The Democratic Party’s socialist wing is taking a victory lap after more than a dozen Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, backed candidates won or are expected to advance in primaries across five states, casting the results as proof of momentum, despite party leaders urging Democrats to stay focused on electability ahead of the midterms.

Tuesday’s primaries produced outright wins, apparent victories and runoff advancements for more than a dozen candidates linked to or backed by the DSA, including candidates for Congress, state legislatures, and local offices such as mayor and city council. One of the biggest victories came in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, where Chris Rabb, a sitting state representative and self-identified democratic socialist, won the Democratic primary. 

Rabb is running unopposed in the November general election, which will lead him to becoming DSA’s second nationally endorsed member of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the organization.

DSA’s election night live blog described the results for its «ambitious slate of candidates» as «rosy,» adding, «There is a new Democratic Socialist in Congress,» following Rabb’s primary win since he will be running unopposed.

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«There’s dissatisfaction with the establishment,» Mustafa Rashed, a Philadelphia-based political strategist, told WHYY News, the primary NPR-affiliate in the area. «[Voters] want someone different and if you can unapologetically present yourself as an outsider, as someone that’s going to give you a different outcome, I think people will be receptive to that message and respond to it. And I think that’s what happened.»

«What this means is that there’s potential for a new working-class alignment of voters… [who are] saying the same thing to the political establishment and the political machine in both the Republican and Democratic Party,» Maurice Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, told WHYY News shortly after the results were released. Mitchell described Rabb’s Tuesday night victory as «a shockwave» heard around the nation, WHYY reported.

According to the DSA, May’s primaries were «just the beginning,» citing a list of 27 DSA-endorsed candidates on the ballot in the upcoming slate of June primaries.

The socialist victories on Tuesday landed the same week the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a long-delayed 2024 postmortem report that warned Republicans will continue trying to elevate Democrats whose politics or positions can be used to paint candidates in competitive races as out of touch. The report also suggested Democrats need to reconnect with Middle America, the South, rural voters, men, Latinos and working-class communities while building stronger messaging around affordability, public safety and candidate quality, rather than assuming anti-Trump energy is enough.

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DNC Chairman Ken Martin first promised to release a 2024 postmortem report after becoming DNC chair, then reversed course in December by arguing the party should focus on winning rather than rehashing the failures of the last election. 

That decision triggered months of pressure from activists, Democratic operatives and potential 2028 figures, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, before Martin released the report Thursday with a sweeping disclaimer distancing the DNC from its findings.

A man is seen walking in front of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters located in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

«Socialism is ascendant in today’s Democratic Party, and it’s influencing and shaping the primary election contests in a way that potentially spells doom for the party in general elections,» GOP strategist Collin Reed told Fox News Digital.

Reed compared Democrats’ current left-wing primary pressures to the Tea Party-era candidacy fights Republicans faced more than a decade ago, saying it was «ironic to see the shoe now on the other foot.»

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«As someone who’s old enough to have lived through the 2010 and 2012 cycles, when Republicans had a similar challenge in nominating and choosing candidates who could win general elections, it’s ironic to see the shoe now on the other foot,» Reed said.

The danger that could be afoot for Democrats heading into the midterms, and even the 2028 presidential election, has been echoed by Democratic Party leadership who have warned their party against putting all of its energy into ideological fights at the expense of electability.

At a July fundraiser last year, former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to stop «navel-gazing,»  and support candidates already running competitive races and focus less on ideology than whether candidates can deliver for voters.

Former President Barack Obama  (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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«I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,» Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts obtained by CNN.

«Stop looking for the quick fix,» he added. «Stop looking for the messiah. You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates.» 

Some progressives, however, have viewed Rabb’s win as evidence that the winning energy behind socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani can travel beyond New York.

«Philly progressives don’t want to waste the momentum they’re seeing in Maine, Texas and Michigan on another establishment candidate,» Ryan Birchmeier, a Democratic strategist and a previous communications director for former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, told The Guardian. «They see this as their ‘Zohran moment.’»

Protesters hold Democratic Socialists of America signs during a May Day rally in Minneapolis. (Derek Shook/Fox News Digital)

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Rabb himself made a similar comparison in March, telling City & State Pennsylvania that voters were motivated less by the Democratic Party itself and more by «opposition to extremism» and «anti-establishment fervor.»

Rabb, too, pointed to Mamdani’s election in New York City and said he was seeing that same energy «on the ground» in Philadelphia.

In 2024, climate activists in New York City protested alongside anti-Israel protesters at a rally headlined «Climate Justice Means Free Palestine.» Last year, climate change celebrity icon Greta Thunberg tried to storm Israel by sea on a flotilla protesting the country’s war in Gaza, yelling «Free! Free! Palestine!» when she was refused entry.

And, last week, activists from CodePink, a far-left feminist activist group that has received funds from an American expatriate, Neville Roy Singham, living in Shanghai, took a break from their rallies supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Cuba Communist Party to circulate a video on Instagram, attacking a Utah data center project backed by investor Kevin O’Leary.

What connects these causes?

Climate activists, anti-Israel protesters and other activist movements with very different agendas have become strange bedfellows united by a shared disdain for America and funding from China, according to experts who warn the trend is weakening the United States amid a rapidly accelerating AI race.

Critics say the same activist ecosystem is now targeting America’s AI infrastructure and industrial power, in a development that experts warn could undermine the United States in its technological competition with China.

The growing convergence increasingly includes communist and Islamist activist movements, and it recently extended into campaigns targeting America’s artificial intelligence data centers, with activist and environmental groups helping delay or block dozens of such projects worth billions of dollars over concerns about energy use, water consumption and environmental impact amid rising power demand.

Fox News Digital has observed many of the movements protesting side-by-side at demonstrations across the country despite their otherwise stark ideological differences.

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«What all of these protests have in common — the protests against AI data centers or the environmental protests or the protest against Israel — is that anti-American trend within them,» Hudson Institute fellow Zineb Riboua told Fox News Digital.

«Climate change was also one of those very trendy causes to protest for or against, and now there’s always this quest to find what is the next thing to revolutionize,» Riboua added. «And this revolution against the United States is always welcome, no matter what type of forms and shapes it takes.»

Same network, new issue

Fox News Digital has previously reported that Singham, a U.S.-born tech tycoon living in Shanghai, funneled roughly $285 million into six activist nonprofits accused by lawmakers and analysts of promoting pro-China narratives and anti-American protest movements.

O’Leary accused local groups opposing the Utah project of being tied to China-linked funding networks and argued the backlash reflected a broader nationwide trend of activist campaigns targeting AI infrastructure, though Fox News Digital has not independently verified the Utah-related allegations.

Protesters react as the Box Elder County Commission approves a large AI data center project in Tremonton, Utah, on May 4, 2026. Activists opposed the proposed 40,000-acre development over concerns about water use, energy demand and environmental impact. (Natalie Behring/Getty Images)

‘Red-green-green alliance’

Riboua, who specializes in anti-West ideological movements and China’s influence in the Middle East, warned that the overlap between climate activists, anti-Israel protesters, communists and Islamists is being driven by a broader anti-American worldview she described as «Third Worldism,» an ideology that divides the world into «oppressors» and «oppressed» and casts the United States and the West as the primary source of global problems.

The ideology unites otherwise unrelated activist causes under a shared anti-Western framework, she said.

«Third Worldism drives anti-Americanism because the goal of Third Worldism is basically dismantling a cohesive Western society or Western country,» Riboua said.

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Energy expert Brenda Shaffer, a research faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, described the broader activist convergence as part of a «red-green-green alliance,» an ideological overlap between three elements: communist movements, characterized by the color red; Islamist activism, described as green; and environmental protest groups, symbolized as green.

They increasingly unite around anti-West and anti-American causes, she said.

Riboua said the alliance has become increasingly visible as activist groups move rapidly from one issue to another — from climate protests to anti-Israel demonstrations and now toward campaigns targeting AI infrastructure and data centers.

The overlap has also become increasingly visible on the streets. At a 2024 «Climate Justice Means Free Palestine» rally in New York City, climate activists and pro-Palestinian demonstrators protested side-by-side.

«There’s always this quest to find what is the next thing to revolutionize,» she said.

People participate in a «Climate Justice Means Free Palestine» rally outside Citibank headquarters in New York City on June 18, 2024. Protesters carried pro-Palestinian signs and climate justice messaging during the demonstration. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Riboua pointed to Thunberg’s evolution into a vocal anti-Israel activist as an example of the growing ideological overlap between climate activism and broader anti-West protest movements.

«Greta is not an Islamist, and I think that she never read Karl Marx, but she has all the good instincts of a revolutionary against the evil oppressor, Westerner, and the United States,» Riboua said.

China, energy and the AI race

Shaffer warned the growing convergence is increasingly affecting industries critical to America’s economic and technological competition with China.

«Energy is crucial to the AI race, to the data centers,» Shaffer told Fox News Digital via a Zoom interview.

Shaffer argued that while activist groups in the West target fossil fuels, AI infrastructure and industrial development, China continues rapidly expanding coal production, manufacturing capacity and energy generation.

«So we’re truly by adopting international climate policies, we’re weakening the West,» Shaffer said.

«China really benefits from these policies that we adopt and we just let them keep forging ahead with coal.»

Shaffer compared the trend to Soviet-backed anti-nuclear activism during the Cold War, arguing that adversarial powers have historically benefited from anti-energy movements in the West.

Racks of servers with colorful wires are seen in a data center as AI expansion strains the power grid, prompting a proposal for tech firms to fund their own energy needs. (Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)

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«You saw traditionally the Soviet Union funding movements against nuclear energy in Europe so that Europe would remain dependent on Soviet and later Russian gas,» Shaffer said.

She also warned that increasing Western dependence on Chinese renewable-energy supply chains could create new strategic vulnerabilities because China dominates major parts of the global solar and inverter market.

Shaffer argued many activist campaigns focus on delaying or blocking energy and infrastructure projects in the United States while China rapidly expands coal consumption and industrial production.

Riboua added that many ordinary protesters are not necessarily driven by ideology, but by simplified narratives amplified through social media clickbait and activist messaging.

«Some people are generally good people and they want to have a moral position,» she said. «They know headlines … there’s a lot of ignorance.»

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Shaffer warned that artificial intelligence infrastructure requires enormous amounts of reliable electricity and said the West risks falling behind China if energy costs continue rising and infrastructure projects continue facing activist opposition.

«You can’t have an arms industry built on solar energy,» she said.