A progressive group aligned with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has outlined a plan to build a “firewall” around Warren’s staunchest allies running for Senate in 2014. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has raised more than $163,000 to support Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), and Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), lawmakers the group contends are critical to preserving Warrens’ populist vision. PCCC will officially endorse Merkley today, and it’s already raised nearly $70,000 for him.

“Jeff Merkley is one of the boldest leaders in the Senate because he isn’t afraid to take on the big fights like breaking up the big banks, expanding Social Security benefits, defending our privacy, and fighting to ensure Senate rules represent the will of the people,” said the group’s cofounder, Stephanie Taylor, in a statement.

A group aligning itself with Elizabeth Warren is endorsing and raising money for U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, whose election in 2008 predates Warren’s to the Senate from Massachusetts in 2012.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says it has 21,709 Oregon members and nearly 1 million nationally. It has launched a national fundraising appeal, and says it has collected $69,400 for Merkley from 7,260 mostly small donors in Oregon.

Like Warren, Merkley has taken on Wall Street, and championed the creation of a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that Warren proposed as part of 2010 legislation overhauling the financial system.

Progressive groups such as the PCCC and 350 Action are pushing House GOP energy chair Fred Upton to contribute cash raised from energy interests to a fund for cleaning up a gas line rupture in Michigan. The challenge for liberals: To push big money’s influence on to the national agenda — see the attacks on the Kochs — at a time when action by Congress is hopeless and SCOTUS is dismantling protections.

Progressive groups, transparency advocates and the whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers are coming out strongly against a Senate bill to reform the National Security Agency (NSA), arguing the reforms it contains are inadequate.

“Our fundamental civil rights — the human rights we hold dear — are not adequately protected by either the Senate or House versions of the USA Freedom Act,” wrote the groups and individuals, including the Sunlight Foundation, Credo Action, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Drake.

Candidate for New York Governor Zephyr Teachout called the Albany results “extraordinary,” and said they were reflective of the strengths of unions, specifically the Public Employees Federation, the white-collar government employee union that endorsed Teachout.

Teachout also thanked the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the National Organization for Women and the Sierra Club, who all endorsed her.

PCCC-endorsed Zephyr Teachout won a stunning 34.3% of the vote in what the New York Times is calling a “surprisingly potent liberal revolt” and “an embarrassing rebuke” to Governor Andrew Cuomo, adding that it could “put a sizable dent in any national aspirations he may hold.”

This is a victory for progressives everywhere. Andrew Cuomo’s corrupt economic policies hurt New York working families. In a few short weeks, Zephyr Teachout gave Andrew Cuomo the race of his political life — even though she was outspent 11-to-1, and fueled only by the hands and hearts of her supporters.

The national message for politicians is clear. If you run as a Democrat and govern as a Republican, you can be challenged and held accountable.

This developing movement, now often referred to as “the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party” (a variation on the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s declaration, “I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”), is focused on many of the issues that Warren raised in her electrifying July speech at Netroots Nation, where she vowed to fight for wage hikes, fair trade, pay equity, affordable education, and ironclad protections for Social Security and Medicare. “This is a fight over economics, a fight over privilege, a fight over power,” the Massachusetts senator said. “But deep down, it is a fight over values. These…are progressive values. These are America’s values. And these are the values we are willing to fight for.

Many of these candidates identify as “bold progressives,” borrowing a phrase from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Along with groups like Democracy for America and Progressive Democrats of America, which have formed over the past decade to push the party to the left, the PCCC argues that Democrats can’t win by proposing to be kinder, gentler Republicans. While there’s a general acceptance that support for reproductive rights and marriage equality benefits Democratic candidates in much of the country, the PCCC argues that this appeal can be strengthened and expanded with economic-populist stances. The PCCC doesn’t just defend Social Security; it backs candidates like Coleman who propose to expand it. And when “Third Way” centrists grumble that Warren and her allies are engaging in a risky politics, the PCCC counters with polling numbers that show compromising on economic issues is the real risk, since it blurs the distinctions between the two parties.

The Senate advanced a constitutional amendment meant to reverse two recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign spending after Republicans opted to back proceeding to debate on the measure.

Democratic political groups, such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), pushed hard for a vote, saying the issue motivates Democrats to go out to the polls.

“Citizens United gives corporate special interests the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who is up for reelection this November. “It’s wrong and I’ve been fighting it since the day the Supreme Court announced its egregious decision.”