Latest news with #DemetriusFreeman
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- NZ Herald
What's on the line - the president's party has lost the House majority in four of the past five first Midterms
Speaker Mike Johnson. Recent speakers lost their majorities after pushing through sprawling legislation early during a president's term. Photo / Demetrius Freeman, the Washington Post Republicans say their massive domestic policy agenda is too big to fail. On the other hand, they quietly acknowledge, it might be too big for voters to understand. 'I'll tell you, vampires are hard to kill. This bill is hard to kill,' Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) told reporters after
Toronto Sun
28-06-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
Trump says he will move aggressively to undo nationwide blocks on his agenda
Published Jun 28, 2025 • 5 minute read President Donald Trump exits the Oval Office for an event in the Rose Garden of the White House. MUST CREDIT: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Photo by Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president's top priorities, a White House official said, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president's agenda 'as soon as possible,' said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to the Education Department and the U.S. DOGE Service, as well as an order halting the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the official said. 'Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,' President Donald Trump said Friday at a news conference in which he thanked by name members of the conservative high court majority he helped build. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Trump on Friday cast the narrowing of judicial power as a consequential, needed correction in his battle with a court system that has restrained his authority. Scholars and plaintiffs in the lawsuits over Trump's orders agreed that the high court ruling could profoundly reshape legal battles over executive power that have defined Trump's second term – even as other legal experts said the effects would be more muted. Some predicted it would embolden Trump to push his expansive view of presidential power. 'The Supreme Court has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch,' Notre Dame Law School professor Samuel Bray, who has studied nationwide injunctions, said in a statement. 'Since the Obama administration, almost every major presidential initiative has been frozen by federal district courts issuing 'universal injunctions.'' Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Nationwide injunctions put a freeze on an action until a court can make a decision on its legality. They have became a go-to tool for critics of presidential actions in recent times, sometimes delaying for years the implementation of an executive order the court ultimately approves. Experts said the Supreme Court's ruling could make it more difficult and cumbersome to challenge executive actions. It could result in courts issuing a patchwork of rulings on presidential orders in different parts of the country. In the short term, the ruling is a setback for liberals who have gone to court to thwart Trump. But the decision could also ultimately constrain conservatives seeking broad rulings to rein in a future Democratic president. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Trump undertook a flurry of executive actions in the opening month of his term that ranged from dismantling government agencies to seeking the end of birthright citizenship. There have been more than 300 lawsuits seeking to block his executive actions. Federal district judges have issued roughly 50 rulings to date, temporarily holding up the administration's moves to cut foreign aid, conduct mass layoffs and fire probationary employees, terminate legal representation for young migrants, ban birthright citizenship, and more nationwide. Some of those rulings have been stayed by higher courts. The Supreme Court found Friday that federal district courts must limit their injunctions to the parties bringing the case, which could be individuals, organizations or states. They had previously been able to issue injunctions that applied to people not directly involved in cases. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The ruling came as part of a case challenging Trump's ban on birthright citizenship. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of that executive order. The justices left it to lower courts to determine whether a nationwide injunction might be a proper form of relief for states in some cases, like the ban on birthright citizenship, where the harm could be widespread. The court also did not forestall plaintiffs from seeking nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits. Smita Ghosh, a senior appellate counsel with the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive public interest law firm, said the ruling could be a blow to plaintiffs seeking to stymie Trump's executive orders. The CAC has filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the birthright citizenship ban. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'This approach will make it more difficult and more time-consuming to challenge unconstitutional executive practices, limiting courts' abilities to constrain unlawful presidential action at a time when many believe that they need it most,' Ghosh said. Many groups will pivot to filing class-action lawsuits to sidestep the ruling, she predicted, as some plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship lawsuit sought to do Friday. Such lawsuits allow individuals or groups to sue on behalf of a larger class of individuals who have suffered a similar harm from a government policy. It's likely courts will see more and more class- or mass-action lawsuits from cities, counties and states that realize they can no longer rely on litigation brought by others to advocate for their interests, said Jonathan Miller, chief program officer for the Public Rights Project, which is challenging several Trump policies. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I think this decision will be perceived by this administration as a green light to more aggressively pursue its agenda, be bolder when it comes to compliance with injunction and its willingness to test the limits of the judiciary,' Miller said. Not everyone expected the ruling to have broad impacts. Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which has filed numerous challenges against Trump's agenda, called it a 'limited ruling' and said the court left open a number of routes for challenges against executive actions that could result in broad blocks on Trump's policies. Ed Whelan, a conservative attorney, was likewise skeptical. He wrote in a newsletter that 'the ruling is probably going to accomplish much less than many people celebrating it realize,' in part because plaintiffs would instead pursue more class-action lawsuits that would ultimately produce similar results as nationwide injunctions. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The administration on Friday trumpeted the decision at the White House as a victory in its broader fight against the judiciary. Officials frequently deride judges who rule against the administration as activists and obstructionists. Dozens of judges appointed by presidents of both parties have temporarily paused many of Trump's efforts, and data shows threats against the judiciary have risen since he took office. 'Americans are getting what they voted for, no longer will we have rogue judges striking down President Trump's policies across the entire nation,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said, standing beside Trump at the news conference. She added, 'These lawless injunctions … turned district courts into the imperial judiciary.' Both Democratic and Republican presidents have complained about the blocks, said Jesse Panuccio, a partner at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm and a Justice Department official in the first Trump administration. 'I think the ruling is seismic for how the federal district courts have been doing business in the last 20 years or so because the universal injunction has become a fairly standard and – in my view – unlawful remedy in cases,' Panuccio said. 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Winnipeg Free Press
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
The bully is a person in our neighbourhood
Opinion A new kid moves into your neighbourhood. A loudmouth, pretty darned full of himself; 'I'm the best, the bigly-est, the smartest person ever,' but you're used to all sorts, even windbags, so you don't pay him much mind. And then one day as you're walking by, he punches you in the face. Later, he's all smiles, and says 'Let's let bygones be bygones, we could be the bestest of friends.' And things get better for a bit, though he's still insufferable. Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post U.S. President Donald Trump Not long after, as you're walking by, he comes up and punches you in the face, saying that you were mean to him. A week later, he punches you in the face. And then says, 'We should really be friends.' At some point, tired of being punched in the face, you simply avoid him. Deal him out altogether from your life. Because you have no trust whatsoever that he isn't going to punch you in the face — and, to add insult to injury, also blame you for forcing him to punch you in the face. Enter America. Several media outlets — the CBC among them — are reporting that Canada and the United States are exchanging broad-strokes terms for a joint deal on economic and security issues. No framework deal at this point, just a starting point for what two competing views on what a negotiation might look like. You can understand it from a pragmatic point of view, when we do so much of our business with our largest trading partner to the south. And it is, in a qualified way, good to at least be talking. On the other hand … Sign a trade and security deal with the United States? We already have a binding trade deal with the United States, signed with great Sharpie flourish by the exact same person who has spent the last few months punching us in the face with tariffs. Here's the key point — why would we trust an American leader with a 100 per cent record of punching us in the face to, maybe, not punch us in the face any more? The truth is, we can't. Especially because U.S. President Donald Trump has a lengthy corporate history of punching people in the face as well. It's been his art of the deal — signing contracts and then refusing to honour payment terms, and demanding people settle breached contracts for pennies on the dollar or fight him in the courts for years. Weekday Mornings A quick glance at the news for the upcoming day. It's a conundrum we, and many other American trading partners, face: we can't really afford to lose America's business, and we can't really afford trying to keep it, either — because every time we jump one hurdle, we're faced with a new one and are asked to jump even higher. Contrast America's current negotiating style with the Chinese government, which has just announced a zero-tariff policy with virtually every single African country — 53 in all — with the one exception being Eswatini, the former country of Swaziland, because that country has diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Meanwhile, the U.S. is punishing African countries with high tariffs because Americans buy products cheap from them, while the populations of those countries are not in a financial position to make an equal-sized purchase of American goods. (Not only punching them in the face, but kicking them when they're down as well.) It's understandable that we're trying to make a deal in the short term, or maybe our federal government is trying to run out the clock as much as possible. But that's not the answer. Maybe we can't move out of the neighbourhood. But we can make new friends — not necessarily China, but there's a big world out there.
Yomiuri Shimbun
31-05-2025
- Health
- Yomiuri Shimbun
White House MAHA Report May Have Garbled Science by Using AI, Experts Say
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a Make America Healthy Again Commission event at the White House on May 22. Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House's sweeping 'MAHA Report' appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday. Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning. Some references include 'oaicite' attached to URLs – a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of 'oaicite' is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company. A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate -as well as the tendency to 'hallucinate' studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real. AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA Report. 'Frankly, that's shoddy work,' he said. 'We deserve better.' 'The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,' which addressed the root causes of America's lagging health outcomes, was written by a commission of Cabinet officials and government scientific leaders. It was led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of misstating science, and written in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump. It blames exposure to environmental toxins, poor nutrition and increased screen time for a decline in Americans' life expectancy. Outcry was swift following The Post's report. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said the administration's potential use of AI to influence policy was dangerous. 'These people are unserious – but they pose a serious risk to Americans' health,' he wrote in a social media post. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said in a statement, 'It's shameful that American parents even have to think about fake science and AI-generated studies in official White House reports on their kids' health.' The entire episode is a 'cautionary tale' for the potential use of AI in government, said Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank. 'Did they not have enough staff?' he asked Friday. 'What are the checks?' One reference in the initial version of the report cited a study titled 'Overprescribing of Oral Corticosteroids for Children With Asthma' to buttress the idea that children are overmedicated. But that study didn't appear to exist. There is a similar Pediatrics article from 2017 with the same first author but different co-authors. Later Thursday, that Pediatrics article was swapped in for the apparently nonexistent study in the version of the report available online. An article credited to U.S. News & World Report about children's recess and exercise time was initially cited twice to support claims of declining physical activity among U.S. children, once with only part of the link shown. It listed Mlynek, A. and Spiegel, S. as different authors. Neither referred to Kate Rix, who wrote the story. Neither Mlynek nor Spiegel appear to be actual reporters for the publication. As of Thursday evening, Rix had been swapped in as the author on one of the references in the version of the report available online. Nearly half of the 522 citations in the initial version of the report included links to articles or studies. But a Post analysis of all the report's references found that at least 21 of those links were dead. Former governor and current New York City mayoral front-runner Andrew M. Cuomo was caught up in controversy last month after a housing policy report he issued used ChatGPT and garbled a reference. Attorneys have faced sanctions for using nonexistent case citations created by ChatGPT in legal briefs. The garbled scientific citations betray subpar science and undermine the credibility of the report, said Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. 'This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,' he said. 'It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can't believe what's in it.' When asked about the nonexistent citations at a news briefing Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House has 'complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS.' 'I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA Report that are being addressed, and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government, and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government,' Leavitt said. At some point between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Thursday, the MAHA Report file was updated on the White House site to remove mentions of 'corrected hyperlinks' and one of the 'oaicite' markers. Another 'oaicite' marker, attached to a New York Times Wirecutter story about baby formula, was still present in the document until it was removed Thursday evening. The White House continued to update the report into the night. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said that 'minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same – a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation's children.' 'Under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, our federal government is no longer ignoring this crisis, and it's time for the media to also focus on what matters,' Nixon said. Kennedy has long vowed to use AI to make America's health care better and more efficient, recently stating in a congressional hearing that he had even seen an AI nurse prototype 'that could revolutionize health delivery in rural areas.' Peter Lurie, president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said he was not surprised by the presence of possible AI markers in the report. Lurie said he had asked his own staff to look into it after noticing that the report linked to one of his organization's fact sheets but credited the Department of Agriculture and HHS as the authors. 'The idea that they would envelop themselves in the shroud of scientific excellence while producing a report that relies heavily on AI is just shockingly hypocritical,' said Lurie, who was a top Food and Drug Administration official in the Obama administration, where he wrote such government reports. There are many pitfalls in modern AI, which is 'happy to make up citations,' said Steven Piantadosi, a professor in psychology and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley. 'The problem with current AI is that it's not trustworthy, so it's just based on statistical associations and dependencies,' he said. 'It has no notion of ground truth, no notion of … a rigorous logical or statistical argument. It has no notions of evidence and how strongly to weigh one kind of evidence versus another. ' The Post previously reported that the document stretched the boundaries of science with some of its conclusions. Several sections offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.
Yomiuri Shimbun
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Democratic Troubles Revive Debate over Left-Wing Buzzwords
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) during a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on April 3. Maybe it's using the word 'oligarchs' instead of rich people. Or referring to 'people experiencing food insecurity' rather than Americans going hungry. Or 'equity' in place of 'equality,' or 'justice-involved populations' instead of prisoners. As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members – especially centrists – is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain. They contend that liberal candidates too often use language from elite, highly educated circles that suggests the speakers consider themselves smart and virtuous, while casting implied judgment on those who speak more plainly – hardly a formula for winning people over, they say. The latest debate is, in part, also a proxy for the bigger battle over what the Democrats' identity should be in the aftermath of November's devastating losses – especially as the party searches for ways to reverse its overwhelming rejection by rural and White working-class voters. 'Some words are just too Ivy League-tested terms,' said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). 'I'm going to piss some people off by saying this, but 'social equity' – why do we say that? Why don't we say, 'We want you to have an even chance'?' Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear – who, like Gallego, is considered a potential 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful – made a similar point. 'I believe that, over time, and probably for well-meaning reasons, Democrats have begun to speak like professors and started using advocacy-speak that was meant to reduce stigma, but also removed the meaning and emotion behind words,' Beshear said, citing such examples as using 'substance abuse disorder' to refer to addiction. 'It makes Democrats or candidates using this speech sounding like they're not normal,' Beshear said. 'It sounds simple, but what the Democratic Party needs to do is be normal and sound normal.' Other Democrats and progressives strongly disagree, saying the party's problems can hardly be traced to a few terms that, they say, are used by activists far more than by actual Democratic politicians. There are good reasons for using nonprejudiced language and seeking new ways to be sensitive to those who have suffered discrimination, they say – and only bad reasons for jettisoning them in the face of Republican attacks. 'We are simply asking people to consider the language they are using as we move toward shared goals,' said Daria Hall, executive vice president of Fenton Communications, a progressive communications firm. 'It is important to acknowledge the human element within populations and to recognize how they identify themselves. Language evolves; it always has.' The divides are not clear-cut. But some Democrats are emphasizing a need to embrace centrist, common-sense ideas in a plainspoken way, while others say the key is to trumpet progressive, inclusive policies that fit the angry populist mood. Recent years have seen a pattern of progressives embracing new terms that conservatives turn against them. Republicans have long excelled at using such 'politically correct' terms as 'woke,' 'critical race theory' and 'gender-fluid' to depict Democrats as out of touch. 'Honestly, Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing,' said Allison Prasch, who teaches rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 'Republicans maybe aren't so concerned about saying exactly the right thing, so it may appear more authentic to some voters.' She added: 'Republicans have a willingness to paint with very broad brushstrokes, where Democrats are more concerned with articulating multiple perspectives. And, because of that, they can be hampered by the words and phrases they utilize.' Against that backdrop, a crop of youthful, up-and-coming Democrats is arguing that liberals need to abandon what they portray as constantly evolving linguistic purity tests. Gallego derided the term 'Latinx' – which avoids the gender binary suggested by 'Latinos' and 'Latinas' – as 'stupid,' saying few Hispanics use the term. He also recalled once being told not to describe his own background as 'poor,' but rather as 'economically disadvantaged.' 'Not every person we meet is going to have the latest update on what the proper terms are,' Gallego said. 'It doesn't make them sexist or homophobic or racist. Maybe they are a little outdated, but they have a good heart.' Beshear said liberals, in genuine efforts to be more sensitive, have drained the power from many words. Saying someone has defeated 'substance abuse disorder,' he said, minimizes the sheer human triumph of beating addiction; decrying 'food insecurity' fails to convey the tragedy of hungry children. Some Democrats contend that their use of elite-sounding terms is highly exaggerated. Actual party leaders rarely use words such as woke or gender-fluid, they say, contending they are mostly used by left-leaning activists or academics – or by Republicans trying to create an issue. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) is another rising swing-state Democrat who contends that her party needs to use language that comes, as she puts it, from the factory line and not the faculty lounge. She said the scope of her party's challenge hit home when a voter wearing a 'Make America Great Again' cap asked her, 'What's your hat?' He was hoping for a Democratic message that could fit onto a cap, she said, and she realized there was no obvious answer. She recalled speaking to a roomful of skeptical Teamsters before the November election. 'I just said, 'Hey, you motherf—ers, I don't want to hear another godd— word about all Donald Trump has done for you,'' she said, adding: 'They love it. … To me, that is a different way to enter the room.' The Democrats' renewed linguistic debate broke into the open in April, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a progressive firebrand, was headlining a 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour to rally opposition to Trump's alliance with ultra-wealthy figures. 'We have a nation which is now run by a handful of greedy billionaires,' Sanders told an enthused crowd in Nampa, Idaho, on April 14. 'I used to talk about oligarchy and people say, 'What is he talking about?' Everybody knows what I'm talking about tonight.' In a subsequent interview with Politico, Slotkin mentioned her view that the term 'oligarchy' does not mean much to most people, and that Democrats would be better off declaring, say, that Americans do not have kings. Sanders retorted on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that 'I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.' Slotkin downplays the dispute, although she stands by her contention that 'oligarchy' is not a user-friendly word. More important, she said, is the Democrats' need to confront Trump with 'alpha energy,' which she described as a sort of plainspoken toughness leavened with compassion. Since taking office, Trump has continued his all-out war on words that he deems liberal or woke, ordering them excised from government websites and targeting programs that have such terms in their names as 'diversity, equity and inclusion,' or DEI. Trump says he is rescuing free speech from progressives' cultural tyranny. Liberals say Trump is doing the opposite: silencing language he opposes. The battle unfolded on a particularly emotional front in the 2024 election, when GOP leaders seized on the view of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and other Democrats that people have a right to choose their own pronouns. Trump aired ads declaring 'Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you' that were considered highly effective by strategists on both sides. Hall, who leads her firm's racial justice and DEI group, said the point of progressive language is not to judge anyone but to respect how people want to be identified in this moment. 'We have a lot more work to do, but we have to give ourselves some grace, because we are all learning as language continues to shift,' Hall said. The true irritant for some critics is not the words, she added, but the underlying social shifts. 'American demographics are changing, and some people have an issue with that,' Hall said. 'Diversity, equity and inclusion are not bad words unless people make them so. These words are an effort to be more inclusive, not less.' Many Democrats privately admire Trump's ability to talk in a way that connects with voters on a visceral level. He is unusually skilled, they concede, at finding words and phrases that stir powerful emotions, such as promising to 'make America great again' and decrying an 'invasion' of 'illegal' immigrants. Democrats contend that Trump's slogans are empty at best and dishonest at worst. But they have struggled to find equally powerful language to convey Democratic values and ideas. 'What the Trump team has completely failed at is having anything behind their slogans,' Slotkin said. 'They figured out the slogans, but they have no plans.' Democrats need to have effective policies, she said – but, at the same time, 'you need the tagline.' The notion that Democrats must communicate better in the 2026 and 2028 campaigns is increasingly accepted within the party, and potential candidates including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg have been road-testing their tone and style. 'It's so important for Democrats to have a vocabulary that can reach everybody,' Buttigieg told reporters after a recent town hall in Iowa. 'And you can't fashion that vocabulary online, or only talking to people who already agree with you or who are already kind of in your political style.'
