Third, Ocasio-Cortez is not Sanders. Perhaps she has less appeal among older white voters and men than the Vermont senator. But it’s easy to imagine her running well ahead of him among Black, Latino, and women voters, particularly the younger people in those cohorts. She is charismatic in a way that the senator isn’t. Perhaps […]
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Conroy: And I’m going to go Mark Kelly, senator from Arizona. Perry Bacon: Okay. Does anyone want to discuss? Shapiro—I was deciding between Shapiro and Pritzker, and that was a hard one for me. It feels to me like Pritzker has not done a particularly good job signaling. He’s from Chicago. He is pretty liberal. […]
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You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. We’re a very long way from the first votes in the 2028 presidential primary. But many politicians are already positioning themselves for the next presidential contest. In the […]
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Source: MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images / Getty The Supreme Court delivered one of the most significant blows to the GOP’s attempt to gerrymander their way into a midterms victory after ruling on Wednesday that California can use its newly redrawn map in this year’s midterms. According to NBC News, the Supreme Court […]
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Bessent hit Newsom back in a Politico interview. “Newsom was in over his hairdo,” he said, and has “a brain the size of a walnut,” and, most creatively, Newsom is “Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken.” This last insult was so elaborately crafted that it sent me to Google. Patrick Bateman is the serial killer […]
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Big Ag took hold of the Midwest decades ago. And some of these trends—shrinking populations, farm consolidation, and local business closures—are common in rural areas across the country. But some residents and activists say a recent, allegedly pro-environmental policy is making things worse: A climate program implemented some two thousand miles away is encouraging farms […]
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Big Ag took hold of the Midwest decades ago. And some of these trends—shrinking populations, farm consolidation, and local business closures—are common in rural areas across the country. But some residents and activists say a recent, allegedly pro-environmental policy is making things worse: A climate program implemented some two thousand miles away is encouraging farms […]
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Source: Smith Collection/Gado / Getty The modern GOP really believes that it should be allowed to do whatever it wants while everyone else plays by the rules. So it should come as no surprise that, after convincing several Republican state legislatures to engage in rare, mid-decade redistricting efforts, the Trump administration sued California for engaging […]
Read MoreIranians have agency. They have been protesting against this regime from its very beginning. In March 1979, one month after Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran, overthrew the king, and announced the start of the Islamic Republic, 100,000 Iranian women poured in the streets of Tehran to fight against the suddenly compulsory hijab. The protests have […]
Read MoreIranians have agency. They have been protesting against this regime from its very beginning. In March 1979, one month after Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran, overthrew the king, and announced the start of the Islamic Republic, 100,000 Iranian women poured in the streets of Tehran to fight against the suddenly compulsory hijab. The protests have […]
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Source: Anadolu / Getty On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must end the deployment of the National Guard in California. According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority and that control of the National Guard must be returned to California Governor Gavin Newsom. […]
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Andreessen and Altman both opposed California’s efforts to regulate AI. Altman’s company, OpenAI, even subpoenaed policy wonk Nathan Calvin, requesting “all documents concerning SB 53 or its potential impact on OpenAI.” Calvin is a lawyer at the AI think tank Encode, where he worked on S.B. 53. He told The New Republic that the bill […]
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Lil Sis, a group that tracks corporate influence in politics, reports that polluting industries have spent $15.9 million on lobbying in New York state since 2021, increasing their spending during that time by 52 percent. They have lobbied against a “cap and invest “measure, as well as other initiatives to comply with the state’s 2019 […]
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Source: OCTAVIO JONES / Getty The Trump administration is suing the state of California because California officials have this strange idea that law enforcement officers who are given authority and demand compliance from the public should have to identify themselves, including allowing people to see their faces. Insanity, amirite? According to CBS News, on Monday, […]
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Source: Justin Sullivan / Getty Over the last several months, Republican state legislatures have begun rare, mid-decade redistricting efforts to protect their narrow majority in the House. Tuesday’s elections in California and Virginia gave Democrats a massive win in countering the GOP’s attempt to gerrymander their way to a midterm victory. California Gov. Gavin Newsom […]
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Source: Christina House / Getty A lot of things happened during Tuesday night’s blue wave that saw Democrats winning key state elections across the country. New York City got its first Muslim mayor, to the dismay of seething Islamaphobes everywhere. Women became governors and mayors for the first time in the history of states and […]
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Source: Alexi J. Rosenfeld / Getty New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s win in the 2025 general election offers a case study in building diverse coalitions in spite of extremism in the current political landscape. Among the many wins Tuesday night, his win poses the biggest threat to establishment politics. And it wasn’t just from […]
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In Orange County, the line of voters lingered outside. It was typical of the standard polling place—busier during lunch, nurses in scrubs, mothers with a baby on their shoulder. The local CNN reporter was keeping watch. I didn’t see any dogs waiting to vote. Not long after I arrived on the scene, I heard that […]
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California asked the Ninth Circuit to review the panel’s decision in an en banc hearing, meaning that the entire appellate court would review it. (Since the Ninth Circuit is so large, it only uses a subset of eleven judges for en banc hearings.) The court declined to do so, keeping the lower court’s restraining order […]
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“I am inclined to grant the plaintiff’s motion,” said Illston during a hearing on the matter. “The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning to assume that all bets are off—that the laws […]
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“I am inclined to grant the plaintiff’s motion,” said Illston during a hearing on the matter. “The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning to assume that all bets are off—that the laws […]
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Last month’s climate package wasn’t the California Democrats’ first flub this year. Over the summer, in what Politico dubbed the state’s “Great Climate Retreat,” they weakened limits on the carbon intensity of transportation fuels, rolled back environmental reviews for new housing, and lifted a cap on oil industry profits. “California was the vocal climate leader […]
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What’s notable, in one sense, is how badly this project has failed. Despite months of effort, Trump and Miller have not come close to manufacturing the sense of fear or trauma out in the country they’d hoped for. But in the nascent Pritzker-Newsom understanding, assuming this will all take care of itself—that voters will resist […]
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Bacon: I think we’ve talked about Pritzker and Newsom a few times. We’ve talked about Democratic AGs. Are the other Democratic governors involved in in resisting, I don’t think I know, but part of it is Newsom and Pritzker are presumably, presumably running for president, so I think that’s part of what’s going on. That’s why […]
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In the latest episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon, Democratic strategist Arkadi Gerney argues that the United States is in the midst of a “cold civil war.” For liberals to win it, they must use “hardball” tactics, including borrowing from the Republicans’ playbook. Gerney says that Republican governors and attorneys general smartly coordinated during […]
Read MoreSource: DOMINIC GWINN / Getty California state legislators passed a bill banning law enforcement from wearing face masks while conducting official operations. According to AP, California is the first state legislature to pass a bill of this nature, though similar measures have been introduced in Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Congress. Democratic state Sen. […]
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Source: To say the moves made by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr regarding public health are concerning is a massive understatement. One of the loudest voices of the anti-vaccine movement, RFK Jr. has consistently downplayed the efficacy of vaccines and implemented policies making it harder to access them. In an […]
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Source: Anadolu / Getty It would be a shame to see a smarmy somebody like Gavin Newsom successfully troll his way to the presidency. Granted, it’s debatable that we will even have a legitimate presidential election in 2028, but let’s suppose something – the Supreme Court, a menu item from McDonald’s, a heart and soul […]
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“That’s what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike: He knows that America is not just an abstract ‘proposition,’ but a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests,” Schmitt said. The Continental Army soldiers at Valley Forge, Pilgrims at Plymouth, pioneers in Missouri, […]
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Nowhere is the case for public ownership clearer than in the defense sector. Lutnick—like Trump, a broken clock—was right when he said that companies like Lockheed Martin already function as quasi-public entities, deriving nearly all their revenue from government contracts. They are, in effect, state enterprises run for private profit. The same logic applies, more […]
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During a Thursday CNN appearance, Daskalakis advised senators to ask Kennedy at his appearance before the Senate Finance Committee next week: “Has he been ever briefed by a CDC expert on anything—on, specifically, measles, Covid-19, flu?” Asked whether RFK has indeed ever received such a briefing, Daskalakis replied, “The answer is no. So no one […]
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