American Voter

NEW YORK — At the top of his victory speech at a Brooklyn theater late Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani — the 34-year-old democratic socialist just elected New York’s next mayor — spoke of power being gripped by the bruised and calloused hands of working Americans, away from the wealthy elite.

“Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it,” he said. “The future is in our hands.”

The imagery was apropos of the night more broadly — when a beaten-down Democratic Party, still nursing its wounds from a wipeout by President Trump a year ago, forcefully took back what some had worried was lost to them for good: momentum.

From coast to coast Tuesday night, American voters delivered a sharp rebuke to Trump and his MAGA movement, electing Democrats in important state and local races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia and passing a major California ballot measure designed to put more Democrats in Congress in 2026.

The results — a reversal of the party’s fortunes in last year’s presidential election, when Trump swept the nation’s swing states — arrived amid deep political division and entrenched Republican power in Washington. Many voters cited Trump’s agenda, and related economic woes, as motivating their choices at the ballot box.

The wins hardly reflected a unified Democratic Party nationally, or even a shared left-wing vision for a future beyond Trump. If anything, Mamdani’s win was a challenge to the Democratic Party establishment as much as a rejection of Trump.

His vision for the future is decidedly different than that of other, more moderate Democrats who won elsewhere in the country, such as Abigail Spanberger, the 46-year-old former CIA officer whom Virginians elected as their first female governor, or Mikie Sherrill, the 53-year-old former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor who won the race for New Jersey governor.

Still, the cascade of victories did evoke for many Democrats and progressives a political hope that they hadn’t felt in a while: a sense of optimism that Trump and his MAGA movement aren’t unstoppable after all, and that their own party’s ability to resist isn’t just alive and well but gaining speed.

“Let me underscore, it’s been a good evening — for everybody, not just the Democratic Party. But what a night for the Democratic Party,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during his own remarks on the national wins. “A party that is in its ascendancy, a party that’s on its toes, no longer on its heels.”

“I hope it’s the first of many dominoes that are going to happen across this country,” Noah Gotlib, 29, of Bushwick said late Tuesday at a victory party for Mamdani. “I hope there’s a hundred more Zohrans at a local, state, federal level.”

On a night of big wins, Mamdani’s nonetheless stood out as a thunderbolt from the progressive left — a full-throated rejection not just of Trump but of Mamdani’s mainstream Democratic opponent in the race: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Mamdani — a Muslim, Ugandan-born state assemblyman of Indian descent — beat Cuomo first in the Democratic ranked-choice primary in June. Cuomo, bolstered by many of New York’s moneyed interests afraid of Mamdani’s ideas for taxing the rich and spending for the poor, reentered the race as an independent.

Trump attacked Mamdani time and again as a threat. He said Monday that he would cut off federal funding to New York if Mamdani won. He even took the dramatic step of endorsing Cuomo over Curtis Sliwa, the Republican in the race, in a last-ditch effort to block Mamdani’s stunning political ascent.

Instead, city voters surged to the polls and delivered Mamdani a resounding win.

“To see him rise above all of these odds to actually deliver a vision of something that could be better, that was what really attracted me to the [Democratic Socialists of America] in the first place,” said Aminata Hughes, 31, of Harlem, who was dancing at an election-night party when Mamdani was announced the winner.

“A better world is possible,” the native New Yorker said, “and we’re not used to hearing that from our politicians.”

In trademark Trump fashion, the president dismissed the wins by his rival party, suggesting they were a result of two factors: the ongoing federal shutdown, which he has blamed on Democrats, and the fact that he wasn’t personally on people’s ballots.

Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s chief advisors, posted a paragraph to social media outlining the high number of mixed-status immigrant families in New York being impacted by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and mass deportation campaign, which Miller has helped lead.

Democrats in some ways agreed. They pointed to the shutdown and other disruptions to Americans’ safety and financial security as motivating the vote. They pointed to Trump’s immigration tactics as being an affront to hard-working families. And they pointed to Trump himself — not on the ballot but definitely a factor for voters, especially after he threatened to cut off funds to New York if the city voted for Mamdani again.

“President Trump has threatened New York City if we dare stand up to him. The people of New York came together and we said, ‘You don’t threaten New York,’” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “We’re going to stand up to bullies and thugs in the White House.”

“Today we said ‘no’ to Donald Trump and ‘yes’ to democracy,” New Jersey Democratic Chair LeRoy J. Jones Jr. told a happy crowd at Sherrill’s watch party.

“Congratulations to all the Democratic candidates who won tonight. It’s a reminder that when we come together around strong, forward-looking leaders who care about the issues that matter, we can win,” former President Obama wrote on social media. “We’ve still got plenty of work to do, but the future looks a little bit brighter.”

In addition to winning the New York mayoral and New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, Democrats outperformed Republicans in races across the country. They held several seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and won the Virginia attorney general’s race. In California, voters passed Proposition 50, a ballot measure giving state Democrats the power to redraw congressional districts in their favor ahead of next year’s midterms.

Newsom and other Democrats had made Proposition 50 all about Trump from the beginning, framing it as a direct response to Trump trying to steal power by convincing red states such as Texas to redraw their own congressional lines in favor of Republicans.

Trump has been direct about trying to shore up Republicans’ slim majority in the House, to help ensure they retain power and are able to block Democrats from thwarting his agenda. And yet, he has suggested California’s own redistricting effort was illegal and a “GIANT SCAM” under “very serious legal and criminal review.”

Trump had also gone after several of the Democrats who won on Tuesday directly. In addition to Mamdani, Trump tried to paint Spanberger and Sherrill as out-of-touch liberals too, attacking them over some of his favorite wedge issues such as transgender rights, crime and energy costs. Similar messaging was deployed by the candidates’ Republican opponents.

In some ways, Trump was going out on a political limb, trying to sway elections in blue states where his grip on the electorate is smaller and his influence is often a major motivator for people to get out and vote against him and his allies.

His weighing in on the races only added to the sense that the Democrats’ wins marked something bigger — a broader repudiation of Trump, and a good sign for Democrats heading into next year’s midterms.

Marcus LaCroix, 42, who voted for Proposition 50 at a polling site in Lomita on Tuesday evening, described it as “a counterpunch” to what he sees as the excesses and overreach of the Trump administration, and Trump’s pressure on red states to redraw their lines.

“A lot of people are very concerned about the redistricting in Texas,” he said. “But we can actually fight back.”

Ed Razine, 27, a student who lives in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, was in class when he heard Mamdani won. Soon, he was celebrating with friends at Nowadays, a Bushwick dance club hosting an election watch party.

Razine said Mamdani’s win represented a “new dawn” in American politics that he hopes will spread to other cities and states across the country.

“For me, he does represent the future of the Democratic Party — the fact that billionaires can’t just buy our election, that if someone really cares to truly represent the everyday person, people will rise up and that money will not talk,” Razine said. “At the end of the day, people talk.”

The Associated Press and Times staff writer Connor Sheets contributed to this report.

“Every single government shutdown, typically, the party in power is the party that gets blamed for the shutdown.”

US Republican commentator Chet Love explains what’s behind the latest federal government shutdown and how voters could change the course of what he calls “broken” US politics.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that his social media posts mocking President Trump, his podcast interviews with right-wing influencers and his push to redraw California’s congressional districts are all in service of one goal: making the Democratic Party look anything other than weak.

“The essence of the challenge to the party is weakness,” Newsom said during an on-stage interview Wednesday at an event hosted by the news outlet Politico.

Newsom said some of his more combative messaging choices, including sitting for interviews with Fox News host Sean Hannity and debating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, were efforts to break the cycle of Democrats responding to grievances ginned up by right-wing media, rather than setting their own agenda.

The same applies to his bombastic social media posts, posted by the governor’s media office, mocking Trump’s unhinged missives (complete with capital letters and exclamation points) and his new online store, called the Patriot Shop, that is peddling a tank top that says, “Trump is not hot,” among other not-to-subtle digs at the president. Newsom said he’s even toying with offering a “Trump corruption” crypto coin, a shot at the president’s own cryptocurrency, which the governor called a grift so great that it makes “dictators blush.”

Newsom said the problem with the Democrats, who are shut out of every branch of government in Washington, D.C., was best summed up by President Clinton after his party was shellacked in the 2002 midterm elections: American voters, given the choice, prefer “strong and wrong to weak and right.”

“Our party needs to wake up to that,” Newsom said. “We have to use every tool at our disposal to not only assert ourselves, but prove ourselves to the American people.”

Newsom’s comments come as he flirts with a 2028 presidential bid and the Democratic Party’s popularity hits record lows.

Proposition 50, the redistricting measure that California voters will see on their ballot Nov. 4, is in the same combative vein, Newsom said.

At Newsom’s urging, leaders at the Capitol shoved the measure through the state Legislature and onto the ballot in record time last week. If voters approve the measure, California would scrap its independently drawn congressional lines for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections in favor of partisan districts that could help California Democrats win as many as five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, helping the party’s effort to win control and neutralize Trump’s far-right agenda.

Democrats have cast the effort as a way to counter the Texas GOP, which recently redrew the state’s congressional districts to help Republicans pick up five House seats.

America First was the slogan Donald Trump championed during his re-election campaign as he promised to put the interests of Americans above those of foreign governments, immigrants and large corporations. However, the United States president has made several policy decisions that have divided his electoral base. The two guests in this episode of The Stream voted for Trump in the 2024 election but now find themselves on the opposite side of several issues: economic policy, foreign military spending and the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Presenter: Stefanie Dekker

Guests:
Ethan Levins – Social media journalist
Erol Morkoc – Spokesman, Republicans Overseas UK

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that he would form a new political party in the United States if a Republican-leaning Congress passes President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which proposes tax breaks and funding cuts for healthcare and food programmes.

Musk has voiced criticism of the bill on multiple occasions over the past month and began suggesting the idea of the new party on social media starting early June.

Here is more about Musk’s reservations about the bill, and about his new proposed party.

What has Musk said about the America Party?

Musk has been saying that if the bill is passed, Republicans are no different from Democrats, who are often accused by conservatives of being profligate with spending taxpayers’ dollars.

The version of the bill that the Senate is discussing at the moment, if passed by both chambers of Congress, would expand the national debt by $3.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034. The current US national debt stands at more than $36 trillion.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk posted on his social media platform, X, on Monday.

“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”

In an earlier post, Musk wrote: “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

The debt ceiling, set by the US Congress, determines the upper limit to the amount of money that the US Treasury can borrow. The current debt limit is $36.1 trillion.

Why does Musk oppose the bill?

Once a key aide and major campaign donor for Trump, Musk had a public online falling out with the president in June over his criticism of the bill.

On June 3, Musk wrote on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

Musk alleged that Trump was linked to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a now-deleted post on X. However, Trump and Musk seemed to have reached a detente when Trump told reporters that he wished Musk well while the latter wrote on X on June 11 that he had gone “too far” in his criticism of the US president.

However, since then, Musk has argued in a series of online posts that the bill would increase the debt ceiling, “bankrupt America”, and “destroy millions of jobs in America”.

Musk owns the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla. The current version of the bill, with amendments made by the Senate, seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of EVs worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30. This could reduce the consumer demand for EVs in the US.

What is the America Party that Musk proposed?

On June 5, Musk posted a poll on his X account, asking his followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle?”

While social media polls are known to be nonrepresentative of broader public sentiment, 5.6 million people voted on the poll, and 80.4 percent responded with “yes”. Since then, Musk has repeatedly reposted the poll result, citing it as evidence that most Americans want a new party to be formed.

“Musk believes that 80 percent of Americans are unhappy with the two major parties and are not being represented,” Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor at the Department of Government, the University of Essex, told Al Jazeera.

While that number might not reflect the wider American public, it does point to a trend in the electorate; according to a Gallup poll from 2024, 43 percent of Americans identified as independent, 28 percent identified as Republican and 28 percent identified as Democrat. In other words, more Americans identify as independent than as either Democrat or Republican.

One of Musk’s followers replied to a post on X with an image with the text “America Party”. The world’s richest man responded: “‘America Party’ has a nice ring to it. The party that actually represents America!”

How real is Musk’s threat?

Experts say Musk, whose net worth is $363bn as of Monday according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, would realistically be able to fund a third party in the US. However, it is still unclear whether he would go ahead with his plan or whether his party would have a significant effect on US elections.

“Musk certainly has the financial power to back a third party that could be very disruptive to the Republican Party, but it’s not certain if Musk will take on this risk,” Lindstaedt said.

Lindstaedt recalled how earlier this month, Musk backed down from his criticism of Trump on X. “If we take him at his word, he could spend hundreds of millions on this project,” she added.

“Musk has been ramping up his criticism of the bill lately, and he may find specific legislators [particularly from the House] would be willing to defect if their constituencies are more negatively affected by Trump’s policies,” Lindstaedt said, referring to the House of Representatives. “He will also have the attention of fiscal hawks in particular.”

Lindstaedt added that among American voters, there is a “huge appetite” for a third party.

“The bill will leave the US spending hundreds of billions just in the interest, and the more Americans understand this, the more they may want to flock to something different. US public frustration with the traditional parties is at an all-time high, and Musk may be able to capitalise on this.”

However, Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science in the UCL School of Public Policy in London, said it was unclear whether Musk is serious and suggested that the barriers to breaking the Republican-Democrat duopoly are hard to scale for anyone.

“This is Elon Musk bluffing,” he told Al Jazeera. “He knows as well as anyone that the power of party machines behind Democrats and Republicans is too much to surmount.”

Gift added that while forming a party is possible, “winning seats in Congress or the White House is another matter entirely”.

“At best, a third party will have little impact on US elections; at worst, it will play ‘spoiler’, taking votes from one of the two parties and de facto giving it to another.”

What has Trump said about Musk?

On Monday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, saying: “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one.”

Trump added: “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”

“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump wrote, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body aimed at boosting government efficiency and upgrading Information Technology, that Musk formed and led at the start of Trump’s second administration, before leaving on May 30.

Washington, DC – It was the 250th birthday of the United States Army, and Trump’s 79th.

Tanks and other armoured military vehicles rumbled down the streets of Washington, DC, on Saturday, in what Trump had teased as an “unforgettable” event and critics had called a pricey tribute to the “egoist-in-chief”.

Speaking after the hour-long procession, which cut through a balmy evening dotted with raindrops, Trump framed the spectacle as a long time coming.

“Every other country celebrates their victories. It’s about time America did, too,” he told the crowd, which sprawled sparsely across the National Mall.

“That’s what we’re doing tonight,” he said.

Vice President JD Vance, who introduced the president at the end of the parade, was the only official to acknowledge the dual birthdays.

“June 14th is, of course, the birthday of the army. It is, of course, the birthday of the president of the United States,” he said. “Happy birthday, Mr President.”

For critics, the overlapping dates sent a disconcerting message.

Away from the celebrations, among about 100 protesters at Logan Circle in Washington, DC, Terry Mahoney, a 55-year-old Marine veteran, described the parade as “dictator behaviour”.

“If you take everything else he’s done, stomping on the US Constitution, this parade may just be window dressing,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But it’s the worst kind of window dressing,” said Mahoney, who was among the tens of thousands of protests who took to the streets nationally to oppose Trump’s leadership on Saturday. “So I wanted to make sure that my voice was represented today.”

But blocks away, near the entrance to the heavily fortified parade route, Taras Voronyy, who travelled from South Carolina, was less concerned about the blurred lines of the parade than the soldiers it was honouring.

“It’s a chance to celebrate the military, and also, Trump will be here,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I was actually a little confused if it was supposed to be for the Army’s 250th anniversary or for Trump’s birthday,” he said. “So I guess it’s a twofer.”

A birthday celebration 

Trump had sought a massive military parade ever since attending a Bastille Day celebration in Paris in 2017, but faced pushback from defence officials during his first term.

This time around, he sent 28 Abrams tanks, a horde of armoured vehicles, cavalry, military planes and helicopters, both modern and antique, to the US capital, in a show of military hardware without comparison since 1991, when the US marked the end of the Gulf War.

Spectators gathered along Constitution Avenue – a thoroughfare that connects the White House to the US Capitol – for a pageant that stretched from the Army’s 1775 birth, through World War II, the Vietnam War, and the so-called “war on terror”.

Trump’s arrival prompted cheers, and a handful of jeers, from the crowd, which was dotted with red Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats. Attendance appeared to be less than the military’s prediction of about 200,000 people.

For Freddie Delacruz, a 63-year-old US Army veteran who travelled from North Carolina for the parade, Trump’s birthday and the Army celebration were distinct phenomena.

“It’s a coincidence,” he said. “I got married on June 6, which is the anniversary of D-day [the landing of allied forces on the beaches of Normandy, France].”

“So these things happen,” he said. “But we’re here to support the army. I spent 32 years in the army – I want to see the tanks, the planes, the helicopters flying around.”

Delacruz also did not see much significance in Trump’s deployment earlier this week of the US National Guard to California to respond to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Los Angeles and other cities.

Local officials and rights advocates have said the deployment, which was soon followed by Trump sending Marines to protect federal property and personnel, represented a major escalation and overreach of presidential power.

A judge on Thursday sided with a lawsuit filed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, ruling that Trump’s deployment without the governor’s approval was unlawful. However, an appeals court paused the ruling just hours later, allowing the deployment to temporarily continue.

Delacruz acknowledged that Trump has “got a lot of power… I mean, he’s got the Department of Defense, he’s got the Department of Department of State and now, all the Cabinet members are supporting him 100 percent”.

“But he’s still just the president, and he can’t control Congress,” he added. “This is what the people voted for.”

Aaron M, a 57-year-old Army veteran from Miami, Florida, also said he did not see an issue with how Trump has used federal forces in local law enforcement.

Trump’s decision was the first time since 1965 that a president had activated the National Guard without a governor’s consent. Both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have indicated that the approach could be replicated across the country.

In recent days, Trump has also floated invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow US troops to take part in domestic law enforcement, in what critics call a step towards martial law, but has not yet done so.

“If governors can’t get their states under control, then Trump should send [the National Guard] in,” said Aaron, who declined to give his last name.

“Look, I was born in Nicaragua. I came here when I was 12,” Aaron added.

“I know what a dictator is. This is not a dictator,” he said, motioning to the grandstand from where Trump watched the parade.

‘Protesting is patriotic’

For Anahi Rivas-Rodriguez, a 24-year-old from McAllen, Texas, the military pageantry underscored a more troubling turn, which she said included Trump’s hardline immigration policies melding with the country’s military might.

“I have a lot of people in my life who are scared. We do not belong in a fear in America,” said Rivas-Rodriguez, who joined a group of protesters marching in front of the White House.

“I do not stand by an America that tears families apart and targets people because they look brown and they look Mexican,” she said, her eyes welling up, “because they look like me”.

Trump earlier this week described the protesters as “people who hate the country”,  adding that those who came out on Saturday would be “met with very big force”.

Rivas-Rodriguez bristled.

“Protesting is patriotic, and I am here for my country because I care about America,” she said. “Maybe I’m a little intimidated [by Trump], but I am not scared because I am still here.”

About 60 arrests were made in a protest at the US Capitol late on Friday, but no major incidents were reported in the US capital on Saturday, with many groups choosing to hold protests elsewhere.

The organisers of the national “No Kings” protests held no official event in DC, despite hosting demonstrations in about 2,000 cities across the country.

In a statement, the group said they did so to avoid “allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity”.

Still, Roland Roebuck, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran from Puerto Rico, said he wanted to attend the parade in protest to send a message.

“Trump has been allergic to military service and deeply disrespectful of the military,” he said, pointing to Trump’s medical exemption from serving in Vietnam due to “bone spurs”, in what critics have said amounted to draft dodging.

Roebuck said the parade – with a price tag of between $25m and $45m – rings tone deaf at a time when Trump has been rolling back federal services, including those that affect veterans.

He also accused Trump of “erasing” the contributions of Black soldiers like himself through his administration’s anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) campaign at the Pentagon.

“Many of the people that are here are very confused with respect to what this parade represents,” Roebuck said.

“This represents a farce.”