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When I asked Skye Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, about the resonance of democracy in the midterms, she mentioned health care, the minimum wage, education, the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and economic unrest all as issues of concern to voters.

What we see every day is people deeply concerned about democracy and about the broader promise of democracy what are their wages going to be, what is their economic opportunity going to be, can they educate their kids, are they going to be able to raise their kids in safe communities? These are broader democracy issues, she said. There is a movement that is seeking to eradicate and undermine the very foundation of our democracy But that same movement is also engaged in a range of conduct that is harmful to people and communities, and that is a democracy issue, too.

Democratic messaging about democracy itself may pick up once Trump announces hes running again for president, as is widely expected, especially if Biden seeks a second term.

Biden, who was in the Senate even before Carter got to Washington, is steeped in institutional concerns. He cast his 2020 campaign broadly as a return to democratic norms, and in a preview of his likely messaging in 2024, he said of Trump last month: You cant be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy. You cant be pro-insurrection and pro-American.

If the electorates attention to threats to democracy can be fleeting, said John Anzalone, the longtime Biden pollster, the fact is, in some ways we forget democracy worked.

The fact is that we had a threat, Anzalone said, referring to the 2020 election. America rose up, and it kicked its ass.

Still, he said it wouldnt surprise anyone if Biden or Democrats running in some midterm elections make it more of an issue as the campaign season unfolds.

There may still be time for that. Most of the partys paid messaging will not come until after Labor Day. Democrats in some races are issuing fundraising appeals based on their opponents statements about elections, and they have found criticizing Republicans for election denialism effective when wrapped into a broader critique of a candidate as extreme.

On the call in November with the Carter group, Gephardt, who is 81 and living in Florida, said, Us old people dont have much of an audience And we shouldnt. Were has-beens. But we love this country, we love this democracy, and weve got to play the role of Paul Revere.

But that was in November. This spring, the Carter group met less often, disrupted by a run of deaths and memorial services for members of the group or people close to them. Between March and May, among other people, Albright and two former House representatives Vic Fazio and Norman Mineta, also a former transportation secretary passed away. There was a memorial service in May for Walter Mondale, the former vice president who, before his death last year, had been a regular on the calls.

By the time the group resumed its regular meetings earlier this summer, the anxiety some members had about democracy in the fall was no less severe. In some ways, they were even more dispirited. (Carter was aware of the groups meetings, Francis said, but has yet to participate in one. He has publicly warned the country is at risk of losing our precious democracy, while the Carter Center, long involved in monitoring elections abroad, turned its focus to the United States for the first time in 2020.)

Its conventional wisdom among pro-democracy activists globally that one strategy for protecting the ballot is to boost pro-democracy candidates regardless of their party. But instead, in a handful of states including Michigan, Maryland and Pennsylvania, Democratic groups had been meddling in Republican primaries, spending millions of dollars elevating pro-Trump hard-liners they believed would be easier for Democrats to defeat in the fall.

It may have been smart politics. In Maryland, the candidate helped by the Democratic Governors Association, Dan Cox a state lawmaker who organized buses to Washington for the rally preceding the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 is running in such a heavily Democratic state that he is almost certain to lose. By helping to sink Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee may have given Democrats a better chance of flipping a congressional seat there.

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There's a Huge Divide Among Democrats Over How Hard to Campaign for Democracy - POLITICO

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) mocked Democratic Mayors Muriel Bowser and Eric Adams for their utter hypocrisy over concerns of illegal immigrants being bused to their cities.

The mayor of [Washington,] D.C., Muriel Bowser, has said that the 6,000 illegal immigrants that Texas has put on buses and sent up to D.C. has created a crisis and it is unacceptable and has to stop. Now, that is just 6,000, Cruz explained on his Verdict podcast. We ought to send 600,000 600,000 would be roughly one-sixth of the number of illegal immigrants who have come in under Joe Biden.

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By the way, if she doesnt like it, she is a member of the Democrat Party. The person responsible for these 3.5 million [people] lives in her city, Cruz continued.

The Republican senator also blasted Adams for considering it a successful idea to send New Yorkers to campaign against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for reelection.

"I have to admit that I had some great joy responding and said, 'Well, actually, to be fair, there are already thousands of busloads of New Yorkers fleeing New York and coming to Texas, and Eric Adams is driving them away, Cruz said.

Cruz suggested those crossing the southern border should also be sent to places such as Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, south Hampton, Cupertino, California, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where Biden vacations.

Every place that rich liberals sit and swirl Chardonnay, Cruz suggested. They ought to sit there and watch busload after busload of illegal immigrants unloading.

It reveals the utter hypocrisy of the Left, Cruz added. Theyre willing to cause human suffering as long as it doesnt impinge on the view from their golf course.

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When pressed about the concerns of Bowser and Adams, the Biden administration has deflected reporters questions, accusing Texas of using the migrants as political pawns.

Well, the question is to Gov. Abbott. Why is he using migrants as a political pawn in doing what he's doing?" White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month. "There's a legal process here, and he's not using that legal process."

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'Utter hypocrisy': Ted Cruz blasts Democrats criticizing immigrants in their cities - Washington Examiner

Congress has quietly replaced a farm loan assistance program for racial minorities that was under threat from White farmers legal challenges.

The new provision no longer mentions race. Instead, it provides loan relief for distressed borrowers and additional aid for farmers, ranchers, and foresters who have experienced discrimination. The change comes after White farmers claimed the program, established by the 2021 American Rescue Plan, discriminated against them by specifying that loan assistance was available only for socially disadvantaged groups.

Supporters of the pivot including some Black lawmakers say the workaround is more legally airtight and will quickly get aid to the groups that need it. Yet some Black farmers are concerned its just another example of the Agriculture Department leaving them behind after generations of discrimination that made it more difficult and at times impossible for them to get loans.

When you put Black farmers in with everybody, we come up last based on all the numbers and all the history, said John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association.

Democrats climate, tax, and health-care law (Public Law 117-169), provides $3.1 billion for loan relief for at-risk borrowers encompassing distressed farmers regardless of minority status and $2.2 billion for farmers who experienced discrimination in USDA lending. For the latter program, farmers outside of race-based socially disadvantaged groups, such as White women and members of the LGBTQ community, could be eligible. The Agriculture Department said it intends to get the relief out to farmers as quickly as possible.

Under the American Rescue Plan (Public Law 117-2), socially disadvantaged farmers were set to get $4 billion in loan relief. The funds were supposed to correct the Agriculture Departments historic denial of loans to ethnic minorities based on race, saving scores of Black farmers with untenable debts from foreclosure.

BGOV Bill Summary: Democrats Reconciliation Bill

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Glenn Morris watches as his corn is unloaded at the elevator on Oct. 11, 2021 in Princeton, Ind. Morris is one of two Black farmers still working full time in Lyles Station, a region of Indiana once dominated by Black farmers.

There are less than 50,000 Black farmers in the US, down from 950,000 at their peak in 1920. Advocates warn that many remaining farmers are hanging on by a thread.

The debt relief was a contract between the Black farmers, the farmers of color, and USDA, Boyd said, and they broke that agreement by repealing it. He added that hes considering filing new litigation based on the cancellation of the program.

U.S. Black Farmers Lost Billions in Land Value, Study Shows

The new language has been in the works for over a year, a Senate aide said, but was only added in a managers amendment before the Senate vote.

The White farmers who sued the Biden administration for discrimination through the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty cheered the repeal of the earlier assistance for socially disadvantaged groups.

The devil may be in the details, of course, and we will be closely monitoring the program to ensure USDA adheres to the constitutionally mandated principles of nondiscrimination, Rick Esenberg, WILLs president and general counsel, said in a statement.

Some underrepresented farmers groups are optimistic the new program will actually help them and avoid the legal hurdles that stalled the aid from the American Rescue Plan.

The immediate aid just needs to get out to the folks who are the most distressed, said Kari Jo Lawrence, the executive director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council.

Lloyd Wright, who grew up on a family farm in Virginia and served as the director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights in the 1990s, said eliminating the earlier section of the American Rescue Plan makes the program even better.

I dont think they could have done a better job in writing it, Wright said, adding that the White farmers lawsuits that held up aid werent going anyplace.

Boyd said hes concerned this funding could be used up by other farmers, such as White women.

That scenario seems plausible to Cesar Escalante, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Georgia. Compiling and submitting evidence of discrimination have been challenges for Black farmers in the past for reasons including lack of access to documents and computer literacy, Escalante said.

So even if more racial minority farmers are victims of discrimination, not a majority of them can argue and prove their case, Escalante said. But more female farmers could, even if their absolute number is lower than victims from certain racial minority groups.

Warren, Booker Press USDA to Address Bias Against Black Farmers

But many Black farmers do have a documented history of discrimination, Wright said, especially those whose family operations got their start before 1964, when the Civil Rights Act made segregation illegal. He said Native American farmers should also be able to easily prove theyve dealt with discrimination, since settlers took their land in the first place.

The laws language directs the USDA to create a program to determine who was subject to discrimination, said Stephen Carpenter, an attorney with the Farmers Legal Action Group and that will be hard for them to do.

Supporters of the new program argue the alternative would have been no aid at all if the White farmers won their case against the Biden administration. This way, they say distressed Black farmers and other disadvantaged racial groups will still be eligible for loan modifications, as well as the discrimination assistance.

But Boyd said Black farmers in his community feel left behind by an administration they helped elect.

Its going to be hard for me to go out there and ask our Black farmers in midterm elections to vote for people who aint helping, he said.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who sits on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee and was involved in drafting the provision in the Democrats bill with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), said he understands why some Black farmers are skeptical given the history of the federal government breaking promises to them.

I wish that right-wing extremists and activist judges had not held up the debt forgiveness we passed in the American Rescue Plan, Booker said in a statement. But it was clear that those resources were going to be held up in court for years, with an uncertain outcome at the conclusion.

The legislation is key to lessening the weight of debt threatening to make Black farmers shut down their operations, Lorette Picciano, executive director of the farmers network Rural Coalition, said. Likely these farmers are going to get a resolution much faster than they would have without the bill language, she said.

Many Black farmers who approve of the new bill language acknowledge that more is needed to make up for years of discrimination by the federal government. But Wright said hes hopeful that it will at least stop the country from losing the Black producers who now make up less than 2% of all the nations farmers.

This bill wasnt designed to do that, Wright said. This bill as its designed can put a thumb in the dike so we dont lose all the rest of them.

To contact the reporter on this story: Maeve Sheehey in Washington at msheehey@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robin Meszoly at rmeszoly@bgov.com; Sarah Babbage at sbabbage@bgov.com

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Democrats Pivot on Race-Based Loan Relief as White Farmers Sue | Bloomberg Government - Bloomberg Government

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar urged Democrats to better serve and engage with working people in a Saturday keynote speech at the annual progressive political convention Netroots Nation.

"We cannot assume that the politics of transaction will turn out the votes when Americans are longing for the politics of transformation."

The Minnesota Democrat's 11-minute address in Pittsburgh wrapped up a session about the upcoming midterm elections titled, "On to November: How We Win and Save Democracy."

Omar celebrated recent victories, stating that "our movement is at a watershed moment. Over the past several years, we've seen the biggest resurgence of progressive organizing and movement-building in our lifetimes."

"Across the country young people are reviving the labor movement," she said, noting unionization efforts by Amazon, Google, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's workers. "We have taken on some of the biggest, wealthiest multinational corporations in the worldand we are winning."

"I'm proud that workers in my office led a movement to unionize the staff of the United States Congress and we are just getting started," Omar said. "But friends, it is not just unions."

The Somali-born congresswoman cited her youth in a refugee camp, her historic election to Congress, and the campaigns and wins of other diverse, progressive candidates despite well-funded efforts to defeat them.

Omar also highlighted recent legislative successes, including healthcare expansion for veterans, a gun safety measure, and the Inflation Reduction Act, a compromise package on Medicare, taxation, and climate action that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) negotiated with obstructionist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

She further noted public safety changes currently underway in her districtover two years after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.

"The reality is none of these things would be possible without a massive, vocal, organized progressive movement driving the narrative and pushing for change," Omar said. "Because I know this: when you show up, it gives us the power to organize the base and to work to push for change on the inside."

The congresswoman continued:

I want to be clear about something else: We cannot take any of that for granted now. It is when you start to get comfortable that your opponents strikeand I know this very well. We have to be alert. We have to protect our victories as vigorously as we fight for them, because we cannot build on those wins if they are rolled back.

Labor rights, abortion rights, criminal justice reform, even the very survival of our democracy is being threatened at this moment. We are up against forces that are willing to suppress the vote, overturn election results, and literally commit treason against our country to get their way. We are up against corporate donors, landlords, and war profiteers spending millions of dollars to take out progressive members of Congress.

"The only way to protect our wins is with a massive, historic voter turnout," Omar argued. "We cannot go after the same tiny slices of swing voters we go after election after electionusing the same poll-tested talking points we use every election. We cannot assume that the politics of transaction will turn out the votes when Americans are longing for the politics of transformation."

Noting that in 2016, a notable share of votersparticularly those who supported former President Barack Obama four years earliercast their ballots for a third-party candidate or simply stayed home, Omar explained that "these nonvoters are more likely to be working class, they are more likely to be immigrants, and they are more likely to be people of color. In fact, more than half of them have an income of less than $30,000 a year."

"These are the people the Democratic Party should stand for," she argued, adding that "we cannot rely on" the likes of outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) or Manchin "to save us."

Instead, "we need to elevate people who have fluency in the day-to-day struggles of the people they seek to represent," Omar asserted. "For every moderate suburban Republican there are line cooks, homeworkers, dishwashers, cashiers, farmworkers who would vote a straight Democratic ticket if they were given a reason to."

"Progressives win when turnout is high and we lose when turnout is low," she noted. "So this election, we cannot let fear defeat us. Let us focus on those who don't have a voice and who will support our boldest, most endearing ideas as a party."

"Let's elevate the people who are closest to the pain. Let's give working folks a reason to turn out to vote for us," she added. "That's who our party should be for, that's who our party should be talking to, and that's who we should be counting on to help us save our democracy in November."

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Omar to Democrats: 'Let's Give Working Folks a Reason to Turn Out to Vote for Us' - Common Dreams

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruled mail-in ballots constitutional and they are here to stay.

It is called pre-canvassing, which is a fancy term for opening mail-in ballots and preparing them to be fed into a machine for counting.

Act 77 says pre-canvassing cannot start until 7 a.m. on election day, but, with it being a task that both takes time and manpower, counties are begging lawmakers to let them begin the sorting process sooner.

It is a very small thing, said Democratic Analyst Danielle Gross, with Shelly-Lyons Communications.

However, it could be too big of a leap for legislative Republicans like Seth Grove, who chairs the House State Government Committee.

When you do pre-canvassing youre opening everything up. You separate envelope from the ballot, and the game is over on election integrity, theres no way to go back in and analyze anything, it is over, Grove said.

Pre-canvassing was part of Groves comprehensive election overhaul bill that passed both the House and Senate but was vetoed by Governor Tom Wolf because of voter ID requirements. But why not do a stand-alone bill that would give counties, which are overwhelmingly Republican-controlled, the ability to pre-canvass?

I think theres a good number of members in General Assembly that would not do that without the proper protocols in place, Grove said. They are taking an issue thats overwhelmingly bipartisan, overwhelmingly non-controversial, and making it fit their narrative about elections in Pennsylvania and their narrative is just not true.

They [Republicans] are taking an issue thats overwhelmingly bipartisan, overwhelmingly non-controversial and making it fit their narrative about elections in Pennsylvania and their narrative is just not true, said Gross.

But one thing Grove insists is not true is the narrative around pre-canvassing.

Oh, were doing pre-canvassing. Everythings fixed, were gonna have smooth elections everythings running great. Thats not the case, Grove said.

The election is on November 8 and it is likely it will happen without any of the reforms counties have asked for.

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Republicans and Democrats on pre-canvassing ballots in Pennsylvania - ABC27