It’s Time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Raise Its Game

It’s Time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Raise Its Game

It’s Time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Raise Its Game

The CPC must move from being the conscience of the Democratic caucus to being its captain, from defining the alternative to defining the agenda.

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A massive people’s uprising is driving the opposition to President Trump. In Congress, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is an emerging center of that resistance.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the CPC. Its first and founding director was an independent socialist from Vermont named Bernie Sanders. Now, co-chaired by Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), the CPC is the largest Democratic House caucus, with 73 dues-paying members. Each election in recent years has provided it with dynamic new leaders—Wisconsin’s Mark Pocan, New York’s Yvette Clarke, Pennsylvania’s Matthew Cartwright, and now Washington’s Pramila Jayapal and Mayland’s Jamie B. Raskin.

Last weekend more than 30 of those members joined with activists from across the progressive landscape to share ideas and plot strategy at the annual summit of Progressive Congress. CPC members individually are already mobilizing against Trump. The challenge is whether the CPC can collectively begin to define the forward-looking agenda of the resistance.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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