👀 A small but growing number of Democrats are embracing their own version of "America First" in response to Donald Trump's ongoing war with Iran in partnership with Israel.

Why it matters: Trump's war is scrambling the politics of a slogan he once owned, fracturing the right even as some Democrats — including potential 2028 presidential candidates — embrace it.

🚙 Driving the news: Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Senate candidate in Michigan who campaigned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) last weekend, told us: "I'm the most America First candidate in the country, proudly."

• "When you keep our money here rather than sending it to some other country's war machine, that's America First," he said.

🤗 California Rep. Ro Khanna, who's weighing a run for the White House, also is embracing the label.

• In April, he said it's time to "put America first" when he reintroduced a bill to ban gas exports during periods of high gas prices.
• In February on the House floor, Khanna said that "another war in the Middle East is not America First."

And Dan Osborn, a union leader running for Senate in Nebraska as an independent against the Republican incumbent, wrote on Friday: "We need to be putting America first, not Israel first."

• "We can't undermine the independence of the American military for any ally," he added, "much less an untrustworthy one that's already forced us to throw money at a useless forever war overseas."

🐘 Zoom out: Some Republicans agree with Democrats that Trump's war with Iran was a betrayal of his pledge to put Americans first — and that it's given Democrats a political opening.

• Tucker Carlson, who introduced Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2024, lobbied the president against attacking Iran and has since apologized for "misleading people" about Trump.

El-Sayed agreed with Trump's critics on the right, saying that "the MAGA version of America First is to make a show out of America First, only to sell you out."

• "They'll always be beholden to the interests of a foreign interest lobby like AIPAC, and always be beholden to the interests of the corporate war machine, the military-industrial complex, the folks who win every single time we send our weapons abroad," he added.

🔎 Between the lines: Most national Democrats still stop short of using Trump's phrase, but they increasingly echo its main arguments.

• Campaigning in Memphis this month, Ocasio-Cortez — who's considering a run for president or the Senate in 2028 — said that "all that money we're spending on bombs abroad could be spent on schools right here."
• 🏡 In a speech to Arkansas' Democratic Party in April, former Vice President Kamala Harris said, "To spark an American revival, we must start with a bold agenda where our public dollars go to affordable housing and healthcare and childcare, not spent on reckless foreign wars that no one wants."
• Trump himself repeatedly decried "stupid foreign wars" during the 2024 campaign.

🏭 Beyond antiwar statements, many Democrats have embraced domestic industrial policies aimed at reviving U.S. manufacturing.

• In June, Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Cory Booker of New Jersey — both potential presidential contenders — were among those introducing the Make More in America Act.
• Kelly argued the bill would "build more things here at home and create good-paying jobs while reducing our dependency on foreign adversaries."

Bottom line: Trump will finish his term in 2029, but the politics that led him to embrace "America First" now appear bipartisan, and here to stay.

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— Alex Thompson, Holly Otterbein

😤 Some progressive Democrats are fuming that the party's new schedule for 2028 presidential primaries could make it harder for one of their own to win the party's nomination.

• 🗳️ A powerful Democratic National Committee panel voted Friday to kick off the primary in South Carolina — the state where progressive icon Bernie Sanders suffered landslide losses in the 2016 and 2020 primaries.

Why it matters: The panel's decision came with Democrats already divided over a wave of contentious 2026 primaries that have pitted an insurgent left against the party's more moderate establishment.

Zoom in: From Wisconsin to Michigan to Maine, top Democrats are trying to halt the left wing's momentum in the run-up to this year's midterms, favoring relatively centrist candidates they see as more electable.

• Some progressives view the elevation of South Carolina on the party's 2028 primary calendar as part of that effort.
• 🌴 South Carolina edged out Nevada for the first spot on the primary schedule, stinging progressives because Sanders won the primary in the Silver State in 2020.
• Puck reported that some DNC members were concerned that making Nevada the first state to vote would boost another socialist candidate.

😠 But even some DNC members were angry with the decision to put South Carolina first.

• 👈 A member of the DNC's Rules & Bylaws panel, which preliminarily OK'd the calendar, told us that "the public is swinging left, and the establishment is trying to fight the winds of change."
• The panel member added that putting South Carolina first could "shut down" a progressive presidential candidate, which is "not a strategy for winning the electorate."
• Branko Marcetic, a writer for the socialist magazine Jacobin, posted on social media that "the whole rationale is stopping a left-wing insurgent." Leftist streamer Hasan Piker snarkily suggested that South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn had too much power over the presidential nominating contest.

The other side: South Carolina Democratic Party chair Christale Spain told us that a progressive candidate such as Ocasio-Cortez "absolutely" could win the state's primary.

• "I hate that the narrative kind of seems like 'Well, a progressive can't win in the South,'" said Spain, who worked for Sanders' 2016 campaign. "The work that you have to do in the South is retail politics."

Between the lines: The debate between progressives and traditional Democrats over South Carolina has at times been racially fraught partly because Sanders, who's white, twice fared poorly in a state where a sizable chunk of Democratic voters are Black.

• 🏆 At the same time, Black Democrats viewed South Carolina's victory in the debate over the primary schedule as overdue recognition of their importance to the party.
• The DNC panel's decision on the primary schedule still must be ratified by the full DNC.

Read more.

— Holly Otterbein

A look at what potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders are up to:

• 📈 Ocasio-Cortez tops a list of potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders in New Hampshire with 22% of voters, followed by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 21%, according to a new poll by the University of New Hampshire.
• Harris "is the frontrunner" in the primary, "like it or not," reads the headline of a New York magazine article. An ally who recently talked with the former VP suggested that she regrets listening to "all these consultants that were telling me to take this position or that position."
• 🫵 Kelly is the latest potential 2028er to be profiled in the Atlantic. Asked about Harris' memoir, in which she questioned Kelly's readiness to be her running mate in 2024: "I ran one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, in a swing state. My Senate races were harder than her Senate races."
• 🏀 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was ecstatic at the news that LeBron James is joining the Philadelphia 76ers. Asked by a local ABC station if he had any inkling it would happen, Shapiro said, "I don't know if I can get away with a no-comment live on air, but I'm going to go with a no-comment." Shapiro was also the subject of a deep dive by NOTUS titled "Is Josh Shapiro Actually Good at Governing?"
• 🥊 Maryland union leaders opened another front in their battle with Gov. Wes Moore, this time blasting him over a staffing problem in state prisons.
• 📚 Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy traveled to South Carolina and Georgia on his book tour.
• 🤖 Khanna is heading to Pennsylvania for a "new economic patriotism tour" this week. He also defended Clyburn amid criticism that the South Carolina congressman had only recently heard of ChatGPT.
• Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff has shelled out thousands on "makeup services" this year, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
• 📺 Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced a new YouTube series on the "people, power, and politics" reshaping the South.
• Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal arguing that "Bernie bros" are hurting Democrats running in swing districts — and partly blaming former President Biden's "open-border policy" for the party's losses in 2022 and 2024.
• 😉 Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen campaigned for progressive Senate candidate El-Sayed in Michigan, saying, "It's pretty simple: We want someone who's going to be there for working people." When someone in the crowd yelled, "And a new Senate majority leader!" Van Hollen smiled.