democrats

WASHINGTON — Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton swept the Southern states in Super Tuesday’s Democratic presidential voting, including delegate-rich Texas and Florida, re-establishing himself as the front-runner for his party’s nomination.

Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, Clinton’s principal rival, had his chief success in his home state, which he won easily as expected. He also won the Rhode Island primary and the caucuses in Delaware.

But Tsongas did no better than second in the Southern states, including Florida, where he had made his biggest commitment of time and resources and which was generally viewed as the most significant test of the day for him and Clinton. In addition to Florida and Texas, Clinton came in first in the primaries in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Louisiana, and he won the caucuses in Missouri.

The victories Tuesday brought Clinton 418 delegates, contrasted with 208 for Tsongas and 23 for former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. Clinton started the race with 275 delegates, twice what Tsongas had. The eventual nominee will need a minimum of 2,145 delegates.

“I must say, it is only tonight that I fully understand why they call this Super Tuesday,” Clinton told cheering supporters in Chicago, where he arrived to launch his drive for primaries next Tuesday in Illinois and Michigan. “From Florida to Texas and all states in between, people opened their hearts to Hillary (his wife) and to me.”

For his part, Tsongas put a brave face on the results. “We’re on our way to the White House,” he said at a victory rally in his hometown of Lowell, Mass. He cited a Washington Post-ABC poll published Tuesday that showed him beating President Bush by 5 percentage points in a trial heat, 3 points more than Clinton’s margin over Bush.

Brown had his best showings Tuesday in Massachusetts, Mississippi and Oklahoma, running second in those states.

“This crusade rolls forward,” Brown declared Tuesday night at a United Auto Workers union hall in Romulus, Mich., a suburb of Detroit. “Hey, governing elite, watch out.

“I think I’m a lot closer to the heart and soul of this party” than the other candidates, he claimed. “I’ve got as good a chance as anybody. But this is a campaign that builds week by week. We’ve already moved from the margin to the center.

“We’re getting Tom Harkin’s vote now.” Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s role in the campaign as the spokesman for traditional Democratic liberalism ended this week when he dropped out of the race.

All told, 783 delegates–more than one-third the total required for nomination–were at stake in contests waged in 11 states, from Hawaii to Rhode Island. But seven of them were in Dixie or on its borders, which gave the day its special cast and gave Clinton an advantage he fully exploited.

A television network exit poll showed Clinton taking 68% of the vote among native-born Southerners, contrasted with 19% for Tsongas and 8% for Brown.

Once again, as in the Georgia and South Carolina primaries last week, blacks made a big contribution to Clinton’s victory. He got about 80% of the black vote across the South, according to network exit polls, contrasted with 59% of the white vote.

A Times exit poll in Florida showed that voters picked change, compassion and agreement on the issues as the main reasons that influenced their choice for President. Clinton won the support of the first two of these groups soundly and split the third evenly with Tsongas.

Tsongas appeared to have been hurt by Clinton’s charges that he was prepared to tamper with cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries. About one-fourth of those interviewed in The Times poll said that issue had influenced them, and three-fifths of that group backed Clinton.

Even on this day of triumph, concern over Clinton’s controversial draft status during the Vietnam War cast a shadow. Of Southern Democratic voters polled by the networks, 20% said this issue made them think less favorably of Clinton, although one-third of these voted for him anyway.

By contrast, in Florida, the Times poll showed that Tsongas took the votes of those interested in a candidate whose ethics they do not doubt, whom they believe they can trust, who has convictions and who has values like their own.

These answers appeared to reflect not only their confidence in Tsongas, but also their misgivings about Clinton because of the draft controversy and earlier allegations that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Those charges had damaged his campaign in New Hampshire, when polls had him far in front of the field.

Clinton attempted to address this problem Tuesday night in his victory speech in Chicago.

“The people of the South heard the worst about me but they saw the best,” he said. “They know that the true measure of character in politics can never be perfection, because, if it were, no one could pass. The true measure is genuine commitment that lasts day in and day out, through failures and disappointment and defeat and setback.”

Tsongas, who was outspent and who many thought was outmaneuvered in the day’s battle, sounded a defiant note.

“There are those who believe the American people are not intelligent, that you can be Santa Claus, that you can pander and give middle-class tax cuts,” he said, sounding one of his favorite themes at his Lowell rally. “I’m going to tell you something, Bill Clinton, you’re not going to pander your way into the White House as long as I’m around.”

Brown also sounded as if he had just begun to fight.

“I will tell you that I have a better chance than my two opponents” of getting the nomination, he told ABC News interviewer Peter Jennings. “Both of them are fatally flawed. They don’t represent the majority of who the Democratic Party is. I do. That’s my background.

“It’s hard to get the message out. But as we do, the crowds are going now from the hundreds to the thousands.”

In the frantic days of campaigning that preceded Tuesday’s day of decision, the contrasting objectives of the three Democratic contenders reflected the differences in their prospects and resources.

For Clinton, the balloting presented the opportunity to take a giant step forward in the delegate race and to gain momentum for next week’s critical contests in Illinois and Michigan.

“It’s always been the case that we had more money and more organization than anybody else,” Craig Smith, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, said on the eve of the balloting. “Our strategy has been to go in and win as many states as we can and roll up a big delegate margin.”

That is exactly what Clinton did Tuesday throughout the South.

Perhaps just as important as these tangible assets in helping Clinton was the region’s demography. It created an environment more receptive to Clinton’s economic message–centered on his call for a small tax cut for middle-class families–than Tsongas’ doctrine of relying mainly on tax incentives for business to generate growth.

“The clarity of choice between Clinton and Tsongas on economic policy works to our advantage in the South more than in states like Maryland and New Hampshire,” where Tsongas won, said David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager. “There are more middle-income voters and more working families.”

Under these circumstances, the Super Tuesday confrontation represented mainly an exercise in damage control for Tsongas. Seeking to minimize the impact of defeat, the candidate and his managers conceded the outcome well in advance.

They set their goal as finishing a “strong second” everywhere, particularly in Florida, Super Tuesday’s most competitive battleground. And they pointed to what they asserted would be more positive results elsewhere in the country next week.

“Once Super Tuesday is over, he (Clinton) has to go into the rest of the country, and we’ve done better there,” said Tsongas campaign manager Dennis Kanin, citing his candidate’s victories in New Hampshire and Maryland.

As for Brown, the self-styled candidate of protest, the balloting offered a chance to enhance the credibility his candidacy gained with victories in Colorado and Nevada. Waging his guerrilla style of political warfare from Dixie to New England, Brown sometimes seemed mainly a threat to Tsongas’ support, particularly when he appealed for the vote of environmentalists by demanding a ban on ozone-threatening products.

But Brown also sought to make inroads in Clinton’s backing among minorities, telling a rally of Latinos in El Paso, “You know you’re being ripped off, lied to, shined on.”

Here is a brief look at how the contest took shape in the biggest battlegrounds:

FLORIDA: 148 delegates.

Tsongas was drawn into making his biggest Super Tuesday commitment of time and resources here mainly because of demographics–the presence of more expatriate Northerners, more suburbanites and more upper-income voters than anywhere else in the South. Those characteristics have defined Tsongas voters in past primaries.

Recent political history also seemed encouraging. In the last two Democratic presidential campaigns, Florida has been won by non-Southern candidates who, like Tsongas, won the New Hampshire primary–former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart in 1984 and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

But as Tsongas strategists soon realized, circumstances were more favorable for Hart–who was running against another non-Southerner, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale–and for Dukakis–who had financial and organizational assets that in the 1992 contest are possessed by Clinton.

Clinton’s operation had daily polling to guide it. By contrast, conceded Rob Schroth, Tsongas’ state coordinator, “The only way I can find out what is going on is by talking to voters, to reporters and to the Clinton people.”

More important, Clinton strategists contend, Tsongas hurt his own cause. Instead of concentrating solely on his theme of economic revival, they point out, he spent much of the past few days attacking Clinton, calling the Arkansas governor “cynical and unprincipled.” He also was forced to deal with Clinton’s attacks on him for favoring a gasoline tax, for allegedly being insufficiently supportive of Israel and for supposedly being willing to tamper with Social Security cost-of-living allowances.

“He got off his message for three days and it hurt him,” said Jeff Eller, Clinton’s state coordinator. Kanin concedes that Tsongas’ shift in emphasis may have undercut his message but asserts that his candidate had no choice but to hit back at Clinton. “What Clinton was doing was attacking him all over Florida on whatever issue appealed most in that area,” Kanin said.

TEXAS: 196 delegates.

Clinton helped himself by coming to Texas early and often, as well as by capitalizing on friendships in the state that go back more than 20 years. “He’s paid a lot of attention to this state,” said George Christian, an Austin political consultant and onetime aide to former President Lyndon B. Johnson. “He’s here every time you turn around.”

Because of that, Clinton has lined up an impressive list of endorsements from elected and party officials and from leaders of key interest groups.

“He’s got the who’s who of the Mexican community and the who’s who of the black community on his side,” said George Shipley, a Democratic consultant who guided Texas Gov. Ann Richard’s campaign to victory in 1990.

One influential group, the Texas Mexican-American Democrats, not only endorsed Clinton, but also mailed out 200,000 letters to Mexican-American voters urging them to cast their ballots for the Arkansas governor.

Tsongas campaigned here for only two days, and his late-starting organization seemed to have relied at least as much on misgivings about Clinton as on Tsongas’ own virtues to get support.

Clinton “has impressive financial assets, but he has heavy personal liabilities,” said Texas Railroad Commissioner Robert Kreuger, Tsongas’ state chairman.

The personal contrast with Clinton did appear to help Tsongas win some votes. After hearing Tsongas speak at a rally at the Alamo last week, Sylvia Jiminez, a San Antonio accountant, praised his economic message but said pointedly, “Bill Clinton is too much glitz.”

SOUTHERN PRIMARIES: Clinton was helped by a big edge in endorsements from prominent Democrats in the rest of the South. Tennessee, with 68 delegates, was the only state in which Tsongas campaigned, aside from Texas and Florida. Only Brown made a significant attempt to compete in Mississippi, with 39 delegates. In Oklahoma, with 45 delegates, Tsongas failed to get on the ballot because of a technical slip-up by his staff, leaving second place to Brown.

Staff writers Cathleen Decker, David Lauter, J. Michael Kennedy and Marilyn Yaquinto contributed to this story.

RELATED STORIES, PICTURES: A12-14

Super Tuesday Vote

Here are the top finishers in Super Tuesday’s key states:

DEMOCRATS Clinton Tsongas Brown % of vote in 1. Massachusetts (primary) 11 67 14 83 2. Rhode Island (primary) 21 53 19 100 3. Delaware (caucus) 21 30 19 100 4. Florida (primary) 51 34 12 92 5. Tennessee (primary) 67 19 8 99 6. Mississippi (primary) 73 8 10 94 7. Louisiana (primary) 69 11 7 99 8. Missouri (caucus) 61 6 4 90 9. Oklahoma (primary) 70 — 17 99 10. Texas (primary) 66 19 8 78 11. Hawaii (caucus) — — — —

GOP Bush Buchanan Duke % of vote in 1. Massachusetts (primary) 66 28 2 90 2. Rhode Island (primary) 63 32 2 100 3. Delaware (caucus) — — — — 4. Florida (primary) 69 31 — 92 5. Tennessee (primary) 73 22 3 99 6. Mississippi (primary) 72 17 11 93 7. Louisiana (primary) 62 27 9 95 8. Missouri (caucus) — — — — 9. Oklahoma (primary) 70 27 3 99 10. Texas (primary) 70 24 3 76 11. Hawaii (caucus) — — — —

All numbers are percentages. Complete results, A12

Super Tuesday Roundup

Here are the latest results from Tuesday’s presidential contests. PRIMARIES Texas DEMOCRATS 78% of precincts reporting

Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 819,554 66 97 Paul E. Tsongas 230,607 19 28 Jerry Brown 93,657 8 2 REPUBLICANS 76% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 425,588 70 121 Patrick Buchanan 143,829 24 0 David Duke 15,723 3 0 Uncommitted 18,259 3 0 Florida DEMOCRATS 92% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 536,088 51 87 Paul E. Tsongas 360,339 34 58 Jerry Brown 131,267 12 3 REPUBLICANS 92% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 554,173 69 97 Patrick Buchanan 254,150 31 0 Massachusetts DEMOCRATS 83% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Paul E. Tsongas 443,150 67 88 Jerry Brown 94,483 14 6 Bill Clinton 70,480 11 0 Uncommitted 10,114 2 0 REPUBLICANS 87% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 149,247 66 26 Patrick Buchanan 63,124 28 11 David Duke 4,785 2 0 Uncommitted 8,618 4 1 Tennessee DEMOCRATS 99% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 211,488 67 56 Paul E. Tsongas 60,662 19 12 Jerry Brown 25,415 8 0 Uncommitted 12,217 4 0 REPUBLICANS 99% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 177,173 73 23 Patrick Buchanan 54,328 22 10 David Duke 7,662 3 0 Uncommitted 5,043 2 0 Louisiana DEMOCRATS 99% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 259,731 69 59 Paul E. Tsongas 41,790 11 1 Jerry Brown 24,925 7 0 REPUBLICANS 94% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 75,346 62 26 Patrick Buchanan 32,484 27 5 David Duke 10,438 9 1 Oklahoma DEMOCRATS 99% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 288,031 70 38 Jerry Brown 68,432 17 7 REPUBLICANS 98% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 147,426 70 34 Patrick Buchanan 56,234 27 0 David Duke 5,474 3 0 Mississippi DEMOCRATS 94% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 138,777 73 39 Jerry Brown 18,222 10 0 Paul E. Tsongas 15,093 8 0 Uncommitted 11,642 6 0 REPUBLICANS 92% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 104,065 72 33 Patrick Buchanan 24,320 17 0 David Duke 15,516 11 0 Rhode Island DEMOCRATS 100% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Paul E. Tsongas 26,875 53 13 Bill Clinton 10,729 21 6 Jerry Brown 9,519 19 3 Uncommitted 689 1 0 REPUBLICANS 100% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates George Bush 9,911 63 10 Patrick Buchanan 5,012 32 5 David Duke 327 2 0 Uncommitted 440 3 0 CAUCUSES Missouri DEMOCRATS 90% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton 306 61 34 Paul E. Tsongas 30 6 2 Jerry Brown 20 4 0 Uncommitted 143 29 30 Delaware DEMOCRATS 100% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Paul E. Tsongas 48 30 5 Bill Clinton 33 21 3 Jerry Brown 31 19 2 Uncommitted 47 30 4 Hawaii DEMOCRATS 0% of precincts reporting Dele- Vote % gates Bill Clinton xxx xx x Paul E. Tsongas xxx xx x Jerry Brown xxx xx x Uncommitted xxx xx x

* Republican caucuses in Missouri, Delaware and Hawaii will be held in the coming months.

Where, Robert Garcia must consider, does one begin?

Garcia is a two-term Democratic congressman from Long Beach. He’s the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, which makes him the top Democrat on the panel charged with patrolling and policing operations of the federal government — a role congressional Republicans have conspicuously abdicated. If, as seems likely, his party wins control of the House in November, Garcia is poised to take over as chairman.

After two years of reckless abandon, the most obvious target for some badly needed congressional oversight is the crooked occupant of the White House. Like a shoreline strewn with seashells or a meadow bursting with mushrooms, President Trump’s brazen corruption and naked self-dealing offer a field that is ripe for the plucking.

So, given the gavel, where to start?

“First we have to ensure that people understand that this president and the administration, what they’re doing, is unprecedented and the most corrupt administration we’ve ever seen,” Garcia said.

To wit: In just his first year back in the Oval Office, Trump reported earning at least $2.2 billion, which is 5,500 times the president’s $400,000 annual salary. (No wonder he gives away his paycheck.) But it’s not just Trump who’s raking it in hand over fist.

“You have Jared Kushner getting billions from the Saudis and other foreign governments,” Garcia said. “You have [Trump’s sons] doing real estate deals across the country, being on boards that are getting contracts from the federal government. You have the selling of pardons. I mean, the list goes on…. It is just like an endless amount of corruption.”

Before he digs in, however, Garcia has to win reelection in November.

A vote, then a reckoning?

His reconfigured congressional district, which straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, is somewhat less friendly than it used to be. As part of a redrawing under Proposition 50, the 2025 measure California voters passed to boost Democratic membership in the House, the lines were extended south, to take in the Trump-friendly territory of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. (The remap gave away a chunk of Garcia’s Democratic voters to bolster other districts.)

Still, the odds are strongly in his favor — especially in a midterm election serving as a referendum on the deeply unpopular incumbent.

Though his district leans left even after modification, Garcia said his pursuit of Trump isn’t some ideological bender. The president’s malfeasance is something constituents raise often, he said. “It’s corruption and it is affordability,” Garcia said this week from his district office in Long Beach. “Those are the two issues I hear constantly about. It’s just nonstop.”

Apart from Trump and his family, Garcia has a long list of administration officials he’d like to hold to account, and an even longer list of questions he’d like answered.

Why, for instance, are “JD Vance and Susie Wiles and Kash Patel having secret meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein files?” Garcia asked, name-checking, respectively, the vice president, White House chief of staff and FBI director. “Why is [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller out there essentially creating this huge … loss-of-due-process crisis in this country as it relates to what he’s doing with” Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security?

Also, Garcia said, he wonders what businesses have gotten in return for their generous giving to this most avaricious of administrations.

“If you are cutting secret deals with the Trumps, if you are helping to set up these these crypto schemes, if you are paying for this ballroom that no one knows about and you are gaining some sort of favor from the presidency,” he said, “we need to understand exactly what’s going on.”

Of course, any attempt to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing is sure to run into stonewalling from an obstructionist White House. The “Justice” Department, which has been thoroughly tainted and co-opted by Trump, won’t be any help either.

For that reason, Garcia said, “not only does there have to be efforts made by the Congress and the House … we also have to partner with our state partners and attorneys general and governors and outside organizations…. I think the state court process is going to also be really important for us.”

Impeachment in abeyance

Impeachment, which has a visceral appeal to certain of those deeply aggrieved by this lawless president, is not a first resort, Garcia said. Nor, he suggested, is it necessarily the second or third resort.

“Trump commits an impeachable offense every week,” Garcia said, exaggerating somewhat. But, as he noted, Trump was impeached twice in his first term and still won reelection in 2024. (Throw in a conviction on 34 felony counts and you can see the futility of trying to shame Trump into submission.)

“I don’t think you ever take anything off the table, and that includes impeachment,” Garcia said. “But that’s not our focus on Day One…. It’s time for [Democrats] to work on actually passing a forward-looking agenda and making sure that we are taking on this family and these dealings that are clearly the most threatening we’ve ever seen. To me, that has to be the immediate priority in front of us.”

Garcia and fellow Democrats are mindful of what’s driving unhappy voters who face a vexing mix of inflation and weak economic growth. Affordability is, for good reason, the central issue this election season.

But accountability matters, too. Indeed, in Trump’s debauched Washington, it’s long overdue.

That’s something else voters should consider in November.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Supreme Court for now allows Trump to plan new mail ballot rules. California to sue again
The deep dive: Will Trump interfere in the midterms? Democrats and their allies are preparing
The L.A. Times Special: Two good ideas from Republicans dead on arrival in Democratic Legislature

Until next time,
mzb
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A Maryland court has ruled against a proposed constitutional amendment that could have paved the way for Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2028 elections.

The ruling Wednesday by a judge in the state’s capital city marks another setback in Democrats’ national attempts to counter a Republican redistricting movement pushed by President Trump ahead of this year’s elections. The judge ruled that the amendment cannot appear on the November ballot, but he paused the effect of that ruling to allow for an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Democrats already control seven of Maryland’s eight congressional seats. Democratic Gov. Wes Moore called lawmakers into a special session in August with a goal of making it easier to claim that final seat.

An amendment referred to the ballot by lawmakers seeks to sidestep a court ruling that struck down a previous Democratic redistricting plan in 2022. It would declare that a constitutional requirement for districts to be compact and take into account “natural boundaries” applies only to state legislative districts, not congressional ones.

That would allow Democratic state lawmakers to draw congressional districts that cross the Chesapeake Bay, reshaping a district east of the bay that is held by Republican Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Robert Thompson ruled that lawmakers violated their own deadlines for ballot measures. Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a law signed by Moore that set a July 1 deadline for the secretary of state to certify summaries of all statewide ballot questions to the Maryland State Board of Elections.

The state attorney general’s office argued that deadline didn’t apply to the redistricting amendment because lawmakers wrote their own ballot summary for it, using their constitutional authority. The judge disagreed, instead siding with arguments by the conservative Oversight Project and Republican state lawmakers who sued.

Earlier this year, the Virginia Supreme Court also invalidated a redistricting ballot measure because of procedural violations by state lawmakers. In that case, voters had already approved an amendment in April authorizing mid-decade redistricting when the court ruled that lawmakers last year had waited too long to take an initial step necessary to qualify it for the ballot.

Virginia and Maryland both were seeking to follow the path of California, where voters approved a Democratic-backed amendment authorizing mid-decade redistricting. Democrats hope to gain as many as five congressional seats from California’s redrawn districts, plus an additional seat from new districts in Utah.

But Republicans hope to win as many as 16 additional seats from new U.S. House districts enacted in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.

Redistricting typically happens near the beginning of each decade, after new census data is released. But a mid-decade redistricting battle broke out after Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw congressional districts in hopes that it might help Republicans hold onto a slim House majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Lieb writes for the Associated Press.

ST. CLOUD, Fla. — Florida chef Elijah Button was chopping onions in June when his knife slipped and sliced his middle finger to the bone.

It was his worst kitchen accident to date. But having given up his Affordable Care Act health insurance plan in January because of a $100 monthly premium hike he couldn’t afford, the 21-year-old in St. Cloud didn’t have the money for emergency care.

“Going to the hospital for it wasn’t even an option,” he said, gesturing toward his finger before preparing a pot roast for his aunt and uncle in their suburban home. “My first thought was, ‘how am I going to fix this?’”

After Republicans in Congress let enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans expire in January, millions of Americans including Button had to decide whether to keep insurance that often doubled or tripled in cost — or risk going without it.

Months later, with no action from lawmakers to replace the lost funds, they’re facing the consequences. Some are dealing with strained budgets and exorbitant medical bills, while others avoid the doctor in fear of the cost.

Florida, whose large population of gig workers, entrepreneurs and small business owners relies heavily on the federal health insurance marketplace, has become one of the nation’s most visible epicenters of that impact.

Figures first reported by The Associated Press showed that about 440,000 Floridians dropped their Affordable Care Act plans this year — more than in any other state. Thousands more who kept coverage are struggling to get by, as prices of necessities like groceries and gasoline remain steep, and health insurers project another year of double-digit premium hikes.

While Florida had the most affected residents, its struggles are reflective of broader nationwide concerns over rising healthcare costs and a lack of meaningful policy to address them.

In the deep-red state where congressional districts were recently redrawn to strongly favor Republicans, the cost of healthcare is a major campaign issue. Republican midterm candidates have been promoting fraud crackdowns to protect federal health programs, while Democrats have been urging voters to help Congress change hands so they can restore subsidies.

Button, who is estranged from his parents, asked his uncle for help with his bloodied finger. With a butterfly bandage, splint and daily cleanings and dressings, it healed. But the scar still gnaws at Button as a symbol of what else could go wrong.

“It just feels like I’m living in a house of cards,” he said.

Florida’s population and politics make it ground zero for ACA fallout

Last fall, debate over the expiring subsidies consumed Congress, resulting in a record 43-day government shutdown as Democrats insisted on extending the COVID-era assistance and most Republicans refused.

Fast forward almost a year and lawmakers rarely reference the topic anymore. The administration says it is addressing affordability with fraud-busting efforts and deals with drug companies, but Congress hasn’t passed any significant legislation to lower health costs.

In part due to its large number of construction, hospitality and small business workers — and also because its Republican-led legislature never expanded the Medicaid safety-net health program — Florida has the largest Affordable Care Act enrollment in the country. At just over 3.8 million enrollees, it represents about a fifth of the nation’s total enrolled population.

Of the roughly 443,000 Floridians who left the marketplace, most are likely going without insurance, according to Cynthia Cox, a vice president at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. She said that’s because it is typically a “place of last resort” to get coverage.

The data doesn’t tell the stories of those who kept insurance. Tracy Rand, a licensed mental health counselor in Leesburg, Florida, is one of them.

Ever since getting her ovaries removed last year due to benign but painful tumors, she has had severe menopause symptoms that require medication, including an overactive bladder and hot flashes that cause piercing headaches.

She uses clear plastic containers to organize the more than 30 medicines and supplements she takes daily, their bottles crammed into a living-room drawer and a tray on her kitchen counter.

The 51-year-old’s Affordable Care Act plan was going to surge in price this year from $55 a month to $1,100 a month, so she downgraded. Her new plan, with higher deductibles and copays, costs $160 a month.

To make that work in her budget, Rand quit a doctoral program she was working toward, started buying groceries at cheaper stores, gave up once-monthly dinners out with her husband and stopped meeting friends regularly at a paint-your-own pottery studio.

It’s been a difficult adjustment, but a necessary one for her health.

Rand said the prospect of insurers raising rates again fills her with dread.

“I don’t know what else we can get rid of,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t know if we’re going to have to file bankruptcy.″

Clinics for the uninsured are a saving grace — but they can’t take everyone

In Orlando’s leafy, brick-paved neighborhood of Colonialtown South, Tarsha Watson found her lifeline. A clinic there called Grace Medical Home provides low-income, uninsured Floridians with comprehensive care for a $5 per-visit fee.

Watson, 54, has a master’s degree in business administration, but she hasn’t been able to find work since losing her job two years ago. That means she doesn’t have health insurance. When she explored Affordable Care Act coverage, she was quoted $600 per month, far out of her reach.

At Grace, Watson learned her blood sugar is high and that she needed to lose weight. Now, she walks laps around her backyard pool and does Tai Chi YouTube tutorials to focus on fitness. She said she wishes everyone could have her experience.

“It’s very hard out here,” she said. “It’s not enough.”

At the clinic, patients cycle in and out of a wide hallway lined with appointment rooms as doctors scan supply shelves for complimentary over-the-counter medications. The expansive building has separate areas for dental, mental health, vision and pediatric care.

CEO Stephanie Garris said it’s one of 110 free or charitable clinics in Florida, but that’s not enough to handle demand. To treat more people in response to the Affordable Care Act changes, it recently started hosting a mobile acute care clinic for walk-in patients.

Garris said Grace Medical Home treated about 1,350 people last year. Every year, they take about 350 new patients.

“Would I love to double that, triple that? Of course,” Garris said. “I just think in the reality, with the huge number of uninsured that we have, it’s just not possible.”

Health costs become an issue in midterm campaigns

For U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, a Democrat defending his seat in a sprawling — and now much redder — redrawn district south of Orlando, health costs are a campaign focal point.

He said his district, which is near various theme parks, had the second-largest Affordable Care Act enrollment in the nation, in part because many small tourism businesses can’t offer employees health insurance.

“I just hear it everywhere I go,” he said. His Republican opponent, Navy veteran and former Trump administration official Dan Green, did not answer emailed questions about the subsidies but has emphasized affordability of groceries and property insurance as campaign priorities.

Soto voted with Democrats and some Republicans — including a few from Florida — to save the subsidies last year. The Republican majority declined and suggested other ideas, including funding Americans’ health savings accounts. No law along those lines has passed yet.

Button, a Democrat in Soto’s district, said he is open to different reforms for health costs, but said politicians aren’t acting fast enough.

“They keep trying to make excuse after excuse,” he said. “I don’t have six months to a year to wait for you guys to pass this through the hoops that you need to.”

Swenson and Martin write for the Associated Press.

OMAHA, Neb. — “Do they still like Trump in Nebraska? I think so,” the president said during a recent event in Washington.

Given that the state easily backed Republican Donald Trump three times and hasn’t supported a Democrat for the White House since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, the answer may seem obvious.

But in Nebraska’s largest city, it’s an open question and could decide one of the country’s most-watched congressional races. Retiring Rep. Don Bacon ’s open seat pits fellow Republican and Omaha City Councilmember Brinker Harding against Democratic activist Denise Powell.

The district encompasses an increasingly Democratic-leaning Omaha metro area of 1 million-plus and its more conservative suburbs — famous for steaks and the Reuben sandwich’s birthplace, though New York disputes that.

It’s one of just eight districts nationwide that elected Republicans in House races while supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over Trump two years ago.

Harding and Powell have been making the rounds at parades and festivals where meat raffles offer oversized sausages as prizes. However, those on-the-ground appeals could be drowned out by Trump who, like most things in politics, has moved to shape November’s midterm elections in his own image.

The president is organizing a Republican midterm convention in Dallas next month that will serve as much a two-day rally for him as a boon to party candidates nationwide. Trump is also frequently visiting tightly contested districts, despite his low approval ratings and the unpopular war in Iran.

While Trump centers himself, Democrats are happy to oblige.

When Powell knocks on doors to talk to voters, she asks, “What’s keeping you up at night?” On a sweaty Saturday afternoon, John Rosseter responded without hesitation. “Well, Trump.”

“I want to see the history books written years from now,” said Rosseter, 67, who owns a carpentry business. “They won’t be pretty.”

The ‘Blue Dot’ hasn’t helped Democratic House candidates

Nebraska splits its presidential electoral votes, and the 2nd Congressional District’s delegate has gone to Democrats three out of five times since 2008, making it a “ blue dot ” in an otherwise Republican red state. But a Democrat has won the House seat just once since 1994.

Harding plays up Trump’s primary endorsement, and House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise campaigned for him. Harding said he has “the full confidence of, not only the White House, but leadership in the Congress.”

He has also tried to appeal to swing voters and says he knows the district better than does Powell, co-founder of Women Who Run Nebraska, which supports female candidates.

Two possible Democratic 2028 presidential candidates — ex-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rahm Emanuel, an ex-Chicago mayor who was President Barack Obama’s first White House chief of staff — have campaigned with Powell.

She talks about how Medicare cuts have increased anxiety about affordability. Powell also points to Trump and his family’s business dealings as an example of “the choices that they have made while people on the ground are struggling” and she says that resonates with Republicans.

“Even the ones who aren’t necessarily anti-Trump,” Powell said, “understand the need for checks and balances.”

Some Democrats want a ‘Blue Dot Wave’

Jason Brown and his wife, Ruth Huebner-Brown, caused a sensation in 2024 by spray painting about 50 reused lawn signs with blue dots and distributing them around Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood. The couple has since expanded to professionally produce signs promoting a “Blue Dot Wave.”

Brown said the Republican-controlled Congress has capitulated on “every Trump nominee, every Trump policy, all the way down to putting gilding gold on statues.”

Supporters of Harding have countered with red “Brinker Dot” signs.

“We need to make sure that we keep this country on the track to being even better,” Harding said.

Jack Hosking, the 90-year-old retired former head of a title insurance company, organizes a weekly coffee to discuss political and community issues. He estimated that about 70% of attendees are Trump voters and “maybe even more so lately, because of the crap that the New York mayor started,” referring to Zohran Mamdani’s efforts at pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Both Powell and Harding have addressed Hosking’s group, though, and he predicted that as much as half will support the Democrat.

“She spoke well enough that, my sense is, a lot of them will cross over,” Hosking said, noting that when it came to campaigning, “Brinker’s not doing much.”

The president seen as a base motivator

The Republican National Committee views Trump as a national asset, betting he can prevent complacency in a year without a presidential race, when enthusiasm for the party in power typically wanes.

The committee rebranded its “Young Guns” program for key candidates to “MAGA Majority” in deference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, and many congressional candidates will be at the Dallas convention with Trump.

Others aren’t waiting that long.

Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Tom Barrett of Michigan, whom Democrats are aiming to unseat, both appeared with Trump during his rallies in their districts. When the president visited Macungie, Pennsylvania, in June, he joined Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, saying, “I’m here for him.”

Trump also traveled to the Wisconsin district of Republican Rep. Derreck Van Orden, as have Cabinet members.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, facing a reelection fight, appeared with Trump during an April event in Arizona. Two Iowa Republicans in what could be toss-up reelection contests, Reps Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, both were by Trump’s side when he kicked off his midterm campaign outside Des Moines.

Bacon sometimes defied the White House in his final term. He criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and tried to curb Trump’s ability to impose tariffs and was the only House Republican who opposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Mary Jane Truemper, who heads the Nebraska Republican Party, said Powell and the state’s Democrats have moved too far to the left. She called Harding “a steady force” and said the nominee is not as fond of picking high-profile fights the way Bacon sometimes was.

“I think he speaks to the moderate Democrats as well as the Republicans,” said Truemper, who managed Bacon’s reelection campaign in 2018 and also worked for an unsuccessful primary challenger to him.

Even Powell said, “Don Bacon was a good representative of this district, and I think that there are a lot of people drawn to a pragmatic style of leadership in a state like ours.” But that may not be enough this year.

“People are worse off than they were before,” Powell said.

A local race may expose a wider party divide among neighbors

In the Elmwood Park neighborhood, Andy Maxwell, a 58-year-old pediatrician, said he likes to find the middle ground in politics and his community. But he recalled that, after putting up a Biden sign in his yard in 2020, his neighbors erected a Trump one.

“We don’t like all the turmoil part of it,” Maxwell said of politics nationally.

Nearby, 80-year-old Jerard Pearson called Democrats “feckless,” but said of Trump’s base supporters, “I’ve always been curious about this one-third level of crazy out there, a third of the population.” He is also no fan of a neighbor’s large “Harding for Congress” sign.

Truemper said Harding appreciates Trump’s endorsement but Nebraskans like to be wooed “person-to-person, rather than a national entity coming in.”

“Is that going to be the deciding factor?” she asked of Trump. “I don’t know.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

The high desert is not typically a place you look for a wave. But in the vast expanse between the Sierra Nevada and Utah border, a not-exactly-wide-open race for Congress is testing whether a blue wave, should one come November, is ankle-high or something more akin to a political tsunami.

Nevada’s 2nd District has been represented by just four lawmakers since its creation more than 40 years ago. All those representatives have been Republicans.

November’s contest should be another shoo-in for the GOP and its nominee, David Flippo. The district, which takes in northern Nevada, is overwhelmingly white and rural, which makes it solidly conservative. In 2024, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by a decisive 56% to 42%; only Washoe County, home to Reno, kept things that close. Trump won other portions of the district by 50 percentage points or more.

But inflation, Trump’s sagging approval rating and other factors — northern resentment toward southern Nevada, where Flippo lived until fairly recently, the refusal of the incumbent to support his party’s nominee — offer Democrats the not-entirely-far-fetched hope of a major upset.

“It will be an interesting summer and fall,” Mark Amodei, who has represented the district for 15 years, wrote on social media after the June primary. “But I believe it’s fair to say that CD-2, for the first time in its history, isn’t a Republican guarantee.”

That’s just about the kindest thing the congressman has had to say about his would-be successor.

All of which make the sprawling district in Nevada’s rough and rocky Great Basin an improbable political bellwether. A win on such forbidding terrain would almost certainly mean a nationwide Democratic gain of 30 or more seats in November; they need to flip just three to take control of the House.

Flippo, 63, a 25-year Air Force veteran and Trump stalwart, arrived in the district from Las Vegas. He ran for Congress there in 2024, losing in the Republican primary. He was preparing for a second try in the Democratic-leaning 4th District when Amodei unexpectedly announced his retirement in February. So Flippo hightailed it north to run in the far more hospitable 2nd District.

He took on the favored candidate of Amodei and others in the GOP establishment, James Settelmeyer, a former minority leader of the state Senate. Backed by a constellation of MAGA celebrities, Flippo waged a fiercely negative campaign, accusing “Tampon Jim” of voting to put menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms and coddling undocumented immigrants, among other distortions. With Trump’s endorsement, Flippo handily defeated Settelmeyer and 11 other primary opponents.

“”Absolutely scurrilous campaign against … one of the nicest guys around,” Amodei said afterward, on the program “Nevada Newsmakers.” “The voters are never wrong. But guess what? Mark Amodei’s not endorsing [Flippo.] I wish him all the best. No way. No, thank you.”

Apart from his exceedingly short-term residency in the district, questions have also been raised about Flippo’s opaque finances. He has lent his campaign more than $1.6 million and failed to provide the personal disclosure information required of federal candidates. There is also no record of Flippo filing the required statement during his 2024 campaign, according to the Washington news outlet NOTUS.

In addition, it reported that Flippo was fired from a job in the financial services industry after his company accused him of violating policies and regulations.

So, a carpetbagger with a sketchy history.

Flippo’s main opponent is Teresa Benitez-Thompson, 48, a longtime Reno resident, former member of the state Assembly and a relatively moderate Democrat. Those credentials also buoy Democratic hopes. The party’s congressional campaign committee has, for the first time in decades, added Nevada’s 2nd District to its target list, though it remains to be seen how much time and money national Democrats commit to the race.

To prevail, Benitez-Thompson would have to defy political gravity, which is to say overcome the reflexive partisanship that has typified politics in this age of deep voter polarization.

In the last two midterm elections, according to the Pew Research Center, more than 90% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters supported GOP candidates for the House. In other words, the kind of crossover voters that Benitez-Thompson needs to win have become rare indeed.

““Trump is a huge liability for Republicans; there is no question that the GOP is going to have huge turnout problems, meaning that in a lot of races, Democrats are going to greatly exceed expectations,” the veteran election handicapper Charlie Cook wrote in a recent midterm analysis. “But converting Republican voters to actually back a Democrat — even for a day — is so much harder now.”

Jon Ralston, one of Nevada’s leading political savants, agreed.

“Some of those rural Nevada voters would rather commit hara-kiri than vote for a Democrat,” Ralston said. (No, Japan’s ancient suicide ritual is not particularly associated with honor or custom in the cow counties, as Nevada’s lightly populated stretches are known. But you get the point.)

“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Ralston, founder and chief executive of the Nevada Independent news site, said of a Democratic upset. “But I remain skeptical.”

Here’s the thing, though, about wave elections — and, to be clear, your friendly political columnist is offering no predictions ahead of November. Like a massive ocean swell, which can bear all kinds of flotsam and jetsam ashore, a political wave that is big enough, broad enough and strong enough can carry all manner of unlikely candidates to victory.

Even in the bone-dry desert.

Big-city mayors are giving poll workers panic buttons in case election skeptics question their work. County and state officials are gaming out responses to immigration raids near voting centers.

Lawyers for Democratic states and civic groups are pre-writing legal challenges to ballot seizures. And Democratic aides in Washington are preparing members of Congress to push back in the court of public opinion against any baseless claims of voter fraud in competitive districts.

Across California and the nation, civic organizations, voting rights advocates and Democratic leaders are preparing for a raft of potential actions by the Trump administration to interfere in, subvert or deny November’s midterm vote.

President Trump, an election denier for years, has without evidence described the U.S. election system as badly corrupted by fraud and dangerously vulnerable to both domestic and foreign interference.

He has said he would do “anything necessary” to have “honest elections,” and has tried since returning to office to unilaterally rewrite the rules for voting nationwide and wrest control of elections from the states through executive orders and other administrative measures.

Now, he has declined to rule out additional and unprecedented steps to force his will on the November election, including through emergency declarations and military deployments, and in February suggested Republicans should simply take over voting in blue states.

Election experts say there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections, despite Trump’s allies searching for years.

A worker looks through ballots at a Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Monday, June 8, 2026 in City of Industry, CA. Counting continues on ballots cast for the state’s primary election held June 2.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Much of the work to resist any Trump interference or power grab is being done quietly to avoid revealing too much of the strategy to the Trump administration or stoking unnecessary fear among voters.

It is designed to match what Trump’s opponents see as his three-part “interference playbook” — to “deceive” voters before the election, “disrupt” the vote itself and “deny” any unfavorable results after, said Justin Vail of Protect Democracy, a prominent litigant against the administration.

“The threats are real,” Vail said, “but the preparation is larger and more coordinated than ever before.”

The scenarios being planned for include the president deploying troops or immigration agents to polling sites to intimidate voters, fomenting unrest as a pretext to declare a national emergency, claiming fraud in the ballot counts of key congressional races or commanding the U.S. Postal Service to intervene in mail ballot delivery.

All told, the efforts amount to an unprecedented exercise to ensure the nation’s elections are safe from its own federal government.

They also reflect a deterioration in trust between states and counties overseeing elections, voting rights and pro-democracy advocates and a federal administration that has denigrated their work and tried to take control of voting away from states.

As public frustration with the economy mounts and Trump’s approval rating sinks, Democrats have become hopeful their party will retake power in Congress. Trump, meanwhile, has suggested that alleged election integrity problems will be the culprit if Republicans lose.

In California, 61% of voters recently identified federal inference in November as a “major concern,” according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.

“We are taking this threat really seriously,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who helped form a Senate task force to prepare. “Politically, I’m very optimistic about the midterms. But I’m also deeply concerned with the president’s willingness to interfere with them — and the fact that, unlike even in 2020, where there were at least some people around him to try to constrain what he was doing, all those people are gone.”

President Donald Trump is seen on a screen as his supporters cheer during a rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters gathered in the nation’s capital today to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election.

(Samuel Corum / Getty Images)

Much of the work is legal preparation among Democratic state attorneys general and lawyers with leading civic organizations. Nothing is being ruled out after Trump’s supporters, at his goading, violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, following his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Other preparation is political, as members of Congress, mayors and other elected officials position themselves to use their bully pulpits and legislative powers to punch back. And grassroots campaigns are also unfolding, as community leaders recruit voters to defend their local elections, including online.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck task,” said Skye Perryman, president of the nonpartisan legal organization Democracy Forward. “We’re anticipating scenarios we haven’t seen before in the United States.”

Trump, who has never accepted his 2020 loss to Biden despite scores of reviews and audits confirming the result, has consistently sought to undermine Americans’ trust in elections, telling the nation in a prime-time speech last month that the voting system was “broken” and claiming that the SAVE America Act, a strict Republican-proposed voter ID and citizenship measure, is necessary to fix it.

The White House said it wouldn’t respond to hypothetical questions about the midterm election, but said anyone who breaks voting laws will be held accountable. Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, blamed “extreme liberal Democrats” for undermining U.S. confidence in elections by blocking the SAVE America Act, which Trump has failed to push through Congress.

Bis claimed voters support such changes, and said “President Trump is absolutely right: We fix this now, or we lose our country.”

Causes for concern

The fears of interference are driven by Trump’s long record of election denial; his recent insistence that the midterms are vulnerable to both domestic fraud and foreign interference; his success installing loyalists and fellow election deniers in powerful positions throughout his government; and his current administration’s many attempts to usurp control over state voting processes, including through executive orders, lawsuits and legislation.

Trump and his allies have sued to compel blue states to turn over voter rolls; seized ballots in Georgia; tried to limit mail voting via new U.S. Postal Service rules; pushed stricter citizenship and voter ID requirements via executive order and in Congress; diminished independent agencies tasking with helping states secure elections; kicked off a nationwide gerrymandering effort to boost Republican chances in the House; and threatened to imprison Democratic leaders who stand in their way.

Sen. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (C) departs after a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol on June 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is visiting Capitol Hill to attend a closed-door luncheon with the Republican Senate Steering Committee to push his SAVE America Act, which would impose strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements in federal elections.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Some analysts saw Trump’s speech last month as laying the groundwork for greater intervention in November, and he raised further alarm this month by entertaining a suggestion from conservative radio host and election conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root that the president has “the right to declare a national security emergency” to unilaterally enforce new voting restrictions.

“Stranger things have happened,” Trump responded.

The White House has previously downplayed the likelihood of immigration agents being deployed to polling locations, but Trump has refused to rule it out. Legal experts say such a move would probably be swiftly blocked by courts, as would any unlawful deployment of military troops to polls.

Some voting experts said Trump’s efforts shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, particularly given federal courts’ dim view of them to date.

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, noted Trump’s executive orders on elections were blocked, the Justice Department is 0 for 23 in cases demanding state voter rolls, and the primaries have run smoothly with high turnout — showing the president is “having very little effect.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said it is “important that people be aware that there are threats, but to not let those threats be debilitating” or prevent them from voting.

Civic experts are urging regular voters to help debunk misinformation about voting within their communities. Democracy Forward has asked people to take one civic-minded action per day leading up to the election, while Indivisible, a progressive grassroots organization, is training volunteers nationwide to mount public push-back to any interference.

Coordination in Congress

A Senate aide who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity said members of the Senate task force meet regularly to plan for as many potential forms of interference as possible — and that there is “no bottom” to what they’re considering.

Task force members are studying nuanced local election laws to understand how Congress members should respond to any federal interference in their home states, and working on “coordinated messaging” that all members can use in response to immigration raids or other broad interference, the aide said.

National Guard troops stand in the shade at The Park at LeDroit in Northwest on August 12, 2026 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming credit for Washington’s dramatic crime decline a year after Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to the nation’s Capitol, but the evidence shows crime was already falling before his federal intervention and the extent to which his policies accelerated that decline remains disputed.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

They are also reading “line by line” through recent legal decisions limiting National Guard deployments and other federal actions to identify any “loopholes” the administration might exploit.

They are paying particular attention to districts with competitive congressional races and where past problems have arisen. In California, they’ve studied the recent seizure of ballots by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and the criticism of slow ballot counting statewide, the aide said.

Schiff said the scenario he is “most concerned” about is one in which the president or his allies “seed” unrest in big cities to “give the president a pretext, Reichstag fire-like, to call out the military or invoke the Insurrection Act or call out ICE or Border Patrol.”

The Reichstag fire erupted in the German parliament four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor in 1933, and was used to justify a sweeping crackdown on political opponents and the suspension of civil liberties — ushering in Nazi rule.

Schiff said lawsuits will be a necessary but “very imperfect remedy” in such a scenario, and Democrats will need to develop a more robust response combining “litigation with mobilization” and legislative oversight.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which has election oversight, is helping to create an election observer program for hotly contested races, and has warned his colleagues that he will call a vote on any election-related emergency Trump declares, so that they must co-sign or resist it.

Separately in the House, staffers have been building their own “road map” for how to deal with a laundry list of “terrible things that bad-faith actors who seek to subvert the election could do,” with a principal focus on any ways they might disrupt the Jan. 3 swearing in of new Congress members, said a House aide involved in the preparations there, who spoke with The Times on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Capitol, on July 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.

(Tom Brenner / Getty Images)

House staffers are also looking at how court imposed limits on Trump’s emergency powers might be “exploited, weaponized [or] ignored” by the administration, including the Justice Department.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the department is “working diligently” to fulfill the demands of Trump’s election-related executive order purporting to “strengthen the integrity of our elections,” which courts have blocked, and has “statutory authority to enforce our nation’s election laws, including through requesting state voter rolls,” which courts have also blocked.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department’s civil rights division and has threatened local elections officials with legal consequences if they don’t comply with her voter roll demands, said her division “has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the voting public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”

State and local preparations

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said attorneys from his office and similar Democratic ones across the country are “hard at work planning, preparing, strategizing, researching, getting ready for all the different ways the Trump administration can break the law.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, right, holds a press conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, May 14, 2026.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

That includes any attempts to seize ballots, deploy federal law enforcement or the military, or command the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with mail ballots, he said. “The right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow. It’s fundamental. We need to protect it.”

Dean Logan, registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County, said he has a responsibility to ensure that “election operations remain secure and uninterrupted” no matter the threat, and is taking steps to do so, though he declined to address potential acts by Trump. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said big cities are also preparing, including to prevent harassment of voters or election workers.

“Cities are where we host vote centers. It’s where the volunteers come from, where people go with their questions,” Richardson said. “We have to pay attention to national rhetoric. We have to be aware of anxiety that might — tensions that may — arise.”

Progressive state Sen. Aisha Wahab will replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell in Congress and finish his current term.

Wahab (D-Hayward) defeated Melissa Hernandez, the president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board and the former mayor of Dublin who was seen as the more moderate candidate. The two faced off in a special runoff election on Tuesday, and the Associated Press declared Wahab the winner Thursday afternoon.

The two Democrats will face each other again in the Nov. 3 general election to determine who will represent a slightly redrawn district in the East Bay for a full term beginning in 2027.

Following a Thursday update from Alameda County elections officials, Wahab led with 53.1% of the vote to Hernandez’s 46.9%, according to the secretary of state’s website. The additional ballots widened the slim lead Wahab held on election night.

“This victory belongs to the voters who made clear that our district cannot be bought,” Wahab posted on Facebook Thursday after the race was called. “Through one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen, we never took the bait or went negative. We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me. From foster care to Congress, this journey shows the possibility of the American Dream. Today this district made history by electing the first Afghan American to Congress.”

In an email to supporters, Hernandez said the November election “will be in the new district lines, adding 26,000 Dublin voters who didn’t have the chance to vote for me in August. We’re looking forward to winning this on November 3rd with a more favorable district and a much larger electorate. Game on!”

Swalwell, a Dublin Democrat, resigned from the seat and dropped his bid for California governor in April after multiple women accused him of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies.

Though Wahab was favored to win the seat and finished first in both the regular and special election primaries, the race became more competitive after the pro-Israel group American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars on ads attacking her. Though the war in Gaza was not a central campaign issue, Wahab has criticized Israel’s military actions in Gaza and described it as a genocide. Hernandez has defended Israel’s right to defend itself.

Progressives celebrated Wahab’s victory despite the heavy spending against her.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group founded by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said her campaign “should be studied by every progressive running for office in America.”

“The lesson from CA-14 is simple: Democrats do not have to surrender to the biggest checkbook in the race,” Geevarghese said. “Big money can buy television ads, mailboxes and endless attacks. It cannot buy the trust built through thousands of conversations between neighbors. That is the model: Unite the movement, organize everywhere, and make billionaire money fight us on our terrain.”

Democrats on Thursday narrowed the list of potential host cities for their 2028 presidential convention to Boston, Denver and Philadelphia as their party looks ahead to a wide-open primary to succeed President Trump.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement the cities put forward “incredibly strong bids,” and he promised the convention would be an “inspiring celebration of our party’s future nominee.”

A final decision is expected to be made later this year by party leaders. Republicans have already chosen Houston for the site of their 2028 convention.

The Democratic convention, scheduled for Aug. 7-10, 2028, traditionally gives the party a chance to formally introduce its nominee to the country, rally the base and kick-start the most intense period of campaigning ahead of the general election.

The party didn’t specify why Atlanta and Chicago, which was the site of the 2024 convention, were eliminated. Officials visited all five cities in April and May, considering logistical and fundraising capacity among other factors.

The three finalists are liberal strongholds surrounded by the type of suburban areas that have become increasingly important to the party in recent elections. They also provide access to fundraising and key demographic and interest groups, like labor unions.

While Colorado and Massachusetts have gone Democratic in recent presidential elections, Pennsylvania has been among the biggest battlegrounds. Trump, a Republican, won Pennsylvania in 2024.

Philadelphia last hosted the convention in 2016, Denver in 2008 and Boston in 2004.

Before the presidential primary gets into gear, Democrats are looking at this year’s midterm elections as an opportunity to flip the narrowly divided Republican-led House and maybe take back control of the Senate.

Democrats face fundraising disadvantages compared with Republicans, along with financial debt, and Martin has confronted criticism over his stewardship of the party.

During a recent DNC meeting in Texas, Martin downplayed the critics and called for the party to unite as it tries to win the midterms and look ahead to 2028 and the end of Trump’s second term.

Catalini writes for the Associated Press.

Californians are more concerned about the Trump administration interfering in the state’s midterm elections than they are about voter fraud, noncitizens voting illegally or foreign interference, according to a new poll.

A majority of voters — 61% — identified potential federal interference as a “major concern” heading into November, slightly more than the 59% who cited possible foreign interference as such, according to the poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times.

By comparison, 41% of California voters identified voter fraud and 37% identified noncitizens voting as major concerns, the poll found.

The polling reflects the liberal leanings of the state, where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, as well as the nation’s hyperpartisan divide on voting issues and vulnerabilities.

That divide has been driven for years by President Trump’s relentless criticism of U.S. elections, particularly in large blue states such as California, and recently by his administration’s attempts to wrest control over voting processes from the states based on unverified claims of widespread fraud and the fierce pushback against those claims from California Democrats and other liberal leaders around the country.

The White House has dismissed concerns about interference and accused Democrats of obstructing its efforts to protect American elections from fraud, including through the proposed SAVE America Act — which would enforce strict new ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters nationwide.

While 80% of Democratic respondents to the poll said potential federal interference in the state’s elections was a major concern, just 28% of Republican respondents identified it as such.

Voter fraud was identified as a major concern by 84% of Republican voters but just 21% of Democratic voters, the poll found. Noncitizens voting illegally also was identified as a major concern by 85% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.

Republicans also have substantial concerns about the security of mail ballots and how slowly California counts its vote, while Democrats were far less concerned about those issues, the poll found.

Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director, said it clearly reflects the partisan divide around election issues and “shows that in this state, federal interference is a big deal — more so than in other places around the country.”

He called that a “big finding” in line with previous polls that found “Californians are very concerned about prioritizing efforts to defend democracy and to protect election systems,” including in the face of threats from Trump — who routinely has focused on the state in his regular attacks on election integrity.

“For 61% of Californians to say that’s a major concern to them in terms of the threats to the election system, I think that’s very newsworthy,” DiCamillo said.

He also noted the particularly stark difference between state Democrats and Republicans on the issue of noncitizens voting.

“Nearly 90% of Democrats say that’s not a concern, whereas 85% of Republicans feel it is,” he said. “Californians have a lot of noncitizens in the state, but Democrats don’t think they’re infecting the voter rolls, so they’re not concerned about it.”

That was striking, DiCamillo said, given how much Trump has pointed to California to claim that noncitizens are voting.

“Obviously, the Democrats are very strongly opposed to the president, what he’s trying to do, and the Republicans are supportive,” DiCamillo said.

Other findings in the poll also support that conclusion.

For instance, while Trump has claimed without evidence that mail ballots are a major source of fraud and their use should be reined in, the poll found that 72% of Californians approve of mail ballots as a primary method for voting in the state — with 58% saying they strongly approve.

California law requires every registered voter in the state to be sent a mail ballot, and more than 80% of voters have used such ballots in recent elections.

Trump also repeatedly has accused California officials of failing to secure state elections against fraud and of cheating as they count later-arriving mail ballots. But the poll found that Californians by greater than a 2-to-1 margin — 65% to 31% — are confident local election officials are accurately and fairly counting ballots. However, the poll did find that more than half of respondents, 53%, had concerns about delays in California’s vote-counting process.

Overall, 64% of respondents were confident in the integrity of the state’s election system, compared to 34% who were not.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, downplayed the threats of voter fraud and noncitizens voting in the state, but acknowledged they are real concerns for some voters — which is a problem in itself.

“I see election security as both a matter of actual security and perceived security. And the truth is that we have a great deal of actual security in California elections, but, unfortunately, that security is not being perceived by some voters,” she said. She attributed that in part to the “constant drumbeat that we’ve had now for a decade, coming from the occupant of the White House, that our elections are rigged.”

Alexander said California law requires registering voters to prove and attest to their identity and has multiple verification measures to ensure people casting ballots are who they say they are. She said there are “common sense” reasons why noncitizens do not try to vote — including that it requires them to turn over personal information and could be grounds for criminal charges and deportation, which is “a huge disincentive.”

Alexander also said Trump administration interference in the midterms is a real concern, but so is overhyping the threat to the point it discourages voters from casting ballots.

“Not to dismiss the threats — the threats are real — but the more we talk about them, the more we scare voters,” Alexander said. “I’ve encountered voters who’ve said this to me: ‘What’s the point in voting when they’re just gonna cheat?’ Or, you know: ‘It’s all rigged.’ And that’s part of the play here — is to scare people into thinking that voting doesn’t matter.”

To counter that, Alexander said it is “really important that people be aware that there are threats, but to not let those threats be debilitating or to allow them to dissuade people from wanting to participate.”

The poll surveyed 4,207 registered voters in California from Aug. 3 to 9, online in English and Spanish, and has an estimated margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have given preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture tied to President Trump and his family to operate a digital-asset bank, a decision that has drawn immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats who are now pushing legislation to bar such an action.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and nine other Senate Democrats introduced a bill Saturday that would bar the president, the vice president, their immediate family members and other senior government officials from owning or controlling banks.

The measure was proposed a day after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — which is part of the Trump administration — granted conditional approval for World Liberty Trust Co. to become a trust bank. The firm was founded in 2024 by two of Trump’s sons and the sons of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.

If the firm gets final approval, it would not act like a conventional bank and take deposits or make loans. Instead, the chartered bank would be able to issue and manage cryptocurrencies and digital assets. But the move would grant new financial powers to the Trump family’s crypto business, which has already shown to be profitable for the president in his first year back in the White House.

Trump’s financial disclosures show the president has earned more than $1.2 billion from crypto-related projects as he has pushed to deregulate the digital-asset industry. He hauled in more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products and is a significant owner of the firm through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake.

Aside from World Liberty Financial, Trump last year took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his likeness.

Trump’s crypto windfall has lately fueled Democrats’ argument that the president stands to personally gain from the same regulatory apparatus he oversees, and has led to acrimonious negotiations in Capitol Hill over how to regulate the industry.

The White House said Tuesday “there are no conflicts of interest.” But the recent decision by federal regulators in relation to World Liberty Financial is now giving more ammunition to Democrats, who have pushed for more ethical guardrails to crack down on the Trump family’s crypto ventures.

“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen — and Congress cannot allow it to stand,” Warren said in a statement. “The Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act will close the door on this kind of unprecedented corruption.”

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said the decision to allow a Trump-linked crypto firm to charter its own bank is “injecting risk into our financial system and fueling the Trump family’s business endeavors.”

“It is Congress’ responsibility and duty now to rein in this corruption and ensure that bank charters, deposit insurance, and other banking licenses cannot be handed out to entities influenced or controlled by any President’s family,” Alsobrooks said in a statement.

David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, disputed the criticism, saying the preliminary approval is “great news for consumer and investor protection advocates and for the American financial services industry.”

“Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is running towards regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it,” Wachsman said in a statement. “World Liberty Trust Company’s national charter will ensure robust and permanent regulatory supervision from the OCC, a federal banking regulator, that will outlast the Trump administration.”

Wachsman said World Liberty will be required to provide weekly reports about its operations that will be subject to independent reviews. He added that federal banking laws such as anti-money-laundering rules and consumer protection statutes will be “directly applicable and enforceable.”

The White House did not comment directly about the administration’s involvement with the World Liberty application to charter a bank. But in a statement, the White House disputed claims that the president’s decisions in office have financially benefited him and his allies.

“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “The President only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

Kelly added: “There are no conflicts of interest.”

Lawmakers in the United States have renewed calls for answers about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that reports emerging from the aircraft carrier may belie a troubling pattern.

In at least three separate appeals, Democrats called for more information about how the Navy prepared for the vessel’s record-breaking deployment.

The aircraft carrier has been involved in military operations against Venezuela as well as the US-Israel war on Iran since it departed from San Diego, California, in November.

The ship has yet to dock for a port call in the time since. Having spent more than 260 days at sea, it has broken the US Navy’s record for the longest deployment without a stop.

Reports have emerged in recent weeks about crew members attempting to jump overboard amid shortages of food and other supplies.

On Tuesday, US Representative Pat Ryan published a letter sent to acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and signed by 22 members of Congress.

It noted that the lengthy deployments “have become a pattern in the Administration’s handling of its war against Iran”.

The war, which began on February 28, shows no sign of ending. Ryan pointed out that the USS Gerald Ford had also broken records for the length of its deployment as part of the Iran war, and it, too, was the subject of worrying reports about strain on sailors’ health. The ship returned to the US in April.

“The reported conditions on the Lincoln, following so soon after the reported conditions on the Ford, leave Congress and the public concerned that the Department is not adapting quickly enough to the conditions,” Ryan wrote in his letter, dated August 14.

He also questioned whether US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East, was “taking the appropriate steps to mitigate the continued challenges in our fleet”.

A delegation of California lawmakers, including Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, has also sent a letter to the Pentagon calling for an inquiry.

Separately, a group of Democratic senators addressed another letter, dated August 15, to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, demanding answers and calling for accountability.

“This is a symptom of poor planning by both you and the President and exacerbated by the deeply unsound decision to start a war with Iran,” that letter said.

“Open-ended deployments driven by an open-ended war have real consequences for our servicemembers, and we are seeing those consequences now.”

The appeals for more information come as the USS Lincoln prepares to navigate home.

Cao revealed last week that the USS Lincoln would soon return to the US. The announcement coincided with reports that the USS George Washington has been rerouted from the Pacific Ocean to replace its fellow aircraft carrier.

But the USS Washington’s departure leaves no aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, long portrayed as a region of strategic interest for the US as it seeks to check China’s territorial ambitions.

President Donald Trump and his defence officials, meanwhile, have argued that reports about the USS Lincoln’s conditions have been overblown.

Hegseth, for instance, has called the reports of conditions “completely misrepresented”. Trump last week also said the vessel had not been deployed “nearly long enough”.

On Monday, the president brushed aside questions about the USS Lincoln’s conditions as part of a “CNN fake report”.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, has also released a statement on social media this week, saying he has visited the USS Lincoln in recent days and found the crew “awe-inspiring”.

“This doesn’t mean that all is perfect,” he wrote. “Find any of the nearly 4 million Navy veterans in America today and they will likely tell you that service at sea for long periods isn’t for everyone.”

But he applauded the USS Lincoln’s leadership for having made “mental health and crew resilience” a priority.

Unlike Democrats, members of Trump’s Republican Party have largely not responded to the reports of mental health strain and supply shortages on the USS Lincoln.

However, Representative Don Bacon voiced concern during an interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation programme on Sunday.

“We should have oversight,” he said.

The youth movement among our political leaders, especially among Democrats, is in full cry. On the whole, this looks to be a positive inflection point in our political leadership, empowering a new generation of leaders advocating needed changes in the government’s relationship with its constituents.

But in some particulars it’s misplaced. As the smoke from the recent party primaries clears, it’s proper to take stock in what we’ve lost, alongside what we may gain from a changing of the guard.

For example, take Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.), 78, who was turfed out of his seat in his state’s Aug. 11 primary by his Democratic challenger, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 47.

Given that Larson is in his 28th year as a member of congress, it sounds reasonable to suggest that it’s his time to go. But that means overlooking Larson’s most important role in the House, as a member of both the majority and (currently) the minority. And that’s his persistent campaign to preserve Social Security — indeed, to enhance it so it serves today’s workers as well or better than it has served Americans since its enactment in 1935.

There doesn’t seem to be much risk that Bronin’s election, which looks likely, will undermine the progressive faction in the House.

Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District, which Larson represents, is perhaps the bluest district in a blue state, and Bronin’s policy positions tick all the appropriate progressive boxes. But it will probably take years for Bronin to acquire the credibility on Social Security that Larson possessed, even assuming that he wishes to do so.

Larson’s instrument has been the Social Security 2100 Act, which he first introduced in 2017. The act has never passed, but in its draft versions it has embodied several principles that remain fundamental to the Democratic approach to Social Security.

Among them: augmenting benefits to the lowest-wage workers; providing coverage to those whose work has been outside the system, such as family caregivers; and raising Social Security taxes on the rich, who have increasingly avoided paying their fair share of the costs of this all-important antipoverty program. More on that in a moment.

Larson’s loss didn’t result from his championing Social Security. The thrust of Bronin’s campaign was almost entirely that Larson had grown too old in the job, and the path should be cleared for new blood (i.e., himself).

Nothing is new about the drive to bring fresh faces and fresh ideas into the political mainstream. Youth movements arise regularly in politics, especially in times of partisan discontent.

George Orwell, whose observations about the politics and mores of his time remain relevant to the present, wrote (in 1932) of the youth movement that erupted in Britain in 1918.

“At that time,” he wrote in “The Road to Wigan Pier,” his classic about class and economics, “there was, among the young, a curious cult of hatred of ‘old men.’ The dominance of ‘old men’ was held to be responsible for every evil known to humanity, and every accepted institution from [Sir Walter] Scott’s novels to the House of Lords was derided merely because ‘old men’ were in favor of it.”

Orwell traced the phenomenon to Britain’s experience in World War I, which he wrote “had been conducted mainly by old men and had been conducted with supreme incompetence. By 1918 everyone under forty was in a bad temper with his elders, and the mood of anti-militarism which followed naturally upon the fighting was extended into a general revolt against orthodoxy and authority.”

Today’s youth movement, which is concentrated among Democrats, has an analogous origin. It’s rooted in distaste for a politics that has impoverished a generation while filling the pockets of the wealthy.

In some cases, the need to usher superannuated politicians out the door is indisputable. A prime specimen was Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.), whose mental and physical incapacities became manifest as she neared the end of her life; in 2023 she died in office at 90.

On the other hand, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), led her Democratic caucus with a firm hand as Speaker until she yielded the gavel in 2023 at age 82, having notched one of the most successful speakerships in history. (She’s not running for reelection this year.)

Joe Biden, whose apparently faltering faculties became a political talking point during his 2024 presidential reelection campaign, when he was 82 and was in the process of returning the U.S. economy to its pre-pandemic strength when he lost to Donald Trump — who at the age of 80 has been systematically dismantling Biden’s economic policies to the disadvantage of middle-class and working Americans.

Meanwhile, has anybody heard recently from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), age 84? He hasn’t been seen in public since mid-June. At the moment, he’s regarded as one of those politicians determined to hold on to their seats with what Orwell (him again) described as their “prehensile bottoms.”

As I wrote in 2023, when the age issue was all the rage, “concern-trolling about the advanced age of government leaders hasn’t always been a path to political success.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt cited a “hardening of the judicial arteries” in announcing his 1937 scheme to pack the Supreme Court, which involved shifting the politics of the court to the left by trying to force justices to retire when they reached the age of 70, or adding a justice to the court for every sitting justice who refused. FDR’s plan collapsed after it provoked widespread opposition, the most significant political failure of the New Deal.

That brings us back to the Social Security 2100 Act. The measure, which was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), isn’t perfect. In fact it has been revised at least three times, typically to address political wavelets that come and go.

In all versions, over time it would eliminate the cap on payroll taxes, which are currently limited to 12.4% on wage income up to a maximum of $184,500. That’s a maximum tax of $22,878, divided 50/50 between workers and their employers.

Because of the cap, the effective payroll tax rate on someone with income of $1 million falls to about 2.3%; in reality it’s even lower, because unearned income such as capital gains, interest and dividends, which constitute half or more of the income of wealthy households, isn’t taxed at all.

Originally, the bill called for raising the payroll tax rate by one-tenth of a percentage point a year, to an employer/employee combined 14.8% by the 2040. On the other hand, Larson would reduce the income tax on Social Security earnings, returning a bit to middle- and lower-income workers. Social Security’s actuaries calculated that Larson’s bill would ensure the program’s solvency for at least 75 years, but in practical terms into the almost limitless future.

The rate increase was dropped in subsequent versions, but it was supplanted by a 12.4% tax on net investment income for taxpayers with income over $400,000. That would guarantee the system’s solvency into the 2060s, the actuaries calculated.

Social Security’s advocates plainly could see Larson’s defeat coming. The day before the Connecticut primary, three of them published an op-ed calling Larson an “irreplaceable” asset to their cause. “When it comes to fighting for Social Security,” they wrote, “no one has worked harder than Rep. Larson.” They pointed out that the “Social Security 2100 Act earned in the last Congress support from over 90% of House Democrats, representing all corners of the Democratic coalition.”

Bronin hasn’t said anything specific about Social Security, beyond a campaign pledge that he’ll work for “strengthening” the program. I asked his campaign whether he had any details to offer, but didn’t get a reply. Larson, for his part, has reacted to his defeat with a gentlemanly call for all Democrats to come together to defeat Trump.

Unlike Republicans, who have spent decades slandering Social Security as an undeserved “entitlement” and suggesting that it’s responsible for federal budget deficits (impossible, as a matter of law) and sluggish economic growth (untrue, as a matter of fact), Democrats have worked to preserve it, if not always effectively.

In coming Congresses, Republicans will be offering all sorts of nostrums to “save” Social Security. History says that these will aim to impose benefit cuts on workers to protect the rich from higher taxes.

Will the Democrats stand fast against this long GOP campaign? With Larson’s defeat, they’ll be short one leader. Let’s hope the rest of the party keeps the faith.