TV News LIES

Progressive Abdul El-Sayed is leading Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) by 15 points ahead of next week’s Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat, according to a new poll.

An Emerson College Polling/WLNS/WOODTV survey released Thursday showed El-Sayed handily defeating Stevens in the primary with 54 percent support to Stevens’s 39 percent. A separate 6 percent of respondents said they were undecided while about 2 percent backed state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D), who dropped out of the race earlier this summer.

When factoring in undecided Democratic voters who were asked who they lean toward, El-Sayed rose to 57 percent support while Stevens sat at 41 percent. A separate 2 percent of respondents supported McMorrow.

El-Sayed and Stevens are running for the Democratic Senate nomination next Tuesday to take on former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). Although Peters, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and former Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) have backed Stevens, El-Sayed, a former Wayne County public health official, has held is own in the toss-up race.

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Only a day after Quinnipiac’s poll, an AP-NORC poll showed similar numbers, as only 33% of respondents approved of Trump’s performance, a drop of 4 percentage points from the last AP-NORC poll. Trump’s approval rating in the July 30 AP-NORC poll is the lowest recorded by the pollster since his return to the White House in 2025.

Quinnipiac University’s poll was conducted from July 23 to July 27 with 963 responses and a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. AP-NORC’s poll was also taken from July 23 to 27, but with 1,165 responses and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

This week has been historic for the president, but for all the wrong reasons.

Apart from reaching record lows in both Quinnipiac University and AP-NORC’s polls, the president has hit similar lows in two other surveys released earlier this week.

On July 28, a new Economist/YouGov poll found that 34% of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, marking the president's lowest approval rating in YouGov’s tracking since he returned to the White House.

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Just one in three Americans approve of how Supreme Court justices are doing their job, according to a new Gallup poll that shows Republicans are particularly dissatisfied with the court.

The July 2026 poll revealed that 33% of Americans approve of the high court, a record low for the 26-year poll. Previously, the lowest bar was at 39% from Gallup data collected in July 2025.

Low ratings from Democrats and independents likely reflect their unhappiness with the ideological tilt of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, Jeffrey M. Jones wrote for Gallup. But Republicans may be disappointed that the conservative court hasn’t gone far enough – and, in fact, thwarted key Trump administration policy goals, Jones said.

Only 58% of Republicans approved of the court's performance in July 2026 compared with 79% in September 2025 and 75% in July 2025. Democrats' approval rating of the court remained in similarly low range in that time period, only spanning 11% to 14%. The total approval rating during those three time periods was 39% in July 2025, 42% in September 2025 and 33% – the record low, in July 2026.

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Of all the Democratic primaries between a progressive populist and establishment liberal this year, the Michigan Senate contest Aug. 4 could be the most consequential in mapping the party's future.

The race between Abdul El-Sayed, a Detroit-based public health officer, and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, a former Obama administration official, has touched almost every nerve on the political left leading up to the 2026 midterms.

Whether it's who is to blame for the 2024 election outcome, what type of candidate is best to defeat Republicans in a general election or the U.S. relationship with Israel and its prosecution of the war in Gaza, centrist and left-leaning factions agree that the stakes are higher than in any other primary battle.

"The crux of the race is between two competing visions for where the Democratic Party should go," said Ravi Mangla, spokesman for Working Families Party, a progressive political party that supports El-Sayed.

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Democratic Majority for Israel is behind a million-dollar effort to slow the momentum of populist candidate William Lawrence in the closing days of a three-way primary in mid-Michigan’s 7th congressional district, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement.

Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, is running primarily against data center buildouts in the district, but has also made opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war in Iran core parts of his campaign. He has two well-funded centrist challengers. The winner will take on Republican incumbent Tom Barrett.

DMFI is using a vehicle called Rolling Sea Action Fund PAC to move money into the race. It is unclear if DMFI is funding the ad buy with a transfer or whether DMFI donors were being directed to Rolling Sea, but Joel Wanger, DMFI’s chief political officer, is organizing the effort.

It’s a PAC affiliated with the Congressional Black Caucus, but it is regularly used by big money interests as a pass-through to cloak the true source of spending. “Rolling Sea exists as a place to wash money,” as one consultant working on the race put it to Drop Site. The ad buy began with $899,000 being put behind it.

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Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson formally clinched the Democratic nod to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in November, giving the party just 100 days to quickly turn the tides in the must-win race.

Jackson handily won on Saturday with 566 votes during the Democratic nomination convention in Bangor, Maine. His only challenger, biopharmaceutical executive Saundra Pelletier, nabbed the remaining five votes.More...

“This is the absolute honor of my life to accept the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate,” he said to cheers.

“I will spend every day now through November earning that trust,” Jackson vowed to his supporters.

Democrats in the state largely consolidated around the former state senator ahead of the convention to replace scandal-ridden Graham Platner, who exited the race earlier this month. The contest, which Decision Desk HQ and Cook Political Report rate as a toss-up, could prove decisive in the party’s chances of clinching the upper chamber this fall.

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