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    How a Black Progressive Transformed Into a Conservative Star

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    In the summer of 2020, Xaviaer DuRousseau was preparing to appear on a Netflix reality show called “The Circle,” where a group of strangers, isolated in separate apartments, compete for a cash prize and occasionally adopt fake digital personas to trick one another.Mr. DuRousseau, then 23, was a progressive who marched in Black Lives Matter protests, had pushed his university to require ethnic studies courses as a graduation requirement and voted for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016. For the TV show, producers wanted Mr. DuRousseau, a Black man, to pose as a white woman and lecture others about racial injustice, before revealing his true identity.Mr. DuRousseau spent hours boning up on right-wing politics to get ready for debates with conservative contestants.But as he watched videos from PragerU, the conservative advocacy group, and Candace Owens, a right-wing influencer, he found himself nodding along.Maybe, he began to think, the media really was targeting President Trump for taking on the political establishment. Maybe free college and free health care were unrealistic goals, despite what Mr. Sanders said. Maybe police brutality against Black people was less common than he thought.“I was getting so frustrated, because I kept agreeing with some of the stuff that they were saying,” he said. “I just kept debunking myself, over and over.”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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      Ro Khanna Wants to Take On JD Vance

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      Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, sees the vice president — a likely heir to President Trump’s political movement — as a unique threat to the constitutional order.Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, has been busy in the early months of 2025 trying out ways to make himself a counterweight to the Trump administration.In a social-media skirmish in February over the administration’s hiring and firing of an official who had written racist posts, Mr. Khanna drew the ire of Vice President JD Vance, who told him, “You disgust me.” More recently, Mr. Khanna has been staging town halls in Republican districts across California with a parade of progressive co-sponsors.Now, he is planning to shine an even brighter spotlight on Mr. Vance — and on himself — with speeches aimed directly at the vice president in April in Ohio, Mr. Vance’s home state, and at their shared alma mater, Yale Law School.In an interview, Mr. Khanna, 48, said he intended to cast Mr. Vance as a unique threat to America’s constitutional order, and argued that there was no time to waste in building the case against Mr. Vance, a likely heir to President Trump’s right-wing political movement.His speaking tour of several cities in Ohio, and on Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn., is also an effort to nudge himself into the national conversation about the Democratic Party’s future.For Mr. Khanna, who has represented much of Silicon Valley since unseating a Democratic incumbent in 2016, that has been a long-term project. He makes a cascade of cable news appearances and travels widely; his repeated trips to New Hampshire before the 2024 election included appearances as a surrogate for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an unusual debate with Vivek Ramaswamy. At last year’s Democratic convention, he arranged to meet with delegates from 15 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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      AOC Puts Her Own Spin on Bernie Sanders’s Pitch at Las Vegas Rally

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      The two progressive leaders, one young and one old, are touring Western cities with a similar message but a key difference in how they sell it.Even as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has fired up the American left over the past decade, his speeches have the flavor of a sociology lesson. He rarely makes himself the main character.Which is why it is striking how differently the young leader often seen as his successor, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, approaches politics.As she kicked off a Western tour with Mr. Sanders on Thursday in North Las Vegas, Nev., she introduced herself by name — which he never does — and used her experience waitressing to explain her politics to a crowd of several thousand people.“I don’t believe in health care, labor and human dignity because I’m a Marxist — I believe it because I was a waitress,” she said. “Because I worked double shifts to keep the lights on and because on my worst day, I know what it feels like to feel left behind. And I know that we don’t have to live like this.”Mr. Sanders, by contrast, delivered a version of the same speech he has given since before Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was born, railing against corporate greed. “Eat the rich,” someone yelled.Unlike Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mr. Sanders rarely injects his personal story, including his middle-class roots, into his speeches.Mikayla Whitmore for The New York TimesWe 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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      Bernie Sanders Has an Idea for the Left: Don’t Run as Democrats

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      The Vermont senator, who has long had a tense relationship with the Democratic Party, suggested in an interview that more progressives should join him in running as independents.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a message for his fellow progressives: Why don’t you shed the Democratic label and run as an independent, the way he does?Mr. Sanders’s admonition came in an interview with The New York Times on the eve of a three-day, five-city swing through Western states alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. He predicted that they would draw tens of thousands of people to rally against President Trump, Elon Musk and the influence of billionaires on the American government.“One of the aspects of this tour is to try to rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party,” Mr. Sanders said in the interview on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of great leadership all over this country at the grass-roots level. We’ve got to bring that forward. And if we do that, we can defeat Trumpism and we can transform the political situation in America.”The suggestion that would-be leaders of the left should abandon the Democratic Party picks at a political scab that has never fully healed. Mr. Sanders, 83, a longtime independent, has had a tense yet codependent relationship with the party for decades.While he has never accepted the Democratic label for himself, he is a member of the Senate Democratic caucus and has run under the party brand when it was politically expedient, including his two bids for its presidential nomination. In 2017, he waged a hard-fought but ultimately futile effort to install an ally to lead the Democratic National Committee.In 2011, Mr. Sanders said during a radio interview that “it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition” for his 2012 re-election. The Vermont senator said at the time that he could not do it himself because he was not a Democrat.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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      Who Might Be the Next Chair of the Democratic Party?

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      The current leader of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, won’t seek re-election. His successor will need to revive a distressed party.As the Democratic Party reels from devastating losses — in the presidential contest, the race to control the Senate and its bid to regain control of the House — its national committee is searching for a new chair. Whoever lands that critical role will be charged with shepherding the party out of the woods and into a new era.Jaime Harrison, the current chair of the Democratic National Committee, has decided not to seek re-election. The party’s 448 committee members, who include party officials and politicians from across the country, are expected to vote on his replacement on Feb. 1.Two contenders have already entered the race. Several others have either suggested publicly that they are considering a run, or are quietly holding conversations with party members to gauge potential support. The private deliberations were described by several people who have participated in them and insisted on anonymity.Here’s a look at the Democrats in the mix.Who’s already joined the race?Martin O’MalleyMr. O’Malley, a former governor of Maryland and a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, was the race’s first entrant.He has a long record of public service, getting his start on the Baltimore City Council before becoming the city’s mayor in 1999. During his tenure as governor, an office he held from 2007 to 2015, he led the Democratic Governors Association.In 2023, President Biden tapped him to lead the Social Security Administration. Mr. O’Malley has said he will resign from the post on Friday.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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      Bernie Sanders on the Democratic Party’s Future, on “The Daily”

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      “There was no appreciation — no appreciation — of the struggling and the suffering of millions and millions of working-class people,” the senator said.As the Democratic Party grapples with its sweeping electoral loss and a new political reality, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been resolute about his diagnosis of where the party went wrong.“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he said in a statement after the 2024 presidential election.This week — when Republicans cemented their control of the House, giving President-elect Donald J. Trump a unified Congress to enact his agenda — Senator Sanders spoke to Michael Barbaro, host of the New York Times podcast “The Daily,” about his take. The two discussed the fallout of the election and where Mr. Sanders sees the Democratic Party going from here.Below are takeaways from their conversation, with excerpts edited for length and clarity. You can listen to their full conversation on “The Daily.”Bernie Sanders Says Democrats Have Lost Their WayAn interview with the Vermont senator on the fallout of the election defeat.Sanders is in a fighting mood, but he may be willing to work with Trump.When asked how he felt about being in the minority with Trump poised to bring an aggressive agenda to Congress, Mr. Sanders said, “Our job is to rally the American people to make it clear, especially to working people, that we need an economy and a government that works for all and to expose as best we can what Trump and his administration are doing.”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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      With Cabinet Picks, Trump Seeks to Inject Hyper Masculinity into Washington

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      The hyper-macho and online energy of the Trump campaign is now aimed at Washington.It used to be that the perfect cabinet pick was a steady, behind-the-scenes expert who wouldn’t take too much attention away from the president.Think James Baker III, the Princeton-educated lawyer who played tennis with George H.W. Bush, became Ronald Reagan’s Treasury secretary and was later named Bush’s secretary of state. Or Condoleezza Rice, who spent her career in government and academia before becoming a stalwart in the cabinet of George W. Bush.That era ended this week, its demise encapsulated by a single word: “doge.”With his early selections for cabinet and other high-level posts, President-elect Donald Trump is taking the bomb-throwing, hyper-macho and preternaturally online energy that infused his campaign and seeking to inject it directly into Washington’s veins.He has asked Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an initiative to cut government waste named for the elder statesman of online memes, Doge. He has chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose skepticism of basic measures like vaccines has haunted public health officials for years, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1.6 trillion agency charged with ensuring the “well-being of all Americans.” And he wants former Representative Matt Gaetz, a chest-thumping Trump loyalist who has been investigated on suspicion of sex trafficking and accused of showing colleagues nude photos of women on the House floor (and who has denied both accusations), to be his attorney general.What Trump is proposing could bust norms, pave the way for his promises of retribution and make the institutions that stood in his way during his first term more pliant. It’s effectively government by bro — and it seems that the more you’ve trolled the establishment, the better your chances are of being invited by the president-elect to join it.POTUS, U.F.C.-styleTrump’s presidential campaign was a celebration of masculine kitsch. It created multiple opportunities for Hulk Hogan to rip off his shirt in front of the president-elect’s most devoted followers and ended with the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive Dana White taking the stage as Trump declared victory.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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      Who Are the Next Leaders of the Democratic Party?

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      Democrats will soon have a leadership vacuum, and there will be no shortage of highly ambitious governors, senators and transportation secretaries looking to fill it.American presidential elections tend to be a zero-sum game for the parties and their voters. Win, and everything is great. Lose, and your party is rudderless, leaderless and powerless.So it goes for the Democrats after Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat to former President Donald J. Trump. Questions about who will lead the party, and in what direction, will be hotly debated as officials explore what went wrong and forge plans to oppose the next Trump administration.Jockeying has already begun, and not all ambition may be rewarded. Appearing too eager to seize the opportunity presented by Ms. Harris’s defeat could backfire if Democrats are not ready to move forward. But if the period after the 2016 election is any guide, scores of Democratic figures and groups will try to fill the leadership void created as President Biden leaves office.Four years is a very long time in politics. In that time, Barack Obama went from a state senator to a presidential nominee. In even less time than that, Mr. Trump transformed from being a reality show figure pushing a racist lie about Mr. Obama to president himself. It is not out of the question that the Democrats’ next leader is not someone on the nation’s radar today.With those caveats, here’s a look at six groups of people who could determine which direction Democrats take as the second Trump administration unfolds.Kamala Harris and Tim WalzMs. Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota campaigning in August in Philadelphia. In his own concession speech last week, Mr. Walz signaled that he was eager to remain relevant in the party.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWe 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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      Tim Walz Heads Home to the Minnesota State Fair

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      Shortly after Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was tapped by Vice President Kamala Harris to be her running mate, a photo of Mr. Walz at the Minnesota State Fair in 2019 went viral.He wore a gold University of Minnesota T-shirt, a maroon University of Minnesota hat emblazoned with the Gophers mascot and a smile that his face could barely contain. In his arms was a small, sleeping piglet.It was peak Midwestern dad energy — one of the regular-guy reasons that Ms. Harris chose him to join the Democratic ticket despite his limited national profile. Over the last few weeks, Mr. Walz has been on a whirlwind tour introducing himself to the rest of the country. He has campaigned before crowds of over 10,000 in battleground states like Wisconsin and Georgia; hosted fund-raisers in California and Maryland; and completed his transformation into a party leader with a rousing speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.But Mr. Walz will need no introduction when he steps back onto the grounds of the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul on Sunday, where he is expected to make a campaign stop.“Oh, he is?!” asked Keri Huber, an archivist at the fair. To be sure, it was no surprise to her, but she had yet to hear the news because, she explained, she had been on the grounds, working nonstop.Like other state fairs happening across the nation, the Minnesota State Fair, affectionately known as the Great Minnesota Get Together, has a storied political tradition as a spot to woo voters in a less-scripted forum. Over the years, it has been an opportunity for once and future officeholders to appear, well, normal, while chowing down pronto pups — which, depending on whom you ask, are not so different from corn dogs — and buckets of Sweet Martha’s cookies and posing for photos.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