As some of you know, the Democratic National Committee recently made South Carolina the “first-in-the-nation” primary for the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries. South Carolina replaces Iowa as the FITN, and with that designation came a lot of negative responses being directed at my home state.

I’m obviously biased here, but I know that South Carolina makes a lot of sense as the FITN for a few reasons that may escape the average voter or commentator who doesn’t understand why a state that, in general elections, is reliably red makes sense to be the first state to vote for a Democratic presidential primary. And, no, it’s not about “rewarding” Congressman Clyburn.

South Carolina is a relatively small state that is comparatively inexpensive to campaign in relative to more “important” swing states. Campaigns spend lots of money buying television time, and a good marker of how expensive states are to campaign in is the number of Designated Market Areas, or DMAs. So, if a state has 3 DMAs, they have enough money to buy enough ad time to make an impact across each of the DMAs. South Carolina has 8 DMAs. Georgia has 11, North Carolina has 10, Pennsylvania has 11, Ohio has 12, and Michigan has 11. So, for less well-funded campaigns, South Carolina gives candidates a chance to compete and build name recognition in a state that is both less expensive and geographically smaller to campaign in, allowing candidates to do more of the retail campaigning that voters often appreciate. South Carolina is a good campaign for insurgents, so if you’re AOC or a lesser-known candidate, South Carolina is an opportunity.

South Carolina is not a caucus state. I hate caucuses. They’re undemocratic, and Iowa showed you last time that they’re also error-prone and can reward interest parties and organization over what voters want. South Carolina is a primary where voters vote; they aren’t going to caucuses in gymnasiums and doing weird things that caucuses require. In an era where democracy is under attack, we shouldn’t support undemocratic institutions like caucuses.

Black voters are under attack. South Carolina is our first chance to speak nationally on what matters to Black voters. Black voters make up roughly 55% to 60% of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina. No other general election swing state comes close. The other states that do – Maryland, Louisiana, Mississippi – aren’t swing states. So, if the goal is to ensure that candidates prioritize the Party’s most loyal voting bloc, you won’t find many states better than South Carolina. Also, Black voters are under attack by this Administration, so why wouldn’t you want this group of voters to have the first shot at helping to shape who replaces Donald Trump?

South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary is a majority-Black electorate, effectively forcing Democratic candidates to speak directly to the needs of Black voters. There is a reason why ethanol and agriculture were always issues that Presidential candidates had to get smart on, and it was because Iowa was first. Now, imagine if instead of ethanol, candidates are forced to prioritize issues like funding for HBCUs, restoring minority contracting across the federal government, and addressing the racial wealth gap. This is what South Carolina, as the FITN, does because you don’t get my endorsement or anyone else’s without it.

South Carolina is the country’s fastest-growing state and has a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas and looks a lot like other fast-growing Sunbelt states. Most folks on the internet think that South Carolina is still stuck in the 60s, but it’s the country’s fastest-growing state. And, areas like Charleston, Greenville, and Myrtle Beach are full of former Ohioans, Michiganders, and New Yorkers who have moved to the state – so our Democratic primary gives us both the traditional Democratic base vote in older Black voters as well as a diverse mix of Democratic voters that looks like the rest of the Sunbelt. This, again, gives candidates something different than the lily-white Iowa and New Hampshire voters they’ve had to accommodate for the past few decades.

There’s an adage of “judge me by my enemies”, and the people who have the most heartburn about this are almost exclusively White Progressives who still have scars from Senator Sanders’ experience in South Carolina in 2016. And, because this wing of the Party is now ascendant – at least on the internet – they see South Carolina as a hurdle instead of the opportunity that it presents. Because, if this group wants to win in 2028, they must make more inroads with older, Black voters and Black voters generally. South Carolina is the perfect place for them to test-drive a different approach and different messengers that could make them more palatable in other Super Tuesday states in the South and in a general election. Instead, they’d rather cast aspersions about largely Black South Carolinians like my parents and family and the voters who supported me for years in the state legislature instead of taking the time to learn the state. That’s unfortunate. The good news is the candidates that do understand this opportunity will be the ones that I predict will go farther in the primary campaign than others. South Carolina has a tradition of picking the nominee, and going first will probably only amplify that trend.

I know I’m in the minority of Democrats here, but I think that the media narrative regarding the intra-party fight between “Establishment” Democrats and the DSA wing of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party is overblown. While a good story to tell and likely to generate clicks, what I see more of in this “fight” is a generational fight that also comes with a few unique wrinkles that generally happen within parties going through the kind of generational, demographic and ideological shifts we see happening across the Democratic Party.

A few points I want to make clear upfront as we think about what’s happening and how Democrats can emerge from this cycle ready to govern while Trump is still in the White House while also looking to win in 2028 –

• Primary fights are healthy, so long as we leave them in the primary. What we’re seeing a lot of Democratic elite hand-wringing about in the emergence of the DSA and more progressive statewide candidates is healthy. Progressives want – and deserve – to see their candidates in primaries where they can make their case to the entire Democratic electorate. Democrats lose voters’ trust when candidates look like they’re hand-picked by party elites. And there’s value to all wings of the Party in seeing where voters land when there’s an election where we have the real polls of whose view of the world prevails with our voters. Primaries tell us where we are as a party, and we only know where we are if we have real choices. When we have choices, people will disagree, but voters will (and should) ultimately make that call. We should all welcome everyone to run in our Democratic primaries, including Democratic Socialists who don’t want to be Democrats at all. Because ultimately, voters will reject them if their views are too extreme or if voters don’t think they can win general elections. I trust our voters to make the right call (most times). The key, though, is that once the primary is over, we focus our attention on the people who deserve to lose: Republicans.

• Establishment Democrats needed a wakeup call. I think we can all agree that the Democratic Party is a gerontocracy that needs to be broken, and the Party’s failing brand has as much to do with old candidates that are out of touch as it does a message that is stale and needs new messengers and new messages. If we learned nothing else from 2024, we were reminded that the couch is always on the ballot when people don’t think they have something to vote for. A party whose message was largely focused on what it was against and who could only be associated with deeply unpopular social issues was one that needed to be beaten. What I think the emergence of the Far Left and DSA has done for many Democrats is wake them up to an electorate that is growing tired of the Party’s leadership. That’s a good thing – for everybody.

• This isn’t about being “centrist.” The easy mistake a lot of commentators make about this issue is that the solution to the DSA and Progressive is being a “moderate” or “centrist.” That’s not only the wrong read; that’s also bad politics. Most voters are going to have positions that span the ideological spectrum, and good candidates and campaigns can, too. Some issues like universal healthcare and more government control on things like data centers and artificial intelligence are good politics and good policy and don’t come with clean ideological tags. So, ignore the “we need more Democratic centrists” talk because that’s not a winner, either.

• While the DSA wing of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party is real, it’s only concentrated, largely White, only in a few places but over indexes online and in terms of media attention. I also think we need to be clear about the nature and scale of the “threat” that the DSA poses. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ascendance – along with a handful of Congressional races in deeply Democratic districts – has muddied the reality that this is a “movement” that is only in a handful of pockets across the country. They tend to be highly urbanized areas with lots of college educated people, so think New York City and Seattle not Birmingham and Indianapolis. That’s important because Democrats have to win and compete everywhere, and in the places where we’re the weakest (rural and suburban areas), we aren’t faced with much DSA/Establishment primary battles. And the non-DSA parts of the country are the vast majority of America. So, while the largely New York City and D.C.-centric media types like to focus on this (in part, because the DSA activity is hot in their backyards), the ink spilled on this isn’t close to the political reality on the ground for most Americans and most Democrats.

So, now that that’s out of the way, I think smart Democrats will take what works from the ascendant Far Left/DSA wing but still commit to the kind of fundamentals that Establishment candidates and electeds swear by.

What that looks like is candidates that are clear on the Middle East and the U.S.’ relationship with Israel but also understanding that affordability on healthcare, housing, and childcare still wins the day. Universal healthcare is increasingly popular, but you have to have an option for people who like the insurance they have and a role for private insurers. That also looks like candidates with modern, easy-to-understand communications like Mayor Mamdani’s “man on the street” interviews and straight-to-camera appeals instead of wordy IG posts that no one reads or kneeling in Kente cloth.

I think my friends on the DSA left would benefit from learning from the “political gravity” that will come with deeply unpopular positions like abolishing the police, prisons, and borders and gender reassignment surgeries for prisoners – or they’ll continue to lose in bigger races outside of Congressional districts and cities like New York City and Denver and most Democratic primaries. Political gravity will also come into play on race, because a class-only critique of our politics is both wrong *and* bad politics, as Black voters – particularly in the South – will continue to give the Far Left the cold shoulder. As you can see, Mayor Mamdani isn’t abolishing the police, he kept Mayor Adams’ police chief, he can’t arrest Netanyahu when he comes to New York (even though he campaigned on this and no one asked for it), and he is meeting with President Trump. So, even their patron saint has done what everyone does when they win elections: they moderate to govern. He’s also – at least rhetorically – said the right things about race and the outcomes of Black New Yorkers, so the Far Left’s blind spots on race could improve in time. I hope more of his allies take note and follow suit.

Political gravity is also finding my Establishment friends. The Democratic Party’s traditional relationship with Israel is no longer sustainable, and I think in 2028 we’ll see the first Democratic nominee for President with a non-traditional orientation towards Israel and the Middle East that is closer to Jesse Jackson than Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Our relationship with Corporate America post-Trump also has to change when we saw so many companies bend the knee to the Trump White House. I can’t say this enough, but Washington Democrats are also too old, and every time they remind us that they’re out of touch, it gives life to people who want to burn it all down. Political gravity will bring younger challengers from the Establishment wing like a Christian Menefee in Houston such that the race becomes young versus old and not electable versus unelectable in general elections, and the Establishment is going to lose that one more and more as time goes on.

I won’t hold my breath that the groups will learn from one another. But I know when I see Senator Ossoff or Governor Moore, for example, I see young Democrats that are getting smarter on communications, taking tougher stances, while also doing what’s shown to work. Political gravity will do that to you, and I hope everyone uses our primaries to learn to win and be responsive to an electorate that is expecting more of all of us.

Donald Trump can’t pass a voter suppression bill (the “SAVE Act”), so now he’s trying to withhold natural disaster and other federal funding from the Department of Homeland Security (which includes FEMA) if states don’t “voluntarily” implement what the SAVE Act calls for.

In case you missed it, the President announced that his DHS would be withholding over $1 billion in federal funding – your tax dollars – if states didn’t voluntarily start phasing out certain electronic voting systems, moving to hand-marked paper ballots (that can be tampered with without a paper trail) and most importantly, run state voter rolls through DHS’ citizenship verification database. Now, the last part is designed to purge voter rolls of people that the President doesn’t think will vote for him. And from all indications, this will continue to be a focus of his as his approvals slide, gas prices stay up, bad news cycles pile up, redistricting fails to yield the kinds of results he wants, and he keeps catching Ls in Congress.

If you recall, the Trump Department of Justice has consistently sought unredacted voter files from state voting administrators. And, they’re asking for this information because they are seeking to purge voting rolls – presumably under the guise of ensuring that undocumented individuals don’t vote (something that doesn’t actually happen). What’s actually happening is that the Trump Administration DOJ is seeking to purge voting rolls of people most likely to vote Democrat based on a combination of data points that the federal government has on all of us – e.g. race, age, voting history, geography. Because this is clearly illegal, the Trump Administration has been sued 8 times it has sought these records from states, they’re 0-8. The Supreme Court could very well ultimately allow these illegal vote purges, but for now, they’re illegal.

So, how does Trump respond? The SAVE Act. The President has sought to include the SAVE Act in must-pass bills, and Senate Republicans have told him he doesn’t have the votes. Now, he’s trying to withhold money for first responders, relief from natural disasters from states who don’t “voluntarily” comply with the SAVE Act because he knows he can’t get it passed.

Ultimately, he’ll be sued about this, and he’ll lose. But, what concerns me is certain states with Republican governors that will host close elections – e.g. Georgia – or who have hotly contested elections that could swing this cycle – e.g. Texas – cooperating with the Administration to purge voter rolls ahead of fall elections. Voters often don’t know they have an issue until they vote, and when that happens, it’s too late. So, for my lawyers, we need to make sure that our Republican governors don’t “volunteer” for this, particularly in states that we know will shape the balance of Congress for the next two years and the balance of power in our states.

We already know they have a few tricks up their sleeves this election season around intimidation around polling sites, potential National Guard and ICE deployments and the like – systematic voter purges can’t also be on the menu.

There’s a lot happening in college sports with much of the activity coming from Washington these days – which usually is a red flag for me.

But the recent actions I’ve seen taken by the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus give me hope that legacy civil rights organizations and Black politicians are thinking outside the box as Southern CBC members are having their districts systematically dismantled by Southern governors and legislators.

In case you missed it, as Congress debates legislation the future of college athletics, the NAACP and the CBC have teamed up to oppose this legislation while also announcing two related campaigns: Out of Bounds and Project 42. Out of Bounds calls for athletes, fans, and alumni to boycott SEC schools in states like my own (South Carolina) seeking to eliminate CBC districts like South Carolina’s 6^th Congressional District. Project 42 similarly calls for athletes to consider other non-SEC schools.

So, first, I applaud the objective here. Legal tools are limited, and political tools can be helpful but when districts are drawn in the way that many legislatures are drawing them, there’s only so much voting alone can do. Hitting southerners where it hurts (college football) isn’t new (I tried this as a state legislature with then-high school phenom Marcus Lattimore when South Carolina still flew the Confederate flag on top of the State Capitol), but in the era of NIL deals and astronomical dollars going to college athletes, this is a brave step for the NAACP and the CBC.

It’s brave because the criticism that I saw from Black commentators was fierce and opposed to the boycotts. Concerns that the NAACP was asking Black families and athletes to turn down money was wrong (it’s not what the NAACP or the CBC was asking for), but it was a common criticism that I got in my DMs and that I saw on my algorithm. It’s also brave because there are lots of Black fans like me who both are lifelong supporters of our schools (University of South Carolina, in my case) and of these two organizations presenting a difficult choice for many of us.

While I can’t guarantee that I won’t watch the Gamecocks this fall, I do hope that these campaigns start to incorporate financial incentives in them: namely the identification of mission-aligned brands that can match the NIL deals that players are getting at SEC schools and poaching them in favor of schools like Michigan or UCLA or University of Washington or University of Virginia, or the University of Colorado who aren’t doing what states like South Carolina and Mississippi are doing.

That part is missing from Project 42, and I hope that the CBC and NAACP actually put some teeth into this so that it’s not another boycott that we soon forget. I can tell you that as a fan, if you start to threaten recruiting classes and leverage the transfer portal through more lucrative NIL packages, that’s the kind of campaign that will force people to listen.

The President’s bad birthday week reminds us that he’s losing traction with his own party and Democrats across the country in the midterms should not take their foot off the gas when making the case against Republicans running for anything from dog catcher to Governor.

The Iran deal is a loser. As I reminded everyone on CNN last week, Iran came out on top and Donald Trump lost the war he started for no good reason in Iran. We are creating a $300 billion reconstruction fund to repair the damage that President Trump created without provocation when we could use that money to rebuild communities here in the U.S.

It doesn’t end Iran’s nuclear program permanently. There were no restrictions on the development of the kinds of ballistic missiles that pose the most significant threat to the region (and to us). It’s not clear what kind inspections they got Iran to agree to, so the ability to do inspections anytime and anywhere (what we want and need) isn’t happening. So, they can keep building nuclear weapons, and we can’t really check to see what they have. And, the Strait of Hormoz is open but not permanently in the way it was before Trump started this war no one (other than Netanyahu) asked for. It’s so bad that you have Republicans in Washington voting to end the war while the peace deal is still pending.

Gas keeps going up, and he doesn’t care. It’s summer and we’re all driving to vacation and taking our kids to summer camp and gas prices aren’t going down anytime soon. While we saw a temporary dip when the Iran deal was announced, we’re still in for months of higher gas prices which will stretch into the elections in November. After telling reporters he didn’t care about the impact of his Iran policy on Americans at the pump, he later said he “love[d] the inflation” which is wild.

Congressional Republicans keep voting against him and Senate Republicans are sick of him. Republicans in Washinton were key in killing his ballroom, stopping his January 6^th Reparations Fund, ending the Trump War in Iran, and they’re stopping his nominations. This is a far cry from the same Trump that pushed through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and threatened Republicans who challenged him. Now, they are openly challenging him in ways that even I didn’t see coming a year ago.

His endorsed candidates keep losing or put Democrats in a better position to win in November. He may hand Texas to Democrats after endorsing corrupt philanderer Ken Paxton, he decided to endorse both South Carolina gubernatorial candidates in the Republican runoff after it was clear that his preferred candidate was going to lose (she lost handily to South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson), his Senate candidate in Georgia will likely be dog walked by Jon Ossoff and his gubernatorial candidate in Georgia (Burt Jones) lost. So, not only is he losing Republicans in Washington, he’s losing the ones on the ground, too.

The message to Democrats is clear: run against Trump, make your opponents distance themselves from him, and depress their turnout. As much as I hope – and believe – we’ll see record Democratic turnout in a lot of place this Fall, I am as invested in depressing their turnout as a I am in juicing ours. Winning is always a two-part formula: you bring your people out and their people choose the couch. I think we’ll be okay (though, election interference scares more – more later on that). But, sliding approval ratings and ads that show how his own people – farmers, White “working class voters”, rural and suburban voters – suffering because of him isn’t about swinging them to us; it’s about keeping them home in November.

This piece is personal for me. My family’s roots at South Carolina State University run deep, from the Orangeburg Massacre to the classrooms and community that helped shape my life.

I wrote about why the students were right to speak up, why leadership failed them, and why South Carolina still hasn’t fully reckoned with what it owes Black institutions.

Read the full piece here.

Like everyone else this past week, I have spent some time reflecting on and appreciating Reverend Jesse Jackson’s life and legacy. But, what may be different from everyone else’s reflections on Reverend Jackson is that mine are deeply personal because Reverend Jackson wasn’t just a towering public figure that I admired, he’s “Uncle Jesse”, my godfather.

My father, Cleveland Sellers, was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or “SNCC.” He worked closely with Uncle Jesse who was an active leader in Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference or “SCLC.” Both were young men roughly the same age, both were South Carolinians, and they developed a close bond through the Movement.

Soon after I was born, my father chose Uncle Jesse as my godfather.

Like Uncle Marion (Marion Barry), Uncle Julian (Julian Bond), and Uncle John (John Lewis), and countless others from the Movement that my father befriended, Uncle Jesse would often call our house, and he would do what any uncle does when you pick up the phone – ask how school is going and then ask to talk to your parents.

He would occasionally come to Denmark when he was visiting South Carolina, and over the years as I grew older, I would run into him often and we’d catch up on life, what I was working on, etc.

Several incredible reflections have been written about Uncle Jesse this past week, and I’ll provide a few at the end of the article. For me, as I think about him and the political moment we find ourselves in, a few things come my mind that I want to make sure that in our reflection of him, we keep with us as we move forward.

First, Uncle Jesse was a true populist that was ahead of his time on many of the issues that we still grapple with. He was an early, vocal proponent of a Palestinian state, and sought to mainstream pro-Palestinian positions into the Democratic Party.

He literally coined the phrase and created the first real, multi-racial “Rainbow Coalition” in his presidential runs uniting a then-Mayor Bernie Sanders and white progressives from New England with Black Southerners, Native communities, West Virginia coal miners, and Latino farm workers. As white progressives continue to have challenges connecting with older Black Southern voters in particular, they should look to the unique mix of populism, inclusive capitalism, and spirituality that only Uncle Jesse could comfortably reconcile.

A politics that only talks about raising the minimum wage and single payer – two issues that many African Americans align with but only tell a part of the picture of what matters to us – but that doesn’t also have the same energy for a Black restaurant owner in Denmark, South Carolina will always miss the mark with us. This combination came natural to Uncle Jesse because it’s a natural marriage for many of us. Others should take note.

Second – as many commentators have noted – the Clinton and Obama presidencies were made possible because Jesse Jackson negotiated to change the rules in the Democratic presidential nomination process to a proportional system and away from a “winner-take-all” system.

As we look to 2028 for the next leader of our Party, creating space for insurgent candidacies is a part of Jesse Jackson’s legacy on the Democratic Party.

Lastly, I think Jesse Jackson’s impact on the private sector provides a very clear roadmap for how you do economic populism in a way that also resonates with Black voters.

Uncle Jesse’s Wall Street Project revolutionized how Wall Street hired and promoted Black professionals in Wall Street and the professional services that service them forcing them to do business with us and hire us. Notably, President Trump was once a vocal support of the Wall Street Project.

He fought to diversify who our pensions and retirement plans invest in and invested with. He was one of the most vocal supporters of corporate supplier diversity programs radically altering how Corporate America did business with our entrepreneurs while also creating entire divisions within companies that created opportunities for Black professionals at companies across the country.

He was a vocal advocate for fairness in Black media ownership in response to major media mergers in the 80s and 90s and in diversifying Hollywood.

Uncle Jesse reminded the world that Black Americans want economic prosperity just like everyone else. And a part of that equation must include recognizing the value of Black entrepreneurs and our Black corporate and business community – groups that Democratic politics tend to ignore.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion that the Trump Administration now targets is the house that Uncle Jesse helped to build. It’s no coincidence that Republicans know what Uncle Jesse knew better than most: when you economically empower Black Americans and we leverage that economic power politically, we punch above our weight. And when we punch above our weight politically, we change the country every time.

You don’t get Barack Obama’s black donor base without the “DEI” and the Black executives that Jackson’s work created. Black economic power begets Black political power. Uncle Jesse knew this intimately in ways that many Democrats – including some Black Democrats – still fail to understand.

Uncle Jesse is Democrats’ roadmap in 2028. The Latino voters who voted for President Trump last time need to come home to a Democratic Party that doesn’t think rounding them up indiscriminately is “immigration enforcement.” No Black politician prior to Jesse Jackson made the kind of inroads with Latino voters that he did. Black voters who are estranged from the Democratic Party need to see a Party that understands both the need for reconstituting the social safety net and a more forceful government role in minority contracting, supplier diversity, and supporting minority businesses and that will be force again for forcing Corporate America’s hand on cultivating and supporting diverse workforces, boards, and suppliers.

We need to energize young voters and reinstitute the kind of mass voter registration drives that made Uncle Jesse a force to be reckoned with.

I will miss him dearly, as will my parents. My prayers go out to Aunt Jackie, Jessie Jr., Yusef, Jonathan, Santita, Jackie, and Ashley.

His life was a blessing upon us all, and his roadmap for true inclusion and prosperity will endure forever.

A few really good articles and tributes to Uncle Jesse are below and worth your time –

• Jonathan Sewer’s piece in The Atlantic

• Dr. Saida Grundy’s piece in The Guardian

• Reid Epstein’s piece in the New York Times

• Donna’s Brazille’s tribute on ABC News

And, yes, I know many of these are paywalled, but good journalism often is. It’s worth the investment.

In case you missed it, Kanye West published a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal last week entitled – “To Those I’ve Hurt.”

So, I’ll first say that my intent here is not to minimize what has seemed like Ye’s genuine struggle with mental health challenges.

For those of us who were “foundational” Kanye fans, we’ve seen his evolution and his very public battles with bipolar disorder. I’ve seen what bipolar disorder does to those I’ve love before, so I fully understand that some of what we have seen from him could have been manic episodes where he “lost touch with reality.”

I also understand the role that grief can play in compounding mental health challenges. Kanye tragically lost his mother years ago, and in the spirit of fairness – and recognizing Ye’s humanity here – there’s no way that you lose your mother in that fashion and come out unscathed. And, to do all of this in the public eye with very public battles with your children’s mother, your former business partners and others can’t be easy.

So, I say what I’m about say with a full acknowledgement of the various factors at play in Ye’s apology and the factors that led to it:

I’m skeptical.

And, I really want to find a way to bring Ye back to our community in an authentic way, but too much here is a red flag that, unfortunately, feels more transactional and geared toward the release of his next album than the apology that we really needed to see.

And, to be clear, the “we” here is the Black folks who rocked with Kanye first, wore two polos to the club with our collars popped, supported him before he was a household name, and who have wanted Kanye to heal.

So – why I’m skeptical:

First, he’s about to release a new album on March 20^th. And the same Wall Street Journal that published his ad also shared the origins of the ad – “The Makings of a Kanye West Apology: An All-Staff Meeting and a 7-Figure Record Deal” – noting the obvious: “[that] [t]his is not the first time that Ye has apologized before a new album. In late 2023, as he prepared to release “Vultures 1,” he wrote on Instagram in Hebrew that “I deeply regret any pain I may have caused.” So, there’s that.

Then, it’s the venue itself, the Wall Street Journal. I have no major issues with the WSJ (though, I often disagree with its political and editorial contributors). We know who reads the WSJ, and it’s not Black folks – not most of us at least. And, paying for an ad that goes to Rupert Murdoch-owned NewsCorp, who also owns Fox Corporation (and Fox News), is designed to speak to white business types. Not a newsflash to anyone but imagine had this been placed with a Black-owned media organization or the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s 230 black-owned regional and local outlets or The Grio or The Root.

All these outlets could benefit from both the investment and the clicks that he gave to the WSJ with this ad. This was a choice, and he didn’t choose us – again.

And, finally, while he does acknowledge the pain that he has caused African Americans, the WSJ apology doesn’t feel commensurate with the harm caused. “Slavey was a choice”, “White Lives Matter”, ranting and appearing to support President Trump from the Oval Office, claiming erroneously that 50% of Black death comes from abortions, and calling racism a “dated concept” requires more than a one off apology in an outlet that we don’t read. If you want us to care (which it's not clear that he cares if we care at all), you need to talk to Black press, go on Black podcasts, place an apology for us in our outlets – and most importantly – actually talk to us genuinely and authentically in the way that we’ve authentically and genuinely been there for you through it all.

We bought the Yeezies, we still buy the tickets to his shows (sadly), many of us stood by him – and continue to do so – despite the incidents above.

But maybe that’s the problem.

We should expect more from the people that we invest our time and money in, particularly when they’re the same people who look to us for safe haven when they offend other communities.

But, they never come correct to us.

I really to do hope that Kanye finds himself and get what he needs to be where he needs to be.

He just might have to do it without us.

This year is an election year as many of you know. And throughout 2026, I will highlight key races that I think will not only shift the balance of power in Washington and in our states, but that will also give us a glimpse into 2028 and beyond.

I’m starting this feature in The Moment with Georgia’s Gubernatorial and Senate races as two races that will tell us about just how “swingy” Georgia is (or not). More broadly, I think Georgia gives us a glimpse into how Democrats fare in critical “Sun Belt” states like Georgia in 2026 as populations shifts from Democrats’ Blue Wall of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to states like North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.

So, why Georgia –

• Georgia’s Black voters tell me where the rest of Black voters are in 2026 (and possibly in 2028). Almost half of the voters in Georgia’s Democratic primaries are Black, and in any general election Black voters make up about one-third of the electorate. Georgia’s Black voters include large shares of urban, suburban, and rural voters making Georgia one of the largest, diverse, and influential Black electorates in the country. The level of voter enthusiasm from Georgia’s Black voters and the issues that mobilize them this cycle will likely be a good indicator of where most Black voters are in 2026 – and potentially in 2028.

• The 2024 drop off of Black male voters under 50 was dramatic in Georgia, and it’s a trend I’m watching in 2026. The Brennan Center found that the growth in Georgia’s Black-White racial turnout gap in 2024 was largely concentrated among younger Black men under 50 – far more than any other group of voters in Georgia. Going back to my point above regarding Georgia’s electorate (and my points below on the Senate), Democrats’ chances in the Senate could come down to young Black men being re-engaged in Georgia in 2026. How we engage young Black men, when we do it, how much we invest in it, and where we do it in 2026 will tell me if Democrats learned from 2024 and are ready to win in 2026 and 2028.

• Georgia has a solid swath of college-educated, swing White voters in suburban Atlanta that could be a bellwether for any potential 2026 “blue wave” and preview potential red flags for Republicans in 2028. A key metric for Democrats’ strategic shift to the Sun Belt (e.g. Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada) is the growing share of college-educated whites as a share of their electorates. The reality is that Republicans win when a greater share of white voters that didn’t go to college turn out; it’s the opposite for Democrats. About 21% of white Georgia voters are college educated, but they skew more conservative than college-educated White voters in other parts of the Sun Belt and the “Blue Wall” states. If they stay home or split tickets like they have done for Senator Warnock, this could be an indicator that swing, college-educated, White voters are voting against the Trump Administration and the MAGA Republican candidates likely to come out of the Republican primaries for Senate and Governor in Georgia in 2026.

• Georgia’s 2025 Public Service Commission race was so out of left field to folks outside of Georgia that I need to see if this is a fluke or if Georgia’s latent Democratic strength is finally starting to show. Last year, Georgia Democrats flipped two seats on their state Public Service Commission (their utilities regulator) – the first time this has ever happened and the first time a Democrat has won a statewide election for a state race in two decades. If this is an indication of Democratic enthusiasm, Georgia Democrats could make major gains.

• Georgia will be key to the balance of power in the Senate in 2026. Democrats are now bullish on potentially flipping Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa, and protecting New Hampshire and Michigan – but Jon Ossoff remains their most vulnerable incumbent. And, he doesn’t have the benefit of running on a ticket with Senator Warnock.

• Georgia is pushing to vote earlier in the 2028 Democratic primary. Georgia Democrats are working hard to move their Democratic presidential primary up for 2028 – and they should. They’re a legit battleground, they have the second largest Black electorate in the country, and they have one of the most active Black donor bases in Democratic politics. Anyone wanting the Democratic nomination in 2028 will have to be active in Georgia in 2026.

• Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock aren’t running. Raphael Warnock has appeared on the ballot five different times (winning every time) and Stacey Abrams has been the Democratic nominee the last two cycles in Georgia. Both bring their own coalitions of voters when they’re on the ballot, but neither is on the ballot this year.

Georgia has decided the balance of the Senate before, and that could be the case again in 2026 if Democrats flip and protect many of their targets.

Senator Ossoff has operated largely in the shadows of Senator Warnock and has at times struggled with Georgia’s Black politicos – highlighted by his fight to remove Congresswoman Nikema Williams from the head of the Georgia Democratic Party.

He has also navigated his own unique politics on Israel (he is Jewish, but he has been one of the more vocal Democratic critics on Israel) – a major litmus test for Democrats in 2026 and 2028.

Can he get young Black men back the polls? Do his progressive politics fall flat with Warnock-Kemp voters?

The Georgia Democratic primary for Governor includes former Atlanta Mayor and current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Keisha Lance-Bottoms and other notable Georgia Democrats. And, despite Georgia’s importance nationally for Democrats, none of the candidates currently running have broken through nationally in the way that someone like a Wes Moore did a few years ago in Maryland.

Mayor Bottoms’ sometimes troubled tenure in Atlanta and her decision not to run for re-election (a rarity in Atlanta) could prove to be a general election liability. And, in the post-Kamala Harris environment for Black women candidates, can Mayor Bottoms maximize Black male turnout if she’s the nominee? And will her tenure in Atlanta be a net negative in a general election?

All the things that matter nationally for Democrats and their chances to shift the balance of power away from President Trump and Trumpism are there in Georgia in 2026.

I’ll be active in Georgia this year, and I think all Democrats should find a way to Magic City and do some volunteering in Georgia this year.

Back in 2019, then-Senator Kamala Harris described the first Trump Administration’s deportation raids and deployment of ICE a “campaign of terror” to make whole populations of Hispanic Americans afraid”.

And she told y’all again in 2024 that Trump would do the same (or worse) and send troops to our cities – and folks didn’t take her seriously.

She also called for significantly restructuring ICE and the Department of Homeland Security back in 2020, which again, some folks (including some running for the Democratic nomination in 2028) have also criticized.

Now, that we see that ICE is operating as the new slave catchers, brutalizing Americans, operating like a paramilitary version of the Proud Boys, and murdering citizens, we’ve got to revisit two really big questions.

• First, what are we going to do to prosecute ICE agents and purge them when Democrats are back in power?

• And, second, what exactly should we do with ICE if/when we’re in a position to do something about them again other than protest?

Because I spend quite a bit of time suing police departments and correctional facilities when they brutalize and murder Americans like ICE is doing now, I spend a lot of time navigating this issue of qualified immunity.

This is basically a legal doctrine that makes it harder to hold law enforcement accountable even when they’re clearly on bullshit.

Unfortunately, ICE is largely protected by qualified immunity but not protected in the way that J.D. Vance, Steven Miller, or Stephen A. Smith suggests they are.

First, the immunity is qualified not absolute. ICE offices do have some immunity from criminal prosecutions, but they can’t do whatever they want on the job. They still have to comply with federal laws, act reasonably, and not clearly violate a person’s constitutional rights. That clearly happened here, so qualified immunity isn’t a get out of jail free card – even if these cases are often difficult and law enforcement usually wins.

So, what can we do?

First, I think Attorney General Ellison in Minnesota should pursue a prosecution of the ICE offices in question anyway – even if we know that qualified immunity could ultimately protect an officer. The public needs to see how awful this doctrine is in the face of tragedies like what we saw with Rachel Good in Minneapolis.

And, this is a case where the State of Minnesota could succeed. Here’s a good read on what they can – and should! – do under state law from LawFare Media.

Second, I like what Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson are doing and saying in Chicago. In addition to prosecutions like what I hope we will see in Minnesota; we need to track names and activity for future state and federal prosecutions of ICE agents.

Third, every single Democrat running for election or re-election to Congress this cycle needs to be supporting H.R. 4944, the “Ending Qualified Immunity for ICE Agents Act” and whatever comes out Senator Murphy’s efforts to reform DHS. If this isn’t coming out of the mouths of the people asking for your vote for Congress this year, don’t vote for them, and don’t send them money.

The “Abolish ICE” crowd was right. We’ve created a monster that has to be reigned in – or potentially abolished.

Now, some of you will hate me here, but another reality is that Americans want immigration enforcement; they don’t want slave catcher brutality and moms being murdered. And there’s a political line to walk here because “Abolish ICE” can easily be misconstrued politically as “open borders.” That’s a political liability for Democrats, and a trap that we have to avoid.

But, Vice President Harris was right, too – we have to radically alter what DHS and ICE do. Their current iterations have to abolished, and immigration enforcement has to go to somewhere else and they have to be able to held accountable.

Hell, I want to change all qualified immunity laws applied to law enforcement – this should also be a bedrock principle for Democrats moving forward.

We absolutely have to call for any 2028 Democratic hopeful to do a full purge of DHS and ICE if elected and Nuremberg-style trials led by the Department of Justice commencing the first day of the next Democratic Administration. If Donald Trump can make up fake prosecutions of people that tried to hold him accountable, we have to bring real prosecutions of the actual terrorists deployed by this Administration to terrorize us.

I know there is a paywall, but this Atlantic article, “The Front-Runner” about California Governor Gavin Newsom being the Democratic “front-runner” for the 2028 Democratic nomination bothered me, and it was yet another reminder that Democrats may still not fully understand the moment we’re in.

Parts of it and Newsom, I agree with.

Democrats are weak – both in terms of how their own voters perceive them, and in how they look relative to Republicans, despite generally supporting the policies Americans say they want.

Democrats have to meet the moment with things like Newsom’s Proposition 50 that will likely help flip the House in 2026. And his communication style and embrace of pop culture and sports as a part of his appeal is sorely needed inDemocratic politics.

The red flags are everywhere.

• “Given the choice,” he tells me, summing up a crucial Clinton insight—one many Democrats still can’t quite seem to grasp—“the American people always support strong and wrong, versus, weak and right.”

• “His idea of strength includes a willingness to fight dirty, going lower than Barack Obama could ever imagine, and so his social-media accounts bristle with memes about Donald Trump’s bruised hand and advancing age.”

• “He also has a high tolerance for risk. Proposition 50, a ballot measure that has redrawn California’s congressional map in favor of the Democrats, was seen as a toss-up when he first backed it last year. The new map was a blatant partisan gerrymander, a departure from the time when the Democrats used to talk up the fairness of independent commissions. Morally wrong, maybe—but do you want to win back the House or not? Prop 50 passed by a two-to-one margin.”

• “He’s much given to—like Trump, in a way—making these grand pronouncements about how something’s the greatest ever, how this is going to be the most wonderful thing,” the veteran California journalist Jerry Roberts told me, “and then his record is littered with failures.”

I don’t need “strong and wrong” for 2028 – show me “strong and right” where you actually deliver. The fact that “fight[ing] dirty” is just talking plainly about a twice-failed, formerly impeached lame duck President tells me more about the cuck politics of national Democrats than anything else.

This doesn’t make Newsom strong or unique; he’s just where we all are with the bullshit we’re seeing.

The fact that he wielded the power he had as a Governor for Proposition 50, and that other Democratic governors are doing as well – isn’t “risky.”

It’s doing your fucking job.

It’s not a case for a front-runner in the least, and polling two years out is an indication of nothing.

A track record of Newsom in his actual job as Governor of California of grand announcements and policy failures should concern us all.

Whoever has to clean up the mess Donald Trump is creating must actually show that he or she has delivered something other than tweets in all caps.

• I know Beshear has stabilized rural healthcare in deeply red Kentucky.

• Shaprio helped rebuild a collapsed bridge in 12 days and is lowering utility bills in a critical swing state inPennsylvania.

• Pritzker has fixed Illinois’ budget while investing in people and fixing the roads.

• Wes Moore is actually building housing in Maryland and rebuilding the Key Bridge after it collapsed.

• Roy Cooper expanded clean energy, made historic investments in North Carolina’s HBCU’s and expanded Medicaid against a deeply racist and fucked up state legislation in North Carolina.

We have a bench and options.

We should have learned our lesson from anointing frontrunners instead of letting primaries and the politics play out.

A part of the Trump Derangement Syndrome Democrats suffer from is this desperate need to find the next great person instead of investing in the infrastructure that allows Republicans to plug and play no matter who leads them.

Fixating over someone who talks tough but doesn’t deliver ain’t it. And when voters seek authenticity over almost anything else (the real lesson of Trump), a guy who swings where the wind blows ain’t it.

The fact that calling Trump who he is and speaking plainly tells me more about how bad other Democrats are –not about how Newsom is the right fit for the moment.

Our party is broke. Neither Senator Schumer or Leader Jeffries inspires hope or confidence that we have the leadership we need in Washington if they’re Majority Leader or Speaker.

We have no real think tanks like the America First Policy Institute that can produce something like Project 2025 – or the politicians or bureaucrats or the bureaucratic training grounds to train the people who could actually deliver it.

Our state and local Democratic Party apparatus in most parts of the country is broke and broken.

Our media ecosystem and echo chambers pale in comparison to theirs, so even when we’re right, our voters never know about it, their voters can easily dismiss it, and most people never hear about it.

And, if even there is a “blue wave” in 2026, not a single person can tell me what we’d do with it.

I don’t know Gavin Newsom. But what I do know is that anointing a front-runner – with polling suggesting that people are thinking this way, tells me more about our desperation than what the plan should be moving forward.

No single person or candidate can fix this, and us fixating on a front-runner when the house is burning around us reminds me that we didn’t really learn what we needed to do in 2024.

It’s not enough to win elections.

You have to win, you have to win with the right people who can show you they can deliver, and most importantly, we have to build the infrastructure to keep winning.

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