Another liberal media darling is throwing their hat in the ring in the 2026 midterms.
Olivia Troye made headlines in August 2020 when she resigned as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to then-Vice President Mike Pence, citing President Donald Trump‘s handling of the COVID pandemic among other complaints.
Troye’s departure from the White House was welcomed with praise and cemented herself as a fixture in establishment media circles. Since leaving government in 2020 she made at least 92 appearances on CNN and a whopping 248 on MS NOW/MSNBC, according to data by the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center. She landed a prominent speaker slot at the 2024 DNC Convention in support of Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Last week, she announced she was running for Congress in Virginia’s 7th district as a Democrat. Notably, despite her reputation among the #NeverTrump ilk, Troye was a Democrat before serving in the Trump administration, revealing in her campaign launch video that she had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but decided to continue working in the federal government, saying “serving your country isn’t supposed to be partisan.”
Troye’s entry into politics is the latest of multiple anti-Trump figures who’ve embraced Democratic politics so much so that they’re putting themselves on the ballot.
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Before the Trump era, George Conway was a highly-respected conservative attorney in Washington, D.C. But during the first Trump term, Conway began gaining notoriety for his posts on Twitter (now called X) slamming Trump while his then-wife Kellyanne Conway was serving as White House counselor.
In 2019, he co-founded the scandal-plagued anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project (he left in 2020) and later became a contributing writer for The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Like Troye, Conway also increasingly made numerous appearances on CNN and MS NOW.
Conway is now running for Congress in a crowded Democratic primary in New York’s 12th district, hoping to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler. Among Conway’s top rivals is Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy.
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Another 2026 hopeful who had quite the political turnaround is David Jolly. Jolly previously served as a Republican congressman from Florida. But during the 2016 election cycle, Jolly lost his standing within his party when he became a vocal critic of Trump’s ascent to the White House.
After leaving Congress in 2017 following his election defeat, Jolly left the Republican Party and landed a gig as an MSNBC (now called MS Now) contributor.
Jolly is now running as a Democrat for governor in Floria.
One of the biggest breakout media stars during Trump’s first term was Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a former Army officer who served on Trump’s National Security Council. He emerged as the whistleblower and key witness in the president’s first impeachment over the Ukraine scandal. Vindman sounded the alarm on Trump’s now-infamous July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing the president of pressuring Zelenskyy to target Trump’s likely 2020 opponent, former President Joe Biden, while temporarily putting a pause on military aid.
Vindman went on a media tour in 2021 to promote his book, giving interviews to ABC, CBS, MSNBC among others. The USSR-born veteran also became a prominent figure providing commentary in the media’s coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
He is now running for Senate in Florida as a Democrat, eying to unseat Republican incumbent Ashley Moody. He hopes to join his twin brother, Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., in Congress.
