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The Free Press (CBS News)
The Free Press, formerly Common Sense, is an American media company based in New York City. Founded by opinion writer Bari Weiss and her spouse Nellie Bowles, the company started as a newsletter in 2021, and grew into an associated media company in 2022. Since October 2025, it is an independent entity within CBS News, whose parent company Skydance Corporation acquired it in 2025 for $150 million.
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Joe Klein, Rod Dreher, Olivia Reingold, Audrey Fahlberg, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Jesse Arm, Yemisi Egbewole, and Liel Leibovitz serve up more reporting and analysis on a historic election. It’s Thursday, November 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Joe Klein on whether the Democrats can capitalize on their midterm triumph. Audrey Fahlberg, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Rod Dreher on the GOP blame games. Olivia Reingold on the meaning of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan. Jesse Arm and Yemisi Egbewole on what a divided Washington will look like. And more. But first: The highway that explains the midterm results. There was good news for Democrats nationwide on Tuesday, but if you want to understand why they did so well—and what the party needs to do to capitalize on their victory—the legendary political journalist Joe Klein says you must focus not just on one part of the country but a single highway: the I-35 corridor that starts in Laredo, Texas, and winds its way up through Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota. It is, Joe writes, “where the election of 2026 took place, spiritually and politically.” It is also “where the governing strategy for the Democratic Party should now reside.” If you want to understand not just what happened on Tuesday but what the next two years hold, read Joe on the I-35 Democrats and the lessons contained in their triumphs. —The Editors Red Faces on the Right It didn’t take long after the blue wave swept the country for one question to rise to the fore among Republicans: Who’s to blame? Some of those Republicans have the cell phone number of Free Press Washington correspondent Audrey Fahlberg, who reports today on the vicious fight to evade responsibility for Tuesday’s GOP disaster. “On Wednesday, the mood inside the White House was bleak,” reports Audrey. “Aides and other officials had expected to lose, but not this badly.” In her piece today, Audrey takes us inside the Trump administration, where aides and cabinet secretaries are already pointing fingers. Who’s responsible? Is this the end of MAGA? And what does it mean for 2028? If you ask conservative columnist Michael Brendan Dougherty, the most plausible explanation for Tuesday night’s rout is the simplest: the unpopular war with Iran. Trump started the fight, writes Michael, made himself personally responsible for its outcome, and ensured his party would bear the cost. Republicans lost power, he argues, because their leader promised to put “America First” and did anything but. So where do Republicans go from here? For Rod Dreher, the answer depends on their willingness to clean house. Some on the radical right, like Nick Fuentes and the Groypers, had backed the Democrats this cycle with the explicit intention of burning the GOP to the ground and rebuilding it in their image. More broadly, an angry faction of young conservatives see the defeat as a reason to embrace white identity politics. That, says Rod, would be a disaster for the Republican Party, and a disaster for the country. If anyone is serious about fixing the GOP, argues Rod, they need to make enemies to the right. And for more on the midterms and the beginning of the end of MAGA, read Ross Douthat’s latest column: Abdul El-Sayed and the Israel Test In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race, one of the most hotly contested battles this cycle. Olivia Reingold spent election night at Abdul El-Sayed’s victory party in Detroit—and after the “Free Palestine” chants and victorious whoops died down, she spoke with supporters about what drove them to the polls: gas prices, concerns over “anti-Muslim” rhetoric, and Palestine. Read her dispatch on what propelled the Muslim progressive firebrand to victory, and why his win signals a seismic shift for the Democratic Party. It’s a peculiar reality that a domestic congressional race ha…
The Free Press ·
With MAGA in ruins, some Republicans will be tempted by white identity politics. That would be a catastrophic mistake not just for the GOP but for America, writes Rod Dreher. MAGA may be dead but Donald Trump is very much still with us, which means the GOP must try to rebuild for 2028 in a crossfire hurricane. On one side will be the energized Democrats, who will spend the next two years dragging administration officials before Congress. But surviving Republicans will also face gale-force baiting for Donald Trump, who is taking no responsibility for leading the GOP off a cliff, and who will surely torment any Republican who dares to speak the truth about the cause of the party’s suicide.
Paid postRod Dreher ·
Politicians suck at reading elections. They see mandates where there are only mirages. But if there was a mandate from the election, it was for the quiet competence of the candidates along I-35, writes Joe Klein. I-35 is a great American highway. It starts at the southern border in Laredo, Texas, then moseys its way through Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota, straight up through the gut of the country. It is where the election of 2026 took place, spiritually and politically. It is where the governing strategy for the Democratic Party should now reside. The midterm election really began in Minnesota during the winter ICE raids and the brutal deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The question nagged throughout the year: Is this who we are? Didn’t a guy like Pretti treat me at the hospital when I slashed my hand on the job? Didn’t we all know a wandering soul like Good, who had landed in Minneapolis with her three kids just eight months earlier? It was the subtext for all that followed. We wanted the border closed—good job, Mr. President—but did we really vote for brutal, masked gangster feds fighting our fellow citizens in the streets?
Paid postJoe Klein ·
Tuesday’s humiliating defeat has quickly turned into distancing the Republican Party from some of Trump’s views—but no clear idea how to move on, either with the president or in spite of him, writes Audrey Fahlberg. Just two years ago, Donald Trump romped to victory in a sweep of the popular vote and seven battleground states that left Republicans confident—even arrogant—that their grip on power was impregnable, at least through the president’s second term. That confidence has been shattered by voters who put Trump back in the White House but made clear in Tuesday’s midterm elections that they are through with MAGA. On Wednesday, the mood inside the White House was bleak. Aides and other officials had expected to lose, but not this badly. Many were caught extremely off guard by the Democratic sweep, a person familiar with the matter told The Free Press, and were stunned by the Democratic Party’s historic gains in the deepest red territory. The most jaw-dropping examples include James Talarico’s double-digit Senate win in Texas, the defeat of Senator Darline Graham in South Carolina by Annie Andrews, who has never held elected office, and a comfortable flip of a Senate seat in Kansas to the Democrats for the first time since 1932. Now comes the circular GOP firing squad about what went wrong—and the big question of how the party can rebuild.
Paid postAudrey Fahlberg ·
For years, both parties have turned aid to Israel into a proxy fight for domestic political grievances. If these elections are an excuse to end that arrangement, we’ll all be better for it, writes Liel Leibovitz. On Tuesday morning, just hours before the GOP suffered a historic shellacking in the midterm elections, Donald Trump came out with what he hoped would be a game-changing announcement: The U.S., he declared, would soon end its annual $4 billion military aid to Israel. The news should’ve made me happy—my Tablet colleague Jacob Siegel and I spent the last three years making the case for this exact policy. But there was little to celebrate about Trump’s declaration, because anyone listening closely to the president on Election Day, or to the vice president the following morning, would have realized that the administration is making very few right moves—and even then, always for the wrong reasons, and often with disastrous consequences. How so? To answer the question, and to understand why this week’s political upheaval may actually be very good news for anyone concerned with America’s strength and security, it helps to first understand precisely what U.S. aid to Israel is—or, more accurately, what it is not.
Paid postLiel Leibovitz ·
The new right claimed power in 2024. Then it fell completely on its face, writes Ross Douthat. The new right that emerged in American politics after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, manifest first in memes and secondarily in podcasts and policy journals and think tanks, prided itself on staring contemporary realities in the face rather than taking refuge in Reagan-era platitudes, recognizing all the things that the conservatism of the prior 20 years had failed to meaningfully conserve. For its many critics—Reaganite and centrist and left wing—the movement’s claim to know what time it is was a bully’s credo, or a youthful boast unseasoned by experience. But younger eyes really do see certain things more clearly, and in the late 2010s and early 2020s the new right had a strong claim to be more in tune with the American moment than many rival factions.
Paid postRoss Douthat ·
Olivia Reingold reports from Detroit, where the Muslim progressive’s election signifies a seismic shift in the scales of power. Socialism, TikTok, and anger now reign supreme. DETROIT, Michigan — “LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOO!” A blonde with a tattoo of the state of Michigan on her forearm thrusts her fist into the air. It is just after 1:30 a.m., and Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor turned podcaster, has been senator-elect for approximately one minute. Three friends next to me embrace in a hug. Hundreds of his supporters, crowded into a downtown event space, raise their smartphones. As his signature walk-out song, Tupac Shakur’s “Changes,” fades into the background, the 42-year-old leads the crowd into his usual ritual. “All right, friends, you know how we do,” he beamed. For the past year and a half, El-Sayed’s crowds across Michigan have finished his three signature campaign slogans at nearly every rally. Tonight, his promises are victory cries. “Money out of—” “POLITICS!” “Money in your—” “POCKET!” “Medicare for—” “ALL!”
Paid postOlivia Reingold ·
The Iran war was the biggest factor in this election. The president started the fight, made himself solely responsible for it, and guaranteed that his party would pay the cost for whatever happened, writes Michael Brendan Dougherty. As the dust settles after an undeniable electoral disaster for Republicans, one thing is clear: These losses come down to the Iran war. The exit polls have Donald Trump’s approval at 38 percent, lower than George W. Bush’s in 2006. Yes, the climbdown started on “liberation day” and coincided with a popular reaction against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. But it began really tanking with the war, dropping to 33 percent by August of this year. Polls suggest that a healthy majority of voters say he made the wrong decision in starting the war. CBS found that a quarter of Republicans agree. And though election analysis will say that voters ranked the cost of living higher than foreign policy issues—which is certainly true—this year, they are not separate issues. Consider that just four days before he resumed hostilities with Iran in February, Trump was bragging about falling gas prices. At the time the national average was $2.98. By Election Day it was $4.15. Diesel jumped from $3.75 to $6.29. Estimates put the cost of the war at nearly $2,000 per family. The energy supply shock provoked inflation. So did Trump’s tariffs, though not as much. But in a price-sensitive environment, every dollar counts. Americans across the country have a lot of time to think about their credit card bill on their way to the gas station, grocery store, or bank. The war has shown up in nearly every American’s household budget. People have a reason to remember Trump’s decision every time they put their hand in their pocket. And who can they look to blame? There was no vote authorizing the war in Congress, even though Republicans controlled both chambers. Anticipating a swift and undeniable victory, Trump never bothered to make a case for war to the American public. In February, he announced the resumption of war with Iran in the middle of the night one Saturday from Mar-a-Lago while most of America was sleeping. “Bombs will be dropping everywhere,” he said. Much of that address wasn’t even aimed at an American audience, but nominally at Iranians themselves, whom he encouraged to rise up. Congress was given a letter the following Monday.
Paid postMichael Brendan Dougherty ·
Democrats take the House and the Senate. Eli Lake, Niall Ferguson, Victor Davis Hanson, Caitlin Flanagan, Peter Savodnik, and more Free Pressers break down the results. It’s Wednesday, November 4. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. It’s the morning after the 2026 midterm elections, and yes, the blue tsunami arrived. Today: Last night’s results and what they mean. Barely 15 minutes after the first polls closed on Tuesday night, the signs were there: The Democrats were going to win big. And that is exactly what happened. Republicans have lost control of the House and the Senate. Texas is blue—Democrats didn’t just win the Senate seat but, astonishingly, the governor’s race too. Kansas will have a Democratic senator for the first time since the Great Depression. Not to mention Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Iowa and Maine. It wasn’t just a blue tsunami, but as expert election watcher Sean Trende quipped on X last night, a “100-year flood.” For the Republicans, it was a disaster—and one that comes just two years after Donald Trump pulled off the greatest political comeback in living memory and was riding high with a unified government and a 6–3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court. So how did it all go wrong for the president who told Americans to “pretend I’m on the ballot” when they cast their vote this election? In our first offering today, Eli Lake tells the story of “broken campaign promises, a fractured coalition, and a president who prized loyalty over competence in both politics and governance” that means the “Trump era is all but over.” As is always the case when big news breaks, we want to hear from the voices we trust the most. So, as the aftershocks of last night’s political earthquake were still rippling across the country, we asked Free Press regulars for their take. Click below for Niall Ferguson on the return of political presidency; Caitlin Flanagan on the Democrats’ miraculous revival; Joe Klein on the deep thinking to be done on both sides; Mene Ukueberuwa on a changed political map; Aaron MacLean on what the results mean for the ongoing war with Iran, and more. But while many may be inclined to look at last night’s results and draw sweeping conclusions about the country’s future, Victor Davis Hanson says not so fast. Today, the historian lays out five lessons from the election, arguing that much remains uncertain: Midterm losses are nothing new for the party in power, Trump’s ability to advance his agenda may be less affected than it seems, and the political landscape heading into 2028 is still taking shape. In other words, he argues, the biggest takeaways from last night may be what we still don’t know. Noah Bernstein spent the last stretch of the campaign in Texas. Perhaps no result was more symbolic of the national story than James Talarico’s victory in the Senate race last night. The Lone Star State has been a conservative bastion for decades. Trump won by nearly 14 points only two years ago. And yet, it was a shellacking for the Texas GOP right down the ticket, with Democrat Gina Hinojosa beating Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in the governor’s race, Democrats taking both chambers of the state legislature and on track to win the majority of the statewide races. What’s the lesson from the Talarico win? Read Noah’s report to understand what the victory means for the future of Texas politics. If the GOP is licking its wounds and figuring out who to blame, last night’s results have the Democratic Party united in celebration. But how long will that unity last? Not long, according to Peter Savodnik. He’s been reporting on a party at war with itself for months—and once the hangovers among the activists and operatives have worn off today, the same divides will still be there. Read Peter on why tonight’s results only fuel the fight for the future of the Democrats. The 2026 Midterms: Taking Stock Over the past severa…
The Free Press ·
Victory in the midterms will hardly paper over the party’s divisions, writes Peter Savodnik. The Great Democratic Crack-Up starts now. That may sound a bit odd, given the party’s historic thrashing of Donald Trump and the Republican Party on Tuesday. Let me explain. For months, the anger and divisions have been bubbling up—the uber-progressive left pushing back against what it views as a feeble and feckless Democratic leadership, the leadership trying to hold things together, and the bundlers in New York and Los Angeles and elsewhere raising oodles of cash. Georgia senator Jon Ossoff reeled in $115 million; Texas’s new Democratic senator James Talarico, $146 million; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, $38 million—of which she gave $1 million to Democratic Senate contender Abdul El-Sayed. That spending paid off: The Democrats now control the House and the Senate. Mission accomplished. Meanwhile, the influencers and podcasters—who feed off the intraparty fireworks—have been lapping up the likes and views, with leftist streamer Hasan Piker becoming something of an issue on the campaign trail, and the pod bros emerging as the new Democratic kingmakers. James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said Tuesday that the party’s “civil war starts Wednesday”—the day after the election. A Democratic consultant in Washington told me, “It feels like the Democratic civil war has already started.” He was referring to the trio of leftists who had just been elected to the House, and were backed by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Paid postPeter Savodnik ·
The biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s results is how much we still don’t know, writes Victor Davis Hanson. There are five easy takeaways from the results (so far). 1) History: Remember that, in the 126 years of midterms since 1900, the party in the White House has lost House seats 90 percent of the time and Senate seats 75 percent of the time. So the losses are not unexpected. Yet Trump’s midterm losses may rival the cataclysmic losses of Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010 (both of whom ironically left office with the highest ratings of their presidencies). Saving midterm congressional seats is always hard for an incumbent president. 2) Trump’s last two years: The blue wave will give the extremist left enormous momentum. But if the last two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations (both of which had earlier lost their initial House and Senate majorities) are any guide, it won’t radically derail Trump’s last two-year initiatives—since it is still unlikely Democrats will gain a veto-proof Senate. Except for judicial and cabinet nominations, which will all be blocked, Trump will continue Obama-like, pen and phone, executive-order domestic policies. Abroad, he will do largely as he has in the past, the way Clinton did in Serbia and in his Middle East negotiations, and Obama did with the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris Climate Accords, and the normalization of relations with Cuba. He will succeed or fail on whether the economy takes off and he achieves the denuclearization of Iran—and quickly.
Paid postVictor Davis Hanson ·
Niall Ferguson, Caitlin Flanagan, Mene Ukueberuwa, and more on last night’s political earthquake, and what it means for the country. Two years ago, Donald Trump swept all seven swing states, won the popular vote, and carried Republicans to control of Congress. On Tuesday night, he lost both houses in a thrashing that reached into traditionally deep-red parts of the country. The damage went well beyond battlegrounds. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Kansas hasn’t had a Democratic senator since the Great Depression. Now Trump has officially entered lame duck territory, with Democrats running Congress for the final two years of his presidency. Was this a referendum on Trump himself, or just the punishment nearly every second-term president gets? Was it the Iran war, the cost of living, or the stench of corruption that did the damage? And will Democrats hold on to voters who turned out against Trump rather than for their party? To make sense of it, we asked some of our most trusted voices for their immediate reactions. Here’s what they had to say. —The Editors Caitlin Flanagan: Democrats Finally Remembered How to Win Jesus, take the wheel: The Democrats are finally talking like they want to win some elections. It’s a miracle. Throughout the campaigns they’ve stayed focused on the issues, and for the most part they’ve steered away from the kind of niche social issues that many people have never heard of and that caused the party so much trouble in the last presidential election. The party limped out of the Chicago convention two years ago, and you really wondered if they would ever come back. They have. This country is the kind of mess you don’t see in the charts and reports from the National Bureau of Economic Research—it’s a crisis that shows up in people’s homes. It’s in the places where the food and gas is too expensive, and where the medical bills are crumpled up in a drawer you never open but will never let you sleep. We’ve been pricing people out of their own lives. And Trump’s two pet projects—the tariffs and the war in Iran—have the whole system wrapped up in the baling wire of high inflation. And you know what you don’t want to see when you’re coping with all of that? Mr. Monopoly leering down at you from the top of the board.
Paid postThe Editors ·
The state lawmaker is the first Democrat to win statewide office since 1994, writes Noah Bernstein. AUSTIN, Texas — James Talarico is a religious man. But he needed an act of God to turn Texas blue. And on Tuesday night, he brought about a miracle. “We just took back Texas,” Talarico said in his victory speech. “And tonight we defeated Goliath.” Talarico’s victory signals the full crest of a blue tsunami. Senate races in North Carolina and Ohio were high-profile contests, but each amounted to a competition over purple territory. Democrats also flipped hard-to-win seats in red states such as South Carolina and Kansas. But Texas is in a league of its own. It’s the second-largest state in the union, the spiritual home of American conservatism, and it has been deep red for decades. Before Tuesday, Texans hadn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. And Donald Trump won the state by more than 1.5 million votes just two years ago, making Talarico’s win as big a pickup for either party in recent memory and putting 40 electoral college votes in play come 2028. In an equally unlikely turn, his fellow Democrat Gina Hinojosa won the governorship, defeating once-popular three-term incumbent Greg Abbott.
Paid postNoah Bernstein ·
Two years ago, voters powered Trump to the political comeback of the century. On Tuesday, they rejected him comprehensively, writes Eli Lake. When Donald Trump came into office for his second term, his approval ratings were in the high 40s. He had won the greatest political comeback in presidential history with a coalition that ranged from working-class white men to vaccine-skeptical wine moms. Trump won nearly half of all Latino votes, and 15 percent of the black vote, the highest tally for a Republican presidential candidate in decades. Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, and had a 6–3 edge on the Supreme Court. The future was MAGA and there was nothing the Democrats could do about it. Or so it seemed. Two years later, Trump has squandered those gains. At a special GOP midterm convention in Texas this summer, Trump asked the crowd to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” It appears that’s exactly what the voters did. The result is that the president’s House and Senate majorities are gone. Some of the deepest red states in the union, like South Carolina, have gone blue. Texas, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1988, will send James Talarico to Washington to fill John Cornyn’s seat. Georgia, which Trump won in 2024, gave Democratic senator Jon Ossoff an easy reelection victory and elected the first black governor in its history, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms. By midnight, it looked like Democrats were having their best midterm since 1974, after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace due to the Watergate scandal.
Paid postEli Lake ·
In the final round of The Honesty Project, we asked Americans about the biggest midterm topics. We found that opinion has shifted regarding both parties’ main weaknesses, writes Mene Ukueberuwa. Welcome back to The Honesty Project, a series of opinion surveys from The Free Press exploring what Americans really think about the most consequential issues in public life. We’re going beyond the questions usually asked in a typical poll. In partnership with Populace, an opinion-research think tank, we developed surveys designed to uncover respondents’ “private” opinions—the beliefs they consider too sensitive to express openly. We want to get past the biases that can distort polling and prompt people to give less-than-candid answers, and learn more about aspects of American life people don’t feel comfortable discussing freely. (Click to learn more about the initiative and methodology.) This Election Day, we asked Americans what matters most as they decide how to vote, including how they view President Donald Trump and his Democratic critics.
Paid postMene Ukueberuwa ·
In the latest This Week in Canada newsletter, a Catholic school bus driver who put a very troubling sign in the window claims discrimination, a masked man gets away from Toronto police, time seems to be on Carney’s side, and more, writes Rupa Subramanya. Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where Carney’s refusal to buckle to Trump on trade might just be working; three masked men unmask our crime problem; “The Lolita Line” is back in service; and more. Let’s jump right in! Is Canada’s gamble to refuse a bad trade deal and wait for political pressure to build on Donald Trump going to pay off? Prime Minister Mark Carney said last week that Canada is prepared to muddle through its trade war with the United States until 2029 rather than “lock in something that’s not in Canada’s interests,” according to Politico. “Every month that goes by, Canada grows stronger,” Carney said. “Our options increase.” That isn’t quite what the economic numbers say. Canada is surviving the trade war, now in its third month of 50 percent tariffs imposed on CAD$27.6 billion of Canadian-made goods, better than some people feared, but the costs are steep. The average U.S. tariff has climbed to 7.5 percent from essentially zero, the Bank of Canada estimates, while employment growth is particularly weak in industries that are most reliant on U.S. demand. Steel exports to the U.S. have fallen by half, and auto, steel, and aluminum companies have delayed investment, scaled back production, or shifted some investment to avoid tariffs. Carney isn’t really hoping to win a trade war against an economy more than 10 times the size of Canada’s. He is hoping that Canada can withstand the ongoing pain, buy more time to reduce its economic dependence on the U.S., and allow political pressure to build on the other side of the border.
Paid postRupa Subramanya ·
In today’s Front Page, two perspectives on the Democrats’ Haley Stevens Rorschach test. Arthur Brooks on how to raise kids who love reading. Michael Doran on whether Trump can broker a unity government in Israel. And much more. It’s Tuesday, November 3. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Joe Klein and Eli Lake on Haley Stevens and the Democrats’ civil war she provoked. Arthur Brooks on why it’s okay to read to your teenagers. And more. But first: Trump’s closing argument and the volunteers taking election integrity into their own hands. If Republican candidates braced for midterm defeat were hoping for some eleventh-hour message discipline from Donald Trump, let’s hope they didn’t turn on their televisions on Monday afternoon. Had they done so, they would have found the president standing not in a swing state but in front of the reflecting pool. The president eventually made his closing pitch to voters. But not before a 20-minute riff extolling the renovations to the Washington landmark he ordered earlier this year, including pictures of pipes and a detailed rundown of the “high-quality materials” used by the contractors. When the president finally got to the election, he didn’t exactly sound optimistic. “For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms. But we gave this a very strong shot,” he said. While Trump is setting expectations low, Democrats are trying not to get ahead of themselves. We may have learned by now not to trust the polls, but everything suggests a blue wave. To find out whether or not that blue wave materializes, tune in to our election livestream tonight (scroll down for more details and mark your calendars here). Before that, though, Americans have to vote and their ballots have to be counted. And that—in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade—has become a more contentious process than one would like. Today, Olivia Reingold meets the ranks of progressive activists fashioning themselves as “Election Defenders” at polls across the country. Read Olivia’s piece for an Election Day look at the messy, combustible picture on the ground as Americans head to the polls. —Oliver Wiseman Will Democrats Regret Spurning Haley Stevens? Haley Stevens just might be the most hated woman in Democratic politics right now. On Sunday, the Michigan congresswoman, who lost to Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for Senate, un-endorsed her former opponent and instead backed Republican Mike Rogers. The subsequent vitriol from her erstwhile colleagues has been astonishing, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling her switch a “despicable betrayal.” Today, we have two pieces about l’affair Stevens from different perspectives. Joe Klein considers Trump “a clear and present danger to our country” and dearly hopes that both houses of Congress will elect Democratic majorities after today’s election results are in. But, he argues, Democrats need to be clear-eyed about the danger El-Sayed poses to the party. If they don’t, he writes, the party “will pay the price in a loss of decency and humanity.” For his part, Eli Lake wonders when all the Democratic pooh-bahs who are now furiously condemning Stevens will realize what a mistake they’ve made by getting behind El-Sayed as a means to gain back the Senate. “They all have chosen to purge Stevens instead of thinking through what happens when the man they have endorsed wins his election and becomes a kingmaker,” Eli writes. “Perhaps then the Democrats making a show of their solidarity with El-Sayed will learn they have invited a wolf into their henhouse.” And ICYMI, catch up on Olivia Reingold’s exclusive interview with Stevens on the ground in Michigan. Tune In for LIVE Midterms coverage with The Free Press and 2WAY! The Free Press and 2WAY are teaming up for a real-time interactive election night special. You can tune in right here. Will Rahn will co-host with Ma…
The Free Press ·
The wife of an Afghan man who once assisted the U.S. military feels ‘numb,’ she tells Frannie Block. ‘They are sending him back to be in danger.’ A 32-year-old man, Ali, is currently sitting in an ICE detention facility in western Louisiana, contemplating whether he is about to die. As soon as today, the United States could be shipping as many as 80 Afghans back to Afghanistan. But Ali’s wife, Hamida, said if he returns, he will be killed by the Taliban. He previously assisted the U.S. military forces in Kabul as a police officer, and the Taliban, who has ruled the country ever since the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, has a long documented history of persecuting Afghans perceived to have assisted the United States, including by subjecting them to beatings, starvation, and other forms of torture inside secret prisons. “We are human,” Hamida told me. “We helped the U.S. government for a while, all of us, directly or indirectly.” She pleads that the U.S. government “believe and trust” that people like her and her husband have only “come here for a better life.” (I am using pseudonyms to identify Ali and his wife, who spoke to me under the condition of anonymity.) On Monday, a group of 66 Democrats from both the House and the Senate signed a letter pleading with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “cancel” any planned deportation flights to Afghanistan. “Our nation made a promise to stand by Afghans who risked their lives and their families’ safety to stand by U.S. service members,” the letter reads. “This mass deportation—potentially to their deaths—is a violation of that promise and our moral obligations to the Afghan community who stood alongside our troops.”
Paid postFrannie Block ·
Democrats are recruiting tens of thousands to monitor poll sites and report voter intimidation. Olivia Reingold talks to the progressives taking ‘election integrity’ into their own hands. Last Tuesday, I joined a call with 79 progressives from around the country on “Election Safety Training.” Held by Women’s March, a nonprofit founded in the wake of the first Trump administration, the hourlong crash course braced participants for Republicans’ dirtiest tricks. Or, as one of the organizers described the party, the “GOP: Gang of Pedophiles.” Kalaya’an Mendoza, a “holistic safety and security” expert, briefed us on how to document potential vote tampering using a protocol inspired by the U.S. military: “ALERTA: Activity, Location, Equipment, Request, Time, Appearance,” a six-step process to gather information he said we would then disseminate to a “community rapid response group.” “It’s important that we prepare so that we don’t panic,” he cautioned, directing us to write down the hotline number for tips of voter interference. Mendoza told us we should be “very prepared for some kind of foolishness” that could come from any direction: the Trump administration, the Proud Boys, or even a group of men carrying “strange pseudo-Nazi paraphernalia.”
Paid postOlivia Reingold ·
I would like both houses of Congress to gain Democratic majorities, but not at the cost of empowering extremists who don’t like Israel or, more to the point, Jews, writes Joe Klein. I just read Simon Schama’s essay in The Jewish Quarterly about the reemergence of Jew hatred. You should read it, too. You should read it if you’re a conservative, but especially if you’re a liberal and are considering voting for certain members of the Democratic Party this year—and most especially if the Democrat on your ballot is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or just a free-range anti-Israel bigot like the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. Though I often vote for Democrats, I could never support any member of the Jew-hating “socialist” left. I consider Donald Trump a clear and present danger to our country. I would like both houses of Congress to gain Democratic majorities, but not at the cost of empowering academic extremists who don’t like Israel or, more to the point, Jews.
Paid postJoe Klein ·