DL Open Thread: Friday, Feb. 27, 2026
Americans are unhappy with the way things are going in the country, and don’t feel particularly well represented by either major political party. In our new February Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, 53% of U.S. adults say the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans. An identical percentage — 53% — say the same about Republicans.
The conventional reading of numbers like these — especially after Kamala Harris’s loss in 2024 — is that when voters say a party is “out of touch,” they mean so in terms of ideology. For the Democrats, for example, “out of touch” gets mapped onto “too progressive” — with the implication that to become “in touch,” the party needs to tack to the ideological center.
Our February poll tested this assumption directly, and the assumption is simply wrong. When Americans say Democrats are “out of touch” they don’t only — or even primarily — mean “too progressive.” This type of thinking is another example of people committing the Strategist’s Fallacy instead of thinking about what is really being measured by the poll question being asked.
Whether a party is “in touch” or “out of touch,” we found, is a product of more than just ideological perceptions. In our survey, U.S. adults call Democrats weak (48%), ineffective (47%), and out of touch — but also empathetic (54%) and principled (49%). They call Republicans extreme (60%), elitist (57%), and cruel (51%). Both parties have brand problems. But the kind of problem is fundamentally different from what most people are assuming — and that difference matters enormously for 2026.
Today’s Chart of the Week: Americans — including swing voters — say Democrats should fight harder, not moderate. Republicans, in contrast, have a major extremism and cruelty problem. I sit down and actually do the math on how many votes Democrats could flip by messaging on ideology versus fighting for what members believe in.
There’s lots more, all well worth reading. Bottom line: Milquetoast centrists weaken D turnout, real fighters boost it.
Judge Targets Trump’s Serial Lawbreaking:
The chief federal judge in Minnesota accused federal officials of continuing to disobey judicial orders related to immigration enforcement and then mischaracterizing the scope of their missteps.
The judge, Patrick Schiltz, threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt if the pattern continued, writing in a scathing order on Thursday that, “one way or another, ICE will comply with this court’s orders.”
“The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” wrote Judge Schiltz, who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush.
Across the country, federal judges have repeatedly called out Trump administration officials in recent weeks for testifying dishonestly, representing the law inaccurately and failing to comply promptly with their orders, especially on immigration-related matters. Tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration have been especially high in Minnesota, where the courts have been overwhelmed with lawsuits stemming from a crackdown on illegal immigration.
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Today, transgender people across Kansas are reporting receiving letters from the Kansas Division of Vehicles stating that they must surrender their driver’s licenses and that their current credentials will be considered invalid upon the law’s publication in the Kansas Register on Thursday. Should any transgender person be caught driving without a valid license, they could face a class B misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Kansas already requires county jails to house inmates according to sex assigned at birth. The letter, obtained by Erin in the Morning, marks one of the most significant erosions of transgender civil rights in the United States to date.
SB 244, also known as the “bathroom bounty” bill, contained heavy identification document bans as well. The bill was rushed through the Kansas Legislature in January using a “gut and go” procedure that bypassed nearly all public input on its key provisions. Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the bill on February 13, calling it “poorly drafted,” but the Legislature overrode her veto days later. In addition to the driver’s license provisions, the law bans transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in public buildings and creates a bathroom bounty hunter system allowing citizens to sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for at least $1,000 in damages, including potentially in private restrooms. The bill takes effect immediately upon publication in the Kansas Register rather than the standard July 1 effective date—giving transgender Kansans just days between the override and the invalidation of their identity documents.
I can’t even…
Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind refugee from Burma who Border Patrol agents dropped off at a doughnut shop Thursday and left to find his way home, 5 miles away, has been found dead.
City Hall spokesperson Ian Ott said Shah Alam, 56, was found by B District officers after they responded to a call for a dead body on the first block of Perry Street shortly after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Shah Alam, a Rohingya refugee, had been missing since February 19. He was released that afternoon from custody at the Erie County Holding Center after posting bail. In response to an immigration detainer that had been placed on him, the Erie County Sheriff’s Office contacted U.S. Border Patrol prior to his release, according to spokesperson Christopher Horvatits.
Benjamin Macaluso, a Legal Aid Bureau attorney representing Shah Alam, said Border Patrol agents picked him up at the Holding Center at 4:39 p.m. Thursday.
Shah Alam was released on bail, Macaluso said, after he had agreed to a plea deal with the Erie County District Attorney’s office. Shah Alam’s guilty plea to charges of trespassing and possession of a weapon — a curtain rod he used as a walking stick — allowed him to “clear” the detainer and avoid detention by ICE or another immigration agency, Macaluso said.
After taking custody of Shah Alam, Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a Tim Hortons on Niagara Street in the Black Rock neighborhood, Macaluso said, shortly after 8 p.m. Shah Alam and his family live in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood on the East Side, according to Fazal.
A spokesperson for Border Patrol, in a statement Wednesday evening, said after agents determined Shah Alam was not supposed to be in their custody, they “offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop.” That Tim Hortons, the spokesperson said, was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.”
THE COFFEE SHOP WAS CLOSED!
Shah Alam had been in the Erie County Holding Center since February 2025 after being arrested by Buffalo police. On February 15 last year, he had been out for a walk in his neighborhood and had been using a curtain rod he purchased as a walking stick.
Nearly blind and with no ability to speak English, Shah Alam got lost and ended up on the porch of a woman’s home as she was letting her dog out, according to Macaluso. Shah Alam is completely blind in one eye and can only see with blurry vision for several feet in the other, according to Macaluso.
The woman called police, Macaluso said. When Shah Alam did not follow police commands to drop his curtain rod, they Tasered and beat him, then arrested him, Macaluso said. The officers suffered minor injuries in the scuffle, he said.
Shah Alam was charged with offenses including assault, trespassing and possession of a weapon. Macaluso said Shah Alam’s family opted to not bail him out of the Holding Center for fear he would end up detained by ICE out of state.
That’s Amerika in 2026.
Say Goodbye To CNN. Trump Big-Foots WB Into Selling To Paramount:
Netflix’s decision to walk away from its $83bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) has left some staffers working at CBS News and CNN panicking about the future as the two top-tier news operations come under the same roof.
With Paramount Skydance emerging as the winning bidder, a deal that still requires the approval of WBD shareholders and government regulators, they fear the merging of the two networks – and, with it, the potential for a significant amount of job cuts. Some CNN employees are also nervous about Paramount’s Trump-friendly ownership and leadership enacting ideologically driven programming changes at the network, with particular concern about the specter of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss possibly getting a significant role.
Weiss, a conservative commentator turned media entrepreneur with no previous television industry experience, has had an uneven tenure at CBS since she was appointed editor-in-chief last October. Her path to the job was paved by concessions that David Ellison and his Skydance Media made to gain the support of Trump-picked regulators to acquire Paramount.
“A Paramount WBD merger is a disaster for the people who work at both companies, and if Bari Weiss takes control of CNN, it will be the end of the global network Ted Turner founded,” one concerned CNN producer – who was not authorized to comment – told the Guardian. “I don’t think that’s hyperbolic.”
Donald Trump, a long-time critic of CNN, said in December that the cable network should be part of any sale of WBD – and that the winning bidder should oust the network’s leadership. Netflix had secured a deal to acquire only the studio and streaming assets of the company; and if the streamer’s deal had gone through, CNN and WBD’s other television networks would have been spun off into a new entity called Global Networks.
“I don’t think the people that are running that company right now, and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don’t think that should be allowed to continue,” Trump said at the time, adding that the network’s ownership “have run CNN into the ground”.
What do you want to talk about?
