Politics

Kash Patel and Cliff Sims are jostling for the deputy director gig at the CIA

Published

2 years ago

November 27, 2024

Two Trump transition insiders, Cliff Sims and Kash Patel, are angling to be deputy director of the CIA — and angering others who feel they’re using their roles on the transition to undermine any would-be contenders, according to three people familiar with the matter. The No…
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Politics

As Democrats preach faith, conservative pastors condemn their campaigns from the pulpit

Published

4 hours ago

October 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

When Robert Jeffress takes the pulpit at First Baptist Dallas on Sunday, he’ll give his 16,000 congregants a not-so-subtle message: Beware of false faith.

Jeffress will preach about the Tower of Babel, a topic that shares “some parallels to what’s happening in the election,” he said in a recent interview with Blue Light News.

“My goal as a pastor is not to get people in the voting booth, but to keep them out of hell,” the archconservative megachurch pastor, televangelist and longtime Republican backer said. Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, “seems harmless,” Jeffress continued, “but the toxic faith he is preaching will lead people away from heaven, not toward it.”

On Sunday morning, conservative evangelical pastors across the country will be sharing a similar message, with the hope of galvanizing their congregations to support right-wing candidates and causes on Election Day.

But the big difference from recent years: They’ll be preaching against Democrats in four battleground U.S. Senate and House races who’ve made their faith a key part of their campaign message.

Talarico is a few classes short of becoming an ordained minister. Kansas Senate Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton is pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country. In Iowa, Presbyterian pastor Lindsay James and Lutheran minister Sarah Trone Garriott are running for Congress. All four are in tight races in red territory, according to polls.

They’ve all made their faith an explicit part of their closing message.

“Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.’ This is really important. All of these things guide us,” Hamilton says in his stump speech.

“I approve this message because my faith teaches me that caring for my neighbor is not optional,” James says in a face-to-camera ad.

It’s a marked deviation from decades of the Democratic Party’s gradual march toward a less religious tone that has matched their increasingly secular voting base, and an effort to win over politically moderate believers who have grown disgruntled with Trump and the Republicans.

These Democrats’ campaigns have put the country’s conservative evangelical pastors in unfamiliar territory: needing to convince their congregants that self-described fellow believers deserve their condemnation, not their vote.

“There are some Christians that don’t know how to respond to it, because [the candidates] are using all the same language that we do, but they are advocating for a lot of things that we are not for,” said Josh Bingaman, lead pastor of the First Church Open Bible in Des Moines, Iowa.

Many conservative pastors contend these Democrats are wolves in sheep’s clothing, pointing out disagreements on abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender rights or even the nature of God.

In Wichita, Kansas, Rob Rotola of Word of Life Church will lay out the stakes of the election in his Sunday sermon.

He said he has “no problem” calling Hamilton a false prophet, and imagines when his sermon is through, his congregants will “feel sorry for Adam Hamilton and would pray for him, but would tell their friends where he stands.”

In Iowa, Mike Demastus of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ plans to remind his congregants of “the importance of every single one of us, as believers, to go and vote and be engaged in this process.” He doesn’t include Trone Garriott among those “believers”: “She’s a poser and a fake, and most conservative evangelical Christians see through that as quickly as she can say it.”

Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in the state, called Trone Garriott a “dangerous politician” and dismissed James as straying from the true path.

“To hijack Scripture to make it fit your agenda, versus to embrace the comprehensive nature of Scripture to fit God’s agenda, that’s a very, very risky thing to do,” Vander Plaats said in an interview.

A spokesperson for Talarico pointed to the candidate’s past statements on faith, including his assertion that “when I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I’m doing it on biblical grounds.”

Trone Garriott spokesperson Zach Schenkman said that “while others try to divide Iowans and dictate how every Christian should practice their faith, Sarah is focused on showing up to make a difference for her neighbors.”

James spokesperson Jackson Smith said: “No politician gets to define or dictate how any Iowan practices their faith, and Iowans are disgusted by this kind of politics.”

Hamilton’s campaign declined to comment.

Trump has long enjoyed overwhelming support from white evangelical Christians: In 2024, exit polls found more than eight in 10 white evangelical Protestants voted for the president. Even now, as his approval rating among other demographic groups has declined sharply, Trump’s support remains relatively strong with white evangelicals, according to polls.

Some conservative evangelical leaders have long mixed faith and politics, criticizing Joe Biden for how he practiced his Catholicism, questioning whether Hillary Clinton was really a practicing Methodist, and attacking Barack Obama’s sincerity as a Christian (Jeffress once said Obama was “paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist”).

Other pastors feel newly empowered by the Trump administration’s moves to loosen restrictions on tax-exempt churches engaging in partisan political activity.

Joseph Hall, lead pastor of Crossroads Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, said that for weeks he has dedicated a portion of his Sunday sermon to talking about the midterms: “I am promoting ‘vote red.’ Most every Republican stands closer to our beliefs and people of faith’s lifestyle than obviously the Democrats.”

Jeffress, a longtime Trump booster, says he will not be explicitly endorsing Republican candidates this cycle. He argues his dalliance into the election is a moral engagement, not a political one.

“As a pastor, I’m reacting to what James Talarico is saying about his faith more than his politics,” Jeffress said. “Look, James Talarico’s religious beliefs don’t disqualify him from being a senator, but they do disqualify him from being a Christian pastor, or even a Christian.”

Politics

El-Sayed campaign wants Stevens to stay away after day of back-and-forth sniping

Published

21 hours ago

October 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Michigan’s Democratic coalition is fragmenting in real time days before a critical Senate election.

After it seemed like former primary rivals Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens might finally appear together, they’re back to sniping at each other. And it could hardly come at a worse moment as Democrats look to unite behind El-Sayed and hold on to a pivotal Senate seat.

El-Sayed’s campaign is asking Stevens to stay away from all future campaign events in the closing days of the race, two people familiar with the decision told Blue Light News, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign dynamics. She should stay away “as not to distract from the central issues of the campaign,” one of the people said.

The brushoff capped off a day of the two lobbing increasingly pointed statements back and forth at each other, frustrating Democrats who say the infighting risks imperiling a state the party can hardly afford to lose as they try to flip control of the Senate.

“I have no idea what the hell Haley Stevens is doing. This is a moment where we have to recognize the stakes,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who was squeezed out of the Democratic primary by the two other candidates, told BLN earlier on Friday, before El-Sayed issued his response. “People are not talking about ads. They are not talking about Haley Stevens. They are talking about the price of gas and groceries.”

Stevens did not immediately respond to a question on if she will now stay off the trail, and did not respond to an earlier question about whether her appearance was contingent on him apologizing. El-Sayed’s campaign declined to comment.

El-Sayed narrowly defeated Stevens in a bitter and hard-fought primary in August that exposed division over support for Israel.

Michigan is crucial to Democrats’ plans to take back the Senate: the party can hardly afford to lose retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’ seat as it hopes to use an otherwise-favorable year for Democrats to win seats in much redder states and seize control of the chamber.

Stevens and El-Sayed have not campaigned together since a post-primary unity breakfast, but appeared on the verge of doing so earlier on Friday.

Stevens initially said she would appear alongside El-Sayed and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) at a church in Detroit on Sunday.

But she said she expected the Democratic nominee to apologize for some of his past comments and condemn an ad run by an outside group supporting him that she described as antisemitic. The ad featured a conversation in a grocery store where a woman told a man they couldn’t buy eggs because they had to set aside money for “killing Palestinians.”

El-Sayed’s campaign had previously noted he was not affiliated with the ad.

In response, El-Sayed did not touch on the ad or his past comments on Israel, instead saying that has campaign “has always been focused on addressing the most critical challenges Michiganders are facing” and that that focus “is why our people-powered campaign defeated a historic $70 [million] in outside spending from big corporations and AIPAC on behalf of Congresswoman Stevens.”

“So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand: that’s beating Mike Rogers,” El-Sayed said.

Some Democrats tried to downplay the fight heading into the final days of the race.

“There’s been a lot of efforts to coalesce Democrats, both from Abdul and from the congresswoman. I think everybody’s on the same page of Democrats just beating Mike Rogers,” said Joe Tate, a state representative from Detroit who supported Stevens in the primary and is now backing El-Sayed. But he acknowledged that “when you have people that have competed through a primary, I know it can always have those lingering effects.”

Republicans have sought to play up the Democratic divisions.

“If you’re Black, or if you’re Jewish, and you vote for Abdul, you’re not smart,” President Donald Trump said at a Friday night rally in Daytona, Florida.

And Stevens’ comments so close to the pivotal election left some Democrats wondering what her goal was.

“If you are someone with a large platform — whether you are, say, an outgoing member of Congress or an out-of-state streamer — who genuinely wants Abdul El-Sayed to become the next U.S. Senator from the state of Michigan and for Democrats to take back the Senate and put a meaningful check on Donald Trump, before you speak publicly I would implore you to ask yourself ‘is what I’m doing actually helping, or am I just seeking attention?’,” Democratic operative Adam Carlson, who has polled for a pro El-Sayed super PAC, wrote on X.

Sophia Cai contributed to this report.

Politics

Democrats are still looking for a message, even if they win big on Tuesday

Published

1 day ago

October 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats are poised for a good night next Tuesday. That doesn’t mean they’ve figured out how to win.

More than a dozen lawmakers, campaign operatives, strategists and pollsters warned in interviews that national Democrats risk drawing the wrong conclusions if they take back control of at least one chamber of Congress next week.

Those figures from across the party worry that the midterms, which have become a referendum on President Donald Trump, have done little to improve the Democratic Party’s brand. They caution that a favorable political environment has papered over persistent problems for a party still grappling with why it lost the 2024 presidential election. And they admit they are still sharply divided over what its message should be heading into 2028.

“Don’t confuse them losing with us winning,” said Morgan Jackson, the senior adviser to Democrat Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign in North Carolina. Cooper has consistently led in the polls by a wide margin in a state Trump won three times.

“This is not an affirmation of the Democratic Party in any which way,” said one veteran Democratic pollster working on Senate campaigns, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It is very much a rejection of Trump.”

The Democratic Party’s approval rating plummeted in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, and remains relatively weak. That’s even as voters tell pollsters they are more likely to trust Democrats than Republicans on several fronts, including addressing the cost of living, which voters consistently say is their top issue this cycle.

Democrats’ quest for a coherent, positive pitch to answer rising prices and perceived corruption in Washington has at times been stymied by infighting between the party’s progressive and moderate factions over the best way to respond to the Trump administration.

Democrats fought over whether to prolong government shutdowns to protest funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the slashing of health care subsidies in late 2025 and early 2026. They were quick to attack their own upon release of the Democratic National Committee’s formal autopsy on where the party went wrong in 2024.

But as Americans soured on Trump’s agenda and the Iran war drove up costs, Democrats zeroed in on a broad “costs, chaos and corruption” message that blamed the White House — without having to resolve their own internal tensions and disorder.

“When your opponent is destroying themselves,” said Matt Barron, a Democratic strategist who has done work across the rural Midwest and Rust Belt, “just get out of the way and let it happen.”

Nabbing wins in a midterm election with a historically unpopular president is one thing. Building a winning brand for a party that was soundly defeated at the polls just two years ago is another.

“If all you do is say the other people are terrible, that only gets you so far,” said Democratic donor Oliver Libby, who has advised Democratic House candidates Cait Conley in New York and Johnny Garcia in Texas this cycle. “You can have a minimum viable product of a midterm with criticism. You definitely don’t win a presidential year with just criticism.”

In a new Blue Light News Poll conducted by PF Global, more than half of Americans said if Republicans lose control of both the House and the Senate, it would be either because of Trump’s actions since he became president, or because Republicans have run weak campaigns. Just one in four said a Democrat-controlled Congress would be because the party had run a strong campaign.

“There are people who are going to vote in this election who are going to vote against Republicans,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist and adviser to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “That does not mean they are in love with Democrats. It just means they are voting against the people in charge.”

Democratic strategist Lis Smith, an architect of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, said the Democratic candidates performing well in historically deep-red territory are the ones distancing themselves from the national party.

“That should tell party leaders something,” she said.

Smith helped found the moderate groups Majority Democrats and The Bench, and is advising Democratic Senate candidates like Adam Hamilton in Kansas, James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa — all of whom have taken on that tack.

In Kansas, Hamilton publicly asked former Vice President Kamala Harris to stay away from his campaign, and said he would vote against Chuck Schumer remaining the party’s leader in the Senate. In Texas, Talarico vowed to challenge the party’s “establishment” and “change the Democratic Party.” And in Iowa, Turek says he rarely thinks about the party, while Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state, has said he wants to end the two-party system altogether.

“The reality is that a lot of very average and even mediocre candidates get across the line in a wave election,” Smith said. “A wave can hide a lot of weaknesses, and so we need to be able to make sure that the party can survive when the wave recedes.”

Assuming Democrats take back control of at least one chamber of Congress next week, top party operatives see an opportunity for their side to deliver for voters who have wanted more checks on the Trump administration’s expansive use of executive power. But many caution that Democrats on Capitol Hill should avoid leaning too hard into an anti-Trump message next year, while others argue that the anti-corruption message will continue to galvanize the electorate.

“The thing that I would be concerned about, if you go from 2026 to 2028, is that people think that corruption, that elite control over our economy, is just a Trump issue,” said Bill Neidhardt, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and is now advising left-leaning Democratic candidate Will Lawrence and working to boost Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. “What they need to focus on is that corporate power, those billionaire elites who are dictating the terms of our economy, that’s what people are upset with.”

William Garcia, the co-chair of Wisconsin’s La Crosse County Democratic Party, has been canvassing extensively for his party in the state’s rural-heavy 3rd district, where voters swung toward Trump in recent years. Democrats are now trying to claw back that support.

“I think we’re going to have a great night on Nov. 3. And then all these Democrats are going to have to deliver on all of these things we’re talking about,” Garcia said. “If we get to the end of 2027 summer and we haven’t passed bills to make a substantial difference in people’s lives, that’s my biggest fear. We gotta deliver.”

Others acknowledge that voters may hold the party to a higher bar if they succeed in taking back control of both chambers of Congress — and they’ll be ready to punish Democrats in 2028 if they don’t follow through on their campaign promises to hold the Trump administration to account and bring down the cost of living.

It’s a slippery slope for a party that has historically struggled to convince voters that it is well equipped to handle the economy. In 2024, Trump persuaded the majority of voters they would be financially better off with him in the White House, while painting Democrats as a party more concerned with social issues.

“If we start getting back into a party that cares more about non-economic issues, then we haven’t learned the lesson,” warned Pete Giangreco, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on House, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns this cycle. “People just are going to keep hitting the change button until the economy starts working for them again.”

Samuel Benson and Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.