∼ ∼ ∼ This article is part of a series — At 250, Who Will America Be? — reporting on threats to American democracy as we approach the nation’s Semiquincentennial, on July 4, 2026. ∼ ∼ ∼
Donald Trump recently held rallies in New York and California, states he has no hope of winning at the presidential level. But should he return to the White House, he knows he will need the U.S. House and Senate in Republican hands to become a full-frontal authoritarian. The legislative branch of government is where the laws get made, and Republicans are hoping that, come 2025, they can loosen regulations on gun ownership, further curb abortion rights, gut Social Security and Medicare, and cut taxes on the wealthy.
Although we’ve already written about building a bulwark in the Senate against the GOP’s undemocratic machinations, we want to reiterate that the Senate is the body that gives thumbs up or down to Supreme Court nominations — Trump got to pick three, and they were instrumental in granting presidents sweeping immunity for “official acts” while in office. We’ve already seen what Trump did when he was new to government and unsure of just how far he could push past the restraints of democracy. Trump 2.0, should it come to pass, will not only be an immunity smorgasbord of self-dealing and violent attacks on dissent, it will also be an opportunity to cement the current ultra-conservative SCOTUS majority for generations, if any justices retire or die. (There are currently three septuagenarians — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor — and Chief Justice John Roberts is 69.)
So, before we get to crucial House races, we’ll revisit three Senate races which, because of the Supreme Court, have huge national implications.
• In Texas, Colin Allred seems to be the consensus winner of his debate with Republican Ted Cruz. Allred called Cruz out when the GOP incumbent delivered one of his trademark smirks as Allred described the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saying, “It’s not funny.” The Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate is nothing to laugh about either, so flipping Cruz’s seat could give democracy the last laugh.
• We wrote in the earlier piece that embattled Dem incumbent Jon Tester, of Montana, was getting fundraising help from stars of The Big Lebowski and other celebs, and now John Grisham has joined the fray: “For decades, I’ve written novels that explore the complexities of justice and the human spirit. These stories are more than fiction — they reflect real-life battles for fairness and truth.… Jon Tester has been a beacon of hope and integrity in a time when those values are desperately needed.”
• Even with New York Times bestselling authors in his corner, Tester is trailing in his deeply Red state. In increasingly Red Ohio, however, Sherrod Brown has retained a steady — but small — lead over his challenger, Bernie Moreno. Helping Brown hold on to his heartland seat will also help keep the heart of democracy beating — or at least, out of the I.C.U.
• • •
Next we’ll take a look at crucial House contests. Below, we list races that are close enough to be worth your donation to the greater cause of democracy. Currently there are 220 Republicans in the People’s House, 212 Dems, and three vacancies. The polling/forecasting site 538 gives Republicans a slight edge in retaining the House, all the more reason your small contributions of money and/or time are crucial.
In April, we wrote about organizations looking to get out the vote in New York State — in four districts in particular that could flip from Red meat to Blue skies.
• In New York’s 4th District, 538 has Dem challenger (and Emily’s List choice) Laura Gillen up 3.2% over GOP incumbent Anthony D’Esposito, known for particularly egregious nepotism when it comes to his taxpayer-funded payroll.
• NY 17: Mondaire Jones is currently one point behind incumbent Mike Lawler, known for his slavish devotion to Donald Trump: Let ‘em eat cake, Mike.
• NY 19: Challenger Josh Riley is currently in a super-tight race against Marc Molinaro, a Republican incumbent who once had a reputation as a moderate but has gone so full-metal MAGA that reposting the canard about immigrants eating pets on X is just another day at the office.
Will Rollins reached out to Log Cabin Republicans and other conservative LGBTQ groups and asked, “What has Ken Calvert done for you? He voted against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. He’s voted against letting you serve in the military. It makes no sense to go out and support somebody like that.”
• In New York’s 22nd District, former public school biology and chemistry teacher John Mannion is challenging GOP incumbent Brandon Williams, who said, after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, “God saved our Republic last night.” With that mindset, one might wonder where God was during the insurrection on January 6, 2021. Williams wasn’t in Congress then, but once there he voted to support two election deniers, first Jim Jordan and then Mike Johnson, for speaker of the House. As constitutional law scholar David M. Driesen wrote in a 2023 op-ed, Williams’s support of Speaker Johnson “is complicit in putting aid to our allies at risk by supporting a speaker who sees essential national defense expenditures as weapons to be used to aid rich tax cheats.”
Your donations can also help in other close races around the country. Here are some races on the opposite coast where you can get the best bangs for your bucks.
• In California’s 13th District: Democrat Adam Gray leads incumbent John Duarte by one point, in a rematch of a race two years ago when Duarte won by only 564 votes. Although Duarte has said he has not read the Project 2025 proposals from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Dem billboards point out that his votes against such programs as allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices align with Project 2025’s pro-corporate aims.
• CA 22: Democrat Rudy Salas worked in the grape fields of California’s Central Valley growing up, and as a state assemblyman has worked on major bond issues to improve the Golden State’s water infrastructure. The incumbent Republican, David G. Valadao has opposed programs for providing clean water to hundreds of thousands of Californians. And while Valadao is one of only two GOP House members still in office who voted to impeach Trump at least once, the fact that he is also the co-sponsor of a federal bill that would ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy, without exceptions for rape or incest, means he should not be let him off the hook.
• CA 27: George Whitesides has held a high government post at NASA and has been an executive in the aerospace industry. When he accuses GOP incumbent Mike Garcia of corruption for selling his Boeing stock, just before a Congressional committee Garcia sits on hammered the aerospace giant in a negative report, he nails one of the most corrupt practices in D.C. Whitesides’s campaign site notes, “It is unacceptable that members of Congress can still trade individual stocks while in office — and George will work to ban the practice and improve enforcement when in office.” Well, we can hope, and electing Whitesides might help move hope to reality.
• We’ve reported on the race between Dem challenger Will Rollins and Ken Calvert in CA 41 elsewhere, but with 538 calling the race even, we just want to remind folks that Rollins is an openly gay former federal prosecutor and Calvert is one of the most anti-LGBTQ members of Congress. In June, Rollins told an interviewer that his campaign reached out to Log Cabin Republicans and other conservative LGBTQ groups and asked, “What has Ken Calvert done for you? He voted against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. He’s voted against letting you serve in the military. It makes no sense to go out and support somebody like that.” Amen.
• In CA 45, army vet Derek Tran is ahead by two points in a district in a state that is subject to wildfires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. He’s looking to oust two-term GOP congresswoman Michelle Steel, who, early in her freshman term back in 2021, voted to defund FEMA.
• VA 7: But it’s not just the coastal behemoths that are crucial to democracy. In purplish Virginia, immigrant and former member of the 82nd Airborne Division Eugene Vindman is in a tight race against another vet, Republican Derrick Anderson, perhaps most famous for posing with the wife and three daughters of a friend in what some voters might easily mistake for a family photo — he’s unmarried, but does have a fiancé in the wings. Vindman, on the other hand, has an actual wife and two kids, and continues a sense of service and duty that runs in his family — it was his brother Alexander who revealed President Trump’s extortionate language during a 2019 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which led to Trump’s first impeachment later that year.
• And in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, which has voted for the eventual presidential winner over the past seven cycles, Dem incumbent Susan Wild, known for bipartisan negotiating (her mother was a liberal Democrat and her father a conservative Republican), is maintaining a lead just outside the margin of error over GOP challenger Ryan Mackenzie, a big supporter of school vouchers to siphon funding from public schools.
Considering the bellwether nature of Wild’s district, she’s worth your support. If she wins, there’s a better than even chance that supporters of Kamala Harris — and of plain old-fashioned democracy — can go wild on election night. ❖
