Ro Khanna | Exploring the new middle Today World News

The boundaries of the left and the right, conservatives and liberals, are all frayed in U.S. politics, as old ideas and loyalties collapse. The Democratic Party has not figured out a viable response to the chaos unleashed by Donald J. Trump a decade ago, in terms of leadership and ideas. Ambitious politicians are exploring the turmoil in the hope of chancing upon a career catapult. One who is increasingly in the spotlight is Rohit — Ro Khanna — who represents Silicon Valley in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. Khanna was first elected to the House on the same day Mr. Trump was elected President in 2016. He has placed himself in the eye of the storm, hoping to come out on top on the other side. Mr. Khanna believes that the Democratic Party has become “stale”, with “the same personalities. The same talking points. The same consultants. And I’m excited that you’ve got a lot of new voices that are emerging,” as he said in an interview.

Mr. Khanna has broken from the orthodoxy of his home Democratic turf and sought partnerships with a spectrum of political players, getting tongues wagging about his plans for the 2028 presidential election. Would he run for the Democratic nomination? He has not said no, and that probably is a yes at the moment.

He is raising funds when he is not raising the political temperature in the country. Mr. Khanna is evidently testing the waters and figuring out whether he has a winning script. Among questions that remain unclear is whether his brown skin could turn out to be an advantage or disadvantage, which would depend on how the racial bipolarity of American politics turns out in the next season. The midterm elections of November will be a defining moment for Mr. Khanna’s future — as it would be for the country’s politics in general.

Mr. Khanna is pushing the boundaries of American political conversations in a measured manner — causing enough uproar to be noticed as a disruptor, and keeping it below the threshold of slipping out of lane. He has been at the forefront of a campaign for the release of the complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the dead convict in a sex-trafficking scandal that entangles a long list of America’s powerful. He is questioning the President’s powers for taking the country to war in the middle of yet another war the current incumbent, Mr. Trump, has taken the U.S. into.

Economic agenda

He has a comprehensive economic agenda that combines points from America First nationalism and the welfarism of the Democratic left. He proposes state support for the development of manufacturing and the working class, and calls for moderation in maximalist tech capitalism. “We need a Marshall Plan for America — the federal government working with the private sector, working with labour, working with universities to re-industrialise these communities,” he said in an interview to the Foreign Policy magazine. He also stands for welfare expansion in health and education.

However, what marks out Mr. Khanna as an unmatched adventurer is his relentless questioning of Israel, and its influence in U.S. politics. That is a high-stakes gamble to be the voice of an evident but untested emerging strand of American politics — a bipartisan condemnation of Israel’s expansionism and militarism. From an unquestioned bipartisan support for Israel, there is now an unmissable bipartisan critique of Israel across a spectrum of intensity. In September 2025, he posted on X agreeing with “the UN commission’s heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza”. “What matters is what we do about it — stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognise a Palestinian state.”

In 2025, Mr. Khanna started a novel experiment of organising town hall meetings in Congressional districts held by Republicans in California. He explained it as a move to demonstrate accountability to the people. He was asked about his presidential ambitions by the New York Times then, and Mr. Khanna said it was immaterial. “Ambition is a good thing if it’s used towards good ends…I’m of Hindu faith. And one of the great teachings of the Gita is if you do your duty without worrying about the reward, you’re more likely to get rewards.”

He has continued with similar statements that kept the ambiguity until now. Mr. Khanna has strong connections with India and Hinduism, but he is a strident critic of Hindutva. His maternal grandfather was a freedom fighter for India, and spent five years in a British jail — a fact that Mr. Khanna rarely misses an opportunity to mention.

Pro-Israeli groups in the country have perhaps noticed him the most, and soon after he called Gaza a genocide, AIPAC unleashed a campaign blitzkrieg in his district. He is also facing a primary challenge — his opponent is another Indian American who accused Mr. Khanna of being too involved in big politics at the cost of constituents. He has doubled down on his criticism of Israel. In early 2026, he said the United States should view Israel first and foremost as “an occupying nation violating human rights”.

Expansion of politics

Mr. Khanna has appeared on several talk shows and podcasts hosted by hosts who hold controversial views, and believes that the expansion of politics will be in reaching out across the aisle rather than preaching to the choir. This approach to crafting a new middle is most pronounced in his enduring partnership with Thomas Massie, a Republican Congressman from Kentucky whom Mr. Trump is trying to unseat in November. Mr. Khanna and Mr. Massie have made an alliance on the Epstein files, opposing presidential fiat in war and other issues, and resisting the influence of Israel. Mr. Khanna explained that his politics and alliances are about questioning “elite impunity”. “There’s a sense in this country that rich and powerful people with connections don’t play by the same rules,” he told ABC7 San Francisco in an interview. Mr. Khanna does not take campaign money from Political Action Committees — an American mechanism to funnel big money into elections.

Mr. Khanna argues that institutional power — neocon foreign policy establishments, AIPAC, free-trade orthodoxy, and the Democratic old guard — has failed ordinary Americans, and that the corrective requires unlikely coalitions and willingness to say what others will not. Whether that is a governing philosophy or an extended audition is the question his 2026 primary will begin to answer.