Trump Truth Social premium service gives Democrats investigation target

President Donald Trump’s social media network’s plan to sell faster access to Truth Social posts hands Democrats another high-profile target as they prep congressional investigations into the Trump administration in case they win in the November midterm elections. Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform, recently announced the plan. Trump’s posts […]

To Keep Pressure on the Iranian Regime, Support the Democratic Opposition

Can Progressive Candidates Win in Swing States? They Already Have.

Center-left Democratic officials are coalescing around the opponents of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in primaries that will take place over the next month. That’s in part because of ideology—many centrists simply don’t agree with the progressive policy stands of Hong and El-Sayed. But some centrists say that they are backing Hong and El=Sayed’s opponents because progressive candidates like those two don’t often win in swing states. And many of Hong and El-Sayed’s supporters are also essentially buying into that historical analysis. They are deeply invested in Hong and/or El-Sayed winning the general election, suggesting those victories would be unique evidence of progressive electoral strength in swing states and would show that someone like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be elected president. Both sides’ perspectives are ahistorical, too caught up in the current Mamdani-Sanders-AOC moment. Numerous progressives have won in swing states and districts in the past. Neither El-Sayed nor Hong would be the first progressive candidate to win in the Midwest. Ocasio-Cortez wouldn’t be the first president with a left-wing background. These primaries are a real fight over which faction controls the Democratic Party today. But they shouldn’t obscure the success of progressive candidates years and even decades before anyone had ever heard of Claire Valdez or Ilhan Omar. What makes this debate complicated is that there are not precise definitions of progressive, leftist, or other such ideological terms. And what constitutes progressive or leftist politics changes over time. Many progressive politicians were not supportive of same-sex marriage in 2002, but virtually all progressive politicians hold that stance today. So for this article, I looked at politicians who were described or self-identified as progressive or very liberal during a given campaign and their results. Let’s go back 20 years. “An unabashed progressive takes aim at a Senate seat in Ohio,” was the tagline of a November 2005 piece in the leftist publication In These Times. The author is Chris Hayes, who went on to greater fame. The unabashed progressive is Sherrod Brown, then serving in the House. Brown is considered a traditional Democrat now. But back then, his opposition to the Iraq War and deep skepticism of NAFTA and other international trade agreements put him firmly on the Democratic left. “If a bedrock economic populist like Brown can win in a red state, it will explode the post-Clinton conventional wisdom that anything resembling ​’class warfare’ is a non-starter for the Democrats,” Hayes wrote. Among those who praised Brown in Hayes’s article was Bernie Sanders, then Vermont’s congressman. Brown ended up winning the Ohio Senate race in 2006—against a two-term incumbent—by 12 points. “I ran a very outspokenly progressive campaign, standing up for the middle class, taking on the drug companies and the oil companies … And I think that that campaign shows that you can win in moderately conservative states as progressive Democrats,” Brown told NPR in November 2006. Two years later, a man described by another In These Times writer as an “unflinching progressive” won Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other states across the Midwest. Again, today we don’t think of Barack Obama as being particularly leftist. But in 2008, being a strong opponent of the Iraq War, a critic of the death penalty, and a skeptic of the Israeli government, all positions he held in his rise in Illinois politics, were very much on the party’s left. Obama’s 2007 voting record was the most liberal of any senator, according to National Journal. And it’s not just those two. In 2012, Tammy Baldwin, who had been a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was elected to the Senate from Wisconsin. Andy Kim won reelection in 2022 in a competitive district in New Jersey even though his opponent attacked him for being a member of the Progressive Caucus. Ruben Gallego, elected to the Senate in 2024 from Arizona, was a member of the Medicare-for-All and Progressive caucuses during his House days. Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford University, found that from 2016 to 2024 there were 27 successful U.S. House campaigns in swing districts by candidates whose ideology was left of the average Democratic politician. Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman won Senate races in swing states even though voters perceived them as fairly progressive, says Bonica, citing the Cooperative Election Study, in which voters themselves rank candidates on a seven-point ideological scale. (Sadly, Fetterman has changed his stripes since then.)Progressive candidates at times obviously lose, including Brown in his 2024 reelection bid. And it’s true that there are far more centrists and more moderates than progressives representing swing districts and states. But that’s in part a screening effect.

Democratic Kentucky governor demands McConnell RESIGN if he can't PROVE his capacity to serve

Despite Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) posting another photograph of himself, the governor of his state is demanding more evidence of McConnell's well-being.Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a letter dated Monday that McConnell should resign if he's unable to prove that he can continue to serve.'Provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.' "President [Donald] Trump is stuck in a war of his own making and has greatly strengthened the very country he claims is a threat," Beshear wrote."Prices continue to rise, crushing Americans who are working hard but not getting ahead. Americans' voting rights are being eliminated by the Supreme Court and threatened by congressional action. All while you are absent and refuse to communicate clearly and directly to the people you serve," he added. "As Governor of the state you serve, I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign," Beshear concluded.McConnell's office did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.The 84-year-old senator was hospitalized on June 14 after a fall that left him briefly unconscious and has also had a bout with pneumonia, according to his office. His absence from the Senate and public life has led many to speculate that his condition is far more grave than his office is admitting.A month after he entered the hospital, McConnell's office released a photograph depicting the senator and his wife, Elaine Chao, on his hospital bed. On Monday, he released a second photograph and said he was recovering at a rehabilitation center.RELATED: Mitch McConnell’s replacement might be chosen in court first Beshear also reportedly sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), asking him to begin the process of removing McConnell unless McConnell provides evidence that he is healthy enough to continue in office.If McConnell is forced to resign, his seat stays empty until a special election can determine his successor. The governor, who is a Democrat, is not legally allowed to temporarily fill the seat, as is the case in some other states. However, some have argued the governor might contest the law in court. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

It's Official: We Have a New Director of National Intelligence, and Democrats Are Hopping Mad

Democrats Call FIFA President to Congress After Trump’s World Cup “Quid Pro Quo”

Meanwhile, FIFA announced that it is planning to sell a major stake in the World Cup to a Kushner family firm.

Jeffries promises to reverse Medicaid cuts if Democrats take the House

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) pledged to rescind cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act subsidies if Democrats flip the House in November. Democrats have spent over a year criticizing cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the ACA-enhanced tax credit that expired late last year. “These […]

Who Wins (and Who Loses) in the Democrats’ New 2028 Primary Calendar?

Democratic Party officials have approved a new calendar that puts South Carolina at the head of the line. Black and Latino voters will gain new clout.