Progressive Primary Wins, Rand Paul's Fauci Gambit, and the Democratic Civil War of 2025

Abdul El-Sayed's narrow Democratic Senate primary win in Michigan has triggered a full-scale panic among centrist Democrats, with Third Way president Jonathan Cowan announcing a $15 million campaign running through 2028 to discredit democratic socialism. The fear is explicit: that El-Sayed's swing-state victory signals a pathway for a progressive to capture the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Critics of this panic point out that El-Sayed's positions sit well within mainstream Democratic opinion, and that the 'moderate' label applied to groups like Third Way obscures their actual center-right positioning within the party.

The same election cycle produced striking evidence of progressive political power in deep-red territory. Missouri voters rejected a Republican-backed measure to make citizen ballot initiatives harder to pass by a crushing 80-20 margin, defending a constitutional amendment process that has previously delivered wins on marijuana legalization, Medicaid expansion, and overturning a near-total abortion ban. In Kansas, voters defeated a Republican effort to make state Supreme Court seats elected positions — a push motivated by a 2019 ruling protecting abortion rights — with opponents of the measure outspending supporters more than 2-to-1, and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach notching another loss.

Rand Paul escalated his years-long crusade against Anthony Fauci by having his Senate Homeland Security committee pass a contempt resolution on a party-line vote, then bypassing a full Senate floor vote — which he knew he'd lose, since it would require 60 votes — and instead sending a referral directly to the Justice Department. Legal experts say this maneuver is likely invalid: the law requires either the full Senate or House to approve a contempt referral before the DOJ is legally obligated to act. Congressional investigation attorney Stanley Brand called the move potentially 'null and void.'

Stephen Miller used the El-Sayed victory to declare that 'the cold war has come home,' warning that communists seizing House seats, Senate seats, and governors' mansions would permanently extinguish the American dream. Miller also appeared alongside the president to promote a new executive order narrowing birthright citizenship, describing the phenomenon of birth tourism as people going to 'baby mills' to 'mint' American citizens — language that drew immediate condemnation. The administration has now lost 21 consecutive lawsuits seeking access to state voter rolls, and legal challenges to the new citizenship order are expected.