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Trump Hammered Over Iran War That Drove Gas Prices Above $4 Per Gallon Every Day in August for First Time Ever
"Donald Trump started a deadly and costly war with Iran that has driven gas prices through the roof, and Americans are breaking the bank to fill up at the pump."
Aug 31, 2026
President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran has achieved a significant milestone, but it's not one that many US voters will likely appreciate.
Data published by the American Automobile Association (AAA) on Monday show that the average price for gas in the US now stands at $4.08 per gallon, or $0.90 per gallon more than the average price one year ago.
Gas prices typically decline throughout summer months, but the spike in oil prices caused by the Iran War has kept prices elevated in August beyond anything seen in prior years.
"For the first time ever, the national average in August has been above $4 per gallon every day," explained AAA. "This month is poised to set a new record as the most expensive August at the pump, surpassing the previous August record set in 2022."
Kendall Witmer, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, slammed Trump in a Monday statement where she accused the president of making policy to benefit his fossil fuel industry donors while leaving working-class Americans holding the bag.
"Donald Trump started a deadly and costly war with Iran that has driven gas prices through the roof, and Americans are breaking the bank to fill up at the pump," said Witmer. "Meanwhile, Trump and Big Oil executives who donated to his campaign are profiting off his war, cashing in at the expense of hardworking Americans. In Trump’s world, the rich and powerful come first, while everyday Americans get left in the dust."
High gas prices have become a major political headache for Trump, as a recent analysis estimated that Americans have paid $71.5 billion more to fill up their cars thanks to the president's war.
Meanwhile, a mandated ethics filing released last week shows Trump made more than 1,000 stock transactions in June, including thousands of dollars invested in energy companies profiting off of his war.
CNBC reported on Monday that the president is scheduled to meet with US refiners and fuel distributors as part of an effort to lower gas prices ahead of the midterm elections in November.
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'Zero Aid to Israel,' Ro Khanna Declares at Democratic National Committee Meeting
"Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, and we should have the courage to say so," said the California Democrat.
Aug 16, 2026
Congressman Ro Khanna said in a speech at the Democratic National Committee's summer meeting on Saturday that the party must support cutting off military assistance to Israel, pointing to the country's ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip and imposition of an "apartheid system" in the West Bank.
Khanna (D-Calif.), who is considering a presidential run in 2028, told DNC members gathered in Austin, Texas that "Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, and we should have the courage to say so." The congressman's remark was met with enthusiastic applause.
Khanna, who also said the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "must be condemned unequivocally," cited his recent trip to the illegally occupied West Bank, where the lawmaker was detained by armed settlers and the Israeli military.
"Zero aid to Israel," Khanna declared Saturday. "No military sales of weapons used to kill civilians. And let me be clear: If our party cannot stand for these principles, it will never convince a generation that watched the horrors of Gaza on their iPhones that we mean what we say about justice."
Khanna's remarks came after the DNC approved by voice vote a package of resolutions that included one calling for full enforcement of the so-called Leahy Laws, which prohibit the transfer of US weaponry to governments credibly accused of human rights violations.
A United Nations commission said last month that "even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law."
Recent polling has found that an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters oppose US military aid to Israel, but their representatives in Congress remain divided on the matter. In late July, more than half of the House Democratic caucus—including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—voted against an amendment backed by Khanna that would have cut off $3.3 billion in US assistance to Israel, which has repeatedly used American weapons to commit atrocities against Palestinians.
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‘Twin Victories for Human Rights’ as DNC Advances Resolutions on ICE, Aid to Israel
“Approval of the resolutions... point the way for the Democratic Party to move in directions consistent with what voters want."
Aug 13, 2026
As the war for the future of the Democratic Party rages on, progressives took steps toward a pair of key victories at the Democratic National Committee on Thursday, advancing one resolution calling to abolish the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and another in support of barring US military aid for Israel.
The resolutions, which were both introduced by Louisiana DNC member Michele Johnson, were approved during a meeting in Austin by the DNC Resolutions Committee and are expected to be put before the full committee for a vote by Saturday.
Though resolutions passed through the DNC do not bind lawmakers or presidents to take particular actions, they play an important role in legitimizing positions once confined to the margins but which are fast becoming a consensus among Democratic voters.
"While it may not actually push Congress to do something, it sends a message that we believe these things," Johnson said during an interview last week. "Ultimately, these resolutions can be used in the creation of a platform... to guide Democrats for the next four years."
The first resolution “urges Democratic members of Congress to craft legislation abolishing ICE and enacting immigration reform that provides pathways to citizenship, protects workers, and ensures dignity for all impacted people.”
If passed, it would put the party in line with the majority of its voters, 73% of whom said in an Economist/YouGov poll last month that they believe ICE should be abolished.
It's a position that has been adopted by increasing numbers of lawmakers in the party's progressive wing, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), but has been resisted by party leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
As part of the “mass deportation” crusade during President Donald Trump’s second term, which has resulted in individuals being detained nationwide with little due process, ICE has increasingly relied on indiscriminate raids, warrantless arrests, and racial profiling while setting up a vast network of opaque detention camps with squalid conditions. Most of those rounded up have had no criminal convictions.
As of Thursday, more than 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump retook office in January 2025, and several more, including multiple US citizens, have been shot during enforcement operations without clear justification.
The resolution "urges Democratic members of Congress to pursue civil and criminal accountability for any federal agent, attorney, or official who lied under oath, misrepresented evidence, or gave false testimony regarding DHS conduct, and to remove qualified immunity and other protections shielding DHS and ICE personnel and subcontractors who have injured protesters or journalists, fired into moving vehicles, or caused deaths in custody, whether of detained individuals, US citizens, or immigrants regardless of nationality or documentation status.“
The other resolution advanced on Thursday states that the DNC supports the "full, consistent, and impartial enforcement" of the so-called "Leahy Laws" to prevent military aid to Israel or any other countries that violate US human rights law.
These laws, named after their sponsor, former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), state that the US cannot provide training, weapons, equipment, or other assistance to a foreign military unit when the government has credible information that it has committed a “gross violation of human rights.”
Critics have argued that former President Joe Biden violated the Leahy Laws by continuing to provide unrestricted military aid to Israel as it waged a genocidal war in Gaza and escalated its assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank during his presidency. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeatedly balked at calls, including from within his own State Department, to enforce the Leahy Laws despite mounting evidence of atrocities.
A classified State Department report whose findings were publicized in October 2025 found that the Israeli military had committed hundreds of human rights violations that may have warranted enforcement of the Leahy Laws, including many during the Biden administration.
The resolution advanced on Thursday “calls for strengthened vetting capacity, clear remediation standards," referring to the process by which a military that violates human rights can restore eligibility for US funding, "and regular public reporting on the implementation of the Leahy Laws by the Department of State and the Department of Defense."
The resolution also "encourages Democratic members of Congress to conduct robust oversight of Leahy Law implementation and to support legislative measures that close documented enforcement gaps."
Like with ICE, a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are calling for the US to cut off support for Israel, but party leadership has been resistant. This is despite nearly three-quarters of Democratic voters saying in a May 2026 New York Times/Siena poll that they are opposed to sending more funding.
The passage of the Leahy Law resolution shows how the ground has shifted beneath the Democratic establishment since last August, when the Resolutions Committee blocked a resolution that would call for an arms embargo against Israel in favor of a more limited one pushed by DNC chair Ken Martin, calling for unrestricted aid to Gaza and a two-state solution. Martin later withdrew his resolution, leaving neither as the party's adopted position.
In April, more resolutions, which called for the conditioning of military aid to Israel and the recognition of a Palestinian state, were deferred to a working group. Another resolution condemning the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was also killed by the resolutions panel.
Sam Rosenthal, the political director of the progressive advocacy group RootsAction, attended the committee meeting on Thursday. His group promoted both resolutions, including by sponsoring a mobile billboard that circled outside the conference, which read, “HEY DNC, UPHOLD THE LEAHY LAWS. SUPPORT HUMAN RIGHTS!”
"These were twin victories for human rights, at home and abroad,” Rosenthal said of the votes on Thursday. “Approval of the resolutions for abolishing ICE and upholding the Leahy Law point the way for the Democratic Party to move in directions consistent with what voters want."
"Getting sufficient turnout from the party’s base at election time," he added, "will require a change in the approach of the party’s national leadership so that it is clearly responsive to the views of Democrats nationwide.”
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'Must Be Done': Sanders Calls for Ban on Super PAC Spending in Democratic Primaries
"I would hope that we can all agree that Republican special interests should not play a role in determining the outcome of Democratic primaries. The time to act is now."
Aug 10, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday urged national Democratic leaders to impose a total ban on super PAC spending in primary contests, a change that the progressive senator said is necessary to prevent corporate interests from heavily influencing the party's electoral outcomes.
In a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote that "what is particularly obscene is not only the outrageous amount of money coming into Democratic primaries from billionaire-funded super PACs, but the reality that these special interests have no particular desire to see Democrats win."
Sanders, who caucuses with the Democratic Party, cited as a telling example the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's $30 million intervention in the Democratic primary for a critical US Senate seat in Michigan. The organization, known as AIPAC, spent heavily to boost Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and attempt to tear down her progressive opponent, Abdul El-Sayed—who went on to win the race despite being massively outspent.
AIPAC is now reportedly planning to spend big in support of El-Sayed's Republican general election opponent, Mike Rogers.
"It is absurd that they spend tens of millions of dollars to try to determine who the Democratic nominee is and, if they fail, then proceed to support the Republican candidate in the general election," Sandres wrote. "That is not democracy. That is not what Democratic voters want."
Sanders emphasized his support for passage of a constitutional amendment to repeal the US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which paved the way for the establishment and proliferation of super PACs—entities that can raise and spend unlimited sums supporting or opposing political campaigns.
"BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT," Sanders wrote in all caps. "Right now, the Democratic Party has the power to prohibit super PACs from participating in its primaries. That can be done. That must be done. I urge you to take action and make clear that the Democratic Party will no longer maintain this corrupt system."
"While there are ideological differences of opinion within the big tent of the party, I would hope that we can all agree that Republican special interests should not play a role in determining the outcome of Democratic primaries," the senator continued. "The time to act is now."
The DNC has repeatedly faced calls in recent years to curb or eliminate the influence of super PACs in Democratic primaries—but has yet to take concrete action.
Earlier this year, the DNC Rules Committee rejected a proposed resolution that condemned the "growing influence" of AIPAC and other organizations pumping huge sums into Democratic primaries. The rules panel instead advanced a resolution broadly condemning dark money and expressing the DNC's "commitment to campaign finance practices that align with the party’s core values."
Nearly a third of all corporate political spending on elections since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has come during the 2026 election cycle, according to a June report by Public Citizen.
"Cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online betting corporations have collectively spent $294 million to influence federal elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, reflecting a strategic move to spend directly on political action committees to influence federal elections," the report found. "These corporate super PAC political contributions make up 57% of the $517 million that corporations have reported spending on the 2026 midterms so far."
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Author of DNC Autopsy Found Gaza Policy Hurt Harris in 2024—But Never Submitted Finding to Party Leadership
"This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity," said one critic.
Aug 07, 2026
When the Democratic National Committee at long last released its "autopsy" report on former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 election in May, one of the most puzzling aspects was the lack of any conclusions related to her and former President Joe Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Holly Otterbein of Axios reported on Thursday that the document's author, Paul Rivera, did indeed look into the issue of Gaza and found it had a role in Harris’ loss. But he did not submit the findings to the DNC for inclusion in the report. Axios did not include an explanation for that decision.
Rivera confirmed Axios’ reporting from back in February that the conclusions had been shared with the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian think tank, which told the DNC that Harris’ failure to break from Biden’s policy on Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza proved a liability with progressive voters, especially in Michigan.
This news led to speculation that DNC chair Ken Martin, who had resisted calls to release the autopsy in full, was doing so to avoid publicizing findings that portrayed Israel as an albatross around the party's neck.
Rivera alleged earlier this week that Martin and top DNC brass withheld other portions of his report from public view, including a chapter criticizing the party's overreliance on “self-enriching” consultants and party operatives out of touch with voters. Rivera claims to have handed Martin a three-ring binder containing the report, but Martin denies that this occurred.
Rivera, who was fired from his advisory role at the DNC following widespread public backlash to the release of the autopsy, has since published his own 564-page report on the 2024 election, which includes several pages examining the role of Gaza.
As of Election Day 2024, more than 43,000 Palestinians had been killed, including at least 13,300 identified children, according to figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and protests had swept the nation demanding that Biden cut off military aid to Israel.
While Rivera's report does not conclude that Gaza alone cost Harris the election, it found that it had a clear role in alienating voters who would have otherwise supported Harris.
It found that in Michigan, one of the key swing states that handed victory to Trump, the losses in heavily Arab and Middle Eastern communities like West Bloomfield, Sterling Heights, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck, were significant.
In these communities, Harris received 30,850 fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, while Trump gained 14,874, a swing accounting for nearly 20% of the 234,291-vote shift that handed President Donald Trump the state.
Rivera noted that the Uncommitted Movement, which garnered more than 700,000 votes nationally in the 2024 primary, originated in Dearborn, where Harris lost nearly a third of the support Biden had received in 2020. In nearby Hamtramck, her support tanked by 39% from Biden's in 2020.
Notably, many of these voters did not flock to Trump, but to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received more than 12,000 votes across Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck.
"The political analysis is simple," Rivera wrote. "The electoral results and voting shifts in Michigan and elsewhere demonstrate the impact the crisis had on the Harris campaign."
He concluded that the issue could not simply be boiled down to "messaging" but to concrete policy.
“For many voters whose family members were displaced, subject to violence, or killed, the inability of the administration to effectively intervene was unacceptable,” he wrote. “In 2024, absent a real end to military action and restoration of civilian control in Gaza, many voters in Michigan and elsewhere would not be satisfied.”
Asked by Common Dreams to elaborate on why he did not provide these findings to the DNC, Rivera did not immediately respond to a request sent through his website’s press contact.
Zeeshan Aleem, a political columnist at MSNOW was puzzled by the decision by Rivera not to provide the Gaza findings to the DNC.
"This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity," he said. "The author of the DNC report said he did conclude that Gaza hurt Kamala, but didn’t include that finding in the report he submitted to the DNC. Why?"
The opacity and conflicting narratives surrounding the autopsy's release continue to befuddle critics and onlookers.
Dave Weigel, a political reporter at Semafor, described the idea that Gaza cost Harris votes as "a water-is-wet finding guarded like the Ark of the Covenant."
"Martin could have just admitted that, yes, this issue that got Harris protested everywhere and helped Trump win Michigan hurt the campaign," he said. "Instead, it became a secret that Holly pried loose and generated an extra year of negative stories."
The exclusion of Gaza from the official report released in May became ammunition for some commentators seeking to downplay the idea that Democrats' support for Israel is an electoral liability or to accuse the IMEU Policy Project of spinning a false narrative.
Responding to the release of Rivera's report, media critic Adam Johnson mocked those who framed it as a "conspiracy theory."
"What’s so important to understand is that anyone denying Gaza harmed Harris’ chances is a rank propagandist. Nobody believes this in good faith," he said. "Obviously it did. We can debate the degree of harm it had, but clearly it was significant and had many downstream deflating effects."
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Forced Out of DNC for Criticizing Party Leaders, David Hogg Speaks Out: 'I Wasn't Wrong'
As progressives notch win after win in Democratic primaries, the 26-year-old activist said it shows that the party "didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for."
Aug 06, 2026
Just over a year ago, David Hogg, then the newly-minted vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, found himself unceremoniously pushed out after he called on the party to back primary challengers to unseat members of a moribund establishment.
Now, as progressives notch victory after victory against the party's conservative old guard and are once again galvanizing young voters thought to have been lost, the 26-year-old reformer says it proves he was right all along.
"A year ago, I was removed from my position as vice chair of the DNC for daring to suggest that we needed to challenge geriatric, corrupt, and asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats in safe blue seats," Hogg wrote in an op-ed for Zeteo on Thursday. "The establishment kicked me out for those 'radical' views, and the establishment is losing."
His missive came days after yet another triumph for the left in Michigan, where the progressive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed overcame more than $60 million in outside spending in the Senate primary, more than half of which came from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to upset a candidate backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other leading figures in the party establishment.
Hogg—a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting who co-founded the gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives— noted El-Sayed's victory as one of the latest in a "hot streak" for the organization he formed in 2023 and has continued to lead after being forced out of the DNC.
The group, known as Leaders We Deserve, is predominantly funded by small-dollar donors and has boosted young progressives to challenge the party status quo, running on policies like Medicare for All, increased taxes on the rich, expanding public services, and an end to aggressive foreign interventions and military funding for Israel.
The group was a major outside supporter of a super PAC that helped fuel democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani's unexpected ascent in New York City last year.
It has also backed a number of progressive challengers who've gone on to defeat well-funded, establishment-backed candidates this cycle, including community activist Donavan McKinney in Michigan, labor organizer Claire Valdez in New York, and professor Randy Villegas in California, who've each claimed Democratic nominations for the US House.
Hogg wrote that state-level candidates backed by his organization have an 18-1 record in their races this cycle.
He argued that the success of these candidates served as a counterpoint to the conventional wisdom following the party's losses in 2024, that Democrats needed to chase young voters to the right after they opted in unexpectedly huge numbers for President Donald Trump.
"As we saw in Mamdani’s race, and in races with progressive candidates across the country," Hogg said, "young voters are turning out in record numbers, proving that we didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for."
And contrary to the establishment's fearmongering about "electability," Hogg said the left's recent wins show that "progressives aren’t just electable; they’re a dominant force."
"Voters see clearly that many of our politicians are serving their largest corporate donors instead of the working class. Younger voters cannot fathom voting for a status quo that has never served them," he said. "It turns out that a focused affordability message, moral clarity, and a commitment to not being bought motivates voters across the political spectrum."
"A year ago, cable news pundit panels, elected officials, campaign strategists, and the entire establishment told me I was crazy for daring to challenge our party to do better," Hogg said. "Today, I say: I wasn’t wrong; I was just early."
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Unpublished DNC Autopsy Chapter Criticized 'Self-Enriching' Party Operatives
"There are too many people who have become generationally wealthy off politics and drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem."
Aug 03, 2026
The New York Times on Monday published what it described as a "missing chapter" of the Democratic National Committee's widely criticized "autopsy" of the 2024 presidential election.
The chapter, titled "What Happened in 2024" and provided to the Times by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, offers criticisms of party consultants who are "self-enriching" and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary voters.
Specifically, the chapter questions whether Democratic politicians and operatives have a grasp on the economic realities facing most Americans, while calling for "a fundamental re-evaluation" of whether Democrats "really understand the wants and needs of voters."
"An emerging critique of Democratic decision-making," the chapter states, "is there are too many people who have become generationally wealthy off politics and drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem. This is deeply frustrating to many... who want to try a different set of politics but keep banging their heads up against a system proven to be inflexible and self-enriching."
The chapter adds that "many of the people who worked at the highest levels of the party" are "financially secure," and thus potentially insulated "from the realities many Americans were encountering in their lives."
In an interview with the Times, Rivera claimed that he personally handed the missing chapter to DNC Chair Ken Martin in a three-ring binder earlier this year.
Rivera said he had no specific insight into why the chapter was not included with the report that the DNC released in May.
"Whether that was a conscious decision on their part to bury the section for the purposes of hiding a paragraph, I don’t know," the Democratic strategist told the Times. "That's a them question. What I can tell you is they had it, and they made a decision not to release it."
Martin, however, flatly denied that Rivera had ever personally handed him the chapter.
“This alleged report section was not in any binder I reviewed," said Martin in a written statement given to the Times. "If we had this in May, we would have released it with the rest of the report."
Martin also called it ridiculous to suggest that he would have suppressed a section of the final DNC report to avoid offending the party's consultant class.
"If I or the DNC had report materials that went after self-enriching consultants, we absolutely would have included them," Martin insisted, noting his own past promises "to hold the consultant-industrial complex accountable and ensure the party only pays for work that actually helps us win."
The Times report noted that the DNC's autopsy featured a section titled "What Happened" that was listed as "pending" on the grounds that it "was not provided by author."
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Asked About Stephen Miller, DNC Staffer Happy to Confirm: ‘I Stand by Calling Him an Ugly Fuck’
"He is a White House official who is taking to Twitter to hurl these absolutely false and transphobic attacks," said Paulina Mangubat. "It's just absolutely disgusting."
May 29, 2026
"I said what I said."
That was Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Paulina Mangubat's statement Thursday evening after her response to White House adviser Stephen Miller's smear against Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas went viral earlier this week.
After Miller posted a picture on Wednesday of Talarico with the comment that Democrats in Texas had nominated "their first transgender Senate candidate,” Mangubat, who serves as the DNC's content and creative director and is behind many of the committee's social media posts, had a concise response.
"Shut up, you ugly fuck," Mangubat wrote, prompting an angry reply from Miller's wife, right-wing podcaster Katie Miller. She named Mangubat as the person behind the DNC's social media presence and announced that the staffer was "30, unmarried with no kids"—a fresh example of the MAGA movement's fixation with liberal, unmarried women.
On Thursday, Ben Meiselas of the progressive media company MeidasTouch invited Mangubat on his show to give her the opportunity to respond to Katie Miller.
"What do you want Katie Miller to know?" asked Meiselas.
"I want Katie Miller to know that her husband is an ugly fuck," Mangubat replied.
Meiselas: Katie Miller has been posting about you. I want to give you the opportunity right now to respond. What do you want to say to her?
Paulina Mangubat, Content and Creative Director for @TheDemocrats: I want Katie Miller to know that her husband is an ugly fuck. pic.twitter.com/KA8ioubJqx
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 29, 2026
"Stephen Miller is one of the most powerful men in the country right now," she continued. "He is a White House official who is taking to Twitter to hurl these absolutely false and transphobic attacks against an amazing candidate in Texas, James Talarico."
Mangubat added that Miller's actions during President Donald Trump's terms in office have been "ugly," pointing to his role as an architect of Trump's family separation policy and his mass deportation agenda—an operation in which federal agents have fatally shot at least six people, including at least three US citizens.
"He is celebrating when ICE shoots down Americans in the street," said Mangubat in an apparent reference to Miller's comment—just hours after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January—that Pretti was a "would-be assassin."
"It's just absolutely disgusting," she continued. "And so yeah, I stand by calling him an ugly fuck."
Earlier this week, Katie Miller posted a photo of Mangubat and said that "this is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like,” adding “it’s why Pew reports 50% of them have been diagnosed with a mental condition.”
Miller didn't say what Pew Research data she was referring to, nor did she cite any evidence when she later asserted on Fox News that her husband being called ugly "is the same violent political rhetoric that is leading people to shooting up."
Meanwhile, Mangubat quickly seized on Katie Miller's attacks on her marital status to publicly announce her impending wedding.
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'Not Up to the Task': Calls Mount for Ken Martin to Resign Over 2024 DNC Autopsy Debacle
"The DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand.”
May 22, 2026
The disastrous release of the Democratic National Committee's 2024 election "autopsy" report on Thursday has brought about a reckoning for the committee's chair, Ken Martin, who is facing calls to resign from legislators and other influential figures in the party.
The 192-page report, written by strategist Paul Rivera in the wake of former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss to President Donald Trump, was panned as amateurish and incomplete, even more than 18 months after the election. Rivera was reportedly fired on Friday.
Aside from being filled with glaring spelling and factual errors and containing several unfinished sections and self-contradicting annotations, it neglected key issues widely believed to have contributed to the Democratic nominee's defeat: Most acutely, her continued backing of Israel as it perpetrated a genocide in Gaza, her inability to address working- and middle-class voters' concerns about affordability, and the shambolic attempt by former President Joe Biden to run for a second term despite his old age and his earlier indications he would serve for only four years.
Many Democrats now see it as a damning indictment of Martin, who was elected as DNC chair last year in part on promises to conduct a thorough and transparent review of the party's defeat. Not helping was his sudden pivot in late 2025 to attempt to bury the report he once championed, only releasing it this week after it leaked to CNN despite mounting pressure from party members.
On Friday morning, Axios quoted an ideological mix of Democratic legislators describing the report's release as the final straw for Martin.
"He should resign," Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told Axios, citing "his lack of leadership" and saying it is "utterly nuts it took us this long to release the autopsy."
In a radio interview Thursday, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to a caller who argued Martin should be replaced: "I agree... Having what we have right now is not doing it."
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) told Semafor that "there doesn't seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking... I believe it's time for him to move on."
Despite a push by Martin's allies to arm state party chairs with talking points expressing that they are "fully confident in his leadership," NOTUS reported that inside private DNC group chats and one-on-one conversations, dissension is brewing, and there is even talk of forcing a vote of no confidence to oust the chairman.
"People feel gaslit" by Martin's flip-flopping, one unnamed DNC member told the outlet. "You kept telling people it was coming, then when you didn’t release it, you didn’t even tell everyone the real reason why.”
“While I don’t believe that there are enough votes to pass a vote of no confidence yet, I think there’s more of a permission structure now to have a more open conversation about it,” said another member who NOTUS described as an ally of Martin's. “If they think this is going to make things go away, no, this is only going to ramp up now.”
That's the hope of many in the party's grassroots, who said the entire saga demonstrated Martin's unfitness for a role with major responsibilities as Democrats head into existentially important elections in 2026 and 2028.
Dan Pfeiffer—a former Obama administration staffer whose Pod Save America podcast cohosts held Martin's feet to the fire as he fought to keep the autopsy hidden—called the release "a disaster of his own making."
"He didn’t pick a qualified person to run the autopsy. The fact that he was apparently shocked by the work product shows there was no oversight of the process," Pfeiffer said on social media. "Once he saw that the report was poorly done, he just decided to start lying to everyone about why it wasn't being released."
"In '28, the DNC will set the primary calendar, decide how delegates are awarded, sponsor the debates, and put on the convention," he said. "If no one trusts the DNC, it will be harder to unite the party around the eventual nominee."
Amanda Litman, the president of Run For Something, a group that recruits progressive candidates for office, said in a video posted to social media Thursday that putting together a report composed of "pure gibberish," without access to any of the underlying interviews or materials that buoyed its conclusions, called into question the DNC's ability to be "a fair, competent... conductor of the Democratic presidential primary."
"Ken Martin is not up to the task of being DNC chair—the most important part of which is preparing to run the presidential primary process with trust and competency—and should resign," she added on Friday.
David Hogg, who served as the DNC vice chair in 2025 before being pushed out by Martin over his efforts to support primary challengers against some entrenched party elders, said the autopsy saga was a "demoralizing joke" for the party.
In a release from his political action committee, Leaders We Deserve, Hogg said, "Martin should resign, and the DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand."
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Establishment Democrats Still Don't Get Why They Lost in 2024
No amount of messaging acumen could have plastered over the gaping hole in Harris’ campaign: a total dearth of popular policies.
May 20, 2026
As the controversy over the Democratic National Committee’s buried autopsy report continues to rage, more Democrats from the party’s establishment wing are offering their two cents. The latest contribution is a column in The Bulwark, written by Rob Flaherty, the former deputy manager of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Flaherty’s piece “Here’s What I Told the DNC Autopsy” discusses his conversations with DNC operatives tasked with writing the still-unreleased report. He then continues into his own analysis of what went wrong with Harris’ 2024 campaign for president.
To his credit, Flaherty is willing to do what very few mainstream Democrats have done since Harris' 2024 loss: take a long, and public, look at the campaign’s missteps. But, as with so many other analyses from the establishment wing of the party, he believes that tweaks to the campaign’s messaging strategy and media apparatus could have won the race.
Progressives operating inside the party, meanwhile, have long argued that no amount of messaging acumen could have plastered over the gaping hole in Harris’ campaign: a total dearth of popular policies. (At RootsAction, where I’m the political director, we’ve written our own post-2024 autopsy that focuses exactly on this issue, and where Harris’ campaign fell out of step with popular sentiment.)
If Democrats want to present themselves as a convincing alternative to the post-MAGA Republican Party, they’re going to have to articulate what their political differences are.
Flaherty, by his account, was principally responsible for the digital dimensions of the campaign (social media, content creators, etc.) and so his analysis proceeds through that lens. He devotes a lot of time to worrying over message alignment—alignment between earned and paid media, between the campaign and independent expenditures, and so on. What's missing in that analysis, though, is what that message was.
At the tail end of Joe Biden’s presidency, the nation was embroiled in a number of crises. The recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic had been uneven, with many at the bottom of the labor ladder still struggling to find steady work and keep up with runaway inflation. Americans at all income levels, in fact, were reeling from spiking costs in basic consumer goods. And, while Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza unfolded in full view of anyone with a social media account, Biden and his administration continued their unyielding support for Israel. On top of it all, the unpopular Biden broke his promise to be a “bridge” president, ignored the polls showing that most Democrats wanted a different candidate, and unwisely opted to run for a second term—dropping out only after a disastrous debate and massive pressure from inside the party.
His vice president was then thrust into the unenviable position of having just 107 days (as she often reminds us) to mount a presidential campaign that could defeat Donald Trump.This entailed massive logistical challenges, yes—but it also meant reckoning with Biden’s tenure as president. Would Harris continue to argue, as the Biden administration had, that Bidenomics had been a boon for the working class? Would she continue to support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he laid waste to the Gaza Strip? These questions demanded answers. Harris and her campaign though, seemed loath to provide them.
Flaherty appears to understand that this was a major problem for Harris. He bemoans the campaign's vacillation on its core message, contrasting that with Trump's comms discipline: "Trump's message was much clearer: The economy feels bad and Harris says it's good. Those vibes were tough to argue with."
He is heavily focused on vibes: "The moment the [BidenHQ] account switched from Biden to Harris, the campaign channeled a vibe shift that showed up in polls. We needed to consolidate the base, make the campaign cooler, and have a campaign voice that could be more flexible and nimble than the candidate’s own."
Putting aside how a “vibe shift” appears in polls, it’s clear from the outset that Flaherty’s level of analysis is all branding, no substance. He gets into the weeds of individual social media accounts and their relative impacts with critical constituencies. Was the KamalaHQ online presence too "girls and gays" coded? Did the account turn off men? For someone who devotes a footnote to scolding the “DC crowd” for believing Biden to be broadly unpopular, Flaherty sure seems to have drunk the Beltway insider Kool-Aid when it comes to assessing the impact of an individual social media account on an election in which more than 152 million Americans cast a vote.
Vibes should not be the basis for a campaign. Yes, a sour mood in the electorate requires a particular approach, but it doesn't mean that Democrats can entirely punt on the difficult work of crafting a resonant political message. Coordination and message discipline between social media influencers, independent expenditures, surrogates, and official campaign accounts is meaningless if those voices aren’t making a compelling argument. In 2024, Democrats’ biggest political liability was that voters had no idea what four more years of a Democratic administration would entail. It was like Harris was running back Biden’s infamous campaign promise to donors in 2019: that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Such an approach couldn’t work in 2024, given all the public discontent and anxiety.
When Flaherty steps back from the arcana of digital strategy, he seems to understand this problem quite well. He points out that Democrats, in focusing on picking up comparatively well-off, suburban voters, have shed too many votes elsewhere. "The resulting [Democratic] coalition, which has involved a shrinking share of working-class voters of color, especially men, just isn't big enough to beat a motivated MAGA base." He even goes on to write that Democrats should embrace "economic populism with teeth."
Progressives in the Democratic Party would certainly agree with the last point. Poll after poll confirms that this is popular policy: Most voters support taxing the rich and a more equitable distribution of wealth. Flaherty understands enough to give lip service to this idea, but is either unwilling or unable to continue this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: Democrats should embrace this reality, codify it in their political platform, and let it ring out loudly in all their campaign messaging. Like many in the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, Flaherty shows a remarkable ability to diagnose the party’s political ailments without being able to clamor for a cure.
This trend continues. Flaherty touches briefly on the discord between Harris and pro-ceasefire activists, but he is eager to wave away the negative impact it may have had on her campaign. He writes that the Biden's administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza hurt the campaign "but not in the ways people think." He then goes on to quote another campaign worker who characterizes Biden's support for Israel (and Harris' inability to create daylight between herself and Biden) as a "giant, rotting fish around [the campaign's] neck."
This is actually exactly how progressives think that Gaza hurt the campaign. Those of us who were pro-ceasefire, and who clamored for Harris to reject the policy of unquestioning support that the Biden administration had pushed, worried that the moral stain of US complicity in Gaza would be impossible to wash out, even as the Democrats switched standard-bearers midstream. We worried that critical constituencies—young people, Arab and Muslim Americans—who had been bombarded on social media with an unending stream of carnage from Gaza would be unable to hold their noses in the ballot box when it came time to vote for the Democratic ticket, even against Trump. Harris’ campaign faltered because 6.8 million Americans who supported Biden in 2020 did not support her. With such a stark drop off in support, it makes sense to focus on an issue where the Democratic Party policy was firmly out of step with popular sentiment among the Democrats’ base. This disconnect can’t simply be brushed aside.
Flaherty admits that, by the time the Harris campaign got going, they were “playing around the edges.” That is, campaign staff were permitted only to make marginal tweaks to a campaign that was already underway; the time for grand strategy had passed. Postmortems from insiders about the 2024 election sometimes read like the accounts of survivors struck by some environmental catastrophe. But this was a tragedy of the Democrats’ own making; Flaherty himself was a deputy manager of Biden’s aborted 2024 campaign.
Donald Trump’s political career is nearing its end, but the effects of Trumpism will be felt for decades to come. If Democrats want to present themselves as a convincing alternative to the post-MAGA Republican Party, they’re going to have to articulate what their political differences are. Progressive policy is increasingly popular among Democrats and the broader American electorate: universal healthcare, debt-free public college, AI regulation, and an end to endless war all rank as attractive policy planks with majority support. Any candidate running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 should have this policy at the core of their platform.
Otherwise, there is no amount of consulting, brand management, influencer outreach, or narrative shaping that can save a campaign with no message at its core. If Democrats can’t internalize the real lessons of Harris’ campaign, they may be doomed to repeat its failures.
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