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A democratic socialist ousted a veteran congresswoman in Denver, and a U.S. senator lost his bid for governor. But the state's other senator fended off a progressive primary challenger.
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The Supreme Court has ruled that states can prohibit transgender student athletes from competing in women's and girls' sports teams, with the court's conservative justices finding that such bans — currently introduced in Idaho and West Virginia — do not violate the Constitution, and all nine justices agreeing that they do not violate Title IX, the federal anti-sex discrimination statute. These bans are part of an "effort that we're seeing escalate to push trans people out of public life," says Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project. They have the ultimate effect of "increasing the legitimacy of the Trump administration's authority over every aspect of our bodily autonomy and everyday life."
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New York Times/Siena polling of six battleground states shows a close race for control of the U.S. Senate in November. Our chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, walks through the findings state by state.
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A sitting Democratic House member and a sitting senator both lost key races in the state.
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Republicans are defending seats in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas as they try to maintain their majority. Democrats are competitive in all six states — but not leading in enough to take the chamber.
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The Department of Justice is attempting to sabotage a reparations initiative that compensates victims of historic housing discrimination in Evanston, Illinois. For decades, Black residents of Evanston were subjected to redlining and other forms of housing discrimination, which prevented them from obtaining bank loans to purchase property. "Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, housing has been the primary way that families have built wealth, and we are in a country where there is 10 times as much wealth in the white community as there is in the Black community. … [T]hat gap is a result, primarily, of this type of dispossession on the grounds of housing," explains Howard University law professor Justin Hansford.
Evanston's reparations program, funded through donations and a local tax on recreational marijuana sales, grants Black residents and their descendants up to $25,000 for property down payments, mortgages, home repairs and other related fees. It is the first of its kind in any U.S. city and seen as a model for similar initiatives across the country and the world.
"The effort to bring a lawsuit to stop this particular program is meant to send a message to programs in cities and states around the country that this is something that is dangerous or illegal," says Hansford, who is helping Evanston city officials defend their reparations program from the DOJ's claims that its race-based criteria are unconstitutional. "We want to make sure that everyone knows that it is constitutional to pursue reparations in the United States."
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The Democratic Socialists of America's slate dominated the New York primaries last week, with Aber Kawas winning the Democratic nomination for a New York state Senate seat in the New York City borough of Queens with a 20-point lead against progressive State Assemblymember Steven Raga. Born and raised in New York to Palestinian parents, Kawas campaigned on affordable housing, universal healthcare, immigration reform, public transit, climate action and opposition to U.S. support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Over the past decade, the DSA has grown from about 5,000 members to over 100,000 members in 200 chapters across the United States. "What we are saying is that we want to make sure that people who are struggling are provided the best social services possible by our government," says Aber Kawas of DSA candidates. "That is not a threat to people. That is a really hopeful message that so many Americans and so many people are looking for, and that is why we were able to win in these landslide victories."
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