Mar. 10, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

The next test of whether a new generation of Democrats can unseat members of the old guard comes Tuesday, in a battle over who will represent much of western Mississippi in the U.S. House.

The race to represent the state’s 2nd Congressional District features 34-year-old Evan Turnage — a former lawyer in the offices of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — mounting a longshot bid to replace 78-year-old incumbent Rep. Bennie Thompson. Whoever wins the Tuesday primary will almost certainly win the general election in the solidly Democratic district. (A third candidate, Petris Williams III, is also running in the Democratic primary.)

Turnage has branded himself as a fresh alternative to Thompson, alleging the incumbent hasn’t done enough to reduce poverty and other issues in the majority Black district — which has ranked among the poorest nationwide — during his 33 years in the seat.

“People in this district are ready for change,” Turnage told MS NOW in a phone interview on Monday. “This is the poorest district in the poorest state in the country, and it’s been like that for my entire life. People want better.”

Turnage is one of more than 80 Gen Z and millennial Democrats mounting primary contests this year against veteran House Democrats, according to data released last month by the Democratic political fundraising platform Oath. Others include Melat Kiros, a 28-year-old, Justice Democrats-backed lawyer and barista taking on 68-year-old Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado in June; and Justin Pearson, a 31-year-old state legislator in Tennessee vying to replace Rep. Steve Cohen in August and backed by both Justice Democrats and Leaders We Deserve, the political action committee founded by 25-year-old Democratic activist David Hogg.

Progressive power broker Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., has also endorsed a small handful of the candidates taking on House Democrats, including Donavan McKinney, a Michigan state representative running in the state’s 13th district; and 32-year-old Nida Allam, a member of the Durham County Board of Commissioners who lost a tight race to oust Rep. Valerie Foushee in North Carolina last week. (Spokespeople for Sanders did not respond to requests for comment from MS NOW.)

Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, told MS NOW the deep field of young primary challengers shows that “voters are overwhelmingly ready to usher in a new generation of leadership in this party.”

But he added that the group is not “simply looking to replace old incumbents with young incumbents,” and is instead focused on backing candidates who oppose “democratic corporatism and billionaire greed” and display “moral and political courage.”

“It does us no good to replace aging corporate shills with youthful corporate chills,” Andrabi said. “The problem is that the Democratic Party is overrun with corporate shills.”

In Mississippi, Thompson has leaned on his experience in Washington, which has included wielding significant power as the first Black Democrat to represent the state in Congress. He’s currently the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, and formerly served as chair of the Select Committee on Jan. 6.

In an emailed statement to MS NOW, Thompson did not directly address the arguments Turnage has made about the need for generational change.

“Elections are about giving people a choice, and I respect that process. I have always run my campaigns by focusing on the needs of the people of Mississippi’s Second Congressional District and the work we’ve done together,” Thompson said. “There is always more to be done, and I remain committed to continuing that progress. Ultimately, I trust the voters of the district to look at the record and make the choice they believe is best for their communities.”

Tough Democratic primaries for some veterans is a hallmark of the 2026 midterm election cycle.

But the recent outcomes of some of these early races underscore the uphill battles younger candidates like Turnage face — and emphasize that they do not all share the same strategies for unseating older incumbents.

In North Carolina, Allam’s race against Foushee was widely seen as a bellwether for how far a left-wing challenger could go in a bid to oust an establishment Democrat in a deep blue district.

And in Texas, Rep. Christian Menefee, the 37-year-old elected to the House in a special election earlier this year, and Rep. Al Green, who has served in Congress for more than two decades, will head to a May runoff election to represent a newly-redrawn district after neither cleared earned 50% of votes in their race last week. (Menefee came out on top, earning about 46% of votes to Green’s 44%, according to the Associated Press.)

Similarly to Allam, Turnage has taken direct aim at his opponent in emphasizing the benefit of electing a millennial to Congress.

“People in my age group are the first age group in generations in America who are expected to have less wealth than their parents, expected to have lower life expectancy than their parents, and that is because of failed leadership from the current generation,” Turnage said.

Both he and Allam also criticized their opponents’ reliance on big-money donors.

Turnage noted that Thompson’s top donor is a group associated with Aflac, the insurance company, and that he has taken thousands from corporate political action committees. (Campaign filings show that, as of last month, Turnage had about $40,000 cash on hand and $85,000 in debts, compared to Thompson’s $1.5 million on hand.)

Allam — who did not respond to repeated inquiries from MS NOW — criticized Foushee for receiving support from outside groups aligned with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. (Allam had close to $229,000 on hand last month and $86,000 in debts, compared to Foushee’s approximately $184,000 on hand.)

Menefee, on the other hand, swatted away questions about his candidacy representing a generational shift, telling MS NOW in an interview last week that he sees his challengers as President Donald Trump and the Republicans who supported gerrymandering the district in which he’s running rather than Green.

“Our support in this race has been intergenerational,” Menefee said.

“We’ve focused very heavily on making sure that folks know that I’m looking to bring new strategies to standing up to the Trump administration,” he added.

Green, on the other hand, has criticized Menefee for missing several votes during his first couple months in Congress, and has said he is proud of his own voting record; he has also claimed, “I am the generational change.”

When it comes to critiques of big-money donors in the Texas race, it is Menefee who has fielded criticism for earning the support of the cryptocurrency lobby — though he has said he was “not at all cognizant” of the financial power they wield.

For the Justice Democrats and the candidates they back, big-money is an ever-present obstacle. Still, Andrabi said, we “want to win every campaign we run.”

But the group also sees Allam’s loss to Foushee — by a single percentage point, compared to a 9-point difference in 2022 — as a win. They also take credit for pushing Foushee to denounce U.S. funding of the Israeli military and regulate artificial intelligence, two issues she said are among her priorities in her statement celebrating her victory.

“If nothing else,” Andrabi said, “we are showing Democratic incumbents that what they are doing is wholly insufficient for their own voters.”

In Mississippi, Turnage has been trying to send the same message to Thompson. But he said he did not seek out the support of groups like Justice Democrats because he did not want “to nationalize this race.”

“We are focused on the issues in Mississippi,” he said.

Still, Turnage said he finds hope in both Allam’s close race and the fact that Menefee — who Turnage said is a friend — will proceed to the runoff.

“I think it’s just another sign that, especially here in the South, people are ready for a new generation of leadership,” Turnage said.

Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.

Mar. 10, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

The mass deportation sweeps integral to meeting Stephen Miller’s goals have slowed substantially after last month’s federal retreat from Minnesota. It’s the biggest setback the White House deputy chief of staff has faced in his bid to purge the country of millions of immigrants. But as the highly visible raids featuring Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol have receded, it would be unwise to mistake a change in tactics with a change in Miller’s overall strategy and goals.

If there were one word to describe the Trump administration’s deportation campaign months before its surge into Minnesota, it would be “unsubtle.” The quota of arrests Miller had set — 3,000 per day by June, double his demand for 1,500 daily in January — required ICE to ditch its longstanding methods. Rather than targeting specific individuals, it adopted mass roundups of immigrants as its standard operating procedure.

The sight of these indiscriminate, and yet highly discriminatory, arrests helped tank President Donald Trump’s approval ratingespecially toward his immigration policies. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino’s self-important, heavy-handed antics helped add fuel to the growing embers of public discontent toward the federal interventions. That discontent swelled into outrage when federal immigration agents killed two Minneapolis residents within the span of two weeks. Reportedly it was Miller behind the initial claim that one of those victims, Alex Pretti, was a “domestic terrorist,” a false charge that helped galvanize the opposition to ICE’s tactics.

Withdrawing from Minnesota last month was the first of several major setbacks for Miller’s policies. The Department of Homeland Security is still partially shutdown as Senate Democrats hold up funding in hopes of instituting new reforms on ICE and Border Patrol. Meanwhile, the department itself is soon to be without a leader after Kristi Noem’s firing last week, with no hearing scheduled to get her replacement confirmed.

According to The New York TimesICE pulling back on massive city-wide operations and returning to more targeted arrests has had an impact Miller must hate:

In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested roughly 11 percent fewer people per day than they had the previous month, according to internal government figures reviewed by The New York Times. The drop was driven in part by ICE arresting fewer immigrants without criminal records, the data show. Overall, arrests have fallen to their lowest levels since September.

While any drop off is encouraging, the danger in this moment is that the “softer touch” Trump said his administration needed will be mistaken as a reversion to the norm. According to the Times’ review of ICE data, in February, agents were still detaining about 1,115 people daily, which remains “about four times as high as they were during the last year of the Biden administration.” And 40% of the people ICE arrested in February had no criminal recordonce again exposing the lie in Trump’s claims that only the “worst of the worst” were being targeted.

The public’s opinion soured toward the brutish show of force Miller’s demands required, but there’s no guarantee that the public will maintain that disapproval as the memory of heavily armed agents patrolling city streets fades. And while Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., suggested Sunday that Miller needs to be firedhe made clear he  has issue with the administration’s methods, not its goal.

“We’ve lost the debate over immigration and deportations,” Tillis told CNN. “I believe that we should deport everyone that we can find that came across the borders during the Biden administration. But we’ve got to be smart, use our limited resources, go after the most dangerous first.”

That’s almost exactly how Trump sold Americans on his mass deportation scheme, only for Miller to carry out the real agenda of hitting a million deportations a year, no matter who got caught up in the dragnet.

The upside for Miller is that while he may have lost several recent battles, the war is still ongoing. After all, he still has three more years and billions of dollars already appropriated to ICE and DHS more broadly to help bring to life his vision of an America purged of its immigrants. Even though ICE and Border Patrol are at least temporarily restrained, DHS is still procuring warehouses and factories to convert into the detention facilities that Miller seeks to fill.

Meanwhile, hundreds of immigrants are still being rounded up daily despite committing no crime. The comparative quiet on city streets isn’t being matched in the cries of anguish of families who know a loved one won’t be coming home. Even if the deportation figures aren’t rising as fast as Miller would like, the sum of lives forever changed by his cruelty won’t be receding anytime soon.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.

Mar. 10, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

Israel struck 30 fuel depots in Tehran on Saturday. The attacks sent giant fireballs and colossal towers of smoke into the air, which obscured the sun and blanketed Iran’s capital of around 10 million people. Black raindrops fell in the capital the following day, and some residents woke up with burning pain in their throats and eyes. Iranian officials warned that the precipitation contained toxic compounds.

The strikes were captured in haunting photographs in international media — and the United States wasn’t happy.

Axios, citing a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge of the matter, reported that the strikes “went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance” and sparked “the first significant disagreement” between the two countries.

“The U.S. is concerned Israeli strikes on infrastructure that serves ordinary Iranians could backfire strategically, rallying Iranian society to support the regime and driving up oil prices,” Axios reported. (The White House and the IDF didn’t offer comment to Axios on their reportedly differing attitudes toward the strikes.)

There was also a concern about economic optics. A Trump adviser told Axios that President Donald Trump “doesn’t like” the attack and said there was a concern that it “reminds” people of higher gas prices.

Make no mistake, there is no sign that the Trump administration — which has provided no coherent explanation for its war of aggression and appears to have been behind a Tomahawk cruise missile strike that killed scores of children at a girl’s elementary school —  is concerned about the welfare of the Iranian people. But this fissure highlights how the U.S. and Israel have different approaches to and interests in the war in Iran — and how easily Trump could get swept in Israel’s greater willingness to fight a prolonged war.

While Trump initially indicated he desired regime change in Iran, he has since softened his tone and suggested, among other things, that he’s open to diplomacy and a Venezuela-style deal in which Trump would find more cooperative leaders to work with in Iran and keep most of the government intact. While Trump continues to zig and zag unpredictably on describing his objectives in Iran, it’s fair to say he is amenable to exiting the war with Iran without regime change.

By contrast, Israel is consistently all in on regime change. Israel views Iran and the proxies it backs — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza — as an existential threat, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers this a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East and eradicate an archnemesis. There is a “now or never” attitude underpinning his strikes.

These diverging attitudes can be seen in the way that Israel and the U.S. are prioritizing different targets. As Justin Leopold-Cohen and Ryan Brobst of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power pointed out in a recent analysis, “Israel has prioritized hitting regime officials and military leaders, while the US has taken responsibility for degrading the Iranian Navy and is striking hardened targets with Tehran’s bomber fleet.” They noted that the different target priorities may be explained by their differing objectives in the war.

Here’s a vivid example of how Israel’s laser focus on regime change puts it at odds with the U.S.’s more flexible outlook: As The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reportedon the first day of the war Israel targeted a “group of Iranian officials which the White House had identified as more willing to negotiate than their bosses, and who might help bring a swift end to the conflict.” In other words, Israel’s effort to clean house entirely also foreclosed a perceived potential Venezuela-style pathway for Trump.

Israel’s strikes on the fuel depots also underscores how Israel is willing to take risky and aggressive actions to topple Iran’s power structure and destabilize its economy and society. While the U.S. cited the strikes as something that might give life to pro-regime resistance, it seems plausible that Israel’s longer time horizon and appetite for regime change explains its willingness to hit harder.

These differing attitudes have two primary sources. One is geopolitics: Israel is striving for regional hegemony, and Iran is its only serious rival in the Middle East. While Iran is not close to building a nuclear weaponIran’s ballistic missiles and its proxies do pose a real threat to Israel’s security and allow it to contest Israeli domination of the region. By contrast, Iran can’t hit the U.S. with its missiles or threaten U.S. security by funding groups like Hezbollah. Yes, Iran can hit U.S. military bases in the Middle East, but U.S. military supremacy over Iran is unambiguous, and Iran has not shown an appetite for picking a fight with the U.S. the way it has with Israel.

The other factor is politics. The Israeli public is overwhelmingly supportive of the war on Iran, and Netanyahu, who is trailing in the polls ahead of an election this yearonce again appears to see war as a way to try to bolster his popularity, secure his legacy and delay his long-running legal troubles. Meanwhile in the U.S., support for the war on Iran is strikingly lowand Trump is already constantly seeking to assure that costs associated with the war, such as high oil prices, will be short term. Trump knows that a quagmire would undermine one of the central themes of all three of his presidential campaigns — avoiding forever wars.

What’s most concerning is that Trump’s failure to set clear goals could mean he goes along with Israel’s objectives without even trying to do so. Without clear criteria for success, Trump’s operation is vulnerable to mission creep. And without attentiveness to or knowledge of the region, Trump may allow Israel to set the tone of the situation on the ground. Netanyahu has every incentive to make sure it all drifts in a direction that satisfies his goals.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.