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A growing number of Democrats are ringing the alarm that their party sounds and acts too judgmental, too sensitive, too "woke" to large swaths of America.

Why it matters: These Democrats warn that by jamming politically correct terms or new norms down the throats of voters, they risk exacerbating the cultural wars and inadvertently helping Trumpian candidates.

Top Democrats confide that they're very aware of the danger. Already, we've seen a widespread pullback in the "defund the police" rhetoric.

Democratic strategist James Carville has been warning his party about this for months, telling Vox in an April interview:

Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal that she believes the left is misreading its position and "overplaying its hand."

On the flip side, "How to Be an Antiracist" author Ibram X. Kendi, who directs Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, wrote in The Atlantic on Friday that Republican operatives "have conjured an imagined monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nations defenders from that fictional monster."

What we're hearing: Moderate and swing-district lawmakers and aides tell Axios' Margaret Talev and Alayna Treene that the party could suffer massive losses in next year's midterms if Democrats run like Sen. Elizabeth Warren is president.

Between the lines: The big question is how different the midterms will be from 2020. People voted for Democrats in November when the same talking points and ideas were being discussed. The presidency was at stake, but the other cultural or social issues were the same.

What to watch: This tension is a huge test for President Biden. He knows that the rising left in his party, while great for fundraising and media coverage, could be electorally disastrous.

Axios' Kim Hart and Alayna Treene contributed reporting.

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Rise of the anti-"woke" Democrat - Axios

Some House moderates are urging party leaders to focus squarely on the bipartisan bill, while many liberals remain skeptical it will happen at all and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has threatened to sideline it without an accompanying Democratic package. A failed bipartisan result would force Democrats to write one huge spending bill marrying all their priorities.

Taken together, Democrats decisions in the coming days will define what may be the largest spending bill in history, offering their best chance at reshaping the federal government for years to come. Bidens party has a rare opportunity with full control over Congress and the White House, but its majorities are so slim that even attempting the two-part move will be a daredevil act.

If you add the two plans together, it would be the biggest bill in the history of the country, said House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). There's no way its going to be easy."

House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) pauses for reporters after meeting with the House Democratic Caucus and Biden administration officials to discuss progress on an infrastructure bill at the Capitol. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

After three months of plodding negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has laid out an aggressive timetable that envisions passage of both a budget resolution to allow a huge Democrats-only tax and spending package plus a vote on a deal with Republican centrists to plow nearly $600 billion into roads, bridges and broadband. Schumer will reiterate the timetable in a Dear Colleague letter to Democrats on Friday, according to a Democratic aide, and warn of the possibility of working long nights, weekends and into the August recess to finish that work.

The majority leader has been constantly dialing up White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, as well as his members in the bipartisan group and committee chairs in charge of a party-line spending bill, whose work will run into the trillions.

Every Democrat knows that the partisan legislation could be this years last big train to which they can hitch their long-sought priorities, and demand is high. Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants Medicare expansion, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is pressing for immigration reform and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) is pushing her colleagues on child care spending. A whole slate of progressives want a major climate focus. And there will be restraints on spending from moderates and from the Senate parliamentarian on what can pass muster and avoid a GOP filibuster.

While Sanders initially suggested spending $6 trillion to complement the bipartisan deal, more moderate members are likely to tamp that down to $4 trillion or even lower depending in large part what moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) agree to. Asked if she had a number in mind, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) replied: "Yeah, $6 trillion."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responds to questions from reporters as Mass. Attorney General Maura Healey, left, and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), right, look on during a news conference in Boston. | AP Photo/Steven Senne

In the House a band of centrists already anxious about their fragile majority are fretting over the party-line bill. And the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are flexing their muscle and laying out demands, which will cause consternation among the party's moderates.

With that policy maelstrom still churning, leadership may have to threaten cutting some of Congress beloved August recess to drive hard decisions and get bills on track to meet Schumers aggressive timetable.

It will be used as a way for us to get the job done, the threat of losing August recess when we can go home, Duckworth said. Maybe that will be used as a carrot on the end of a very big stick.

Lawmakers will likely receive more clarity on the details of both the bipartisan plan and its financing as well as the contours of the partisan budget reconciliation spending bill early next week. While both Budget Committee Democrats and the bipartisan group have been aiming to wrap their work by then, no one is setting hard deadlines yet.

We are really working hard to try to get something that can get to the floor in the next couple of weeks, said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), one of more than 20 senators working on the bipartisan bill. But I don't want to be too specific. Because in my experience, deadlines always slip a little bit.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) listens to testimony on Capitol Hill in Washington. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

Theres also the question of whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell might end up opposing the package, which could scuttle any effort to get 10 GOP senators on board. McConnell spent the July 4 break barnstorming Kentucky, saying he thought the bipartisan bill had a "decent chance" but also asking that it be credibly financed. The plan is currently to use increased IRS enforcement, unspent coronavirus aid and infrastructure privatization to cover the bills price tag.

Financing some of the trillions in spending on Democratic-only priorities will be even trickier, considering the party wants to raise taxes on both large companies and capital gains for wealthy people. Manchin has suggested more modest increases than Biden, but his support for both the spending plan and rolling back some of the 2017 tax cuts law is a breakthrough in and of itself.

The Senate Dems should look at each other and say: We're committed to doing a reconciliation bill. And I know Manchin is, said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has suggested the $4 trillion number.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks during a Senate committee hearing. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo

A successful July and August will require intense coordination by Schumer, Pelosi and committee leaders. Theyll need to make sure the bipartisan bill can pass both the Senate and the House and that its paired reconciliation bill has lockstep support in both chambers, a more complex dance than Democrats' swift passage of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid law in March.

Already theres been plenty of infighting, so much so that before the July Fourth recess Yarmuth and other party leaders pleaded with their members to stop making policy demands and drawing red lines or theyd never find the support to pass it.

Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), who has already declared he will vote against the Houses budget resolution, said it's time to stop spending after the massive Covid package. At the moment, House leaders can only afford to lose a couple more Democrats.

"When I was talking to the White House legislative team the other day, they said, 'Oh, I bet you lie awake at night counting dollars on this,'" Yarmuth said. "I said, 'No, I lie awake counting votes.'"

Laura Barrn-Lpez, Marianne LeVine and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

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Democrats wrestle over control of the infrastructure throttle - POLITICO

A senior aide to President Joe Biden misleadingly claimed that congressional Republicans defunded the police when they voted against the American Rescue Plan Act. House and Senate Republicans didnt support the legislation, but it wasnt a vote to cut or eliminate federal funding for law enforcement, as the claim may have led viewers to believe.

Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, made the claim during a June 27 interview on Fox News Sunday. He was asked to respond to Republican Sen. Lindsey Grahams statement that Bidens proposed plan to address rising crime across the country would not work because a declared war on the police was backfiring on those who have done it.

Senator Graham doesnt have a clue. And lets talk about who defunded the police, Richmond said, referring to the controversial concept of terminating or shifting funds away from police budgets that some Democrats and activists embraced in 2020 after a Black man, George Floyd, was killed by a white police officer.

When we were in Congress last year trying to pass a rescue plan an emergency relief plan for cities that were cash-strapped and laying off police and firefighters, it was the Republicans who objected to it. And in fact, they didnt get funding until the American Rescue Plan, which our plan allowed state and local governments to replenish their police departments and do the other things that are needed.

So, look, Republicans are very good at staying on talking points of who says defund the police. But the truth is, they defunded the police. We funded crime intervention and a whole bunch of other things, Richmond continued.

Richmond was referencing the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that Biden signed into law on March 11, as the U.S. economy continued to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. That bill passed in both houses of Congress with only Democratic support. It provided additional recovery money to lower-level governments, which could spend some of the money for law enforcement. But there was no requirement to do so.

Richmonds claim suggested that Republicans voted to cut or reduce existing federal funding to police departments which is what some who truly want to defund the police advocate. Thats not what happened.

The American Rescue Plan included hundreds of billions in additional economic relief for individuals and small businesses, including direct stimulus payments and expanded unemployment benefits. Among other things, it also provided over $350 billion in emergency funds to help state, county, city and tribal governments make up for revenue that was lost during pandemic-related shutdowns.

When the bill passed in a 50-49 Senate vote on March 6, Biden said it meant that states and local governments that have lost tens of thousands of essential workers because of layoffs would now have the resources they need available to them, to those laid-off police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses they can rehire. And after Biden signed the bill into law on March 11, national police organizations also touted the emergency funding available to lower governments to maintain public safety services.

However, the section of the bill outlining the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds did not stipulate that the relief funding had to be used on police officers or for other law enforcement initiatives.

This is how a March 18 Treasury Department fact sheet summarized the recovery fund: The Rescue Plan will provide needed relief to state, local, and Tribal governments to enable them to continue to support the public health response and lay the foundation for a strong and equitable economic recovery. In addition to helping these governments address the revenue losses they have experienced as a result of the crisis, it will help them cover the costs incurred due responding to the public health emergency and provide support for a recovery including through assistance to households, small businesses and nonprofits, aid to impacted industries, and support for essential workers. It will also provide resources for state, local, and Tribal governments to invest in infrastructure, including water, sewer, and broadband services.

Even the May 10 fact sheet on the Treasurys proposed interim final rule on how to use the recovery funds noted that recipients have broad flexibility to decide how best to use this funding to meet the needs of their communities.

Also, Republicans in Congress did not say they opposed the legislation because some of the relief funds would potentially go to police departments.

At least one consistent GOP criticism of the overall bill which we wrote about was that only a small percentage of it was specifically earmarked for health spending related to COVID-19.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also criticized the total cost of the legislation and said that many states actually had budget surpluses and didnt really need additional emergency funds.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell similarly denounced the COVID-19 relief bill for including completely unrelated left-wing pet priorities, as well as sending $350 billion to bail out long-mismanaged state and local governments. He also argued that the bill at a total cost of nearly $2 trillion was about the same size as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which was signed into law near the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and provided about $150 billion in direct assistance to state and local governments.

And when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressed in a June 30 press briefing to name a single Republican who had opposed the bill because of the additional funding for police, she didnt identify one. Instead, Psaki said: So if you oppose funding for the COPS program something that was dramatically cut by the prior administration and many Republicans supported and then you vote against a bill that has funding for the COPS program, we can let other people evaluate what that means. It doesnt require them to speak to it or to shout it out; their actions speak for themselves.

Psaki was talking about the Community Oriented Policing Services program, which provides federal funding for hiring police officers, as well as nonhiring initiatives such as law enforcement training. As president, Donald Trump did propose cutting COPS funding, but Congress ultimately increased funding for the program throughout his presidency. And while the American Rescue Plan included funding that could be used to rehire or compensate police officers, it wasnt specifically tied to the COPS program.

When we asked the White House about Richmonds defunding claim as well as Psakis defense of it in press briefings an official directed us to a June 29 statement that White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates issued to a Fox News congressional correspondent. That statement also pointed to the American Rescue Plan funding to state and local governments, and the COPS program.

The President ran and won decisively on a platform of increasing funding for law enforcement, against an opponent who not only spent his entire term attempting to cut the COPS program with the support of congressional Republicans but who also blocked critical resources needed to prevent the laying off of police officers at a time of rising crime, Bates said in the statement, which was published in a tweet.

The President, with the backing of leading law enforcement groups, secured the money that his predecessor opposed to keep cops on the beat and every single Republican member of Congress voted against it. They continue to oppose the American Rescue Plan even as it delivers the rehiring of police in their districts. The President is also fulfilling his campaign promise of fighting for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for the COPS program, as a central element of a comprehensive approach to the higher crime rates he inherited, alongside addressing gun violence directly, implementing prevention programs and dealing with root causes.

The White House official also told us that some Republicans in Congress have suggested that unspent funding authorized for state and local governments could be rescinded or reallocated to pay for other proposals, such as Republican-supported infrastructure plans.

To that point, a June 29 blog post on the website of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi which carried the headline House Republicans Vote to Defund Police Again emphasized that Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee that day voted in favor of an amendment to a funding bill that would stop local governments from receiving the second portion of American Rescue Plan money that is scheduled to be released in 2022.

What we are talking about is an extremely large amount of money that local governments didnt ask for, that in many respects dont need, and to this moment in time dont even know how they would effectively spend this kind of money, said Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, who proposed the amendment, which failed in a 23-34 vote. He argued that because were on the tail end of COVID, it would be irresponsible for members of the committee to continue to shovel money out the door because of the disease.

The two parties clearly disagree on how much money state and local governments need to recover from the pandemic. However, voting against a bill that includes additional money that may be used to bolster police departments is not the same thing as reducing or redistributing existing federal funding for police, as Richmonds remarks suggested.

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Democrat Makes Misleading 'Defund the Police' Claim - FactCheck.org

Though Mr. Podestas firm had disclosed the client under less-detailed congressional lobbying rules and retroactively registered with the Justice Department, that did not stop the special counsels office from subpoenaing the records and employees of his firm and others that worked with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates.

Mr. Podesta questioned the motives and methods behind the special counsels investigation. He referred to one of the investigations lead prosecutors, Andrew Weismann, as Inspector Javert, the police character in Les Misrables who became obsessed with ensuring the capture and punishment of a parolee who had been convicted of stealing bread to feed his family.

I didnt even steal a loaf of bread, Mr. Podesta said, asserting that he was targeted at least partly because the special counsel thought it was a good idea to have a Democrat, clearly.

Mr. Podesta said his firms finances were stretched thin, partly because it paid as much as $5 million in legal fees for employees who were subpoenaed by prosecutors, and partly because the investigation spooked clients, who left the firm.

Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates were charged with unregistered foreign lobbying, tax fraud and other crimes in October 2017. The indictment identified the Podesta Group and a firm with which it worked on the Ukraine effort, Mercury Public Affairs, though not by name, as having worked as part of a scheme with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates to gain support for Mr. Yanukovych, while evading foreign lobbying disclosure requirements.

Within a day, the Podesta Groups bank, citing the special counsels investigation and the draining of the firms accounts to pay the staffs legal fees, canceled its credit line, rendering the firm illiquid, Mr. Podesta said.

He told his employees in a staff meeting that he was stepping back from the firm, citing attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative media as making it impossible to run a public affairs shop, according to people in attendance.

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Tony Podesta Weighs Return to Lobbying and Democratic Politics - The New York Times

If you are a white leftist, you have not written one word to this newspaper that was informative or enlightening. Not one.

Sixty-two percent of Democrats support voter ID for voting, with non-whites supportive by 84%. That, my friend, is staggering.

Republican voter suppression is a lie. A lie based in liberal racism that pretends that non-whites are not smart enough to get a free government ID.

Sure, non-whites can get an ID for opening a bank account, traveling on a plane, purchasing liquor, getting a motel room, or a myriad of other ID requirements. But to prove you are who you say you are to choose the power that runs the country? Racist, they claim. So you see whos racist here? Democrats.

Again.

Because the history of racism in this country is Democrats. Slavery? Democrats. Jim Crow? Democrats. Civil Rights bill? Filibustered by Democrats. Democrat National Committee member, absolute segregationist, and racist Bull Connor? Democrat. Robert Byrd, KKK member, and US Senator? Democrat.

When you think about it objectively, you will conclude that the race problem currently experienced in the United States is (again) a creation of white liberals, who have used every white killing of a Black person as an excuse to make relations worse, while completely and I mean completely ignoring any Black person killing a White person, or a Black person killing a Black person (which is a far worse ongoing, numerical travesty).

White liberals have lied to you endlessly, and continue to do so. Tune them out.

Barry Johnson, Chico

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Letter to the Editor: Democrats ongoing tradition of racism - Chico Enterprise-Record