I’ve been observing the unfolding conversation about big DSA wins in New York City on Tuesday and specifically the clout Mayor Zohran Mamdani has gained because he went three for three in congressional endorsements. It’s a complex picture and I’m generally more sanguine about what’s happening than others. As I wrote, I think Chevalier doesn’t have any business in Congress. Lander and Valdez are simply the left wing of the Democratic party and on that front even Lander and Valdez are very different candidates. I may do a separate post on Chevalier’s extremism on Israel-Palestine and, yes, Jews, as well as other issues. Important topic but not the topic of this post.

I’ve made the point a few times that our political language and mental geography assumes that there are two political spectra in the Democratic party, one that is right/centrist to left and another that is accommodation to fight. It’s often assumed that these pretty neatly line up — progs and left-wingers are up for a fight but the more center-left or liberal folks are more cautious, institutionalist or even accommodationist. And yet there’s no real connection between these two things.

So far, so good. You’ve heard me make this general point many times. But it is really on the center-left, or liberals, to make clear that this isn’t the case. And to a great degree they are not — not convincingly — though there’s been progress on this front over the last eighteen months. And in a political climate in which people are both really angry and really scared and think major change is necessary, the old rhetoric, the old posture just isn’t going to cut it. It doesn’t speak to anyone. It seems jarringly out of touch with the moment.

An important new story by Layla A. Jones out this morning shows yet another way right-wing conspiracy theories may be making their way into government, impacting regular people’s lives.

For more than a decade, the Census Bureau has been preparing to swap out the way it records people’s race and ethnicity, eliminating the separate “Hispanic or Latino” ethnicity option and adding more options to the question about race. The change was intended to offer people categories that better reflect their understanding of their identity; many respondents had been checking “other” rather than choosing from the categories available.

Here’s where the story gets weird.

You’ve now probably seen news that Trump plans to use the U.S. Postal Service as a key part of his war on the 2026 midterm. Specifically, according to testimony Wednesday from Postmaster General David Steiner, if a state doesn’t hand over its absentee and/or voter list to the federal government, the post office simply won’t deliver that state’s ballots. This morning a court blocked aspects of the policy.

Lets start by saying this is blatantly anti-constitutional, though of course it’s possible that the corrupt Supreme Court will allow it.

But this front in Trump’s war against the 2026 election is illustrative of a number of critical factors in the challenge before us.

The key paragraph from this bizarre Josh Kovensky story about how Ken Paxton, the Trump DOJ, and a federal judge who is notoriously friendly to Republican causes worked together to scrap an immigration rule they didn’t like — in just a few hours.

Timestamps show that the complaint was filed against the DOJ at 1:51 p.m. At 2:59 p.m., the DOJ and Texas filed a motion jointly asking the court to order what Paxton’s complaint sought. At 6:29 p.m., 278 minutes from the time the case was filed, Judge O’Connor, chief judge in the Northern District of Texas, gave the DOJ and Paxton much of what they asked for.

From TPM Reader BD, responding to Josh’s post here:

Hi—as a 42-year Washington Heights resident (and a 26-year TPM reader), I feel moved to comment on your dismissive judgment that Darializa Chevalier doesn’t belong in Congress. I’m going to take a wild guess that your view of her is based on some of the truly objectionable social-media breadcrumbs that she has left, and that have been widely circulated by her antagonists.

From TPM Reader RR, responding to Josh’s post here:

I live on the UWS and campaigned a number of days for Micah Lasher talking to a good number of voters. I have a bit of a different take on the Israel question. (For what it’s worth, I’m also a secular Jew.)

One of the big stories coming out last night’s primaries are the wins for House candidates endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He endorsed three House primary candidates and each won. Those included Brad Lander, who we might call a left-leaning member of the pre-AOC/DSA New York Democratic Party who allied late with Mamdani during the mayoral primary in which he was also a candidate; Claire Valdez, who won an open primary against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; and Darializa Avila Chevalier who defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five term Dominican-American rep and longtime NYC pol. So two wins against incumbents (Lander over Rep. Dan Goldman and Chevalier over Espaillat) and another against a quasi-incumbent, since Reynoso is the sitting borough president and had the endorsement of Rep. Nydia Velázquez, whose retirement opened up the seat.

Three candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — Claire Valdez (NY-7), Brad Lander (NY-10) and Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13) — won their congressional primaries tonight. In another New York City congressional race, the chaotic NY-12, won by Micah Lasher, Mamdani didn’t endorse.

There was voting in New York state today and I had to choose a candidate in a race I’ve observed, but not really as a voter. Who should I pick? I understood the question a little better when I explained my thinking after the fact to my son.

You’re no doubt seeing the now endless run of stories about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, now beset by rubberized coating which is already peeling off and algae blooms due at least in part to a darker bottom which is absorbing more heat.

Let me note an admittedly picayune part of the story. We’ve discussed in the past Donald Trump’s penchant for creating spurious backstories to justify his various building projects. We were told last year that presidents and executive branch officials had been complaining for decades — or centuries! — about the need for a White House ballroom. “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc,” he claimed at one point. And it took him to finally create it.

Rinse and repeat: these absurd fairy tales are always part of the Trump sales job. With the Reflecting Pool it’s apparently been in crisis for the last century. Only Trump is going to be able to fix it for good.

Everyone sees these absurd stories and mostly recognizes them as such. What I wanted to highlight is the ways this seeps into a lot of coverage. So, for instance, this story in the Times reports that the manager of Trump’s Bedminster golf club apparently directed the current “repair.” But there’s this aside in there which I see in almost every report on the topic …