May, 06 2025, 04:06pm EDT
Interior Attempts to Cut Air Quality Monitoring in Parks
Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that the Interior Department temporarily suspended an air-quality monitoring program in the national parks. This follows after the United States experienced some of the worst wildfire smoke and air quality in decades in June 2023, and 2025’s air quality is already trending toward dangerous pollution levels.
In response, Jackie Ostfeld, the Sierra Club Outdoors for All Campaign Director, released the following statement:
“This is an appalling move by the administration, especially considering the haze, wildfire smoke, and worsening air quality conditions that have plagued many areas of the country the past few years. Instead of working to protect the health of our communities, increase access to the parks as summer vacations approach, or address any of the reasons behind air quality issues in our treasured and iconic national parks – wildfires, industry, pollution – the administration is cutting programs designed to keep our outdoors safe and accessible.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Zohran Mamdani's Battle Against the Billionaire Class and Democratic Establishment Is Just Beginning
Noting that corporations, large landlords, developers, and donors "want to keep him out of the mayor's office," India Walton urged Zohran Mamdani's campaign to "stay ahead of the messaging and stay on doors."
Jun 26, 2025
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday beat disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic NYC mayoral primary—but progressives within and beyond the city don't expect the billionaire class and party establishment that lined up against him to give up so easily. Going into the general election, those who believe in Mamdani's vision are encouraging him and his supporters to maintain the momentum of the movement they've built.
"This is a foot-on-the-gas kind of moment," RootsAction senior strategist India Walton told Common Dreams.
Walton knows about what she speaks. In June 2021, the community activist and healthcare worker defeated incumbent Byron Brown in the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, New York's second-largest city. However, following a bruising general election race, Brown won in November as a write-in candidate—dashing the hopes of Walton's working-class agenda.
"Folks like myself and Zohran have not fallen out of the sky," Walton said. "We have our roots in organizing, and to be able to turn out 40,000 volunteers speaks volumes about how Zohran has been on the frontlines of movements and of issue-based campaigns. And when people know that you have a moral compass and you are fighting for them, they are motivated to come out for you—not only to vote but to volunteer, and I think that we have to believe for ourselves, as progressives, that not only is our message resonant, but our relationships are vital to continuing to see these kinds of wins."
"The way that you combat fear and lies is by having one-on-one conversations with people, because if it comes on a glossy mailer, it's easy to believe."
As Mamdani and his supporters—in New York City and across the country—turn their focus to the general election, Walton said, "we need more people out, more people in the media, cheering him on, congratulating him, and talking about how progressive values do win elections."
"Do what is in your lane to do right: if you can donate five dollars, then donate five dollars; if you can spend an hour phone banking then spend an hour phone banking; if you can make a piece of original art and send it to the campaign to be used on campaign materials, do that," she said. "Whatever it is in your spirit, whatever time, talent, and treasure you have, do that, because this is gonna take all of us in order to make sure that he makes it over the finish line, and it's gonna send a resounding message in November, what this country wants, what this country needs, and what a city that really sets the stage for the tone of the rest of the nation could be."
Walton also cautioned that "I think that we should have every reason to be suspicious of people who endorsed Andrew Cuomo and now want to jump on the Zohran train, because they're only there for their own self-interest."
"I think that a part of where I made a mistake was trying to cozy up to the corporate Democrats who rejected me in the first place," she said, reflecting on her 2021 loss. Mamdani can "keep the tent big," because "we know other people are gonna wanna come along when the train is moving," she noted, "but you don't have to put them in your inner circle."
Billionaires, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and corporate interests, such as DoorDash, poured money into Cuomo's primary race. "There's gonna be more of that," as well as attacks on Mamdani from "folks who traditionally donate to Republicans," Walton warned. "It's corporations. It's large landlords. It's developers. It's the donor class. It's the billionaires and the 1% who want to keep him out of the mayor's office."
As Common Dreams has reported, members of the U.S. oligarchy—including Republican President Donald Trump, an erstwhile New Yorker who publicly melted down about Mamdani's primary win, and billionaires like Bill Ackman—are "terrified" that the democratic socialist may be the city's next mayor.
Warren to CNBC's Joe Kernen as he fear-mongers about Mamdani being a socialist: "Where is your outrage over a Republican Party that is saying 'We want to fund every more tax giveaways for billionaires ... while we take healthcare away from everyone else'"
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 26, 2025 at 9:03 AM
On Thursday, the billionaire hedge fund manager Ackman, who has made his distaste for Mamdani well known, announced he would lavishly back any "superhero" candidate who emerged to challenge the Democratic primary winner in the general election. Ackman said large amounts of donor money would "pour in" for a candidate who could take on Mamdani's proposals for more affordable housing, healthcare, food, and transportation in the city.
Walton urged Mamdani's campaign to "stay ahead of the messaging and stay on doors. The way that you combat fear and lies is by having one-on-one conversations with people, because if it comes on a glossy mailer, it's easy to believe and people don't have time to go doing their own research, but if someone knocks on your door and has a three-minute conversation with you about who Zohran is, what he's done, and why you should vote for him, that's so much more meaningful than getting a piece of mail."
It's not yet clear exactly who Mamdani, a current member of the New York State Assembly, will face in the general election. Cuomo is considering his next move after conceding Tuesday night—but the ex-governor, who resigned from that post during a sexual harassment scandal, is openly teasing a potential independent run.
"I said he won the primary election," Cuomo toldThe New York Times in a phone call shortly after his concession speech. "I said I wanted to look at the numbers and the ranked-choice voting to decide about what to do in the future, because I'm also on an independent line. And that's the decision, that's what I was saying. I want to analyze and talk to some colleagues."
The city's current controversial mayor, Eric Adams, is already running as an independent for another term—and, as Semaforreported Wednesday, in the wake of Mamdani's win, the ex-cop has suddenly found "'overwhelming support' from NYC's desperate business elites."
As Gothamistdetailed Wednesday, the other candidates are the Republican nominee, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who "is back on the GOP ballot line four years after Adams trounced him in the general election," and defense attorney Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor "running a centrist campaign on yet another independent line."
Tuesday's results may be enough to deter Cuomo from launching another campaign for this cycle. As progressive Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid wrote Wednesday for Zeteo:
Mamdani's victory redrew the map of what's possible in New York City politics. He didn't win on the backs of white gentrifiers alone; he built a multiracial, cross-class coalition that reached from the brownstones of Park Slope in Brooklyn to the apartment towers of Jackson Heights in Queens. He ran up margins in progressive enclaves like Park Slope, East Village, and Cobble Hill, but also won working-class, immigrant-heavy neighborhoods across Queens and Brooklyn—Bangladeshi, Chinese, Latino, Arab, Indo-Caribbean. He was the highest performer in Queens among Latino and South Asian precincts and carried South Asian strongholds like Richmond Hill and Jackson Heights, and East Asian precincts like Sunset Park, Chinatown, and Flushing. Most strikingly, he flipped Oakland Gardens, a swing district in Queens... long seen as part of Cuomo's base. Mamdani didn't just activate the left; he broke into communities that conventional wisdom says don't vote socialist. And he did it with a disciplined message on public goods and affordability, backed by a massive, relentless volunteer field operation.
During the primary race, Mamdani battled Islamophobic threats and unfounded allegations of antisemitism. The Muslim victor and fellow candidate Brad Lander, who is Jewish, also endorsed each other—encouraging voters to take advantage of the city's rank choice voting system by listing both men on their ballots and leaving Cuomo unranked.
Other prominent Jewish people and groups also backed Mamdani—including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, which "endorsed Zohran on the first day he launched his campaign because we knew this would be a historic opportunity for our movements," the group's political director, Beth Miller, said in a Wednesday statement.
"Trump-supporting billionaires and hateful politicians spent millions of dollars trying to smear Zohran and use the New York Jewish community as a political pawn to drive division. They failed," Miller continued. "Jewish New Yorkers joined the broad and diverse coalition of this campaign to elect a mayor who will fight with us for the humanity, dignity, and freedom of all people—from NYC to Palestine."
"For decades, traditional political wisdom said that in order to win elections, politicians shouldn't speak about Palestinian rights, or hold the Israeli government accountable to international law," she pointed out. "But Zohran's historic victory last night that toppled a political dynasty shows that people are done with that tired, racist, and hateful old version of politics. Our future is not about any one politician. It's about all of us. It's about our movements and what everyday people can build when we come together."
While billionaire Jeff Bezos is popping champagne bottles in Venice with his rich celebrity friends at his $20 million wedding, he wants to lecture struggling New Yorkers that Zohran Mamdani is bad for New York City.The same Bezos-owned Washington Post that pulled its endorsement of Kamala Harris.
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— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 12:01 PM
In a Thursday opinion piece for The Guardian, Ben Davis, who worked on the data team for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, noted that "Mamdani is the progeny of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the U.S.'s largest socialist organization in a century."
"He is among the many young people inspired by Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign," Davis wrote. "Mamdani was built by the DSA and the young left-wing milieu that emerged after the Sanders campaign. They cannot be separated. Not his charisma or campaign style. He is a product of the movement."
Sanders endorsed Mamdani last week and toldPolitico after the primary election: "Look, he ran a brilliant campaign. And it wasn't just him. What he understood and understands—campaign's not over—is that to run a brilliant campaign, you have to run a grassroots campaign. So instead of taking money from billionaires and putting stupid ads on television, which the people increasingly do not pay attention to, you mobilize thousands and thousands of people around the progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working-class people, and you go out and you knock on doors."
"You cannot run a grassroots campaign unless you excite people. You cannot excite people unless you have something to say. And he had a lot to say," Sanders explained. "He said that he wants to make New York City livable, affordable for ordinary people, that the wealthiest people in New York City are going to start to have to pay their fair share in taxes so that you can stabilize the outrageously high costs of housing in New York, which, by the way, is a crisis all over this country. That you could deal with transportation in a sensible way, deal with childcare, deal with healthcare, deal with the needs of ordinary working-class people."
Sanders—who has responded to Trump's second term and Republican control of Congress by taking his Fighting Oligarchy Tour around the country—framed Mamdani's win as an opportunity for Democratic Party leaders to learn important lessons after devastating losses during the last cycle: "We need an agenda that speaks to working-class people, activates millions of people around this country to get involved on that agenda. Take on the billionaire class, take on oligarchy. That's how you win elections."
"I think they have a lesson to learn, and whether or not they will, I have my doubts," the senator said of Democratic leadership. "If you look at the dynamics of this campaign, what you have is older folks voting for Cuomo, the billionaire class putting in millions of dollars into Cuomo, all of the old-time establishment candidates and politicians supporting Cuomo, and he lost."
In an early signal that Sanders may be right about the party leadership not learning any new lessons, Axiosreported Thursday that "many Democratic leaders and donors are panicking" about Mamdani's win—noting that some party leaders have congratulated but not endorsed him, while other officials continue to speak out against him.
Responding to that report on social media, Nina Turner, a former progressive congressional candidate from Ohio, and David Hogg, a gun violence prevention advocate recently ousted as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee after pushing for primary challenges to "asleep-at-the-wheel" Democrats in blue districts, both pointed in jest to a longtime part line: "Vote blue no matter who."
Hogg this week also joined a growing chorus of progressives using Mamdani's victory to call for primary challenges against the Democratic establishment, and to launch campaigns prioritizing working-class priorities.
🎴 Mamdani's insurgent campaign—backed by grassroots activists and first-time voters—overcame tens of millions of dollars."This wasn't just a local upset," said Joseph Geevarghese, leader of Our Rev. "It's a referendum on the direction of the Democratic Party."@newsweek.com: tinyurl.com/4j6pmr5z
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— Our Revolution (@our-revolution.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 12:28 PM
"People are tired of a status quo that isn't working for them. Zohran Mamdani's campaign has sent shockwaves across the country and shown what's possible when candidates have the courage to stay true to their values and speak authentically to working people," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, which is working to elect the primary winner.
Victor Rivera, co-founder and executive director of Beyond the Ballot, another organization backing Mamdani, said in a statement that "America's largest city just sent a clear message: Billionaire rule is on borrowed time."
"New Yorkers are done with a politics that serves luxury developers, hedge fund landlords, and police lobbyists. Zohran's victory proves that ordinary people, tenants, workers, students, and immigrants, are reclaiming power for the people," added Rivera, whose group is made up of Gen Z organizers fighting "both far-right extremism, and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party."
In a Wednesday fundraising email with the subject line "Zohran Mamdani," Sanders argued that "we cannot stop with just one primary victory in New York City," and promoted candidates including Abdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate hopeful in Michigan, and Troy Jackson, who is running for governor of Maine.
The senator also highlighted four candidates seeking seats in the U.S. House of Representatives: Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin, Adelita Grijalva in Arizona, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, and Robert Peters in Illinois.
"The political future of our country rests upon the very simple principles that working people need to stand together EVERYWHERE to fight back against corporate greed and create an economy that works for all of us, and not just billionaires and large corporations," he said. "We need to elect people up and down the ballot who have the guts not only to stand up to Trumpism, but to take on the monied interests and fight for a working class that has been ignored for far too long."
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Warren Accuses Bisignano of Misleading Public on Social Security Call Wait Times in Wake of DOGE Cuts
"Donald Trump and [the Department of Government Efficiency] took a chainsaw to Social Security, leaving Americans waiting hours just to get help," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Jun 26, 2025
Pointing to the findings of a phone survey conducted by her staff, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Wednesday accused Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano of potentially misleading the public when it comes to call wait times at the social safety net program.
" Donald Trump and [the Department of Government Efficiency] took a chainsaw to Social Security, leaving Americans waiting hours just to get help—and that's if their call is answered at all," said Warren, a Democrat, in a statement published the day after.
In a letter to Bisignano dated Wednesday, Warren highlighted that the Social Security Administration's (SSA) website states that average speed of answers, excluding callback wait times, is 19.2 minutes.
That metric is measured by "fiscal year to date (through the last month completed)," which Warren argues means it is "wildly out of date" because it is an average capturing a long period of time. SSA has also recently taken down several real-time performance metrics that were previously on its website.
Warren noted that earlier this year, Bisignano said he thought it would be possible to get agency phone wait times to "under a minute," partly through making use of artificial intelligence. What's more, Warren highlighted that an SSA official told the outlet the Federal News Network that monthly average call wait times were down 12 minutes in May, when excluding callers who took advantage of the callback option and did not remain on hold.
According to Warren, a phone survey conducted by her office from June 12-20 found that average wait times for calls was higher. The average wait time for calls that were answered was 102 minutes, and of those that were answered, 32% had wait times of over two hours, according to the survey results. Her staff made 51 calls to SSA.
More than 50% of calls made to SSA were not answered by a human and the majority of calls concluded when the caller was put on hold and then the call was dropped, according to the survey results.
USA Today reporters ran a similar experiment and found wait times to be consistently over an hour, according to reporting from the outlet published Thursday.
"This represents a catastrophic customer service failure under your watch at SSA. I write to demand answers about this attempt to cover up the truth—which is that the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts have made it harder for America's 70 million Social Security recipients to access their hard-earned benefits," wrote Warren in her letter.
During the first few months of Donald Trump's second presidency, billionaire Elon Musk, who was tapped to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, and his allies fanned a false narrative alleging rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration, and used those "claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans," according to June reporting from the The New York Times.
Due to pressure from DOGE, nearly 50% of the Social Security Administration's executives and thousands of employees there have left, either by retiring or taking buyouts. Per the Times, as much as 12% of staff may leave because of DOGE's cost-cutting efforts.
Warren alleged these cuts, as well as "DOGE-led initiatives" like the now-reversed "anti-fraud" checks, have downgraded the SSA's services.
Warren concludes the letter with a list of queries for Bisignano, including asking him what the average wait time was for a caller who called in SSA's National Help Line in the past week.
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Mamdani Shows Pro-Palestine Politics Can Win, Activists and Writers Say
Zohran Mamdani's opponents "made it a referendum on anti-Zionism being antisemitism," said journalist Spencer Ackerman. "They lost."
Jun 26, 2025
Following state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's upset victory in New York's Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, progressive writers and activists are making the case that strident support for Palestine was one of his key assets.
In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the 33-year-old democratic socialist was peppered with accusations of "antisemitism" from supporters of his centrist opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
They singled out Mamdani's past calls to boycott Israel over human rights violations, his criticisms of Israel following the October 7, 2023 attacks, and his sponsorship of legislation to penalize nonprofits that fund illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
But contrary to expectations that this would make his campaign a dead letter in the city with America's largest Jewish population, he not only defeated Cuomo by more than seven points on the first ballot, but did so with large amounts of Jewish support.
"Cuomo was counting on the idea that Zohran's support for Palestinian rights would be a liability for him, but what last night showed was that that's not true," said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action in comments to Al Jazeeraon Wednesday.
Mamdani's victory came at a historic nadir for pro-Israel sentiment among Democratic voters. In a Quinnipiac poll conducted from June 22 to 24, 63% of Democratic voters said they felt the U.S. was "too supportive of Israel," an all-time high.
That translated to how New Yorkers viewed the primary. In a May 28 poll from Emerson College, 46% of the Democrats surveyed said they did not think it was important for the city's next mayor to have pro-Israel views, compared to just 33% who said they believed it was.
Mamdani's view of Israel's actions in Gaza, which he has described as "genocide" and "war crimes," increasingly reflects that of Democratic voters. Cuomo, who previously served as part of the legal team defending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against war crimes charges, insisted that using such harsh language toward Israel's human rights abuses was fueling anti-Jewish hate crimes at home.
"They made it a referendum on anti-Zionism being antisemitism," journalist Spencer Ackerman, a supporter of Mamdani, told The Forward, a Jewish publication. "They lost."
Despite repeated questioning about his foreign policy stances on the campaign trail, Mamdani did not apologize or back off his stances. In comments to Al Jazeera, Heba Gowayed, a sociology professor at the City University of New York, said that his unwillingness to flip on his past stances only bolstered his sense of authenticity.
"The fact that he refused to back down from his position on Palestine is huge," Gowayed said. "In an atmosphere where we've been told that holding that position is politically disqualifying, it was a movement that not only insisted on this position but was, in a sense, predicated on it."
Mamdani's victory was not simply despite Jewish voters. He won in large part because of Jewish support. A poll from May showed him to be the second-most popular candidate among Jewish New Yorkers, behind only Cuomo.
He also forged a critical alliance with New York's highest-ranking Jewish elected official, Comptroller Brad Lander. Not only did Lander encourage his chunk of supporters to rank Mamdani, but he helped him fight back against the spurious accusations from the Cuomo camp, accusing the former governor, who has come under fire in the past for making negative remarks about Jews, of "trying to weaponize antisemitism for his own political gain."
Mamdani also received endorsements from influential progressive Jewish groups, including JVP Action and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), who said the Democratic establishment took for granted that Jewish voters cared only about Israel.
Sophie Ellman-Golan, a spokesperson for JFREJ, a New York-based group with more than 6,000 members, said that Jewish New Yorkers were galvanized by Zohran's optimistic message about making the city affordable and prosperous for everyone.
"There's a fixation on, because we are Jews, we must be primarily focused on Israel," she told The Times of IsraelWednesday. "This is not to say these issues don't matter to Jews, of course they do, but we are also New Yorkers, and we are dealing with the same material conditions that other New Yorkers are."
Ellman-Golan elaborated in comments to the independent publication The Handbasket.
"Jewish New Yorkers are just like other New Yorkers. We also want affordable housing and childcare, and excellent public transit, and for this city to be a place where we can build a future," she said. "That's what Zohran ran on, and that's why New Yorkers—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—voted for him!"
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