Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Sunday that Democrats have failed to connect with working-class voters because the party too often backed “status quo establishment candidates” unwilling to challenge what he described as a rigged economic system.

Speaking on “Meet the Press,” Khanna weighed in on a newly released Democratic National Committee autopsy report examining the party’s 2024 election loss and broader struggles with voters.

“We do need to recognize that the status quo has failed,” Khanna said. “This is a system that has created massive inequality. That the economy is lopsided and unfair, and it’s not working for many working-class and middle-class Americans. And too often we’ve run status quo establishment candidates who have been unwilling to call out an economic and political system that has failed.”

DEMOCRATS IN RETREAT, WITH VOTERS SAYING THAT THE PARTY IS NO LONGER A ‘FRIEND OF THE WORKING CLASS’: REPORT

Khanna made the remarks after NBC’s Kristen Welker cited a passage from the DNC report arguing Democrats have focused too heavily on “winning arguments” while Republicans focused on “winning elections.”

The California Democrat rejected the idea that Democrats should abandon reasoned debate but acknowledged the party needs a stronger economic message aimed at voters struggling financially.

“I don’t think we need to give up reason,” Khanna said. “I think more Americans probably want reason debate in this country.”

DEM PARTY BLAME GAME: ACCUSATIONS FLY AS TO WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HARRIS’ MASSIVE LOSS TO TRUMP

Khanna also reflected on former Vice President Kamala Harris and the report’s conclusion that the White House did not do enough over several years to improve her standing before Democrats switched nominees.

“In retrospect, had she been in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio talking about the economy and been the lead for the president’s economic policies — the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act — perhaps we would have done better,” Khanna said.

Still, Khanna argued Democrats must now focus on rebuilding support among working-class voters heading into future elections.

“We need to have an economic message that actually is talking to the working-class folks who have been shafted,” he said, “and that’s taking on a system that has been rigged.”

DEMOCRATS’ ‘COMEBACK RETREAT’ SUGGESTS PARTY TO ‘EMBRACE PATRIOTISM’ TO WIN BACK WORKING-CLASS VOTERS

Khanna also defended the DNC Chair Ken Martin as some Democrats call for his resignation following backlash over the handling of the autopsy report.

“No,” Khanna said when asked whether Martin should step down.

Khanna pointed to Martin’s opposition to super PAC involvement in Democratic primaries and his criticism of superdelegates selecting party nominees as positions he supports.

“Ken Martin is a Paul Wellstone Democrat,” Khanna said. “There are two things he’s done that I actually agree with.”

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Khanna added that Martin could have handled the autopsy process better and should work more closely with state parties ahead of the 2026 and 2028 election cycles.

“Could he have handled this autopsy better? Absolutely,” Khanna said. “Should he be working more with state parties to make sure they’re funded into ’26 and ’28? Absolutely. But I don’t believe he should resign.”

The DNC report was commissioned after Democrats’ losses in the 2024 election cycle and was reportedly delayed before its public release amid internal disagreements over its findings and political fallout.

This is part three of a series examining the challenges confronting the NATO alliance.

LVIV, Ukraine — Four years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials across NATO’s eastern flank increasingly believe the alliance’s future is already being rewritten on Ukraine’s battlefield.

From drone warfare and cyber defense to civilian resilience and large-scale military mobilization, Eastern European officials say Ukraine has become one of the world’s most battle-tested militaries, forcing NATO to rethink how future wars will be fought.

This week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte confirmed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been invited to attend the alliance’s annual summit in Ankara in July, underscoring how central Ukraine has become to NATO’s future despite not being a member of the alliance.

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“I think today the Ukrainian army is the number one army in Europe,” Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi told Fox News Digital during an interview in the western Ukrainian city.

“I think NATO needs the Ukrainian army,” he added.

The debate over NATO’s future intensified this week as alliance foreign ministers gathered in Sweden ahead of a major NATO summit in July, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling the upcoming meeting “one of the more important leaders’ summits in the history of NATO.”

Rubio warned NATO allies this week that the alliance lacks sufficient munitions production for future conflicts, a concern echoed by retired Lt. Gen. Richard Newton, who said the Pentagon is studying Ukraine’s rapid wartime industrial adaptation.

“A number of nations are taking a page out of Ukraine’s transformation of its defense industrial base, in terms of quality as well as the tremendous increase in quantity of arms to the frontlines as well,” Newton said, adding, “The Pentagon is taking note and working to encourage the transformation of our own industrial base so we can drastically improve and more rapidly provide capabilities to our forces in the field, not in a matter of years but in months and perhaps even in weeks.”

Rubio also referenced President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would maintain troop deployments in Poland after concerns earlier this week about possible reductions on NATO’s eastern flank.

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Speaking before the NATO meeting, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski welcomed Trump’s announcement. “I want to thank President Trump for his announcement that the presence of American troops in Poland will be maintained more or less at previous levels,” Sikorski said.

“I think this makes Putin very uncomfortable.”

Some note that the debate over NATO’s future comes with deep irony for Moscow.

One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s central grievances before the invasion was NATO’s eastward expansion and Ukraine’s growing ambitions to move closer to the alliance. Moscow repeatedly demanded NATO roll back its military footprint to pre-1997 levels and opposed any future Ukrainian membership.

Instead, the invasion accelerated NATO’s expansion.

Finland formally joined NATO in 2023, ending decades of military nonalignment, while Sweden joined in 2024 after Russia’s invasion dramatically reshaped security calculations across northern Europe. Finland alone added more than 800 miles of direct NATO border with Russia.

Now officials in Poland and Ukraine say the war is not only expanding NATO geographically, but fundamentally transforming the alliance itself.

“For decades, NATO focused largely on expeditionary wars and counterterrorism,” said Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski during an interview in Warsaw. “Modern warfare is mostly done by drones.”

“There is not a military in the world which is better than Ukraine” in understanding today’s battlefield realities, he added.

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Retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, who served as NATO supreme allied commander Europe, said the war has fundamentally transformed how militaries around the world understand modern warfare.

“The war in Ukraine has changed far more than just NATO’s understanding of modern warfare — it has changed the whole world’s understanding,” Breedlove told Fox News Digital.

Breedlove added that Ukraine’s military has evolved into “one of Europe’s most capable and formidable” forces after years of fighting Russia, despite having surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

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“Today, most agree that Ukraine is not only fighting, but winning back land against one of the world’s most formidable forces,” he said.

That transformation is visible throughout Ukraine.

Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine had one of Eastern Europe’s largest IT sectors. Sadovyi said the war forced much of that technological ecosystem to pivot toward defense production.

“Before the invasion, we had in Kyiv a huge IT cluster, 40,000 workers,” Lviv’s mayor said. “During the war, we rebuilt the IT cluster to defend cluster.”

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Ukraine now operates a rapidly expanding wartime innovation ecosystem focused on drones, anti-drone systems, battlefield communications and decentralized weapons production. NATO officials and European militaries are increasingly studying those lessons closely.

Breedlove says the conflict exposed the limits of traditional air power and accelerated the rise of drone warfare.

“It’s critical to remember that the war in Ukraine is being fundamentally fought without the support of modern air warfare because of the failures of the Russian Air Force,” he said.

“It’s why drone warfare has grown so exponentially, because neither side was able to marshal true modern air capabilities.”

The changes are also reshaping NATO strategy.

The Polish defense official Zalewski told Fox News Digital the Pentagon is now promoting what Polish officials describe as “NATO 3.0,” a model in which Europe assumes greater responsibility for conventional defense as the United States shifts more attention toward China and the Indo-Pacific.

“The main assumption of this concept is that conventionally it would be Europe defending itself,” he said.

EUROPE STEPS UP TO FUND ITS OWN DEFENSE, PROVIDE SECURITY FOR UKRAINE AFTER TRUMP THREATS

That shift comes as Poland dramatically increases military spending and positions itself as one of NATO’s leading military powers on the alliance’s eastern flank. Warsaw spent nearly 5% of GDP on defense this year, the highest level in NATO.

Polish officials argue the war proved Eastern Europe was right to take Russia’s threat seriously long before many Western European countries did.

“The eastern flank is much more powerful than even five years ago,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki told Fox News Digital during reporting in Warsaw.

“We were right about the nature of Putin’s regime and Russia’s aggressive strategy.”

Ukraine is not currently a NATO member, and the alliance has avoided offering Kyiv a concrete timeline for accession during the war out of concern it could trigger direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

But across Eastern Europe, officials increasingly argue the alliance’s future may depend on Ukraine regardless of formal membership.