Missouri lawmakers tried — and failed — to enshrine constitutional bans on abortion and gender-affirming care for minors in the form of Amendment 3 in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The day after the election, headlines focused on voters’ rejection of the abortion ban and less on the “ballot candy” part of the measure: the permanent ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement on Nov. 5 of a universal clemency for the 548 people awaiting execution in his state marks an important turning point in American politics. It signals the end of law-and-order politics as a determining factor in the calculations of likely presidential contenders.
Newsom, an ambitious politician who is almost certain to run for president in 2028, reportedly weighed the impact that commuting hundreds of death sentences — including those of some notorious killers — would have on his political prospects.
That Newsom went ahead with the mass clemency tells us a lot about the salience of tough-on-crime positions in the present political moment. Opposition to capital punishment is no longer the death knell for people aspiring to be president.
This is not to say that Newsom won’t face backlash, either in California or elsewhere in the country, for his clemency decision. As the New York Times notes, “Those against Mr. Newsom’s move are expected to file a challenge arguing that he violated the law with a blanket commutation and that each case must be considered on individual merits.”
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The Bulwark: Some 2028 Democrat hopefuls are ‘quietly courting campaign staffers’
September 1, 2026 / 07:34
The Times reports that “Marc Klaas, the father of Polly Klaas, whose kidnapping and murder prompted an era of tough-on-crime policies in California, is livid at the idea of Mr. Newsom granting mercy to his daughter’s killer, or anyone else sentenced to death.” Klaas told the Times that he was aghast at Newsom “putting his energy” into commuting the death sentences of “serial killers, spree killers, cop killers, baby killers. We’re talking about absolutely the worst people
Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested Sunday that Democratic lawmakers who are planning to launch oversight investigations into the Trump administration could be criminally prosecuted.
“What we‘ve seen over the past several days and even over the past several weeks are outright threats,” Blanche said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Asked if he considered those threats to be a crime, Blanche said, “It depends on what’s said. So yes, there could be.”
Blanche himself is a potential target of impeachment, Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is poised to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told MS NOW a day after Election Day.
The attorney general’s stark warning came a day after President Donald Trump railed against the incoming congressional majority on social media, saying, “These SLEAZEBAGS should go to jail for what they are doing.”
“You have free speech in this country. You are allowed to be critical of President Trump, of me, of this administration,” Blanche said. “But when the threats become so vile and so dangerous that you are telling people in college that they better be careful if they want to work in the Trump administration because somebody will come after them, at some point, you have to draw the line.”
The attorney general was referring to Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s “deterrence message” last month to students at the University of Chicago. Slotkin was among a group of Democratic lawmakers investigated by the Department of Justice last year after urging U.S. military service members to “refused illegal orders” by Trump administration officials.
Even before winning both chambers of Congress five days ago by strikingly large numbers, Democrats said they planned to hold
To win his U.S. Senate race in Texas last week, Democrat James Talarico, who’s white, had to mend some fences with Black voters after he defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who’s Black, in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. There were already hard feelings between Black voters and Democrats left over from 2024. Some prominent party members had blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump on “wokeness,” which Black voters rightly read as code for “Black issues.” Also, because Black women have so reliably voted for Democrats, many of them in Texas were offended at the seemingly reflexive claim by some Democrats at the start of the primary between Crockett and Talarico that he was the more electable one.
The lingering bitterness from Black voters forced him to engage in what can be described as a racial reconciliation-oriented campaign strategy.
Talarico had won the majority of white Democrats and Latinos in winning the nomination, but the lingering bitterness from Black voters forced him to engage in what can be described as a racial reconciliation-oriented campaign strategy to make up with Black voters without losing the support among of the groups he carried to win the nomination. His victory over Republican Ken Paxton to become the first Democrat to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas in 36 years, proves his strategy succeeded.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed didn’t defeat a Black candidate on his way to winning his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, but he did have to appeal to Black voters who felt that Harris lost Michigan because Arab and Muslim voters punished Harris for President Joe Biden’s Gaza policy.
Young people are taking to the streets across France, Italy, Belgium, India, Serbia, and Albania, refusing to surrender their futures to a capitalist system that has abandoned them or to a politics that Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have described as “end times fascism.” These protests are fueled by mounting anger over deteriorating schools, economic insecurity, unaffordable housing…
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It took Natt Offiah an hour to realize he had arrived at the wrong location to monitor the provisional and absentee ballots in the Mississippi U.S. Senate race. He drove to Madison County Circuit Clerk’s Office on Wednesday, but the building was under construction. After a phone call, Offiah, director of organizing for the People’s Advocacy Institute, and his colleague finally reached the…
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