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Democratic socialists are gaining ground on the national political scene, championing left-of-establishment ideals and rattling mainstream Democrats with big wins ahead of the midterms. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed the democratic socialist movement further into the national spotlight with his historic election last year, joining the ranks of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie…

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The political world is in a frenzy over left-wing challengers’ wins in New York City’s primaries Tuesday.

Leftists are overjoyed, and think they’re beating back the Democratic establishment. Many on the right and center are horrified, arguing extremists are taking over the party.

And yet if you look past deep blue urban areas — and toward the swing House districts that will actually determine which party wins a majority in November — a very different story is unfolding, one that could have a much bigger impact on America.

Just a few miles north of the city, in the Hudson Valley, lies a GOP-held district that’s one of Democrats’ top targets. The winner of this week’s primary there was Cait Conley, an Army veteran and Biden administration staffer who had the support of much of the Democratic Party’s establishment. She won easily, while the most notable progressive challenger in the race pulled just 15 percent of the vote.

That’s just part of a larger pattern throughout the country this year: In the districts with the most competitive general elections ahead, the Democratic establishment has mostly seen its preferred nominees win.

“Most of these Democratic candidates in these toss-up, top-tier districts are fairly conventional,” Jacob Rubashkin, the deputy editor of the publication Inside Elections, told me. “That’s not a judgmental statement on them at all. But it is rarer cases where you’ve got a candidate who breaks the mold a little bit.”

There have been about two dozen primaries so far in districts that could swing in November. (The exact count depends on how generous your definition of “swing district” is.) So far, only two of those primaries have resulted in the establishment candidates backed by the DCCC — the Democrats’ House campaign committee — losing to a challenger from further left. In fact, national left groups didn’t even participate in many swing district contests at all, preferring to prioritize blue-district battles they had a better chance of winning.

So who are Democratic voters nominating? There are a handful of nominees with unusual backgrounds, though they vary ideologically — a firefighter union leader and smoke jumper lean left, while a farmer and musician are more moderate.

But mostly, Democrats’ nominees fall into familiar categories: candidates who have run before and lost, local officeholders, or women with military and national security backgrounds like Conley. (Party leaders heavily recruited that candidate profile in the 2018 midterms.)

All this means that, in a year where the energized left is getting all the attention, the Democratic Party’s chances of gaining a House majority depend largely on candidates who are…pretty standard Democrats. And if the party does take over the House, it’s the winners of these districts — not the far left candidates in the headlines — who will be most decisive in determining what can actually pass.

The “normal” candidates winning Democratic nominations in key swing districts

Despite their devastating defeats in 2024, Democrats haven’t engaged in a wholesale rethinking of who they should nominate in swing House districts. In a few contests, the party and its voters are even nominating the same people who have run before and lost, betting that a more favorable political climate will allow them to win this time.

In Iowa’s First District, Democratic nominee Christina Bohannan, a law professor and former state representative, lost to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) in 2022 and 2024. But that latter loss was by a mere 799 votes.

Former TV anchor Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania’s 10th District is another repeat nominee (she lost by about 5,000 votes in 2024). And, though she hasn’t won her primary yet, former Rep. Elaine Luria, a Navy veteran first elected in 2018, who lost in 2022, is trying to reclaim her old seat.

Other nominees are trying to make the jump from state or local politics to Congress — like San Diego city council member Marni von Wilpert (CA-48), Scranton, Pennsylvania, mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Iowa state Rep. Lindsay James (IA-02), and Iowa state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03).

There’s a group of female military veterans who call themselves the “Hellcats” running, of which three have locked up their nominations so far – the aforementioned Cait Conley (NY-17), Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett (NJ-07), and Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza (AZ-06). (Arizona’s primary is in July, but Mendoza is running unopposed.)

These candidates aren’t bomb-throwing provocateurs — but for the most part, they aren’t left-punching centrists, either. They haven’t gotten many national headlines, which may be by design. “As a House candidate you don’t really wanna be noisy if you’re running in a Republican district,” said Rubashkin. That is: it isn’t helpful for the Eye of Sauron — or Fox News — to be trained on you.

The more against-the-grain candidates

Yet there are other nominees who have more unusual backgrounds or political profiles.

Some — like farmer Jamie Ager (NC-11), musician Bobby Pulido (TX-15), and sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia (TX-35) — are more moderate. Others, like smoke jumper Sam Forstag (MT-01), are more progressive.

In a few contested primaries, there’s been a surprising trend where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the centrist Blue Dog Democrats have backed the same candidates — generally, because both like their populist credentials. That happened for firefighter union leader Bob Brooks (PA-07) and ironworker Brian Poindexter (OH-07). Bernie and the Blue Dogs are also both backing Rebecca Cooke, who grew up on her family’s dairy farm, in the August primary for Wisconsin’s Third District. 

“These are people trying to run in that more populist lane and bridge the ideological divide,” says Erin Covey, the House editor for the Cook Political Report. “The Blue Dog brand has evolved a lot — they’re looking for candidates who don’t have elite backgrounds.”

Finally, there are the outliers: Matt Dunlap (ME-02) and Randy Villegas (CA-22) are both progressive challengers who defeated DCCC-backed favorites, in classic “insurgent versus the establishment” fashion. But so far, their stories are not typical.

Will conventional candidates be enough to win in November?

Taken together, the Democratic Party is essentially betting that it doesn’t have to change much to take back the House — that the party can run similar types of candidates as in the past, and win because of a national backlash over affordability.

“These candidates are not making a ton of time talking about Trump on the trail,” Covey says. Their messaging, for the most part, is “all about lowering costs.”

The risk is that they might be underestimating just how damaged the Democratic Party brand is in these swing districts. After all, their voters elected Republicans last time around.

“I’m not trying to be glib, but I do think the biggest challenge to any Democrat running in a competitive district is simply that they’re a Democrat,” Rubashkin said. “The last four to five years of national coverage of the party under Biden and Harris has been so negative that there’s a cloud over everyone with a D next to their name.”

But Rubashkin is skeptical that the party needs more loud centrists — or loud leftists — to win swing districts. “Not everyone is going to have the ability and inclination to drive national news cycles of how they’re not like other Democrats. And I don’t think it’s necessary to do that to win these races.”

So despite all the sturm und drang about leftists winning a few blue district primaries — and the high-profile Maine and Michigan Senate races — the Democratic establishment is still very much getting the candidates they want in the battle for the House. If they win, that portends a Congress in which the lightning-rod New York newcomers are still outliers, and the institutional party still has the majority-making seats. 

And in the meantime, the party’s success in November, or its failure, will rest on the establishment — because they’ve overwhelmingly gotten the candidates they want.

The actors at the center of Christopher Storer’s FX series discuss the finale, what it means to leave their characters behind and what they imagine for the Bear and its crew.

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President Donald Trump has exactly two modes: unfocused and obsessed. Most things in this world activate the first mode. But there are a handful of exceptions that become deeply ingrained in his mind and nothing can shake them loose, no matter how many times he’s been denied, contradicted or proved wrong. You see it in Trump’s fixation on renovating and building monuments, his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss as anything but fraud, and, lately, the supposed necessity of passing the SAVE America Act.

Trump is championing a rewrite of election law that would make it significantly harder for Americans to register to vote, require voters to show ID in all federal elections and force states to submit their voter rolls to the federal government. The bill has been stalled out in the Senate for months with no path to passage, but the president is still demanding the SAVE America Act reach his desk. Until then, Trump and his allies in the House have shown they’d rather doom any pending legislation than accept defeat.

A major bipartisan housing bill became the first victim of this new round of legislative hostage taking. As his own administration finalized preparations for a signing ceremony to herald the win, Trump announced that he would be refusing to sign it. The boycott would continue, he said on social media, “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”

Chaos ensued as GOP members tried to explain why their leader would hurt their party’s political fortunes.

“We saw glimpses of this during Trump’s first administration,” a senior GOP aide told MS NOW’s Lillie Boudreaux and Peggy Helman, “but never in my lifetime have I seen a president so deliberately attempt to lose majorities for his own party.”

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Trump’s attacks on elections ‘a dangerous situation’

June 24, 2026 / 13:56

Trump has pulled similar stunts before. He swore in March that he wouldn’t sign any bill that came to him without first getting the SAVE America Act over the finish line. In doing so, Trump undercut Republican talking points placing the blame for the then-ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Democrats. He caved on that front, but last month demanded that a renewal of a foreign surveillance authority must have the SAVE America Act attached. The ultimatum scuttled a potential deal to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal as Democrats balked and left even some Republicans reeling.

There’s still a chance the housing bill becomes law even without Trump’s signature, provided he doesn’t veto it entirely. But it’ll be easier for him to keep his pledge to sign no new legislation if no new legislation reaches his desk. At least, that seems to be the play from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who has taken up Trump’s crusade with gusto in the House — capitalizing on the minuscule majority that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., commands, to shut down the House’s work entirely.

The chamber operates mostly based on so-called “special rules” that allow bills to proceed swiftly to the floor for a vote. Luna has promised to vote against any rule on any legislation until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act. Johnson had hoped to get Trump to sign-off on a pared-down version of the bill in exchange for helping to get things moving again in the House, but a visit to the White House failed to yield results.

It’s highly unusual that a member of the House is trying to affect the Senate’s behavior. It’s weirder still because there just aren’t enough votes to give Trump what he wants — and nothing Luna does can change that. There’s almost no appetite among the GOP caucus to ditch the filibuster, especially not for this bill. Even if the threshold to pass were lowered from the current 60 votes, there’s no guarantee that there are 50 Republicans who want to pass the version that came through the House.

Trump’s attempt to strongarm GOP senators into following his lead Wednesday during a lunch Wednesday went over like a lead balloon.

“The president came to the Capitol to do what he thinks Senate Republican leadership can’t do: flip votes on SAVE and nuking the filibuster,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Politico. “He left with the same number of votes that existed when he arrived — possibly fewer.”

The president’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has blinded him to political reality. He’s incorrectly spent weeks claiming that failure to pass the bill will be the GOP’s ruin come November. Now, rather than spending the next few weeks proving that they deserve to keep their majorities, Trump has left GOP lawmakers paralyzed. In doing so, he has helped transform his flawed prediction into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The post Trump’s SAVE America obsession is more likely to doom the GOP appeared first on MS NOW.

MS NOW welcomes letters from readers who want to respond to our journalism, add context, raise a thoughtful disagreement or share a perspective that may help other readers better understand an issue. Please review our submission guidelines. Then use this form to send us your letter.

To the editor:

Regarding Hayes Brown’s June 25 opinion article, “Trump turns Congress’ housing boom bill into a bust”: I read this article hoping it would point out that the bipartisan housing bill passed by both the Senate and the House with overwhelming margins does not need the president’s signature to become law. I could find no mention. Did I miss something?

If an enacted measure is presented to the president and the president has not signed or vetoed it in 10 days, the measure becomes law without the president’s signature. If the president does veto the measure, a two-thirds vote from both the Senate and the House can override the president’s veto, and the measure will become law. The president gets only one bite at the apple.

Somehow, in all the press coverage of this important matter, the limitations on the president’s role in the legislative process have been ignored.

Thank you for your otherwise excellent reporting.

— Tom Brown
Alexandria, Virginia

MS NOW’s Hayes Brown replies

Thanks for reading! And that’s fair. I considered adding that point, but I had seen an additional detail while writing: The bill hadn’t been sent to the president yet, so that 10-day clock hadn’t started. And trying to explain the intricacies of the timeline felt like too much to unpack without going too deep into the weeds.

To send a letter to the editor, review our submission guidelines and use this form.

The post Don’t forget this constraint on the president’s reaction to the housing bill appeared first on MS NOW.

Most historians agree that in the Declaration of Independence, at least seven of the signatories’ 27 grievances refer to King George III’s use of the military against the colonists as British citizens. In light of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushing out another of our nation’s top military leaders, that 12th grievance is particularly instructive.

Of the British monarch, the colonists wrote, “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.” We see, then, that from the onset of our republic, the founders embraced the principle that politicizing the military is anathema to democracy. But Hegseth clearly rejects that principle as he pursues the politicization of the American military.

The abrupt resignation of Army Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, is the latest example of Hegseth’s disastrous leadership.

Donahue was a legendary Delta Force commander and the last American service member to leave Afghanistan during the chaotic withdrawal in 2021. He is an exemplary officer who was respected by those he has led and is expected to eventually serve as Army chief of staff or even chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But CBS News, citing multiple sources, reported that Donahue had “earned the ire of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth” and was forced to retire prematurely.

In April, Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. The general had reportedly pushed back on the secretary’s decision to block the promotions of four Army colonels — two Black men and two women — to brigadier general. The four had already been vetted and approved for those promotions by an internal Army board. The New York Times, citing military officials, said George had refused to remove those officers’ names from the promotion list and that Hegseth had refused to meet with him to discuss the issue.

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Hegseth questioned about firing Army Chief of Staff 

April 29, 2026 / 04:29

When Hegseth testified to the House Armed Services Committee on April 29, Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., asked, “What specific national security risk, mission risk or leadership concern did Gen. George present that justified removing him in the middle of a conflict? Or was he removed because he challenged some decisions being made?” The secretary refused to provide legal or professional grounds for what he had done and has failed to provide rationale for any of the senior officer removals.

Though reporting from The Wall Street Journal speculates that Hegseth may have wrongly associated Donahue with the deaths related to the military’s withdrawal from Kabul, officials told the newspaper that the Pentagon is characterizing it as consistent with the secretary’s dubious goal of dismissing 10% of active-duty general or flag officers and eliminating 20% of four-star general officer positions.

Donahue will be the sixth three- or four-star Army general to unexpectedly depart during Hegseth’s tenure (out of roughly 60 Army officers who hold that rank). Hegseth’s purge of senior military officers now includes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Overall, he has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen general officers and admirals and blocked the promotion of 40 senior colonels or Navy captains who had been selected for flag rank, which is unprecedented in our history.

As much as we may be inclined to blame Hegseth alone for firing a significant number of the current military leadership, he ultimately answers to President Donald Trump, and we should take the president letting the secretary do this as a sign of his support.

Because President Trump has already sought to use the military to control illegal immigration, deployed troops to cities for “law and order” missions and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to protests, Hegseth’s purge is all the more consequential. A politicized senior military leadership is consistent with his policy choices, and they will be more compliant.  They may also be reluctant to tell the truth to the president and the defense secretary and instead tell them what they want to hear.

Our recent attack on Iran may be illustrative. The administration apparently ignored military leaders who warned Iran would seek to close the Strait of Hormuz. We’ll be even worse off if professional military leadership is replaced by officers who ignore their best military judgment and don’t express contrary views.

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‘They were standing up for something’: Hegseth ousts Army Chief of Staff & 2 generals amid Iran war

April 4, 2026 / 12:21

Politicization of the military ultimately decreases the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service chiefs in one of their most essential responsibilities: developing the officer corps. They direct the establishment of promotion boards and nominate officers for promotions or selection for key command positions. In the past, promotion lists through the rank of major general have typically been reviewed by the civilian service secretaries. The defense secretary had the legal authority to do so, but traditionally, either accepted or denied an entire list. Individuals were only removed if adverse information appeared following recommendations from the promotion board. 

Politicization of the military will likely set the stage for political infighting among the senior military leadership. Officers may come to believe their recommendations for promotions or command selection should be based on a fellow officer’s political alignment as much as, if not more than, their military expertise and performance.

One could even imagine an incoming president seeking to replace the entire senior military leadership based on political affiliations — that is, treating military leaders like Cabinet secretaries, political appointees or ambassadors as part of a presidential transition.

The American Army was created on June 14, 1775, which makes our military even older than our nation. From the onset, the nation’s founders recognized the military was a profession that required acceptance of ultimate liability. The members could be killed in battle or required to order others to die in defense of the nation. Patriots rose in rebellion and died fighting a military whose primary loyalty was to a king and not to its nation’s citizens. This critical relationship between the American military and its citizens has not changed in 250 years.

Consequently, the American military’s apolitical nature as well as the contract between the military and civil authority have remained essential principles of our democracy. As we celebrate the miracle of our founding, it would be beyond a tragedy for us to surrender those principles.  

The post This 4-star Army general had an even brighter future. But with Pete Hegseth in charge, he’s out. appeared first on MS NOW.