Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during her book tour last weekend that she views Supreme Court opinions as a way to voice her personal convictions.

“I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do,” Jackson said.

She made the comments during a discussion of her new memoir, “Lovely One,” in front of 4,000 attendees at the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans.

Jackson’s conception of her role appears to differ from that of most Supreme Court justices.

The justice “apparently has a fundamental disagreement with the rest of the court about what the role of a Supreme Court justice is,” Scott Jennings, former director of political affairs for George W. Bush, said in a CNN interview on Wednesday.

“People from the ideological right and the ideological left on the court have had to put her in her place a couple of times here in this term. I would guess internally it’s causing issues at the Supreme Court,” he added.

This tension has become evident in recent rulings. In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against universal injunctions, which federal courts were using to block President Donald Trump’s executive orders. Justice Jackson filed her own dissent.

“I write separately to emphasize a key conceptual point: The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law,” she stated.

The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky told The Daily Wire this week that “Jackson is really at the far end of the spectrum,” and that her colleagues — including the other liberal justices — “are getting tired of her.”

Reminiscing about her childhood during another book promotion at the Kennedy Center, Jackson said her mother “wanted me to get out there and use my voice,” and that she’d enrolled Jackson in public speaking classes starting in elementary school.

Despite being the youngest and newest justice, having been nominated by President Joe Biden in 2022, Jackson speaks more than any of her colleagues. Since October, she has spoken 50% more words than the next most vocal justice, Sonia Sotomayor, according to a report by Empirical SCOTUS.

She was also in the majority the least often this term, and wrote more — including opinions, dissents, and concurrences — than any of the other justices except for Clarence Thomas.

“There are some times when, even after the principal dissent is written, I have a slightly different perspective or a different take on something or this is an issue of particular importance to me,” she said.

“I will say, ‘Forgive me, Justice Sotomayor, but I need to write on this case,’ and it’s because I feel like I might have something to offer and something to add, and I’m not afraid to use my voice.”

Isabel Garcia

Kristine Parks, Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi

“The biggest threat to the Republican Party in 2028 is if we do not deliver on our promises of [home]ownership for the next generation,” Kirk told Fox News Digital in an interview at the Turning Point Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida…

“If we don’t fix the homeownership problem in this country, the cost-of-living crisis, and if we don’t give the next generation [a chance] at being owners and not renters, we are going to see what I call ‘Mamdani-ism’ spread across the country,” he predicted.

The influential conservative media personality said there was no doubt that younger voters were trending conservative, and he believes that the shift was largely driven by losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. Canceled

Canceled milestones like prom, graduation, and in-person learning had a huge impact on this generation, he said.

“There’s very low trust of institutions and the institutions have failed them,” Kirk told Fox News Digital.

There’s very low trust of institutions and the institutions have failed them,” Kirk told Foxd News Digital. “Primarily, if you’re 18, 19, 20, 21 right now, that kind of portion of Generation Z, they were lied to during COVID and so much of their livelihood and so much of what they care about, and they’re deeply passionate about was taken from them abruptly… So they’re a little bitter about that.”

Kirk also pointed to skyrocketing prices and record-breaking illegal border crossings under the Biden administration as driving factors behind Gen Z’s growing alignment with Trump. But he warned that unless Republicans can deliver solutions, the party risks alienating this emerging bloc of voters by 2028.

If we don’t fix the homeownership problem in this country, the cost-of-living crisis, and if we don’t give the next generation [a chance] at being owners and not renters, we are going to see what I call ‘Mamdani-ism’ spread across the country,” he predicted.t

Mamdani, the democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens, soared to victory in New York City’s Democratic primary mayoral race on a hard-left platform that included freezing rent, city-owned grocery stores, free buses, free childcare, raising corporate taxes and massively increasing the minimum wage. 

Mamdani-ism is the radical element of the Democratic Party, which is bitterness, discontent, the mobilization of grievances,” Kirk told Fox News Digital. “Where it is free stuff, populism weaponized against the American public.” He sees 2028 as a battle between two choices for America: an “optimistic” and patriotic vision where Americans take pride in ownership or one that follows more closely to Mamdani’s views.

Voters under 30 were the “decisive element” in the 2024 election, Kirk said, boosting Trump to victory in key swing states like Michigan and narrowing the gap in bluer places. 

Big Tech has also seemed to notice the generational shift to the right, with several Silicon Valley leaders appearing to want a friendlier relationship with President Trump in his second term.

Meta was one of the tech companies sponsoring the conservative event in Tampa. Kirk said he’s “thrilled” that Silicon Valley seems more open to conservatives after years of tension and hostility between the two over social media censorship.

With Kirk and other Turning Point figures’ success on social media, he thinks it should be a “no-brainer” for tech companies to seek a friendlier relationship with young conservatives.

“7,000 students, this is your target demo,” he said. “And secondly, we want to dominate on these platforms because, honestly, we already are. I mean, my personal Instagram, I think we’re upwards of almost 6.4 million followers. We get billions of impressions a year. You know, were very viral around TikTok. So I can’t speak for Mark Zuckerberg, but we’re thrilled to have Meta, Rumble and any other tech companies as well.”

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

New York City Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is taking the direction set by communist Karl Marx and he has “got to be stopped,” said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“Government retail-owned stores — I mean, that’s worse than some of the communist countries; price controls on everything. The list goes on and on,” Giuliani told Newsmax’s “Saturday Report.”

“He wants to erase [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. That’d be secession. He tried to arrest a world leader. You can’t let him interfere with the foreign policy of the United States.”

Mamdani won New York City’s Democrat mayoral primary, cementing his upset of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and sending him to the general election.

The 33-year-old democratic socialist and member of the state Assembly since 2021 was virtually unknown when he launched his candidacy centered on a bold slate of populist ideas.

He will now face a general election field that includes incumbent Mayor Eric Adams as well as independent candidate Jim Walden and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

“My inclination would be” that Curtis could beat Mamdani, said Giuliani.

“Those three men, whatever you think their failings are, they’re like Abraham Lincoln against” Mamdani, he told Newsmax.

Tucker Carlson is calling on the public to ask questions “no one has ever tried to ask” about Jeffrey Epstein’s case after the Justice Department and FBI decided to withhold records from the sex trafficking investigation, the Daily Caller reported.

The move, which included the acknowledgment that one particular sought-after document never actually existed, sparked a contentious conversation between Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino at the White House this week. The spat threatened to shatter relations between them and centered in part on a news story that described divisions between the FBI and the Justice Department.

“So the real question is not ‘Was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?’ Yes, we can answer that. The real question is ‘Why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from?'” Carlson said Friday at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit.

And those are the questions that need to be answered. I think it’s entirely fair to ask them, and it’s not adequate to say anyone who asked them is somehow desecrating the memory of little girls who died in Texas. They’re not going to put up with that answer. I don’t care who gives that answer. That is not acceptable.

“I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American. We have every right to ask, ‘On whose behalf was he working?'” Carlson said.

“How does a guy go from being a math teacher at the Dalton School in the late 70s with no college degree to having multiple airplanes, a private island, and the largest residential house in Manhattan? Where did all the money come from? And no one has ever gotten to the bottom of that because no one has ever tried. Moreover, it’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government.”

Tensions that simmered for months boiled over on Monday when the Justice Department and FBI issued a two-page statement saying that they had concluded that Epstein did not possess a “client list,” even though Bondi had intimated in February that such a document was sitting on her desk and had decided against releasing any additional records from the investigation.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.

President Donald Trump on Saturday called comedian Rosie O’Donnell a “threat to humanity” and said he was “seriously considering” revoking her citizenship.

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote in a Saturday morning Truth Social post.

“She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

O’Donnell in recent days denounced Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive GOP-backed tax breaks and spending cuts plan.

It’s just the latest threat by Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and onetime ally, Elon Musk.

But O’Donnell’s situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O’Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps — but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.

“The Mamdani effect is going to metastasize in the Democrat Party. Now, how successful it will be in a general election, I don’t know, I still have my skepticism. But the Mamdani effect is grievance-based politics, playing into people’s bitterness, and also playing into the economic disorder that Biden left us,” Kirk said.

President Trump is going to fix this, and he is aiming to fix this,” Kirk continued. “But understand, for the younger voters that I represent and the younger voters that delivered the White House for President Trump, they can’t afford homes, they’re increasingly renting, they’re not getting married, they’re not having children, so there are two ways this can go.”

Kirk said young people can either take an “optimistic, patriotic vision like President Trump is offering,” or a “very dark and sinister vision – one that is anti-Western, anti-American, anti-civilization.” He believes far-left Democrats like Mamdani have embraced the latter.

“I believe this effect will only continue in the Democrat Party for years to come,” Kirk said.

Fox & Friends” aired footage of Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin downplaying concerns from Jewish colleagues about Mamdani, who has drawn criticism for not condemning calls to “globalize the intifada” in earlier interviews. The term is widely seen as a call for violence against Jews and Israelis, but Mamdani has said he’s not out to police speech.

You might think the Democrats are going to moderate. You might think that I went on Gavin Newsom’s show, and he’s going to move to the middle. No, no, no, the rise of Mamdani and that ridiculous statement from Ken Martin shows the canary in the coal mine is [that] the Democrats are going to double and triple down on an anti-civilizational agenda,” Kirk said.

“I believe this effect will only continue in the Democrat Party for years to come,” Kirk said. 

By Brian C. Joondeph

Once seen as a taboo word in American politics, socialism has experienced a notable resurgence, especially among young voters. Polls show that more than half of millennials and Gen Zers now view socialism favorably. Politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have transformed what was once a fringe ideology into a highly popular political movement.

Even more troubling, they’ve achieved this not through real policy solutions but by promoting a utopian fantasy rooted in grievance, entitlement, and historical ignorance.

Socialism is a system of “governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” No truly socialist society has achieved a level of plenty or freedom comparable to America.

A Cato/YouGov survey conducted in March found that “62 percent of American adults under 30 say they hold favorable views of socialism.” Rasmussen Reports observed a similar sentiment this past May, with 50% of voters under 30 indicating they want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election.

Why are so many young Americans falling for it?

To be clear, this movement isn’t rooted in careful study of history or economics. It’s fueled by emotion rather than reason. It thrives because too many young people have been raised to believe that discomfort equals injustice and that government is the answer to every problem.

Today’s young adults have grown up in a culture that promotes victimhood instead of resilience. From K-12 schools to college campuses, they have been taught that life is unfair, that capitalism is oppressive, and others—corporations, the wealthy, or “the system”—cause their struggles.

They’re told that if they can’t afford a house, it’s due to capitalism. If they have student debt, it’s because they’ve been “exploited.” If they feel anxious or unfulfilled, it must be because of inequality or climate change. In this worldview, personal responsibility is an afterthought, and government redistribution is viewed as the ultimate solution.

Enter socialism, stage left.

It’s no coincidence that today’s youth know more about TikTok trends than about the gulags of the Soviet Union or the starvation in Mao’s China. Schools have stopped teaching the harsh truths about socialism’s brutal legacy. Instead, they focus on sanitized stories about “equity,” “social justice,” and “collective good,” often blending them with moral superiority and “safe spaces” for those who are easily offended.

This isn’t just a failure of the education system; it’s a deliberate ideological project. Young people aren’t truly being educated. Instead, they’re being indoctrinated to believe that capitalism is the problem, not the answer.

Critics often point out economic issues like increasing student debt, rising housing costs, and stagnant wages as failures of capitalism. However, the irony is that many of these problems are actually made worse by government interference, not market forces.

A few generations ago, few, if any, students graduated with significant educational debt. A middle-class family lived in a home, had two cars, a stay-at-home mom, and could pay the bills as well as save.

The federal government subsidized student loans and drove up tuition costs. Local governments limit housing through zoning and regulations. Inflation? Blame the government’s focus on spending and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies.

Capitalism didn’t fail. It was undermined by bureaucrats, regulators, and central planners. Now, the same group that caused the problems claims they will fix them by increasing their own power. That’s not progress; it’s a power grab.

As we see with Big Pharma, the government creates the problem and then sells the cure, except that the solution is often worse than the original problem.

One of the left’s favorite tactics is pointing to countries like Sweden and Denmark as “proof” that socialism works. However, these countries are not socialist. They have capitalist economies with high taxes and generous welfare systems, supported by a strong work ethic, homogeneous populations, and increasingly strict immigration controls, factors the American left would never endorse.

In Denmark, the top marginal income tax rate is 55%. Additionally, there is a 25% VAT on nearly all goods and services. The high taxes on income and spending support generous welfare benefits, maternity leave, subsidized housing, and more.

Try replicating that model here, with our open borders, declining labor participation, and cultural fragmentation, and you’ll end up with Venezuela or Cuba, not Stockholm or Helsinki.

What’s most concerning is that socialism is no longer viewed as a radical idea. It has been rebranded and marketed to young people as kind, fair, and compassionate. But socialism, even in its “democratic” form, is fundamentally coercive. It expands government power, limits economic freedom, and suppresses dissent. History shows where it ultimately leads – shortages, stagnation, and government surveillance.

New York City could soon resemble Havana if residents elect Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Mamdani campaigned on a platform that included a “$30 minimum wage, tax hikes on businesses and the rich, and other policies like creating city-owned grocery stores and imposing a rent freeze for stabilized tenants.”

The left isn’t giving young people independence. It’s offering dependence with a smile—a life where the government pays your bills but also controls your future. Or as the World Economic Forum promises, “you will own nothing and you will be happy.”

The solution isn’t to shout, “communism bad” and walk away. It’s to engage, educate, and expose the lie. Conservatives must explain, clearly and confidently, why capitalism is the most moral and effective system ever devised. It rewards merit, encourages innovation, and protects freedom.

We also need to stop surrendering the culture war. This involves reforming education, fighting ideological bias in the media and universities, and encouraging young Americans to see themselves not as victims of the system, but as capable individuals responsible for their own future.

America’s future is at risk. Only 36% of Democrats feel extremely or very proud to be American, down from 80% a decade ago. Among young Americans, the Gen Zers, only 24% are proud to be American, compared to 32% who have little or no pride.

In contrast, 92% of Republicans are proud to be American, a number slightly higher than it was ten years ago.

Nature abhors a vacuum. When half the country hates America, they will gladly embrace something very un-American, namely, socialism.

Socialism flourishes when honesty is absent. Our duty is to speak the truth openly and confidently. Because if we don’t, we could soon live in a country where freedom isn’t the norm but the exception.

Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer.

Trump says he’s considering revoking Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship, reigniting decadeslong feud

By Donald Judd, CNN

 2 minute read 

Updated 4:18 PM EDT, Sat July 12, 2025

Rosie O’Donnell and President Donald Trump. Getty ImagesCNN — 

President Donald Trump reignited a decadeslong feud with comedian Rosie O’Donnell on Saturday, taking to his Truth Social platform to write he was considering revoking her citizenship.

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown Law, said Saturday that Trump’s threat of “coercive expatriation” was “patently unconstitutional.”

“For good reasons, it is difficult to denaturalize a U.S. citizen and even harder to expatriate one,” Vladeck wrote in April. “Congress has provided for only a handful of circumstances in which the executive branch is empowered to pursue such a move; and the Supreme Court has recognized meaningful constitutional limits (and an entitlement to meaningful judicial review) even in those cases.”

CNN has reached out to the White House about what prompted the president’s threat — but O’Donnell drew attention last weekend after she posted a video to TikTok slamming the Trump administration’s response to the Texas floods, claiming the president “gut all of the early warning systems and the weathering‑forecast abilities of the government,” stymying the federal response.

O’Donell moved to Ireland shortly before Trump’s inauguration in January, telling CNN in April that Trump’s reelection prompted the move.

“I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown. “I have no regrets. Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision. I was welcomed with open arms.”

Responding to the president’s post Saturday, O’Donnell wrote on Instagram, “you want to revoke my citizenship? go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan. i’m not yours to silence. i never was.”

Trump and O’Donnell have clashed since at least 2006, after O’Donell — then a co-host of “The View” — called Trump a “snake-oil salesman on Little House On The Prairie,” and said he went bankrupt, which Trump denied.

For his part, Trump has called O’Donnell “a real loser,” “crude, rude, obnoxious, and dumb,” and “a pig” over the years

Progressive politics may promise empowerment, but for many liberal women, the result appears to be rising misery and isolation.

A growing body of data points to a clear trend: liberal women are statistically the most dissatisfied and mentally unwell demographic in the country, and experts say it may have more to do with worldview than circumstance.

According to a 2024 survey from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), just 12% of liberal women aged 18-40 report being “completely satisfied” with their lives.

In contrast, 37% of conservative women in the same age group report full satisfaction, a difference that speaks volumes.

The findings come from the 2024 American Family Survey, which also shows that liberal women are two to three times more likely to say they are “not satisfied” with their lives.

Marriage and faith, two traditional anchors of community and stability, may play a key role in the satisfaction divide.

56% of conservative women in the study are married, while only 37% of liberal women are.

Church attendance reflects a similar gap: 53% of conservative women attend religious services weekly, compared to just 12% of liberal women.

That detachment from relational and spiritual communities may be fueling widespread loneliness.

Nearly 30% of liberal women report frequent loneliness, while only 11% of conservatives say the same.

“These women are lacking key support systems that help weather life’s inevitable challenges,” said Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at IFS.

“We’ve seen in the research that conservative women tend to be more likely to embrace a sense of agency and to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces.

“They’re also less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns and more likely to think of themselves as captains of their own fate.”

This isn’t a new development. A 2020 Pew Research study found that 56% of young liberal white women had been diagnosed with a mental health condition, compared to fewer than 30% of moderate or conservative women.

Cognitive psychologist Jonathan Haidt traces the issue to a culture of “catastrophizing,” a mental habit of exaggerating negative outcomes, often amplified by social media and activist narratives.

“Once you equate words with guns, you’re closer to hell than salvation,” Haidt warned.

Journalist Matt Yglesias also noted the link between heavy social media use and negative cognitive patterns that mimic clinical depression:

“Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin mirrors depression,” he explained.

That tendency toward pessimism has implications for electoral politics as well.

Political analyst Nate Silver argued that the Democratic Party’s messaging, shaped by its increasingly anxious, predominantly female base, may be turning off male voters.

“I think an underrated factor in the ‘how can Democrats win back young men’ debate is the effects of personality, which differ especially among younger voters,” Silver noted.

A cultural rejection of traditional roles may also be contributing to the crisis.

A 2024 analysis by Evie Magazine argued that dismissing marriage and motherhood as “oppressive” leaves many progressive women isolated from relationships that offer meaning, support, and long-term joy.

Haidt has argued that modern feminism’s emphasis on systemic oppression may backfire, trapping women in a cycle of resentment and helplessness.

Feminism’s focus on systemic oppression can backfire,” he said.

“It may create a generation trapped in a cycle of entitlement and empathy deficits.”

The broader shift among Gen Z toward an external locus of control.

The belief that one’s life is controlled by outside forces has also been tied to rising anxiety and depression.

This has especially been the case since the explosion of social media in the early 2010s.

Progressive campus policies may only worsen the trend.

Greg Lukianoff, co-author with Haidt of The Coddling of the American Mind, has warned that safe spaces, trigger warnings, and ideological echo chambers act as “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy,” validating fear and fragility instead of fostering strength and resilience.

For liberal women, the data suggests that politics may be part of the problem, not the solution.

David Lindfield, Slay

Deja Foxx celebrated her April birthday in a way most 25-year-olds don’t. The extra candle meant she was now eligible to represent Arizona in Congress, and Foxx marked the occasion with a fundraiser.

She’s part of a wide-ranging group of young Democratic candidates, many running to replace older incumbents, who have grown restless waiting for their turn to lead their party back to power.

After a crushing 2024 election loss, they say the party desperately needs a rebranding — and young leaders should steer it.

In southern Arizona on Tuesday, Foxx is one of several Democrats hoping to step into a deep blue seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a longtime political power broker in Tucson. He had become one of the most senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill over two decades in Congress. Grijalva’s daughter, Adelita, is one of the contenders, and three Republicans are vying in the GOP primary.

But the push for younger leaders won’t end there. In next year’s midterm elections, primary challengers have already begun to emerge in states like California and Indiana that will give Democratic voters choices between longtime lawmakers and younger candidates.

In Georgia, for example, 80-year-old Democratic Rep. David Scott’s decades-long legacy could end with a primary he’s expected to join. This has drawn challengers fed up with his refusal to step aside despite years of concern about his declining health and rare public appearances. The primary got crowded almost a year after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election race amid similar scrutiny over his age.

Challenging well-connected candidates can be daunting, but progressive leaders say the moment calls for urgency.

“Passing of the torch implies the leaders are handing it off,” said Amanda Litman, head of a group called Run for Something that bolsters progressive young candidates. “What we’re seeing right now is, the new generation is taking the torch. They’re not waiting for it to be passed.”

Many Boomer and Gen Z candidates alike have largely abandoned the traditional playbook of spending millions on TV ads in favor of TikTok and social media. But it’s a pivot that older political hands would recognize from an older playbook: meeting voters where they are.

Foxx, a digital strategist, led influencer strategy for Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign bid. On TikTok, she speaks to nearly 400,000 followers, saying she’d be the first woman of “our” generation elected to Congress. In 2022, Florida voters elected the generation’s first congressman — Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost. The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, which Frost co-chairs, has endorsed Adelita Grijalva.

Foxx has leaned into popular Gen Z internet slang in branding her district tour “Crashout or Congress.”

“Does the news make you feel like you’re about to crash out? Be honest,” Foxx posted.

Foxx said her campaign turned a corner after a primary debate in late May, when some clips of her performance drew the eyes of millions and helped spark a fundraising boost.

If Scott seeks another term in his suburban Atlanta district, he’ll face several candidates in the Democratic primary next May: microbiologist and state Rep. Jasmine Clark, 42; state Sen. Emanuel Jones, 66; and 33-year-old Everton Blair, former chair of the state’s largest school district. Scott’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.

Clark racked up 7,000 TikTok followers after a popular influencer reposted her. She occasionally pops in with solutions to people’s problems on NextDoor and is sometimes recognized as a podcast host instead of a state representative. She says Republicans have done a better job at saturating social media with their messaging.

“Instead of looking at Republicans and wagging our fingers at them, we could take some lessons from them,” she said.

Voters have been crushed by high living costs, Clark said, but Republicans, not Democrats, have been the ones to tell people their pain is real — even though Democrats have better ideas for fixing things.

Blair agreed that Democrats have better policy prescriptions for addressing voters’ economic concerns, but he said too many longtime lawmakers have stifled the party’s ability to get that message across. He said President Donald Trump is fattening the wallets of billionaires but cheating low- and middle-income voters “out of the American dream.”

“We have an incumbent who is just not doing the job, and we need a better fighter,” Blair said. “The stakes are just too high.”

Young people have grown up in a political climate dominated by algorithms, said 21-year-old Akbar Ali, first vice chair of the Democratic Party in Gwinnett County, home to some of Scott’s district. That gives them a built-in understanding of how information spreads today, he said, but doesn’t replace on-the-ground outreach to voters of all ages.

He said Scott’s physical absence is palpable, both in the community and as a voice in Congress.

“A lot of people are upset on a national level because we can’t hit back with enough vigor.” he said.

Adelita Grijalva carries a household name in Tucson and is regarded as the frontrunner. To Foxx, Grijalva benefits from her “legacy” last name.

Grijalva, who has received several endorsements, including from Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has pushed back. She said she brings her own credentials to the table. Her father was progressive and antiestablishment, and she said she is, too.

But Foxx, who benefited personally from some government programs the Trump administration has slashed or is looking to slash, said Democrats need to do more to reach new voters.

“We are bringing people into this party, into this democracy, who have felt left out — by and large young people and working-class folks,” Foxx said.

In New York City, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani recently won the mayor’s race with an upbeat campaign that leaned heavily on TikTok and emphasized finding new ways to make city life more affordable.

In an era where so many young people doubt they’ll ever be better off than their parents, they’re increasingly willing to ditch pragmatism for bold policy platforms, said David Hogg.

Hogg was removed from his leadership role with the Democratic National Committee, which said his election broke party rules. His decision not to run again followed his push to oust long-serving Democrats in safe congressional seats. He has not backed away from his vow to primary “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats with fresher faces.

People of all ages want a fighter who understands what’s at stake as Trump cuts Medicaid and other programs that millions of Americans rely on, Hogg said. That’s why his political action committee, Leaders We Deserve, endorsed Foxx.

Young voters were key to Democratic wins in recent years, but some swung to the right as Trump made gains in 2024. Hogg said he’s looking for candidates to “win them back” by talking about how change happens.

Older candidates can do that too, he said, but for better or worse, young people aren’t yet “jaded” by politics.

“In this dark moment, we need people who can provide us a general sense of hope, as crazy that can feel sometimes,” Hogg said. “To believe that maybe things won’t be as screwed up as they are now forever.”

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.