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Mayor Eric Adamsplanto save accelerated education in New York City from progressive critics begins with students like Cassy Thimes daughter: a black second-grader who would thrive in a gifted classroom that today includes few kids of color.

Shes a top student and a gifted program will give her a more rigorous education and push her to excel, said Thime, who has a doctorate in education and lives in Queens. Now she has classmates who cant even read.

Adams, who took office in January, is diving headfirst into a controversy over academically selective schools thats dividing communities from San Francisco to Fairfax County, Va.

New Yorks second black mayor rejects the criticism that accelerated learning is racist and must be dismantled because of the low number of students of color who qualify. He believes they should strive for an elite education, too. To help them, Adams and his new schools chancellor, David Banks, are staking a middle ground that embraces both competitive academics and diversity. If this longshot strategy works, New York could influence districts across the country.

As Banks sees it, the problem with selective schools boils down to scarcity there are too few seats for advanced students in elementary, middle, and high schools for all who merit one. So the solution is pretty obvious: Create more elite schools and programs.

New York is starting with the addition of 1,100 seats to the gifted and talented (G&T) program for elementary students this fall. Identifying more advanced black and Latino students from the get-go means they will be bettered prepared to qualify for New Yorks elite middle and high schools like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech schools that are under constant attack from progressives for admitting just a handful ofblacks and Latinos.

To ensure that blacks and Latinos fill more of the seats in the expanding G&T program, Adams also has to change the admissions process. Citywide testing, in which all students across New York compete against each other for admission, has been an obstacle. Minority students (not including Asians) took only 16% of the gifted seats prior to the pandemic while making up about 63% of all elementary students, with whites and Asians occupying about 75% of the gifted slots, according to city data.

For this reason, Banks is dropping the citywide written test, which was taken mostly by white and Asian students whose parents signed them up. Now all preschool students will be evaluated by teachers for admission, and the top performing second-graders in each elementary school will also be invited to apply. This approach, employing what academics call local norms, means that students will compete against others in similar socioeconomic groups, reducing any academic advantage that growing up in wealthier school districts may provide.

The likely upshot is that a higher percentage of blacks and Latinos and a lower percentage of whites and Asians will be admitted into the gifted program, a racial rebalancing that has set off a backlash in other school districts. Asian parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, sued over a racial rebalancing at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and lost at the Supreme Court in April.

But G&T advocates in New York are open to the rebalancing, as long as the pie is expanding for everyone and the admissions process is standardized and transparent. Chien Kwok of the Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, an advocacy group of mainly Asian Americans, hailed Adams plan for embracing the concept that gifted kids in all communities are entitled to a rigorous education.

In the past we were leaving gifted children behind, Kwok said. Now the program is expanding, its no longer a zero-sum game, so Im supportive.

Banks is also promising to bring a similar expansion to the citys selective middle and high schools in the future. If that happens, it would benefit tens of thousands of students in the nations largest school system and send a message nationwide that high academic standards and racial equity dont have to be at loggerheads.

A lot of people are going to watch carefully to see how well this works, said Jonathan Plucker, a professor at the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University. And I'm very confident that it will eventually evolve into something that's going to be a huge plus for the country and a big win for excellence in education.

That may be a bullish view considering the obstacles ahead. Banks has been scathing in his criticism of the Department of Education he now leads, calling it a broken, top-heavy bureaucracy that has struggled to make progress over the years in its most basic tasks, such as teaching students to read at grade level.

To improve the gifted program, teachers most of whom are not certified to teach gifted students need to be trained. Nor does the city have anything like a well-designed and up-to-date curriculum to challenge gifted students. Currently, gifted instruction varies greatly from school to school, and often doesnt go much beyond the general education curriculum mandated by the state.

The chancellor will also have to contend with a dozen advocacy groups and parents in several of New Yorks 32 districts that are ideologically opposed to competitive academic programs that separate students by abilities. These groups, such as New York Appleseed, have lobbied for years to abolish accelerated schools and place students of wide-ranging abilities as much as six grade levels apart in the same general education classroom to reduce racial segregation. The advanced students will help those who are academically behind, the theory goes, and everyone wins.

Progressives came close to achieving their goal, called Brilliant NYC, at the end of Bill de Blasios run as mayor last year. They are appalled that Adams rejected it in favor of a G&T redesign that they consider inherently elitist and without value to any students.

The gifted and talented program is very contentious and this new administration is going backwards by expanding it, said Allison Roda, a professor of education at Molloy College who helped develop Brilliant NYC. Gifted and talented has always been used as a tool to segregate students and avoid integration.

The mayors buildout of gifted education, announced in April, was one of his first major policy decisions, reflecting an urgency to reverse the flight of wealthier families from the school system.

Even before the pandemic, according to Banks, families were leaving the troubled system in which 65% of black and Latino students never achieve reading proficiency. The enrollment drop has been most acute among younger, white, and affluent students, with the system losing almost 5% of students in pre-kindergarten through third grade in 2020-2021. That means less state funding for city schools.

One hundred and twenty thousand families decided to vote with their feet and to say we are going to find other alternatives for our children, Banks said in a speech on March 2. Thats an indictment of the work that we have done.

But the city is nowhere near the point of satisfying demand for accelerated education, even though G&T programs are typically no more expensive than general education classes. Today, the program reaches only a small fraction of students, with about 15,000 out of 65,000 rising kindergarten families vying for 2,400 seats, mostly in more affluent sections of the city. Manhattans upper west and east sides are rich in programs, while some low-income districts in the Bronx and Brooklyn have very few or none.

The long distance that young kids in low-income or remote areas have to travel to get to a G&T program is one reason so few blacks and Latinos participate. Cassy Thime, who lives with her daughter in Rockaway Beach, Queens, is more than eight miles from the nearest program.

By bringing the program to all school districts, and adding 100 new G&T kindergarten seats, Adams is taking a small first step in what needs to be a much bigger expansion if he hopes to meet the demand. The city is also creating 1,000 new seats for students in the third grade spread throughout all the districts an age when a childs giftedness becomes more apparent. Banks said the additional seats were the baseline, not the ceiling, of a program he expects to grow.

In order to be admitted to the gifted program in the past, four-year-old preschoolers had to earn a top score on a written test an approach that both sides in the G&T debate deemed inappropriate. Preschoolers have no experience with written tests, and they are far too young to understand that its a gateway to a better education through college.

The other problem is that black and Latino families have been less likely than whites and Asians to register for testing, partly because gifted programs dont exist in many poorer neighborhoods and parents may not have heard about them.

Banks says the screening of all kids in preschool provides the fix. Rather than giving students a test, preschool teachers will look for signs of giftedness in how children draw, read, speak, or add and subtract, and then recommend the top performers for the program.

But teacher screening comes with its own issues. For starters, preschool teachers currently lack the training to identify gifted traits a specialty in itself as they evaluate kids for the fall program. This opens the door to a selection process filled with bias, from a teachers subjective views of what constitutes giftedness to pressures from administrators to meet diversity goals.

Without deep intensive training, teachers often recommend the compliant children, not the one that's thinking out of the box, or the incessant questioner, or the one that's completely disorganized, said Elissa Brown, a former director of the Hunter College Gifted Center and co-president of GiftedNYS. So, you're going to get biased teacher ratings around who is gifted.

The separate pathway into the program for third-graders is almost certain to bring in many more black and Latino kids. The top 10% of students in every elementary school in the city, based on their second-grade marks in four core subjects, will be invited to apply. The pipeline will draw equally from wealthier schools with many white students in places like in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and threadbare schools with mostly kids of color in areas like Harlem.

This local norms approach has significantly boosted diversity in gifted programs in places like Montgomery County, Maryland, and Houston. In Colorados Aurora Public Schools, a pilot project drawing students from 10 elementary schools into a gifted program shrank the underrepresentation of Latinos to 7% from 17%, and blacks to 2% from 6%. The success of the pilot prompted the district to expand it to another 10 schools, according to Scott Peters, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who co-authored a paper on the use of the local norms admissions process.

The controversy over G&T is partly a result of Americas scattershot commitment to educating gifted children. New York is one of eight states that have no requirements around gifted instruction, which means many upstate cities like Binghamton and Buffalo ignore it, Brown said.

New Jersey is one of about 25 states that require schools to offer gifted programs for students. Only 16 states, including North Carolina, also provide additional funding for such programs.

As a result, G&T education is a mishmash for the estimated 10% or more of public school students whom researchers have identified as gifted. G&T guidelines, data collection, accountability, oversight of programs, as well as teacher training are spotty across the country and hinder efforts to make improvements, according to the 2019reportby the National Association for Gifted Children.

The quality of gifted instruction also varies greatly. For elementary grades, the most common style differentiated instruction is also the most superficial: Advanced kids are given extra or harder worksheets in a general education classroom, or are asked to be de-facto teacher assistants to help other kids, Brown said. In increasing intensity, other approaches pull kids out of class for a few hours a week or cluster them in groups of four to six with a separate curriculum within general education classrooms. The most robust approach puts gifted students in their own dedicated classroom or entire school the practice used in New York City.

As a result, G&T education is a mishmash for the estimated 10% or more of public school students whom researchers have identified as gifted. G&T guidelines, data collection, accountability, oversight of programs, as well as teacher training are spotty across the country and hinder efforts to make improvements, according to the 2019 report by the National Association for Gifted Children.

The quality of gifted instruction also varies greatly. For elementary grades, the most common style differentiated instruction is also the most superficial: Advanced kids are given extra or harder worksheets in a general education classroom, or are asked to be de-facto teacher assistants to help other kids, Brown said. In increasing intensity, other approaches pull kids out of class for a few hours a week or cluster them in groups of four to six with a separate curriculum within general education classrooms. The most robust approach puts gifted students in their own dedicated classroom or entire school the practice used in New York City.

The concern among researchers is that popular approaches like differentiated instruction dont give gifted children anywhere near the challenge they need to thrive. The gap between the abilities of average and gifted students is too wide for a teacher to adequately instruct all of them at the same time.

Consider IQ: The average score in the U.S. is about 100; most gifted students score at least two to three standard deviations above that, or 120 to 130.

These students are at least one or two grade levels ahead in at least one subject, she said. There are fourth graders who can handle algebra. So why are they still doing simple computation?

The expansion of gifted education in New York is part of the chancellors larger turnaround attempt of the citys $38 billion-a-year Department of Education. Banks, a former school safety officer, teacher, and principal who has butted heads with the bureaucracy in the past, almost immediately eliminated the department position of executive superintendent, saving millions in salaries. He also plans to redeploy DOE bureaucrats into the classrooms where they can help understaffed schools.

To convey the challenges ahead, Banks told the story of a speech he gave at the historic Tweed Courthouse, the grand Romanesque building that serves as the departments headquarters. As Banks was starting his talk, the teleprompter broke, forcing him to ad lib.

Its a classic example, $38 billion, and we cant even get the teleprompter to work, he said in March at The Forum at St. Barts. There are so many pieces of the system that are dysfunctional. Its a massive turnaround.

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Genius Move? NYC's Black Mayor Bucks Progressives on the Racial Chessboard of 'Gifted' Education - 69News WFMZ-TV

The "Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice" is set to take place today in Washington, D.C. Led by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), the list of rally sponsors includes the ADL, Hadassah, Hillel and several Jewish Community Centers and Jewish Community Relations Council chapters. Rabbinic, cantorial and synagogue associations of all major Jewish-American denominations will be represented, with one glaring exception: those of the Orthodox.

The stated goal of the rally is to proclaim that "Abortion access is a Jewish value, plain and simple." Its real goal, however, is to gaslight broad swaths of the country, and to provide cover for secularist elites. The rally's organizers, sponsors and supporters wish to render the killing of a fetus a religious liberty "right" and, at the same time, promote the dangerous fiction that a rational pro-life position violates the "separation of church and state."

In situations where termination of pregnancy is necessary to save the mother's life, it would be offensive to claim that such a basic humanitarian concern is uniquely tied to a particular religion. Is chemotherapy a "Jewish value?" What about access to X-rays or organ transplants? The panoply of sponsors, then, are not addressing the actual underlying debate. They are rallying to demand, in the name of religion, elective feticide until the moment of birth.

According to a didactic tale, a well-meaning person once asked a rabbi, "If you were to bless a pig, would that make the animal kosher?" "No," the rabbi replied, "but it would make me trayf (not kosher)!" Jewish values are not determined by an alphabet soup of Jewish organizations, but by an immutable and transcendent code of Jewish spirituality, ethics and law. And that Jewish code is clear that life and the soul precede birth. In Genesis, for example, Rebecca is told that her unborn twins have distinct natures (25:23). In the Prophets, G-d informs Jeremiah, "Before I placed you in the womb I knew you, before you left the uterus I sanctified you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (1:5).

Moreover, Jewish tradition insists upon adherence to the Oral Law, in which the Mishnah provides moral instruction that a mother must be saved even at the expense of her child, if necessary, "because her life precedes his life" (Ohalos 7:6). Read that again, because the NCJW, the lead sponsor of the rally, refers to this Mishnah without quoting its explicit reference to the "life" of the fetus. Inexplicably, in the same paragraph, NCJW claims that, under Jewish law, a fetus is "not yet having [a] life of its own."

This is shocking, and shameful. Still worse, other major Jewish organizations and even "rabbinic" groups signed on as rally sponsors, despite the NCJW's perversion of an obvious statement in Jewish law.

Every citizen has a democratic right to advocate a public policy position, but it is wrong to misuse or mistakenly invoke the First Amendment. Unfortunately, many American Jews have so utterly lost sight of that which Judaism holds dear that they have elevated their own progressive agenda to the level of faith, likely to fill a resulting spiritual void. This rally, led by those who cherry-pick, decontextualize and distort Jewish law to support their position, will draw from those ranks. As mentioned earlier, no Orthodox organization will be at the rally.

This dichotomy between authentic Judaism and idolization of the progressive platform manifests itself in other ways, as well. In several weeks, the Jewish world will celebrate the 3,334th anniversary of G-d's giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. Jews who faithfully adhere to the Mishnah's teachings will pray in synagogues around the world, celebrating what we believe to be G-d's greatest gift. Yet, even conceding that I have no special talent for predicting the future, it is quite certain that not 5% of the attendees at the "Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice" will fully observe this annual festival of Shavuot.

Even holding faith aside for a moment, common sense should also have its say. Visit a neonatal ICU, and you will meet babies who cannot yet breathe on their own or ingest nutrients. Yet they are learning to recognize and find comfort in familiar voices, music and their own thumbs. Doctors and nurses work around the clock to ensure that these babies go on to live normal lives. It is utterly nonsensical to argue that a fetus, in precisely the same situation during a routine pregnancy, is not alive.

The transparent and patently dishonest message of the "Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice" is that valuing life is neither a matter of common sense nor an American principle, but rather a parochially Christian tenetand, further, a tenet that constitutes a violation of the much-ballyhooed "separation of church and state." Balderdash. In fact, the sanctity of life and the importance of traditional morality both come directly from the Hebrew Bible. Thus, all Americans, especially of the Abrahamic religions, should reject the progressives' position, predicated as it is upon the absurd notion that it is somehow unconstitutional for the moral values of the citizenry to be reflected in the laws that govern our society.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that represents over 2,000 rabbis in issues of American public policy. Follow him on Twitter: @ymenken.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Read more:
Jewish Progressives Are Dead Wrong About 'Abortion Justice' | Opinion - Newsweek

FOX business host shreds the Biden administration over the state of the economy on 'Kudlow.'

So, we begin tonight with the front page of the New York Post. That kind of says it all.

Take a look "Joe's Train Wreck" "gas hits a brutal $6 a gallon, border crisis gets worse, ministry of truth collapses, market drops 1,164 points worst day in two years, baby formula disaster."

The only thing the Post missed was that the cavalry is comingbecause of Mr. Biden's train wreck and I want to generalize about this train wreck because in policy terms, it shows the complete breakdown and failure of the radical Left, progressive agenda or, as Newt Gingrich calls it, "big government socialism."

A RECESSION IS NOW THE BASE CASE SCENARIO FOR WELLS FARGO

Texas Republican shreds Biden's policies on 'Kudlow.'

In a few moments, I am going to talk to Sen. Ted Cruz about the failure of radical progressivism, wherever it has been tried and at whatever point in history it has been tried total failure.

Take the Ministry of Truth fiasco another attempt by Biden's statism to control speech. Disagreement becomes misinformation. That's right, out of the old Soviet Union ortoday's China, or Venezuela or Cuba. That's whattheydo. That's not what America does.

Now, this silly little Mary Poppins lefty person, Nina Jankowicz, made it a laughingstock, but we should not lose track of a much more important point that the Biden administration was trying to control free speech. Specifically, they were trying to control free speech that disagreed with their ideological viewpoints. That's radical progressivism.

Fortunately, this specific attempt to control free speech is now dead on arrival, but it is not dead in the minds of the ideologues who populate the Biden administration. Somewhere, some place, they're going to try to do this again.

The baby formula disaster is a perfect example of progressive over-regulation and of course, progressive obsession with blaming business.

The open border crisis is also a function of the progressive disregard for the rule of law and national sovereignty. It is the direct opposite of "America First." It is the notion that we're all part of one, big progressive global family and there's no need for borders because instead of national interest, we have something called "world interest."

MAJORITY OF CEOS PREPARING FOR A RECESSION AS SKY-HIGH INFLATION PERSISTS

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade rips the Biden admin over the state of the economy on 'Kudlow.'

It's utter nonsense, as ordinary working folks around the country who are concerned about the drug epidemic, terrorism, the crime wave and sex trafficking will tell you.

The stock market smack-down is a clear recession signal that I will talk about later in the show.

Record gasoline prices are, frankly, just what the Bidens really want. No matter what they may say, they like $100 crude oil. They like record diesel fuel. They don't care about truckers and their trucks. They don't care about business or consumer costs. They don't care about pipeline safety. They're not interested in our relations with oil-rich Canada.

For the first time in recent memory, they actually used government intervention to cancel a private sector project that was already under construction.

High fossil fuel prices supposedly make Green New Deal renewables more attractive in their ideological mindset. The reality is renewables are only 3% of our power, while fossil fuels are 80% as ordinary Americans are painfully aware once again.

Wages are going up, but inflation is going up faster. Biden progressives are completely in denial about the inflationism of rapid government spending, borrowing and money printing.

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President Joe Biden addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, 2021 at U.N. headquarters in New York City. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary-Pool/Getty Images / Getty Images)

The only way to whip inflation is a complete policy reset i.e., abandoning the progressive agenda. They won't do it. That's why the GOP should be advancing a pro-growth, balanced budget plan and be ready to hit the ground running next January after the Congress changes hands and this little, historical sliver of a temporary progressive interlude comes to an end.

Save America, balance the budget. Yes, the cavalry is coming.

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the May 19, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."

Read the original here:
Kudlow: The only way to whip inflation is by abandoning the progressive agenda - Fox Business

PITTSBURGH John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor whose shorts- and scowl-wearing persona made him something of a political celebrity, has won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Fetterman, who entered the race as the Democratic front-runner early last year and only grew his advantage over time, had more than 54% of the total expected votes as of Wednesday morning, more than double his closest competitor, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, who had less than 25%.

He will face the winner of a Republican primary that was still too early to call Wednesday, in one of the most critical Senate races in the country. In that GOP primary, celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz held a narrow lead over former hedge fund CEO David McCormick. Conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, after a late surge in the race that shocked Republican insiders, was trailing McCormick and Oz.

As returns rolled in, Fetterman, 52, was in a Lancaster hospital, where he was recovering from a stroke he suffered just four days before the primary. His campaign said Tuesday that he underwent a procedure to get a pacemaker to regulate his heart rate.

The campaign, which didnt respond to several requests to interview Fettermans doctors, has said doctors reversed the stroke in time to prevent any cognitive damage, and that hes expected to make a full recovery. Fetterman voted via emergency absentee ballot Tuesday and is expected to remain in the hospital for several days.

Without him, a crowd of supporters and his wife Gisele celebrated at an election-night rally at an airport hotel here.

This race were running, its a race for the future of every community across Pennsylvania, she said. For every small town, for every person who calls those small towns home and for every person whos considered leaving because they didnt see enough opportunities. Its a race for a better Pennsylvania and for a better country.

The crowd erupted in cheers as MSNBC called the race for Fetterman shortly before 9 p.m. They waved yellow Fetterman towels in the air and jumped up and down.

I have goose bumps right now, said Phil Heasley, 31, of Butler, a Fetterman campaign volunteer. This is someone who always showed up for us, and now its our time to show up for him. Itd be great if he were here, but were gonna raise the roof as if he was.

The below graphic shows the most recent results reported. It is updated in real time.

Fetterman appeared on the big screen briefly from the hospital, saying simply: Thank you so much for everything. From my heart, thank you for everything.

How cute is he? Gisele Fetterman asked after the cameo.

She spoke about her husbands unconventional style, which attracted so many to his campaign.

Its not just that John looks nothing like a politician, she said. Its because John doesnt act like one. At heart, hes still that hardworking, scrappy, small-town mayor.

Gisele Fetterman later told reporters her husbands health shouldnt be an issue in the general election.

Anyone who would imply that he would be unfit to serve because of this procedure is also... offending millions of Americans who have pacemakers, she said.

And its almost ableist, you know? I think hes going to have a full, thriving life. Hes going to be able to do the same work as anyone else, she said. But the reality is, families come with health scares. That is a very American thing. What hes gonna want to fight for is to make sure that everyone would have access to the same care that he was able to receive.

Fettermans unconventional style helped propel his victory and represents something of a departure from years of Democratic voters in Pennsylvania nominating more centrist candidates. Lamb, who campaigned as a moderate Democrat in the mold of President Joe Biden, was in second-place Wednesday. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta had less than 10% of the total expected vote.

The victory makes Fetterman the Democratic standard-bearer in one of the most hotly contested races in the country, which could determine control of the chamber. The incumbent Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey, isnt seeking reelection.

Fetterman began drawing national notice as mayor of Braddock, a small Rust Belt town outside Pittsburgh. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Senate in 2016, and then beat a Democratic incumbent in the 2018 race for lieutenant governor.

His path to the nomination zigzagged through Trump Country, where hes tried to attract disaffected rural Democrats with a hybrid populist-progressive appeal. He spent far less time campaigning in the populous Philadelphia region, home to a huge proportion of the states Democratic voters though he used a formidable fund-raising advantage to blanket the airwaves there.

Fetterman had strikingly little support among elected Democrats in the state for his primary campaign including in the state Senate chamber he presides over though he is sure to enjoy a largely united Democratic Party in a race thats critical to U.S. Senate control.

READ MORE: Fetterman doesnt just have supporters he has fans. His celebrity could make him a senator.

Lamb, who didnt appear at his election-night party to deliver remarks, conceded in a statement late Tuesday night.

I entered this campaign knowing it would be tough, but I believed Democratic voters in Pennsylvania deserved a primary campaign with a real debate focused on the issues so that we win in November, Lamb said. Today, voters made it clear that John Fetterman is their choice to carry that effort forward.

Lamb said he respects that decision, congratulated Fetterman, and wished him a speedy recovery from his stroke.

Lamb said hed do everything I can to help Democrats win in the general election.

Our entire democracy is on the line in November, he said. Democrats need to be unequivocally united in our defense of this democracy, and we will be. Johns vote in the Senate is essential to protect this democracy, and he will have my vote in November.

Lamb had the backing of many elected Democrats in the state and argued he had the left-of-center profile that would appeal to the widest range of voters in a general election. But Lambs campaign struggled to raise money or excite a critical mass of voters, and national Democrats, who had anointed chosen candidates in previous Senate races, largely stayed on the sidelines this time. A super PAC organized to support Lamb had little impact after raising much less than its $8 million goal.

And Lambs own campaign largely faded in its final weeks, not announcing many campaign events.

Kenyatta, who ran on his working-class background and the historic nature of his campaign he would have been the first openly gay Black man in the Senate garnered some passionate support despite meager resources. But with far less money than even Lamb, he never established himself as a top-tier candidate.

Kenyatta addressed his supporters Tuesday night in North Philadelphia with a triumphant tone, touting the milestones achieved, including the first time an openly gay person of color ran for Senate.

Each time one of us stands up, it inspires another person to stand up as well, Kenyatta said, encouraging people to run for office. Each one of us adds pressure to a status quo.

Kenyatta said he called Fetterman committing his support and asked those in the room to do the same.

Campaign staffers and members of the Working Families Party, including City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, filled the room.

Melvin Calhoun, 60, said he was happy with Kenyattas campaign.

Im not mad, he said. Im going to keep following his career.

Alex Khalil, a Jenkintown Borough Council member and the only woman in the race, ran on a shoestring budget and never broke through.

Fetterman had a cash advantage from the start, with high name-ID from two statewide campaigns and an impressive small-dollar fund-raising operation like the one that powered Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns. Fetterman had 200,000 individual donors by the end of the primary and a loyal fan base as he traveled the state.

Hell run in the general election partly on his record as lieutenant governor, a largely ceremonial job but one that includes leading the Board of Pardons, where pardons and commutations of life sentences greatly increased during his tenure. Hell also likely tout his time as mayor of Braddock, where violence in the small town of 2,000 decreased on his watch.

But his main pitch will likely be the one he made to primary voters that he has a populist, outsider appeal, is no friend to the political establishment, and will unapologetically fight for Democratic values.

Republicans have already signaled that theyll look to paint him as being too liberal on issues like abortion, health care, and criminal justice.

And a 2013 incident that has loomed over his campaign, in which he held at gunpoint a Black jogger whom he wrongly suspected of a shooting, is almost certain to resurface in the general election. His primary opponents frequently brought up the incident and questioned whether it would impact his ability to turn out Black and progressive voters in the fall.

It proved to be a nonissue for Democratic primary voters.

So did his eleventh-hour stroke.

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John Fetterman won the Democratic Senate primary, with a promise to unite progressives and rural Pa. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Some political analysts say recent progressive candidate success is a sign the Texas Democratic party is moving left.

AUSTIN, Texas Texas is poised to send the most liberal Democrat in state history to Congress. That progressive member will be representing San Antonio. Two other progressive candidates are in the run-offs.

Some political analysts say it's a sign the Texas Democratic party is moving left.

After winning the Democratic nomination for Congressional District 35, which covers the I-35 corridor from San Antonio to Austin, Greg Casar is forecast to win this heavily Democratic district in November. He brings a very liberal agenda from this conservative state.

"There's so many families working people that believe in a $15 an hour minimum wage, believe that we should not have crushing student debt holding back our young people, believe that we should have free health care as a human right," said Casar.

As an Austin city councilmember Casar voted to defund the police.

"I voted and proudly voted to say, you know what? Let's take a pause on some of our police classes and reform that academy," said Casar.

Two progressive candidates are in congressional run-offs as the country to looks to Texas to see if the Democratic party is changing.

"In our recent UT Texas Politics Project Poll, we ask Democrats whether they think the Democratic party is liberal enough, not liberal enough or too liberal. The most frequent response that you get from the youngest cohort of voters is not liberal enough," said Jim Henson with the UT Texas Politics Project.

"We're going to see more candidates like Greg Casar and other, again, more grassroots progressive movement of candidates emerge and become a louder voice in the party," said Henson.

Casar's progressive policies earned the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is trying to reshape the Democratic party. AOC campaigned here for Casar and Jessica Cisneros.

Cisneros says the endorsement helped her get into the May 24th run-off against nine term Congressman Henry Cuellar.

"I think it's definitely helping in terms of anything that can help raise awareness about what kind of work we're doing and what kind of policies we're fighting for here in South Texas. We're fighting for funding education and health care. Reproductive rights falls squarely under health care," said Cisneros.

Cuellar has the support of Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Whip James Clyburn who campaigned here for him. Cuellar he says the polices of AOC don't represent his district which reaches from east San Antonio to Laredo and further south along the border.

"If you look at the progressives, even my opponent, I don't think Hispanics support defund the police. You know, Hispanics generally are conservative in nature and to come in with this far left type of progressive ideas, this is not what South Texas is looking for," said Cuellar.

The redrawn congressional election maps make most districts less competitive in the general election. Political analysts say that means we'll see more candidates from the far left and far right in the primaries and a shift from moderate to progressive here in Texas.

"If you look at the attitudes of people who identify as Texas Democrats, the share of people who identify as liberal is definitely increasing and has increased over the past decade as the Texas party, slowly and in a lot of ways, very slowly comes to look more and more like the national Democratic party," said Henson.

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Progressive candidates' success in Texas could indicate changing face of Democratic Party - KENS5.com