Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary carries 2020 echoes: From the Politics Desk

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In today’s edition, Sahil Kapur draws parallels between Michigan’s Democratic Senate race and the 2020 presidential primary. Plus, we dive into President Donald Trump’s day at the Supreme Court.

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— Adam Wollner

Michigan’s heated Democratic Senate primary carries 2020 echoes

Analysis by Sahil Kapur

A hotly contested Democratic primary features three main contenders: A progressive favorite, a center-left establishment candidate and someone who’s ideologically in between them trying to pluck from the left and the middle.

That was the 2020 Democratic presidential primary featuring Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, respectively.

And it bears uncanny resemblance to the dynamic in Michigan’s key Senate primary this year — featuring Abdul El-Sayed, Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow.

Just like Sanders himself in 2020, the Sanders-endorsed El-Sayed has strong support from the left as he campaigns on a vision for single-payer health care and getting money out of politics.

Like Biden in 2020, Stevens is seen by the party establishment as the safest option to defeat Republicans in the fall. The Democratic nominee in Michigan will face former Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost the state’s Senate race in 2024.

And much like Warren, McMorrow launched her campaign early, positioning herself as an outsider ready to upend the status quo, while seeking to build bridges with voters on the left and in the middle of the party.

Some surveys suggest McMorrow may be following a similar trajectory as Warren: polling competitively for months, using social media effectively to gain traction, but ultimately fading as the left consolidated against one rival and the center rallied around another.

Primary polls showed McMorrow in or near the lead for stretches of last year and early this year. But lately she has fallen into a distant third as El-Sayed solidifies progressives and Stevens attracts more moderate Democrats. Three recent surveys show her slipping into single digits, as El-Sayed and Stevens race ahead and poll competitively for the lead.

The 2020 contest was a high-stakes fight for the soul of the party, setting the trajectory for Democrats ever since.

Now the 2026 election is taking place in the crucible of an intense Democratic intra-party fight about how to reset after the Biden era, pitting calls for incrementalism and moderation against demands for generational change and upending the status quo.

Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary for the open seat vacated by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., could provide an early answer as to where the party is going — and offer a rare glimpse into what will undoubtedly be a lively contest for the next presidential nomination in two years.

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Trump’s voting restrictions face roadblocks from Congress and the Supreme Court

By Jonathan Allen and Katherine Doyle

The Supreme Court and the Republican-controlled Senate have erected guardrails that limit President Donald Trump’s ability to make it harder for citizens to vote — and he’s not happy about that.

In a 5-4 decision handed down Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by Trump, joined the court’s three liberals in ruling against the Republican National Committee’s challenge to a Mississippi law that allows certain ballots to be tallied if they are received after Election Day.

Trump, who has contended contrary to the evidence that Democrats “rigged” his loss in the 2020 election, said that the majority decision is “very detrimental to honest elections” and claimed that it “gives people more time to vote illegally.”

He used the courtroom defeat to redirect attention to the Senate, where his effort to rewrite voter-eligibility laws is stuck. Republicans do not have enough votes to either pass the so-called SAVE America Act or kill the chamber’s rule requiring 60 senators to overcome a filibuster.

That legislation is “even more important” as a result of the ballot decision, Trump said. Earlier in the day, in a Truth Social post, he sought to apply more pressure to Senate Republicans to act on his bill, which would require multiple forms of identification to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot.

The Mississippi ruling was one of several today that went against Trump — even as he won a major expansion of presidential authority to fire officials appointed to leadership posts at federal agencies deemed by Congress to be independent.

At the same time, the justices gave a reprieve to Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve board whom Trump has tried to fire. That opinion, also written by Roberts, essentially created a Federal Reserve exception to the decision in the case involving other independent agencies.

Trump was optimistic that his side would prevail tomorrow on a pair of issues that were central to his 2024 campaign and which will be decided in a final batch of opinions issued by the court for this term: birthright citizenship and banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s school and college sports.

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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Annelise Hanson.

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