The “story of the year in American politics so far” is the “rise of the Democratic socialists,” said The Wall Street Journal. The group’s “influence bears watching” as the “next generation tries to fulfill Bernie Sanders’ goal of taking over the Democratic Party.” 

Having initially “focused its resources and endorsements on local and state legislative races,” the Democratic Socialists of America worked to “grow its influence incrementally,” said The New York Times. But after Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City last year, the DSA’s “calculus has changed.” Victories for a cadre of “left-wing insurgents” in NYC House primary races last night represent a “massive sledgehammer to the Democratic establishment” in the city and “far beyond,” said Politico. 

The DSA is also “back in the spotlight” after “notching two high-profile mayoral primary victories” in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, said The Hill. While some see the group’s resurgence as proof that its “candidates and ideas are gaining traction” within the Democratic party, critics “caution against drawing broader ideological conclusions” and point to “voters’ desire for change.”

There may be “some lessons that can be learned” from DSA victories in New York and Washington, said former Clinton White House adviser Doug Sosnik to The Hill. But there are “limits to how much this will tell you about voting in the rest of the country.” If, for example, Los Angeles elects DSA-aligned mayoral candidate Nithya Raman and city attorney hopeful Marissa Roy, both of whom had strong showings in the city’s primary races, it would “underscore the leftward tilt of Los Angeles,” said the Los Angeles Times. 

Trump’s attempt to refurbish the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has grown from a mild distraction to a potentially disruptive scandal for his administration. After framing the work on the pool as a “metaphor for how awesome his awesomeness is,” the president’s effort “has become a metaphor of sorts,” said MS NOW. “But not the one Trump had in mind.” 

The president claimed this week that “enormous blooms of green algae” and “peeling polyurethane” in the pool, as seen in pictures flooding social media, had “nothing to do with the rushed $16.4 million makeover he had ordered,” said The New York Times. Instead, Trump “laid out in vague terms” the “series of events that he claimed were responsible for the highly embarrassing breakdown of a Washington landmark.”

The “entire debacle” has “all the hallmarks of a flailing dictator story,” said Talking Points Memo. The “American flag blue” paint peeling from the bottom of the pool is “disastrous symbolism even Trump recognizes.” While “hardly the most urgent issue facing the U.S.,” the algae-filled pool’s “symbolic power, as a stagnant pond beneath the gaze of Abraham Lincoln’s marble statue, is irresistible for the president’s critics,” said The Guardian. 

Given how many of Trump’s previous “scandals” have actually been “crimes or depredations or assaults on democracy,” there’s a strangely “comforting sense of nostalgia” about Trump’s Reflecting Pool “debacle,” said The Bulwark. It “feels like an incident from the before-times. It’s just a scandal.”

A new push attempts to reallocate educational programs across the government