Democrats flock to Denver for a post-midterms introspection-turned-celebration

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Democrats flock to Denver for a post-midterms introspection-turned-celebration

2026-11-12 13:03 Last Updated At：15:01

DENVER (AP) — Fresh off the best electoral performance in half a century, Democratic officials and strategists will converge on Denver starting Thursday to plot a further course for the party and revel in their gains.

The two-day What's Next conference, hosted by a new group called Majority Democrats, was put on politicos' calendars months ago as another stepping stone as the party charted its way out of its post-2024 political wilderness.

Now Democrats will have to figure out what to do with majorities in both chambers of Congress and control of at least 12 new state legislative chambers.

The schedule includes some of the victorious candidates from the midterms, such as Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico and Iowa Sen.-elect Josh Turek.

Also, there will be potential presidential hopefuls, such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

It's a who's-who of rising Democratic talent that will also make the event a showcase for the party.

The gathering is also a showcase of sorts for Denver, which remains in the hunt for the party's 2028 convention after last hosting one in 2008. The city is selling itself as a modern example of a purple state turning solid blue, and its mayor, Mike Johnston, will kick off the festivities Thursday.

The group Majority Democrats seeks to bridge the traditional left-center splits that have riven the party for years, particularly since the 2024 election that returned President Donald Trump to the White House. It particularly positions itself as the voice of a new generation of party leaders tired of old ideological and establishment battles, and the speaker list skews noticeably young.

The conference also includes various party leaders, such as the likely next House speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, who has engendered suspicion among some on the left who continue to target the party's Washington power structure.

5 years of fighting climate change haven't done much and stronger targets are needed, report says

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — The world has failed to slow or stop global warming trends in the past five years because plans weren’t realized and efforts that would have helped were canceled out, a report said Thursday.

The grim assessment came during a U.N. climate meeting in Antalya, Turkey, where more government leaders were due to speak Thursday about the state of a warming world and what they hope to do about it.

“Aggregated climate action has now essentially stalled for five consecutive years with positive and negative actions canceling each other out,” the independent Climate Action Tracker said in its report. The first five years after the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world did so much that it trimmed an entire degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) from warming projections, but nothing has changed since, the report said.

Climate change is caused mainly by the release of greenhouse gases, which happens when fuels like gas, oil and coal are burned. Confronting climate change means finding ways to drastically cut the amount of emissions put into the atmosphere each year. Countries establish plans to reduce emissions, called nationally determined contributions. The speed of reductions and ways to achieve them are different by country.

Because collective efforts of countries haven't significantly reduced global emissions, the world is now “headed toward an irrecoverable overshoot of 1.5 degrees Celsius” (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, which is the warming threshold the world adopted during the Paris Agreement, according to the report.

The report said if the nations of the world fulfill all their climate promises — which is a big if — the globe will end the century 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial times. That's the same pace the globe was on in 2024 and 2025, showing the new set of promises made last year have “failed to the move the needle” of projected warming, said report lead author Sarah Heck, a climate policy analyst at Climate Analytics.

“This is still not enough,” Heck said. "Countries really do need to strengthen their targets.”

That's the message island leaders gave the rest of the world Wednesday. Even more leaders of island nations were expected Thursday to reinforce what to their people is a life-or-death message. While all the globe is threatened by climate change's souped-up storms, hotter heat waves, worsening droughts and floods, island nations also have to watch rising seas shrink swallow up their land.

“Every new oil well drilled, every piece of coal extracted is a threat to my country’s future. The discovery of new fossil fuel resources is not something to celebrate, but something to fear,” Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine said Wednesday as her colleagues from Tuvalu, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Niue and other islands are expected to make similar pleas Thursday. “No one has the right to pollute their neighbors.”

“It is time to wake up,” said Heine, who recalled coral that she watched go from “bright and lush” to white with bleaching this year. She said the response of the world to the inevitability of passing the 1.5 warming limit target “must be overwhelming or the world we know is over.”

To fight climate changes, the rich world needs to not just promise more, but also deliver more money to poor nations to help them recover from climate damage and adapt to a warmer world, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Wednesday.

“Pledges are not payments. But even the promised pledges are now 70% below previous levels,” Mottley told her fellow leaders. “So the applause in this room, let us be clear, has never rebuilt a single home in any country.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.