What Changed Since Our Last Report

When we last covered this story, DNC Chair Ken Martin had just admitted the autopsy report was incomplete and unverifiable. Now the report is actually out — all 192 pages of it — and the fallout is accelerating fast.

Martin released the document on May 21, 2026, according to NPR, alongside a Substack post in which he apologized for sitting on it since late last year. The calls for his resignation are no longer whispers. They're loud.

What's Actually in the Report

The document was written by Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, who has no affiliation with the Biden or Harris campaigns. The party hired an outsider to do this, and the outsider delivered a half-finished draft.

Missing from the final product: a conclusion, an executive summary, and a "Notes for the reader" section. According to NPR, the report still contains placeholder text including "XXXX@dnc.org" where a contact email should be and "xx/xx/2025" where a date should appear.

The Democratic Party's official reckoning with its worst presidential loss in decades contains literal fill-in-the-blank fields.

The report's working title — "BUILD TO WIN. BUILD TO LAST" — rests on what the DNC itself calls "shaky foundational data." The party added annotations throughout the document flagging claims it could NOT verify, according to NPR. Rivera apparently never provided source material, meaning the DNC received conclusions without the research that was supposed to back them up.

Martin's Explanation Doesn't Hold Up

"When I received the report late last year, it wasn't ready for primetime," Martin wrote on Substack, per NPR. "Not even close. And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning."

So why release it now without fixing it?

Martin's answer — implied, not stated — is pressure. AP News reported the release came after "intense internal pressure" from Democratic stakeholders who wanted transparency. Martin held a broken report for months, then released the broken report anyway, and called it accountability.

The Harris Criticism Is Real But Unverifiable

AP News confirmed the report criticizes Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign directly. Left-leaning outlets have focused more on the process failures than the substance.

Fox News, by contrast, led with the political heat on Martin — framing it primarily as a resignation story. Fox also featured former Democratic donor John Morgan offering a "blunt autopsy" on party failures, keeping the spotlight on Democratic dysfunction broadly.

Both angles are legitimate. The mainstream left press is underplaying the Harris criticisms. The right press is underplaying the fact that this report's procedural failure makes the Harris criticisms impossible to evaluate — you can't trust findings when the source data doesn't exist.

The NYT Goes Further: Martin Should Resign

The New York Times didn't hedge. Their editorial position is that Ken Martin should be replaced as DNC chair — full stop. That's a significant call from a publication that typically protects Democratic leadership.

The NYT also published polling data suggesting there's more internal Democratic consensus than the chaos implies. A Times/Siena poll found common ground within the coalition on core issues, though the divisions are real. The party isn't as fractured ideologically as the autopsy disaster makes it look institutionally.

But institutional dysfunction is its own crisis. You can agree on policy and still be led by people who can't execute a basic internal review.

What Everyone Is Missing

Paul Rivera got paid to produce this document and delivered an unfinished draft without source material.

Who hired Rivera? What were the contract terms? Was Rivera paid in full? Was there any quality control checkpoint before delivery?

None of the major outlets — NPR, AP, NYT, or Fox — have reported on the contract details or whether Rivera has been asked to account for delivering an incomplete product. This is a basic accountability question that's fallen through the cracks while everyone argues about Martin's future.

What This Means for Regular People

If you're a Democrat, your party just proved it cannot conduct an honest self-assessment. The report that was supposed to explain why 2024 went wrong is itself a case study in why 2024 went wrong — no follow-through, no accountability, no finished product.

If you're not a Democrat, don't celebrate. A functional opposition party is good for the country. This isn't one right now.

And if you're a taxpayer watching both parties operate — the GOP running up the debt and the DNC unable to complete a book report — the takeaway is the same: nobody in charge is being held to a standard you'd accept from a first-year employee.

Ken Martin apologized on Substack. That's not accountability. Accountability looks like finished work, named sources, and consequences for people who don't deliver either.