In the deep-blue stronghold of Illinois, voters delivered a clear message on Tuesday: the far-left wing of the Democrat Party, often amplified by high-profile endorsements from members of “The Squad,” does not command the loyalty it once appeared to hold.
Progressive challengers backed by figures like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others went down to defeat in multiple Democratic primaries, handing victories to more moderate, establishment-aligned candidates. This outcome in a state that reliably delivers Democratic majorities raises fresh questions about the party’s internal direction ahead of the November 3, 2026, general elections.
The most closely watched contest came in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, where 26-year-old progressive activist and influencer Kat Abughazaleh sought to replace the retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Abughazaleh campaigned on an aggressive platform that included a wealth tax and strong criticism of U.S. policy toward Israel, earning endorsements from Tlaib and Omar. She fell short against Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston and a former state legislator, who positioned himself as a pragmatic progressive focused on local issues like climate policy and building regulations. Biss’s win signaled that even in a safe Democratic seat, voters preferred experience and moderation over ideological purity.
Similar patterns emerged elsewhere in the state. In a bid for a congressional seat, state Sen. Robert Peters—a progressive who had championed the end of cash bail and minimum wage increases—raised over $1.1 million but lost to Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller. Peters had backing from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In the 7th District, activist Anthony Driver Jr., endorsed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was defeated by establishment figure La Shawn Ford. Tech entrepreneur Junaid Ahmed, who emphasized Gaza self-determination and universal healthcare and received support from Ocasio-Cortez, Jayapal, and Warren, also came up short.
Collectively, these Squad-aligned candidates raised around $5.7 million, yet none advanced to the general election. The defeats came despite the energy from progressive groups and the national spotlight on their causes. Instead, mainstream Democrats prevailed, advancing to face Republicans in November. Even in cases where winners like Biss held progressive views on certain issues, the results favored candidates seen as more attuned to winning broad support rather than energizing a narrow base.
Democratic strategist James Carville dismissed notions of progressive momentum, pointing out that only about 15% of the party identifies as progressive and that they rarely exceed that share in primaries. He referenced a recent New York race where a progressive secured just over 50% as evidence against any sweeping national shift. Liam Kerr of Welcome PAC described the Illinois results as proof that “the noise machine around far-left candidates rarely translates into actual votes,” with voters prioritizing winning over ideological performance.
Jim Kessler of the Third Way think tank called the outcomes a “cold shower to the progressive fringe,” emphasizing that every winner was a mainstream Democrat. He argued that Democrats must continually relearn the lesson that mainstream approaches beat extreme ones. On the other side, Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee contended that the debate is not about the appeal of progressive economic policies but about whether candidates who truly champion them can overcome opposition from powerful industries funding more compliant alternatives.
Some observers noted nuance in the results. Michael Ceraso, a veteran of the 2016 Sanders campaign, pointed out that winners like Biss and those backed by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker—who has advanced minimum wage hikes, ended sub-minimum wages for disabled workers, and protected reproductive rights—represent real progress. The governor’s support for Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in her successful primary further illustrated that progressive policy gains can occur without embracing the most confrontational candidates.
These Illinois primaries fit into a broader pattern of Democratic infighting visible in other blue areas. In recent cycles, progressive insurgents have occasionally prevailed but often struggle against well-funded establishment defenses or external groups like AIPAC, which targeted several of these candidates over their stances on Israel. The results do not erase progressive influence—policies on wages, climate, and social issues continue to advance—but they do expose limits to the Squad-style approach in even the most favorable terrain.
Voters in deep-blue Illinois chose moderation over revolution, at least in these contests. Whether this signals a durable shift or a temporary correction remains to be seen, but the message is unmistakable: in the battle for the Democratic Party’s future, the center still holds significant sway. As the party looks toward November and beyond, the tension between energizing the base and winning elections will only intensify.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
