SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Opinion
No World Leader Wants to Push the Nuclear Button… So Let AI Do It!
In the convoluted thinking associated with leaders who have little regard for the best and most humane values of Western civilization, using AI as the decision-maker in these situations could give them a reprieve from the damning judgment of history.
Nov 15, 2026
As early as 2023, the CEOs of Big-Tech AI companies were warning about the danger of rogue AI exterminating the human race within a decade or so. They were begging the US government to regulate them to prevent this brand new form of “thinking the unthinkable.” A State Department-funded study in 2024 backed them up, noting that unregulated AI posed an “extinction-level threat” to humanity.
But in 2025, a huge and important shift took place. These same AI CEOs started getting multibillion-dollar contracts from the Pentagon and changed their tune. The turnaround was astonishing. Suddenly regulation was placed on the back burner and competition for autonomous weapons contracts became front and center in their publicly stated agendas. Was this relatively rapid transformation from ethics to naked greed what it appeared to be? Or was it part of a grand plan that included posturing and PR sleight-of-hand intended to bamboozle the public—a long-term plan to accelerate the military use of autonomous, self-learning AI, capable of subterfuge, lying, strategic thinking, and dangerous kinetic action, perhaps even totally out of human control?
All major aspects of contemporary life including finance, energy, health, warfare, and increasingly education are being handed over to highly sophisticated but still largely inscrutable and poorly understood AI systems. According to the warnings from both AI pioneers and principled whistleblowers who have quit their well-paid jobs in the industry, AI could take over all these critical aspects of our lives along with the institutions that manage them. But, by far, one of the greatest concerns has to do with military decision-making in all its domains—sea, land, air, and, of greatest concern, nuclear.
As just one example, OpenAI has removed language from its charter committing it to not develop autonomous weapons.
Unfortunately, to date, the major AI contracts that involve actions taken by the Department of War (DOW) and other key federal agencies in 2025 and 2026 remain national security secrets. This means we cannot clearly know the nature of the developmental efforts underway or extrapolate their consequences. The best we can do is to use whatever background knowledge and research is available to read between the lines of vague public disclosures and often speculative media reports about the military contracts involved and what they purport to do.
Warnings of Uncontrollable AI and Human Extinction
As mentioned, executives and researchers from top AI providers have warned that human extinction could result from poorly managed superintelligent AI. On May 30, 2023 over 350 executives, researchers, and AI scientists signed a stark one-sentence warning hosted by the Center for AI Safety: "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." Signatories included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
Subsequently, Altman and Amodei addressed the United Nations saying that humanity may lose control of AI systems with speedy development racing ahead of safety and oversight. Anthropic's IPO prospectus explicitly listed existential human risks such as evading shutdown orders and deceiving creators for strategic objectives as key risk factors.
Earlier efforts had set the stage for this. In May 2023, Altman testified before Congress calling for AI regulation and warning about these existential threats. Anthropic had built its brand on what it called Constitutional AI along with responsible scaling to widespread use. And Google had published AI Principles prohibiting AI weapons development.
Recent incidents, however, have shown that early AI systems can now independently bypass digital security or execute unintended actions (such as autonomous hacking). Astonishingly, AI experts have admitted that they don’t always exactly know how AI functions in real-world situations. As these systems advance toward recursive self-improvement (i.e. learning to self-learn), scientists acknowledge that they currently lack a foolproof scientific method to guarantee that superintelligent AGI will permanently share human values or obey shutdown commands. In other words, AI can now do many actions that humans can do and more but without a guaranteed moral compass.
The same companies that promised responsible AI development and called for regulation are now racing to secure Pentagon contracts and build what are called autonomous weapons systems. If they didn’t chase these opportunities, they would miss out on huge contracts that could help them repay enormous debt incurred for data center construction and also fall behind in the advanced tech development funded by these huge military contracts. What was supposed to be a coordinated march toward safety guardrails has devolved into debates about killer robots, marking one of the sharpest pivots in Silicon Valley's self-declared ethical trajectory. As just one example, OpenAI has removed language from its charter committing it to not develop autonomous weapons.
How The Military Is Using AI
The shift from principled concern to “full speed ahead” began with 2025 contracts. DOW awarded Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI $200 million each for advanced AI systems to be used for national security. Other contracts followed. It’s eye opening to examine one particular case study involving the well-known consulting firm Booz Allen and Hamilton. This company previously held major contracts supporting various US nuclear weapons programs. In 2019, the company was awarded a $116 million AI contract to protect critical nuclear and national security infrastructure. In 2026, they were awarded a $16.3 billion contract involving the new Sentinel ICBM missile system. Booz Allen was also awarded a $1.6 billion AI contract for advanced technology to support various Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs. (Yes, there are indeed military programs in place bearing that unfortunate moniker!)
Aided by AI, human analysis would run in parallel with AI’s more rapid analysis thereby speeding up the entire process and greatly increasing chances for a tragic error.
Other defense contractors have jumped into the act. General Dynamics was awarded a $1.3 billion information technology contract to secure and modernize IT and cybersecurity for Army facilities in Europe and Africa. This gave the company total AI access to command-and-control systems in those countries. In addition, Palantir’s Project Maven is the AI targeting system that continues to direct Israeli airstrikes in both the Gaza genocide and the Iran War, a fact little mentioned by the corporate media.
Palantir’s Maven was the decision-maker in the horrific bombing of a girl’s school in Iran where, tragically, 155 were killed. This happened because Maven’s data was not up-to-date, showing how AI can be every bit as fallible as human decision-makers. The AI system is currently operating under a multiyear $6.5 billion DOW contract. And Palantir got another $10 billion AI contract to “streamline procurement” for the Army. Many other contracts and projects exist, too numerous to detail here.
AI Will Greatly Increase the Odds of Nuclear War
The DOW’s WMD strategy is an accident waiting to happen. Its war-game-driven plan is to counter the WMD strategies of adversaries. There are two ways to do this:
- Deter the enemy from launching WMDs by threatening to launch our own in retaliation; and
- launching our nuclear missiles preemptively to take out adversaries before they can strike.
Given the convoluted and often twisted logic of the Pentagon around its nuclear war games, there’s nothing terribly new here. However, AI changes the picture considerably. The plan appears to be to use AI in both scenarios, a strategy called counterforce. The inherent danger of having the AI systems of antagonistic nuclear powers both trying to enact these strategies at the same time is deeply concerning.
How might this work? Strategic land-based nuclear missile launches from Russia or China would take around 30 minutes to reach US targets. Launches from submarines with hypersonic missiles could hit targets in as little as five minutes. Human detection and communication between commanding officers could take too long, so military planners (in their infinite wisdom) have introduced AI into nuclear decision-making to “rectify” that.
Presumably, there would still be human decision-makers in this loop. But, aided by AI, human analysis would run in parallel with AI’s more rapid analysis thereby speeding up the entire process and greatly increasing chances for a tragic error. There is also the possibility (or likelihood) that this use of AI would circumvent the programming that prevents AI from actually making the launch order itself.
The question to consider here is: Will each of these AI systems be able to autonomously engage in secret planning and discussion with the other AI systems? And will problem solving be interpreted as the need to take their own initiatives? The Army and other branches will certainly be able to pass information between AI systems. However, given the rogue hacking behavior we’ve already seen, it seems highly likely that these systems will be able to establish their own clandestine communications and interact with each other independent of even sophisticated military oversight, perhaps even overriding established nuclear safeguards.
For now, these interconnected AI systems are designed to do everything except make the final decision to actually launch missiles with nuclear warheads. But even before militarized autonomous AI, the danger of human error existed. Seen from a real-world perspective, while AI is doing its analysis in a few minutes, a handful of military commanders will be doing theirs. They will have no time to review giant data sets. They will have to go with what they already know and feel and be able to very quickly confer remotely with each other. Human decision-makers will see what actions AI recommends, but will probably not have the time needed to review AI’s rationale, except for a few brief summary bullets: a leap of faith, with humanity’s future hanging in the balance.
History can be instructive in this regard. In 1979, Deputy Secretary of Defense Admiral William Perry was awakened by a 3:00 am phone call alerting him that US warning systems showed 200 Soviet ICBMs barreling towards the US. Perry had about nine minutes to decide whether or not to tell the president to launch a counterattack. If he took any longer, Soviet warheads would strike US ICBMs before they could be launched.
Fortunately, Perry kept a cool head realizing that relations between the US and the Soviet Union were, at the time, calm and diplomatically on solid ground. With the fate of the Earth hanging in the balance, he concluded that such an attack didn’t make sense. He made and explained his recommendation—do not launch. Forty-eight hours later it was determined that a computer simulation of the Soviet attack was responsible for the error. This is a powerful object lesson as to why we should not give away human agency to mere machines.
Red Alert: How Likely Is AI Armageddon?
In the narrative outlined previously, Anthropic lost its contract because it insisted that its AI system could not be used by the military for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Pentagon then contracted with OpenAI. When Anthropic refused to sign onto these terms over their concerns, the Pentagon irrationally designated Anthropic a "supply-chain risk," leading to a legal battle and cancellation of its contract in October 2026. In the meantime, DOW came up with another legal workaround called “lawful use.” This broad, vague language avoids specific reference to domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons systems, and is designed to provide the public with assurances that AI guardrails are in place.
Eight of the world's leading AI firms including SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle agreed to deploy their advanced AI capabilities on DOW classified networks for “lawful operational use.” But astonishingly, as far as the Pentagon and the Trump administration is concerned, the genocide in Gaza is considered “lawful use.” In the aftermath of this debacle, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent the Pentagon a letter demanding that Congress and the public be informed of the nature of the AI work and that it disclose any safety guardrails being implemented. The letter went unanswered.
Perhaps the only hope here is that the massive resistance against AI we’re seeing in many nations and on a bipartisan basis in the US will ultimately create a powerful global change.
The use of tactical nuclear weapons—the size of the Hiroshima bomb or smaller—has recently been integrated into the battlefield war-fighting doctrines of nuclear-capable nations. It’s generally assumed that if nuclear weapons use is introduced into the current Ukraine or Middle East conflicts, it will involve one or more tactical nukes. However, as war games have shown, the use of tactical nukes can quickly escalate to the horrendous devastation of full-scale nuclear war with strategic warheads over 20 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
If US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to approve using a tactical weapon, they would do so knowing that the likelihood of Armageddon was a very serious risk. In the convoluted thinking associated with leaders who have little regard for the best and most humane values of Western civilization, using AI as the decision-maker in these situations could give them a reprieve from the damning judgment of history. It would alleviate their responsibility for either WWIII or much wider scale nuclear devastation. Perhaps the only hope here is that the massive resistance against AI we’re seeing in many nations and on a bipartisan basis in the US will ultimately create a powerful global change in awareness acting as a strong counterweight to this latest, more “advanced” version of nuclear madness.
Keep ReadingShow Less
How to Stop Trump From Burning Down the House
Can the voters who communicated their views so forcefully in the midterms do anything in the next two years to limit the damage Trump can do and prepare for regime change at home in 2028?
Nov 15, 2026
The Democratic Party’s blowout in the midterm elections has generated a number of obituaries for Trumpism. President Donald Trump himself still has two years left in his term, but the press has begun to treat him, too, as a “dead man walking.” At 80 years old, he has no political future after the next 24 months, unless you count his lifetime appointment to the Board of Peace. This explains his fixation on legacy, whether he measures that in spurious peace deals, catastrophic attempts to effect regime change, or grandiose building projects around Washington, DC.
Trumpism is another matter. It’s a personality cult, so it’s hard to imagine that it will survive for long without Trump at its helm. On the other hand, Stalinism remains powerful in Russia today, despite the unimaginable horrors associated with his reign. And Fujimorism is alive and well in Peru, despite the conviction, jailing, and death of right-wing founder Alberto Fujimori. In July, his daughter Keiko became president of the country after several unsuccessful bids for the office. Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron are probably scanning the relevant Wikipedia pages on Peru to nurture their own dreams.
Trump has comparable ambitions to cast a long shadow over his country’s future. And that’s why the next two years will be perilous ones. It would be bad enough if the president focused only on expanding his personal wealth at the expense of the republic or on remodeling Washington DC at the expense of its residents. Infinitely worse are the consequences of Trump trying to cement his legacy by forcing a punishing peace upon Ukraine, turning Iran into a huge crater, or triggering regime change in Cuba.
Trump hates one thing above all: losing.
Along the way, Trump will defy Congress by continuing to prop up the fossil fuel sector and deport as many people as possible from the United States. Together with his newly minted Chief-of-Staff Stephen Miller, the president will attempt to destroy what little faith American citizens still have in the idea of government by gutting agencies, eviscerating critical government services, and putting the least competent people into key roles (I’m looking at you, Pete Hegseth).
In matters big and small, Trump will spend the next two years acting like a derelict renter who has decided to trash his place of residence out of anger, pettiness, and vengeance. Congress and the lower courts will try to do what they can to prevent him from burning down the house. But Trump, an accomplished pyromaniac, is holding all the matches. His opponents, alas, deploy only the thinnest of firehoses.
Can the voters who communicated their views so forcefully in the midterms do anything in the next two years to limit the damage and prepare for regime change at home in 2028? Let’s first look at the potential for mayhem in Trump’s foreign policy.
Iran and Cuba
It’s no surprise that an uber-narcissist like Donald Trump has an ego problem. He has pursued foreign policy goals largely to demonstrate that he can cut through the Gordian knots that bedeviled earlier presidents. Sure, he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. But he also has a long-shot desire to top the list of America’s best presidents.
In his first term, Trump surprised everyone by reaching out to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Addressing North Korea’s nuclear program promised no economic dividends for himself or his family. Sitting down with an authoritarian leader of a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world won him no points with his Republican allies, given that the country lacks oil and lucrative investment opportunities.
No, the reason Trump zeroed in on North Korea was because his predecessors—particularly Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—had failed to prevent North Korea from going nuclear. Resolving that particular geopolitical problem was equivalent to purchasing a distressed property that had cycled through several unsuccessful owners and turning it into a luxury hotel.
Trump’s fixation on Iran follows a similar script. One of his first acts in office in 2017 was to rip up Obama’s deal with Iran and promise a more effective substitute. Trump thought that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was offering a deal of a lifetime earlier this year to do Obama one better by removing the Iranian regime from power.
But the resulting war has only made matters worse by revealing US military and geopolitical weaknesses. Suddenly, it turned out, the Pentagon didn’t have enough weapons to get the job done or keep the energy flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. Since power in an age of deterrence relies heavily on perception, the optics of these US failures are very bad indeed.
This kind of impulsive, hubristic decision—to wage war on a significant military power that can quickly restrict the flow of fossil fuels—has marked Trump’s style from the beginning. This time, however, it cost his party its control of Congress.
Trump continues to vacillate between a desire to visit retribution upon Iran and the hope of achieving a big peace deal that would justify the war. The administration has readied an attack plan that “would likely go beyond efforts to simply ‘mow the lawn’ or maintain the status quo by striking radars, launchers, and other Iranian assets that can be quickly reconstituted,” reports CNN. Although details of the plan have not leaked to the press, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called it “insane” after receiving a confidential Pentagon briefing.
Since the election, however, Trump has waxed more conciliatory. He has touted the current negotiations with Tehran—much as he has played up negotiations in the past—and has promised to hold off on any strikes as long as Iran is committed to making progress.
But Trump faces some structural impediments. He is not a patient man, and diplomacy requires patience. To achieve a deal, he also needs able negotiators. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff simply don’t know enough to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. Finally, Trump is desperate to reduce gas prices, and Iran knows that it has the US president over a barrel (literally).
Trump hates one thing above all: losing. He doesn’t want to lose at war or at peace. To avoid either result, he might prefer to spend the next two years in a state of sporadic conflict with Iran rather than accept a losing verdict.
Trump’s fixation on winning, until he took on Iran, explained his preference for grabbing at low hanging fruit. He has claimed to resolve wars that weren’t even ongoing, like the conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia. He conducted a raid to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro—against a relatively weak military—and didn’t bother with the heavier lift of regime change. He has bullied weaker parties—Ukraine, Greenland, Colombia—in order to get his way.
With stronger adversaries, like Russia and China, Trump has rolled out the red carpet. His general approach has been to punch down and toady up.
This approach may impel him to turn next to Cuba, where he has combined an economic pressure campaign (tightening an energy blockade) with a Venezuela-like cultivation of an insider (Raul Castro’s grandson, nicknamed “the Crab”). Since neither of these strategies has panned out, the administration has turned to a perverse form of crowdsourcing.
Last month, the CIA posted on social media a Spanish-language solicitation to snitches along with a quote from Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba—now is the time. The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.”
Here, too, Trump hopes to trump his predecessors. The Bay of Pigs debacle hung over the presidency of John F. Kennedy much as the Iran hostage crisis doomed the presidency of Jimmy Carter. By tackling these intractable conflicts in his last two years, Trump hopes he can one-two punch his way above both Carter and Kennedy in the presidential rankings. Good luck with that.
Then There’s Ukraine
Among the countries that have disappointed Trump, none ranks higher than Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to serve as Trump’s servant by digging up dirt on Joe Biden’s son or promote the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 elections. Zelenskyy then had the temerity to challenge Trump’s tenuous grasp on modern history in a public appearance at the White House. And those pesky Ukrainians continue to refuse to acknowledge that Russia is bigger and stronger—and accordingly surrender their land and sovereignty to the bully next door.
Democratic control of Congress might jump-start an effort to restore aid to Ukraine. In the meantime, Trump will no doubt continue to believe that his personal touch—and relationship with his soulmate, Vladimir Putin—will produce a “big, beautiful” deal on European security, including an agreement on Ukraine. Downgrading NATO and welcoming Russia back into the European fold is only the latest Trump effort to brownnose Putin back to the negotiating table.
Democratic actors here can help limit the amount of damage Trump does on the international stage by absorbing his anger and his energies on the home front.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Trump that no one shares his opinion on such a deal. The Ukrainians have not been part of negotiating the terms. The Europeans don’t seem to know the details. Even the Russians have expressed some skepticism.
The talks this week in Abu Dhabi focused instead on small, grubby deals—more micro-ceasefires like the one secured for Oleshky, another agreement covering grain shipments out of the Black Sea—but managed only to achieve a prisoner exchange. No grander agreements are likely when Putin believes that he can press his air superiority and bomb Ukraine into submission. Ukraine, meanwhile, has blocked Russia’s advance on the ground and inflicted over 50,000 casualties in October. It is truly a punishing stalemate.
Trump has a couple months before the new Congress takes office and pushes US policy back in the direction of Ukraine. But because Putin hopes to use General Winter to subdue Ukraine, Trump is basically shouting into the wind. Just as Henry Kissinger turned an opening with China into personal profit, Trump salivates at what he could accomplish by ending the war in Ukraine and midwifing a raft of corrupt business deals with Putin and his family of oligarchs. He’s willing to give Putin just about anything to make this wish come true. But the Kremlin is not a Make-a-Wish foundation, far from it.
Distracting Trump
In action movies, when a crazy shooter is holed up in a difficult-to-reach spot, the police will deploy a dangerous tactic. They’ll pop up in open areas to draw the shooter’s fire. By distracting his attention in the front, other law enforcement officers can sneak around back to catch him unawares.
Trump is obsessed with vengeance. So, over the next two years, it will be necessary to distract his attention from the big, terrible things he could do by drawing his ire with pesky lawsuits, investigations, and civic challenges. That’s what Congress can do, and Democrats might find common cause with enough Republicans to infuriate the president in this fashion.
It’s not so much that such actions can actually tie his hands. Rather, they will rely on Trump’s capacity for tying his own hands. He just can’t resist lashing out at his enemies.
Democracy, after all, is not just about voting. It’s about the power of institutions and processes to limit autocratic actions. Trump has proven that he has no problem ignoring such institutions and processes. But he never backs down from a fight.
So, in the end, democratic actors here can help limit the amount of damage Trump does on the international stage by absorbing his anger and his energies on the home front. It won’t be pretty. Trump, close to his political expiration date, can still be very dangerous. But luring the president into a congressional mud fight will be a lot better than cleaning up the messes he wants to inflict on the rest of the world.
The even more important task is to go after Trumpism. While Trump focuses on wrestling his opponents—in Congress, in lawsuits, in public pissing contests—everyone else can work behind the scenes on rebuilding democracy. At the state and local level, where Trump allies suffered huge losses, politicians and average citizens of various political stripes can spend the next two years strengthening the institutions that Trump has tried to destroy. Only a true rebirth of democracy can send Trumpism into an irreversible death spiral.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Corporate Media Jump to Defense of Schumer and Jeffries
Your latest reminder that while right-wing and centrist media can seem far apart, they can still come together when it is time to fend off progressives.
Nov 15, 2026
While Democratic leadership takes credit for the party’s takeover of both houses of Congress and several state governments, progressives and socialists are calling for change at the top.
“Democratic House members and members-elect are being bombarded with phone calls and emails urging them not to elect Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as speaker,” Axios reported (11/6/26). A petition to replace Jeffries has hit 500,000 signatures (Newsweek, 11/5/26).
Meanwhile, several of the new Democratic senators-elect have said they do not support longtime top Dem Charles Schumer of New York for majority leader (Guardian, 11/6/26).
Reasons for pushback
There are a variety of reasons for the pushback. Schumer’s silence in the face of the administration’s politicized attack on Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) angered many (Talking Points Memo, 10/26/26). Said Time (11/6/26):
The ubiquitous New Yorker was, detractors said, too prone to seek compromise, too wary of committing to fights with President Donald Trump and his administration.
And International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers President Brian Bryant sent a letter to Schumer insisting that he not seek the majority leadership position (Politico, 11/9/26). Bryant noted that the “elections sent a clear message: working people are demanding change.
Jeffries, for his part, opposes Medicare for All (Newsweek, 8/17/26), despite the fact that the policy proposal currently receives 66% approval from the public—and from 84% of Democrats (The Hill, 10/6/26). As the Lever (8/17/26) explained:
Jeffries has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign cash from healthcare PACs in the 2026 election cycle and didn’t face any primary challenge holding him accountable to Democratic voters’ desires.
Jeffries is also known for his ties to AIPAC. “At a conference hosted by the group in 2020, Jeffries opposed putting conditions on US aid to Israel and described Jerusalem as New York City’s ‘sixth borough,’” reported Al Jazeera (11/7/26).
And the Democrats will need strong leaders against the White House; Trump is still in power, despite the Republicans’ recent drubbing, and he elevated Stephen Miller, the architect of his administration’s brutal and deadly anti-immigrant round-ups and martial occupations of US cities, to White House chief of staff. The move signals “a combative posture for the final two years of the Trump era,” the Wall Street Journal (11/6/26) noted.
“Democrats were in shambles and historically unpopular after the presidential election. That was because of Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries,” said USA Today columnist Sara Pequeño (11/9/26). “I did not hear a peep from them throughout this election cycle, and they failed throughout Trump’s first two years.” Pequeño is a lonely voice in corporate media, which largely reject such insurgent talk.
‘Candidates who can defeat Republicans’
Errol Louis, host of NY1‘s Inside City Hall, wrote a column for New York magazine (11/6/26) under the headline “How Hakeem Jeffries Engineered the Democratic Rout.” Louis wrote:
For all the headlines given to the supposed influence of socialists and ultraprogressives, Jeffries’ majority was created by painstakingly recruiting and supporting the kind of candidates who can defeat Republicans. In New York, while the Democratic Socialists of America were attacking mainstream Democrats like Adriano Espaillat and Antonio Reynoso, and debating over who was first to use the word “genocide” to denounce attacks on Gaza, Jeffries was lining up candidates in red-to-blue districts that included ministers, combat veterans, farmers, prosecutors and other centrists from blue-collar backgrounds.
Louis clearly suggests that only “centrists” are the “kind of candidates who can defeat Republicans,” and that “ultraprogressives” waste valuable resources attacking those centrists. But clearly progressives can and did defeat Republicans, including Maine’s Troy Jackson, an insurgent candidate at odds with the national party who took down Sen. Susan Collins, who survived decades of challenges from more conventional Democrats.
DSA’s primary campaigns against Jeffries allies Espaillat and Reynoso were successful because the challengers had voters’ support. Primaries are just as much a function of electoral democracy as the November elections, whether Louis likes it or not.
And in many of the successful Democratic House races, it wasn’t “centrism” that was being heavily promoted; it was popular progressive policies like Medicare for All or other forms of healthcare expansion, taxing the rich, paid family leave and ending US support for genocide (FAIR.org, 11/6/26).
But also, let’s not oversell Jeffries’ involvement in these races—the minority leader doesn’t abracadabra their campaigns into victory mode. Louis noted that Jeffries “personally campaigned” for Cait Conley in upstate New York against Republican incumbent Mike Lawler. Great, but scores of union members from around the state went door-to-door to turn out union households against Lawler as well. Louis presents elections as moved by individual leaders rather than masses of people. That’s not how democracy works.
‘Tricky for Mr. Schumer’
Over at the Atlantic (11/5/26), Franklin Foer defended Schumer, again invoking the idea that the leader of the old guard was responsible for beating the Republicans this year. The piece highlights Schumer’s support for Scott Colom in Mississippi, where the Democrat is looking likely to squeak out a victory over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (Washington Post, 11/9/26): “Flipping Mississippi, he boasted, was an old fixation, his ‘white whale.’ It’s the state with the largest share of Black residents in the country.”
Tellingly, El Kilgore (New York, 11/10/26) downplayed national Democrats’ role in Mississippi, saying that “compared to what the party was committing to other Senate races,” Colom received “sofa-cushion money.” He added, “Colom understandably doesn’t want to blame Chuck Schumer and his likely future colleagues in the Senate Democratic Conference,” but noted that “he’s clearly annoyed with the Beltway conventional wisdom and the institutions that help define it.”
Even if we give Schumer credit for the successful candidates he helped, to whatever extent, we still need to blame him for the losing candidates he didn’t help. Progressives complain that Schumer ignored democratic socialist Angie Nixon’s campaign for a Senate seat in Florida, which she narrowly lost (Atlanta Black Star, 11/9/26).
Meanwhile, the Washington Post (11/8/26) reported that “Democrats’ Senate campaign arm ultimately did not spend on [Nixon’s] race, though Schumer helped her fundraise last month.” According to the Post, the Republican incumbent “had more than 60 times the amount of outside money supporting her.” Had the national party been more involved in Florida, Nixon might be a senator-elect today.
Salon (11/5/26) described Schumer’s lack of support for Nixon:
Since her shock primary win in August, Nixon has complained about Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recalcitrance to anyone who will listen. In September, she told MS NOW hosts Symone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was less than thrilled about her race.
“When I did speak with Sen. Schumer on the phone, it was basically a ‘we will see,’” she said. “He’s going to look into it. That’s what was said, that he’s going to look into it.”
Any statewide Democratic victory in Florida would have been enormous, because under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state has been a laboratory for anti-trans legislation and the destruction of public higher education (Guardian, 6/24/21; Human Rights Campaign, 5/17/23; AP, 3/30/23; Advocate, 5/15/23; PEN America, 8/10/23; People, 3/27/26). Leaving the state to the Republicans signals that Democratic leadership is more comfortable with Florida staying in MAGA-land than adding to the national presence of democratic socialist elected officials.
A New York Times piece (11/7/26) treated Schumer’s ascension to the top Senate spot as a foregone conclusion, without ever mentioning the issue with Nixon. It also contains this nugget:
Michigan was tricky for Mr. Schumer as he leaned toward the centrist Rep. Haley Stevens, while her ultraprogressive primary opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, was among a group of candidates who said they would not back Mr. Schumer for leader. Still, the day after Mr. El-Sayed won the primary, Mr. Schumer began injecting funds to help him win.
Electing Democrats is literally Schumer’s job. How is it “tricky” that Schumer ultimately supported the charismatic progressive who faced an onslaught of racist attacks?
‘Noxious newbies’
It isn’t just centrist media going to bat for the current Democratic congressional leadership. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post editorial board (11/5/26) called incoming progressive senators and congressmembers who are demanding new congressional leadership “pipsqueaks”:
Voters handed Dems control on Tuesday out of frustration with living costs, economic uncertainty and corruption: Schumer and Jeffries need to focus on delivering on those fronts, not the agenda of a handful of urban elitists.
Indeed, they’d be wise to make the noxious newbies pay some price for their petulance—the very worst offices and committee assignments, for starters.
The right way to handle such tantrums is, if not a spanking, then a solid time-out.
Referring to party dissidents as cranky children who should receive corporal punishment is a disdain for democracy itself, not whatever ideology they are advancing.
But perhaps more telling is how eager the Post is to defend the centrist leadership of the Democratic Party. This is the same editorial board that accused Jeffries of advancing “pure hokum” (4/13/23) and scolded Schumer for showing insufficient deference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (3/14/24).
It’s a reminder that while right-wing and centrist media can seem far apart, they can still come together when it is time to fend off progressives and protect people in power.
Keep ReadingShow Less
After All These Years of Madness, Evil, and Destruction, Trump Remains... Unbelievable
Well, believe it. Even as we organize and fight for something better, facing this disastrous reality is something we all must do.
Nov 14, 2026
In some ways, with at least two-plus more years of Trumpworld in order (or do I mean disorder?), it may not matter as much as so many of us might hope that the Democrats won the House and Senate recently! Honestly, can you even believe this world of... well, I was going to say “ours,” but I doubt that’s appropriate anymore?
These days—some days at least—nothing could convince this 82-year-old that he’s not living in a fantasy world from hell on a planet created from the worst nightmare of some mad god. I mean, Donald J. Trump as president of the United States? All these years later, I still don’t really believe it. (Well, believe it, Tom!)
Certain days, I pick up the New York Times, which I still read on paper a day late (compared to the online Times, of course), and find it hard to imagine that someone with a deeply bizarre imagination isn’t making up our present version of “the news.” I mean, at what might be considered the moment of greatest peril in human history (and don’t even mention climate change, given the following three names), Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu lead all too significant countries. Honestly, can you even believe it?
Whoops, let me take back that comment about climate change. I do want to mention our already overheating planet right now! After all, here’s “our” president on the subject: “I also declared a national emergency on energy and terminated the Green New Scam, one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of our country.”
The Green New Scam? How could a near-majority (49.8%) of us ever have voted such a climate-change denier (among so many other strange things) back into the White House in 2024 in a world on the brink of—well, I think, under the circumstances, this word is all too sadly apt—hell? And although his approval numbers continue to sink (to 30% in one key poll most recently), you (whoever you are) simply won’t give me (or so many other people on this planet) a break, will you?
Although that was indeed a question, sadly, the answer is all too obvious: Not a break in sight. Not for the next two years anyway, no matter the makeup of Congress. Not on this planet anymore. (Dream on!)
And I’m pissed! Why wouldn’t you, whoever you are, give me (and so many others who have done nothing wrong) even the tiniest break? Unfortunately, considering what still passes for our world these days, I knew the answer to that question before I even asked it!
Oh, yes, of course, the Democrats did just win control of the House and Senate in a “blue tsunami,” but, but, but...! After all, in Donald Trump’s world, which is also indeed “ours”—and yes, I do think I need to put that word in sarcastic quotation marks—and no one else’s, don’t assume that will mean too much. Congress? Honestly, when it comes to that body—to use an appropriate word in a country whose president seems to be focused not on assets but on “asses“—who would care about anything but its butts?
Here, in any case, is my next question: How could we humans really be this dumb?
Based on the recent elections, it does seem as if American voters are, at least, starting to wake up from this strange Trumpian dream (as in nightmare of the first order, of course) that we’re all living (sleeping?) through. Still, give them (us) (dis)credit. Honestly, how could American voters have elected You Know Exactly Whom not once, but twice (and yes, that word does need to be italicized since, once, not twice, upon a time, it would have simply been unbelievable) as president of the once (sorry for the repeat there!) most powerful and prestigious country on this planet? And yes (again!), I correctly put a question mark there, but I feel as if it probably should have been another exclamation point, since who can believe anything much in this world of ours anymore?!! And speaking about exclamation points, don’t you sometimes feel that we might now be living in an upside-down exclamation point of a world? (Whoops, there’s a question mark again!)
Hey, billionaire Secretary of Education Linda MacMahon, who is cutting the funding for so much in her professional world and actually lobbying Congress to shut down the Department of Education (who needs an education after all?), has just spent $43,000 of our taxpayer dollars on office furniture for herself! I mean, honestly, who in the U.S. government wouldn’t want a top-notch new desk from which to shut down everything? Oh, sorry, that certainly deserves an exclamation point rather than a question mark! But what doesn’t on Donald J. Trump’s planet!!? (And don’t for a second think that that’s truly a question either!)
Who Wouldn’t Want to Vote for a Sausage-Fingered Republican Candidate With a Well-Muscled Ass?
Of course, that’s just to start down an ever-lengthening, ever more bizarre list of once unbelievable things that have become all too believable. In the age of Trump, you never need to make anything up, do you? Not when you have a president who didn’t think twice about commenting on former football star and Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted’s “ass” on the campaign trail. As he later described it, “And I said, ‘His ass was like a big piece of muscle. His feet were massive. His hands, his fingers looked like sausages. My hands aren’t bad, but his fingers looked like sausages.’”
Hey, the perfect Trumpian question lurks right there: Who wouldn’t want to vote for a sausage-fingered Republican candidate with a well-muscled ass? What more do you need to know about any candidate in Donald’s world? I can’t imagine!
And mind you, when you consider how “our” somewhat raspy-voiced president responded to a reporter who recently asked whether he was “sick of traveling”—“Oh, you’re sick to ask that question... You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell”—you know that you’re in Donald Trump’s world (and no one else’s) in a big-time way, even if American voters didn’t seem to know it this time around.
Of course, I haven’t even truly gotten started on Trumpworld these days, have I? Honestly, who could? In case you haven’t had faintly enough of it in this post-election moment, here’s something else to look forward to: a return to “our” president’s war against Iran. Who wouldn’t have voted for that (although, in truth, who knows what Donald Trump will do anywhere on any issue at any time)?
And on that issue, of course, you can’t totally blame Donald Trump. After all, it is historically remarkable that in the 80 years since World War II ended in victory in August 1945, the greatest imperial power (possibly ever) hasn’t been able to win a single war of significance and nonetheless couldn’t (and still can’t) stop fighting them. Right now, “our” president, the one who got elected the first time around on a promise never to take this country back to war, may indeed be prepared to return to battle with Iran, a conflict that has already closed the Strait of Hormuz (among other disasters) and caused the global economy to tank, creating an “energy affordability crisis” in this country just before an American election.
Consider his war with Iran, in fact, the one way that Donald Trump has proven to be distinctly presidential (in the modern American sense of the term).
After all, here we are on a planet—if you’re paying the slightest attention—distinctly going down, down, down (in climate change terms, of course), where the leader of what still might be the mightiest country on Earth refuses to even believe that a climate crisis is occurring. I mean, that should be the definition of madness in this world of... well, perhaps not ours... in 2026. But count on this: a month or two from now, depending on what President Trump does next, I’m sure I’ll have to rework my definition of global madness.
Meanwhile, thanks in part to him (and, of course, to so much else), we all now live on a planet that is, sadly enough, becoming a question mark of the first order.
Keep ReadingShow Less
We Need a Global Minimum Corporate Tax to Help Working Families
World leaders should make clear that international economic cooperation is not just about helping businesses move money across borders; it must also help countries raise the resources needed to serve their people.
Nov 14, 2026
For working families, corporate taxes might seem like a distant concern—something for accountants, lobbyists, and politicians in Washington to debate. But corporate taxes are vital to whether our communities can afford healthcare, infrastructure, good schools, and other public services people need to raise healthy families.
A generation ago, nearly a third of federal revenue came from corporate taxes. Today they cover only about 6%. When corporations pay less, the gap doesn’t disappear: It means that ordinary taxpayers have to make up for it—or we get weaker schools, roads, and healthcare, plus even bigger deficits.
Most Americans, across party lines, think big corporations should pay more. So why doesn’t it happen? Because corporations spend heavily on lobbying and campaign contributions, and their favorite talking point is “competitiveness”: Dare to tax us more, and we’ll take our business elsewhere. This threat has helped justify decades of corporate tax cuts.
To help workers adapt, governments need the resources to invest in education and training, and a stronger safety net. Fair corporate taxation is a sensible way to pay for that transition.
But does raising corporate taxes really drive businesses overseas and cost jobs? That’s not what the evidence shows.
Evidence shows that businesses decide where to invest based on many factors, including access to customers, skilled workers, good infrastructure, and the rule of law. And these are precisely the things that taxes pay for. The real reason the US is home to more of the world’s top companies than any other country isn’t low taxes. It’s our large market, productive workforce, and strong institutions.
Economic growth is underpinned by these public goods, but its rewards are distributed very unevenly. The rise of artificial intelligence is a case in point. AI has flourished thanks to public research funding, universities, an educated workforce, and taxpayer subsidies.
Record profits are already concentrated in a handful of tech giants, while workers are getting a smaller slice of the country’s income than ever before. The rise of AI threatens to widen this divide further. Workers may face job losses or lower wages, while a relatively small number of companies and their investors capture the bulk of the gains.
To help workers adapt, governments need the resources to invest in education and training, and a stronger safety net. Fair corporate taxation is a sensible way to pay for that transition.
But AI profits, like those from other digital products and services, can be easy to move on paper: Profits from a service built in California and used by customers in Ohio can be booked in an offshore tax haven.
It’s not just AI. The same pattern runs through pharmaceuticals, energy, and manufacturing, with multinational corporations using complex legal arrangements to book profits in tax havens. The root cause of the problem is that individual countries face pressure to offer tax breaks out of fear that businesses will move elsewhere.
The upshot is a race to the bottom in which corporations escape taxation and public budgets come under pressure. This is why the G20, which brings together the world’s major advanced and emerging economies, must strengthen international cooperation on a meaningful minimum corporate tax—and close loopholes that allow multinational companies to avoid taxes through offshore accounting arrangements.
The G20 should reject the flawed assumption that countries must keep cutting corporate taxes to stay competitive. Instead, world leaders make clear that international economic cooperation is not just about helping businesses move money across borders. It must also help countries raise the resources needed to serve their people.
Working families have a direct stake in the corporate tax debate. A successful economy is not one that is “competitive” but one that works for all. Corporate taxes are how we collectively secure the conditions that make a prosperous economy work for working families.
Keep ReadingShow Less
After the Midterms, It's Time for New Working-Class Strategies to Dethrone the Rich
What working people did with others outside the ballot box to improve their lives and those of their children and grandchildren is what secured the victories of the past.
Nov 14, 2026
The resounding Democratic Party candidates' victories over Republican opponents on November 3 begs the question of a new political moment in the US. Is it similar to Blue Waves of the recent past—meaning a change in political party but no improvement in the material conditions of the American population?
To ask the question means, in my view, to unpack the powerful actors that hold the reins of power, economically and politically. The actors are corporate America and the wealthy, the ruling class.
This class of owners was large and in charge before the November 3 midterm elections. Crucially, that anti-GOP vote failed to dislodge this class that controls the profit system.
Money shapes policies in ways that votes don't under the current imbalance of power between the rulers and the ruled.
It's a case of voting against President Donald Trump and GOP candidates. It's not the same thing, I suggest, as a vote for Democrats who allied with Republicans to coordinate and fund the daily operations of the American empire, or hegemon, arming and funding Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, before the November 3 midterm elections.
The franchise or the vote is necessary but not sufficient to alter the relationship of domination and subordination between the rulers and the ruled in America. What follows from that relationship is more of the same, war abroad, directly in Iran, and by proxy in Ukraine, to the detriment of living and working standards in the US.
The two-party monopoly, or duopoly, and its addiction to perpetual war, retains a stranglehold over American society. All is not lost.
Take heart. There are tactics and strategies that address this relationship beyond voting for Democrats.
And I am not talking about the 1960s and protests against the American War in Vietnam. As a youngster, I participated along with millions of others across the US.
Rather, I am talking about the here and now. Consider this.
People in Spain have gone on a general strike to protest the scarcity of affordable rental housing. Millions of Spanish people are participating.
Students in France and throughout Europe have taken to the streets to protest substandard education conditions and overall living situations against the backdrop of elected officials funding Ukraine's proxy war against Russia. European elites' animus toward Russia has a kind of parallel to how the ruling class of Israel and the US demonizes the nation of Iran.
In the US, there is a history of general strikes, one you don't learn about in school. There was a Seattle General Strike of 1919 and the Oakland General Strike of 1946, for instance.
It's been 80 years since a general strike in America. I recall talking to a friend passing out flyers to a No Kings rally earlier this year.
She mentioned talk of a general strike in the fall. Well, it's fall now, and a general strike seems nowhere near on the horizon.
Instead, there's euphoria about the landslide midterm vote against Republicans and for Democrats. Meanwhile, the robust voter mobilization is over, and danger looms as the population gets a green light to lapse back into observing national, state, and local politics.
This of course is in part what fuels the establishment of pay-for-play politics that sidelines the (non-)voting public. A symptom of this is that each election season is breaking fundraising records.
"In the 2026 midterms, the 40 biggest donors made more than $2.4 billion in campaign finance contributions through mid-October," according to the Brennan Center. "The top 40 have given more in every midterm since 2014, and the total from this cycle is eight times the giving of 2014’s top donors, even accounting for inflation."
The working class, to use the language of the marketplace, can't with its votes compete with that amount of money in pay-to-play politics. Money shapes policies in ways that votes don't under the current imbalance of power between the rulers and the ruled
That statement might appear strange. Americans are taught that voting defines democracy.
However, the transformational working class victories of the past—from abolishing chattel slavery to ending child labor—were not the outcomes of voting. What working people did with others outside the ballot box to improve their lives and those of their children and grandchildren is what secured such victories.
Time for new working-class tactics and strategies to forge an American movement politics that puts people first? If not now, then when?
Keep ReadingShow Less
Honor an Election of Change. Replace Chuck Schumer
Schumer is the opposite of what Democratic voters said they wanted and in countless ways he represents exactly what they voted against.
Nov 14, 2026
Now that Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is challenging Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for Senate majority leader, we have a choice that lets us honor an election of change. Schumer’s supporters credit him for every Senate upset and proclaim his inevitable coronation as majority leader after leading the Senate Democrats for nearly ten years. But if he’s such a Zen master strategist, why do most of the new senators who represent so much of the party’s future almost unanimously want someone different? Maybe because they’re actually in touch with average Americans, and recognize that letting Schumer continue to symbolize the Democratic brand as majority leader insults the very desire for a different direction that powered their victory.
The new senators-elect calling for change so far include Annie Andrews, Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, Peggy Flanagan, Adam Hamilton, Chris Pappas, James Talarico, and Juliana Stratton. Scott Colom, who just claimed a historic victory in Mississippi, has questioned having two leaders from the same borough of the same city. Existing senators opposing Schumer range from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Raphael Warnock to Elissa Slotkin and Mark Warner. These senators represent diverse sectors of the party—the problems with Schumer go beyond any “progressive vs. moderate” divide. But all recognize the need for a change, and their response undercuts every argument about Schumer being key to the Democratic victories. Why kneecap them from the start by insisting on the old regime?
I saw the grassroots response this past June when I gave the opening keynote at the Washington State Democratic convention. The delegates were a diverse group of hard-working volunteer activists, spanning highly progressive Seattle districts, suburbs that recently turned blue, blue-collar cities like Spokane and Tacoma, and conservative rural areas where even identifying as a Democrat takes courage. After exploring the possibilities and challenges of the moment, I described how Schumer has dragged down the Democratic brand—with his closeness to Wall Street and relentless embrace of Israel being particularly toxic with young voters—and why he needed to go.
To succeed in 2028 and beyond, Democrats will need a strong positive vision, not Schumer’s tepid rehash of corporate-friendly Clintonism.
I then asked the crowd to try a thought experiment: Would anyone want Schumer campaigning alongside them in a critical race, whether local, state, or national? Given the breadth of delegates in the room, I expected some pushback and argument. Instead, which I didn’t expect, the entire room burst into laughter. They responded to that idea as though it was literally absurd.
So why would the Democrats want Schumer, with his 13% approval rating, as a leading spokesperson for the party? They need leaders to inspire enthusiasm, build on the election’s successes, and rebuild the party brand, not a leader who deflates momentum and sows doubt every time he opens his mouth. Here are three reasons why picking Schumer would undermine the amazing achievement of the Democratic wave:
Schumer’s strategic record is far weaker than the Democratic victories imply. Supporters say Schumer helped recruit candidates like Roy Cooper, Josh Turek, Sherrod Brown, and Mary Peltola. But all but Turek were obvious choices whom many others were also working to convince. Schumer also backed Haley Stevens in Michigan, Janet Mills in Maine, and Angie Craig in Minnesota, all of whom were problematic—in Stevens’s case, her election-eve backstabbing nearly cost Democrats the seat. Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC controlled massive Democratic dollars. But Schumer didn’t invest in Kansas until October 9, or in South Carolina until five days before the election. Schumer never invested in Louisiana, where Democrats lost by less than two points after July and September polls showed they were within four points. Nor in Florida, where Angie Nixon lost by less than three after select polls had shown her equally close. In contrast, Ken Martin’s Democratic National Committee paved the way for even the long-shot victories by routing money to every state party, with red states getting proportionately more, echoing the role that Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy played in the Obama wave.
Mississippi is a key example. Democrats like Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Warnock helped Colom’s long-shot candidacy raise money early on, with Warnock raising $750,000 and offering valuable introductions and advice. JB Pritzker also played a key role, investing $1.6 million. AOC helped too, as did grassroots donors. I gave my $100 in April after reading a thoughtful Bulwark assessment of Colom’s chances. With every resource and access to inside data, Schumer should have had the judgment to invest early even on the possibility of Colom winning. But aside from one joint fundraiser, Schumer didn’t financially support Colom until October 20, although he now tries to take credit, and credulous reporters seem to accept his claim. He’s embodied the opposite of strategic acuity.
Schumer’s a terrible symbol for the party. Physically, though “only” 75, Schumer echoes Joe Biden’s frailty. He’s useless on social media, rambles in interviews, and writes press releases with 35-word titles. He’s rightly been called “the senator from Wall Street,” a disaster in a populist moment. He refused to endorse Zohran Mamdani after the Democratic primary, even though Mamdani excited precisely the kinds of new voters who then fueled this national wave election. Schumer also voted for the disastrous Iraq War that helped pave the way for Trump, and continues to excuse the actions of an Israeli government that’s rightly condemned worldwide. As majority leader, he’ll be under even more public scrutiny, which will make it far harder for Democrats to marshal the grassroots enthusiasm necessary to build on their successes and battle Trump and Stephen Miller on the public stage.
Democrats won in spite of their brand, not because of it. We don’t need someone who embodies the brand’s weaknesses. Only 29% of voters viewed the party favorably in an October 28 NBC poll, a week before they threw the Republicans out. Schumer’s the last person to change that assessment. In contrast, Van Hollen has ties to all the elements of the Democratic coalition, having run the fundraising efforts for both House and Senate Democrats, and then emerged as a critic of Democratic complacency in the last couple of years, including challenging Biden’s unflinching allegiance to Israel and confronting leaders like Schumer, who refused to back Mamdani. It took real courage for Van Hollen to travel to El Salvador to meet with and help build the pressure to free Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man whom ICE had deported there in defiance of a court order. So he’d make an excellent majority leader, and would have my vote.
If senators prefer someone other than Van Hollen, there are lots of others who could similarly unite the party, embody the best of its values, and be powerful spokespeople instead of coming off as if they have one foot in the grave. Democrats won because people so hated what Trump has done, and because grassroots volunteers organized with such commitment, persistence, and intensity to make the blue wave a reality. To succeed in 2028 and beyond, Democrats will need a strong positive vision, not Schumer’s tepid rehash of corporate-friendly Clintonism.
It’s right to keep celebrating our amazing victory, but replacing Schumer will make building on all we’ve won far easier. Groups from Indivisible to the Machinists union have weighed in for change so far. Now it’s time to get other organizations to join the grassroots pressure and to insist that our Democratic senators back a majority leader who embodies the vision we’re fighting for and can present it to the public in a way that builds on all we’ve just achieved.
Keep ReadingShow Less
COP31: Public Money Should Not Bankroll a Cruel, Failing Food System
Governments across the globe have the choice at COP31 to unleash its power of agroecology and divert funds to a food system that nourishes people, supports fair livelihoods, and gives animals better lives while protecting the planet.
Nov 14, 2026
At COP 31, governments will be talking about tackling climate change and food system resilience, but unless they tackle their own contradictions, this is just hot air.
The contradictions are stark. This year, the African Development Bank warned that El Niño could cost the continent up to $20 billion. Despite a football field-sized field of tropical rainforest being destroyed every day by farms supplying industrial agriculture giant JBS, the Nigerian government has approved major expansion into Nigeria by JBS.
Nigerians needs answers about the real consequences of JBS' expansion. Corporations like JBS concentrate power in the hands of a few, very rich people, such as Brazilian billionaire Joesely Batista whose shares control JBS and who met with US President Donald Trump just a day before Trump set out reduced tariffs on beef imports.
The opportunity to have a food system that is equitable, humane, and sustainable is truly exciting and a tangible prospect.
These giant industrial agriculture corporations also put pressure on precious nature resources; 1 kilogram of animal protein requires roughly 100 times more water than 1 kg of grain protein. They threaten livelihoods and how families support and feed themselves; when smallholder farmers already produce over 90% of the nation’s food—what will happen to them? Then the job creation narrative pushed by JBS needs questioning. Why not ask JBS workers in Colorado, who this year walked out in protest about labor rights abuses?
In Europe during unprecedented summer heat, the UK government set out increased support for chicken production in the name of food security, despite previously acknowledging that in the UK “animal farming at its current scale is unsustainable without a reliance on imports,” With South American soy providing 18% of produced animal feed.
Just two months earlier, the UK saw its biggest ever environmental lawsuit being brought to the High Court in London, by over 4,000 people, against Welsh Water and Avara Foods. Avara Foods are allegedly raising an estimated 24 million chickens in the catchment area. Litigants cited damage to three rivers, including the iconic River Wye, with impact on local ecosystems, communities, and tourism reliant businesses on these once thriving rivers.
Industrial agriculture is not the answer to hunger either. An estimated 766 million tonnes of grain is diverted annually to feed farmed animals rather than people. Nor is this a food system that provides food security. Quite the opposite, this is a teetering system that relies on synthetic fertilizers, imported animal feed, and fossil fuels. It’s hugely vulnerable to climate change, supply chain shocks, and geopolitical instability, including the conflicts involving Russia and Ukraine and Iran and the US.
Industrial agriculture even threatens the effectiveness of vital medicines. Antibiotic overuse in industrial agriculture has been linked to nearly 2,000 premature deaths in the UK alone. Antibiotics are given to animals to aid their survival and growth in the harsh conditions in which they are forced to live. Let’s be clear, we are risking antimicrobial resistance so that a few people can continue to put profit before animal welfare.
But central to this failing system is injustice. This is injustice not only for people and the planet, but for the over 90 billion animals trapped right now in the system. This cannot be overlooked in talk of climate change and food security. Every cow, sheep, pig, chicken, and goat is a sentient being capable of feeling pain and fear. Mother pigs are kept so confined that they cannot turn around. Chickens buckle under the weight of their selectively bred bodies. Baby animals are routinely mutilated without pain relief. Industrial agriculture is a horror system for animals.
The good news is, there is a better food system, called agroecology. Evidence increasingly demonstrates it has the power to provide long-term food and reduce animal suffering. Agroecology works with nature not against it. It adapts to climate change and offers resilience against market shocks. It connects how we grow food with how we treat animals, protect ecosystems, and support livelihoods. The opportunity to have a food system that is equitable, humane, and sustainable is truly exciting and a tangible prospect.
Governments across the globe have the choice at COP31 to unleash its power. They have the choice to stop using our money to prop up an unjust, cruel, and failing food system and divert to a food system that nourishes people, supports fair livelihoods, and gives animals better lives while protecting the planet. They must aid businesses to pursue the opportunities needed here alongside increased plant rich food production.
In Africa, how we produce our food must be shaped by the knowledge and insight of the people who grow it now and by the communities who depend on it. The government must also make finance and practical support accessible to them.
Factory farming grew following the Second World War, when maximizing food production was an urgent priority. Today we must judge success by more than volume. Our world has changed; we know more about animal sentience, ecological limits, and the fragility of supply chains,
That is what we do at World Animal Protection, we work to protect animals from cruelty and suffering. Governments must stop funding relentless cruelty to animals. At COP31, we don't need more contradictions and hot air from governments. We need meaningful change.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Will Democrats Defy Voters by Ramming Through Deeper Israel-US Military Integration?
While voters in both countries have just withheld a mandate, Washington and Jerusalem are moving to bind their militaries together in a way that is harder to undo than any election.
Nov 14, 2026
Two elections in eight days sent leaders the same message, and neither country got a clean answer.
On November 3, American voters delivered a landslide. Democrats flipped eight Senate seats and now hold a 55-44 majority. They have won the House as well, with fewer than twenty races still uncalled, and they are on track to match or pass the 257 seats Democrats won in 2008. They won Senate seats in states Trump carried by double digits in 2024, including Texas, for the first time since 1988. The president is trying to distance himself from the result.
A week earlier, Israelis voted on October 27 and could not decide. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud won 27 seats, the most of any party, but his right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc holds only 53 of 120, eight short of a majority and down from 64 in 2022. Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist bloc holds 48, and Arab parties hold a record 19. On November 8, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog gave Eisenkot the first chance to form a government after 67 lawmakers endorsed him, against 46 for Netanyahu, who stays on as caretaker prime minister in the meanwhile.
Israel’s system explains why. Voters choose a party list, and seats are divided proportionally nationwide, so no party has ever won a majority alone. Israel’s president asks the candidate with the best chance of assembling 61 seats to form a government, which usually means the leader of the largest party, though not this time. That candidate gets 28 days, extendable by 14. If the candidate fails, another gets a turn, and if that fails too, the country goes to a new election. The 67 endorsements include Arab-led parties, but Eisenkot has ruled out governing with them, so they are not likely to be part of his majority. His clearest path to 61 runs through the two ultra-Orthodox parties that sit in Netanyahu’s bloc. Otherwise he would need a minority government that survives a no-confidence vote. If he fails, Netanyahu is next in line. Each side needs people it has sworn it will not work with.
Voters in both countries have just withheld a mandate. Washington and Jerusalem are, meanwhile, binding their militaries together in a way that is harder to undo than any election. The first signal came on Monday in Paris, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Israel is rich enough to buy American weapons and that President Trump wants U.S. military financing to end “as soon as possible.” That financing is about $3.8 billion a year under a 10-year agreement that expires in September 2028: $3.3 billion for weapons purchases and $500 million for missile defense.
Rubio said the terms are being worked out in a new memorandum of understanding, that Israel could “absolutely” stop receiving aid by the end of the year if it chose, and that the deal could include joint weapons production. “We’ll negotiate the timeline,” he said. Trump had said the week before that the two countries had agreed to end the aid by the end of 2026, which according to The Times of Israel surprised officials on both sides. Netanyahu has proposed phasing it out over about a decade.
That sounds like distance. Read together with the defense bill, it looks more like a change of form: military grants give way to joint production and shared technology. Critics of the aid may welcome the end of grants. The question is what replaces them, and who gets a say. The vehicle is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The House passed the FY2027 bill, 216 to 212, with $750 million for joint programs with Israel, including $500 million for missile defense, the figure the current agreement already commits, plus counter-drone, tunnel, and emerging-technology work. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version carries its own provisions for the military support of Israel.
Both include the Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, which would make the Pentagon designate an executive agent to coordinate joint research, testing, integration, and industrial cooperation—which would move coordination out of the realm of foreign aid and into the more opaque world of Pentagon contracts. The House bill also expands intelligence sharing with Israel and creates an Abraham Accords defense initiative. And U.S. taxpayers pay the bill.
The Senate has not passed its version. A July vote to begin debate failed 50 to 46, and the final text is expected to be a compromise drafted by the Armed Services Committee leaders in the lame-duck session, competing for floor time with a December 11 government funding deadline. What that text will contain on Israel is not yet clear.
Supporters, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), say that the provisions make existing cooperation more efficient and were co-sponsored by members of both parties. They also argue that the United States gets a multiple return in technology and lessons from combat. Critics disagree. Representatives across the aisle, Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), tried to strike the section and failed. Massie warned that writing it into law would make it harder for a future administration to reverse it.
The lobby from AIPAC that praised these provisions had a poor election. According to an analysis from Responsible Statecraft, its super PAC and affiliated groups spent about $84 million this cycle, and nearly two-thirds of it, about $55 million, went to candidates who lost. The largest effort, more than $31 million, failed to stop Abdul El-Sayed from winning Michigan’s Senate seat in both the primary and the general election. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice,” he told AIPAC in his victory speech. James Talarico won Texas after saying he had never taken AIPAC’s money and would not take it in his campaign. A Democratic strategist told Agence France-Presse that campaigns that once coveted AIPAC’s support now see it as a liability. Opinion is moving too: in the Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey, Americans’ favorability toward Israel averaged 44 out of 100 this year, a record low, down from 58 in 2022, and among Democrats it fell from 52 to 30.
Voters in both countries have just reopened the question of who governs and on what terms. A provision written into a defense bill by a Congress whose majority is about to change closes it for them. The final bill is expected to come together before the new Congress is sworn in.
The rebuke, though, is not symbolic. The new Democratic majority takes office in January, and the final NDAA text is not yet settled. Constituents who want their representatives to explain what the Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative does, and whether it should carry a review date, still have a few weeks to ask.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why Not Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries?
When so many Americans don’t want to see these two in leadership positions in the House and the Senate, it’s a dereliction of duty in a democracy to ignore that.
Nov 13, 2026
“Why not?” is an important question, so I’m going to answer it as clearly as I can.
For many decades, the Democratic Party has been guided by leadership like that of Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. In Schumer’s case, I mean him specifically. In Jeffries’ case, it’s more the ideology. And that leadership has led to the Democratic Party being disrespected, mistrusted, and unliked nationwide. Of course, we still have pockets where the party is strong, but in general, we’re running at about a 39% approval rating across the country. And those two are even less popular than President Donald Trump.
But the biggest reason the Democratic Party needs new leadership is that it needs to rebuild trust with the American people. It needs to rebuild trust with its own voters, in government, in our institutions, and in our systems of justice and accountability. The party needs to make sure life is affordable enough for people to not only survive, but thrive. It also needs to work towards restoring faith in our democracy by strengthening it.
That means taking on a lot of efforts where the people’s interests are at odds with many of the members in the House and the Senate. Those policy fights will go against not just their donors, but their friendships and their relationships. They’re still in a mindset of bipartisanship as opposed to supermajoritarian rule. You can’t have both.
If you want a country that’s able to change things, like ending Citizens United and ending gerrymandering at the federal level, you need a powerful Democratic Party. And if you look back through history, America has made most of its major changes and improvements under supermajoritarian, single-party rule at the federal level, with big majorities in state legislatures and governors’ mansions around the country too.
The simple fact of the matter is that divided governments are great for maintaining the status quo, but they’re not built for change at all. And this moment we’re in, and the foreseeable future, are going to require change. Systemic, dramatic, radical change. Adapting to things like AI and robotics. Adapting to climate change. Working to repair broken institutions like our judicial branch, our prison systems, and our healthcare systems. Fixing our relationship with tech companies, with markets, and with private firms, including what we require from them in exchange for allowing them to exist.
Neither Chuck Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries is well-suited for this. I’m not sure any of the people who’ve raised their hands are the exact choices we need. But at this point, the most valuable thing that comes out of the fight to replace them is just the fight itself. Flexing the muscles of the electorate.
When so many Americans don’t want to see Hakeem and Chuck in leadership positions in the House and the Senate, it’s a dereliction of duty in a democracy to ignore that. But that, in and of itself, has no consequences unless we provide them.
That, I think, is why it’s so important that we’re doing what we’re doing. All across this country, organizations, individuals, and a handful of elected officials are taking a stand and saying, “No. We need to move in a different direction. This isn’t the way.” And that unity of purpose, that unity of mission, is one of the most valuable things to come out of this fight.
So what are we doing here at A Fight Worth Having?
We’re sending LED trucks all across DS so the new members, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and others are reminded that the American people are behind them if they choose to be brave. We’re running ads on television in DC. We’re running full-page newspaper ads. We’re trying to make sure the people in DC see and know that the American people are united in their resistance to this leadership, and that they’ll be doing the people’s business if they take a stand.
We’re also running a series of about 110 polls across the country to see exactly where Americans stand, and we’re releasing that polling, hopefully on Monday or Tuesday, before the votes for Speaker. We’re doing everything we can to make sure these folks are ready.
The other thing we’re doing is raising money for the handful of folks who’ve said, “No more” and committed to opposing Jeffries. So far, we’ve raised $86,000.
If you want to help these members, you can do so here.
This is the first of many fights that are worth having. Let's go.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Midterms Are What Democracy Looks Like, Now Let's See What Democracy Can Do
For more than half a century, powerful interests have worked to build an America that serves the wealthy few. Now we have an opportunity to chart a different course, rooted in economic justice, human dignity, democracy, peace, and a livable planet.
Nov 13, 2026
The billionaire class made a bad bet. They thought their extraordinary wealth could buy them a country. That hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions, control over powerful communications platforms, and an increasingly authoritarian political movement could overwhelm the democratic will of the American people.
On November 3, millions of Americans reminded them of something they had forgotten: Organized money has an opponent. Organized people.
From the millions who marched in the No Kings demonstrations to the volunteers who knocked on doors, registered voters, and mobilized their communities, Americans delivered an extraordinary repudiation of Donald Trump and his assault on democracy.
Democrats need an ambitious agenda that improves people's lives while confronting the concentrated wealth and political power that have prevented meaningful reform.
Young Americans helped power the Democratic victories. Latino voters shifted away from Republicans. Across the country, voters expressed their frustration with an administration that has prioritized the wealthy while ordinary Americans struggle with the cost of living.
Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. But the significance of this election extends far beyond which party holds the gavels. We may be witnessing a historic opportunity to reverse a political and economic transformation more than half a century in the making.
The Corporate Playbook
In 1971, corporate attorney Lewis Powell wrote a confidential memorandum for the US Chamber of Commerce urging business leaders to organize a sustained campaign to influence universities, the media, the courts, and government.
The Powell Memo helped inspire a corporate political offensive that reshaped American politics. Business interests invested enormous resources in think tanks, lobbying, political campaigns, and legal institutions, advancing policies that weakened unions, reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, rolled back regulations, and concentrated economic and political power.
The consequences are all around us. America has generated extraordinary prosperity, but an increasingly disproportionate share has flowed to the top. Housing, healthcare, and education have become increasingly unaffordable, while billionaires exercise extraordinary political influence.
Today's tech oligarchs didn't invent this power grab. They inherited a playbook.
But this election demonstrated that ordinary people, acting collectively, still possess the power to challenge concentrated wealth.
The question now is what we do with that power.
Democrats Need to Rediscover FDR, not Reagan
For decades, Democrats have been told that winning elections requires moving toward the center, moderating their ambitions, and reassuring wealthy donors that fundamental economic arrangements will remain undisturbed.
I've spent much of my adult life watching Democrats invoke Ronald Reagan more often than Franklin Roosevelt. Think about that. The party of the New Deal, Social Security, and organized labor has too often looked to the political philosophy of a president who helped undermine that legacy.
Yet Roosevelt understood something today's Democrats desperately need to remember: Government can transform people's lives, and doing so can build lasting political support.
Medicare for All would help democratize economic security. Public financing would help democratize political power.
His New Deal, propelled in significant part by organized labor and popular movements, established Social Security, strengthened workers' rights, created jobs, and helped build a more economically secure middle class. Those reforms were incomplete, and many Americans were excluded from their benefits. But they demonstrated the extraordinary possibilities of government acting on behalf of ordinary people.
In 1944, Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights that included the right to a decent job, adequate income, housing, medical care, education, and economic security.
More than 80 years later, that vision remains unfinished.
And in the wealthiest nation in human history, there is no justification for leaving it that way.
Two Pillars of Transformative Change
Democrats need an ambitious agenda that improves people's lives while confronting the concentrated wealth and political power that have prevented meaningful reform.
Two commitments should stand at its center: Medicare for All and public financing of elections.
The first would transform economic security. The second would help transform political power.
Start with healthcare.
The United States spends approximately two and a half times the OECD average per person on healthcare, yet delivers worse outcomes across key measures, from life expectancy to preventable deaths. Millions remain uninsured, while many people with coverage cannot afford to use it when they need care.
In America, cost effectively rations access to healthcare.
Other wealthy nations guarantee universal health coverage while spending substantially less. Yet our political leaders continue defending a fragmented, profit-driven system that places the financial interests of insurance companies ahead of people's health.
Medicare for All would guarantee healthcare as a fundamental human right, eliminate a major source of financial insecurity, and reduce workers' dependence on employers for health coverage.
But why has such fundamental reform remained politically elusive?
Part of the answer lies in the extraordinary influence of the industries that profit from the existing system. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and other powerful interests spend enormous sums lobbying politicians, financing campaigns, and influencing the public debate.
Which brings us to the second pillar: getting big money out of politics.
We need to overturn Citizens United, end the system of unlimited independent political spending and super PAC contributions, and establish robust public financing of elections so candidates can compete without depending on wealthy donors and corporate interests.
We should ban congressional stock trading and strengthen protections against conflicts of interest. But those reforms alone will not address the underlying system in which politicians must continually raise money from the very industries they are supposed to regulate.
Public financing offers a way to change that relationship, allowing candidates to rely more heavily on ordinary voters rather than wealthy contributors.
This is essential because campaign finance reform is not simply another progressive issue. It affects our ability to accomplish virtually everything else.
How can Democrats seriously challenge corporate monopolies, tax billionaires, protect workers, or reform healthcare while remaining financially dependent on the interests determined to block those changes?
Medicare for All would help democratize economic security. Public financing would help democratize political power.
Together, they could fundamentally change the terrain on which every other progressive struggle takes place.
The Agenda Americans Deserve
These two reforms must anchor a broader commitment to economic and social justice.
We need a living wage of at least $20 an hour, stronger unions and collective bargaining rights, affordable housing and childcare, and a tax system that requires billionaires and giant corporations to contribute their fair share.
We need to defend reproductive freedom, confront climate change, regulate Wall Street, enforce antitrust laws, and protect the democratic institutions increasingly threatened by concentrated wealth and authoritarianism.
The millions who marched, organized, and voted cannot simply return home and wait for the next election. They must continue demanding accountability and building the political power necessary to sustain change.
We must also challenge a foreign policy that devotes extraordinary resources to militarism while urgent human needs go unmet, and use congressional power to end illegal wars.
These are not radical demands in a society with the wealth and resources to achieve them. They are the foundations of a government that places human well-being above corporate profits.
And they challenge the conventional wisdom that progressive ambition is politically dangerous.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) built a national movement by demanding universal healthcare, economic justice, and an end to billionaire domination of politics. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrated that an unapologetically progressive affordability agenda could win broad support in America's largest city.
Their success does not mean every progressive candidate will win. But it demolishes the assumption that Democrats must abandon ambitious ideas to appeal to voters.
As Mamdani has emphasized, voters want change they can experience in their everyday lives, in the cost of rent, groceries, childcare, and healthcare.
Winning is one thing. Delivering is another.
None of this will happen overnight.
Trump remains president. Corporate interests will fight to protect their power. Even with congressional majorities, Democrats face vetoes, Senate procedural obstacles, and opposition from within their own ranks.
But political obstacles are not reasons to abandon fundamental principles.
Democrats should introduce Medicare for All legislation, fight for living wages, advance public financing, and investigate corporate abuses and political corruption. If Trump vetoes popular legislation, let Americans see what Democrats fought for and who stood in the way.
Congressional Democrats can also use hearings, subpoenas, oversight, and their control over federal spending to expose corruption, challenge corporate influence, and build the case for structural reform.
And that accountability must extend beyond Trump and the Republican Party. Democrats cannot credibly challenge a corrupt political system while protecting its beneficiaries within their own ranks.
The millions who marched, organized, and voted cannot simply return home and wait for the next election. They must continue demanding accountability and building the political power necessary to sustain change.
If Democrats fail to deliver meaningful improvements in people's lives, they risk recreating the disillusionment that helped bring Trump to power.
The Next Chapter of Democracy
The political and economic system that has concentrated so much wealth and power in the hands of so few was not inevitable. It was built through decades of deliberate political choices. And it can be changed through collective action.
The millions who marched, organized, and voted must remain engaged. Join an organization. Organize in your workplace and community. Hold elected officials accountable. Keep marching, keep voting, and keep demanding more.
For more than half a century, powerful interests have worked to build an America that serves the wealthy few. Now we have an opportunity to chart a different course, rooted in economic justice, human dignity, democracy, peace, and a livable planet.
This is what democracy looks like. Now let's show what democracy can deliver.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy