Politics

The blacklist of words Democrats should avoid

Published

7 months ago

August 22, 2025

Democrats seem to think they can talk their way out of the political wilderness.

Listen closely and you can hear it through the din of their all-caps Trumpian X feeds, their hourslong “manosphere” podcast interviews and their more frequent swearing.

Nearly 10 months after the 2024 elections, and the party is still embroiled in self-recriminations over where they’re talking, what they’re talking about and, now, the actual words they’re using. Or, more precisely: which words they shouldn’t utter.

In a new memo, shared exclusively with Blue Light News, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put “a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” It’s a set of words that Third Way suggests “people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.”

They span six categories — from “therapy speak” to “explaining away crime” — and put in sharp relief a party that authors say makes Democrats “sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.” In the document, titled “Was It Something I Said?” Third Way argues that to “please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant,” according to the memo.

Among the blacklisted terms: privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.

“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” says Matt Bennett, Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs. “We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk. In recent weeks, this has become a bit of a thing, with comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman highlighting how insane Dems can sometimes sound. Also, elected officials like [Delaware Rep.] Sarah McBride and [Kentucky Gov.] Andy Beshear are begging their colleagues to just be normal again.”

“People can’t relate to something unless it has some edge about it,” Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s senior vice president, tells Playbook. “And we had shaved off all of our edges in an attempt to never make anyone upset about anything.”

The group doesn’t base its list on any specific polling. And the authors don’t offer specific counter recommendations for these terms. But they do outline the values their vision of the party includes.

“We will never abandon our values or stop doing things to protect those who need help, encouragement, trust, a second chance, acceptance, a fair shake, and the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness But as the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 has shown, the most important thing we can do for those people and causes is to build a bigger army to fight them,” the memo reads. “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”

It’s worth noting that in certain parts of the country, a lot of people, especially now, do talk in this language and use the phrases Third Way recommends against, even if it doesn’t scream big tent enough. It’s also worth noting an inherent irony in all of this: it’s hard to police how politicians talk at the same time that you’re asking them to be authentic.

The memo’s authors write “we are not out to police language, ban phrases or create our own form of censorship. Truth be told, we have published papers that have used some of these words as well. But when policymakers are public-facing, the language we use must invite, not repel; start a conversation, not end it; provide clarity, not confusion.”

“The Democratic Party brand is toxic across the country at this point with way too many people — enough that there’s no way for us to win a governing majority without changing that,” Erickson said. “Part of the problem was that we were using words that literally no normal people used — that we were sticking to messages that were so overly scripted that they basically sounded like nothing.”

What about bright spots for the party? Erickson cited three potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders who she says are good examples of how to communicate: Beshear, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).

“Gallego is doing a great job talking about economic success,” she says. “He goes into communities and he’s like, ‘I want you to have a big ass truck, if that’s what you want.’”

Buttigieg, she said, is “doing a great job of going into spaces that are maybe not hostile, but unusual spaces for him to be in and having real conversations about complicated topics, like transgender people in sports, and saying, ‘you know, I think you should have empathy toward people that are figuring this issue out for the first time. And you should have empathy toward transgender kids and their families.’ But he’s not afraid to say those things, and he’s getting yelled at.”

And Beshear is “getting this so exactly right, talking about how these terms aren’t even what those communities use to call themselves,” she said. She recalled Beshear “talking about the fact that ‘justice-involved individuals’ is not a thing that any justice-involved individual would call themselves. They would call themselves incarcerated, call themselves convicted, or they would call themselves a whole lot of other things, but that’s not what they or their families would call themselves. So inventing terms that the people that we’re talking about and trying to protect don’t even use, and then enforcing that that’s the only way you can talk about those people, is crazy.”

So, can Democrats really talk their way back to power? It’s an Aaron Sorkin-eqsue idea to think that everything can be solved by the right words and a compelling speech. (And it’s one that the party has been tantalized by, on and off, for decades.) Of course, Democrats face bigger and deeper problems — a yawning voter registration gap among them — and are still figuring out which policies to advocate.

In some ways, Third Way is reaching the same political conclusion VP JD Vance arrived at during his interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham this week. “I mean, look, the autopsy for the Democrats, some free political advice from the president of the United States is: stop sounding like crazy people,” Vance said.

Vance’s remarks came on the same day he had burgers with the National Guard troops at Union Station. Which is itself a glaring reminder of some of the stakes if Democrats don’t get this right.

Erickson mentioned crime as a key issue on which Democrats need to recalibrate, citing Trump’s “invasion of D.C.”

“It shows that people don’t think Democrats want to hold criminals accountable at all,” she said. “Like we don’t care about violent crime and we don’t care if someone hurts someone, that they should be held accountable. That’s not true. We’re afraid to say that because we’re afraid that someone is going to criticize us for being too ‘tough on crime.’”

Third Way sees it as a place to start. “We need to reflect on the ways that our bubble and our fear of being criticized by anyone on the left has led to a problem with both our policy and our language,” Erickson said.

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Politics

Trump’s MAGA allies have a new plan for mass deportations. It could splinter the coalition.

Published

8 hours ago

April 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A group of President Donald Trump’s MAGA allies released a playbook Wednesday to fulfill the largest deportation push in U.S. history. It could very well split Trump’s coalition.

The plan from the Mass Deportation Coalition — an organization led by some prominent Trumpworld veterans, immigration restrictionist groups and hawkish policy experts — rests on one crucial pillar: A major immigration enforcement crackdown on workplaces, modeling the strategy that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration used to deliver the nation’s largest deportation initiative in history.

“There is no chance for a mass deportation program if worksite enforcement is not the centerpiece,” the playbook, shared first with POLITICO, reads. “Enforcement at scale means focusing on physical areas where illegal aliens are concentrated: worksites.”

That strategy almost certainly promises to alienate some of the Trump administration’s allies in the agriculture, construction and hospitality industries, which all rely heavily on undocumented labor. Farm groups in particular hold significant sway in Trump’s Washington and have already shown prowess in steering the administration away from worksite enforcement when those efforts disrupted the industry.

Worksite raids could also prove deeply unpopular with voters, whose views have turned increasingly negative toward Trump on immigration and seemingly forced the administration to ramp down its deportation push.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

The release of the group’s playbook — which also offers recommendations from digitizing the employment verification process to barring unauthorized immigrants from accessing credit — comes as the Trump administration enters a new stage of internal immigration enforcement.

In the months since an immigration surge in Minneapolis left two U.S. citizens dead, the administration pivoted its message on mass deportations while overhauling its leadership at the Department of Homeland Security. Border czar Tom Homan replaced Customs and Border Protection chief Greg Bovino in Minneapolis and drew down the immigration enforcement presence in the city; the president ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and tapped then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to replace her; and a POLITICO review of official administration social media accounts found that references to “mass deportations” sharply decreased in March.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson denied that the White House has shifted its deportation approach.

“Nobody is changing the Administration’s immigration enforcement agenda,” she said in a statement. “President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities. As the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said, approximately 70 percent of deportations to date have been illegal aliens with criminal records.”

Still, the Mass Deportation Coalition is trying to push the White House back toward a more aggressive immigration approach. Its members include Mark Morgan, the former acting commissioner of CBP under Trump; Erik Prince, a Trump ally and former Blackwater CEO who has pitched the White House on privatizing immigration detention operations; and a number of conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation.

The group commissioned a poll last month by McLaughlin & Associates, one of Trump’s pollsters, that found a majority of likely U.S. voters support deporting all migrants who entered the country illegally. The poll also found that 70 percent of likely voters support “strengthening workplace immigration enforcement to help raise wages for American workers.”

However, those results differ drastically from other recent polling on immigration, like a January POLITICO poll amid the Minneapolis surge which found that nearly half of U.S. adults say Trump’s mass deportation campaign was too aggressive, including 1 in 5 of his 2024 voters.

“Special interests and industry have been able to operate in the shadows, and to lean on lawmakers and administration officials,” said Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project and a member of the Mass Deportation Coalition. “We’re taking that fight public, and we don’t think that they’re well situated to win that fight, because their arguments don’t sell with the American people.”

The group’s stated goal of 1 million deportations in 2026 mirrors a private goal among White House officials, the Washington Post reported last year. It would mark a significant uptick in apprehensions: The Department of Homeland Security said it deported just over 600,000 individuals in 2025, though independent analyses put the number lower.

Industry groups are warning worksite enforcement would disrupt supply chains. Last June, after immigration raids on farms and meatpacking plants sent a shiver through the agriculture industry and drew negative headlines, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and others successfully lobbied the president to pivot to focus on blue cities instead — a move that eventually culminated with the tumultuous operation in Minneapolis.

“The president made clear where he stands on the issue, and made clear how he wants to see the policy enforced,” said John Hollay, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers. “If [immigration raids] were to occur again on farm operations, that’s going to disrupt the food supply chain, and we’ve made that very clear. We know the president is committed to ensuring our food supply chain is not disrupted and that prices at the grocery store are not raised unnecessarily.”

Politics

Dems hit the airwaves over Iran

Published

9 hours ago

April 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats are opening a new front in their midterm offensive over Iran.

VoteVets Action Fund is rolling out a $250,000 ad campaign Wednesday targeting Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) over his support of the war with Iran, according to details shared first with Blue Light News.

It’s one of the first examples of Democrats putting real money behind the issue in the midterms since President Donald Trump’s attack on the country more than a month ago. And it comes as Republicans grow increasingly worried that the war’s impact on prices could hurt the party at the ballot box this fall.

The ad attacks Van Orden, an at-risk Republican and combat veteran, for backing a Pentagon push for $200 billion more for the Iran operation as prices at the pump continue to rise, and after he called last year for cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The ad accuses Van Orden of backing cuts to veterans’ care — though in the hearing referenced, the Republican advocates for slashing bureaucrats to add more doctors.

The spot sheds light on how Democrats are working to weaponize the war: by arguing that Trump is spending big abroad while further pinching voters’ pocketbooks and, in VoteVets’ case, stiffing veterans.

“Look at that gas pump. We’re paying the cost every damn day of this war in Iran. But for Congressman Van Orden, we’re not paying enough. He’s going for another $200 billion dollars to spend in Iran,” a male Marine Corps veteran narrates in the clip.

“This is the same guy who backed big cuts to VA care for vets,” the veteran says, referring to significant staffing reductions at the agency since Trump returned to office, including thousands of medical personnel. “Vets like me, we understand the cost of war. But if we don’t have the money to take care of our veterans, we damn sure can’t afford another war. Call Van Orden on it.”

VoteVets, whose PAC works to elect Democratic veterans, intends to expand its Iran ad campaign into other battleground districts, with a particular focus on GOP veterans who the group argues are blindly following Trump in abandoning his campaign-trail pledge to end endless wars.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that voters throughout the country, and particularly in Rep. Van Orden’s district, are very aware of the fact that every single day we spend billions of dollars [on] this war in Iran is yet another day that not only is the affordability crisis ignored, but it’s getting even worse,” said former Rep. Max Rose, a New York Democrat who serves as a senior adviser to VoteVets. “What this first video represents is our commitment to holding every single Republican veteran in the House of Representatives accountable for their lies, hypocrisy and absence of courage.”

Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, slammed VoteVets as a “running joke in the veteran community” in a statement to Blue Light News. He expressed support for Trump’s military operation and the supplemental funding plan that the White House has been reviewing. But Van Orden stressed that he continues to oppose putting uniformed troops on the ground in Iran.

“Iran has been at war with the United States for 47 years. When we start putting a price tag on American citizens’ lives, we’ve already lost sight of our responsibility,” Van Orden said. “Every single American murdered by these radical Muslim mullahs is priceless, and every American life we can save is beyond value.”

The 30-second spot will run during NCAA games and other live sporting events, as well as on broadcast, radio, streaming services and social media platforms. It represents an escalation in Democrats’ rhetoric and aggression as the party seizes on growing voter backlash to the now monthlong conflict that Trump is threatening to intensify.

Democrats have already been hammering Republicans over affordability as the average price of a gallon of gas soars over $4. Now they’re eyeing ways to connect other cost concerns to the ballooning spending on the war amid reporting that Republicans are considering further reductions to federal health spending to bankroll the military effort — returning to some of their signature issues of the cycle to argue that the GOP is prioritizing fealty to the president over voters’ pocketbooks.

Other Democrat-aligned groups are joining in. Battleground Alliance PAC flew a plane over a minor league baseball game in Pennsylvania over the weekend with a banner targeting Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie that read “Mackenzie: Your Iran Vote = Sky High $$$Gas.” The group is planning similar stunts in more than half a dozen other swing districts across Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio.

“We’re in a war of choice, which is spending an enormous amount of money, and we’re going to get more health care cuts and oil price increases,” said Andrew Grossman, a senior adviser to the labor-backed Battleground Alliance PAC. “And so the cost of living — like the chaos and the Republican Congress just saying yes always to President Trump — is hitting Americans in our pocketbooks, and that is the single most important issue of our moment.”

Mackenzie’s campaign manager, Andres Weller, dismissed the move in a statement as “the same political stunts that people are tired of. An outside group did the same thing at the same place in 2024, and all it accomplished was annoying people who were trying to enjoy a baseball game with their family and friends.”

Democrats’ ramp-up comes as Republicans are increasingly fearful a prolonged war will hurt their chances of holding onto power in the midterms. The conflict is already fracturing the MAGA coalition. And polls show a majority of Americans are against the operation in Iran, including an Ipsos survey released Tuesday that found two-thirds of Americans want the U.S. to end its involvement even if the president does not achieve all his goals, and that 56 percent expect the conflict will have a negative impact on their personal financial situation.

Voters are “going to look to their members of Congress to see if they double down or be an independent voice [on Iran],” Samuel Chen, a Pennsylvania-based GOP strategist, said. “If they’re doubling down on it in these tight seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and other places, that could be the difference.”