In today’s edition … Democrats get creative at combating Trump’s “weaponization” fund … And we ask about the Democratic plans … but first …
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The liberal vs. establishment fights we have seen throughout this year have come to California.
Several races in California’s Tuesday primaries feature candidates further to the left seeking to either oust longtime incumbents or stop candidates with more establishment backing.
The clearest example is in California’s Central Valley, where two Democrats are angling to take on Rep. David G. Valadao, one of the more consistently vulnerable Republicans in the country.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a host of other establishment organizations are behind Jasmeet Bains, a member of the California assembly. Progressives like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) have backed Randy Villegas, an educator.
“What you’re seeing play out in our race and in races all across the country is truly this fight for the soul of the Democratic Party and who we want to be as Democrats,” Villegas said in an interview. “The Democratic Party has allowed itself to get into bed with the same corporate interests and the same special interests that have been part of the corruption within the Republican Party.”
Bains, a doctor who has served in the state assembly since 2022, took issue with Villegas’s framing of this race.
“This is an area that doesn’t care about party distinctions,” Bains said. “I will never say I am fighting for the soul of any party. I am fighting for the valley.”
Bains’s supporters are concerned that Villegas is too far to the left for a district that has elected Valadao for all but one term since 2013.
“I think I am the better fit to flip this seat,” Bains said. “I think I am the best candidate to take on David Valadao, and the DCCC backed me, knowing that I am the strongest candidate to take him out.”
Democrats, however, have long tried to oust Valadao by backing candidates like Bains and almost all of them have failed to defeat the Republican.
“I’d ask them if they think they can beat Valadao given their own track record in this district,” Villegas asked of the DCCC. “It’s a classic example of D.C. insiders and elites trying to swoop in, thinking they know what’s best for the community.”
Progressive groups have cheered the sheer number of races like this in California.
This is the first year Justice Democrats, a liberal organization that backs left-leaning candidates, has been involved in California since the group launched in 2017. But Usamah Andrabi, a top operative at the group, said, “These districts and these candidates just demanded that we involve ourselves.”
And Andrabi argued the interest in these sorts of candidates stems back to “what Democratic voters saw happen in the 2024 election and everything since.”
“I think voters woke up in January of 2025 to a Democratic Party that they were ready to move on from. And we’re ready to see a new generation of leadership come in that has the political courage and moral clarity to not only take on Republican extremism and fascism, but also Democratic corporatism,” Andrabi said.
The race between Bains and Villegas is not the only such contest in the state on Tuesday.
In the Sacramento area, Sacramento City Council member Mai Vang is looking to oust longtime Rep. Doris Matsui. Vang is the most progressive member of the Sacramento council, whereas Matsui, with two decades in the House, is seen as the establishment candidate. But there is also an age component to this race: Vang, at 41, is four decades younger than Matsui, who is 81.
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The Working Families Party, a progressive group that endorses candidates, has backed Vang over Matsui.
“Voters are [ticked] off at who they think are the political establishment in both parties,” said Ravi Mangla, the national press secretary for the group. “If the government were working for people, they would not actually be concerned that we have older representation. It’s a generational crisis, but it’s also an inaction crisis.”
And nearby in San Francisco, the race to replace retiring former House speaker Nancy Pelosi is cutting along these lines, too. State Sen. Scott Wiener is viewed as more centrist than opponent Saikat Chakrabarti, the co-founder of Justice Democrats and a former top aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). Pelosi, meanwhile, has backed Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Democrats are desperate to stand up to President Donald Trump, and his recent proposal for a nearly $1.8 billion payout fund for people who claim they were wrongly investigated by the government has received bipartisan blowback.
So Democrats in blue — and some purple — states are getting creative and pitching levying a 100 percent tax on payouts from the fund.
We, along with our colleague Hannah Knowles, documented this trend over the weekend, finding a slate of Democrats pushing for the targeted tax.
“The slush fund is a blatantly corrupt theft of taxpayer dollars, and we need to do everything we can to stop it,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) said in an interview with The Washington Post. Bennet is the leading Democratic candidate for governor in Colorado.
The issue is particularly relevant in Colorado, where Gov. Jared Polis (D) recently granted clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk who helped secretly copy voting machine hard drives in an effort to bolster Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance said it was “reasonable” that Peters “get some compensation” from the fund.
“I actually think this won’t wear well with Republicans or Democrats in America,” Bennet said of the politics of Trump’s fund.
Colorado is not alone. Leaders in California, New York and Wisconsin have pushed similar proposals.
In California, Assembly Budget Committee Chair Jesse Gabriel (D) said Democrats plan to impose a tax on payouts in the state budget. “That money belongs to taxpayers, and we’re going to make sure it stays with taxpayers,” Gabriel said.
“It’s simple: If you’re a New Yorker and you take from this illegal slush fund, New York state will tax 100 percent of it,” Alex Bores, an Assembly member who is running for Congress, said in a video posted on X. “If you storm the Capitol and you take from this slush fund, too bad, we’re taking it.”
We will keep watching how this trend evolves — and likely grows to other states.
Santa Monica Daily Press: California’s bizarre gubernatorial race will come to an end this week, and recent polling shows it will likely be a showdown between Xavier Becerra, a former congressman and Cabinet secretary in the Biden administration, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator.
Portland Press Herald (paywall): The wife of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner informed his campaign before his launch that she found “explicit texts early on in their marriage.” Amy Gertner later defended her marriage in a video posted by Platner’s X account.
My San Antonio: The NBA finals are set. The San Antonio Spurs knocked out the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder over the weekend to set up a finals matchup with the New York Knicks.
We wrote today about states that are pushing to levy a 100 percent tax on any fund doled out by Trump’s so-called “weaponization” fund. What do you think about these plans? Is one way for Democrats to combat this fund to tax any money distributed to citizens in their state? Should the party be doing more? Let us and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
Thanks for reading. You can follow Dan and Matthew on X: @merica and @matthewichoi.
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