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The Tennessee Democratic Caucus demanded the Department of Children's Services release five young children taken from their parents, who are Black, after a traffic stop in Manchester, Tennessee, last month.

The children -- ages 7, 5, 3, 2 and a 4-month-old infant who was still nursing -- were removed from their parents Feb. 17 after a traffic stop initiated by the Tennessee Highway Patrol because of "dark tint and traveling in the left lane while not actively passing." The children have been in the custody of Children's Services since.

Deonte Williams, the children's father, was arrested and charged with possessing 5 grams of marijuana, a misdemeanor in Tennessee. Bianca Clayborne was cited and released. Court records, Children's Services emails and Highway Patrols citations cited in a story about the family by the Tennessee Lookout published Wednesday raised a series of questions about why the child welfare agency pursued removal of the children after a misdemeanor arrest of one parent and another parent who was free to leave.

(READ MORE: Pulled over for tinted windows, a Georgia family fights to get their children back from Tennessee DCS)

Democrats on Thursday demanded the children be returned to their parents.

Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat, called the actions "ridiculous" and an "overuse of power."

"DCS, Coffee County, y'all need to do the right thing before the situation gets worse, and we have a nation of people coming to the rescue of this Black family," she said.

"Give them their children back. It's borderline discrimination, because if this was any other family, as their attorney said, we don't even think this would be the outcome," she said.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, also a Memphis Democrat, said the goal should be to keep families together because babies and young children belong with their parents.

"It is outrageous that the state forcefully separated Bianca Clayborne, a breastfeeding mother, and Deonte Williams from their kids and have allowed this to continue for nearly a month," she said. "The state exercised extreme and flawed judgment in taking their children and it seems they've doubled down on this poor decision."

"No family is perfect, but an imperfection, like a simple marijuana charge, is no excuse for tearing a family apart. The state is supposed to support reunification. If they don't have a better reason, they must immediately return these five children to their parents."

A spokesperson for Children's Services could not be immediately reached for comment.

(READ MORE: Audit finds Tennessee children in state custody in jeopardy)

Also on Thursday, the Tennessee Highway Patrol denied a request by the Lookout for body- and dash-cam video of the traffic stop and interactions with the family.

The Lookout's request, submitted last week, was denied because videos are "part of an ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution, and the district attorney's office serving Coffee County has asserted its privilege to not release the documents at this time pursuant to Rule 16 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure," a letter from an agency attorney said.

The Highway Patrol also said state law prevents the agency from releasing documents or information that directly or indirectly identifies a child or a family member receiving services from Children's Services.

Courtney Teasley, the family's attorney, on Thursday said "we echo the response of the Democratic Caucus."

(READ MORE: Tennessee Children's Services chief says agency is experiencing 'horrific' turnover rate)

An instant hair follicle test performed on the parents at their first court appearance, about a week after the children were taken into custody, was a key element in Children's Services' arguments for why the children should remain in the agency's custody. However, a Coffee County court administrator, speaking to the Lookout broadly about the county's instant hair follicle testing, said the tests are inadmissible in court. An expert told the Lookout rapid follicle tests are unreliable because they often yield false positives.

Lawyers for the family have challenged the test; an attorney for Children's Services has told them the test no longer exists, thought the custody case is still ongoing.

"This is even more reprehensible when the drug test used to justify keeping these children in foster care is known to be inadmissible by the county's own court administrator," Teasley said.

Read more at TennesseeLookout.com.

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Tennessee Democrats demand release of children removed from ... - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Florida Democrats selected former state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried as their new party chair on Saturday, hoping to move past a disastrous midterm performance in the onetime presidential battleground state where high-profile Gov. Ron DeSantis has helped cement Republican control.

Fried, 45, outdistanced former state Sen. Annette Taddeo at a special meeting of party members in suburban Orlando, and will replace Manny Diaz. In his resignation announcement letter last month, he listed a number of problems facing the party, including a lack of resources and volunteers and poor messaging.

Both women had lost their own races last year Fried to Charlie Crist in the primary for governor and Taddeo to U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar in November.

Within the past few years, Republicans have erased the voter registration advantage in Florida that Democrats held for decades. In the midterm election, longtime Democratic strongholds such as Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties flipped to the GOP, and DeSantis won a landslide reelection victory as he eyes a 2024 presidential bid.

Democrats performed particularly poorly with Latinos in Florida compared with previous years. Miami-Dade, the states most populous county, is home to 1.5 million Latinos of voting age.

Fried, whose term as agriculture commissioner wrapped up last month, has pledged to rebuild the party from the ground up, with a focus on voter registration. As the only statewide elected Democrat, Fried was a fierce critic of DeSantis, often challenging him on policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic and later on a law critics called the Dont Say Gay bill, which bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

Taddeo, 55, was a state senator from 2017 to 2022. She had said she wanted a year-round effort to register voters without outsourcing that job to other groups and to mobilize young voters. She also says the party must conduct more outreach to Black and Hispanic communities.

Just over a decade ago, President Barack Obama won reelection to the White House after twice carrying the state of Florida. President Donald Trump won the state in the last two elections, carrying Florida by an even larger margin in 2020 than four years earlier.

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Florida Democrats Pick Nikki Fried as New Party Chair Saturday

Despite tracing its roots to Thomas Jeffersonwho advocated a less-powerful, more-decentralized federal governmentthe modern Democratic Party generally supports a strong federal government with powers to regulate business and industry in the public interest; federally financed social services and benefits for the poor, the unemployed, the aged, and other groups; and the protection of civil rights. Most Democrats also endorse a strong separation of church and state, and they generally oppose government regulation of the private, noneconomic lives of citizens. Regarding foreign policy, Democrats tend to prefer internationalism and multilateralismi.e., the execution of foreign policy through international institutions such as the United Nationsover isolationism and unilateralism. However, because the party is highly decentralized (as is the Republican Party), it encompasses a wide variety of opinion on certain issues. Although most Democrats favour affirmative action and gun control, for example, some moderate and conservative Democrats oppose those policies or give them only qualified support.

Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party formulate their platforms quadrennially at national conventions, which are held to nominate the parties presidential candidates. The conventions take place in the summer of each presidential election year; by tradition, the incumbent party holds its convention second. The Democratic National Convention is typically attended by some 4,000 delegates, most of whom are selected during the preceding winter and spring. So-called superdelegates, which include members of the Democratic National Committee (the partys formal governing body) as well as Democratic governors and members of Congress, also participate. However, following criticism of the superdelegates influence in the 2016 nomination process, their power was limited by rule changes in 2018. Notably, if the first ballot for the partys nominee is contested, superdelegates are unable to vote until the second round.

Until the 1970s, few nationwide rules governed the selection of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. After the 1968 convention, during which Humphrey was able to secure the Democratic nomination without having won a single primary election or caucus, the party imposed strict rules requiring that states select delegates through primaries or caucuses and that delegates vote on the first ballot for the candidate to whom they are pledged, thus eliminating the direct election of candidates by the conventions. More than 40 states now select delegates to the Democratic convention through primary elections. Virtually all Democratic primaries allocate delegates on a proportional basis, so that the proportion of delegates awarded to a candidate in a state is roughly the same as the proportion of the vote he receives in that state (provided that he receives at least 15 percent). In contrast, almost all Republican presidential primaries award all delegates to the candidate who receives the most votes. Thus, candidates running for the Democratic nomination tend to win at least some delegates in each primary, resulting generally in closer and longer nominating contests. Nevertheless, one candidate usually captures a majority of delegates before the summer nominating convention, leaving the convention simply to ratify the winner.

In addition to confirming the party nominee and adopting the party platform, the national convention formally chooses a national committee to organize the next convention and to govern the party until the next convention is held. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) consists of about 400 party leaders representing all U.S. states and territories. Its chairman is typically named by the partys presidential nominee and then formally elected by the committee. The DNC has little power, because it lacks direct authority over party members in Congress and even in the states. Democratic members of the House and the Senate organize themselves into party conferences that elect the party leaders of each chamber. In keeping with the decentralized nature of the party, each chamber also creates separate committees to raise and disburse funds for House and Senate election campaigns.

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Democratic Party - Policy and structure | Britannica

1. Tester hands Democrats 2024 boost with tough road ahead  The Hill
2. Joe Manchin Refuses to Answer if He Still Identifies as a Democrat  The Daily Beast
3. Manchin, on Fox News, Refuses to Call Himself a Democrat  Rolling Stone

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Tester hands Democrats 2024 boost with tough road ahead - The Hill

CORRECTION: President Biden will turn 80 later this month. An earlier version of this story included incorrect information.

Democrats bracing for a brutal midterm election instead got a big surprise: Democratic candidates performed much more strongly than many had expected.

The result will likely be one of the strongest performances for a presidents party in a midterm election in history.

All of that is very good news for President Biden, who emerges in a stronger position to run for reelection.

Heres a list of the most likely Democrats to run and win the nomination our first ranking of potential candidates since the midterms.

Biden listens to a speech from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen during the ASEAN U.S. summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Nov. 12, 2022.

The Democrat with the strongest chance of winning his partys nomination is clearly Biden.

This likely would have been true even with an average or subpar performance by his party.

He is the sitting president, and sitting presidents are generally nominated by their parties for reelection.

But there have been doubts about Biden running again given his age and his popularity.

Biden will turn 80 next month, and his approval ratings have been consistently underwater for much of the year.

Heading into the midterms, he was seen as a drag on many Democrats, and he did not spent a lot of time in some battleground states and districts.

But Biden and Democratsavoided the red wave that many pundits and strategists predicted, resulting in the president having one of the strongest weeks of his presidency yet.

The midterm results so far have given him some much-needed pep in his step.

His prospects for 2024 are probably the best theyve been throughout his presidency, one Democratic strategist said. He can make the argument that voters largely agree with him and his brand of politics, and hes not wrong.

Asked this week whether the midterm results boosted his case for reelection,Biden said his intention is to run again.

But Im a great respecter of fate, and this is ultimately a family decision, he said at a news conference at the White House on Wednesday.

Some Democrats still arent convinced hes the right guy for 2024.

Exit polls showed that two-thirds of voters dont want him to run for reelection.

Biden has made the case that if former President Trump is the GOP nominee, he can beat him again.

Watch me, he said on Wednesday after a reporter asked what his message is to those who dont want him to run again.

There are also Democrats who think Biden could be vulnerable to another potential GOP challenger: Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who walloped Democratic candidate Charlie Crist by nearly 20 points this week and almost instantly captured the zeitgeist as the GOPs hottest star.

They have to be worried about going up against someone like DeSantis, said a former White House aide to President Obama. How could they not be?

Biden said this week that hell make a decision on a reelection bid by early next year.

Harris speaks at Howard Theatre in Washington on Nov. 10, 2022.

Without fail, the vice presidents name comes up first when Bidens name is taken out of the running.

While Harris had a rocky start as vice president and continues to garner low approval ratings, Democrats say she would still be the go-to if Biden decided not to run again.

Like Biden, Harris benefits from the results of the midterms, strategists say. But at the same time, others continue to worry she hasnt had a strong enough portfolio and platform as vice president.

I think if she ran, she would be challenged by other Democrats, one strategist said. There are lots of people who still think she wouldnt beat a Trump or DeSantis.

Still, Harris is clearly the favorite to be the Democratic standard-bearer after Biden, and the midterm results only strengthened her.

Buttigieg waves as he leaves a canvass kickoff event for Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., on Nov. 6, 2022, in Manchester, N.H.

The Transportation Secretary got a lot of face time with voters as he crisscrossed the country to stump for candidates during the midterms.

In fact, he was one of the most requested surrogates on the trail, according to CNN.

One Democratic strategist explained that while Biden and Harris have suffered publicly with low approval ratings, Buttigieg has been able to stay above the fray.

He got to appear in front of voters and take some credit for all the movement on infrastructure happening in communities all over the country, one strategist said. Win-win for him.

Buttigieg is a rising Democratic star and has had a solid two years in the administration.

But if Biden were to pass on a second term, it may be difficult for him to usurp Harris as the administration favorite.

Whitmer speaks during Election Night on Nov. 8, 2022 in Detroit.

The Michigan governor had one of the best election nights of anyone in the midterms.

Not only did she win by double-digits against a rival endorsed by Trump, but her state turned completely blue, with Democrats now controlling all three branches of state government.

Whitmer has been a little lower on The Hills previous lists, but she emerges from the midterms in a stronger position.

Whitmer was a finalist to be Bidens running mate in 2020 and Democrats say her star is rising more than most in her party.

She was a rising star in 2020 but even more so now, one Democratic consultant said.

Newsom urges voters to turn out and vote YES on Proposition 1 at a rally at Long Beach City College in Long Beach, Calif., on Nov. 6, 2022.

The California governor seems to have something in common with DeSantis: He campaigned on freedom in his state during the election, and it seemed to pay off big, leading him to another gubernatorial victory on Tuesday.

Newsom has caught the attention of Democrats this year mostly for proactively taking DeSantis and other Republicans to task.

In September, he paid for billboards in conservative states including Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Indiana to highlight the point that abortion is still legal in his state.

Hes perceived as strong and hes done well keeping his name in the press, the first strategist said. Keeping your name out there is half the battle.

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Ranking the Democrats who could run for president in 2024