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Dreams of a bigger map. LET’S IMAGINE FOR A SECOND that November 3 goes extremely well for the Democratic party. The polls were largely correct, and maybe they even underestimated the party’s strength in a few races. Democrats flip the Senate, picking up seats in Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, North Carolina, Texas, and Kansas, and win governorships in some of those states—states that Donald Trump won three presidential cycles in a row. They even get within a point or two of winning in Mississippi and South Carolina. Obviously, when it comes to electoral results for Democrats, this would be nirvana. But party strategists and advisers are cautiously considering it as a possibility, and they aren’t just thinking about 2026. These sorts of victories could have real implications for 2028, too. “If you win Iowa in the governor’s race, if you win Ohio in the governor’s race, you are effectively putting those states in play in 2028,” Dan Kanninen, the battleground director for the Biden-turned-Harris presidential campaign, told me. Superstitious Democrats are loath to talk about the next presidential cycle in the closing week of a hard-fought midterm election. But Kanninen is not the only one whose eyes are gazing towards the political horizon. His argument echoes one Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has been making on the campaign trail throughout the year: that the party’s success in 2028 depends on The midterms are just days away, and the battle to shape what Americans believe is reaching a fever pitch. Campaigns are spending millions trying to persuade voters. But democracy needs more than political messaging. It needs independent journalism that asks uncomfortable questions, challenges falsehoods and exposes hypocrisy, and seeks to understand voters, even when—especially when—it complicates the story. That kind of work takes time and resources. It’s our members who make it all possible. Help us keep telling the stories that matter—from these midterms through 2028 and beyond—by joining Bulwark+ today.
Paid postLauren Egan ·
The attacks on Abdul El-Sayed are dishonest and ugly. But will they work? REPUBLICANS KEEP SAYING their campaign against Abdul El-Sayed isn’t trying to exploit fear and hatred of Muslims. Then they keep doing things to prove that it is. They’ve been at it for months—literally since the first hours after El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination in early August, when the GOP launched ads referring to him by his full first name, “Abdulrahman.” But they may have hit a new low last week, with an attack ad that’s all over the internet and television. Its central claim is that El-Sayed wants to impose sharia law, the religious code of Islam, on the rest of America. The ad and the effort behind it are worth examining in detail, regardless of whether you care about Michigan’s Senate race—or, for that matter, how you feel about El-Sayed potentially becoming Michigan’s next senator. That’s because the campaign against him is an example of a destructive, dangerous trend visible all over America: Republicans and their allies not even pretending to observe traditional standards of accuracy, civility, and basic decency in politics, especially when it comes to Muslims. Those standards have never been particularly high, to be clear, and Republicans aren’t alone in twisting facts to suit their political agendas. But the freedom that they feel to describe Islam and its adherents as menaces—along with their willingness to exploit the truth-bending capabilities of social media—makes for an especially toxic mix. You can see it in Georgia, where a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor put out an AI-generated ad of Muslims invading a suburban neighborhood. You can see it in Alabama, where a GOP candidate for attorney general proclaimed in a campaign spot that anybody who supports “radical Islam” can “Allahu Akbar your butt all the way back to the Middle East.” You can see it in Texas, where the state GOP platform literally calls for passing “Don’t Sharia My Texas” legislation. The rhetoric and strategy are all over the U.S. Capitol, too, where some Republicans have formed a “Sharia-Free America Caucus.” And that’s not to mention what you’ll hear from Donald Trump himself, who has repeatedly—including this past Friday—called El-Sayed “a violent, vicious jihadist.” Trump and the others may actually believe El-Sayed is some kind of threat. Or not. Who knows. But this much is clear: Their willingness to bash Muslims and Islam shows they believe the strategy works, and they are sure to keep at it if the midterms go their way. SO LET’S TALK ABOUT that Michigan ad, which you can watch here: The narrator begins by quoting something El-Sayed once told the New York Times: “When I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Sharia-compliant way.” Dark, intense music, the kind you’d expect from an overdramatized thriller or horror film, plays in the background while the narrator asks: “The Sharia law way: What’s that?” Then comes the answer, words appearing in red and white against the backdrop of a woman in a black niqab: “Using government to dictate how women dress, requiring they have a guardian, or prohibiting women from filing for divorce.” “The Sharia-law compliant way,” the narrator concludes. “Abdul El-Sayed’s way.” It’s difficult to capture the full dishonesty of the ad. But a good starting point is what El-Sayed was actually saying in that quote, and what he was not. It comes from an interview El-Sayed gave seventeen years ago, to a reporter writing about a Michigan bank that offers customers a special kind of home loan for Islamic customers. The article itself is actually quite heartwarming. It tells the story of an Ann Arbor banker who learned from a customer that Islamic law forbids the charging or payment of interest. The banker, who is Catholic, adopted some alternative financial packages (like loans that build interest into the selling price) that made mortga…
Jonathan Cohn ·
He spent millions smearing Amy Acton, prompting national criticism. But how low is too low for Trump voters? BY NOW, YOU’VE SURELY HEARD about the ad Vivek Ramaswamy is running against his opponent in the Ohio gubernatorial election, Democrat Amy Acton—the one featuring Acton’s mother accusing her of lying about her past. Not mentioned in the ad: that this woman hasn’t seen Acton in forty-eight years, since she fled Ohio with her husband after he was charged with having raped Acton starting when she was 10 years old. Ramaswamy put $4 million behind the spot and he’s been cheered on by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. It’s a massive bet that voters will believe the mom—despite overwhelming evidence that she is the one lying—and not recoil (as basically much of the top ranks of the Ohio Republican Party have) at the sheer vileness of the attack. Will it work? To find out, on October 22, three days after the ad started circulating online, we convened a group of ten Ohioans who voted for Trump in 2024 but have since soured on him. Of those ten, five people had participated in a past focus group and expressed some openness to Ramaswamy. The remaining five were lukewarm at best on Ramaswamy prior to the group. We played the ad for them, as well as the ad the Acton campaign released in response, featuring her brother. Here’s what happened next: If we’re going to protect American democracy, we have to understand the voters, even when what they tell us is surprising, frustrating, or downright infuriating. That’s why we run so many focus groups: to listen, ask questions, challenge our assumptions, and find out what Americans actually think—not just what we wish they thought. That work takes resources, and it’s our Bulwark+ members who make it all possible. Become a member yourself today and help us keep bringing you the insights you won’t find anywhere else.
Paid postSarah Longwell ·
Trump’s deportation force is giving ordinary people new ways to threaten, torment, and punish their neighbors. “ICE is facial recognition, ICE is surveillance, and ICE is coming after you regardless of your status.” SO SAID REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ at a “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall event in late September. And while her rhetoric is heated, the New York congresswoman has a point. Since the beginning of Trump 2.0, we’ve seen ICE perpetrate wanton violence, especially against Latino fathers and husbands. The agency relies on a gigantic, AI-powered surveillance network to pursue its targets and intimidate protesters. And ICE has assaulted and detained U.S. citizens, showing that in the minds of their agents, the actual legal status of the people they accost does not seem to be a primary concern. Take Ricardo Gonzalez in Long Beach, California. A U.S. citizen and former city employee, Gonzalez was riding an e-bike near his home when ICE agents set upon him. A video of the episode shows an unmarked car driving the wrong way down a one-way street, then swerving at Gonzalez, obscuring him from view. A masked agent then draws a gun, yelling, “Get on the ground.” Gonzalez appears to respond, “Fuck you. You hit me with your fucking car. I’m a fucking U.S. citizen.” A neighbor and witness said an agent jumped out of the car and tackled Gonzalez, and video footage shows Gonzalez yelling in pain that his arm is broken as an ICE agent kneels on his back. The Long Beach Post reports Gonzalez was tased twice, and that one agent taunted the growing crowd of protesters at the scene, saying they didn’t “look legal.” Gonzalez’s daughter confirmed the tasing and said the family is raising money for his hospital bills and recovery. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson has filed a complaint on behalf of the city asking for a formal investigation into the ICE operation, and answers to questions such as whether an ICE vehicle hit Gonzalez, whether he was tased, and why medical aid was not rendered immediately. “Many people—they relegate use of force to ‘this person must have done something wrong,’” Richardson told me. “[Gonzalez] was a U.S. citizen. But even if he wasn’t, do these agents have the right to brutalize who they want with no accountability and no oversight? Because if they do, no one is safe.” ICE has also run up a body count this year. Some of the men killed or brutalized—fathers, brothers, and sons—have been undocumented, it’s true. But none deserved the brutal treatment they received for it. And neither did their children or spouses (many of whom are U.S. citizens) do anything to warrant having their fathers or husbands violently taken away. Sometimes the children were with these men when they were attacked. That’s what happened to 24-year-old Sebastian, who was dropping off his two children at their babysitter at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday when ICE drove him off the road, wrecking his car. The hard-to-watch video shows Sebastian desperately holding onto his toddlers as ICE agents methodically pry his fingers off them. As the two children cry, a crowd gathers, filming the encounter. In this case, the agents eventually let the terrified father go, telling him to report to ICE, the Boston Globe reported. He was apparently not even the man they had come to find. Sometimes the agency’s actions are much more targeted. ICE’s investigative arm raided the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) last week, carrying out a plan clearly intended to get the congresswoman denaturalized and deported. The whole episode was defined by the deeply anti-Somali racism rampant on the right, and it sends a message to naturalized citizens across the country: The White House could send law enforcement after you, too. Politics has a way of turning human beings into categories. “Migrants.” “Illegals.” “Detainees.” “Deportees.” Journalism can do the opposite. It can give people their names back. Tell you where they came from. Introduce you to their families. Show you…
Adrian Carrasquillo ·
Plus: What You Missed This Week From The Bulwark Happy Saturday! This week, Cathy Young checks in on Trump’s pro-Ukraine defenders, Mona Charen examines what the right gets wrong about France, Pete Buttigieg joins us in Charlotte, and Jonathan Cohn interviews Abdul El-Sayed. Plus: Is Ohio the heart of it all in politics these days? I ponder that while coping with another October without a Cleveland championship. Welcome to Overtime. 📣 COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS 📣 Join Lauren Egan for an AMA: Got midterm questions? Lauren Egan is taking your questions during a Reddit AMA on Monday at 1 p.m. ET in r/politics. Ask her about the 2026 midterms, Democrats’ chances to retake Congress, and the battle over the party’s future heading into 2028. Join on Monday using this link. BOOK CLUB: THIS WEDNESDAY! Join us for the next edition of The Bulwark Book Club to discuss The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865–1915. Mona, JVL, and the author, Jon Grinspan, will discuss the book with Bulwark+ members on Wednesday, October 28 at 1:30 p.m. ET. Drop your thoughts and questions about the book for Mona, JVL, and Grinspan in the comments section of this post. Before the book club, Mona highly recommends Netflix’s Death by Lightning about the assassination of James Garfield for a vivid depiction of the time we’ll be discussing. 🚨OVERTIME🚨 THANK YOU, SOUTHEAST! What a whirlwind through Columbia, Charlotte, and Atlanta. To the 2,000-plus who joined us: Thank you for the kind words, gift bags, t-shirts, stickers, and treats. And to our Founders and Best Friends: It was great to spend some time together. You made the trip a blast. Some BTS photos here. Walking for their neighbors… Haitian community members, faith leaders, and supporters are walking more than forty miles from Springfield to Columbus, calling for permanent protections for Haitian immigrants and an end to the use of ankle monitors. Their four-day pilgrimage concludes Saturday. A historic World Series… For the first time in forty-six years, both teams are chasing their first championship. Naturally, I’m sad my Cleveland Guardians didn’t make it past the Rays. I’ve seen this movie before—I watched them get eliminated while we were on the road for our live tour, just as happened right after our Detroit live show in 2024—but it was a great season for Cleveland. Good luck to your team, and to Bryce B and Uncanny390, who both picked the Brewers in the Overtime World Series Bracket contest! Taking Ohio’s ugliness national… I joined Greg Sargent on The Daily Blast to discuss my Morning Shots item on Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack on Amy Acton, Trump’s defense of it, and the Republicans recoiling from the whole thing. (There’s a transcript here.) The grass isn’t always greener… Wired checks in with Americans who moved to Europe and discovered that leaving Trump’s America comes with its own frustrations. Sarah takes the focus group to Ezra… Sarah Longwell joined Ezra Klein to discuss why some of Trump’s 2024 voters feel betrayed, and what Democrats can do with that opening. Watch Sarah on the Ezra Klein Show here. Tech support questions? Visit our new HELP Center! Questions for me? Respond to this message. —30— Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.
Jim Swift ·
His embrace of the vile smear fits an administration that shields predators and abandons survivors of sexual and domestic violence. THE CLOSING STAGES of midterm season have highlighted one of the ugly contradictions of the Trumpist movement: The same people who insist on policing public bathrooms to protect little girls from sexual predators are also smearing an actual child rape survivor. It is loathsome. And yet, in a way, it is also perfectly on message. It is a microcosm of the broader Trump agenda: professing support for the vulnerable while shielding their abusers. This week, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, released a disgusting campaign ad featuring the estranged mother of his opponent, Amy Acton. There is good reason for this estrangement: In 1978, at age 12, Acton accused her mother’s husband of sexual abuse, going back to when she was 10. After the stepfather was charged with rape of a minor, he posted bond and fled the state. Acton’s mother skipped town with him, and she remained married to her daughter’s accused rapist until his death in 2004. It is this mother, who lost custody of both Acton and her brother due to this abuse, and who hasn’t seen Acton since 1978, who declares in the ad of her daughter: “She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true.” This childhood trauma happened half a century ago. But it has been exhumed by Ramaswamy for political purposes, and is now being exploited by none other than the president. Despite bipartisan unease about this grotesque ad campaign, Donald Trump has encouraged Ramaswamy to keep it on blast, and “let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals.” This selfsame president has pledged to “protect” women (“whether the women like it or not”) and, in a proclamation about preventing child abuse, to “bring every abuser, predator, and evildoer who threatens the health and safety of our children to swift justice.” That Trump would now choose to discredit a child sex-crime victim, or take the side of someone complicit in her abuse, is unsurprising. Remember that he was a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Remember that, in his telling, the biggest abusers of children are not child rapists but rather “proponents of the gender ideology movement” who allegedly want “transgender for everyone.” Remember that he has no qualms about throwing sexual or physical abuse survivors under the bus if doing so helps him (or any of his allies) politically. But Trump’s response to the Ramaswamy ad is worth dwelling on not just because it underscores the depravity of our politics but because it reminds us how his administration, despite its rhetoric, has actually harmed victims of sexual abuse. Beyond Acton, there are thousands of other children and domestic violence victims whose lives have been made materially worse by Trump policies—and, in most cases, for no obvious electoral advantage. Just for funsies. For instance,
Paid postCatherine Rampell ·
Plus: An existential threat to physical media, a shakeup at Netflix, and…Norm Macdonald? LOOK, THE NEWS IS ALL BAD. Wars, plagues, vice presidents completely lacking a moral compass . . . and that’s just the bad news generated by Russia. The one bright spot, at least for your humble narrator, is that there’s a whole mess of good movies on the horizon as we head into awards season. I reviewed one of them this week: Fjord is a fascinating movie, the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes earlier this year and a surefire foreign feature nominee at the Oscars in March. It was on a handful of screens last weekend and is expanding wider this weekend; I hope you check it out if you get a chance. But if Fjord is not to your liking—and it’s a 2.5-hour Norwegian-and-English-language film, so I can understand why you might hesitate—you can check out the surprise hit of the fall: You Can See Everything is poised to be the highest-grossing documentary in some years following its $15 million opening weekend on just 855 screens. It too expands this weekend and is the talk of the town. I don’t know if it’ll get a best documentary nod (the documentary branch is notoriously stuffy and may well resent the games that co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim play with the genre’s form), but I can’t imagine it won’t get a best picture nomination. This is a movie unlike any I’ve ever seen, and I think the Academy’s going to go nuts for it. All of which is to say: We’re off to the races. Here are a handful of movies I have circled on my calendar as we hit the meaty part of awards season. Fatherland, opening in limited release this weekend and expanding next weekend, is the latest film from Paweł Pawlikowski. The Polish entry for best international feature at the Oscars next year is the latest in what has been described as his historical trilogy, following Ida (2013) and Cold War (2018). I was a little soft on Ida but found Cold War to be tremendously moving, a fascinating meditation on the ways in which the Communist state deformed art and artists alike. Fatherland is one of three movies costar Sandra Hüller is, potentially, up for awards consideration in, alongside Project Hail Mary and Digger. I am, rather notoriously in some corners, not really a musical guy. So it is with some surprise that I find myself anticipating Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut so keenly. The film stars Julianne Moore as a housewife who wants to be an actress and decides to join an amateur stage musical. One of the reasons I’m so curious about the film is that it may well get a best original song nomination for Eisenberg. It hits theaters on December 11. Wild Horse Nine (out on November 6) is a movie, written and directed by Martin McDonagh, about bickering hitmen (Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich) on an unusual job in an unusual locale. In other words: It sounds a lot like In Bruges. Given that In Bruges is one of the ten best movies of the first decade of this century, I’m pretty excited. Behemoth! (December 4), meanwhile, sounds very different from everything else Tony Gilroy has ever made: something to do with orchestras and relationships, with Pedro Pascal as a cellist? I don’t know! And yet, Tony Gilroy made another of the best movies of that same decade, one Michael Clayton, as well as the best piece of Star Wars content since Revenge of the Sith, his Disney+ show Andor. (I interviewed Gilroy about it last year, no big deal.) So yeah, I’m pretty excited for Behemoth! And one last big film seems likely to rack up some nominations: I speak, of course, of Dune: Part Three. Now, I’m one of the weird few who seem to have preferred the first Dune film to the second, but the buzz on this third entry is through the roof. Denis Villeneuve has never really gotten the love he deserves from the Academy, but this might be the one that finally breaks through with awards voters. We’ll see! Sony Exits the Physical Media Game It looks like Sony is readying a complete exit from the home video ma…
Sonny Bunch ·
Now known as TFM, the PAC also revealed even more Republican donors in its latest financial disclosure. THE SUPER PAC FORMERLY KNOWN as “Democrats for Mike Rogers” might be aiming its efforts at recruiting Dems to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. But according to their latest FEC filings, the group’s funds are coming almost entirely from deep-pocketed Republican donors. In Tuesday’s edition of Press Pass, we wrote about the group’s predominantly Republican contributors as well as payments the group made to an ex-Democrat who did not disclose her relationship to the organization while appearing on Fox News to promote Rogers. Only a few of the group’s donors had been recorded in the FEC’s database at that point. But now, a lot more information has come in. The latest batch of Federal Election Commission filings show that many of the high-dollar donors to TFM—Democrats for Mike Rogers’s currently operating name—are simply longtime Republican megadonors. I suppose ‘Republicans Seeking Democrats for Mike Rogers’ just wouldn’t look as compelling on a lawn sign. Richard Bassuk, a real estate executive from New York City, has a typical TFM donor profile. In addition to the $15,000 he sent the group, he also donated $1,000 to Susan Collins’s re-election bid, $3,500 to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), $3,300 to House Speaker Mike Johnson, and $3,500 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which was specifically earmarked to support the campaign of Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), one of the House GOP’s most vulnerable incumbents. Bassuk also contributed $125,000 to the United Democracy Project, which is affiliated with AIPAC and has spent more than $20 million attacking Rogers’s Democratic opponent, El-Sayed. Bassuk has donated to many other Republicans, as well. Another TFM donor, Fanny Hanono, has also contributed to Collins’s campaign, and she opened up her pocketbook to support Florida Republican Reps. Randy Fine and Maria Salazar. (During the Senate primary in Michigan, she also sent some money to El-Sayed’s moderate Democratic opponent, Haley Stevens.) And in addition to the $100,000 he sent to TFM, Anthony Soave has given to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), and JD Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign. Other donors, such as David Jacques Farahi and Steven Kimmelman, have contributed to a mix of Republicans and Democrats in the current election cycle and past cycles. One of the most high-profile donors to TFM is Maria Letica Saad, who over the past couple years has given $100,000 to the NRSC, in addition to making donations to Turning Point USA’s PAC and a host of other Republican candidates. The single corporate donation to TFM came from Penske, a transportation services company headquartered in Michigan, which contributed $250,000. Penske’s past donations include a half-million-dollar gift to the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund. Just three of the individual donors reside in Michigan. All three have lengthy histories of financially supporting GOP candidates and causes. The first is Soave; the other two are Alan Zekelman and Eric Bronstein, who donated $1,000 to embattled Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) in May. With all these Republican donations coming in, you might wonder what TFM is doing with their newfound largesse. One such expenditure includes paying for legal consulting from Lex Politica, a Texas-based firm founded by Chris Gober. Gober is currently running for Congress in Texas’s 10th Congressional District on the strength of an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who called him a “MAGA warrior.” Gober has several other right-wing campaigns and causes on his firm’s client roster. They include Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, and Republicans who were investigated for election subversion in 2020. Other partners at Lex Politica have resumes that span the Republican political ecosystem.…
Joe Perticone ·
Legal experts say Scott Presler’s houseguests could run afoul of election law. ONE OF THE MOST HIGH-PROFILE grassroots organizers in the Republican party purchased a home in Beaver County, Pennsylvania in April 2024. The former steelmaking stronghold just north of Pittsburgh was a logical place for Scott Presler to put down roots. His get-out-the-vote efforts have been heavily focused on Pennsylvania, which was destined to be one of the key swing states that cycle—and, it seemed, well beyond. Presler cast his own ballot using that address during the 2024 cycle. So did three other people outside the Presler family. A review of voter registration records shows that GOP operatives from states across the country used Presler’s home address to cast ballots in Pennsylvania during the 2024 election. They include a consultant who voted in Florida in both 2020 and April 2025, along with a right-wing social media personality from Oklahoma. Presler has been a leading proponent of the Republican party’s claim that Democrats have illegally registered voters. He even has attacked a homeless shelter in Pennsylvania for allegedly having 500 people registered to vote from there even though it has a 100-bed capacity. (“Imagine being confused by something this obvious. The homeless are also allowed to vote!” tweeted Daniel Pearson, a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial writer.) Now legal experts say that Presler’s use of his home as a base for out-of-state voters to cast Pennsylvania ballots raises questions about whether he committed the same acts of which he has accused others. An individual who wishes to vote in Pennsylvania must, by state law, reside in the state and the intended election district for at least thirty days before Election Day. The address provided when registering to vote must be “considered the residence . . . in which his habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning.” The law also makes clear that “a person shall not be considered to have gained a residence in any election district of this State into which he comes for temporary purposes only, without the intention of making such election district his permanent place of abode.” In a statement sent to The Bulwark from a generic email account, Presler’s PAC, Early Vote Action, confirmed that Presler’s residence was used as a voting address for other individuals, but defended the practice. “Mr. Presler is a generous person who, over time, has had friends find residency in his home while actively working and residing in Pennsylvania. EVA PAC takes its voter registration compliance with law very seriously,” the statement read. “Several of the residents that once lived in Scott’s home have now since departed and found residence elsewhere in other states—yet as you’ve shown, the PA voter rolls continue to reflect their names here. It is pure madness that PA can’t clean up their voter rolls.” But a close review of financial documents, voting records, and social media activity calls into question whether these “friends” had truly established residency in Pennsylvania as defined in state law. Sorry to interrupt. We know: There’s too much interrupting in your life these days already. But these are uncertain times, and we think there’s something to be said for sticking together. For finding people you trust, keeping one another informed, and maybe keeping one another sane. You’ve already found us. We’re glad you did. Join the side you’re already on.
Paid postBrendan Hartnett ·
Pete is no Ike. Much of the political world was horrified this week by Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad that enlists his opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother to attack her character. Donald Trump, however, loved it. “Who wouldn’t use such an ad?” he wondered in a lengthy Truth Social post yesterday. “I only wish the mothers of my opponents would be so brave as to come forward and explain that their son or daughter is a liar, and much worse.” Later, a reporter asked Trump: “Amy Acton’s mother has not cared for her in about fifty years after her stepdad was indicted for raping her. Why should anyone listen to what the mother has to say?” “Well, I know nothing about it. All I know is the mother said very bad things about Acton, who I guess is running for governor against Vivek,” Trump replied. “The mother said very bad things about the one who’s running for governor, and I think you have to take that seriously.” Happy Friday. Hegseth Drops the Globe by William Kristol It was February 3, 2026. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was riding high. He’d survived his rocky start in the job, and early staff turmoil, and Signalgate. He’d started firing generals who might have stood in his way—and there’d been surprisingly little pushback. He’d kicked the media out of the Pentagon. He liked to call himself the “secretary of war,” and it was clear why. He’d blown up small boats in the Caribbean, and Congress was doing nothing to stop it. The one-day expedition in Venezuela in January had gone well. He was looking forward to trumpeting a similar success in Iran. His mind apparently turned to Dwight D. Eisenhower. It’s true that there’s no evidence that Hegseth has ever been a particular fan of Ike. And in fact, Hegseth’s temperament, his bearing, and his character couldn’t be more different from Ike’s. Still, Pete likely thought of Eisenhower for one reason: Ike didn’t rest on his military laurels. He made it all the way to the Oval Office. That’s what Pete’s always aimed for. So, Pete thought, 2026 could be the year he became like Ike, a lauded military commander. And then in 2027 he’d leave, enjoy the accolades, and respond to a groundswell demanding he run for the presidency in 2028. In any case, in the midst of his daydreams Pete apparently recalled seeing Second World War–era photos of Ike standing next to a big floor globe. Someone had told Pete that the Army kept a couple of those around the Pentagon. He ordered his staff to get one for his office. It didn’t go as planned. As Alex Horton and Dan Lamothe reported in the Washington Post, Two floor globes said to be used by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II are housed in the Pentagon, where subsequent generations of Army leaders became custodians of the artifacts . . . The historical significance was attractive to Hegseth . . . and his staff requested that the secretary’s office become the new home to one of the 30-inch globes. There was a process for moving historical items within the Pentagon, involving professional movers and trained curators. But the boss didn’t want to wait. And Hegseth’s staff wanted to make the boss happy: Hegseth’s staff dispatched its own team to relocate an Eisenhower globe. They lost control of the artifact and dropped it, sending the globe crashing onto its base and impaling the fragile shell . . . The resulting gash appears to be several inches wide. So, moved by vanity and vainglory, and acting arrogantly and impatiently, Pete broke Ike’s globe. As David Simon, head writer and producer of The Wire, remarked, “This metaphor is ridiculously obvious and unsubtle. Fire the writers. They’re hacks.” Fair enough! But perhaps it’s appropriate that a hack metaphor conveys the truth about a hack like Hegseth. After all, he is, to say the least, no Dwight Eisenhower. He’s more like Tom Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures . . . and let other people clean up t…
William Kristol ·
Dramatic arrests and last-minute lawsuits are advancing a familiar lie with the power of the federal government behind it. EARLY ON MONDAY MORNING, federal agents pounded on the door of 72-year-old Omar Muñoz’s home in Commerce, California. Armed officers had surrounded his house before dawn and were threatening to break down the front door unless he came out. When he answered, the agents handcuffed and dragged the lawful permanent resident from Belize out of his home, still in his pajamas, parading him in front of their own government film crew and other media who had been tipped off to document the raid. As reporters for the Los Angeles Times put it, Muñoz described seeing helicopters, at least eight cars and several agents from different agencies descending on his home, and recalled thinking, “What movie am I in?” The movie in which he was made into an unwilling cast member is President Trump’s “Operation Protect the Vote.” Muñoz is accused of fraudulently registering to vote and casting ballots, allegations he denies. His daughter immediately recognized why this was happening: “They’re trying to instill fear in society,” she said. Her father is being used as a propaganda tool. The MAGA-friendly California Post, which was granted the exclusive story, crowed about the access: “Inside the biggest voter fraud bust in California’s history—as network of 28 democracy-defying cons are snared.” In these statewide raids, authorities charged only 28 green card holders, including Muñoz, among California’s 23 million registered voters. The arrests were carried out by squads from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. HSI’s primary responsibility is supposed to be investigating serious cross-border criminal activity. But under the Trump administration, HSI has been given very different tasks—like investigating campus protesters, spying on critics of the administration, and executing the recent pre-dawn raid on Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home. And the 28 individuals charged in California are not the end of the administration’s use of HSI late in this campaign season: HSI agents have reportedly fanned out across the country to go to people’s homes to ask about their immigration status, voter registration, and past voting. This isn’t ICE at the polls on Election Day. It’s DHS on doorsteps now. It’s dangerous election interference. The good news: It’s possible to fight these lawless intrusions and to win. But to fight them, you need to understand them first. Here’s what you should know. It’s easy to become numb. Another raid. Another arrest. Another lie about elections. Good journalism fights that numbness. It slows down. It looks closely. It reminds us that every story happened to somebody—and that democracy needs defenders who pay attention. Stay curious. Stay human. Stay with us.
Paid postAmanda Carpenter ·
Plus: Which corporate PACs are paying for Ramaswamy's despicable new ad campaign? Euro tripping Republicans are attempting to rally their dispirited political base with a bit of imported esprit. Widely broadcast scenes of rioting in France have given Republicans a new stockpile of violent imagery that they are attempting to associate with the Democratic slate of candidates for the House and Senate this election cycle.
Paid postJoe Perticone ·
Oh, I’m sorry. Is my rhetoric imperfect? 1. FJD. Again. America’s vice president is an Elizabeth Holmes–level sociopath. Today I want to take you through four statements from JD Vance that illustrate what a terrible human being he is. Statement #1: In 2024, JD Vance advanced a blood libel about Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio. He was open about not caring whether or not his blood libel was true. On September 10, 2024, he told CNN: Whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true—whatever the case may be4—Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. . . . And I think it’s interesting, Kaitlan, that the media didn’t care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats. . . . If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we’re going to keep on doing it. Five days later, on September 15, 2024, another CNN interviewer pressed him on his fabrication. Again, Vance was unapologetic about his lying: If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do. Statement #2: In an interview that aired on October 17, 2026, Vance was asked about his scapegoating of immigrants. He replied: I would say, and to the extent that my rhetoric has been imperfect here, that’s on me. This week, Vivek Ramaswamy released the most disgusting ad in the modern history of campaigns, featuring the toothless, addled, flat-out evil estranged mother of Amy Acton alleging that Acton is a serial liar. Here I want to pause for a moment, because “evil” is a serious word.
Paid postJonathan V. Last ·
For these supposed moral authorities, the only question is whether it works. CONSERVATIVE PODCASTING MOGUL Ben Shapiro can sometimes seem like the last decent person left in right-wing media. When he isn’t writing movies for James Franco, Shapiro has been a rare voice standing up to the MAGA movement’s slide into absolute madness: outright racism, antisemitism, and Charlie Kirk assassination conspiracy theories. But when it comes to Vivek Ramaswamy’s new ad attacking Democrat Amy Acton in the Ohio governor’s race—an ad that stars Acton’s estranged mother, who remained married to the man who was charged with raping her daughter—Shapiro has a surprising stance: He’s cool with it! According to Shapiro, the ad is just another round of rough-and-tumble politics. On his show Wednesday, Shapiro dismissed criticism of the ad as liberal “pearl-clutching.” “It turns out that in politics lots of bad things happen!” Shapiro said. Instead of denouncing the ad, Shapiro said it was no worse than members of the Kennedy family criticizing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or relatives of Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) opposing his re-election. Besides, Shapiro asked, do you remember when Democrats said JD Vance had sex with a couch? Of course, there’s one big difference between those spats and the new Ramaswamy ad: Acton’s mother was married to a man charged with raping Acton when she was 12 years old. After he was indicted, Acton’s mother fled the state with him to avoid the case. Acton has not seen her mother for forty-eight years. Shapiro’s defense of the ad echoes an approach that has defined other MAGA media-driven frenzies this cycle, including the botched hysteria around James Talarico supposedly checking himself into a mental hospital in Ohio: throw accusations against the wall without bothering to care about the accuracy of them, and then demand that the Democrat come up with some sort of defense of them. In this case, court documents make clear that Acton was correct in her descriptions of the horrors she faced. But Shapiro doesn’t seem to worry about the factuality here. And though he may be the most prominent defender in pro-Trump media of Ramaswamy’s bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, he isn’t alone. While the ad provoked shock on the right after it initially leaked, some notable figures have made clear they’re fine with it. Along with Donald Trump and JD Vance, some big names in conservative media are saying Ramaswamy’s $4 million ad campaign starring Acton’s mother is acceptable if it means keeping the Ohio governor’s mansion. Glenn Beck—who, like Shapiro, styles himself a sort of conscience of the right—is on board. On his own show Wednesday, Beck initially praised Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, for “looking like a grandmother.” Then Beck laid out a sort of point system where he could evaluate the competing claims made by Acton and her mother. On one hand, Acton’s stepfather was indicted by a grand jury for raping her, with even Arthur admitting he fled the state to avoid being prosecuted. “We do know that he fled the state after being charged with the rape of a 12-year-old girl, Amy—and that doesn’t look good!” Beck conceded, giving Acton one “point.” Then again, Acton’s mother claims she was once involved in setting up a sexual assault counseling program at a hospital. That, Beck felt, was worth a point on its own, resulting in a tie. “Point each!” Beck said. “That means: Dismiss it.” At The Bulwark, we don’t expect everyone here to agree about everything. Where would be the fun in that? We do believe in facts, arguments, and democracy. And we believe there ought to be a place for people who still take those things seriously. If you’ve been looking for that place, you may have already found it. Several conservative commentators have speculated that Arthur may herself have been a victim of her abusive husband, meaning she’s essentially blameless. “It sounds like Mom may have been part of this abuse,” Beck said, making clear that he meant Arthur…
Will Sommer ·
There is a morbid phenomenon in our politics, apparent both domestically and abroad. What’s driving the coming blue wave? More than anything else, the latest New York Times/Siena poll finds, it’s a sharp reversal among young voters, who got Trump-curious in 2024 but have snapped back hard ever since. Voters 65 and older have crept back toward Democrats by two points, voters 45 to 64 have stayed put, and voters 30 to 44 have slid five points left. But voters aged 18 to 29 have jumped back toward Democrats by fifteen points—55 percent to 70 percent. Happy Thursday. Gramsci’s Foreshadowing by William Kristol There’s a remark by the early-twentieth-century Marxist thinker and Italian Communist Party leader Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist government in 1926 until his death in 1937, that’s been much quoted in recent years: The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters. I’ve long thought Gramsci’s formulation to be an apt comment on the present moment. And I was reminded of it this morning as I read about Vivek Ramaswamy and JD Vance, and Donald Trump and Steven Witkoff. For, if I can update Gramsci, it seems to me that today… Trumpism is dying, and a new liberalism struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters. It’s worth noting that the famous line ascribed to Gramsci isn’t a literal translation of the 1930 entry in his Prison Notebooks: In questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati. The late Professor Joseph Buttigieg—yes, the father of Pete!—editor of the comprehensive English-language edition of the Prison Notebooks, translated Gramsci’s comment more literally: In this interregnum a great variety of morbid phenomena occur. In fact, “morbid phenomena” may describe our Trumpists more accurately than “monsters.” After all, monsters are in a way impressive. They can have a certain grandeur. But Vivek Ramaswamy and JD Vance, Donald Trump and Steven Witkoff? They’re not grand or impressive. They’re merely the “morbid phenomena” of our day, the visible detritus of a failing and flailing movement that’s, sadly, dominated our politics for the last decade—and that, of course, remains powerful today. Jim Swift wrote yesterday about the disgusting attack by Ramaswamy, on his opponent in the Ohio governor’s race, Amy Acton—an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother accusing her daughter of being a “liar” who “lies about her past.” In fact, the mother’s husband, Acton’s stepfather, was arrested and charged with sexually abusing his stepdaughter when she was 12 years old. Her mother lost custody of both Amy and her brother, who also was abused. The stepfather posted bond, fled, and lived as a fugitive until his death in 2004. Acton’s mother left town with him. In a statement, Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said that, “Our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.” And he also explains that “I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it. She continued to receive that abuse” because at 11 and 12 years old, she tried to protect her younger brother. But Ramaswamy has doubled down on his smear. His campaign is putting $4 million behind the spot. Yesterday, in Cincinnati to campaign for the Republican ticket, Vice President JD Vance at first seemed indifferent to the truth of this ad that calls a survivor of childhood sexual abuse a liar. “Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance said. But later in the day, at a rally with Ramaswamy, he actually praised his fellow Republican for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.” What’s more, Vance said that he was “a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining” about the ad. So there it is, the morbid phenomenon of late Trumpism on full display: Smearing a survivor of child sexual abuse; running an ad featuring a primary enabler of the abuse; and complaini…
Andrew Egger ·
A guide to surviving election season without doomscrolling. WITH THE ARRIVAL OF MID-OCTOBER in even-numbered years come the telltale signs of campaign season entering the final stretch. The ads get more vicious. The rallies get more crowded. Michael Bloomberg cuts a big fat check. And political junkies binge incremental data points that either confirm their priors or leave them in a pool of despair. Admit it. Over the past week or so, you too have begun obsessively doomscrolling social media in search of new, unexplored angles on the congressional map. You’ve found yourself stuck in a vortex in which JoeTexasDataGuy’s breakdown of the early-vote numbers during the 8 to 10 a.m. hours from Dallas has you convinced that James Talarico actually can win, and Desantistan67counties’s look at mail-ballot requests in Broward has left you certain that Republicans are pulling it off again. You don’t even know who these people are. You’re not entirely sure that it’s a map of Dallas. You’re confused as to why the other posts in their feeds are about Uzbekistan. But you can’t stop scrolling. In these moments of clinically diagnosable social media addiction, it can be hard to distinguish the political signals from the noise. So to help you stay sane as campaign season reaches a climax—and maybe to get you to put down your phone (but not before subscribing to The Bulwark)—I reached out to nonpartisan election analysts and data experts to ask what data and developments are actually worth paying attention to in these last few days. What are they looking at? Or, better yet, what are they ignoring? For many, maybe all, the answer to the latter is
Paid postLauren Egan ·
France’s major problem isn’t immigration. POLLS BEING WHAT THEY ARE, Republicans and their supporters must be feeling a bit like the condemned Frenchmen who rode to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. It’s fitting, then, that they are seizing on unrest in France as a desperate campaign gambit. “The Riots in France Are a Warning for America,” declared the Federalist. And what is the lesson? “Mass immigration will split your country in two, and the two sides will eventually go to war.” Rep. Keith Self, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, had the script down pat: They’ve been allowing this to happen for years and years, so they are reaping what they sowed. . . . We’re also trying to get a handle on our mass migration consequences, just like France should have done years ago. That’s why I say this is a lesson to America. We are watching the future of America in France and the U.K., frankly. So did Speaker Mike Johnson: France is descending into chaos because they wanted OPEN BORDERS—just like the socialist Democrats in America. What we are witnessing is a chilling warning for all Americans of what happens if the radical Marxist insurgent left gets their way. JD Vance warned: “This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” Naturally, Trump picked up the baton, telling reporters that the French protests were about “immigration, not schools,” and posting: France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late! Back in reality, there is no evidence that the French protests and riots have anything at all to do with immigration. There has been Islamist violence in France over the years, perpetrated by immigrants or children of immigrants, perhaps most famously the attacks on the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan theater in 2015 and the horrific Nice truck attack the following year that killed 86. But that’s not what’s happening today, and no desperate eagerness by American Republicans to hijack these protests for their flailing campaigns can change that. There is no data on the ethnicity or color of the thousands of people arrested in the past week—France doesn’t keep such records. Students in the Paris suburbs were protesting for weeks before the violence started. Similar protests have spread to Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Bordeaux, and many other smaller cities and rural areas—and so has the violence. What originated with students protesting poorly equipped high schools expanded to farmers and labor unions. Some of the rioters are dissolute young men who were itching to pick a fight with the police, but the original demonstrators were students complaining about the long-running underfunding of French schools. Others who joined are furious about the price of gasoline and diesel, and the high cost of living in general. So a more likely cause of the unrest in France isn’t immigration, but President Trump’s half-baked decision to attack Iran without buy-in from Congress. In fact, the high cost of fuel and associated inflation is causing unrest in other European countries including Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Albania. (The Albanians were already displeased by a corruption scandal linked to a resort development project by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.) THE PROTESTS IN FRANCE do bear a lesson for the United States, but it’s not the one the GOP prefers. France has a weakness for à la barricade. Princeton’s David A. Bell quotes an old saying: “While the United States has three branches of government, France has four: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, and the street.” In 2018, the country was nearly paralyzed by the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests over fuel taxes. But today’s protests and riots are different. They have an end-of-an-era feel. People are demanding better services and lower pric…
Mona Charen ·
Organizers work to resist intimidation and calm the nerves of Latinos preparing to go to the polls. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS MADE California the central target of its efforts to intimidate voters. The Department of Justice has launched efforts to coerce California into investigating alleged illegal voters in L.A. County. And the Department of Homeland Security has begun dispatching agents to the homes of voters who they allege are casting ballots illegally. But the efforts have gone beyond just trying to scare people away from going to the polls. The administration is also starting yet another immigration crackdown in the state, which advocates there told me left them alarmed.
Paid postAdrian Carrasquillo ·
Baseball is . . . over? 1. Ball Is Life I took Flash to the ballpark for the first time when he was about 16 months old. We had a minor league team down the road from our house. One Saturday afternoon, he woke up from his nap and we caught two innings in the middle of a day game. We left as soon as he got bored. For several years, that was his experience of baseball. We would show up in the middle of the game and stay for ten minutes, or an hour, and leave when he was ready. We made it to the end of a game for the first time when he was 5 and the conclusion of the ninth inning confused him. “Baseball is over?” he asked. In that moment I realized that, from his perspective, baseball was like the sea. It was always there. He showed up at the ballpark and baseball was happening; he left the ballpark and baseball was happening. In his imagination, baseball never stopped. The players were always there, playing, and we just visited baseball. It never occurred to him that baseball was a finite thing with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This realization made him a little sad. Two Saturdays ago, Flash pitched in college for the first time. It was just fall ball; a friendly. Nothing important. The coach gave him an inning of work. He did a nice job. My heart was happy and proud. But also confused. And a little sad. Because I realized that unless he gets drafted after college, this was the last “first time” of his baseball journey. And the last first time of my baseball journey with him. I remember all of the first times. That first game with his chubby cheeks. The first catch in our front yard. The first time I took him to a field where he could run the bases. As he got older, we were at the minor league park all the time. I remember the first time he caught a foul ball and the first time he worked up the nerve to talk to one of the players. Over the years he became friendly with a bunch of them. Baseball was the only thing he wanted to do. And because he saw these guys up close, and knew them, he assumed that it was normal. That becoming a ballplayer was something anyone could just decide to do; like going to law school. I kept him out of the maw of organized baseball for as long as possible. I didn’t want to get sucked into the Kids’ Sports Industrial Complex. When he was 10, I finally relented and let him join Little League. The firsts kept piling up. First travel-team game. First home run. First complete game. First immaculate inning. First middle school game. First no hitter. First high school varsity game. First showcase. For seventeen years, baseball was a thing Flash and I did together. It was always there. Like the sea. As I watched him throw his first college pitch I realized that this constant in our lives isn’t actually constant. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some day baseball with Flash will be over. And my soul was sorrowful unto death. 2. Tides Are Real I know that’s too narrow a view. In the most important ways, baseball really is like the sea. It really is always there. What changes is our relationship to it. Because there have also been a bunch of other baseball firsts for me and Flash. Our first major league game. Our first World Series game. Our first post-COVID game. Our first trip to Cooperstown. Our first night at Fenway. Someday, God willing, there will be new kinds of firsts. For the two of us, then for him with his own kids, me with my grandkids. And then for him and his grandkids. I’ll pass away, but that stuff about the rhythm of baseball binding together the generations? It’s true. All of it. Here’s a funny thing: I’ve never played a single game of baseball. Not once. Never even threw, or caught, a baseball until I was in college. I have no personal connection to the game. For me, it’s inextricably linked with Flash. For me, the joy of baseball has been walking with my little boy as he grew. Someday his part in playing the game of baseball will end. But I’ll still get to walk with him. Once I…
Jonathan V. Last ·
In an interview before the former president’s Michigan visit, the progressive Senate hopeful reassesses his old critiques. Along I-75 in Southeastern Michigan ABDUL EL-SAYED REMEMBERS EXACTLY where he was the first time he saw Barack Obama. It was July 2004 and El-Sayed was 19, standing at the kitchen sink of his parents’ house outside Detroit while the Democratic National Convention in Boston was playing on the television. Obama, then a Senate candidate, was giving the primetime keynote address—an ode to hope, unity, and American pluralism that would go on to launch his career in national politics. But El-Sayed, who at the time was on the pre-med track at the University of Michigan, says the speech had a more personal significance for him. It made him believe a minority kid with a funny-sounding name could speak to and be accepted by much larger audiences, kindling an interest in politics that eventually would lead him to become this year’s Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat. “I was doing dishes, after I got home late and was eating on my own,” El-Sayed recalled this past Sunday, as we spoke on board his campaign bus in between events. “And I remember the TV being on and just being like holy . . . wow . . . I’ve never seen that before. And the speech was so good. And it was the first time I was thinking, ‘Bro, you’re talking about me.’” This coming Saturday, El-Sayed will get a chance to tell Obama about this moment directly when the former president comes to Detroit to campaign for the Michigander. It will be the first time the two have met in person and only the second time they have spoken, following a phone conversation after El-Sayed won the nomination in August in which Obama called to pledge his support. But for all of the gracious words they have said about each other in public and (reportedly) to each other in private, the fact remains that El-Sayed is part of the Democratic party’s progressive wing. And among progressives, the predominant sentiment about Obama’s presidency is a combination of ambivalence, disillusionment, and occasional hostility. The premise is that Obama was too timid, that he failed to shake up institutions or distance himself from a party establishment bankrolled by corporate America—if not from a lack of fortitude, then at least from a lack of ambition. He may be the most popular politician alive, but there’s this long list of things he got wrong. He should have punished banks and bankers for their role in the 2008 financial crisis. He shouldn’t have embraced tough border control for the sake of bipartisan immigration reform that Republicans were bound to oppose. He shouldn’t have heeded advisers and members of his own party urging him to make deficit reduction a priority. And so on. Progressives aren’t the only Democrats who express versions of these sentiments. But they are the ones who do so most loudly and frequently, and that includes El-Sayed, who during graduate studies in 2012 said of Obama’s re-election bid that he “was not the right choice—he just wasn’t the wrong one.” El-Sayed struck a somewhat more measured tone in his 2020 memoir, Healing Politics, praising Obama’s character and some of his policies accomplishments. But even then, he bemoaned the “inspiring intentions unfulfilled or reversed.” During our conversation, El-Sayed didn’t exactly take back any of these sentiments. But he also expressed an appreciation for Obama’s leadership and the accomplishments of the Obama presidency not so evident in his past writing. That evolution could be purely cosmetic, in order to avoid awkwardness now that Obama is on the way to campaign for him. Or it could be political expediency as El-Sayed tries to rally the Democratic faithful, especially black voters who have not embraced him with the enthusiasm they have Democratic candidates in the past. Many of those voters remember ads from the bruising primary that made it appear (disingenuously) that El-Sayed had attacked Michell…
Paid postJonathan Cohn ·