I’ve worked on political campaigns for close to 20 years. The first race I ever staffed was in 2006, supporting then-candidate Donna Edwards in her bid to unseat incumbent Congressman Albert Wynn. What was then a relatively novel storyline, a progressive outsider challenging an establishment insider, has since become a familiar narrative. That race, I now realize, was one of the prototypes.

Early on, I learned a hard lesson about primary electorates: the most reliable voting bloc is older voters. Our target universe was composed mainly of seniors, with some middle-aged voters mixed in. Even before the campaign officially launched, we began voter registration efforts to expand the electorate. But we never lost sight of a fundamental truth: you cannot win without persuading the voters who actually show up.

Today, I look at the progressive electoral ecosystem and see a movement that has abandoned this wisdom. Leftist and progressive campaigns have become over-reliant on the youth vote, a strategy that simply does not match turnout reality. Despite recent electoral wins by socialists and progressive candidates, these victories have often come despite the left’s failure to craft a message that resonates with seniors. Even in winning campaigns, socialist and progressive candidates tend to lose older voters while running up margins with the young. I do not believe this has to be the case.

The Memo will be posted here after the email version has been sent.

Fresh from his pathetic attempt on Sunday to edge into the aura of Spain's World Cup championship, Trump announces (surprise!) that "full-scale war" against Iran is on the menu for dizzied gas and diesel customers (and the retailers who must pay more for deliveries). Not much chance of escaping inflationary pressure no matter where you live, but Blue states like Maryland can expect more of the Trump gang's assaults, legal and otherwise, as dwindling MAGA flails for some traction against disaster in the midterm elections. Nevertheless they can't find their agenda with both hands, sending ICE goons out on traffic stops again (Trump's brilliant reversal of his newby DHS director Markwayne Mullin, who saw the risks in every pull-over). And, as we report below, FBI agents appear to be off the task of investigating ICE injuries and deaths to civilians. Convenient.

Here in News You Can Use, we have curated news from states and the feds as well as from Maryland. Readers can get more from Maryland Reporter and Maryland Matters, from whom we gratefully swipe items -- as we do from News from the States . and from many other, less obvious sources. 

Natural disasters and nasty bugs are at the top of Maryland's summertime agenda, including the worldwide heat wave costing lives from Europe to Central Maryland and sourced in a Pacific El Nino. You can plan a summer getaway, but where can you go to get away? It's one world, like it or not. Meanwhile, Maryland's biggest adversary is its own national government,  and the state is pushing back on a number of fronts, as see below. Montgomery County has just put up a portal on its website with real-time alerts on ICE activity. Other states (Texas, Maine) are fighting the unrestrained brutality of ICE; see Megan E's accounts below. New DHS boss Markwayne Mullins' hopes to keep ICE out of the headlines will have to wait until he has better recruits and better training -- or maybe abolishes ICE and just starts over. Lots of news at the national/global level starting with the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose ties to Trump and ability to soothe rancor in the Senate was critical to the few things Congress has been able to accomplish. And the Rappahannock tribe in Virginia has been slowly reclaiming land from which they were evicted centuries ago; they just got some more back. It's News You Can Use; occasionally it's not all bad.

Dear friends and members of the Progressive Maryland community,

It is with deep sadness that I share the passing of our beloved friend and longtime board member, Maria Dennis.

Maryland, past the first brutal heat wave, settles down to a typical post-Fourth summer -- that long but always-too-short span until Labor Day. As Progressive Maryland's executive director, Larry Stafford, points out in a blog post today, the results of primary elections around the state (many just certified) reflect an electorate looking for change and dissatisfied with the same-old performance, including from establishment Democrats in this Business Blue state. Civic activists once dismissed as too "radical" and on the margin are now stepping up into the close-in public sphere -- and winning. As the news has related (and mainstream news agonized over) such candidates are winning around the country, from New York to Colorado to Maine. Much of it is a fight-back sensibility responding to Trump's increasingly shameless looting and grifting. The outcome of his increasing turn to Mussolini-style self aggrandizement (and plummeting approval ratings) may be more consequential than imagined. A whole framework of oligarchic top-down governance could be rejected -- for the long term. And, it may be, not only for the errant Executive Branch. The increasingly off-base Supreme Court might find itself in the bind described by the columnist Finley Peter Dunne's caricature Mr. Dooley, the mock-sage who opined "No matter whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' Supreme Court follows th' iliction returns." 

We should not be surprised by the public's reaction to Trump's zany hatred of wind power and other renewables, his ruinous (and judicially rejected) tariffs or his wacky decision to follow Israel's right-wing leadership into war on Iran. It boils down very nicely to "affordability," which the public appears to understand more completely than (certainly) the MAGA gang as well as some of the mainstream Democratic Party leadership. Who comes to their senses first will be knowable in November. Somehow we doubt it will be the MAGA faithful under the thumb of an increasingly dotty Trump.

But there's more. A big take on how the Department of Homeland Security has learned to keep immigration enforcement out of the public eye. States are coming up with new ways to manage data centers (and public unrest about them). And a close look at the hucksterism that surrounded the nation's 250th, and who's raking in the dough. Are women losing ground worldwide after years of rapid progress? And how people get confused by "Sell Date" labels, and what it means for food waste.

It's News You Can Use for this week. Read on.

Across Maryland’s 2026 primary elections, voters made something unmistakably clear: the era of politics driven primarily by corporate money and establishment consensus is being challenged, and in many places, replaced.

From Baltimore City to Montgomery County to Prince George’s County, voters backed candidates running on affordability, housing, public education, healthcare access, and economic justice in some of the most closely watched and heavily contested races in the state.

What emerged was not a series of isolated outcomes, but a pattern: a growing progressive movement that is increasingly organized, increasingly competitive, and increasingly capable of winning across geography and political terrain.