Politics

The Death of Competition in American Elections

Published

10 months ago

February 23, 2025

The Death of Competition in American Elections

President Trump’s return to Washington has tested the bounds of presidential power and set off alarms among Democrats, historians and legal scholars who are warning that the country’s democratic order is under threat.

But a close review of the 2024 election shows just how undemocratic the country’s legislative bodies already are.

After decades of gerrymandering and political polarization, a vast majority of members of Congress and state legislatures did not face competitive general elections last year.

Instead, they were effectively elected through low-turnout or otherwise meaningless primary contests. Vanishingly few voters cast a ballot in those races, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 9,000 congressional and state legislative primary elections held last year. On average, just 57,000 people voted for politicians in U.S. House primaries who went on to win the general election — a small fraction of the more than 700,000 Americans each of those winners now represents.

Increasingly, members of Congress are not even facing primary challenges. About a third of the current members of the House ran unopposed in their primary. All but 12 of those districts were “safe” seats, meaning 124 House members essentially faced no challenge to their election.

The absence of primaries is even more striking in state legislatures. More than three-quarters of those primary races in 2024 were uncontested, according to voting data from The Associated Press.

Lawmakers who do face primaries are often left beholden to a small number of ideologically aligned, fiercely partisan voters — a group all too willing to drag elected representatives to the fringes and to punish them for compromise with the other side.

“Most members of both parties, liberal and conservative, they’re more worried about losing their primary than losing the general election,” said Haley Barbour, a onetime aide to President Ronald Reagan and a former chair of the Republican National Committee.

Competition has been on the decline in elections for both Congress and state legislatures over the past century, according to academic studies. But the meager number of competitive elections in 2024 points to a problem that is far from being fixed, and may be growing worse.

This reality has helped Mr. Trump expand his ranks of loyal lawmakers in Congress and crush nearly all dissent in his party. In recent months, he and his allies have repeatedly wielded the threat of primary challenges to keep Republican lawmakers toeing the Trump line on issues like federal funding and the president’s cabinet nominations.

But the fear of a primary challenge can also twist local politics, where state power brokers and well-funded interest groups can push lawmakers to take broadly unpopular positions.

For example, in Idaho, where just four out of 105 state legislative races were competitive in November, lawmakers declined for six years to consider expanding access to Medicaid. When the issue finally got on the ballot in 2018, six in 10 voters endorsed it.

The lack of competition in elections has contributed to Americans’ cratering trust in government. A recent Times/Ipsos poll found that 88 percent of adults believed the political system was broken and that 72 percent saw the government as mostly for elites. Just 25 percent viewed government as mostly working for the good of the country.

“They’ve lost track of their voters,” Rory Duncan, 65, a Republican and a retired military veteran from Washington County, Md., said of his local government. “They’ve gerrymandered everything. We used to have a Republican, but they’ve gerrymandered it so much that there’s no way a Republican can get elected.”

‘More extreme candidates are winning’

Far fewer Americans vote in primaries than in general elections. Last year, roughly 30 million voters cast a primary ballot in a congressional election (that figure does not include Louisiana, which has a unique primary method). The total turnout in the general election was more than 156 million.

Uncontested and low-turnout primaries plague both red and blue states. In Georgia, a battleground controlled largely by Republicans, 10 of the state’s 14 members of the U.S. House did not face a primary challenge. In deep-blue New York, 21 of the state’s 26 House members ran unopposed in their primary.

Incumbency still gives politicians a huge advantage come election season. But incumbents are increasingly tempting targets for primary challenges because those races are largely ignored — making it easier to mount an outsider campaign that targets a few faithful voters.

Of the 59 House members who have lost re-election contests since 2020, nearly half — 28 — were defeated in primaries. In state legislatures, more incumbent lawmakers lost re-election in the primaries than in the general election last year, according to the political database Ballotpedia.

“One thing incumbents worry about is that it’s pretty easy for someone who doesn’t like you to pull together a super PAC and get money,” said Robert G. Boatright, an elections scholar at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., who in 2013 literally wrote the book on congressional primaries.

Two decades ago, Mr. Boatright said, incumbents lost primaries because of scandal, age or national issues that overrode local loyalties. Today, they are felled by ideological opponents or issue-oriented interest groups often backed by wealthy patrons or legions of small donors with few ties to the races they are financing.

For much of the 2010s, one of the most powerful forces in Texas politics was a group called Empower Texans, the political project of a handful of oil-and-gas billionaires. The group’s political action committee poured millions into replacing more moderate Texas Republican politicians with social conservatives, generally by backing insurgents in primary races.

Though the group’s track record was spotty, Texas politics today is dominated by right-wing leaders, like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who were early beneficiaries of its millions.

On the left, groups like Justice Democrats have had an outsize impact by almost exclusively backing more progressive working-class candidates against more traditional Democrats in a relative handful of carefully chosen primary contests. The group’s first slate of candidates in 2018, funded largely with small contributions from donors nationwide, included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist who ousted a 10-term incumbent in that year’s primary and who has since become one of the most prominent House Democrats.

While the Justice Democrats believe they are pushing the party’s centrist policies to the left, extremism is not simply a matter of liberals versus conservatives, according to the group’s communications director, Usamah Andrabi. “Our primaries are not left versus right. They’re bottom versus top,” he said. “If we have to scare corporate politicians into fighting for working people, then they should be scared.”

Nevertheless, Steven Rogers, an expert on state politics at Saint Louis University, in Missouri, said politicians who edged closer to the political fringes were less likely to face primary challenges.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that over time, more extreme candidates are winning at both state legislative and congressional levels,” he said.

A mirage of meaningfulness

Even contested primary elections can sometimes be a mirage, offering little threat to an incumbent or to the candidate in a state’s dominant party.

Michael Podhorzer, a strategist and the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., recently analyzed election data to determine how many state legislative primaries last year were competitive and “meaningful” — decided by 10 percentage points or fewer, and with the winner prevailing in the general election.

He found that in the 35 states that held elections for both state legislative chambers last year, just 287 of more than 4,600 primaries met that definition.

That leaves many voters without real representation: The districts that did not have meaningful primaries or general elections last year have roughly 158 million citizens, Mr. Podhorzer said, while those with meaningful primaries have only about 10 million.

Experts are quick to point out that beyond gerrymandering, the political “sorting” of like-minded voters moving into the same communities has exacerbated the lack of competition.

Linda Sacripanti, 58, a Democrat who lives in the deep-red northern panhandle of West Virginia, has experienced both of these political realities.

Participating in primary elections, she says, simply means that “I have some choice in which Democrat is going to lose.”

But for roughly 20 years, Ms. Sacripanti, who works in sales, lived in North Carolina, near Charlotte. She recalled voting for Jeff Jackson in Democratic state legislative primaries, when Mr. Jackson represented a deeply blue district in the State Senate. He parlayed that into a run for Congress in 2022, winning a similarly blue seat by 18 points.

“Charlotte itself is pretty, pretty blue, so my vote had even more weight during the primaries,” Ms. Sacripanti said. “So I do think that it mattered.”

In early 2024, Republicans in North Carolina won a legal challenge that allowed them to redraw the congressional and state legislative maps, wiping away Mr. Jackson’s district and effectively forcing him to resign (he is now the state’s attorney general). Last year, only 10 of the state’s 170 legislative seats had a meaningful primary, including just a single State Senate seat out of 50, according to data from Mr. Podhorzer.

“It was just, ‘Change up the districts and get him the heck out of there,’” Ms. Sacripanti said. “When you look up ‘gerrymander’ in the dictionary, it goes right to North Carolina.”

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Politics

Trump admin sues Illinois Gov. Pritzker over laws shielding migrants from courthouse arrests

Published

6 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Trump admin sues Illinois Gov. Pritzker over laws shielding migrants from courthouse arrests

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The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker over new laws that aim to protect migrants from arrest at key locations, including courthouses, hospitals and day cares.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday, arguing that the new protective measures prohibiting immigration agents from detaining migrants going about daily business at specific locations are unconstitutional and “threaten the safety of federal officers,” the DOJ said in a statement.

The governor signed laws earlier this month that ban civil arrests at and around courthouses across the state. The measures also require hospitals, day care centers and public universities to have procedures in place for addressing civil immigration operations and protecting personal information.

The laws, which took effect immediately, also provide legal steps for people whose constitutional rights were violated during the federal immigration raids in the Chicago area, including $10,000 in damages for a person unlawfully arrested while attempting to attend a court proceeding.

PRITZKER SIGNS BILL TO FURTHER SHIELD ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN ILLINOIS FROM DEPORTATIONS

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker over new laws that aim to protect migrants from arrest at key locations. (Getty Images)

Pritzker, a Democrat, has led the fight against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Illinois, particularly over the indiscriminate and sometimes violent nature in which they are detained.

But the governor’s office reaffirmed that he is not against arresting illegal migrants who commit violent crimes.

“However, the Trump administration’s masked agents are not targeting the ‘worst of the worst’ — they are harassing and detaining law-abiding U.S. citizens and Black and brown people at daycares, hospitals and courthouses,” spokesperson Jillian Kaehler said in a statement.

Earlier this year, the federal government reversed a Biden administration policy prohibiting immigration arrests in sensitive locations such as hospitals, schools and churches.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” which began in September in the Chicago area but appears to have since largely wound down for now, led to more than 4,000 arrests. But data on people arrested from early September through mid-October showed only 15% had criminal records, with the vast majority of offenses being traffic violations, misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.

Gov. JB Pritzker has led the fight against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Illinois. (Kamil Krazaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)

Immigration and legal advocates have praised the new laws protecting migrants in Illinois, saying many immigrants were avoiding courthouses, hospitals and schools out of fear of arrest amid the president’s mass deportation agenda.

The laws are “a brave choice” in opposing ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to Lawrence Benito, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

“Our collective resistance to ICE and CBP’s violent attacks on our communities goes beyond community-led rapid response — it includes legislative solutions as well,” he said.

The DOJ claims Pritzker and state Attorney General Kwame Raoul, also a Democrat, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which establishes that federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land.”

ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS PASS BILL BANNING ICE IMMIGRATION ARRESTS NEAR COURTHOUSES

Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

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Raoul and his staff are reviewing the DOJ’s complaint.

“This new law reflects our belief that no one is above the law, regardless of their position or authority,” Pritzker’s office said. “Unlike the Trump administration, Illinois is protecting constitutional rights in our state.”

The lawsuit is part of an initiative by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to block state and local laws the DOJ argues impede federal immigration operations, as other states have also made efforts to protect migrants against federal raids at sensitive locations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Politics

Supreme Court rules against Trump, bars National Guard deployment in Chicago

Published

7 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Supreme Court rules against Trump, bars National Guard deployment in Chicago

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled against President Trump on Tuesday and said he did not have legal authority to deploy the National Guard in Chicago to protect federal immigration agents.

Acting on a 6-3 vote, the justices denied Trump’s appeal and upheld orders from a federal district judge and the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that said the president had exaggerated the threat and overstepped his authority.

The decision is a major defeat for Trump and his broad claim that he had the power to deploy militia troops in U.S. cities.

In an unsigned order, the court said the Militia Act allows the president to deploy the National Guard only if the regular U.S. armed forces were unable to quell violence.

The law dating to 1903 says the president may call up and deploy the National Guard if he faces the threat of an invasion or a rebellion or is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

That phrase turned out to be crucial.

Trump’s lawyers assumed it referred to the police and federal agents. But after taking a close look, the justices concluded it referred to the regular U.S. military, not civilian law enforcement or the National Guard.

“To call the Guard into active federal service under the [Militia Act], the President must be ‘unable’ with the regular military ‘to execute the laws of the United States,’” the court said in Trump vs. Illinois.

That standard will rarely be met, the court added.

“Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from execut[ing] the laws except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” the court said. “So before the President can federalize the Guard … he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be ‘unable’ with those forces to perform that function.

“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the court said.

Although the court was acting on an emergency appeal, its decision is a significant defeat for Trump and is not likely to be reversed on appeal. Often, the court issues one-sentence emergency orders. But in this case, the justices wrote a three-page opinion to spell out the law and limit the president’s authority.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who oversees appeals from Illinois, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cast the deciding votes. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed with the outcome, but said he preferred a narrow and more limited ruling.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

Alito, in dissent, said the “court fails to explain why the President’s inherent constitutional authority to protect federal officers and property is not sufficient to justify the use of National Guard members in the relevant area for precisely that purpose.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a brief in the Chicago case that warned of the danger of the president using the military in American cities.

“Today, Americans can breathe a huge sigh of relief,” Bonta said Tuesday. “While this is not necessarily the end of the road, it is a significant, deeply gratifying step in the right direction. We plan to ask the lower courts to reach the same result in our cases — and we are hopeful they will do so quickly.”

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had allowed the deployments in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., after ruling that judges must defer to the president.

But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Dec. 10 that the federalized National Guard troops in Los Angeles must be returned to Newsom’s control.

Trump’s lawyers had not claimed in their appeal that the president had the authority to deploy the military for ordinary law enforcement in the city. Instead, they said the Guard troops would be deployed “to protect federal officers and federal property.”

The two sides in the Chicago case, like in Portland, told dramatically different stories about the circumstances leading to Trump’s order.

Democratic officials in Illinois said small groups of protesters objected to the aggressive enforcement tactics used by federal immigration agents. They said police were able to contain the protests, clear the entrances and prevent violence.

By contrast, administration officials described repeated instances of disruption, confrontation and violence in Chicago. They said immigration agents were harassed and blocked from doing their jobs, and they needed the protection the National Guard could supply.

Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said the president had the authority to deploy the Guard if agents could not enforce the immigration laws.

“Confronted with intolerable risks of harm to federal agents and coordinated, violent opposition to the enforcement of federal law,” Trump called up the National Guard “to defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence,” Sauer told the court in an emergency appeal filed in mid-October.

Illinois state lawyers disputed the administration’s account.

“The evidence shows that federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks,” state Solicitor Gen. Jane Elinor Notz said in response to the administration’s appeal.

The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”

But on Oct. 29, the justices asked both sides to explain what the law meant when it referred to the “regular forces.”

Until then, both sides had assumed it referred to federal agents and police, not the standing U.S. armed forces.

A few days before, Georgetown law professor and former Justice Department lawyer Martin Lederman had filed a friend-of-the-court brief asserting that the “regular forces” cited in the 1903 law were the standing U.S. Army.

His brief prompted the court to ask both sides to explain their view of the disputed provision.

Trump’s lawyers stuck to their position. They said the law referred to the “civilian forces that regularly execute the laws,” not the standing army.

If those civilians cannot enforce the law, “there is a strong tradition in this country of favoring the use” of the National Guard, not the standing military, to quell domestic disturbances, they said.

State attorneys for Illinois said the “regular forces” are the “full-time, professional military.” And they said the president could not “even plausibly argue” that the U.S. Guard members were needed to enforce the law in Chicago.

Politics

Video: Trump Announces Construction of New Warships

Published

17 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Video: Trump Announces Construction of New Warships

new video loaded: Trump Announces Construction of New Warships

transcript

Trump Announces Construction of New Warships

President Trump announced on Monday the construction of new warships for the U.S. Navy he called a “golden fleet.” Navy officials said the vessels would notionally have the ability to launch hypersonic and nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

: We’re calling it the golden fleet, that we’re building for the United States Navy. As you know, we’re desperately in need of ships. Our ships are, some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete, and we’re going to go the exact opposite direction. They’ll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world. We want respect.
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President Trump announced on Monday the construction of new warships for the U.S. Navy he called a “golden fleet.” Navy officials said the vessels would notionally have the ability to launch hypersonic and nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

By Nailah Morgan

December 23, 2025