2020 Election

A Democratic president who politely listens to progressive rhetoric while failing to act on it is one who just watches the planet burn a little more slowly.

Party leaders have blamed progressive left policies for disappointing electoral results. A close examination of winners and losers suggests otherwise.

Through rigorous reporting, commentary, and a live video show in partnership with NowThis News, The Appeal has covered Congressional races, statehouse races, city councils and county commission elections, District Attorney and sheriff races, and more in the 2020 election cycle. Up and down the ballot, we’ve focused our coverage on the candidates who are running […]

A grassroots coalition is showing up at locations across the swing state to ensure Black and Latinx voters can cast their ballots safely.

If she’s successful in her bid to represent Texas’s 24th Congressional District, Valenzuela will flip the district to blue and become the first Black and Latinx member of Congress.

The media, more than ever, has an important role in preserving our democracy during this election season. The more that members of the media expose false, misleading, or manipulative claims for what they are, the less likely it is for Americans to fall for President Donald Trump’s insidious tactics on and after Election Day.

Newman, who is running for a U.S. House seat, wants Medicare for all, green jobs, and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Quezada has supported progressive policies since starting out in the state legislature in 2012. He’s now running for his final term, which could be his most important, given the state’s changing power dynamics.

Fort Bend Sheriff Troy Nehls wants voters to send him to Congress despite his department’s history of jail deaths and allegations of racial-profiling.

The Adolescent Redemption Project, a new group organized by Michigan prisoners sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, is advocating for progressive prosecutors.

Chrysta Castañeda wants to use the state Railroad Commission’s powers to stop energy companies from engaging in environmentally harmful practices like burning excess gas.

Efforts by elected leaders in several states are making it harder to get to the polls and fomenting misinformation about the election amid a pandemic.

The group is seeing real challenges posed by the pandemic, voter suppression tactics, and threats of intimidation.

Shifting control of the states’ highest courts next month will prove critical on a number of major issues, including redistricting in 2021.

In a presidential election likely to take weeks or months to decide, the race to name a winner on Nov. 3 could do tremendous damage to the integrity of the vote-counting process.

If he becomes president and Democrats win the Senate, Biden should push a federal spending bill that includes money for civilian first-responder programs.

This year’s presidential contest will be the first since a federal judge lifted a decades-old consent decree barring the Republican National Committee from engaging in “ballot security,” or voter intimidation at the polls.

A trio of cases in Wisconsin and Texas illustrates how Republican judges are feigning helplessness in the face of a public health crisis while furthering their own ends.

‘We literally held an election during a pandemic.’

Advocates worry the widespread confusion may have a chilling effect on eligible voters.

Incumbent District Attorneys faced challenges from reform candidates in California and Texas

The Democratic candidate also pledged to expunge prior criminal convictions for marijuana and invest in the communities most affected by the war on drugs.

As old audio clips of Bloomberg defending the controversial policing policy went viral, new data showed the practice isn’t fading away in New York city.

After two terms at the helm of the nation’s largest prosecutor office, Lacey has drawn pointed criticism from community advocates who say she is standing in the way of criminal justice reform.

The former San Francisco DA got the nod over incumbent Jackie Lacey, whose tenure advocates and activists have long criticized as lackluster.

Harris’s record as a prosecutor was representative of a politics of the past. The nation has moved on.

The billionaire and former New York City mayor defended the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim Americans and mandatory minimum prison sentences for gun possession, among other policies.

Biden believes that the jury is still out on the question of whether marijuana is a gateway to other illicit substances. But the truth is that it is not—and this has long been a matter of settled science.

Cabán, the career public defender who lost a primary bid for district attorney in Queens County, New York, will help the political party build nationwide support in criminal justice elections.

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor says his plan—which includes cutting the incarcerated population by half—will “rebalance” a system that is “unfair and racist in many ways.”

Rather than encouraging more faith in the police, true reform requires dismantling the system that empowers them.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Sometimes it seems as if U.S. Senator Kamala Harris thinks we aren’t paying attention. She seems to assume that if she chooses the right words, the ones […]

The 2020 presidential candidates recently unveiled national criminal justice agendas that reimagine public safety and punishment.