Politics
Kenyan McDuffie concedes to Janeese Lewis George in DC mayoral primary
Janeese Lewis George is on track to become the next mayor of Washington, D.C., after Kenyan McDuffie conceded the Democratic primary on Thursday.
Lewis George’s apparent victory will usher in a new era for the district and put her on a collision course with President Donald Trump for the final years of his term.
The Associated Press had not yet called the race at the time of McDuffie’s concession, but Lewis George has tracked ahead of McDuffie since vote-counting began on Tuesday in all but one of the city’s wards. In a statement, McDuffie said he had called Lewis George “to congratulate her on her victory and wish her success as she prepares for the general election.”
Lewis George would face no major challenger in November’s general election, putting her on a glide path to take the reins from Mayor Muriel Bowser next year and giving Washington a change in executive leadership for the first time since Bowser took office in January 2015.
In a primary stacked with anti-Trump Democrats, Lewis George presented herself as a candidate unafraid to oppose the president. She has pledged to rescind the order allowing the city’s police to coordinate alongside federal immigration agents and take a hard legal stance against any attempts by Trump to encroach on the District’s autonomy.
Lewis George told Blue Light News in an interview last week that she would “actively tell our employees to resist” if Trump again attempted to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department.
Her position is likely to pit the democratic socialist directly against a president who has attempted to tighten his grip on the district, taking extraordinary measures to crack down on crime and cut through bureaucratic red tape to pursue a slate of ambitious beautification and construction projects around the city.
When Trump was asked in the Oval Office about the possibility of Lewis George winning the primary and becoming mayor, he told reporters: “I wouldn’t like it.” “Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis,” Trump said. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”
A third-generation Washingtonian, the 38-year-old Lewis George has represented the district’s 4th Ward on the D.C. Council since 2021. She ran a progressive campaign, promising change from Bowser’s tenure and casting herself as a champion of the working class who would stand up to Trump. Her platform — including universal child care, social housing and public safety reforms — galvanized a coalition of voters that skewed young, white, college-educated and newer to Washington, according to polling.
McDuffie, her main opponent in the race, pitched himself as a more pro-business pragmatist who gained Bowser’s tacit support.
The change in leadership for Washington comes at a time of tumult in the city.
D.C. is facing a $1.1 billion budget gap, which Bowser has argued should be covered by cuts to social services. The Trump administration’s government funding cuts and decimation of the federal workforce hit Washington especially hard — resulting in the greatest number of job losses of any metro region in the country in 2025. And Trump’s moves to wrest control of the city by temporarily taking over the MPD and indefinitely calling on the National Guard to patrol the District’s streets were deeply unpopular among Washingtonians.
Washington is also dependent on the federal government for multiple high-profile projects that have the potential to accelerate a sluggish economy, including upgrades to Union Station and the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus. Lewis George told Blue Light News that “there are avenues I want to work with this administration,” including those projects — but she also promised to “stand up to anyone who harms our communities or threatens home rule.”
The race between Lewis George and McDuffie — whose base skewed toward voters who are Black, older and lifelong District residents, polls showed — had grown increasingly fraught in its final weeks. Lewis George collected endorsements from several top unions, while McDuffie found support among establishment Democrats, including former Mayors Sharon Pratt and Tony Williams, and former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.
Lewis George leaned into a campaign focused on affordability, blaming rising prices on Trump and proposing that she would bring down sky-high housing costs by constructing 72,000 new units, compared to McDuffie’s proposed 12,000. McDuffie argued that imposing greater taxes on businesses to pay for more ambitious social programs would drive them away from the district, exacerbating its economic woes.
The candidates also differed on public safety, a marquee issue in light of Trump’s crime crackdown. Lewis George, who was first elected to the Council following the social justice protests of 2020, argued for public safety reform with a holistic approach to crime prevention that includes bolstering community programs and nonpolice response.
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
Construction crews could begin the excavation process for what will be President Donald Trump’s massive 250-foot-tall arch in as soon as the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Thursday.
The monument — which will be erected in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, coming between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery — has generated controversy as concerns emerged about the design and traffic congestion during construction.
The arch would take two to three years to construct on the proposed schedule, according to documents released in June.
“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum said in a social media post.
The 250-foot-tall arch will be among Trump’s most visible projects, as the administration continues its attempts to remake Washington. Critics, however, have voiced fears that the structure may be too large, and overshadow other monuments, like the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River.
The proposed arch will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in size. It is unclear at this time how much construction will cost; the National Endowment for the Humanities earmarked $15 million for the monument.
“This will be one the the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington National Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum said.
The monument will be constructed on land overseen by the National Park Service, and critics have argued Trump’s latest project requires explicit congressional approval. However, the Interior secretary continues to rebut these claims.
Instead, Burgum echoed previous statements and said historically “Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island,” the traffic circle where the monument is planned to be constructed.
“Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value,” he said.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is revving up her involvement in the midterms. While some Democrats are eager to embrace her, others want her to steer clear.
Harris is planning to attend a canvass launch with Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford for his gubernatorial bid next month in Las Vegas, his campaign told Blue Light News.
“As anyone who is interested in 2028 should do, Kamala Harris will be coming through. We are a pivotal state in the presidential election,” Ford said in an interview in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “2028 starts right now in 2026.”
Harris’ plans to visit Nevada signal yet another step into the fray of the midterms — and the national political stage. On Tuesday, she publicly backed Rep. Chris Pappas in his Senate bid in New Hampshire, a must-hold seat for the party in a state that Harris narrowly won in 2024. And she waded into three House races, two Democratic-leaning districts in her home state and a solidly Republican one in Tennessee.
Harris had kept a relatively low profile so far on the campaign trail. Some Democrats prefer it that way.
Iowa’s two most prominent Democratic candidates have said they do not want Harris to campaign for them. Alaska’s Democratic Senate nominee rejected a fundraising solicitation Harris sent on her behalf. And a swing-district Democrat in Wisconsin and a long-shot Senate hopeful in Kansas both told Blue Light News they would prefer Harris keep her distance.
“I received 9,000 more votes than Harris in 2024,” Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden in western Wisconsin, said in a statement when asked by Blue Light News. “I don’t need anyone to come and campaign with me in my district. I do the work of building relationships — including across the aisle — on my own.”
The arm’s-length treatment isn’t necessarily surprising: red-state and rural Democrats have long been hesitant to tie themselves to national Democratic figures. They are increasingly distancing themselves now as polls show the Democratic brand remains underwater even as President Donald Trump’s own standing with voters continues to drop. Trump’s approval hit a weak 36 percent in a recent poll conducted by The Economic and YouGov, while a separate survey from the pollster showed over 56 percent of registered voters disapproved of the Democratic Party.
Harris’ favorability numbers at the end of last year only stood at 42 percent. As the party’s most recent presidential nominee, she is one of its most prominent avatars.
A Cooke campaign aide, granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations, said Cooke’s team has turned down campaign offers from other national Democrats as she focuses on making a personal case to voters in one of the party’s top target districts this fall.
Cooke hasn’t warded off everyone, however: During her primary she leaned heavily into support from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), featuring him in campaign ads; his team also sent texts to help turn out voters. She also has accepted endorsements from potential 2028 candidates like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.).
Other high-profile Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have similarly stayed relatively low-key with their own endorsements so far. He’s faced some Democratic distancing himself: Stefany Shaheen, who is running for a House seat in New Hampshire, emphasized her support from Granite Staters when asked about a fundraising email the governor sent on her behalf last month.
Harris, like other potential presidential candidates, needs to build a network of friends and favors — much of which she has already developed from her own runs for Senate, the White House and her four years as vice president — while staying relevant. She retains a powerful fundraising network that can help down-ticket Democrats, too.
But in many parts of the country where she lost, her involvement could be a drag for Democrats otherwise facing strong political tailwinds in the midterms.
“It’s all good,” Eduardo Negrón, a spokesperson for Harris, said in a statement. “Vice President Harris will continue to raise money and travel on behalf of candidates in races where she can help make a difference. With Trump so unpopular and our deep bench of strong candidates, we are now seeing deeply red states in play this cycle. The Vice President believes we should be ruthless about competing everywhere and that means giving candidates in tough races the space to do whatever it takes to win.”
Harris’ recent ramp-up marks a shift from what had been an otherwise quiet midterms strategy that has focused primarily on standing by close preexisting relationships. It’s strikingly different from other potential 2028 presidential candidates who’ve endorsed more widely and been more prominent on the campaign trail.
One of the few times she did weigh into a contested primary was for Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) — a co-chair of her 2024 presidential campaign — in her bid for Texas Senate. The vice president’s support came in the form of a robo-call released just days before the primary rather than an in-person appearance, and she quickly backed James Talarico shortly after he won the nomination. She also threw her support behind Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed after a bruising primary that has left Democrats scrambling to project unity heading into the general election.
Red-state Democrats have been particularly pointed in their calls to keep Harris out of their races.
“In Kansas, you’re trying to reach 45 percent of the state who are Republicans and a lot of really good people who are Republicans, but their vantage point or their worldview may be a bit different than Kamala Harris’,” Kansas Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton told Blue Light News. “What I’m looking at is I’m really mounting a very Kansas-centered campaign, and I’m out speaking, I tell people I’m running as an independent-minded Democrat.”
Hamilton is running an uphill battle in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. The state is seen as potentially somewhat in play amid the ongoing war in Iran, trade wars with close allies and a persistent cost of living crisis that have cut especially deep in agricultural territory.
But that doesn’t mean a coastal Democrat like Harris would play well in the conservative heartland.
“Having somebody from California come in and try to tell Kansans who they should vote for is a pretty bad idea,” Hamilton said. Harris has not endorsed in the race.
Other Democrats have taken similar tones toward Harris in recent days. In an interview with Blue Light News, Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand said he would not want the former vice president to appear with him as he runs for governor, adding that the country needed “new leadership.”
State Rep. Josh Turek, speaking with reporters after an event for his Senate campaign in Cedar Rapids, broadcasted an even more blunt answer to the same question: “No,” he said flatly, letting out a laugh.
A similar scenario played out in Alaska last month. After Harris’ team sent a fundraising email for Senate candidate and former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) on the eve of the state’s primary election, a spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign told a local Alaska television station that she “isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48.” Peltola’s campaign did not respond to Blue Light News’s questions on the matter.
Campaign spokespeople for several battleground Senate Democrats locked in high-profile races, including El-Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine and Roy Cooper in North Carolina — who have all received her support — declined to respond to requests for comment about how involved they would like the former vice president to be in their races.
Harris’ support isn’t an albatross for all Democrats, however. For some, her endorsement is welcome — and they want her out on the trail.
One key battleground Democrat (and a potential 2028 rival), Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, embraced Harris’ support with open arms. “Senator Ossoff is grateful for Vice President Harris’ help and support in his re-election campaign,” campaign spokesperson Ellie Dougherty said in a statement, adding that he would welcome her to Georgia to campaign alongside him or on his behalf.
Harris lost Georgia, but the rightward swing in the state was the smallest of any battleground — in large part because of a population boom in metro Atlanta and the large share of Black voters.
And in deep-blue Massachusetts, former Biden White House aide Dan Koh won an open House primary on Tuesday after running aggressively on support from Harris and President Joe Biden. Koh sought their support and featured them prominently in a campaign ad and in social media videos. He said scheduling didn’t work out for them to hit the trail, though.
“I will never run away from two people I admire greatly, who I believe did a lot of good for this country,” Koh said last week.
Jessica Piper contributed to this report.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship12 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words