DEMOCRATS

The Nation - Earlier this week, the House passed HR 9495, an amendment to the tax code that would empower the Treasury Department to unilaterally brand nonprofit groups as “terrorist supporting organizations” and suspend their charitable tax exemption, without giving the groups any due process or access to the evidence against them. The resulting stigma of such a designation would almost certainly be enough to scare off banks, likely depriving these groups of the ability to function altogether.

The drive to kill nonprofits is dangerous no matter who is president, and, in the past few weeks, most House Democrats appear to have woken up to the risks of the legislation. Fifty-two Democrats voted to support the bill as recently as last week, but by the time a subsequent vote came around on Thursday, only 15 voted in favor. But that was still enough to give Republicans the votes they needed to pass it. Going forward, the demand from everyone watching this process should be clear: Even one Democratic vote is one too many, and Senate Democrats should promise that they will not support the legislation.  

The Nation -  In the twilight of his failed presidency, Joe Biden is making clear that his core identity is as a foreign policy hawk. Although Biden logged some impressive domestic achievements under the aegis of Build Back Better, he followed the tragic pathway of an earlier Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, in being willing to sacrifice popular domestic programs on behalf of interminable wars. Biden didn’t just support Ukraine and Israel with vast funds and weapons supplies; his administration repeatedly resisted calls for negotiations and ceasefires. 

Portside  - The 2024 election marked a painful setback for Democratic hopes of rebalancing the federal judiciary: When Donald Trump reenters the White House in January, he will have a pliant Republican Senate majority eager to confirm his hard-right judges. But federal courts don’t tell the whole story: Across the country, voters also elected liberal justices to their state Supreme Courts, which function as a key backstop for civil rights and democracy as federal courts lurch rightward. Progressives didn’t win a clean sweep, but they emerged with an impressive scorecard, carrying seats in battlegrounds like Michigan and safely red states like Kentucky and Montana. Left-leaning judicial candidates even prevailed in deep-red Arkansas and Mississippi, bucking the national shift rightward. And a progressive jurist is now leading the tally heading into a recount in an extraordinarily close race for the North Carolina Supreme Court, with a victory there promising to end the left’s painful losing streak on that bench and serve as a capstone for the one piece of the 2024 election where progressives actually flourished.