The Democratic National Committee‘s summer meeting kicked off Thursday in Texas with members rallying around embattled Chairman Ken Martin even as the party wrestles with financial problems and ideological divisions ahead of the midterm elections.
DNC members previously signaled to the Washington Examiner that there is little appetite to oust Martin before the midterm elections, despite calls from Democrats outside the committee for him to step down.
Martin has faced a series of problems as chairman, including a major cash crunch compared with the Republican National Committee, which has worried party members eager to reclaim control of the House or Senate in November. The DNC ended June with $16.3 million cash on hand and more than $18 million in debt, while the RNC had $128 million cash on hand and no debt.
Martin also faced heavy criticism for the handling of an incomplete 2024 election autopsy that answered few questions about former Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss to President Donald Trump.
Two months after the shelved autopsy report was released, revelations that Martin threw a phone at the desk of a junior staffer, asked vendors not to bill the DNC until after the midterm elections, and used DNC headquarters as collateral for a $15 million line of credit reignited calls from Democrats outside the committee for Martin to resign.
But at the DNC’s Resolutions Committee meeting Thursday, members publicly praised Martin’s leadership and pushed back against the Democratic infighting that has spilled into public view.
“Are you tired of hearing everyone criticize us for not working?” Bill Owen, a Tennessee DNC member, asked. “I think all of us are working as hard as we can to elect Democrats, and this goes … especially to our friends at Morning Joe and Joe Scarborough. I’m tired of him ragging on our chair, Ken Martin. Ken Martin’s a passionate guy.”
Democrats have overperformed in the majority of state and federal elections since Trump began his second term. In April, Democrats expanded their majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. The next month, they held on to control of the Michigan state Senate.
Yet the party remains deeply divided over how to rebuild after its 2024 losses. An insurgent socialist wing, led by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has toppled several incumbent Democrats this midterm cycle. Tensions over U.S. support for Israel continue to dominate the primaries.
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In Michigan, progressive Abdul el Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) for the Democratic Senate nomination after regularly criticizing Israel and accusing it of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars unsuccessfully opposing el Sayed’s bid against the pro-Israel Stevens.
Those divisions have also spilled into the DNC itself.
Ron Harris, cochair of the DNC resolutions committee, provided members with an update on the Middle East Working Group’s plans. The group was created by Martin last year to hammer out the party’s official stance on Israel and Gaza.
“The group continues to meet and has sketched out a plan to hold a series of sessions with affinity groups, with pollsters, policy experts, and others,” Harris said. “And members will have the opportunities to both listen to these sessions and contribute questions.”
The party’s divisions were even more apparent Thursday during a lengthy debate over a resolution calling for the formal abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some members sought to amend the resolution to call for reforming ICE rather than abolishing it.
“We’ve adopted resolutions to reform ICE in the past, including the spring meeting in New Orleans, we’ve also just adopted a strong resolution from Chair Martin on the same topic,” said Marge Hoffa, a Minnesota DNC member. “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.”
Members at its 2025 summer meeting denounced the Trump administration’s deportation tactics but stopped short of the calls to “abolish ICE.”
At an April meeting this year, the DNC approved a resolution calling for the replacement of the current structure of ICE to rein in the “lawless conduct of federal immigration enforcement agents.” Another resolution, “demanding improvements and accountability in ICE Detention Facilities, and opposing abusive facilities” was also passed.
On Thursday, the DNC’s resolution committee approved the abolish ICE initiative in a 25-12 vote with one abstention. It now heads to the full DNC for a vote, which is expected either Friday or Saturday.
“Democrats are the open borders party,” Natalie Baldassarre, the RNC’s national press secretary, said shortly after the resolution advanced. “Their radical pro-criminal agenda puts law enforcement and the public at risk. President Trump secured our border, deported violent criminal aliens, and delivered the lowest murder rate in 125 years. If Democrats had any backbone they’d vote down this dangerous proposal and put American citizens first.”
DNC members noted that the resolution is not legally binding but more of a symbolic tool for the Democratic base.
“At the end of the day, this is a resolution passed by the Democratic National Committee,” said Harini Krishnan, a California DNC member. “It does not have any legal binding on the DHS, but what it does do is send a message to voters who have moved left on this issue; it doesn’t matter what state you live in in this country. Voters are asking for us to hold ICE accountable and ICE out. … This resolution is exactly what we need to send a message that, as a Democratic National Committee, we do not stand for this.”
The DNC declined to comment when asked by the Washington Examiner.
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John McCarthy, a New Jersey DNC member, defended the debate to the Washington Examiner, saying that “public support for ICE drop kind of across the board.”
“This is something where I think that voters certainly said immigration was an issue that they cared about,” he said. “What the Trump administration has done, especially in some of these cities where they have just been agitators, you know, people didn’t vote for that either.”