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For Immediate Release
September, 12 2023, 04:24pm EDT
Contact:
Alan Minsky, Executive Director PDA, Alan@PDAmerica.org
Anthony Flaccavento, Executive Director RUBI, anthony@ruralurbanbridge.org
National Progressive Groups Commit to Rural America
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI) today announce the release of the Rural New Deal, a policy platform designed to cultivate long-term rural prosperity and resilience through federal investment in bottom-up solutions.
A joint project of PDA and RUBI, the Rural New Deal was designed as a non-partisan strategy, based upon the experience of rural development leaders, practitioners, and advocates from across the country.
According to PDA Executive Director, Alan Minsky, “Addressing the problems and concerns of rural America, isn’t just the right thing to do, it is essential for the health of our nation. Progressives have ignored rural for too long. The Rural New Deal will change that.”
The Rural New Deal is built around Ten Pillars of federal action, ranging from “Rebuild Farm, Forest and Food Economies” to “Dismantle Monopolies and Support Local Businesses” to “Invest in Rural Health Care”.
Each pillar includes five to eight specific recommendations for action, primarily though not exclusively at the federal level; all of which can be advocated for separately, as well as part of the compete RND platform.
Together they comprise an ambitious yet practical template for public action to rebuild diverse rural economies, strong communities, and a more ecologically resilient nation. The RND complements other recent efforts to shift federal rural policy, such as the Rural Democracy Initiatives “Rural Policy Action Report.”
“The extreme political divide in our country robs rural communities of the resources and opportunities they need, while making it nearly impossible to address the biggest problems we face as a nation,” says RUBI Director, Anthony Flaccavento.
“The Rural New Deal will help break that stalemate because it is both comprehensive and bottom-up in its approach, focusing on strategies that we know from experience will work.”
PDA has added the question “Do you support the Rural New Deal? Yes or No” to its 2024 candidate questionnaire for both the U.S. House and Senate (accompanied by a list of the ten pillars of the RND along with a link to the complete program).
Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and U.S. politics by working inside and outside of the party by working to elect empowered progressives and by building the progressive movement in solidarity with with peace, justice, civil rights, environmental, and other reform efforts. For more information about PDA, please see PDAmerica.org.
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US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday made a pitch for a "working-class-centered politics" as the key to defeating the kind of authoritarian populism embodied by President Donald Trump.
Speaking at a panel at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that decades of government failures such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 2003 Iraq War had opened the door for demagogues such as Trump among working-class voters.
The only way to defeat this, she said, is to reorient progressive politics around social class.
"We have to have a working-class-centered politics if we are going to succeed," she said, "and also if we are going to stave off the scourge of authoritarianism, which provide political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality, both domestically and globally."
AOC: We have to have a working class centered politics, if we are going to succeed and also if we are going to stave off the scourges of authoritarianism which provide political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality pic.twitter.com/USqgTk3brd
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Elsewhere during the panel, Ocasio-Cortez elaborated on the way economic inequality fuels the demand for authoritarian leaders.
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AOC: We’re seeing economies around the world — including in the United States — where extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and, in a sense, drive authoritarianism…
That is a direct outcome not just of income inequality, but of the failure of… pic.twitter.com/0EHsbyqdFK
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In recent weeks, Live Nation has been in talks with top Justice Department officials to avoid an antitrust trial that's supposed to begin next month. The negotiations have reportedly bypassed the DOJ antitrust division previously headed by Slater, who was once viewed as the leader of a supposedly burgeoning "MAGA antitrust movement" but was abandoned by her top ally within the Trump administration, Vice President JD Vance, and forced out.
Influence peddlers reportedly on Live Nation's payroll include Mike Davis—who welcomed Slater's departure in a post on social media—and Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to President Donald Trump. The American Prospect noted that Davis "reportedly earned a $1 million 'success fee' for getting DOJ to drop its challenge to the $14 billion Hewlett Packard Enterprise-Juniper Networks merger," a settlement in which Attorney General Pam Bondi's chief of staff overruled Slater.
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US Department of Homeland Security agents are increasingly infiltrating social media platforms to monitor users, collect intelligence, and target people, according to new reporting based on leaked documents.
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Important to note that "Authorized" here means that DHS/ICE have given *Themselves* permission to do this "masked engagement" bullshit, not that either congress or the courts say it's okay.Challenge this everywhere & every way possible, & in the meantime, keep ourselves & each other safe as we can
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— Dr. Damien P. Williams can't think of a fun display name right n (@wolvendamien.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 4:46 PM
Masked engagement adds a new level to DHS' open source intelligence (OSINT) collection regime, which previously consisted of overt engagement, overt research, overt monitoring, masked monitoring, and undercover engagement. Masked engagement, in which agents conceal their government affiliation without assuming a false identity while interacting with a target, is a step below undercover engagement, in which DHS operatives use false identities and cover stories.
According to Klippenstein:
Masked monitoring allows officers at agencies like [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol to use alias accounts to passively observe public online activity. Crucially, this level of monitoring bars DHS representatives from interacting with other users directly. Under masked monitoring, officers are not allowed to ask an admin for entry into a private group or to “friend” a target to see non-public posts.
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