by Max Burns | Aug 4, 2026 | elections, Opinion
For the legions of weary Michiganders who have endured Democrats’ brutal and eye-wateringly expensive primary campaign to succeed outgoing Sen. Gary Peters, Tuesday marks the end of one battle and the beginning of another. A Democratic Party establishment that just spent months poisoning voters against progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed must now figure out how to put together their fractured party to hold a critical Senate seat in November.
Democrats’ mess in Michigan, and El-Sayed’s ability to weather what should have been a debilitating coordinated effort by Democratic leaders to dislodge him from front-runner status, should be a wake-up call to the party’s Washington elite.
Almost every ad attacking El-Sayed originated not from Republicans but from his fellow Democrats.
Whether voters select El-Sayed or his main opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democratic Party will face the monumental task of restoring trust among the many rank-and-file Democrats who suspect the party establishment would rather surrender the state’s senate seat to a Republican than legitimize El-Sayed’s outsider candidacy.
Perhaps voters would have listened to the criticism from establishment Democrats like strategist James Carville and former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison about El-Sayed, and progressive candidates in general, if the party’s centrist strategy had won the White House and recaptured one or both houses of Congress in 2024. But that isn’t the case.
Recent polling shows that the Democratic Party and its leaders are still scraping all-time low approval ratings with their own base, and Democrats nationally are even less popular than President Donald Trump. With all due respect to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the DNC, they aren’t in a position to be telling anyone much of anything.
The
by Tom Perkins | Aug 3, 2026 | AIPAC, Democratic Party, elections, News, Senate
Early in the Michigan Senate Democratic primary, Erin Mallen sent $10 to State Senator Mallory McMorrow. Mallen, a mom who runs an Etsy shop near Traverse City, a liberal bastion in northern Michigan, liked McMorrow — she is young and a break from the Senate’s establishment who occupied a middle lane between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, Mallen said. Lagging in the polls…
Source
by Allison Detzel | Aug 3, 2026 | elections, News, White House
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar told MS NOW he is “ready for battle” ahead of the midterms, as President Donald Trump continues a nationwide crackdown on voting access.
In July, the administration said it found more than 250,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. However, election officials say they have no idea how the federal government came up with that number, since the states refused to comply with the Justice Department’s requests to provide their full, unredacted voter rolls.
“It’s really frustrating because if you look at a third grader, and if they have to do a math problem, they have to show their work,” Aguilar told Vaughn Hillyard on Sunday. “The federal government has made these allegations, and they’ve not shown their work or provided any transparency into the process they use to identify, or make the assumption that we have, noncitizens on our voter rolls.”
Although the administration claims to be targeting noncitizens in its crackdown, Aguilar said every American should be concerned by the move. “I think the American public should be worried about how the federal government is using information that they have about them,” he said.
“This is not a party issue,” Aguilar said. “This is about personal privacy. This is about the protection of somebody’s personal data and the fact that they are gathering this information about American citizens in a way that they have not explained.”
The secretary urged the Trump administration “to be honest with the American public about how they’re using this personal information.”
Aguilar said he did not believe the president’s pursuit was about protecting the integrity of elections. Instead,
by James Downie | Aug 3, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion, White House
“One thing has never changed,” Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told The Wall Street Journal last week. “President Trump can’t be bought.”
Alvarez’s comment was included in a Journal report with considerable evidence to the contrary.
“Interviews with dozens of donors, executives, lobbyists, Trump advisers and others indicate a staggering fundraising and influence operation,” the Journal reported, “with Trump at the center of it all.”
Even under far cleaner administrations, investigating corruption can be a powerful weapon for legislators from the opposition.
The president reportedly keeps close track of which companies contribute to his presidential library, ballroom, political action committees and other entities. Apple, Microsoft and Meta all have donated at least $10 million.
“Several top Washington lobbyists have been asked to raise $50 million or more, including from their clients, for Trump projects,” the Journal said.
This “Trump Transaction Tax,” as one Wall Street analyst called it, as well as his crypto profiteering, his plane from Qatar, the “anti-weaponization fund” and the many other money-grabbing acts of his second term make his corruption an obvious target for Democrats this fall and beyond. Even under far cleaner administrations, investigating corruption can be a powerful weapon for legislators from the opposition party. But in this case, Democrats can contrast what Trump promised to what he’s done. As former Trump staffer Marc Short told the Journal, “One of the things that most rallied his crowds in 2016 was draining the swamp. The crowds would go wild.”
Play
‘The boss wants his money’: Bombshell report unmasks Trump’s corrupt multimillion-dollar operation
July 31, 2026 / 10:25
Now the president has abandoned even the pretense of ridding Washington of corruption. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates, like Sen. Jon Ossof of
by Eugene Daniels | Aug 3, 2026 | elections, News
CHICAGO — In the halls of a Hyatt, serviced by unionized employees of course, hundreds of young, mostly college educated democratic socialists are milling about. It’s a bit too corporate for what is happening in the rooms: conversations on how they can expand, grow and fight back more.
The session names are the tell: “Winning Socialism in the South,” “Legislating as Socialists,” “Power Shift Opportunities.”
What you won’t find are the stars of the movement. No Mamdani. No AOC. No Bernie.
Instead, it’s the door knockers, the city council types, the local stewards who have gotten disillusioned with American politics and have taken their energy elsewhere. And in a lot of cases, that fight is aimed as much at the Democratic Party as at President Donald Trump.
Which raises the question that hung over the entire weekend, which nobody answered the same way twice: Are these people Democrats, or not?
Ask plainly and a half-dozen answers from people wearing the same label will give you the same answer.
“I think if the Democratic Party was actually delivering on the things that they say they care about and what is listed in their platform, I would feel comfortable saying yes to that,” said Hayley Banyai-Becker, a Democratic Socialists of America leader based in Portland, Oregon, who helped plan the summit told MS NOW. “The answer is no.”
Washington state Representative Shaun Scott, sitting next to her and running unopposed, wouldn’t take the yes-or-no. “I think that DSA is at the mainstream of American politics right now,” he said, then flipped it. “If we were to be considered part of the left wing of the Democratic Party, I would
by Chris Walker | Jul 31, 2026 | 2026 Elections, America PAC, Election Spending, elections, Elon Musk, News, Super PACs
Multibillionaire Elon Musk has authorized his super political action committee (PAC) to spend millions of dollars in this year’s midterm races, continuing a trend of huge investments seen in two recent election cycles. Musk’s America PAC will spend between $100 million to $120 million in the next few months, focusing on Senate and House races across the U.S. The PAC will initially target…
Source
