Washington Examiner

No. 2 House Democrat breaks with Jeffries on Israel aid vote

11 days agoCenter Right

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) announced Wednesday morning that she will support an effort from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to cut off U.S. aid to Israel. Clark’s support for the amendment puts her at odds with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who told Democrats he would vote against the amendment in a Dear […]

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Plot Thickens – New Jersey Data Contractor Says Noncitizens Registering to Vote Not Our Error

The Last Refuge

2 hours ago

Plot Thickens – New Jersey Data Contractor Says Noncitizens Registering to Vote Not Our Error

The contractor responsible for the software used by the New Jersey Dept of Motor Vehicles to uplink voter registration to the state elections office is now saying their software did not cause 6,600 illegal aliens to be registered voters. Someone in New Jersey government had to create that link to register the voters. The USA […] The post Plot Thickens – New Jersey Data Contractor Says Noncitizens Registering to Vote Not Our Error appeared first on The Last Refuge.

Far Right

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Some Democrats tout their version of "America First"

Axios

2 hours ago

Some Democrats tout their version of "America First"

A small but growing number of Democrats are embracing their own version of "America First" in response to Donald Trump's ongoing war with Iran in partnership with Israel.Why it matters: Trump's war is scrambling the politics of a slogan he once owned, fracturing the right even as some Democrats — including potential 2028 presidential candidates — embrace it.Driving the news: Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Senate candidate in Michigan who campaigned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) last weekend, told Axios: "I'm the most America First candidate in the country, proudly.""When you keep our money here rather than sending it to some other country's war machine, that's America First," he said.California Rep. Ro Khanna, who's weighing a run for the White House, also is embracing the label.In April, he said it's time to "put America first" when he reintroduced a bill to ban gas exports during periods of high gas prices.In February on the House floor, Khanna said that "another war in the Middle East is not America First."And Dan Osborn, a union leader running for Senate in Nebraska as an independent against the Republican incumbent, wrote on Friday: "We need to be putting America first, not Israel first.""We can't undermine the independence of the American military for any ally," he added, "much less an untrustworthy one that's already forced us to throw money at a useless forever war overseas."Zoom out: Some Republicans agree with Democrats that Trump's war with Iran was a betrayal of his pledge to put Americans first — and that it's given Democrats a political opening.Tucker Carlson, who introduced Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2024, lobbied the president against attacking Iran and has since apologized for "misleading people" about Trump.El-Sayed agreed with Trump's critics on the right, saying that "the MAGA version of America First is to make a show out of America First, only to sell you out.""They'll always be beholden to the interests of a foreign interest lobby like AIPAC, and always be beholden to the interests of the corporate war machine, the military-industrial complex, the folks who win every single time we send our weapons abroad," he added.Between the lines: Most national Democrats still stop short of using Trump's phrase, but they increasingly echo its main arguments.Campaigning in Memphis this month, Ocasio-Cortez — who's considering a run for president or the Senate in 2028 — said that "all that money we're spending on bombs abroad could be spent on schools right here."In a speech to Arkansas' Democratic Party in April, former Vice President Kamala Harris said, "To spark an American revival, we must start with a bold agenda where our public dollars go to affordable housing and healthcare and childcare, not spent on reckless foreign wars that no one wants."Trump himself repeatedly decried "stupid foreign wars" during the 2024 campaign.Beyond antiwar statements, many Democrats have embraced domestic industrial policies aimed at reviving American manufacturing.In June, Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Cory Booker of New Jersey — both potential presidential contenders — were among those introducing the Make More in America Act.Kelly argued the bill would "build more things here at home and create good-paying jobs while reducing our dependency on foreign adversaries."Bottom line: Trump will finish his term in 2029, but the politics that led him to embrace "America First" now appear bipartisan, and here to stay.Polls indicate voters are tired of the decades of battles in the Middle East, particularly when they don't feel positive about their economic situation at home. Now politicians in both parties are trying to meet voters where they already are.

Center Left

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GOP senator says Thune ‘being too cautious’ in talks with Senate Democrats to avoid shutdown

The Hill News

4 hours ago

GOP senator says Thune ‘being too cautious’ in talks with Senate Democrats to avoid shutdown

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on Sunday said that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is “being too cautious” in his talks with Senate Democratic leaders in an effort to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September. “Look, I mean no disrespect. I love John Thune. He’s my leader. He’s got a big brain.…

Center

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Jeffries pivots to Trump and GOP when asked about noncitizens on New Jersey voter rolls

Washington Examiner

4 hours ago

Jeffries pivots to Trump and GOP when asked about noncitizens on New Jersey voter rolls

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sidestepped a question about New Jersey’s disclosure that thousands of noncitizens were mistakenly registered to vote, instead criticizing President Donald Trump and Republicans over election messaging. “I continue to have confidence in state and local authorities in making sure that there’s going to be a free and fair election […]

Center Right

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Jeffries won’t rule out vote to abolish ICE if Dems retake the House, but downplays push from his party

New York Post

5 hours ago

Jeffries won’t rule out vote to abolish ICE if Dems retake the House, but downplays push from his party

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to flatly rule out the possibility of Democrats moving to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement if his party retakes the House, but implied it's unlikely.

Right

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Sanders dismisses Rahm Emanuel’s warning that ‘Bernie bros’ could ‘spoil’ Democrats in the midterms

The Hill News

6 hours ago

Sanders dismisses Rahm Emanuel’s warning that ‘Bernie bros’ could ‘spoil’ Democrats in the midterms

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday dismissed a warning from Rahn Emanuel, former U.S. ambassador to Japan, who wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Bernie bros” could “spoil” the Democratic Party’s chances in the midterm elections. “There is a strong division within the Democratic Party,” Sanders told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan during an appearance…

Center

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GOP strategist: Democrats are destroying themselves

Alternet.org

7 hours ago

GOP strategist: Democrats are destroying themselves

President Donald Trump is so weak that political experts anticipate potentially Democrats flipping the House of Representatives, Senate or both — and yet an anti-Trump Republican strategist warns they may be undone by incompetence at the top of their organization. “The Democratic National Committee is failing every person reading these words,” Steve Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush, wrote for his Substack on Sunday. “You should be very angry about it because that failure is neither providential nor pre-ordained. It’s a choice — like Trump — and it’s killing the United States of America.”Schmidt reviewed the party’s financial travails, writing that “the MAGA Republicans have more than $128.5 million cash on hand compared to the Democratic National Committee, which is more than $2 million in debt. It’s also on track to spend exponentially more money on politics in Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa than across Mississippi and Louisiana, both of which have great US Senate candidates.”He added, “It’s unacceptable. The DNC is terribly led by Chairman Ken Martin. A sign of the political ineptitude of both [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries is their inability to deal with what must be dealt with.”He went on to quote The New York Times story that shed light on these travails. The report found that when it came to Democrats’ troubles “at the center is Ken Martin, the 53-year-old party chairman, who has found himself increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats, including current and former D.N.C. officials and members. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s troubled state of affairs.”The Times added, “Mr. Martin’s fraying nerves are showing. In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.’s human resources department.”Schmidt condemned Martin’s reported behavior, writing that “personally, I’m sick of the tolerance for losing and the Democratic Party mediocrities, careerists and hustlers who can’t, won’t, and will never stop losing because deep down they’re simply doing what they’re good at: losing.”He continued, “The problem is that we’re losing the country because it isn’t being properly defended by the institution that’s built to stand up to MAGA and be for something better. It’s one of the foremost tragedies of this whole era. It’s deeply true and very real.”AlterNet previously reported on criticisms of Martin’s performance. In June anonymous high-ranking DNC sources told AlterNet that Martin has failed to prepare for Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, mishandled releasing an autopsy of its failed 2024 presidential campaign and refused to adequately address threats to voting security on electronic machines, even though it admitted that "any assessment of the state of technology in the Democratic party would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that comprehensive data warehouses like Phoenix represent an irresistible target for hackers and other bad actors seeking to undermine the integrity of the modern political process."

Left

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Democrats are sabotaging the midterms —and this man is to blame

Alternet.org

7 hours ago

Democrats are sabotaging the midterms —and this man is to blame

President Donald Trump and his Republican Party are in an increasingly weak position as they approach the 2026 midterm elections — and yet Democrats are sabotaging themselves due to the reported incompetence of the Democratic National Committee chairman.“At the center is Ken Martin, the 53-year-old party chairman, who has found himself increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats, including current and former D.N.C. officials and members,” reported The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein on Sunday. “Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s troubled state of affairs.”Goldmacher and Epstein added, “Mr. Martin’s fraying nerves are showing. In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.’s human resources department.”The Times added that the alleged phone-throwing episode had tangible fallout, with D.N.C. human resources officials meeting with Martin about the incident. Yet that was far from Martin’s only problem during his brief tenure in charge of the organization. He has been slammed for delaying the release of an autopsy on the 2024 presidential election, and then releasing an incomplete and annotated version. He has made very few media appearances. Staffers are widely reported as being demoralized, and the organization is full of leaks. Martin reportedly is in constant fear of being fired.Perhaps worst of all, though, the D.N.C. is struggling to raise money.“None of the party’s problems are more acute than money,” the Times reported. “For more than a decade, the D.N.C. has transferred millions of dollars every election to sister committees responsible for winning the House and Senate. But the national party is now so short on cash — even after taking out a $15 million loan last year — that officials have privately conveyed to congressional leadership that there will be no such transfers in 2026.”By contrast, Republicans — even though they are struggling in polls — are far exceeding Democrats in fundraising.“New financial reports released this week revealed the depth of the D.N.C.’s financial hole,” the Times reported. “The party is $2 million in debt, while the Republican National Committee has $128.5 million in cash on hand. The party that holds the White House almost always raises more money into its party coffers, but this year’s chasm is extraordinarily large.”Speaking to AlterNet in June, various sources also expressed alarm at Martin’s leadership of the Democratic Party. One anonymous source, a longtime member of the DNC Women’s Caucus, told AlterNet that Martin has done nothing to protect mail-in voting from Trump’s reported attempts to quash it. He has also refused to move away from electronic voting and toward paper receipts, which would be harder for Trump and other Republicans to tamper with.Despite this shortcoming, the party’s “autopsy” in May acknowledged that "any assessment of the state of technology in the Democratic party would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that comprehensive data warehouses like Phoenix represent an irresistible target for hackers and other bad actors seeking to undermine the integrity of the modern political process."

Left

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No. 2 House Democrat breaks with Jeffries on Israel aid vote

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No. 2 House Democrat breaks with Jeffries on Israel aid vote

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