Democrats who want to get up to speed on “Childhood vaccines: What research shows about their safety and potential side effects” should read Naseem S. Miller’s article of the same title at Journalist’s Resource, a stub of which is cross-posted here:

This explainer about childhood vaccines, originally published on Feb. 26, was updated on Sept. 19 to explain new recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, studies vaccines and immunization for a living. And if you ask him to summarize what we know about vaccines, he’ll tell you, without hesitation, that vaccines work.

“The science behind vaccines is very clear,” says O’Leary, a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Colorado. “The benefits outweigh the risks.”

We created this tip sheet and research-based primer on the heels of the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic who now leads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

During a time when even Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and lifelong advocate of vaccinations, voted for Kennedy’s confirmation, it’s important for journalists to clearly communicate what’s known about the safety of routine childhood vaccines — and dispel myths about their dangers.

We’ve gathered the following resources in this vaccine primer:

• 5 tips when reporting on vaccines.
• What’s known about vaccine safety.
• Common vaccine side effects.
• How vaccine side effects are tracked in the U.S.
• A list of childhood vaccines along with their safety and side effects, based on what large systematic reviews and meta-analyses have found.

Read more here.

From the toplines of a new poll by The Working Class Project:

• Working class voters overwhelmingly disapprove of the job President Trump is doing on lowering the cost of living, even as they remain split evenly on his overall approval and favorability.

• Working class voters prefer Democratic messaging focused on rewarding and valuing hard work vs. overhauling broken systems and criticizing the wealthy. This messaging helps improve Democrats’ standing among working class voters on the economy.

• Democrats face dual challenges on economic and cultural issues and need to address both. Calling out politicians’ obsession with social issues helps attract more working class support.

The poll of 3,000 working class voters was taken across 21 states from August 18-27. Overall, these self-identified working class voters supported President Trump by seven points in 2024, yet the poll found significant opportunities for Democrats in a generic ballot midterm matchup.”

“Pessimism about the direction of the country is growing among Republicans: Forty-nine percent of Republicans say things in the United States are heading the right direction down from 75% in June,” The Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center report. An excerpt: “Since June, the share of adults who say the country is on the wrong track increased 13 percentage points from 62% to 75%. The shift occurred primarily among Republicans. In June, 29% of Republicans said the country was heading in the wrong direction. That number is now 51%. The vast majority of Democrats have felt the country is headed in the wrong direction since Donald Trump won the election in 2024…Among Republicans, there are notable differences by age and gender: those under 45 are more likely than older Republicans (61% vs 43%) to say the country is off track, and Republican women are more likely than men (60% vs 43%) to share that view…Views on Donald Trump’s handling of the issues are highly partisan. Trump’s best issues are border security (55% approve) and crime (46%). Roughly 4 in 10 approve of his handling of health care, trade, the economy, the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, foreign policy, and immigration…Overall, 39% of adults approve of the way Trump is handing his job as president and 60% disapprove…Roughly 60% of the public feels Trump has gone too far in imposing new tariffs on other countries, using presidential power to achieve his goals, and in using the military or federal law enforcement in U.S. cities…Nearly all Democrats believe Trump is overstepping in these policy areas. Most Republicans say Trump’s actions are about right, but nearly a quarter believe deploying the national guard and his using presidential powers are excessive, and about a third feel imposing new tariffs has gone too far…The nationwide poll was conducted September 11-15, 2025 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,183 adults. The overall margin of sampling error is +/- 3.8 percentage points.” More here.

In “Rural Americans Face Unprecedented Price Hikes for Health Care,” Jeanne Lambrew and Emma Ford write at The C entry Foundation: “The implications of actions by the Trump administration and congressional leadership are becoming increasingly clear: overall private health insurance marketplace premiums will climb at the same time as health care tax credits fall. This “double whammy” will disproportionately affect rural Americans…Specifically, new rules, tariffs, legislation, and inaction have contributed to the highest median proposed premium hikes for the individual market in the past five years: 18 percent as of August 6, 2025…At the same time, the scheduled drop in tax credits for health insurance marketplace premiums in January 2026 will increase out-of-pocket premiums by an average of 93 percent in HealthCare.gov states…According to this new analysis by The Century Foundation of thirty-two states, rural Americans will be disproportionately affected by imminent changes to marketplace coverage…Out-of-pocket premiums will increase on average by 107 percent for rural county residents compared to 89 percent for urban county residents—on top of national median increases of 18 percent…Looking at both premium increases and reliance on marketplace coverage, rural residents in states in the Upper Midwest and Southeast are at greatest risk of high prices and loss of health coverage due to recent changes in health policy.” Read more here.

Joanne Kenan explains “Why Voters Will Feel the Impact of GOP Health Cuts Before the Midterms” at Politico: “A full year before anyone casts their vote in November 2026 — meaning now, in the fall of 2025 — the American health care system will begin transitioning from an era of unprecedented expansion of coverage to an era of unprecedented cutbacks. And President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress will be easy to blame…Unless Congress reaches a deal fast on some expiring Obamacare provisions, insurance premiums are set to rise, often by double-digit percentages, in and out of Affordable Care Act exchanges. Hospitals are retrenching ahead of the massive cuts imposed by Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Altogether, around 14 million people will lose coverage in the coming decade, the Congressional Budget Office projected in August, with the first wave of losses beginning in months…And even if some of the changes in Trump’s sprawling law kick in after the 2026 elections, that doesn’t mean people won’t hear plenty about them beforehand. State legislatures will have to debate what or who to cut to fill gaping holes in their health care budgets. Health plans, providers and state Medicaid agencies will have to start educating the public about new rules established by the legislation, like Medicaid copays and work requirements…Then of course, there will be the actual political messaging, led by Democrats and advocacy groups who are ready to remind voters that the GOP cut health spending by $1 trillion while cutting taxes for the rich.” More here.

Ruy Teixeira recommends the following article, “How Democrats Lost Obama’s Vision of American Identity by Ian Reifowitz, cross-posted here from The Liberal Patriot:

Ask people what single line they remember about Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, and most will quote his words about unity, about there not being a black, white, Latino, or Asian America, but rather the United States of America.1But he also recognized the necessity of connecting the language of American unity to progressive policy goals. As Obama described his personal views:

[W]e are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother.

Barack Obama recognized that persuading people to back policies (or candidates like himself) that call for sharing resources with others first required convincing them to identify with those other people as members of the same community—namely the American people.

Obama’s soaring depiction of our country’s story, in which we’ve committed terrible wrongs in the past but also drawn upon our founding documents and values to make remarkable progress, resonated with enough Americans to elect and re-elect him to the presidency with commanding margins—a feat accomplished by none of the Democratic Party’s three subsequent presidential candidates.

It should be obvious that Donald Trump’s vision of America represents something like the antithesis of Obama’s. What’s less obvious but equally important is that Democratic politicians—influenced by far-left academics—have in important ways departed from how the 44th president talks about our history and our national identity in the years since he left office.

Obama’s approach centers on the need to actively inculcate a sense of peoplehood that unifies Americans of every kind, even as it makes space for identities based on race, culture, religion, and more. He understood that a healthy society requires a concept of America within which people of all backgrounds can find themselves. People need to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, something that connects them to a larger purpose. A concept of Americanness—a liberal patriotism—that can connect Americans to one another across boundaries is crucial to countering Trumpism broadly and racial/ethnic tribalism more specifically. Obama’s integrative vision of our national identity provides an ideological foundation for what political scientist Robert Putnam called “bridging social capital.”

Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King, Obama, in his final State of the Union, called on Americans to reject “voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background.” He called on us instead to be “inspired by those…voices that help us see ourselves not, first and foremost, as black or white, or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, not as Democrat or Republican, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed.”

Where the Academic Left’s Critique of Obama Misses the Mark

Embrace of Race Essentialism

First, there’s the question of whether to highlight commonality across lines of race versus stressing the differences, the latter sometimes to the point of race essentialism. Obama constantly emphasized the former in a balanced way, as he did in his “A More Perfect Union: Race, Politics, and Unifying Our Country” address in 2008: “Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” Likewise, here’s the 44th president on December 6, 2024, at the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum: “Pluralism does not require us to deny our unique identities or experiences, but it does require that we try to understand the identities and experiences of others and to look for common ground.”

Obama’s approach sharply contrasts with the race essentialist mindset that characterizes the views of Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility. In a statement that reflects her core beliefs, she urgedwhite people to accept that “your race shaped every aspect of your life from the moment that you took your first breath.” Race is certainly an important influence on any American’s life, but DiAngelo’s statement flattens out the wide range of the lives white Americans live. Rhetoric and policy based on such ideas cannot help but fail to adequately address the real struggles of poor whites, who remain the majority of Americans living in poverty.

The Denial of Racial Progress

A second area of disagreement concerns the degree to which we have made progress reducing racism over the course of American history. In the “A More Perfect Union” speech, then-Senator Obama contrasted his view with that of his left-wing former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in terms that could also apply to the academic left in more recent years. The problem was not in calling out racism but instead in speaking,

as if no progress had been made; as if this country…is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In a sharp contrast, from its very first paragraph, The 1619 Projectlaid out its founding principle. It contends that the idea our country was born on July 4, 1776, “is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619”—when the first enslaved Africans arrived on our shores. At that point, “America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.” Subsequently, The New York Times, which published this collection of essays, softened this claim as well as other similarly provocative language after receiving pushback from scholars and others. Nevertheless, the core of the argument remains that the enslavement of Africans in what would become the United States—a truly horrific, despicable practice that has no doubt cast a long shadow and still matters today—is the single most important event in our history, more important than the act of creating the nation itself.

Leaving aside the accuracy of this highly questionable assertion, a Democratic Party seen as believing it has no chance of being entrusted with governing our country. The Brahmin Left, however, ate it up, and The 1619 Project, about which historians have raised some serious questions, won the Pulitzer Prize. Similarly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, expressing sentiments that stand diametrically opposed to Obama’s, asserted about black Americans: “We were never meant to be part of the American story.” He says this without qualification. The statement is totalizing and eternal. Coates’s words carry real anguish, caused by racism, that all Democratic officials should understand, but this view fails to acknowledge progress, and its complete embrace would leave the Democratic Party with a politically unpopular worldview that makes it less able to enact positive change through policy.

The Support for Racial Preferences

A third area of at least partial disagreement centers on the question of whether to support universal programs—which disproportionately benefit Americans of color—versus those that explicitly target Americans by race. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote, “An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn’t just good policy; it’s also good politics.” He also explained:

The only thing I cannot do is…pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks. I’m the president of the entire United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African American community.

Compare this to what Ibram X. Kendi wrote in the first edition of How to Be An Anti-Racist, perhaps the ur-text of the race essentialist academic left: “Racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.” Kendi altered this section in a subsequent edition, after facing criticism. What he wrote provided the intellectual foundation for the push in policy for equity. It stands in direct opposition to what Obama expressed in the “A More Perfect Union” speech, when he called on Americans to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”

Biden and Harris’s Move to the Left of Obama on Race

Academics and public intellectuals aiming to stir the conscience of their readers have goals and methods that must differ from those of politicians running for office, who seek the political power to make change. Such provocateurs can take positions to the left of mainstream politicians because, after all, they don’t need to win more votes than their opponent. But what’s especially notable here is that Democratic elected officials shifted to the left of Obama on race as well.

The Biden administration relied on several of the universal programs Obama championed, but Biden also adopted too much of the Brahmin Left’s positioning on race. His first executive order called for a government-wide focus on “equity” that, among other things, promoted DEI trainings in federal government agencies and offices. Biden’s Education Department, likewise, advanced similar thinking on race in its programming. In April 2021, the Biden White House promoted a program of grants for teaching civics and American history that both uncritically praised The 1619 Project and quoted directly from Kendi’s book.

Looking at funding, the American Rescue Plan included $4 billion of debt relief that would benefit indebted farmers of color—most of whom were African American—but excluded whites. White farmers sued on the basis of racial discrimination. This policy further entrenched the belief among some white Americans that a Democratic president and Congress—focused on equity of outcomes rather than equal rights—stood on the side of minorities and stood opposed to white interests. This was a far cry from Obama’s position that he would not pass laws that only helped black Americans. Struggling black farmers in Alabama are not better off because the government chose not to include struggling white farmers in Iowa. But the latter are definitely worse off for not getting that help, and the reason behind the policy might well lead those white farmers to resent both people of color and the Democratic officials who made that choice.

Furthermore, such choices weaken the multiracial coalition of the economically vulnerable that true progressive change requires, something Dr. King understood. In Why We Can’t Wait, he called for a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged” that would include poor whites. Echoing Dr. King, Obama also tended to endorse universalist rather than race-specific policies.

Rhetorically, as well, neither Biden nor Harris decisively broke with the hard left, as Obama did when he forcefully distanced himself from Rev. Wright, or President Bill Clinton did when he distanced himself from Sister Souljah, a rapper who said after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”

Some might have expected that Biden and Harris’s more race-specific equity rhetoric would have resulted in increased support among voters of color. It did not. The reality is that the wealthy white liberals who proudly declare their devotion to the principles of DiAngelo’s White Fragility or Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist express positions on racial issues like policing or education that stand far to the left of most African Americans. The views of the Brahmin Left—which TLP’s Ruy Teixeira noted “have come to define the Democratic Party in the eyes of many working-class voters, despite the fact that many Democrats do not endorse them”—are alienating the very Americans most likely to face racial oppression. These groups also happen to include some of the fastest-growing segments of our voting population.

Democratic politicians must find ways to clearly distance themselves from the more extreme, unnuanced aspects of race essentialism, as Obama repeatedly has done. To be fair, President Biden and Vice President Harris on occasion employed language that echoed, at least in part, the Obama vision of America discussed here. Unfortunately, doing so does not have the same impact as putting it at the core of one’s worldview.

A Path Forward

Since Obama left office, Democrats have lost sight of the importance of his type of conception of America. He provided both an accurate picture of the country and showed an ability to win over sufficient numbers of working-class voters of every race—the overwhelming majority of whom are strongly patriotic. Democrats need to reembrace the Obama vision of America and avoid the more identity politics-based vision of the Brahmin Left if they wish to get a fair hearing from working-class Americans on policy prescriptions they propose.

Some intellectuals offer a path forward that differs from that proposed by Kendi, Coates, and The 1619 Project. Writer Heather McGhee has offered a compelling vision of how to talk about race along Obamaesque lines. She wrote:

The zero-sum story of racial hierarchy…is an invention of the worst elements of our society: people who gained power through ruthless exploitation and kept it by sowing constant division. It has always optimally benefited only the few while limiting the potential of the rest of us, and therefore the whole.

McGhee argues that Republicans pit racial and other groups against each other such that if one gains, the others must lose. That story is a false one. She notes that what she called the “race left” inadvertently contributes to this zero-sum vision by “focus[ing] on how white people benefited from systemic racism.” She argues that’s not an accurate story. Many whites suffered, rather than benefited, under the old laws of white supremacy, even as those laws harshly oppressed black Americans above all. For the most part, white people “lost right along with the rest of us. Racism got in the way of all of us having nice things.” Her key illustration is that when courts ordered desegregation of public swimming pools, some communities chose to fill in the pools rather than integrate them. Black people got hurt, but so did working-class whites. McGhee’s formulation is both accurate and politically persuasive to a broad audience.

Democrats need to move away from the language of equity, which implies that it would be acceptable to close the racial gaps in health or education by helping members of the disadvantaged racial groups improve while denying any help to lower-income whites. Obama understood this reality instinctively, as he made clear in his “A More Perfect Union” speech. He called on all Americans to “realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.” Like the 44th president did, today’s Democrats must talk along these lines regularly and weave these concepts into their communication about all kinds of issues, not just on special occasions.

To reorient themselves, Democrats must make some choices and offer newer, more inspiring alternatives than they have in recent years. Barack Obama brilliantly walked a middle path between extremes. He managed to acknowledge inequities and the need for more progress while also offering hope. Obama flatly rejected the faddish vision that, in the words of Teixeira, claims “America was born in slavery, marinated in racism, and remains a white supremacist society, shot through with multiple, intersecting levels of injustice that make everybody either oppressed or oppressor on a daily basis.”

Perhaps nowhere did Obama strike the balance better than in his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. Obama asked:

What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people—the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many—coming together to shape their country’s course? What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

To right the ship, tell a credible and also inspiring story, and win elections, a new generation of Democrats needs to recapture this same spirit.

1 This article draws upon a longer report published by the Progressive Policy Institute, as well as from my books, Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2012) and Riling up the Base: Examining Trump’s Use of Stereotypes through an Interdisciplinary Lens (Boston: DeGruyter Brill, 2025, co-authored with Anastacia Kurylo), along with my article, “How Progressives Talk about July 4 and Our National History in the Post-Trump Presidency Era” (Daily Kos, 2024).

Julianne McShane has a review of “Trump’s Week of Massive Legal Losses” at Mother Jones. Here’s an excerpt:

• Last Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s reciprocal tariffswere basically illegal, as my colleague Inae Oh covered. (On Truth Social, Trump alleged the court was “Highly Partisan,” adding, “If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country.”)
• The same day, a federal judge ruled that the administration could not fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border. (White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the ruling a “judicial coup.”)
• Last Sunday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children. (Miller alleged the “Biden judge” was “effectively kidnapping these migrant children.”)
• On Tuesday, an appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling requiring Trump to rehire fired Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. That prompted the administration to ask the Supreme Courtto allow the firing to proceed.
• The same day, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles was illegal, alleging that the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” (White House spokesperson Anna Kelly characterized the ruling as “a rogue judge…trying to usurp the authority of the commander in chief to protect American cities from violence and destruction.”)
• On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the administration broke the law when it froze billions of dollars in research funds to Harvard. (White House spokesperson Liz Huston called the decision “egregious.”)
• On Thursday, an appeals court ruled that Trump could not cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid without getting approval from Congress. (The administration already appealed the decision.)
• And on Friday, a federal judge blocked Trump from revoking the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants. (A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the ruling “delays justice,” adding, “unelected activist judges cannot stop the will of the American people for a safe and secure homeland.”)

Read more here.

Watching the evolution of the slowly approaching government shutdown crisis in Congress, it’s reasonably clear congressional Democrats are traumatized by what happened in March, and I wrote about how they’re dealing with that at New York:

Congressional Democrats are understandably unhappy with what happened last time they faced a government-shutdown crisis. In March, Republicans forced them into a trap where they either had to vote for another GOP-sponsored stopgap-spending measure, which offered Democrats zero concessions, or obstruct it and trigger a shutdown, punishing the government employees who were already being besieged by Elon Musk’s DOGE and other Trump administration attacks. In the House, where Democrats had no power at all, it was an easy choice: They all voted against the GOP measure. But in the Senate, where a filibuster could have very definitely stopped the bill, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer did a lot of saber-rattling but then caved, rounding up enough votes to end the filibuster and ensure the government stayed open.

Democratic activists were infuriated, and House Democrats suggested Senate Democrats were gutless. The whole episode accomplished nothing other than underlining Democratic Party fecklessness, the lack of unified party leadership, and the whip hand held by the bully Donald Trump and his subalterns in Congress.

Now they’re back to a near-identical point as the spending authority approved in March runs out on September 30. Republicans are again offering an extension of current spending levels — this one a short-term measure until November 20 — with zero concessions to the Democrats whose votes are necessary to keep the government open. To their credit, Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries are moving in lockstep this time around, agreeing to a common strategy and message. But even those gestures reflect an atmosphere of mistrust and an underlying fear of once again angering the Democratic “base.”

In recognition of their leverage, Democrats began talking weeks ago about conditions that needed to be met to earn their votes to head off a shutdown. Some wanted the Trump administration to rein in budget director Russell Vought’s highly provocative and probably unconstitutional spending clawbacks; why agree to spending levels if the people running the country felt free to ignore them? Others were interested in getting a grip on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ravaging of U.S. science, medicine, and public-health infrastructure. But the main focus among Democrats was the issue they’ve long considered their strongest heading toward the 2026 midterms: the damage being done to Americans’ access to health insurance. That meant demanding at a minimum the continuation of Obamacare premium subsidies due to expire at the end of the year, which were omitted from Trump’s megabill because of their cost and the hatred of many Republicans of the president’s signature policy accomplishment. This seemed potentially achievable because at least some Republicans feared blowback from a spike in premiums affecting many millions of middle-class Americans as early as November if the subsidies are allowed to die. And other Democrats wanted to demand the cancellation of some of the Medicaid cuts already enacted in the bill — a sure poison pill for the GOP.

The “counterproposal” unveiled by Schumer and Jeffries late Wednesday includes all the above and more, as the New York Times reports:

“Congressional Democrats on Wednesday proposed adding well over $1 trillion for Medicaid and other health programs to a stopgap spending plan needed to fund the government past Sept. 30, laying out steep demands in a showdown with Republicans that is threatening a shutdown within weeks.

“Democrats put forward a bill that would fund the government through Oct. 31 and permanently extend Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. It would reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programs enacted this year as part of Republicans’ marquee tax and spending cut legislation.

“The measure would also restrict the Trump administration’s ability to unilaterally claw back funding Congress previously approved, a power that President Trump has repeatedly invoked.”

In addition, the proposal would restore public broadcasting funds and vastly increase the amount of money Republicans have endorsed for boosting security for government officials in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. Overall, the idea appears to be to maximize and publicize the distance between the two parties on ground Democrats think they can defend.

To put it mildly, Republicans are certain to give this “plan” a frosty reception, and that seems to be fine with Democrats. As Punchbowl News reports, the GOP has formed an iron consensus in support of a “clean” stopgap bill (or to use the technical jargon, “continuing resolution” or CR) until November, delaying any concessions at all, and at the same time keeping their own fractious members from issuing their own demands for keeping the government open (mostly involving deeper spending cuts):

“[N]early every provision in this package is a non-starter for Republicans. …

“To be clear, Republicans simply have no interest in negotiating. They feel like Democrats felt in the past: Negotiating under these circumstances is validating the Democrats’ position. Republicans are comfortable saying that they’ve proposed a clean CR, which is what Democrats usually ask for, to buy time for bipartisan full-year FY2026 funding talks.”

So Democrats are complaining that Republicans won’t negotiate with them over their demands, while Republicans are complaining that Democrats won’t keep the government open and negotiate over policies later. They are talking past each other in a way that seems to make at least some sort of shutdown very likely.

But from the Democratic perspective, the big fear is another display of weakness and disunity. Right on the brink of the confrontation in Congress, there were clear signs of what “the base” wants to happen, as Semafor reports:

“A new survey from the progressive firm Data for Progress and research firm Grow Progress, shared first with Semafor, shows seven in 10 Democrats support their party withholding votes unless Republicans make changes even if it risks a shutdown, while a similar share backs their party taking a ‘firmer stand’ than they did in March.

“What’s more, Democrats are arguing voters will blame the Republicans who control government for a shutdown, and the poll shows their voters share that view, 82-14. Large majorities of Democrats also think the party should fight President Donald Trump harder — even if they don’t win.”

So after emphatically rejecting the “clean CR,” Jeffries and Schumer appear to be steeling themselves for an inevitable shutdown and taking the opportunity to do some partisan “messaging” on health care and other Democratic priorities. Its primary purpose is to ensure nobody breaks rank and repeats what happened in March. In effect, Democrats are tying their own hands so that none of them can wave a white flag. This will be a fine tonic for the troops around the country, but it’s unclear where that leaves the federal government. We’re now at the point in every game of “chicken” where someone will have to blink.

Stephen Neukam has a ‘scoop’ in his report that “Democrats lean into shutdown fight with alternative funding plan” at Axios: “Senate Democrats are expected to roll out their own government funding plan on Tuesday, Axios has learned, countering a just-unveiled House GOP proposal.

Why it matters: Democrats want to lay out a clear alternative to the short-term Republican plan as the two sides hunker down for yet another partisan showdown ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline to prevent a government shutdown.

• The Democratic proposal will include language to prevent President Trump from using rescissions to claw back funding — as he did earlier this year — as well as an extension of Affordable Care subsidies, sources familiar with the matter told Axios.
• Democratic leaders on both sides of the Capitol on Tuesday poured cold water on a GOP plan, which would fund the government through Nov. 20 and includes increased resources for lawmaker security.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in a joint statement said the GOP plan “fails to meet the needs of the American people.”

The big picture: Democrats are preparing to make a shutdown fight all about health care, which they bet will win over voters.” More here.

From “Think Big for a Change, Democrats: Call This the “No Kings” Shutdown. The consultants will tell you that taking this stand against Trump is a political loser. But this time is different” by Michael Tomasky at The New Republic: “The Democrats have announced their table stakes with respect to a possible government shutdown. Work with us to extend Obamacare tax credits, they’ve told Republicans, or you won’t get our votes, and the government will be shuttered by the October 1 deadline…There are two good things to say about this. The first is that it sounds now like they’re more willing to roll the dice on a shutdown than they were in March, when Chuck Schumer decided against the move and gave Donald Trump and the Republicans a few Senate votes to avoid a shutdown. It was, under the circumstances, a defensible decision—but it came at a time when Trump and Elon Musk were shredding the federal government. The Democratic base, which desperately wanted their leadership to take a stand, was furious at the result. Famous last words, I know, but Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries seem to understand this today…The second good thing is that there’s substantive merit to the position. The tax credits were extended on a temporary basis by Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2021. They’re due to expire. Their expiration would mean that more than 20 million who receive these subsidies would have to pay more for the health care coverage, in some cases a lot more. So, all that is good…But … why am I yawning? I’m yawning because this plan just sounds so safe and poll-tested. I’m yawning because it is essentially playing defense (again)—and defending something they had already won. And mostly I’m yawning because Donald Trump is not merely a threat to the health care subsidies of a comparatively small minority of Americans—he’s a threat to our way of life, on countless levels.” More here.

In “Trump tramples Reagan’s tough-on-the-Kremlin legacy ahead of UK state visit,” Stephen Collinson writes at CNN Politics: ” Here’s how radically Donald Trump has changed the world, and America’s place in it…The first US president to sleep over at Windsor Castle, Ronald Reagan, was lambasted in Britain in 1982 by protesters who thought he was too tough on the hard men in the Kremlin…Trump, who will this week also stay at the home of England’s monarchs for 900 years, is accused of the opposite: constantly caving to Russia, especially with his latest Ukraine war climbdown…Before leaving for Britain on Tuesday, Trump wriggled out of his most recent deadline to slap punishing sanctions on Moscow. This came despite Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly embarrassing him by raining death on Ukrainian civilians following their Alaska summit last month. Trump left their chat convinced that peace was imminent and his Nobel Peace Prize was closer. Events have exposed his misjudgment…The US president has also been downplaying alarming incursions by Russian drones into NATO nations. His docility in the face of Moscow’s aggression (he suggested the violations might have been a mistake) would have astounded Reagan, whose policies helped the US win the Cold War nearly two-and-a-half decades before Trump trashed the GOP’s hawkish internationalism.”

Trump “posted a letter to NATO members on Truth Social saying he was ready to “do major sanctions on Russia,” Collinson adds. “But there was a caveat — alliance members must stop buying oil exports that bankroll Moscow’s war effort…“I am ready to ‘go’ when you are. Just say when?” Trump wrote…It’s a clever ruse. At first sight, the president’s statement seems inherently reasonable. Why are NATO states still purchasing Russian hydrocarbonsdespite seeing Russia as a mortal threat to their security?…But Trump’s offer was a feint. He established conditions that are unlikely ever to be met, thereby getting him off the hook yet again with Putin, whom he almost never exposes to significant US coercive power…Among the other concessions Trump demanded of NATO members was to join his trade war with China by imposing 50% to 100% tariffs on its goods in order to “break that grip” he says that Beijing has over Moscow. The post ignores the fact that NATO is a defensive alliance and not a trade bloc. And alliance members who themselves have been targeted by Trump’s tariffs, including those on the European Union and Canada, seem unlikely to respond to more bullying. In any case, such moves would likely be disastrous for their economies…Trump’s unwillingness to stand up to Putin — who is constantly seeking to divide the US from its European allies — could create dangerous scenarios…Facing no pushback from the US, Russia is becoming bolder, both on its targeting of missile and drone attacks in Ukraine and with its posture in Eastern Europe. As Trump insists Putin wants peace, Russian missiles have slammed into civilian targets all over Ukraine — hundreds of miles from the frontlines. A US-owned factory was hit, and EU offices in Kyiv were damaged.” Read more here.

Some news from the strange world of Donald Trump took me way down memory lane to the 1970s, as I explained at New York:

There had been vague talk for a while in both major-party circles about holding a pre-midterms national convention (or as it was once known, a “mini-convention”). For Democrats to do something like this would be like turning around a battleship. For Republicans, all it took was one Truth Social post:

“The Republicans are going to do a Midterm Convention in order to show the great things we have done since the Presidential Election of 2024. Time and place to be determined. Stay tuned, it will be quite the Event, and very exciting! President DJT.”

President Trump could change his mind, of course, but it makes some sense from his point of view. He knows preserving Republicans’ governing trifecta is going to be an uphill climb in 2026, given the historical pattern of the White House party almost always losing House seats in the midterms. His iron control of the GOP means it won’t be hard to impose discipline on hand-picked delegates to an event like this, essentially making it a big paid ad for the party and its messages. And let’s face it, this could be the last Trump event, perhaps in conjunction with the Semiquincentennial (250th) celebration of the nation’s founding in July, at which he won’t have to share the spotlight with anyone (presumably the 2028 RNC will have to give a fair amount of stage time to his successor).

On the other hand, the historical precedent for this sort of spectacle isn’t great. Democrats held mini-conventions in 1974 and 1978, and as far as I can remember, nobody much regretted the subsequent decision to stop having them.

The 1974 confab in Kansas City actually took place in December, after the midterm elections; it was basically held to adopt a party “charter” and overcome divisions that threatened to divide the party before the midterms. After more factional skirmishing, the delegates came together over a document consolidating party reforms, and the event was mainly known for introducing the so-called “Watergate class” of newly elected Democrats.

In 1978, Democrats held another post-midterms mini-convention, this one in Memphis. Its main purpose was to unify the party behind a beleaguered President Jimmy Carter. But it was widely shunned by Democratic elected officials, and its overall lack of success was reflected in 1980 when Carter had to overcome a tough renomination challenge from Ted Kennedy, before losing a landslide general election to Ronald Reagan.

We’ll see if Democrats feel compelled to follow suit with their own midterm gathering, presumably before the elections this time, despite their own unhappy precedents. They’d be well advised to think this through carefully before moving ahead. Unlike Republicans, they have no dictatorial leader to make them sing together harmoniously, and a midterm convention could easily become the venue for factional and generational bloodletting, along with a very crowded stage for a potentially vast number of 2028 proto-presidential candidates jostling for attention. Unless Democrats think voters will excitedly greet any sign of free speech and party vitality before they vote in 2026, they might want to spend their limited time on the campaign trail rather than staging an event. But there’s no guarantee the Republican clambake will be a success, either. Given how stale and artificial national political conventions have become, one every four years is probably enough.

To get up to speed on the possibility of a government shutdown and what Democrats can do about it, read “Shutdown talk heats up as Democrats insist on stopping health care cuts” by Kevin Frecking and Lisa Mascaro at apnews.com. An excerpt:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A deadline looming, Congress charged Monday toward a federal government shutdown as Republicans brush back Democratic demands to save health care funding from cutbacks, while Democrats are flexing a newfound willingness to play hardball, even if it means closing offices and services.

Republican leaders are ready to call the Democrats’ bluff, possibly as soon as this week, with a test vote before the end-of-the-month deadline to keep government running.

GOP leaders said they could tee up a vote on a short-term spending bill that would keep the federal government fully operational when the new budget year begins Oct. 1. It would likely be a temporary patch, into mid-November.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the measure would include funds to boost security for lawmakers in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Additionally, the Trump administration said it’s asking Congress for $58 million in increased funding for the U.S. Marshals Service and security for the Supreme Court. And the Senate is considering its own proposals.

“I want everyone within the sound of my voice to understand: Members of Congress are safe,” Johnson, R-La., said Monday at the Capitol. “They will be kept safe. They have security measures now at their residence and personally. We can always enhance and do more and do better.”

In the past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

This time, however, Democrats, facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump and refuse to fund the administration’s policies, are taking a tougher position — even if it means halting funds needed to run federal offices.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries are united in opposing any legislation that doesn’t include key health care provisions.

They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiumsfor millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.

More here.

From “The Path to Victory in 2026 — a Popular, Populist Agenda That Delivers for Working People” by Rep. Greg Cesar at Data for Progress: “In the wake of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats are once again searching for a message that can win back working-class voters, mobilize our base, and unify our party. Many Americans — especially non-college-educated voters and those outside major cities — still don’t feel like either party has their back. The question is: How do we earn their trust again?…New polling from Data for Progress points to a clear answer. A bold economic message — focused on holding billionaires accountable, cracking down on corporate greed, fighting political corruption, and delivering real, economic wins for working people — significantly outperforms a more traditional Democratic message centered on “defending the rule of law” and “promoting opportunity.” In the polling, a Democratic candidate running on this bold, populist message beats a Republican by 15 points — compared to just 6 points for a candidate running on the kind of generic messaging traditional Democratic consultants default to. That’s a 9-point boost — not from ideological purity, but from clarity and conviction…And this approach has support beyond Democratic voters. Across party lines, income levels, and education levels, bold economic populism inspires Americans — especially among the working-class voters we need most….Over the last few election cycles, Democrats have continued to lose credibility with American workers. And in 2026, we have an opportunity to rebuild trust — if we lead with a populist economic vision that’s as clear as it is popular. We see a progressive, populist Democrat leading a Republican candidate with non-college voters by 9 points, while a generic Democrat loses by 2. This strategy does not hinge on chasing specific voter demographics or compromising our core values as a party.’

“We must reclaim our identity as the party of working people,” Rep. Cesar adds “the Americans left behind while billionaires and special interests rig the rules of our politics and our economy…The agenda tested in this new polling is a commonsense roadmap for action. It includes cracking down on corporate price fixing, eliminating hidden junk fees, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, expanding Medicare benefits, and ending political corruption…Each of these ideas polls well with voters across the political spectrum, among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike. Majorities of voters with household incomes under $50,000 and voters without a college degree are strongly supportive of this agenda. But more importantly, this agenda shows that voters will support Democrats if we fight clearly for our voters and against special interests. This approach directly names the villains that Americans understand are rigging the system: corrupt politicians, price-gouging corporations, and billionaires hoarding wealth while working families fall further behind…The lesson is simple: When we name our opponents clearly — corruption, soaring costs, and concentrated wealth — and show how we’ll deliver for everyday Americans, we win…That’s why this polling should be a wake-up call — not just for progressives, but for the whole Democratic party.  We don’t need to copy Republican efforts to divide working Americans. We need to be the party that lowers costs, fights corruption, and takes on the billionaires of all political stripes…This is a chance to realign our party with working people across race and across geography — to turn a crisis of trust into a coalition for change. We should take it.”

In “The Eternal Social Justice Summer: A much-maligned new book asks a fair question: Why do the excesses of the left offend voters more than those of the right?,” Richard D. Kahlenberg writes at The Washington Monthly: “It is precisely because Donald Trump is wreaking havoc daily that it’s crucial to comprehend why so many of our fellow Americans came to dislike the Democrats even more than the unlikable and chaotic man they elected president. How is it that a November 2024 survey of working-class Americans found that 58 percent believed Democrats have moved “too far left,”  a share that is 11 points higher than the share that believed Republicans have moved “too far right” (47 percent)?…A healthy concern about racial equality, particularly among white elites, morphed into an unbalanced focus that many Americans, including many Americans of color, found alienating on a host of issues…When the issue of racial preferences came before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 in a case involving Harvard University, the Biden administration arguably prioritized the interests of upper-middle-class Black and Hispanic families over working Americans of all races.  Harvard’s system of large racial preferences and legacy preferences worked well for economically advantaged students of all races. More than 70 percent of Black and Hispanic students came from the richest 20 percent of the Black and Hispanic families nationally, and the white and Asian students were even richer. Rather than backing a system of affirmative action for economically disadvantaged students of all races, however, Biden backed Harvard.”…After the 2024 election, liberals, who were fixated on race, puzzled over how on earth Trump could appeal to an increasing share of nonwhite voters, yielding what Williams calls “the least racially polarized election since 1972.” But to Williams, the result is not surprising. For nonwhite working-class voters, issues of racial reckoning didn’t touch their most pressing concerns, which centered around economic well-being. The “racial reckoning” of 2020, he writes, became “a professional-class affair, existing on another plane entirely from working-class reality.”…It is also possible that the extremism on the right is less difficult for working-class voters to stomach because it doesn’t come with the same strong sense of moral condescension that progressive activists (many of them economically well off) exude.”…Going forward, if Democrats want to win back America’s working class, they need to frame the necessary work of addressing race as a subset of the larger set of challenges facing working people across racial lines. They should emphasize race-neutral policies that serve all Americans who struggle, including working-class whites and underprivileged minorities alike. Such policies could include, for example, boosting funding for regional public and community colleges, as the Monthly’s Paul Glastris has argued…Pundits have pointed to many factors that contributed to Trump’s 2024 election—with inflation and immigration looming large—but cultural disconnect also played an important role.”

Re Trump’s latest big economic proposal – companies ending quarterly reports and just have semi-annual reports because it would “save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies” – Does anyone out there suspect that he is proposing such a reform because he is anticipating a lot of disastrous quarterly reports coming in, as a result of his tariffs? If so, know that you are not alone. The way it is now, the SEC requires quarterly earnings reports. But that could soon be changed. It’s not a new idea. Long before Trump proposed such a change, his 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton, along with Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon proposed such a change, as Matt Egan reports at CNN Business. Nor is it a such bad idea. Egan explains, “The concern is that Corporate America is often far too focused on pleasing the notoriously fickle stock market and not paying enough attention to longer-term challenges and opportunities. Moreover, some argue that the regulatory burdens of quarterly reporting have contributed significantly to the sharp decline in the number of public companies in the United States.” Further, “In the 2010s, regulators in both the European Union and the United Kingdom stopped requiring companies to report quarterly results, moving to six-month reporting periods instead.” All off a sudden, Trump likes ideas originating with liberal Democrats and business leaders. The merits of the idea notwithstanding, it may be another indication that Trump expects some really bad economic news sooner, than later.”

The following article, “Three Big Problems with the Politics of Abundance” by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

I was at the Abundance 2025 conference last week and overall I think it was a big success. There was a wide range of interesting speakers and panels and a pleasing sense of intellectual ferment. It seems likely that the discourse around abundance will continue to evolve in the future and play an important role in policy discussions. That’s a good thing.

But the politics? Ah, there’s the rub. For abundance to succeed as policy it also has to succeed as politics. And here there are some very big problems that will not go away easily and put limits on how far abundance policy can get.

1. Abundance is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Democrats. A key reason abundance has caught on in sectors of the Democratic Party is that they are desperate for something—anything—they can “stand for” besides opposing Trump. They are aware the party is at a low point in voter esteem and widely viewed, especially by working-class voters, as out of touch and ineffective. Abundance is something they can glom on to and say “see—we are turning over a new leaf and will be different in the future.”

A Washington Post article described what Democrats are embracing as “cutting back on the environmental reviews, strict zoning, labor rules and other obstacles that prevent government from efficiently building, fixing and fostering the things people want, from housing to energy.” An Axios article summarized the new approach as “respond[ing to governing failures in blue cities and states] by cutting excess regulations to build more housing, energy projects and more.”

This is fine as far as it goes and is undoubtedly needed. But notice what’s missing. There is no hint here of moving to the center on the wide variety of culturally-inflected issues—crime, immigration, affirmative action, DEI, trans, etc., etc.—that have come to define the image of the contemporary Democratic Party and are tanking the Democrats’ performance among working-class voters. Some Democratic abundance boosters recognize this problem but they are very much a minority voice.

Indeed, it is clear that for most, this is a way of eliding those uncomfortable issues. If we talk about this, we don’t have to talk about that. In this, they are not so different from their great rivals, the “fighting the oligarchy”/populist economics crowd, who also believe their economic approach will dispense with the need to confront and resolve Democrats’ profound cultural distance from normie working-class voters.

That hasn’t worked and won’t work. To believe otherwise is to disregard the clear message of the 2024 election, not to mention the Democrats’ Senate problem and population shifts that will make it ever more necessary to compete in culturally conservative red states. Abundance, in short, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for today’s Democrats. Not even close.

2. Abundance for whom? So this abundance thing—who is it actually for? There is a distinct whiff of professional class coastal liberal preferences in the animating goals of, especially, Democratic adherents to abundance. They are heavy on infill urban housing, urban infrastructure, and building out renewable energy to stave off climate catastrophe. Indeed, in the seminal text of these advocates, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the book’s introduction waxes rhapsodic on their vision of a 2050 socially liberal ecotopia, where, to paraphrase President Trump (“everything’s computer!”), everything’s electric! Fossil fuels are but a distant memory; it’s all clean energy that is dirt cheap with towering skyscraper farms for food and drones that seamlessly deliver everything your heart desires.

This is catnip for the book’s (apparent) target audience of liberal Democratic-leaning professionals but for the rest of the population—not so much. Liberal abundance advocates are obsessed with the need for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy (chiefly wind and solar with a few nukes thrown in). They center “net zero” by 2050 as an urgent priority despite its profound impracticality. And they simply refuse to take seriously the major, undeniable trade-offs between overall energy abundance and a forced march to decarbonization.

That’s a big problem. Cheap, reliable, plentiful energy must necessarily underpin any abundance worthy of the name. Cheap energy enabled the rise of industrial society and remains essential for today’s standard of living. Without it, these advocates’ vision of overall abundance is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Such abundance cannot be achieved by wind and solar solely or even mostly. It means way more nuclear and, yes, more drilling for America’s massive endowment of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel.

Liberal abundance advocates struggle to accept this fact, instead choosing to market their agenda as the way that Democrats’ dream of a rapid renewables–based transition can actually be attained. But working-class voters have little interest in this rapid clean energy transition. These voters—exactly the voters the party needs to win back—do not share the zeal of Democrats’ educated voter base for restructuring the economy around “green” industries and the clean energy agenda that underpinned much of Biden administration economic policy. The last election should have made that, well, abundantly clear.

Too few liberal abundance advocates are willing to grapple with the ways in which their preferred agenda is incompatible with the views and priorities of normie voters, as opposed to people like them. Geoff Shullenberger has noted correctly that the abundance envisioned by advocates “already exists, at least in some form, for those who can afford it,” which just happens to include a huge chunk of the Democrats’ educated professional base. Josh Barro has chided Democratic abundance advocatesfor their support of “decarbonization policies that would make energy, and the aspirational suburban lifestyle, more expensive.” And that lifestyle, he points out, is what “abundance” means for most ordinary Americans. They want that nice house in the ‘burbs with all the gadgets and vehicles! Especially vehicles—as Arizona Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has memorably remarked: “Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck.” The contrast between what most liberal Democrats, including abundance advocates, want such voters to want and what they actually do want is a fundamental problem.

Abundance for whom is an obvious, glaring question that cannot be elided. And right now, way too many abundance advocates have answers that cannot generate the public support they need.

3. Abundance is under-powered as a political project. We live in a populist erawhere a politician like Trump has succeeded by pushing a bold, uncompromising vision to sweep away a broken, elite-dominated system. His crusade is emotional and visceral in a way that liberals loathe but engages tens of millions of working-class voters.

Against this, the technocratic-flavored abundance argument seems weak by comparison. Tweaking the current system to get better outputs assumes more faith in the current system than plausibly exists among most voters. They are more likely to see it as a well-intentioned but likely ineffective reform attempt than a crusade they want to sign up to. An emotional, morally-charged, and nationalistic drive to radically transform our failing system, promote a new era of national development and grand accomplishments and leave the Chinese in the dust is more like a crusade. But at this point such a crusade seems very far from the center of gravity of the abundance discourse.

Frankly, I don’t see how abundance gets very far until and unless advocates recognize its weakness as a political project and embed it in a broader project that can move tens of millions. Only then are their ambitions likely to be realized.