GOOD MORNING, HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING: At a rally in Ohio yesterday, JD Vance said: "There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil." That something, he elaborated, has to do with people who don’t fight for everyone, "but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others." Right. Vance, who accused Haitians of eating people’s cats and dogs, should know. El-Sayed holds a 1.8 percent lead over Mike Rogers in polling averages.
ELECTION DAY DRIP DRIP DRIP: Today in Tarrant County, Texas (that’s Fort Worth and environs), elections commissioners are expected to vote to scrap 92 polling places on November 3. That’s nearly one-third. Said Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico: "The most powerful people in this county don’t want us to be able to vote easily."
EXACTLY THE RIGHT QUESTION: Last night Rachel Maddow had on Greg Werkheiser, lawyer and co-founder of Cultural Heritage Partners, a legal team involved in fighting Donald Trump’s assault on Washington. She asked him about the Supreme Court’s decision Monday, in which five of the court’s conservative justices ruled that the preservationist group challenging the White House ballroom construction didn’t have standing to sue. Responded Werkheiser (at 8:55 in the video): "If Americans cannot sue to enforce laws that protect property that belongs to Americans and not to a president, then who can sue?"
CONTEXT: The ruling followed an all-too-common pattern: A lower court federal judge earlier ruled against the administration, but the Supremes jumped in to rule for Trump. According to two experts at the Brennan Center, through this March, the high court considered 30 emergency applications from the administration—and ruled in its favor 80 percent of the time.
STAY STRONG, MAPQUEST!: We didn’t know MapQuest was still around, but it is, and it’s the only big navigation platform that has defiantly insisted it’s going to stick with Lake Ontario. Google Maps caved instantly, although only for users in the United States (users in Canada still see Ontario, and global users see both names). Apple Maps is staying with Ontario for now, but Trump is bullying it to change the name, so we’ll see what we see there.
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The media are paying attention to the wrong Massachusetts Dem primary |
Tram Nguyen, a candidate for Massachusetts’s 6th congressional district Tom Williams/Getty
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As Massachusetts voters head to the polls for the primary election on Tuesday, the race between incumbent Senator Ed Markey and his younger, more moderate challenger Representative Seth Moulton continues to receive the most attention, even though 80-year-old Markey is nearly certain to win. The race to replace Moulton in the 6th congressional district, on the other hand, is wide open, serving as a microcosm of some of the issues troubling Democrats across the country.
The two front-runners in the five-candidate MA-6 race are Tram Nguyen and Dan Koh. John Beccia, who is self-funding his campaign, could have a chance but appears to be decidedly behind the former two candidates.
In some ways, the race seems a classic matchup between an insurgent progressive and an establishment moderate. Nguyen "is the more progressive, the more grassroots, the more walking the streets, knocking on doors" candidate, said Erin O’Brien, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. "That’s the easy frame to understand her." Meanwhile, Koh is "a good Democrat," she said, "more or less a moderate, lots of D.C. connections."
But perhaps more importantly, the MA-6 race showcases the nationwide split between anti-Trump resistance Democrats (like Koh) and affordability-focused candidates (like Nguyen) who want to create a message that moves beyond Trump. That divide has already played out this primary season, notably in Alex Vindman’s loss to state Representative Angie Nixon in the Florida Senate primary. Vindman gained a national profile for his testimony during the 2019 Trump impeachment inquiry, and made this a focus of his campaign. Other impeachment leaders, like Representatives Diana DeGette and Dan Goldman, lost their races to progressive challengers.
Koh, who served as deputy assistant to former President Joe Biden and deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has earned the endorsement of both Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Nguyen has been a state representative since 2019 and has earned endorsements from state progressives like Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Lori Trahan, as well as state House Speaker Ronald Mariano and state Speaker Pro Tempore Kate Hogan. Her endorsements aren’t just the typical progressive names, which could give her an edge.
"There aren’t necessarily a ton of places in America where people are breaking out the Biden name-drop," said David Hopkins, a professor of political science at Boston College. But given the more moderate makeup of the 6th district, Koh’s "calculation" to emphasize the Biden connection "may be a correct one," Hopkins added.
The district includes the northern suburbs of Boston, and is rated D+11 by the Cook Partisan Voter Index. It’s clearly a Democrat-dominated district, and the winner of today’s election is expected to win the general election against Republican Micah Jones. But the district is a far cry from the progressive urban strongholds of Boston and Cambridge. It’s an older, suburban, more middle-income district, which elected the decidedly moderate Moulton six times.
Koh’s strategy seems to be, "I want to be the champion of normie Democrats who still think Joe Biden did a good job and still think Trump is the enemy," said Hopkins. That strategy is evident as soon as you open Koh’s campaign website, which centers the slogan: "Fight Trump. Lower Costs." The first three issues on his issues page are Fighting Trump’s Corruption, Protecting Democracy, and Abolish Trump’s ICE. Meanwhile, none of the policy points on Nguyen’s website mention Trump, and she focuses instead on economic justice issues.
At the end of the day, noted Ray La Raja, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the two candidates would likely support the same legislation in Congress on most issues. "She’s trying to run in the lane to the left because she thinks that’s where the energy is," he said. "He interprets this race as people looking for a fighter."
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Jessica Pishko on ICE’s aggressive search for "UACs" (unaccompanied alien children) … Matt Ford on the ramifications of James Clyburn’s bombshell Supreme Court expansion announcement … Perry Bacon on why Democrats ought to back, you know, Democrats running for office.
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The National Park Service confirmed a second death on Monday in the Grand Canyon flash flood in Arizona that occurred over the weekend. As of Tuesday morning, one person remains missing, with some 80 people rescued in the past few days. The Park Service has said there is "no estimated reopening date" for the affected areas. The Washington Post’s Ben Knoll reports that while this is part of the expected monsoon season in Arizona, "a record-breaking El Niño and a marine heat wave in the Pacific Ocean have combined to load the atmosphere with moisture.… On the backdrop of climate change, these factors have driven atmospheric moisture levels 5 to 15 percent higher than average." Meanwhile, the death toll from flash floods in Nepal and Tibet following a glacier collapse has climbed to over a thousand. Faced with billions of dollars of repairs, Nepal has reportedly appealed to the United Nations’ climate-disaster recovery fund for help.
The Ohio Capital Journal warns that after nearly a third of Affordable Care Act enrollees in the state dropped their marketplace plans following the GOP’s decision to let subsidies expire, the "smaller, sicker clientele" that remains will see their premiums rise an average of 14.7 percent for 2027. Ohio saw the "biggest enrollment drop of any state" following the subsidy expiration. Democrats are hoping to flip the governor’s mansion, a U.S. Senate seat, three U.S. House seats, and at least six Statehouse seats in Ohio.
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"Stop Doomscrolling. Do Something," Democracy Forward president Skye Perryman urges New York Times readers. "Many of us confuse consuming political news, engaging on social media and participating in group chats with doing the things that we, as individuals, can do to help change our country’s trajectory," Perryman writes in the paper’s opinion section. But twentieth-century political history, she argues, shows that "ordinary Americans" were the ones who pushed through major reforms. "We can organize our neighbors, work at local polling places or join community groups. We must not be satisfied with watching the decline of American democracy from our phones."
In case you missed it: Public Citizen condemned the Trump administration’s announcement late last week that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be reversing an Obama-era rule establishing fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy-duty truck engines. "This latest attempted rollback by Trump is yet another giveaway to the oil and gas industry, the effects of which will increase fuel costs for truckers and in turn, raise the cost of consumer goods," said Public Citizen electric vehicle policy advocate Will Anderson in the organization’s statement.
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TNR Travel: New Dates Added |
Join a special group of readers and supporters on a lovingly designed, all-inclusive tour of one of the most spellbinding places in the world. Drawing on The New Republic’s special contacts among local historians, artists, and chefs, we’ve created a first-class experience that will immerse you in Cuba’s colorful and unique history, politics, and culture.
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"The most amazing and informative trip I’ve ever taken in my life. The presenters were without exception top intellects with superb communication skills." —Gene Bell-Villada
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POLITICAL TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY
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What two presidents (1) ordered the construction of the East and West Wings of the White House and (2) ordered and oversaw the East Wing’s significant expansion? |
Last Friday’s question and answer:
Q: On this March on Washington anniversary: Who were the two civil rights and labor leaders who organized the rally?
A: Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and labor leader A. Philip Randolph.
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