoman Suzan DelBene of Washington added: “Congress should have a role here. It’s terrible that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle aren’t willing to have a vote, too.”Although the rule change hinders the expedited process under the National Emergencies Act, it does not completely eliminate other avenues for forcing a vote, such as a discharge petition, though these are often difficult to achieve.Meeks said: “They can run but they can’t hide. At some point they’re going to have to vote … We’re not going to stop. The American people have a right to know whether you’re for the tariffs or against them. And if they vote this rule in, that will show that they’re trying to hide.”But Republicans countered that Democrats had used similar procedural tactics to block votes on issues such as ending the Covid-19 national emergency when they held the House majority.The rules committee chair, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, said: “A reminder about those who live in glass houses … This is a tool utilised by both Democrat and Republican majorities.”This is not the first time Republican leadership has employed such a tactic to shield Trump’s tariff decisions. A similar rule was adopted previously to prevent votes on resolutions targeting earlier tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, as well as levies on Canada specifically. More

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      ‘What if we didn’t suck?’: the leftist influencer who wants to campaign for Congress differently

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      Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive TikTok star, wants to do campaigns differently. So the very online candidate for a solid blue congressional seat in Illinois is channeling her energy into in-person events.The entry fee for her campaign’s kick-off event was a box of tampons or pads to be donated to The Period Collective, a Chicago-based non-profit that distributes free menstrual products to low-income communities in the area. The debut was such a success, she said, they filled her campaign manager’s SUV with donations. (“I want him to get pulled over so bad,” Abughazaleh quipped in a video for her YouTube series How to Run for Congress.) It’s part of her pledge to disrupt politics as usual and run a campaign that promotes mutual aid and community organizing rather than a candidate-centered “vanity project” that relies on expensive TV ads and “grifty” fundraising texts.“This is about trying a new type of campaign,” Abughazaleh said in an interview with the Guardian shortly after launching her campaign, with a video that asked: “What if we didn’t suck?”Abughazaleh’s campaign arrives at a moment when Democrats are furious with their party’s leadership and demanding change to a political status quo long dominated by septuagenarians and octogenarians. Despite a string of recent electoral gains, polls show the party is demoralized: their popularity is at an all-time low and, according to one survey, the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters say elderly leaders should pass the torch to the next generation of leaders. The party is also desperate to expand their presence – and influence – on social media where their carefully crafted messaging often falls flat.Her pitch seems to have struck a chord. In the week after Abughazaleh launched her campaign, she said it had raised more than $300,000 and received more than 1,000 volunteer sign-ups.“I am sick of waiting around for someone to do something,” she said, speaking via videoconference from her apartment in Chicago, where she has a set-up for recordings and interviews. “There is no mythical, perfect candidate that’s coming out of the woodwork to save us.”After Democrats’ devastating 2024 defeat, Abughazaleh has criticized what she describes as the party’s lack of a post-Trump vision and its attachment to political norms and bipartisanship that Republicans have long abandoned.“This is [the result of] just continually not listening to voters, not considering any other solutions, even if they might be different,” she said. “There’s a lot of talk about being a big tent, but it feels like they’re only extending that tent to the right, and they’re kicking the rest of us out.”Abughazaleh, who boasts more than 200,000 followers on TikTok, flatly rejects the view that Democrats’ losses are the result of the party becoming “too woke” or too supportive of trans rights and pro-Palestinian protests. A Texas native and the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant, Abughazaleh displays her keffiyeh – the black and white checkered headscarf that has long symbolized Palestinian rights – prominently in her campaign video. Last year, she was one of the more than 200 content creators credentialed to cover the Democratic national convention in Chicago, where pleas to include a Palestinian American speaker were dismissed.“The Democratic party ignored us during 2024,” she said. “I kept saying, like, talk to one Arab person to just show, like, some empathy on the issue of Gaza, which now we know impacted a lot of voters staying home.”Having worked as an extremism researcher at the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, she warns that authoritarian regimes often begin their power grab by cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights and implored Democrats not to be complicit in the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people.“Democrats deciding that trans people are the reason they lost the election in 2024 – it’s ridiculous. It’s offensive, and frankly, they are contributing to Trump’s authoritarianism,” she said in a recent CNN interview that her campaign clipped and promoted. “A far bigger issue is that we aren’t giving people something to vote for.”Illinois’s ninth district, anchored in Chicago’s North Side and stretching west, is one of the most reliably blue congressional districts in the state and has been represented by Jan Schakowsky since 1999 – the year Abughazaleh was born. In the interview, Abughazaleh said her candidacy was not intended as a “referendum” on the 80-year-old Democrat who has not said yet whether she intends to seek re-election. Nor is it a leftwing challenge, she said, acknowledging Schakowsky’s progressive record.“This is about: we need to try something different,” Abughazaleh said, arguing that the party has lost touch with many of its voters, especially young people. “A lot of these people in Congress never had to go through school shooting drills at school. I did. A lot of them haven’t had to worry about insurance ever in their lives. I don’t have insurance. I use GoodRx as my insurance. These are things that are very common for young people and just not for most people in Congress.”In a statement, Schakowsky said she planned to make a decision on her re-election “soon” but she welcomed “new faces getting involved as we stand up against the Trump administration”.Abughazaleh’s candidacy has also piqued interest on the right. “Now, even longtime liberals are facing the wrath of their own movement,” Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Campaign said in a statement that claimed Democrats were so astray that they were now “eating their own”.Asked by a reporter whether Abughazaleh’s entry into the race was a worrying sign for Democratic incumbents, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said at the time that he was unaware of her campaign and hailed Schakowsky as a “longstanding, stalwart progressive member”.But he also acknowledged that Democrats were confronting “a lot of energy, a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety” in response to Trump’s return to power.Sharing a clip of Jeffries’ response, Abughazaleh replied: “Nice to meet you, Hakeem! It’s time to get familiar.”Despite her desire to campaign differently, there are some old rules of politics that may be harder to break.Abughazaleh is a recent Chicago transplant who doesn’t technically live in the district, at least not yet, a status that has generated accusations of “carpetbagging”. Addressing the criticism in a YouTube video, Abughazaleh said she and her partner moved to the city abruptly last year and took the first furnished apartment they could find – a place “literally one bus stop” away from the ninth district. The move had nothing to do with her desire to run for office, a decision she said she made after Kamala Harris lost the election and she felt the urge to get involved. Abughazaleh said she intends to move in-district, but cited the cost of breaking her lease as part of the reason she hasn’t done so yet.Supporters also raised concerns about her pledge not to spend money on TV ads, which some argued would put her at a disadvantage in a competitive contest. She said her campaign would re-evaluate the policy.Before entering politics, Abughazaleh spent years monitoring Fox News and other rightwing media at Media Matters. She was laid off last year after legal battles with Musk sapped the progressive group of its resources, in a move that the Freedom of the Press Foundation warned at the time was a worrying example of “billionaires and pandering politicians abusing the legal system to retaliate against their critics”. Musk celebrated her job loss on X: “Karma is real.”In that sense, Abughazaleh can empathize with the tens of thousands of government employees who have lost their jobs as part of Musk’s chainsaw-approach to downsizing the federal workforce.“People are pissed off for good reason. They’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their healthcare, they’re losing the people in their community who are being deported without any due process. Of course, they’re mad, and we should be matching that with anger.”After watching Fox News nearly every day for four years, Abughazaleh said there were some lessons Democrats could learn from the right.“Throwing some metaphorical punches, not reacting to everything,” she said. “What if we didn’t just let them set the agenda all the time? What if we came out strong?” More