Politics

The state of the Democratic Party is … split

Published

4 months ago

February 25, 2026

Democratic leadership’s choice to have Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger deliver the State of the Union rebuttal was a strategic move to keep the party’s focus on affordability. But she was just one Democrat jockeying to pave the way forward for the party.

Various Democratic factions hosting numerous competing events Tuesday night diverged on the best way to challenge President Donald Trump. Throughout the speeches, universal calls to bring down costs and crack down on ICE mixed in with more forceful and sometimes vulgar rebukes of his administration — laying bare the ideological and stylistic divides that are driving the party’s identity crisis.

Spanberger — a one-time battleground House Democrat who joined Congress during the party’s last wave election — was the headliner, calling from Williamsburg, Virgina, for Trump to focus on the needs of American families while also condemning the president for doing “what he always does: he lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted.”

But she was far from alone, with a group of Democratic-aligned organizations holding their own State of the Union events in an effort to harness rising furor against Trump.

Dozens of lawmakers spoke across several counter-programming events, including a rally hosted by MoveOn and the left-leaning media outlet MeidasTouch on the National Mall, or at another in downtown D.C. hosted by the anti-Trump activist networks Defiance and the Portland Frog Brigade along with the Courier Newsroom.

On the Mall, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) called to impeach Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Epstein files and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) accused Trump of “rigging” the midterms by pushing voting restrictions to “save his authoritarian control and turn the presidency into a kingship.” Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) called herself a “bareknuckled brawler with a heart” and declared “that’s what we need right now.”

The dueling rallies, both timed to overlap with Trump’s speech, were accompanied by a Working Families Party rebuttal also delivered by Lee.

Some party strategists said the events — which also hosted high-profile Democrats like Robert De Niro, Joy Reid and New York congressional candidate George Conway — splintered the party’s response in a high-profile moment.

“A uniform response is much better than a cacophony of responses,” said Matt Bennett, an executive with the center-left think tank Third Way. “One narrative is better than many, and Spanberger is very talented at articulating a message that resonates broadly.”

Dueling State of the Union responses are not a new phenomenon. While the party out of power typically greenlights an English- and Spanish-language rebuttal — Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) gave Democrats’ response in Spanish this year, vowing his party would lower costs, make voting more accessible and rein in ICE — different wings have long looked to get in on the action, from Tea Party Republicans during Barack Obama’s presidency to the progressive groups on Tuesday night.

But the lack of a unified response on Tuesday comes as the Democratic Party still searches — and fights over — the best way to beat Trump, even as party members agree overall that centering the Trump administration’s struggles to boost the economy gives them the best chance in November.

Democrats were already divided in their approach to Trump’s address to Congress. Dozens of members across both chambers skipped the speech to protest the president while others said they were attending out of constitutional duty — a schism that stretched all the way up through party leadership.

Despite calls from Democratic leadership to refrain from protests inside the House chamber, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was escorted out of the room minutes into Trump’s speech after brandishing a sign reading “Black people aren’t apes,” a likely reference to a racist video Trump reposted earlier in the month.

Progressive Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also heckled Trump at multiple points during Trump’s speech, including in response to Trump touting his aggressive immigration enforcement.

At multiple moments during his speech, Trump appeared to relish opportunities to draw Democrats in attendance into heated exchanges.

“You people are crazy,” he said at one point, prompting some Democrats in the room to heckle him in return.

Spanberger’s aides were cognizant of the volume of competing Democratic rebuttals and built a “war room” team to boost the governor’s response on social media. And while her team insisted that she isn’t competing with other counter-programming events, her aides believed heading into Tuesday evening that Spanberger’s successful affordability-focused campaign last year gave her credibility on how to best respond to Trump.

Spanberger, whose campaign last year is viewed by some party strategists as a blueprint for Democrats to score victories in November, focused on her proposals to lower costs for Virginians, while also criticizing the president for aggressive immigration policies and blaming rising costs on Trump’s tariffs.

“Americans deserve to know that their leaders are focused on addressing the problems that keep them up at night, problems that dictate where you live, whether you can afford to start a business, or whether you have to skip a prescription in order to buy groceries,” she said in her live rebuttal. “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? We all know the answer is no.”

Several of the lawmakers who spoke at competing events echoed that affordability template, including some Democrats with possible presidential ambitions, like Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

Gallego, who warned in his speech that Trump was making Americans “sicker and poorer,” told Blue Light News beforehand that “it’s fine that we have different people talking, provided the message is all the same: [that Democrats] are here to fight for everyday Americans.”

Some of those behind Democrats’ various response events Tuesday said they aimed to better capture the degree of frustration voters feel towards Trump.

“These are not the times for an institutionalist to say, ‘Well, let’s just give him his moment, and if you want to protest, protest by sitting there silently.’ That’s bullshit,” said Miles Taylor, a co-founder of Defiance and former Trump administration official-turned-Trump critic. “And I think that Hakeem Jeffries knows that his caucus feels like that doesn’t meet the moment, which is why so many of them are literally just not showing up.”

Taylor added that the plethora of Democratic responses also reflected the current political media environment, where both voters and candidates can easily find forums that align with their preferences.

Lee, who railed against Trump’s “authoritarianism” and cast his speech as an “obituary for the country working people built” in her Working Families Party rebuttal, said Democrats are at a “crossroads” and won’t win control of Congress “by electing more of the same” — which she cast as those who “speak boldly but deliver cautiously or sometimes even vote with MAGA.”

In an interview on Monday, Lee said it was critical for Democrats to promote a bigger tent after progressives scored major wins of their own in recent elections, from Zohran Mamdani being elected mayor of New York City to Analilia Mejia’s victory this month in the Democratic primary to replace moderate now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey.

Progressives “are always accepting of moderate places being represented well,” Lee said. But “it feels like there’s a wing of this party fighting back more against us trying to represent our own communities just as hard as somebody who is trying to represent their community in a swing district.”

Politics

Canada’s biggest fan may be its biggest problem

Published

6 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

OTTAWA — Mark Carney may be Canada’s loudest booster at the World Cup, but some of his countrymen fear he may be hurting more than helping — because he always does when it comes to sports.

In March 2025, the new prime minister joined the Edmonton Oilers for a pre-game skate. That night the Oilers fell to the Winnipeg Jets, followed by a wave of injuries on the team. Former Oiler and “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast host Ryan Whitney took to X: “The Carney Curse is real for Edmonton. What the hell just happened. Guy is on the ice with the Oil this morning and now everyone is injured.”

Now some Canadians are worried that their prime minister has brought the “Carney Curse” to the World Cup, blaming him for Canada’s defeat against Switzerland on Wednesday. His country’s only only goal coincided with a moment that Carney left his box seat at Vancouver’s BC Place.

For a brief, glorious moment last week, the Ottawa fishbowl wondered if the curse had been broken. Carney skipped Canada’s World Cup opener against Bosnia-Herzegovina. But then, after days of anxious whispers over whether he’d jinx the squad, the prime minister witnessed Canada thrash Qatar. If Canada had beaten or tied the Swiss, the team could’ve played as many as two elimination games in Vancouver. With the loss, they fell to runner-up — and a knockout-round game in Los Angeles against South Africa on Sunday.

Canada’s men’s soccer team joins an ever-growing list of inadvertent “victims” of prime-ministerial fanhood, including: the Toronto Blue Jays, who lost the World Series after Carney visited the team; the Canadian women’s rugby team, for whom he traveled to the United Kingdom to cheer on at the World Cup last summer; and the Montreal Canadiens, whom he dubbed “Canada’s team” during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Politics

Orange gush: KC mayor parties with the Dutch

Published

51 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas danced with Netherlands fans to their famous song “Links Rechts” ahead of the Orange Walk in Kansas City’s Power & Light District on Thursday. The Dutch supporters — along with the Scots and the Norwegians — have been some of the most exuberant in backing their team around the U.S. One local told the Kansas City Star that the experience topped a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade.

Politics

How much longer can Donald Trump go missing from the World Cup?

Published

1 hour ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Some of soccer’s biggest names have to come to play at the World Cup: Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Vinícius Júnior and now even Cristiano Ronaldo have left their mark on the score sheet.

But one key player who loomed over just about every step of pre-tournament preparations has been notably invisible: Donald Trump.

Pre-tournament fears that the American president would trample on the soccer jamboree have, so far, proved largely unfounded after the first two weeks of competition. Trump has yet to attend a match, and even as the U.S. team mounts its best World Cup performance in decades he has done little to claim the success as his own.

Aside from persistent complications surrounding the Iran squad’s entry and exit to the U.S. for games, and the ban on a Somali referee from entering the country before the tournament started, political incidents involving the Trump administration and soccer — or leaders of other World Cup countries, including the neighboring co-hosts with whom he often spars — have been few and far between.

No ICE arrests around matches. No heavy-handed policing like soccer fans sometimes suffer in Western Europe. No beef between Trump and Democratic leaders of cities and states where some of the tournament’s highest-profile matches have been played.

As one European-based senior sports executive told Blue Light News last year about the administration and the World Cup, “Why would they want to f—k it up?”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended the USMNT’s opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles, while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — along with other senior Cabinet officials — was at the American match vs. Australia in Seattle. Though Trump himself hasn’t been to a game yet, he did send the U.S. squad a message of support at the start of the tournament.

In an interview last week with Blue Light News, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said her administration had worked with the U.S. government “around transportation funding, security funding. That’s the way it should be. There should be that kind of work and coordination.”

Trump allies are on the same page as the tournament progresses serenely through the group stage, beyond continued griping about high ticket prices and transport to and from some stadiums.

“It’s been really good to see the coordination, certainly from a law enforcement perspective,” said Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup task force, as he praised cooperation with police and security services in blue states like New York, New Jersey and California, where the administration doesn’t “agree eye to eye with the mayors and the governors.”

“It’s fun to see moments where the country can come together as well, and I think this is one of those great moments over our 250th birthday where that can happen,” he added.

This week, FIFA chief Gianni Infantino confirmed what many have expected: Trump plans to attend the final on July 19 and help present the winner’s trophy. Can a president who loves the spotlight stay away til then?