The Democratic Party's progressive wing has won two votes inside the Democratic National Committee that it had been losing for years. At the committee's summer meeting in Austin, Texas, in August, the DNC formally called on Democrats in Congress to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it reaffirmed its support for the Leahy Laws, which bar U.S. weapons sales to foreign security forces that commit human-rights abuses. The progressive outlet Truthout, looking back on the meeting on October 2, called the votes "a clear win for progressive activists inside the party."
Their reach is limited, and not every signal points the same way. Both resolutions are nonbinding; the party's platform will be written at the 2028 convention, and candidates are not required to follow either one. The DNC also approved a competing resolution from its chair, Ken Martin, that calls for reforming ICE rather than abolishing it. And the party's 2028 primary calendar puts South Carolina first, a choice many progressives opposed.
The ICE vote
The abolition resolution, introduced by Michele Johnson, a DNC member from Louisiana, passed the resolutions committee 25 to 12 on August 13 after a rare open fight, and the full DNC approved it on August 15 in a package passed by unanimous voice vote, alongside Martin's reform measure. "The DNC urges Democratic members of Congress to craft legislation abolishing ICE and enacting immigration reform that provides pathways to citizenship, protects workers, and ensures dignity for all impacted people," it reads. "No amount of tinkering at the edges will make the culture change," Johnson told the committee. Marge Hoffa, the DNC's Midwestern regional vice chair, argued against it: "We shouldn't contradict ourselves by also introducing a resolution that would now call to abolish something that we have [a] well-established track record of calling to be drastically reformed." Martin said afterward that Democrats are united against the Trump administration's enforcement tactics, even if they disagree on whether to end the agency or change it. Republicans seized on the vote; the Republican National Committee called the proposal "dangerous."
Arms sales, without naming Israel
The Leahy Laws resolution, also brought by Johnson, passed unanimously. It does not mention Israel, and Johnson's speech in support of it did not either. Truthout reads that as a new tactic: at the DNC's 2025 summer meeting, the resolutions committee blocked a measure calling for an arms embargo on Israel in favor of a softer resolution from Martin, and earlier attempts to condemn AIPAC spending in primaries also failed. The Leahy Laws have never been used to block military aid to Israel, and critics of Israel's conduct in Gaza have long argued they should be.
Where 2028 cuts the other way
The calendar is the clearest counter-signal. The DNC chose South Carolina over Nevada to hold the first 2028 primary. Bernie Sanders won Nevada in 2020, and some analysts say South Carolina's Democratic electorate, anchored by Black voters who have tended to favor establishment candidates, is harder ground for the left. "That dynamic has historically been tough terrain for the most progressive voices in the party," said Craig Agranoff, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University. Others disagree. Grant Reeher of Syracuse University's Maxwell School told Newsweek that primaries draw the most energized voters and that "with a large field, that could help the one most progressive (or socialist) candidate emerge with a plurality."
Even Truthout cautions that "there isn't much evidence for a causal relationship between what the DNC committee votes to support and the policies that Democratic candidates actually champion." Its argument is narrower: a 2028 candidate who stakes out a position to the right of the party committee on the Leahy Laws or immigration may now have to explain why.
Sources: Truthout, October 2, 2026; the Epoch Times wire report of the committee debate, August 14, 2026; The Federalist and wire coverage of the August 15 vote; Newsweek, July 25, 2026.