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Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, left, and progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, left, and progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros.

A closely watched runoff election in South Texas between incumbent Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros remained too close to call as of Wednesday morning, according to The Associated Press.

As of 10 a.m. ET Wednesday, just 175 votes separated the two candidates.

The race in Texas' 28th Congressional District pitted one of the most conservative Democrats in the House against a challenger backed by progressive stalwarts, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after neither Cuellar nor Cisneros received more than 50% of the vote in the March primary.

Cuellar, who has held the seat since 2005, had the endorsements of top House Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.

This wasn't the first time Cisneros, a 29-year-old immigration attorney, took on Cuellar, 66; she first did so in 2020, heavily outraising the longtime Laredo congressman before falling short.

Cisneros ran on a distinctly progressive platform, with support for Medicare for All and pro-labor legislation.

Cuellar, who holds more conservative views on abortion, immigration and gun control, painted Cisneros as a far-left candidate who wouldn't be effective in Congress.

Roughly two months before the March primary, the FBI raided Cuellar's campaign office and home in a probe, reportedly stemming from an investigation into U.S. businessmen and their ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar's attorney told Fox News he was not a target of the investigation, but the raids provided Cisneros with attack ad fodder.

On the Republican side, Cassy Garcia, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz, won Tuesday's runoff. The GOP has its sights set on flipping the competitive district in the South Texas region that's been trending more Republicans' way.

The issue of abortion rights played a large role in the campaign, with increased momentum after a leaked draft opinion of a Supreme Court decision indicated the high court may overturn Roe v. Wade. Cisneros pushed to keep abortion rights front and center in the campaign, as Cuellar is the only self-identified "pro-life" Democrat in the House.

"There's so many key issues where she's always siding with Republicans, and he could become the Joe Manchin of the House," she told NBC's Meet The Press. "We don't want Henry Cuellar to be the deciding vote on the future of our fundamental freedoms and rights in this country."

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Closely watched Democratic primary in Texas' 28th District remains too close to call - NPR

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Americans have long taken for granted the constitutional right to an abortion, established by the U.S. Supreme Courts landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Throughout most of the fall in 2021, Democrats, and especially Republicans, still thought that Roe would more likely than not remain the law of the land for the foreseeable future even as the high court refused to block a Texas law from taking effect on Sept. 1 that lawmakers designed to flout Roe by banning abortions once they said cardiac activity was detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy.

Those views started to change in December, though, following oral arguments before the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of Mississippis 15-week abortion ban. More Americans began doubting Roe would survive after the courts conservative justices raised the prospect of overturning nearly five decades of legal precedent on abortion rights during the hearing.

As the chart below shows, Democrats have consistently been pessimistic about Roe being overturned since those oral arguments in December, but following the leak of an initial draft Supreme Court opinion in May showing that a majority of conservative justices were ready to overturn Roe, there was a sharp spike in the share saying it will definitely or very likely be overturned. Even Republicans, who have been less likely than Democrats to think Roe would ever be struck down, now generally think its going to happen.

The reality that Roe might be overturned has also shifted how Americans prioritize abortion as an issue. For decades, those who opposed abortion rights (generally speaking, Republicans) rated the issue as more important than those who supported abortion rights (generally speaking, Democrats), but as the chart below shows, the two parties priorities swapped after Texass abortion ban went into effect, which I first wrote about in October.

In fact, the divide between Democrats and Republicans on the importance of abortion as an issue has only gotten wider, especially after the draft Supreme Court opinion was leaked in May. In the two surveys conducted by YouGov/The Economist since then, a record share of voters who backed President Biden in 2020 have rated abortion as a very important issue, by 61 percent and 63 percent, up from an average of about 42 percent in August surveys. Compare that with 37 percent and 40 percent of 2020 Trump voters who rated abortion as a very important issue in May, down from an average of about 45 percent in August polls.

Not only are Democrats more concerned now, but they're also rating abortion as much more important to their midterm vote for Congress now than they did four years ago, according to polling from Monmouth University. In the 2018 midterms, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to prioritize abortion as their most important issue in choosing whom to vote for in Congress, but in May, 32 percent of Democrats said abortion was the most important issue in determining their vote, compared with 17 percent of Republicans. The share of Democrats who said abortion was an extremely important issue in voting for Congress in 2022 (48 percent) is also up from 2018 (31 percent), while the share of Republicans who said the issue was extremely important in 2022 (29 percent) is down from 2018 (36 percent).

The polling data from both YouGov/The Economist and Monmouth is consistent with a long line of political science research showing how threats and anger often motivate people to take political action. When most Democrats considered abortion rights a given, other issues typically overshadowed it. Yet now that the status quo is on the verge of being upended, Democrats are increasingly prioritizing abortion rights and will likely channel their anger over Roe being struck down into various forms of political participation. Meanwhile, now that Republicans look likely to win their long battle to overturn Roe, the issue is unlikely to have the same potency in GOP politics.

It remains to be seen, though, how these changes in voters priorities will affect future elections. Thus far, the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion has had no discernible impact on which party voters would support in a congressional election in FiveThirtyEights generic ballot polling average. But as FiveThirtyEight editor-and-chief Nate Silver tweeted on Thursday, the electoral effects will likely manifest themselves in more nuanced ways especially after the policy implications of the final ruling become even more apparent during the summer and fall campaign. Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times, concurred, adding that the effect [of overturning Roe] on individual races may prove to be more important than its effect on the national political environment, if abortion becomes especially salient in places due to extreme candidates or state policy stakes.

Regardless, the reality that abortion rights can no longer be taken for granted has already sharply shifted many voters priorities. Those shifts will likely grow larger, too, if Roe is ultimately overturned this summer in fact, they may become even more politically powerful moving forward.

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For The First Time In Years, Democrats Are More Concerned About Abortion Than Republicans Are - FiveThirtyEight

OPINION:

Some Jan. 6 defendants are citing research firm surveys of Washington juror pools to expose biases, they say, that would prevent them from receiving fair trials.

Not surprisingly, survey answers show how the heavily Democratic, government-centric city is in line with how elected Democrats view the Republican Trump-supporting protesters and their Capitol Building invasion. One defense attorney labeled Washington a place of extreme community prejudice with an absolute lack of political diversity and tribal political landscape.

There is at least one high-profile non-Jan. 6 criminal case unfolding in the same U.S. federal courthouse that tapped the citys same voter pools to select a jury. Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is on trial for allegedly lying to the FBI while spreading anti-Trump propaganda.

In this case, Mr. Sussmann sold the FBI on launching an investigation into what he claimed was an ongoing secret cyber communication link. The players, he said, were former President Donald Trump and Russias Alfa Bank, an oligarch-controlled commercial lender.

The FBI decided in early 2017, several months after Mr. Sussmann presented his spreadsheets, that the conspiracy did not exist. The rub is, the Republican-appointed special prosecutor John Durham argues, Mr. Sussmann portrayed himself to the FBI as a concerned private citizen and concealed the fact he was selling the Alfa conspiracy for the Clinton campaign.

What got conservative social media talking about D.C. juries last week is the fact that campaign donors to Mrs. Clinton in other words Hillary loyalists sat among the jury pool.

Mr. Trump won just 5% of the D.C. vote his lowest tally of any electoral college member compared with 92% for President Biden. At the time, Mr. Trumps job approval in D.C. stood at 12%, 18 points lower than Massachusetts, his worst polling state, according to SurveyMonkey.

I think Durhams biggest problem from beginning to end is that Washington jury, National Review legal analyst Andrew McCarthy said on the Brian Kilmeade Show.

Several Jan. 6 defendants want their cases moved to another jurisdiction. One is Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys whose members were among those who crashed the Capitol. Mr. Tarrio, a Black Cuban American, was not in D.C. that day.

Tarrio, as the face and symbol of the Proud Boys, has received the Democratic partys seething hatred, which cannot be contained, mitigated, or controlled, his attorneys argue in a court brief filed this month. Tarrio stands for the antithesis of leftist liberal ideology and must be crushed, destroyed and canceled by the left-leaning members of the jury pool of Washington D.C.

Lawyers also wrote, In this atmosphere of extreme community prejudice and D.C.s tribal political landscape, a fair trial for Tarrio is impossible. There is an absolute lack of political diversity in D.C. that is sui generis in our political system.

Attorneys Sabino Jauregui and Nayib Hassan want the case moved to Mr. Tarrios home turf of southern Florida.

Plumbing the minds of D.C. voters is a key pre-trial tactic by Jan. 6 defendants Thomas Caldwell and Connie Meggs, both members of the ultra-patriotic Oath Keepers. They want their trial moved across the Potomac River to the Alexandria, Virginia, courthouse.

The federal public defender office in D.C. commissioned the firm Select Litigation LLC to assess the jury pool. It did two comparative polls one of D.C. and the other of Atlanta.

Prospective jurors in the District of Columbia have decidedly negative impressions of individuals arrested in conjunction with the activities of January 6, 2021, Select Litigation said in a report filed in court. Their bias against the defendants is evident in numerous results and is reflected in a significant prejudgment of the case: a clear majority admit they would be inclined to vote guilty if they were serving on a jury at the defendants trial.

One of the big political selling points by the Biden White House, elected Democrats and the Biden Justice Department is that the Jan. 6 protesters are guilty of an insurrection. The survey shows that the D.C. pool of voters who make up juries overwhelmingly back that argument, with 76% agreeing.

Mr. Caldwells attorney, David W. Fischer of Glen Burnie, Md, and Juli Z. Haller, Ms. Meggs Washington attorney, retained Lux Research to back their change of venue motion to ensure the Constitutions Sixth Amendment rights to an impartial jury.

Lux selected four test areas D.C., Florida, North Carolina and Virginia to survey jury-qualified people.

Results from the Study show that the DC Communitys attitude is unique among the Test Areas and is decidedly negative toward Defendants, Lux said. The study shows that the DC Community is saturated with potential jurors who harbor actual bias against defendants.

There have been two Jan. 6 jury trials. A jury deliberated just two hours before convicting Guy W. Reffitt, a member of a hard-right Texas citizens group, on all charges.

In April a jury convicted Dustin Thompson after less than three hours of deliberations.

Defendant Matthew Martin of Santa Fe, New Mexico, also went on trial that month, but chose a judge, not a D.C. jury, for a verdict.

Judge Trevor N. McFadden found him not guilty of all charges after two days of testimony. Mr. Martin faced a similar list of charges of hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants: entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, and demonstrating and parading inside the Capitol.

Judge McFadden, a 2017 Trump appointee, said it was not unreasonable for Mr. Martin to assume he was let into the building by police.

Judge McFadden previously convicted another Jan. 6 defendant, a member of Cowboys for Trump, for entering the Capitol illegally.

In an odd way, prosecutor Durham and Jan. 6 defendants share the same fear: a D.C. jury. But for decidedly different reasons.

Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.

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'Tribal' D.C. juries align with Biden and Democrats - Washington Times

Faced with mounting inflation and bad poll numbers, Democratic lawmakers are divided over whether to get rid of Trump-era tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in goods imported from China, which some Democrats think would lower costs for consumers.

Vulnerable Democratic senators from two key battleground states, Arizona and Nevada, are worried in particular that the administration may wind up slapping penalties on Chinese manufacturers of solar panels that have expanded their operations into Southeast Asia.

But tariffs on foreign imports are popular with labor unions and with voters in key presidential swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania states that could decide who controls the White House after the 2024 election.

The debate within the Senate Democratic Conference is made more complicated by divisions within the Biden administration.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo favor easing tariffs, while national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai oppose dropping tariffs on China, according to a New York Times report published Monday.

The political divide is reflected among Democratic lawmakers, who have competing interests heading into the midterm elections and are just beginning to discuss what to do about tariffs while they still control both chambers of Congress.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the chairwoman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, on Tuesday questioned the effectiveness of tariffs on Chinese goods and said that easing tariffs could help reduce inflation, which has become the Democrats biggest political problem.

The tariffs havent been as effective as they think, she said, adding that easing tariffs could help relieve on some of the costs that people are seeing.

I hope that theyll consider it, she said.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D), who is facing a tough reelection race in Arizona, expressed concern that a Commerce Department tariff investigation on solar panels imported from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam could have a major impact on his home-state economy.

If the investigation concludes that solar panels imported from these countries used Chinese parts that should have been subject to tariffs, it could result in huge retroactive tariffs in some cases exceeding 200 percent, experts estimate.

We have a big solar industry and weve got supply-chain issues and thats why a lot of costs are high, Kelly said Tuesday.

The bigger concern right now is that because of the investigation the suppliers in those countries just decided because of the possibility of retroactive panels, theyre not going to ship any more panels, he said. Weve got Arizona companies that are really worried about the future and to be able to start projects or complete projects.

The debate within the administration over what to do about Trump-era China tariffs and the Commerce Departments investigation into whether the China solar industry tried to avoid U.S. tariffs by operating through Southeast Asian countries are two sides of a bigger question: What to do about the importation of Chinese goods at a time when costs are soaring in the United States?

Several Democratic senators told The Hill Tuesday that they are beginning to discuss tariffs and economic policy toward China more seriously.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), another Democratic incumbent in a tough reelection race, said shes also worried about new tariffs on solar industry imports.

I just got off the floor talking about the solar industry and why we need to support the solar industry, she said.

We need to make sure we dont chill the solar industry right now. Ive got workers in jobs on projects that are stopped in my state because its been chilled. Theres got to be this happy medium of how we still hold China accountable but at the same time still move forward toward a cleaner [environment], she added.

Cortez Masto noted that 80 percent of the solar panels used in the United States come from other countries.

The Nevada solar industry is the largest in the nation. The industry supports more per capita in my state than any other and many of those are union jobs, she said on the floor Tuesday. Theyre on hold right now and nothing is moving forward right now.

But supporters of domestic manufacturers in the industrial Midwest, a part of the country that was crucial to President Bidens 2020 election victory and will be critical to him winning a second term, arent rushing to repeal Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports.

Everything is being looked at as part of the Democratic effort to fight inflation, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said, acknowledging that tariff relief is on the table. Theres a whole range of things were looking at.

She said she has concerns about repealing Trump-era tariffs because she wants to promote domestic manufacturing.

Asked whether the Trump-era tariffs truly help create American jobs, she said thats the big question right now.

Industry by industry, it affects some differently, but I have a lot of concerns, she said.

Other Democrats are leery of easing tariffs on China at a time of rising tension over the future of Taiwan and the South China Sea and after China declared a no-limits partnership with Russia.

I think if theres tariffs with China, we ought to be looking at doing business with somebody else, said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). I would look at the tariffs and see how they impact agriculture, but Im not inclined to pull them off.

I think Chinas doing things that arent good, he said.

Major industry groups are getting involved in the debate, as well.

The National Association of Manufacturers is pushing the administration and Congress to revise China tariffs to ease the pressure on mounting supply costs.

Theres a real need to have a robust exclusion process and allow companies on all sides to engage, provide input and make their case for why exclusions [from tariffs] are necessary to provide targeted relief that manufacturers in the United States need, said Ken Monahan, vice president of international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers.

He argued that providing tariff waivers for U.S. manufacturers that rely on imported supplies will certainly support bringing down costs impacting industry at this time.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also pressing the Biden administration to lift the tariffs.

The Chambers stance has long been to push for the removal of damaging 301 tariffs, said a U.S. Chamber spokesperson. Were encouraged that President Biden is giving serious consideration to removing tariffs, particularly those that impact consumers and businesses. As inflation continues to soar, hard-working American families and small business deserve to have more money in their pockets to pay their bills and sustain their businesses.

Lori Wallach, the director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project, said representatives of industrial states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio key presidential swing states want to promote American manufacturing and combat dumping by Chinese solar manufacturers.

Talk to [Sen.] Sherrod Brown [D-Ohio] or Sen. [Bob] Casey [D-Pa.], who are very invested in trying to create a domestic clean energy manufacturing, she said, noting that proponents of domestic manufacturing argue that building the U.S. industrial base will insulate consumers from price shocks in the future in case foreign producers decide to shut down supplies.

Wallach said when the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act takes effect next month, it could cut dramatically into Chinese solar imports.

The much bigger thing thats coming down the pike is that in June the Uyghur Forced Labor Act that Congress passed gets implemented, and much of the actual silicon [for solar panels] comes from these forced labor concentration camps, basically, where the Uyghur people are, she said. The importers are in a panic because the way that law works, everything from that part of China is kept out unless you can prove the supply chain is free of forced labor.

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Democrats divided on tariffs amid woes over inflation - The Hill

In the battle for control of the Democratic party, progressives are increasingly confident they are winning. Thats how they explain the record sums of Super Pac money targeting their candidates in nominating contests for safely Democratic seats.

Theres a set of people who are uncomfortable with a new brand of politics, said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the progressive Working Families party. Theyre trying to set the clock back. But the genies outta the bottle.

So far this election cycle, progressives have a mixed record. But a stronger-than-expected showing in last weeks primaries has energized the movement and set the stage, they hope, for even more success this summer.

In Pennsylvania, state representative Summer Lee overcame a deluge of outside spending to win her congressional primary. Lee was declared the winner after three days of counting. She tweeted: $4.5 mill with a fire and trash can emoji.

Oregon progressives cheered the victory of Andrea Salinas, who also went up against a crush of big money in one of the most expensive House Democratic primaries in the country. Meanwhile, the seven-term Oregon congressman Kurt Schrader, whose conservative politics drew the lefts ire, appears to be on the verge of losing his seat to progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner, though results have been delayed by a ballot-printing problem.

And in what will be one of the cycles most competitive Senate races, John Fetterman, Pennsylvanias iconoclastic, liberal lieutenant governor, beat Congressman Conor Lamb, a rising star of the center-left.

The next test of progressive political power comes on Tuesday, in a Texas runoff election between Congressman Henry Cueller, a conservative Democrat backed by party leadership, and Jessica Cisneros, a progressive immigration lawyer endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. And after that, there are competitive intra-party primaries in Illinois, New York and Michigan.

Were not doing any victory laps, Mitchell said. If anything, those losses and the wins have redoubled our commitment and focus.

Moderates see the cycle very differently.

They point to a trio of House races last week in North Carolina and Kentucky where the more moderate candidate won handily. Those victories came just two weeks after the Democratic congresswoman Shontel Brown won a fiercely contested rematch in Ohio against Nina Turner, a progressive activist who worked on Sanders presidential campaigns.

People who are far outside the mainstream of the Democratic conference make it harder for moderates to run in swing districts because their ideas and their rhetoric are used against people like Abigail Spanberger, said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the center-left thinktank Third Way, referring to the Virginia congresswoman who singled out progressives for costing the party seats in 2020.

Bennett said it was important to distinguish between progressives. He argued that candidates who are liberal but not radical, such as McLeod-Skinner in Oregon, pose little risk to swing-state Democrats.

Instead, we are worried about the Squad, Bennett said, the group of progressive congresswomen that includes Ocasio-Cortez, because the people in that wing of the party do not regard it as part of their duty as Democrats to help ensure that we have majorities.

Its a charge that angers progressives. Following Sanders lead in 2020, they united behind Biden to oust Donald Trump in 2020 and then spent the past year and a half working with congressional leaders and the White House to pass the presidents economic agenda. And yet progressives are the ones being pummeled by outside spending.

A number of contentious Democratic contests have been shaped by Super Pacs, like the one formed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac, another supported by the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and another backed by a crypto-billionaire.

Much though not all of the outside money has been spent in support of moderate candidates, including in Texas, where Cuellar, the nine-term congressman, is in the fight of his political life.

This is a David-and-Goliath sort of battle, Mitchell said.

The rash of spending has only exacerbated tensions between the partys ideological factions. In a sign of progressives building resentment, Jeff Weaver, Sanders former campaign manager, warned that progressives could launch third-party candidates in swing districts to scuttle centrist Democrats chances.

The suggestion infuriated Bennett, who called it the most irresponsible thing Ive seen a Democrat say maybe ever, particularly in the face of a Republican party that has lost its ever-loving mind.

Though still early in the primary season, progressives appear poised to expand their numbers in Congress. Still, not every closely fought intra-party battle has fallen neatly along ideological lines.

Oregons Schrader, a former leader of the conservative Blue Dog coalition, angered Democrats in the state after his vote against a provision that would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. Local Democratic leaders voted to endorse his challenger, McLeod-Skinner, sharply breaking with tradition.

In Texas, however, the battle lines are clearly drawn.

Pundits there think the south Texas runoff between Cuellar and Cisneros will prove to be a bellwether of the Democratic mood in a political landscape that increasingly favors Republicans. Democrats have razor-thin majorities in Congress, and the party in power historically loses in the presidents first midterm election.

Democrats are also struggling to outrun Bidens low approval ratings, weighed down by inflation and widespread frustration with Washington.

Since Cisneros forced Cuellar into a runoff earlier this year, the race has been reshaped by a draft supreme court opinion indicating the justices are prepared to overturn a constitutional right to an abortion.

Cuellar is one of the only Democrats left in Congress who is against abortion. Cisneros, by contrast, has cast herself as a defender of reproductive rights in a state that has effectively banned abortion.

They have also clashed on immigration. Whereas Cuellar staunchly criticizes the Biden administrations immigration policies, appearing frequently on Fox News to air his grievances with the presidents handling of the border, Cisneros has advocated for a more progressive stance in that sector.

No matter what happens on Tuesday in Texas, progressives believe they have made progress elevating candidates they say will excite the partys base in November.

In Kentucky, long a Republican stronghold, Democrats nominated Charles Booker, an unabashedly progressive ex-state lawmaker who would be the states first black senator. Its a shift from two years ago, when he surprised the party establishment by nearly defeating its chosen candidate in the Senate primary that cycle.

Booker now faces an uphill battle to unseat the entrenched Republican senator Rand Paul. But he says his progressive Kentucky New Deal agenda is popular with voters of both parties. Its the partisan labels and political culture wars that get in the way.

The truth of the matter is, the people of Kentucky want real progress, Booker said. Its just that no one listens to us.

The policies that I lift up, the issues that I fight for, theyre not radical and they dont come from some national consultant. This comes from my lived experience of living the struggle that most Kentuckians know well.

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US progressives show strength in primaries and predict more wins ahead - The Guardian US