Democrats belatedly publish 2024 election autopsy report: ‘It won’t meet your standards’

“DNC chair Ken Martin apologizes for initial bid to block release of report on party’s disastrous election defeat

Robert Tait in Washington and Lauren Gambino

Kamala Harris prepares to speak at a campaign rally on the eve of election day in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on 4 November 2024. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

The Democratic party has belatedly published a postmortem on its disastrous 2024 election defeat, after an initial decision to withhold the document triggered an angry backlash.

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), released the report – which fails to mention Gaza or Joe Biden’s age – accompanied by an apology to party members angered by his initial decision to keep the analysis of Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump and defeat in both houses of Congress under wraps.

Martin had initially declined to publish the report, authored by a veteran Democratic strategist, Paul Rivera. He cited a need to focus on this year’s midterm elections and avoid re-opening old wounds.

The decision backfired, leading to a crisis of confidence in Martin’s leadership among senior Democrats and accusations that he was keeping the findings secret.

The report focuses on key demographics that Harris lost – including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states – and compares her performance to other Democrats in key state races, such as North Carolina governor Josh Stein.

“Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate,” the report says. “The math doesn’t work.” The autopsy concludes that Stein’s success in the state that Harris lost provided a clear lesson for Democrats: focus less on “abstract issues and identity politics”.

It also takes an in-depth look at campaign spending and advertising, and highlights the need to involve new voters in campaign messaging rather than just pushing out messages.

Notably, the autopsy does not delve deeply into Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election at age 81, or his decision to effectively hand over his campaign to Harris after he dropped out. The report makes no mention of the role that the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza played in the wider Democratic defeat, despite widespread polling about the impact of those issues, nor does it engage with the criticism that racism and sexism were a factor in Harris’s loss.

Martin acknowledged the lack of comprehensive findings, saying that he was “not proud” of the report and cautioned that it would not “meet your standards”. But he added its release was dictated by the public’s need “to trust the Democratic party”.

“When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close,” the embattled party chair said in a statement released after the report’s publication. “And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning – every conversation, every interview, every dataset.”

He pointed to Democrats’ successive off-year election wins, in which the party prevailed or improved its margins in nearly every major race across the country, and argued that “dwelling on 2024 or looking backwards so late in the game” was an unhelpful exercise that could blunt their momentum.

“In December, I announced we would shelve this report, and I meant what I said at the time,” he said, adding: “I didn’t want to create a distraction. Ironically, in doing so, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. And for that, I sincerely apologize.”

Misgivings about the quality and contents of the 192-page document are stated graphically at the beginning and at the top of each page in the form of a disclaimer marked in red, stating: “This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”

Sections thereafter are punctuated with multiple qualifiers questioning sourcing, data accuracy or a perceived lack of evidence.

One qualifier undermines the author’s version of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters bent on overturning the 2020 presidential election result, which he states led to the deaths of five people. An interposed remark reads: “Claim contradicts public reporting.” In fact, five people died within 36 hours of the attack. A further four police officers who responded to the insurrection died by suicide in the following seven months.

In a statement, the pro-Palestinian IMEU Policy Project called on the DNC to “release the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials’ review of their own data found Biden’s support for Israel to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024”.

Devastated and locked out of power in Washington, Democrats remain locked in a contentious debate over the future and direction of their party. Those tensions have flared in primary contests across the country, where rank and file Democrats from Maine to California are demanding political and generational change in their leadership.“

 

Oil Prices Jump on Impasse Over Reopening the Strait of Hormuz

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“Oil prices rose as talks between the U.S. and Iran over a peace deal stalled, particularly concerning Iran’s uranium stockpile and potential transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude reached over $104 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude rose to around $98 a barrel. Analysts predict disruptions in the strait will ease later in the year but could continue to impact oil prices and global economies.

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May 22, 2026Updated 8:11 a.m. ET

Oil prices jumped on Friday as investors saw few signs of concrete progress in talks to establish a peace deal between the United States and Iran.

Nearly three months since the fighting began, disagreements remain over the fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile and reports that Iran and Oman may impose transit fees on vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration has warned against charging ships for passing through the strait, a critical shipping lane for oil and gas.

Under a fragile cease-fire, negotiations over the points of an enduring peace agreement appear far from settled.

Oil prices jump.

• The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose nearly 2 percent to more than $104 a barrel.

• West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, rose about 1 percent to around $98 a barrel.

Price of Brent crude oil

How much the international benchmark costs

Stocks gain.

• Futures on the S&P 500 pointed to a modest increase when stocks resume trading in the United States on Friday.

• Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, posted gains in most major markets. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and stocks in Taiwan rose more than 2 percent. Markets in mainland China, Hong Kong and South Korea were all higher.

• In Europe, stocks rallied. The Stoxx 600, a broad-index that tracks the region’s largest companies, gained about half a percent.

S&P 500 index

How stocks are trading in the United States

The bond sell-off subsides.

• The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield moderated somewhat, slipping to 4.55 percent on Friday. That was a small reversal after an extended rise that pushed yields to two-decade highs this week. The 10-year yield was around 4 percent before the war started.

• The run-up in yields has fed through to a wide range of loans, including mortgage rates. This week, the average for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage hit 6.51 percent, the highest rate since August, casting a chill on the U.S. housing market.

U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yield

Gasoline prices ticked lower.

• Gas prices fell by a penny on Friday, to a national average of $4.55 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by more than 50 percent since the war began.

• Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.

• The average price of diesel also dropped by a cent to $5.65 on Friday, up 50 percent since the start of the war.

How High Are Gas Prices Where You Live?

Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.

What they are saying: ‘What happens in Hormuz won’t stay in Hormuz’

• Analysts at S&P Global Ratings said that they assume the disruptions to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz “will ease in the second half of the year.” Still, the ripple effects will continue to be felt around the world for a long time — or, as they put it, “what happens in Hormuz won’t stay in Hormuz.”

• Even after a reopening, “later and lower volumes” of energy supplies traveling through the strait could put upward pressure on oil prices, which the analysts expect to average around $100 per barrel through the end of the year. Damage to oil infrastructure may also limit production beyond 2026, they note, resulting in “more persistent price pressures and deeper economic disruptions.”

• Instead of creating “clear winners and losers,” the energy shock has highlighted “varying levels of vulnerability” among the world’s economies, the analysts concluded, with implications for debts, deficits and credit ratings.“

 

G.O.P. Pulls Measure to End Iran War, Lacking Votes to Defeat It

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“House Republicans canceled a vote on a resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Iran or seek congressional approval, due to a lack of votes. This marks a setback for Speaker Mike Johnson and highlights growing divisions within the party over the conflict. The resolution, similar to one that passed in the Senate, reflects increasing pressure on the President to end the war.

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House Republican leaders abruptly scrapped a planned vote on a measure to direct President Trump to end the conflict or win authorization for it, amid party defections and absences.

May 21, 2026

Kenny Holston/The New York Times

House Republicans on Thursday abruptly canceled a vote on a resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Iran or win approval from Congress to continue the war, after it became clear they lacked the votes to defeat the measure.

The retreat was a striking setback that exposed fractures within the G.O.P. over the conflict at a moment when the party has begun pushing back forcefully on Mr. Trump and his agenda.

It also marked the latest embarrassing blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, who has toiled to defeat efforts to challenge or limit the war in line with the president’s wishes, but is contending with growing wariness within his party as the midterm elections approach and the realities of his minuscule majority.

The decision to shelve the war powers resolution came after Republicans had lost control of the floor during an earlier unrelated vote, with several of their members defecting and several more absent. As the House chamber descended into chaos, leaders wary of risking another public defeat on a far more politically consequential vote abruptly scrapped the Iran war measure.

The move came just days after a similar resolution moved ahead in the Senate, when a handful of G.O.P. defectors broke from the president and opposed the war. That vote indicated an increasing willingness by some members of the president’s party to pressure him to end a conflict that a majority of Americans say is not worth the costs.

Last week, a similar measure failed in the House by the barest of margins — on a tie vote — leaving Republican leaders no room for more defections.

“They probably did it because they didn’t have the votes,” said Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who last week sided with Democrats in favor of a similar resolution and said he had planned to do so again on Thursday. “I don’t think they’re going to have the votes when we get back.”

“The next time they bring it,” he added, “it’s passing.”

It was the fourth time Democrats had sought to challenge Mr. Trump’s ability to wage war without congressional approval since he initiated the current conflict in late February, but with both chambers scheduled for a weeklong recess in observance of Memorial Day, they will have to wait until Congress returns in June.

The delay left Republicans in control of Congress flummoxed and lamenting the dysfunction that has taken hold on Capitol Hill as they struggle to govern.

“All I want is just one normal day,” said Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who in her role as the chairwoman of the Rules Committee is in charge of controlling proceedings on the House floor. “Just give me one normal day.”

Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy.

Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.“

 

End of a Colbert-a

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“Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” will end on May 21, 2026, marking the end of an era. Colbert’s tenure as host coincided with two distinct periods in political comedy: the satirical “Colbert Report” era, which critiqued the political-media industry, and the “Late Show” era, where Colbert’s comedic persona became a vehicle for political satire against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency. While the show’s political focus contributed to its success, it also reflected a shift in the media landscape where politics became a dominant form of entertainment.

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Stephen Colbert’s “Colbert Report” satirized politics. Then his “Late Show” confronted a moment when politics became self-satirizing.

May 21, 2026Updated 7:07 a.m. ET

CQ Roll Call/Associated Press; Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

CQ Roll Call/Associated Press; Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

By James Poniewozik

James Poniewozik has written about the connection between TV and politics since the 1990s. His first piece as chief television critic for The New York Times was a review of Stephen Colbert’s premiere on “The Late Show.”

When the CBS “Late Show” dies prematurely on May 21, Stephen Colbert will have been a late-night host for over two decades, long enough that this feels like the end of a cultural era. But what era exactly?

I’m loath to frame Colbert’s cancellation as “the death of late night” — that funeral has been going on for decades. The monoculture is long gone, the ratings smaller, the productions expensive. Yet the end of “The Late Show” still leaves us roughly where we were before David Letterman began the franchisein 1993, give or take a Jimmy Kimmel and sundry basic-cable shows.

“The Colbert Report,” which debuted in 2005, mainly satirized the political-media industry, with Stephen Colbert playing a telegenic blowhard.Joel Jefferies/Comedy Central

Nor can you diagnose this as audience burnout on political comedy. Colbert was the highest-rated host in his time slot for most of his run. Even if you believe his axing was “purely a financial decision” by CBS — you won’t catch me trying to convince you — his exit is reminiscent of the Smothers Brothers, whose political comedy show was a hit for CBS and got replaced by “Hee Haw” in 1969 anyway. End of an era? Maybe the era ended him.

But while his run lasted, Colbert presided over an era when political TV comedy could take a side and still succeed. Or actually, two eras, which almost perfectly coincided with his two shows: one that parodied politics, one made in a time when politics became a parody of itself.

COLBERT ARRIVED AS HOST of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” in October 2005, with an eyebrow pointed like a javelin and a fully formed thesis statement.

“Stephen Colbert,” the conservative commentator Colbert had originated on “The Daily Show,” was the real Colbert’s own Bizarro reflection, a telegenic blowhard who knew nothing and said it as loud as he could. His first monologue introduced “truthiness,” a generation-defining coinage for the idea that it is more important for something to feel true than to be true.

It was a political age’s defining critique, and perhaps its epitaph. You might not have thought, when the “Report” premiered, that the George W. Bush era was over. The president had been re-elected with a popular-vote majority and had three more years in office. Culturally, cable news was in its bunting-draped post-9/11 era, parodied in the show’s screaming-eagle intro credits. Tucker Carlson still had a show on MSNBC.

Colbert nearly always remained in character in public appearances, as when discussing his gimmick presidential bid with Tim Russert in 2007.Alex Wong/Meet the Press, via Getty Images

But eras often end only in retrospect. In fall 2005, the war in Iraq was dragging on and the response to Hurricane Katrina had proved a debacle. When Colbert delivered the “truthiness” monologue — and certainly when he roasted President Bush and the media that covered him at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — it was as sure a sign as any that the culture had turned.

In 2008, Barack Obama, a president much more in line with Colbert’s real-life politics, won election. The nation changed course, but thanks to “the character,” as Colbert referred to his host persona, the show didn’t have to.

The Obama presidency was a boon for conservative commentators, from Glenn Beck working his chalkboard to Sean Hannity mocking the new president for putting Dijon mustard on his hamburger. The great American hot-air machine ensured that the “Report” would never lack for material.

“The Colbert Report” incorporated plenty of comedic stunts.Charles Sykes/Associated Press

What made the show enduring was that it was above all a satire of a political-media industry unconstrained by term limits. Like “The Daily Show,” it was a work of media criticism. It made fun of the imperative to defend the indefensible, to tie and gag one’s brain and follow one’s talking points right off an intellectual cliff.

The show also kept things interesting through a series of ever-bigger comic-educational stunts (a model later followed by John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight”). Colbert tried to get on the ballot in the South Carolina presidential primary. (Because how absurd was it that you could go from hosting a TV show to the White House?) He sent viewers to edit the Wikipedia entries on elephants to illustrate “wikiality,” the idea that consensus belief in a lie could overrule facts. Most audaciously, he created an actual SuperPAC, an extended satire-seminar on the mechanisms by which money controls politics.

Colbert testified before Congress in character in 2010.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images

In 2014, when Colbert was named to succeed Letterman at “The Late Show,” it seemed like one of those cultural handoffs in which the alternative goes mainstream. He would leave basic cable for the major leagues, becoming a normal host of a normal show in normal times. One of his first guests, it was announced, would be the early Republican presidential front-runner Jeb Bush.

But when late-night comics make plans, God laughs hardest of all.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED while Colbert was between shows: Donald Trump rode down an escalator in Trump Tower and transacted his hostile takeover of the national spotlight. The run of Colbert’s “Late Show” would coincide with, as he described it on a recent episode, “10 years of Donald Trump worming his way into our brains.”

When he debuted in September 2015, Colbert resisted going wholeheartedly political. His first show included a run of Trump gags, but Colbert capped off the routine by dumping a package of Oreos over his face, a spin that suggested these jokes were comedy junk food, an empty-calorie, cheap sugar high.

Who could blame him? He’d spent years marinating in partisan commentary to satirize it. “To model that behavior, you have to consume that behavior on a regular basis,” he told me at the time. “It became very hard to watch punditry of any kind.” He seemed good and done with it, ready to show another side of himself as an entertainer and a person.

When Colbert became host of “The Late Show,” he left his “Colbert Report” character behind.Chad Batka for The New York Times

Besides, the wisdom of TV for decades was that political points of view were deadly on big-network late night. People liked “equal-opportunity offenders” like Johnny Carson or Jay Leno, but if you took a side, you’d lose half your audience — especially on Middle America’s TV home, CBS.

But for the first year or so, Colbert’s “Late Show” felt rudderless, avoidant. It wasn’t for the host’s lack of talent as a performer or interviewer. The show was upbeat and playful, but it lacked a focus.

President Trump gave it one. By early 2017, he was the star of every late-night show’s monologues. But there was a difference between Colbert’s jokes and his “Tonight Show” competitor Jimmy Fallon’s. Fallon seemed desperately to hope everyone could just laugh about the president’s hairdo and move on. Colbert’s jabs had a take guided by a moral compass. (That, incidentally, also helped define for viewers the “real” person hidden for years behind a persona.)

And that’s when another funny thing happened: “The Late Show” pulled aheadand away from “The Tonight Show” in the ratings. Credit Colbert’s talent but also a shift in the culture and media environment. The idea that political stances were poison in late night, it turned out, was a holdover of pre-cable, pre-internet TV. Carson could speak to everyone because there was an “everyone” to speak to.

Donald Trump was polarizing — that was the point of him — a figure of a fragmented culture with few common spaces left. Conversely, he was also essentially the only American monoculture left, the one reference everyone would get, more than sports or music or niche entertainments. Talk shows couldn’t credibly choose pop culture over politics now that politics was pop culture.

This time, however, Colbert’s satire came in a different package: through himself, Stephen Colbert, no air quotes.

Colbert with Kamala Harris in 2025. “The Late Show” became more popular when it became more political.Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

Hosting “The Late Show” as himself was not an innovative idea; it was the conventional host mode since the days of black-and-white TV. But if only for its accident of timing, it was striking that Colbert was dropping his mask at a time when actual political rhetoric was increasingly weaponizing the use of memes and a joking-not-joking stance. (Among the things for which the president has claimed comic license: inviting Russia to hack Hillary Clinton, injecting disinfectant to kill the Covid virus, wanting a third term.)

If “The Colbert Report” was a lampoon of pundits who took themselves insufferably seriously, then “The Late Show” proved the right vehicle to make comedy of a politics of trolling and taunting. It was an old-fashioned talk show — with celebrities, musical guests and a band — taking on an era whose rhetoric was so extreme and aesthetics so garish as to be almost beyond parody. (Today, the White House social media regularly posts A.I. slop that makes the “Colbert Report” screaming eagle seem tasteful.)

It was not as innovative as “The Colbert Report.” Nor was it as gaspingly funny. Great comedy is about surprise, and political audiences want to be affirmed. The show felt less urgent in the Biden years (see the dancing syringescelebrating the Covid vaccine in 2021). The crowd’s fervor can get in the way of the comedy, as when a photo of JD Vance (“vice president and scornful hamster”) pops onscreen during Colbert’s monologue and the audience boos, muddying the rhythm and stepping on the joke.

I suspect this was not the show Colbert imagined doing when he started it in 2015. But then these are not the times many of us imagined we’d be living in, and the host stepped up to them. You can’t say his words didn’t leave a mark on the critic-in-chief, who celebrated Colbert’s cancellation on Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired.”

Both Colbert’s run as “Late Show” host and the franchise itself end on Thursday night.Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

AS IT IS, COLBERT’S “Late Show” will be defined largely by its chief antagonist. Indeed, since the cancellation was announced, President Trump’s second term has given “The Late Show” a glut of material and the kind of feisty energy that “The Colbert Report” had in its early days under President Bush.

The administration handed Colbert, a devoted Catholic, a parting gift for the show’s final weeks: an honest-to-God presidential feud with the Pope, not to mention the A.I. image President Trump posted that seemed to depict himself as Jesus Christ, though the president later said he thought the image was of him as a doctor.

“If you just woke from a coma and that report was the first thing you saw, you’d ask the doctor to put you back in,” Colbert said. “No, I’m sorry. You’d ask the Jesus to put you back in.”

It was a funny joke, but, like many of Colbert’s Trump zingers of late, it was laced with the exhaustion of having lived too long in interesting times. Colbert began his “Late Show” analogizing Trump jokes to a sleeve of cookies; now we’re all like Homer Simpson in Hell’s Ironic Punishment Division, being force-fed doughnuts for eternity.

Colbert at least will get to undergo a cleanse; his first post-late-night project is writing a script for a Peter Jackson “Lord of the Rings” movie, a fitting escape for TV’s chief Tolkien nerd. Good luck to him in Middle-Earth. Better luck to the rest of us on regular Earth, who must get by, for now, with one fewer comedic wizard beside us.

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics.“