In his opinion essay, “‘Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’,” Thomas B. Edsall writes at The New York Times: “The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp…It runs the gamut from public and private institutions to core democratic customs and traditions, from the legal system to universities, from innocent targets of fraud to those duped into believing vaccines do more harm than good…Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct congressional approval. A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone…“Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.”…There are the fraud victims who will never get court-ordered restitution because Trump pardoned the guilty. In a June 2025 report, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found that “Trump’s pardons cheat victims out of an astounding $1.3 billion in restitution and fines, allowing fraudsters, tax evaders, drug traffickers to keep ill-gotten gains.” More here.

“When Rahm Emanuel says his party has “lost the plot,” he is not offering a passing observation. He is advancing a political argument — one that could shape the 2028 presidential race and a Democratic Party searching for its footing,” David J. Butler writes in “Can Democrats Reconnect With the Center?” in the Jewish Times. “Emanuel has spent recent months in early primary states delivering a blunt message: Democrats, in his view, have drifted from the instincts that once made them broadly competitive. Coming from a former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, the critique carries weight — and reflects a concern that is no longer his alone…Over the past decade, the Democratic Party has taken a noticeable turn — driven by events that demanded response, but also by choices that reshaped its public face. The shock of 2016 pushed Democrats into a more confrontational posture. The protests following George Floyd’s killing accelerated debates over race and policing, elevating slogans and policy ideas that quickly became political markers. Questions of immigration language, gender identity and school curricula moved from the margins to the center of public debate. During the pandemic, school closures and disputes over public health authority widened tensions with many parents and working families…“Defund the police,” whatever its intent, was heard by many as indifference to public safety. Terms like “Latinx,” embraced by activists and institutions, often felt imposed rather than organic. School debates over curriculum and parental involvement became proxies for broader anxieties about who sets norms and values. Immigration rhetoric, at times, was interpreted not as compassion but as a lack of seriousness about borders…Emanuel’s critique goes directly to that tension. Successful Democratic leaders, he argues, anchored themselves in shared, middle-class priorities: economic stability, safe neighborhoods, reliable schools and institutions that work. That grounding made change intelligible.”

Butler continues, “Today, the party is often seen as placing cultural positioning alongside — or above — those fundamentals. The result is not necessarily policy extremism. It is something subtler, and politically just as damaging: cultural distance…Suburban voters who are comfortable with Democratic economic policies sometimes recoil at perceived cultural overreach or instability. Even when Democrats win, they often do so more narrowly than expected — suggesting a gap between what the party offers and how it is received. These tensions extend beyond domestic policy. On issues like Israel, Democrats are also navigating a widening gap between traditional party positions and the views of a younger, more activist base — another sign of a coalition under strain…But a party that seeks to govern nationally cannot operate only in the vocabulary of its most engaged activists. It must also speak to voters outside those circles, in language that feels grounded and shared — and that reflects the priorities voters themselves consistently elevate…Emanuel is one of several voices making that case. Governors have begun emphasizing public safety alongside reform. Mayors have recalibrated their approach to policing. Party strategists are urging candidates to focus less on ideological signaling and more on economic clarity, competence and order. A quiet reassessment appears to be underway…This is what “coming home” might mean — not retreat, but rebalancing. Advancing equity and opportunity requires more than conviction. It requires connection. It requires a politics that does not assume agreement, but works to build it…Whether that shift takes hold remains uncertain. The Democratic coalition is broad, and many within it see the past decade’s changes as essential progress. Still, the central question is difficult to avoid: Can a party govern nationally if it drifts too far from how most voters understand their lives?…Democrats have faced this kind of moment before. Their most successful periods have not come from choosing between principle and pragmatism, but from aligning the two…If Emanuel and others are right, the task is not to turn back, but to recover that balance — to meet voters where they are and make it easier for them not just to agree, but to come along.”

Kyle Kondik weighs in on the Virginia redistricting election at The Center for Politics, and cautions: “There is still legal action concerning whether Democrats in the state legislature followed the proper procedure in presenting this constitutional amendment to voters—the Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to proceed, but the legal fight is not yet decided. So it is possible that the map could still end up being reversed, although doing so after the voters decided it for themselves would be a political bombshell, whatever the legal realities. Michael Martz of the Richmond Times-Dispatch recently wrote a good explainer of the legal fight…There is also a political dimension to the court proceedings. In Virginia, the seven members of the state Supreme Court are appointed to 12-year terms by a majority vote of each chamber of the state legislature. Two of the current justices, D. Arthur Kelsey and Stephen R. McCullough, are approaching the end of their terms: Kelsey’s expires in early 2027, and McCullough’s in 2028. Both were last appointed back in the mid-2010s, when Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature. It may be that the now-Democratic legislature would not reappoint these justices anyway (if they want reappointment), but one could especially imagine them having a hard time getting reappointed if they ruled against the gerrymandering referendum…If the court does rule against the new Virginia map and reverts to the old one, we will unwind these changes. In that event, VA-2 would still represent a prime Democratic offensive target, and Wittman’s VA-1 would probably still be on the board too (we had it rated as Likely Republican, but we could imagine it being Leans Republican or even Toss-up depending on the political environment). So the new Virginia map didn’t really change the race for the House—Democrats were favored before it, and they are favored after it—but it does make the Democrats’ path to the majority easier.” More here.