On Big Night for the Left, Voters Tapped An Institutionalist Normie to Take on Mike Lawler

This is your TPM evening briefing.

Jun 24, 2026

*Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and his opponent, Democratic nominee Cait Conley. TPM illustration/Getty Images*

Fighters in Many Forms

Anti-establishment forces within the Democratic Party are undeniably ascendant, Tuesday being the latest election to see incumbents fall to political outsiders.

Many of the banner races happened in deep blue New York City districts, where the Democratic candidate is virtually guaranteed the seat. Latitude is broad, from a party success viewpoint, for Democratic socialists and dyed-in-the-wool lefties to challenge even reliable Democratic incumbents.

Elsewhere, where general elections are hotly contested, anti-establishment enthusiasm has to hew closer to the flavor of the district. I’ve been watching to see if Democrats will be able to sublimate the hunger for fighters — which has most often manifested in progressive candidates — to the greater goal of winning the House. You think of a movement like MAGA — energizing and deeply motivating to its members, completely transformative of the party it came from — and how that far-right enthusiasm led to catastrophic fumbles of winnable seats (Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania).

But Tuesday gave observers one early data point suggesting Democrats’ greater discipline in competitive races. Cait Conley, a combat veteran and the director for counterterrorism on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, won the primary to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), one of the most vulnerable House incumbents. She beat out two other candidates, one of a moderate persuasion and one an avowed progressive.

She has been measured on Israel, distancing herself from Democratic efforts to cut off military aid and advocating for a two-state solution, critical in a district replete with Orthodox Jews. She’s leaned on her working class roots and almost comically impressive military service (first in her family to graduate college at West Point, six tours of service including in Iraq and Afghanistan, three bronze stars). She’s presenting herself as a fighter, but not in the DSA/community organizing way that just swept the NYC primaries.

Lawler clearly sensed the threat. He went to extreme lengths to wound Conley’s candidacy, boosting an opponent’s tenuous claim that Conley’s work for defense technology companies links her to the Trump deportation regime (parts of which he publicly supports), including by posing one of his staffers as an unbiased influencer “just asking questions” about the linkage. One of his staffers also lobbied certain political leaders in the Orthodox community to tell their members to vote for a Democrat Lawler perceived as weaker, per Politico.

The election will be one of the closest watched come November. And in this race, anyway, Democrats are proving themselves willing to accept “fighters” in many forms.

— Kate Riga

Postmaster General Confirms He’ll Help With Trump’s Vote-by-Mail Suppression

Postmaster General David Steiner testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday and confirmed that the typically non-partisan agency is planning to do Trump’s bidding when it comes to the president’s years-long war on vote-by-mail.

Steiner said that under a new proposed rule — which was written in response to Trump’s March executive order that directed the USPS to send mail-in ballots to voters only if they’re on lists approved by the federal government — the USPS would not sent ballots out to voters unless their state cooperates with Trump’s overreach. Details from Democracy Docket:

Specifically, the proposal would require state election officials to send USPS a list of voters who have requested a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 30 days before ballots are sent out under state law. If voters aren’t on the list, they will not receive a ballot. If implemented, it would effectively create a federal registration list for absentee voters.

The admission came in response to a pointed line of questioning from Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who called Steiner’s adherence to Trump’s demands “unacceptable.” The postal workers union has come out against the rule, calling Trump’s executive order “an unconstitutional attack on the millions of Americans who vote by mail and another front in an ongoing assault on voting rights in the United States of America.”

“We would tell the state that we need the manifest,” Steiner said.

“The proposed rule basically coerces states to conform to these new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) added.

“This is basically a back-door way for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution,” Peters said. “You’re telling the states, ‘Give the federal government this information — trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we’ll take good care of these — and if you don’t do it, you can’t mail absentee ballots.’”

Later in the hearing, Steiner acknowledged that the USPS would comply with any court orders blocking the rule. There are currently several lawsuits challenging both Trump’s executive order and the USPS rule on only distributing mail-in ballots to states that comply with Trump’s demands.

— Nicole LaFond

Cassidy Tears Into Trump

After canceling the bill signing ceremony for a bipartisan affordable housing bill to try to bully Republicans into passing the SAVE America Act, which will happen in the Senate, President Trump dropped by the Republican conference lunch today. It appears as though Trump tried to shame the handful of Republican senators who voted with Dems on the War Powers resolution Tuesday, prompting Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to tell Trump his real feelings about Trump’s inauspicious mission in Iran.

Now a lame duck senator thanks to Trump, Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr., Cassidy has joined Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) in mildly questioning the president in public — a move that has only been notable given how sycophantic congressional Republicans have been for years.

— Nicole LaFond