In “Are Democrats Finding Their Spines?,” Chris Lehman reports at The Nation: “The Open Markets Institute, a DC clearinghouse of antitrust policy and legal strategy, didn’t lack for ambition in drawing up its convocation this year of political leaders, regulators, and writers attacking the powers of economic concentration. The gathering, hosted at an event space across from the grounds of the Capitol, was called “The Next American Revolution: Breaking Oligarchy and Making a New American Democracy.”…As Institute director Barry Lynn welcomed the crowd to a daylong series of panels on the challenges of antitrust enforcement and its place in our political discourse, it soon became clear that the call for revolution was another invocation of the country’s 250th anniversary; Lynn, like many of the later speakers at the event, reminded the crowd that anti-monopoly sentiment was front and center in the colonial rebellion against the British crown…Still, events outside the room lent a fresh currency to the rhetoric. The night before, a slate of three democratic socialist candidates swept into victories over establishment-backed opponents in New York’s primary balloting, spurring pundit speculation over the rise of a “Democratic Tea Party.” More here.

Eric Blanc shares some “Thoughts on the limitations of DSA, the WFP, and our unions after Tuesday’s historic election. Let’s be honest: none of our organizations are anywhere close to being as deeply rooted in the working class as we need to (or aspire to) be” at Labor Politics: “Tuesday’s election made clear the limitations — strategically and organizationally — of New York City’s labor leaders…In the city’s two marquee congressional primaries, candidates backed by labor’s biggest names — 32BJ, 1199SEIU, DC37, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the United Federation of Teachers, and others — went down to defeat. In the first, Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Adriano Espaillat, a corporate Democrat who racked up some fourteen union endorsements, lost his Upper Manhattan and Bronx seat to Darializa Avila Chevalier, a thirty-two-year-old democratic socialist insurgent backed by Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), and Justice Democrats…Delivering Avila Chevalier the biggest Congressional upset since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win in 2018, a majority of District 13 primary voters showed that they no longer trust a Democratic establishment unable or unwilling to seriously challenge Trump and an oligarchic status quo. Yet most union leaders haven’t yet followed their lead. And it’s a sign of serious internal decay that these organizations, so powerful on paper, can now deliver so little in the way of actual votes. Far too often, union members have become disconnected from our organizations…We saw this same movie play out in early 2025, when most of the city’s union leadership lined up behind Andrew Cuomo — a serial harasser they’d demanded resign four years earlier — and watched Mamdani beat him anyway. (And in another, no less troubling form, we’ve seen how many unions across the country have struggled to convince their members to vote against Trump.)” More here.

“Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Democrats can win back Trump-supporting Teamsters by embracing “economic patriotism,” arguing that a platform built around good jobs, lower costs, domestic manufacturing and national unity can reconnect the party with working-class voters,” Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee reports in “Ro Khanna Says Democrats Can Win Over Trump-Voting Teamsters By Building A ‘Bold, Aspirational Platform‘” at yahoo.com…”Democrats can win Trump voters who are Teamsters,” Khanna wrote Thursday on X. “A bold, aspirational platform of economic patriotism can inspire our nation.”…”I know that there are Trump voters out here and I know there are people who voted for Harris,” Khanna said. “But I want to say something to people who voted for Trump: we can’t go on in this country hating each other. We can’t go on in this country insulting each other.”…”My appeal to you is, let’s find a way to treat each other with respect again, to treat each other with dignity again, to build an economy for everyone and to make us proud of being American, we’re all team America,” Khanna added…The appeal comes as Democrats continue wrestling with a working-class shift away from traditional party strongholds. The Teamsters released polling in 2024 showing rank-and-file members backed Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, 59.6% to 34%, in a national electronic poll. More here.

At Mother Jones, Ari Berman reports “In a Rare Blow to Trump, the Supreme Court Just Saved Mail-In Voting—For Now,” and writes: “In a surprise victory for voting rights, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day, as long as they had been postmarked by the day of the election…The 5-4 decision by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, averts a major election disaster that would have injected chaos into the midterms. Fourteen states have mail-in ballot grace periods on the books, and 30 states accept ballots from overseas and military voters sent before or on Election Day but only received after. The New York Times found that during the 2024 election “at least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day and arrived within the legally accepted post-election window.” Changing mail-in ballot deadlines months before the general election could have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters who could have been unaware of the stricter rules, or have their ballots thrown out because of postal delays, or because they live in remote, rural locations in states like Alaska…Overruling the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett affirmed that such laws are constitutional. “In sum, the election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on election day,” she wrote. “That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.”…In fact, every major study has shown that mail-in voting is safe and secure, but the fact that four justices signed on to Trump’s crusade to get rid of mail-in ballots is highly disturbing and could embolden the president to attempt to take even more drastic steps to make it harder to vote…Today’s ruling should also not distract from the damage the Roberts Court has already done to voting rights. Its decision in late April, effectively destroying the Voting Rights Act, gave Republicans just enough time to dismantle majority-Black seats held by Democrats in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama. That was followed by a series of orders by the Republican-appointed justices on the shadow docket that expedited the GOP’s efforts to erase Black representation and give their party additional seats before the midterms.” More here.