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Opinion
Without the Working Class, There's Only So Much Progressives Can Win
Placing all of our chips on reforming the Democrats is a bad bet, even if we deem it a necessary one in the near future.
Aug 08, 2026
Yes, it should be possible this November to elect enough Democrats to stop MAGA and undo some of the damage Trump et al have done. But without the support of the working class the progressive wish list will remain just that—a series of unfulfilled wishes.
Despite big hopes and a likely small majority, we won’t see Medicare for All, an increase in the federal minimum wage, a green New Deal, job security for working people, labor law reform to facilitate unionization, a billionaire’s tax, elimination of big money from politics, the break-up of mega-corporations, and affordable housing for all, to name just a few.
None of these ambitious and popular reforms will pass as long as the blue-red margins remain narrow, ensuring that there are never enough votes to enact major reforms even if the Democrats control all three branches after the 2028 elections.
Ask any labor leader and they will tell you the sad and maddening 50-year story of failed attempts to level the labor-management playing field, despite Democratic tri-fectas during Obama and Biden. And because of these slim margins one of the biggest recent Democratic victories, Obamacare, is a Rube Goldberg-like contraption relying on corporate subsidies, massive costs, and spotty coverage that has failed to deliver universal and affordable health care.
Bad stuff can be stopped and maybe some of the worst MAGA policies reversed, but there won’t be a progressive majority to win the big stuff even if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2028.
So, instead of pushing toward a more just economy, we sail in the opposite direction and are increasingly dominated by what Bernie derides as the billionaire class.
We just assume these days that razor-thin blue-red margins are a fact of life, the result of increasing political polarization, money in politics, gerrymandering, and misinformation, etc. But not so long ago there were times, under FDR and LBJ, when progressive political majorities were massive. That’s when the Democratic Party included and could count on most working-class voters (roughly defined as those without college degrees). That is no longer the case.
The numbers are stark, especially among white working people.
- In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 53 percent of the white working-class vote. In 2024, only 33 percent voted for Kamala Harris.
- In a working-class county in the heart of coal country in West Virginia, like Mingo County with its fierce union tradition, Bill Clinton received 70 percent of the vote in 1996. After 3,000 of the county’s 3,300 coal jobs disappeared, Harris got a miniscule 12 percent in 2024.
If a sizable majority of those voters returned to the Democrats’ fold, one could imagine enough votes to enact major economic reforms. Could that happen?
How do Democrats win the working class back?
My comrades at the Center for Working Class Politics have spent years showing that working-class candidates, especially with union backgrounds running on a strong progressive economic program, can win in contested districts. Their arguments are persuasive. But the current handful of successes leave most of the working-class swimming on their own in red America, where the Democratic Party is dead and gone.
For example, of the roughly 1,211 state legislative seats in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, the Democrats don’t even run candidates in 40 percent of them.
The Democratic Party needs to be reformed dramatically if it is to adopt CWCP’s strategy. But we have just learned from the missing chapter in the Democratic Party’s autopsy report, released this week by its author, that the party’s functionaries have become “generationally wealthy off politics.” Sponging off the status quo, whether they win or lose, the party’s ecosystem of pollsters, consultants, ad agencies, and such has grown fat, rich, and happy. This is not a political culture open to radical reform.
DSA to the rescue?
The Democratic Socialists of America, arguably the most vibrant political organization in America today (though the bar isn’t high), have attempted to reform the Democrats by knocking off establishment Democrats in primaries and replacing them with DSA-backed candidates. They have succeeded this year in heavily Democratic urban areas, such as New York City, but will now be tested in Michigan, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gained a narrow victory in the Democratic Senate primary this past Tuesday. Similarly, Francesca Hong, another DSA candidate, is the favorite to win the upcoming Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic primary in another state won in 2024 by Donald Trump. Can El-Sayed, not a DSA member but a very progressive candidate, and Hong win in purple states?
Ironically, DSA members and the establishment Democrats generally come from the same class – the class of the college educated. El-Sayed reportedly ran “strongest in communities with young voters, college students and educated and wealthy white voters.”
DSA claims to be speaking on behalf of the working class, but according to its own 2021 survey, only four percent of its members are blue-collar workers, and another six percent work in retail, food service, or similar occupations. Roughly 40 percent are teachers, academics, white-collar professionals, tech workers, or students. Of those 25 years old and older, more than 80 percent have bachelor’s degrees, compared to only 39 percent nationally.
Working people did not disappear from the much redder parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains when their jobs moved to Mexico and China, but the Democrats did.
More importantly, what they put forth as their program did not grow out of a dialogue with non-college working-class folks or even union leaders. If they had had those discussions they would have learned that many of their positions, like abolishing “the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor,” would be opposed by the working people they say they champion.
We will learn more this fall about how DSA candidates adapt and fare with working people in red areas. But as DSA is now structured, it is unlikely to recruit many people without college degrees.
The path to a progressive majority?
Clearly, it is essential that the Democrats win back enough working-class voters to disrupt the MAGA onslaught. Let’s hope and pray they do. But unless huge numbers of Trump voters stay home for the midterms, and the working class breaks heavily for the Democrats, the margin of victory is not likely to be nearly enough to produce the political majorities necessary to rework the economic order.
Bad stuff can be stopped and maybe some of the worst MAGA policies reversed, but there won’t be a progressive majority to win the big stuff even if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2028.
The Democratic Party brand is just too tarnished among working people for them to readily join in significant numbers. Sure, go ahead and run more union candidates, and let’s see if the DSA can overturn the Democratic Party’s establishment and even spread into the working class. But it would be wise to have Plan B—a parallel, not substitute, strategy.
An Independent Workers Party of Their Own in Red America
Working people did not disappear from the much redder parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains when their jobs moved to Mexico and China, but the Democrats did. In red America there is no spoiler problem because in hundreds of state races and congressional districts the Democrats have abandoned ship. That has left an enormous vacuum and few political choices for working people. We can now see a very few working-class candidates trying to fill the void, but there is no organization that ties them together.
A new political organization of working people should be constructed where working people can gather and speak in their own voices about what they want to see changed in America—an organization that recaptures the voice and power they once had in the region.
Building that formation will be difficult, but maybe not as difficult as taking over the Democratic Party. For starters, it will require an anchor tenant, a large union or state labor federation, that realizes that most of its members have given up on the Democrats and want something new. So far there have been no takers, though clearly some labor leaders, like the UAW’s Shawn Fain, share at least some of our analysis of what’s necessary.
But that will change, I believe, as union leaders come to the recognition that they can no longer sell the Dems to their own members. And if one or two unions or state labor federations set up a new independent operation in red America, I think they will be pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm it generates. Our polling suggests that working people just might come running.
If this organization takes off, it becomes much easier to imagine working-class political alliances with enough power to secure substantive economic change. Something working people are sure to need soon as AI and the billionaires take a wrecking ball to what’s left of their livelihoods.
Someone, somewhere, sometime must build something new so that working people can develop their own political voice, just as the Populists did 150 years ago.
Is this the only solution to our problems? Maybe not. I’m wide open to other strategies. I just haven’t heard any that don’t start and stop with reforming the Democrats, whose elites are not about to give up their power and access to riches.
And I don’t see how DSA gets deep enough into red America as long as it’s an organization of college grads talking to themselves about what’s best for the working-class. Even if El-Sayed and Hong win in the general election this year, the wealthy party fuctionairies will still be in power.
By all means, go for it. But someone, somewhere, sometime must build something new so that working people can develop their own political voice, just as the Populists did 150 years ago.
Am I howling in the wind? Maybe. I guess that’s what I do. My contribution is to get you to square up to the problem: We need a serious strategy that leads to serious progressive change.
Placing all of our chips on reforming the Dems is a bad bet, even if we deem it a necessary one in the near future. At the very least, I think, that bet needs to be hedged by building a new independent political organization of working people in red America, an organization that’s responsive to and expressive of their political needs. That’s far better than abandoning working-class families to the next round of Republican charlatans.
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How Israel and Its Lobby Allied With Trump and Damaged the Democratic Party
Pro-Israel PACs finance Republicans, import Republican donor money into Democratic primaries, punish dissenting Democrats, divide the Democratic coalition, and bind Democratic leaders to policies that damage the party’s moral credibility and electoral prospects.
Aug 08, 2026
There are plenty of principled, humanitarian reasons for opposing US support for Israel’s current government. Multiple human right groups, United Nations bodies, international courts, Israeli politicians, and genocide organizations have accused Israel of engaging in war crimes, including genocide, in Gaza and the West Bank. The invasions of Lebanon and Iran are likewise criminal humanitarian disasters.
There are also practical foreign policy reasons for opposing the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby. Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares argue convincingly, in "Stop Netanyahu Before He Gets Us All Killed," that Israel encouraged most of the US foreign policy disasters in the Middle East and Africa:
In 1996, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a “Clean Break” strategy. They advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims—waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel’s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel’s behalf.
The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed, soon after 9/11, the US planned to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
The US followed through with military actions against all those countries, which now lie in ruins, except for Iran, which Israel and the US are in the process of destroying. As Sachs and Fares wrote, “Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice–either in public or behind the scenes–together with his neocon allies in the US.”
Israel has corrupted US foreign policy, causing the country to fight unnecessary wars and create unnecessary enemies.
Aside from the humanitarian and foreign policy reasons for opposing the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby on American politics, there are also political reasons. Foremost among them is that Israel and the Israel lobby have repeatedly lent their substantial financial and political influence toward helping elect Republicans, including President Donald Trump, and toward electing Democrats disliked by many Democratic voters.
Multiple US presidents, including Presidents Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, made efforts to break away from staunchly pro-Israel policies but eventually succumbed to pressure from pro-Israel lobbyists threatening them with electoral opposition.
During the Republican primary debates in 2016, Trump criticized the invasion of Iraq and said that US policy in the Middle East needed more balance: more support for Palestinian rights. But during the general election campaign, Trump had a meeting with Sharon and Miriam Adelson, who promised to help fund his campaign (source). From that point on, Trump has been staunchly pro-Israel.
Sheldon and Miriam Adelson donated approximately $100 million to pro-Trump super PACs during the 2020 election cycle.
You could call this a representation deficit: Democratic politicians become more responsive to a donor network than to Democratic voters.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that the Adelsons’ contributions to GOP campaigns and organizations had totaled around half a billion dollars since 2010.
In 2024 Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to help elect Trump and spent a further $500 million on other Republican causes. According to OpenSecrets, from 2023 to 2024, pro-Israel PACs gave $5.4 million to candidates, almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent over $14 million supporting Trump since 2020. The New Republic says that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent $45 million in the 2024 elections.
In 2024, Trump ran as the peace candidate, promising to stop the war in Gaza. Kamala Harris’ support for Israel was a significant cause of her election loss (source, source).
Polls (this and this) have shown that among Democratic voters, support for Israel has plummeted. In April 2026, Pew found that 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 69% in 2025 and 53% in 2022. Gallup found in July 2025 that only 8% of Democrats approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released August 4, 2026 found that only 16% of Democrats supported continuing military and economic aid to Israel, while more than 80% of liberal Democrats considered reducing aid important or essential.
The victories of socialist and pro-Palestinian candidates (e.g., Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary) during the 2026 primaries—despite tens of millions of dollars spent by the Israel lobby to defeat them—further illustrate the fact that the Democratic base is rejecting mainstream Democrats who support Israel.
Of course, AIPAC does not represent the views of all American Jews. Roughly 7 in 10 Jewish respondents in a March 2026 survey identified as Democrats, and younger Jewish voters have become significantly more critical of unconditional aid.
The Democratic Party’s congressional leadership has continued defending a position overwhelmingly rejected by its own voters. That creates several electoral injuries:
- Young voters conclude that Democratic leaders do not represent them.
- Arab American and Muslim voters feel deliberately disregarded.
- Anti-war progressives see the party as morally compromised.
- Other voters see wealthy donors overriding public opinion.
- Republicans can run as outsiders or supposed “peace candidates,” however dishonestly.
You could call this a representation deficit: Democratic politicians become more responsive to a donor network than to Democratic voters.
In 2024, the Israel lobby helped unseat Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). Republican-aligned billionaires should not be able to determine which candidates Democrats are permitted to nominate. In 2026 the Israel lobby helped unseat Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), one of Trump’s biggest Republican critics.
Though the Israel lobby gives to Democratic candidates too, its political strategy is not simply bipartisan support for Israel. Its effect is asymmetrical: It helps Republicans win national power while policing the Democratic Party from within. It supports Republicans directly, then spends heavily in Democratic primaries to defeat candidates who challenge Republican-backed Israeli policies. Democrats therefore bear the electoral cost of unpopular policies while Republican candidates receive both financial support and an issue with which to divide the Democratic coalition.
In short, powerful pro-Israel organizations are harming the Democratic Party. This is not because support for Israel is inherently Republican, and not because Jewish voters are disloyal Democrats—many Democrats strongly oppose Israel’s policies—but because these organizations increasingly enforce a Republican-aligned foreign policy inside a Democratic electorate that rejects it. They finance Republicans, import Republican donor money into Democratic primaries, punish dissenting Democrats, divide the Democratic coalition, and bind Democratic leaders to policies that damage the party’s moral credibility and electoral prospects.
Democratic Party leaders and activists should stop allowing a pro-Republican, pro-war lobby to distort its policies and chooseits candidates.
The Israel lobby, for its own sake, should think hard about whether it wants to support a quasi-fascist movement. For more on this, see "Supporters of Israel Will Eventually Regret That They Allied With Fascist Trump."
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Who Is 'Authentically' Working Class?
My work experience—spanning six decades and a wide variety of jobs—illustrates why the claims of working-class authenticity that are prized in today’s politics are so fraught.
Aug 08, 2026
Most politicians pledge to work for the working class, or sometimes for working families, a less Marxist-sounding label. Meanwhile, scholars struggle to define the category. I won’t assess the political posturing or adjudicate definitional disputes, but my work experience—spanning six decades and a wide variety of jobs—illustrates why the claims of working-class authenticity that are prized in today’s politics are so fraught.
Once upon a time, the working class was understood as people in capitalist economies who don’t own the means of production and must sell their labor to owners. But as economies grew more complex, anomalies piled up. What about managers who aren’t owners but make lots of money doing the bidding of owners? What about technical employees whose specialized skills give them bargaining power? What about small-business owners of modest means who hire employees? Turns out there are lots of “contradictory class locations.”
I’ve never been a manager, had any specialized technical skills, owned a business, or made big money, but my class status is rife with contradictions and conundrums.
Work History
My paternal grandfather, an immigrant from Denmark, was a blacksmith in a small town in North Dakota, but my father had no interest in the family trade. After a lackluster college career on the GI Bill, he got a job as an insurance adjuster—a white-collar working-class job for which he wore a shirt and tie to the office but got paid like a laborer. My mother, whose family had a similar trajectory, stayed at home with four kids until we were all in school and then took a series of low-paid office jobs.
No matter what my job or level of pay, I knew I was a worker who didn’t own or control capital. I also knew I had a pretty cushy life compared with most working people.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, money was tight in our family. I didn’t get shiny new things, and family vacations were low-budget affairs that involved staying with relatives or in a borrowed camper. We always had a house and ate regularly, and I didn’t feel poor, but I knew the difference between myself and the affluent kids at school.
By the time I was in high school, my father had moved into a sales job and was making more money—enough that he could join the cheaper of the two country clubs in town. He quit bowling in a league (a working-class activity) and focused on golf (the appropriate middle-class game). In modest ways, he transcended his working-class roots, financially and socially.
Our family’s class status changed but not our working-class respect for hard work. As soon as we were old enough, my siblings and I earned money. In North Dakota before snow blowers were common, I had ample opportunities to shovel snow profitably. In the summer, I carried golf bags at the fancier country club in Fargo. Once I turned 16, I bagged groceries and worked in a building supply warehouse unloading trucks. To pay college tuition, I bused dishes and set up tables for hotel banquets.
After college, I worked as a journalist, starting at a small weekly newspaper that paid poorly. While covering a county government meeting at which the income levels for subsidized housing were set, I realized that on my “professional” journalist’s salary, I qualified. Eventually, I worked my way up to bigger newspapers and better pay, and after graduate school I settled into a comfortable middle-class life as a professor.
No matter what my job or level of pay, I knew I was a worker who didn’t own or control capital. I also knew I had a pretty cushy life compared with most working people. I was a working-class guy, sort of, but one with a Ph.D. and more autonomy than most.
Whatever my class status, I retained a sense of obligation to work as hard as I could at whatever job I had. During my 26 years as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, I never took a sabbatical. UT didn’t offer the regular research leaves common at other universities, and I never chased the outside grants that allow professors to take time off. I taught a full load, sometimes with a voluntary overload class, without feeling oppressed. When other professors were shocked that I never had even one sabbatical semester, I pointed out that no one I knew outside of academia thought they had a right to be paid for time off. I liked teaching and had time to write books in the summers—a pretty sweet deal.
Class Culture
I retired at 60, even though I still loved teaching, because I wanted to get out before I burned out. Because I’ve always been frugal, at least in comparison with my middle-class peers, early retirement was financially feasible. That’s also part of my internal sense of class—I don’t have expensive habits and hobbies. Because I grew up not-poor but not-affluent, my expectations were modest. Reactions to childhood economic circumstances vary—some kids yearn for expensive things, and others make it a badge of honor to not need them. Backpacking through Europe on summer vacation was never on the agenda when I was young, and tourist travel doesn’t appeal to the elderly me. I covet not coveting much.
Today I live outside a small town in New Mexico, the kind of place realtors call “rural residential.” There are a few other retirees and professionals on our road, but most of my neighbors are without a doubt working class—tradespeople, laborers, small farmers, and ranchers. I met many of them through the acequia association, a communal irrigation system that is maintained through shared labor. I take pride in working as hard as anyone on ditch-cleaning days and joining every work detail, not just the one I’m obligated to show up for. Most people here don’t ask about what job I retired from, and if they do, I say that I had been a teacher. They probably assume I taught public school, which is viewed as an honorable job. I don’t admit that I had been a university professor unless pressed for details, because it feels uppity.
The unfairness of capitalism doesn’t negate the importance of a strong work ethic.
I came out of the working class. I never aspired to be in the owning class but lived comfortably as an educated professional. Today, I can pass as working class when I show up in my 30-year-old pickup with a shovel and saw. I live on my Social Security check, but I have a retirement account to draw on for emergencies.
Have I ever been “authentically” working class? I don’t know what criteria to use to make that call. I continue to oppose an economic system that creates wealth inequality and undermines community life, a radical working-class politics. But I also advocate for the strong personal work ethic that I think is needed to enhance community life, a value often considered conservative. Both things are important to me.
A final story about that balance, from a friend who ran a nonprofit that employed teenagers from economically depressed neighborhoods to work on a small farm and also took on college-student interns. One year he was telling the interns that one of the goals of the organization was to foster a strong work ethic in those teenagers, and an intern cautioned him: “Telling people in poor communities they have to work hard is a tool of capitalism.” My friend was exasperated. Yes, rich people often accuse poor people of being lazy, lecturing them about working harder to get out of poverty. But the desire to work hard at productive tasks is healthy, no matter what the economic system. The unfairness of capitalism doesn’t negate the importance of a strong work ethic.
In my new book, This I Don’t Believe, I write that we all need opportunities to prove to ourselves that we are competent to run our own lives. One way I’ve done that is by taking work seriously, learning to do work well, and being proud of my work—all part of the core of a working-class identity, even if I’m not part of the working class. It’s my way of trying to live honestly in my contradictory class location.
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Michigan Just Put Medicare for All on the Ballot, and Voters Said Yes
In the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, Abdul El-Sayed put guaranteed healthcare at the center of a statewide campaign and let voters decide. They decided.
Aug 08, 2026
You won’t find “Medicare for All” printed on any Michigan ballot from Tuesday’s primary. What you’ll find is a name: Abdul El-Sayed, the Ann Arbor physician who literally wrote the book on single-payer healthcare and then built his Senate campaign around it.
El-Sayed co-authored Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide, with a foreword from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), laying out how the country could guarantee healthcare as a right instead of rationing it by income. He wasn’t a candidate who discovered Medicare for All in a focus group. He ran because of it, and Tuesday night he routed the Democratic establishment’s chosen candidate, Haley Stevens. That’s as close to a referendum on single-payer healthcare as American politics gets, and voters delivered a verdict.
El-Sayed didn’t soften his message for the donor class. He paired “Medicare for All” with a blunt indictment of a country rich enough to end medical bankruptcy but too captured by insurance money to bother. Voters in Washtenaw and Kent counties answered.
What makes this remarkable is who El-Sayed beat and how. Stevens had every advantage institutional Democratic politics can hand a candidate: Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) early backing, a late endorsement from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and roughly $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates, the largest single-race investment in that organization’s history. This was one of the most expensive Democratic primaries ever run, a fire hose of establishment cash aimed at burying a single-payer candidate. It wasn’t enough. Voters weren’t buying what millions in outside spending were selling.
As a practicing physician assistant who has spent years advocating for Medicare for All and working in electoral politics, I've heard the same warning over and over: Don't run on single-payer. Michigan suggests that conventional wisdom deserves another look.
That should terrify the consultant class that has spent a decade telling Democrats Medicare for All is political poison in a state like Michigan, that it scares away suburban moderates. El-Sayed’s night says otherwise: an unapologetic healthcare message is exactly what turns out voters a low-turnout August primary usually leaves behind. Reporting pointed to a young, energized base and a ground game that outperformed expectations where turnout can’t be bought with television ads.
The country is catching up to what El-Sayed put in writing years ago. Over 85 million working-age Americans are uninsured or underinsured, per Commonwealth Fund research, shut out of the system or paying premiums that still leave them exposed the moment they get sick. Millions are one diagnosis away from medical debt they’ll spend a decade paying off. Public patience with an industry that profits by denying claims has curdled into open contempt, visible in viral outrage over coverage denials and a for-profit sector that ranks among the least trusted in America. Strip away the euphemisms, and the arithmetic is obscene. Insurers post billions in profit by finding reasons to say no to sick people, skimming a cut off human suffering as a business model. The United States is the only wealthy industrialized democracy that treats healthcare as a product to be underwritten, means tested, and denied rather than a right owed to its citizens. El-Sayed didn’t invent that anger, and he didn’t just write a book about it. He built a winning campaign on the promise that Democrats don’t have to keep managing that anger on behalf of the industry that causes it.
There’s symbolic weight here too. El-Sayed lost a bruising primary for governor in 2018, written off as unelectable in a state supposedly too uneasy about a candidate named Abdul. Eight years later, running on the same conviction that no one should go bankrupt getting cancer treatment, he built a coalition big enough to beat back one of the most heavily financed efforts to defeat a progressive candidate in recent Democratic primary history. That’s proof of where the Democratic base stands on healthcare, no matter what the party’s risk-averse, industry-funded strategists have told candidates for two decades.
As a practicing physician assistant who has spent years advocating for Medicare for All and working in electoral politics, I've heard the same warning over and over: Don't run on single-payer. Michigan suggests that conventional wisdom deserves another look.
Michigan shows the old fear, that Medicare for All is too risky to run on out loud, was always a story told by people who never tried telling voters the truth about their premiums. Michigan is a battleground state, not a safely progressive one, and El-Sayed won by refusing to hide the ball. He put guaranteed healthcare at the center of a statewide campaign and let voters decide. They decided. That’s not a fluke. It’s a preview of what happens when a candidate treats single-payer healthcare like the popular, morally obvious policy it has always been. AIPAC and the insurance lobby’s allies spent a fortune trying to prove otherwise and lost.
Party insiders will insist this was about mechanics, not Medicare for All. They said the same after every progressive upset this cycle, right up until they had to explain the next one. For one night, the closest thing Michigan had to a ballot question on national healthcare got its answer, and it wasn’t close.
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Trump Admin Faces Legal Challenge in Hemispheric Court Over ICE Protest Crackdown
This is the first challenge against the Trump administration on protest crackdowns by an international court, and one of the first legal challenges generally.
Aug 08, 2026
Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, at the Organization of American States, a body historically committed to investigating crimes against humanity committed by governments in the Americas, held a hearing in Washington, DC against the Trump administration for its treatment of protests held against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, crackdowns in the US.
The delegation, represented by Thomas Becker and Nicholas Rodelo, for the University Network for Human Rights, presented evidence of attacks of rights to free assembly and free expression by the Trump administration.
Becker has previously successfully prosecuted a civil lawsuit against former Bolivian President and US ally, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, over 2003 crackdowns and extrajudicial killings of protesters.
This is the first challenge against the Trump administration on protest crackdowns by an international court, and one of the first legal challenges generally. Speakers included Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing the family of Renee Good, and former counsel of George Floyd; Reverend David Black, who was struck in the head by federal agents at the Broadview Detention Facility; and Naureen Shah, the director of government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Speakers and observers at the hearing argued that the commission must be empowered to investigate fully and act decisively, warning that the region is entering a new era of authoritarianism even as many of its democracies remain young and fragile.
During the hearing, video evidence and testimony were presented documenting the alleged abuses, prompting a response from State Department lawyers who argued that the incidents represented isolated cases still under investigation, that the United States has rights the commission should respect, and that the IACHR ought to focus its attention elsewhere in the hemisphere, a suggestion that drew scrutiny given that the US has faced far fewer cases before the commission than many other member states.
State Department representatives further contended that federal agents operating under significant stress could not be expected to act "perfectly," and maintained that any agents found to have violated standards would face penalties, though they were unable to answer specific questions from commissioners about ongoing cases or offer evidence of any such penalties actually being imposed, saying only that they would "write down" the questions and respond later.
The commission and the civil society delegation renewed a request—thus far denied by Washington—for an IACHR delegation to visit the United States, likely Chicago, to assess conditions on the ground.
Petitioners also singled out National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) as a central mechanism of the crackdown, arguing it chills freedom of expression by recasting protesters and dissidents, including anti-capitalist, "anti-Christian," and anti-fascist activists, as "terrorists." Blacklists of prominent leftist actors have also been compiled, with state resources used to prosecute them. "This is the new McCarthyism," the delegation added.
They pointed out that resources once dedicated to investigating internal abuse by immigration enforcement agents have instead been slashed, citing an internal FBI memo halting investigations into Department of Homeland Security officers, and that officials tasked with oversight are now regarded within the agencies as "internal adversaries" rather than watchdogs.
"These are the exact same tactics used by Latin American dictatorships from the 1970s," said Becker. "These tactics have been propped up by the US for decades, and are now coming back here, to be used against Americans," he added. The commission was created in the wake of the rise of military dictatorships in Latin America, backed by the US during the Cold War, including Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Rafael Videla in Argentina, and Hugo Banzer in Bolivia.
Becker also argued, "This is not the first time that agents backed by the US government target priests," alluding to the past abuses and killings of religious opposition leaders in Central America.
Speaking to Drop Site News, Dr. James Cavallaro, former president of IACHR and law faculty at Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard, added that "there is a conviction from those in power that they can suppress dissent" and rule through power and violence to "impose their ideology," where "opposition must be crushed."
This is the first time the commission has held any hearing of this type concerning domestic repression against the US government, which was the main force behind the founding and funding of the IACHR and the Organization of American States (OAS). “For years, the commission has heard testimony about attacks on protesters carried out by some of the region’s most repressive dictatorships. Now, it is the United States that will be called to answer for these abuses,” said Cavallaro.
The US government, including figures in the current administration like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has historically been supportive of the IACHR and the OAS, but may see the IACHR as a new target, as it continues its campaign against international legal organizations including the International Criminal Court.
Locke Bowman, attorney for Reverend David Black, shared, "What happened to Rev. Black was emblematic of the physical abuse that ICE and CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] officers directed at conscientious folks in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and elsewhere around the country who bore witness to the Trump administration's cruel immigration policies with their voices, their prayers, and their cellphone cameras."
He added: "There has been no accountability whatsoever for the officers responsible for the pervasive violations of free speech and human dignity. We turn to the Inter-American Commission to ask that the commission join us in demanding accountability."
At the hearing, the University Network for Human Rights also published a detailed report, submitted as part of its formal petition to the commission, laying out documented instances of excessive force, free expression violations, and lack of accountability tied to the crackdown on ICE protests.
The commission is now expected to weigh whether the evidence and testimony presented warrant further inquiry, including a possible on-the-ground visit to the United States, before issuing findings or referring the matter further within the inter-American human rights system.
The last hearing against the US government, sponsored by the ACLU, was held in the context of dozens of extrajudicial killings by US forces in the Caribbean and Pacific, against "drug boats," which experts say violate US and international law, violate local sovereignty, and kill civilians without due process, all without helping to solve the drug crisis. Previously, the IACHR had held proceedings in the context of detainee treatment at Guantánamo Bay, among other cases.
Speakers and observers at the hearing argued that the commission must be empowered to investigate fully and act decisively, warning that the region is entering a new era of authoritarianism even as many of its democracies remain young and fragile. Crime and migration are increasingly being used as pretexts to suspend democratic norms, enabling interference in elections; extrajudicial killings; bans on opposition parties; declared states of exception; suspended protest rights; the jailing of dissidents; militarized policing; and the dismantling of checks on military, intelligence, and presidential power.
This is the most serious test facing democracy in Latin America since the Cold War, with echoes of the Reagan-era doctrine that once propped up authoritarian allies across the region. Now, the United States is again playing that role, installing, arming, backing, and protecting governments that suppress dissent, and reaching for sanctions, tariffs, and even support for coups to keep them in power.
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Big Tech’s Masterclass on Manufacturing Dissent
Big Tech has done the impossible—they’ve united people from across the political spectrum around a singular issue: against data centers and AI.
Aug 08, 2026
If I told you that Big Tech billionaires have accomplished something rare in our incredibly divided country, you might laugh and assume I’m joking. But I couldn’t be more serious.
Through the data center buildout boom, Big Tech has done the impossible—they’ve united people from across the political spectrum around a singular issue: against data centers and AI. More than 70% of Americans oppose a data center being built near them.
There was a right way to roll out data center expansion and build support locally and nationally with a few basic but essential ingredients: transparency; local benefit; clean energy; and respect for peoples’ wishes to not be subjected to pollution, noise, added expenses, and wasteful water use. Like the best recipes, this would have been a little slower, deliberate, and less prone to burning.
But this sector—run by the mega rich, unconcerned with the struggles of everyday Americans—has instead delivered a masterclass on how to manufacture dissent.
Our communities, waterways, parks, and kids’ futures are not for sale.
How did they build such intense opposition so quickly?
Let’s start with secrecy. Tech companies—including the giants Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, and Google—have forced local elected officials across the country to sign non-disclosure agreements while they pursue data centers. The first time local residents hear about a data center being built in their hometown is often after it is already a done deal.
Communities get no say, but they do get higher utility bills. That is the next move in Big Tech’s playbook: increasing costs for communities when life is already unaffordable, so billionaires can become trillionaires.
Next comes round-the-clock noise from cooling fans that emit a constant low hum. When diesel backup generators are being tested or used continuously, it’s like living beside a helicopter taking off. And it’s not just the noise—communities suffer from air pollution impacts too. While many Big Tech companies were formerly champions of clean renewable energy, the Trump era has seen them embrace fossil fuels and power their data centers mostly with coal and methane gas. A Caltech and University of California Riverside study projects that data centers could contribute to 1,300 premature deaths and 600,000 asthma cases across the US in 2028.
Case in point: Microsoft, which just released its 2026 “environmental sustainability report”—quite the Orwellian title given the company’s ballooning pollution. Microsoft’s real-world emissions from powering its data centers have grown 178% from the start of the AI boom in 2020 to 2025, with a 2 million ton increase in carbon dioxide since just last year. That doesn’t include the estimated 15.5 million tons of carbon pollution expected to be emitted by just three mega data center projects announced this year. Microsoft’s voracious appetite for energy reached 37 million megawatt hours (MWh) in 2025—equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of Ireland. That’s what partnering with Chevron gets you.
Trying to spin these numbers into a climate-friendly narrative just adds fuel to the fire—as Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer Melanie Nakagawa saw firsthand recently at a PNW Climate Week event at Seattle City Hall. Audience members posed question after question challenging Nakagawa on the company’s talking points, while protesters chanted, “Microsoft, you can’t hide. We can see your dirty side.”
As if all this was not enough to fuel public backlash, it is clear that our children’s future job prospects are also in jeopardy. Collectively, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have already laid off tens of thousands of employees thanks to AI. It is no wonder that executives delivering commencement speeches about the wonders of AI have been booed off the stage.
“But why stop there?” tech barons seem to ask. How about a data center that threatens the actual river from A River Runs Through It? Yes. Native American land? Sure. National Parks? Certainly. The Great Salt Lake in Utah, a refuge to 12 million migrating birds? Of course. Each overstep brings legions more into the big tent of data center resistance.
Finally, when protest reaches a fever pitch, criminalize it. The US Department of Justice seems to be targeting people who oppose data centers. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have all embraced President Donald Trump, making this deeply unpopular sector even more despised.
If the tech sector wants these built, they need to do the opposite of everything they’ve done so far. Data centers must be done right, or not at all. Otherwise, community opposition will continue to grow and local politicians will fall in line with public opinion—as we’ve seen in hundreds of jurisdictions across the United States. And if AI’s purpose is to steal our kids’ jobs, create new demand for fossil fuels, and make the rich even richer, there is little hope for a recovery.
Our communities, waterways, parks, and kids’ futures are not for sale. The tech sector has demonstrated incalculable greed and adopted radically antidemocratic practices. It needs to now, somehow, convince people that it cares even a little about communities and our country. If they don’t change course fast, the dissent they manufactured will crush them and their data centers.
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Actually Michael Harrington Would Probably Love Today’s DSA – and Hate It Too
The "big tent" of the Democratic Socialists of America has its drawbacks too.
Aug 07, 2026
Kirkpatrick Sale has it half right in his lament over today’s Democratic Socialists of America, “Michael Harrington is Spinning in His Grave.” The imagined spinning stems from post-mortem distress at what its founding leader would make of the organization today. Sale—best remembered for SDS, his history of Students for a Democratic Society, the seminal 1960s “New Left” organization—calls himself Harrington’s “close friend and traveling companion,” and feels that today’s DSA “has stood on its head the principles that Mike and his colleagues stood for.”
While I cannot claim to have been Harrington’s friend, I did know him and arguably qualify as one of his colleagues, in that I was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, his prior organization whose 1982 merger with the New American Movement created DSA. I remain a member of the organization to this day, and when serving in the Massachusetts House of Representatives was once one of DSOC/DSA’s handful of public elected officials. From my vantage point, while I understand Sale’s real–and Harrington’s imagined–distress at some of what he sees in today’s DSA, not only does he ignore developments that would have made Harrington proud, but I also think his take on Harrington’s politics is not quite right.
As a flat statement, Sale’s contention that DSA “is no longer anything that could be called democratic or socialist” is wrong, but he is not wrong in identifying parts of 2026 DSA that would seem unlikely to have appealed to Harrington. Sale clearly recognizes that the roots of the organization’s dramatic changes—its 20-fold inflation from the 6,000 member group of the 90's—lie in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. He errs, though, in calling Sanders “a leading DSA figure and its only representative in Congress.” Sanders actually was not then, is not now, and so far as I know has never been an actual member of DSA—counterintuitive as that may seem.
After Sanders introduced “democratic socialism” to millions of American living rooms in his debates with Hillary Clinton and politically “lived to talk about it,” a whole lot of people who’d also been thinking about the idea googled the term and found DSA; some joined. They were then followed by some who indeed did not identify with the democratic socialist tradition but recognized that this was now where the action was—the hazard of success.
The result is generally understood as a “big tent” organization—a tent thus far large enough to contain both US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Democratic New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani—figures for whom I cannot imagine Harrington having anything but admiration—along with caucuses by no means committed to that approach, groups that Harrington would consider bizarre and out of place (as does this writer.) It contains serious divergences between local chapters and a tenuous national organization. How long this tent holds up is anyone’s guess. As for Sale, if he would actually consider the entirety of organization (the best description of which I’ve seen was recently published in a German Left Party newspaper—"Von Degrowth bis ML" Jungle World, July 30, 2026) he might well see similarities with the late years of SDS (an organization Harrington subsequently regretted having failed to productively engage with.)
Among those similarities is a certain not-ready-for-prime-time quality common in organizations trying to cope with the increased glare of the public attention spotlight. Foibles and foolish statements surface from the past. My personal nomination for the dumbest left slogan of recent years is “Defund the police”—its rational kernel of re-evaluating government’s approach to certain types of public safety situations smothered in a seemingly naive call for an end to law enforcement. And yet, even someone like Mamdani who is generally considered to possess masterful political skills—correctly, I think—has had to walk that one back.
On some points of his critique of current DSA, Sale seems perhaps frozen in time, such as his noting that “Mike was an outspoken champion of the new Israel.” That “new Israel” has changed quite a bit in the thirty-seven years since Harrington has been gone. Would he remain a champion of a nation now planning a prison for Palestinians that includes a moat stocked with crocodiles – a proposal temporarily stalled by consideration of the animals’ subsequently repealed protected status? Sure hope not.
But where I really think Sale is just wrong is in essentially arguing that Harrington was not actually a socialist. Yes, Harrington did talk of being “the left wing of the possible,” and that “generally meant working within the Democratic Party”—as do most current DSAers running campaigns to do something for the American working class in the here-and-now. And while Sale is accurate in saying that the DSA of Harrington’s day “put forth a vision of a democratically elected government that would be like those of the Scandinavian countries, providing state services in health, education, housing and the like,” his contention that back then there was “Nowhere stuff about ending capitalism” makes it sound like Sale missed a lot of meetings—and maybe didn’t keep up on his reading so well either. Even the small DSA had differing strands of thinking. One major one was all about imagining how to reach a genuinely democratically controlled economy beyond the “welfare state” and capitalism, something you will find reflected in Harrington’s writing.
So would the imagined Harrington be troubled by some of what he’d see in today’s DSA? Yes, I’m sure he would. And would he be positively thrilled by some of what he found in today’s DSA? Yes, I’m sure he would.
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The Nuclear Age Began 81 Years Ago—With Lies; It Could End the Same Way
From the claim that dropping the atom bombs was necessary to end World War II to the fabricated nuclear threats used to justify the 21st century US wars in Iraq and Iran, nuclear weapons have a way of spawning deadly lies.
Aug 07, 2026
The atomic age began with a lie.
Eighty-one years ago this week, a single American airplane, flying almost unnoticed over a Japanese city, dropped a single bomb that destroyed the entire city. Three days later another American plane destroyed a second city.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 killed 100,000 people outright. By the end of the year another 100,000 succumbed to radiation sickness, burns, and other injuries from the blasts. Over 90% were civilians.
The stated reason for killing all these people was a lie. The claim that we had to drop atomic bombs to avoid the horrific losses US troops would have been suffered in an invasion of the Japanese home islands was false—and American decision-makers knew it when they decided to drop the bombs.
In the face of these unspeakable horrors, the atomic death of 200,000 Japanese civilians stands out because they were the world’s first victims of nuclear warfare—and their unnecessary deaths, excused by a set of lies, ushered in an era of peril for all humanity.
Because the United States had broken Japanese military codes, American intelligence learned in July 1945 that the Japanese government had already contacted the Soviet Union, America’s World War II ally, to discuss surrender. The Japanese hoped, above all, to ensure that the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender did not require the Japanese Emperor to abdicate—a condition that US readily agreed to in the end.
As Gar Alperovitz convincingly explains in his book, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, the destruction of the two Japanese cities had to do with emerging Cold War politics, not with avoiding an invasion of the Japanese islands.
Those who made the decision knew that Japan was seeking to end the war and believed that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, after the Allies’ victory in Europe, would likely be enough to precipitate Japan’s capitulation.
A long-hidden, top-secret US intelligence study in 1946 confirmed that the atomic blasts were not what ended the war—it was Russia’s August 8, 1945 declaration of war against Japan and Soviet troop movements.
Because Russia was preoccupied with the life-and-death struggle against Nazi Germany, they had not participated in the war against Japan until then. But in July 1945, at a conference in occupied Potsdam, Germany, President Harry Truman secured Joseph Stalin’s promise to join the war against Imperial Japan.
“Fini Japs when that occurs,” Truman observed in his war-time, hand-written journal in July 1945. “We’ll end the war a year sooner now,” Truman wrote in a letter around the same time. “Think of all the kids who won’t be killed.”
US war leaders confirmed the atomic bombing was not needed. The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower (later President Eisenhower) concluded that “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary... no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”
Fleet Admiral William Leahy, then Truman’s chief of staff, agreed: “The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender... The use of this this barbarous weapon... was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.”
Truman did not hesitate to drop the bombs anyway. “The atom bomb was no ‘great decision,’” he said 15 years later.
The World War II era was an age of atrocity. The Second Sino-Japanese War—Japan’s war of conquest against China from 1937 to 1945—caused an estimated 10-20 million deaths. Nazi Germany murdered 6 million European Jews. The Germans also murdered 2 million captured Russian soldiers through starvation. And there was the rape of Nanking, the destruction of Dresden, the 1943 famine of Bengal, and the firebombing of Tokyo and 60 other Japanese cities.
In the face of these unspeakable horrors, the atomic death of 200,000 Japanese civilians stands out because they were the world’s first victims of nuclear warfare—and their unnecessary deaths, excused by a set of lies, ushered in an era of peril for all humanity.
The lies and the dangers did not stop with the end of World War II. As we should have learned, nuclear weapons have a way of spawning lies.
In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, in 2003 the Bush regime constructed the fiction that Iraq had nuclear weapons, as an excuse for invading and occupying the oil-rich nation. But Iraq had neither nukes nor other weapons of mass destruction. The neoconservatives who promoted the invasion of Iraq (and urged President George W. Bush to proceed to invade Iran as well) had manipulated dubious intelligence to promote fears of an imaginary threat.
The price of those lies was high. In the end, the US occupation of Iraq cost the United States trillions of dollars and thousands of US service members’ lives—and caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths.
This year President Donald Trump returned to the right-wing dream of overthrowing the Iranian government, again lying about nuclear weapons to support a completely unnecessary war. Trump and his aides claimed that Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb and was developing long-range missiles that could soon strike the United States. US intelligence agencies confirmed that these claims were both lies.
The persistence of presidential lies about fictional nuclear threats should not obscure the all-too-real dangers of nuclear proliferation.
Citizens who are concerned about threats to our existence on this planet have rightly focused on climate change. But a world increasingly subjected to the stresses of climate change and its impacts—extreme temperatures, sea-level rise, mega storms, uncontrollable fires, crop destruction, drought, famine, refugee flows, and xenophobic politics—is a world in which desperate and megalomaniacal rulers may feel tempted to use thermonuclear weapons. And the nuclear age could end, as it began, with lies.
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Democrats’ Affordability Message Misses a Key Expense—Student Debt
The largest bill increase any single person may get this year is a student loan bill, so why have Dems left it out of their messaging?
Aug 07, 2026
With just 100 days left until the midterms, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on CNN to deliver Democrats’ closing message. “Life in this country is far too expensive,” said Jeffries, rolling out a new "Fighting for an Affordable America" tagline. Americans do not have “enough food on the table, not enough gas in the tank,” and they’re “unable to actually regularly and consistently afford to pay the rent or pay the mortgage.” Jeffries blamed President Donald Trump’s costly war of choice in Iran, tariffs that have cost everyday Americans thousands of dollars per year, and the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
Later that afternoon, in a steel workers union hall in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Jeffries joined Gov. Josh Shapiro at a joint campaign event for Bob Brooks, a LeHigh Valley firefighter running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s seventh Congressional District. Together, the three Democrats pointed to both the corruption plaguing our national politics and the high financial cost Americans have been forced to bear since Trump took office as causes of the affordability crisis. They implored voters in the “swingiest swing state in the country” to shift the tides of Washington, DC by voting against Republicans’ cost-raising policies and for Democrats’ cost-lowering solutions in November.
Democrats are right to highlight the impacts of giant cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, along with the rising cost of gas and utilities fueled by wars abroad and billionaire-backed corruption schemes at home. Uniting a broad electorate around an “affordability” agenda, akin to the messaging and policy success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, will bode well for Democrats around the nation going into an intense midterm election where the winds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s terror, mobilization against AI data centers, and widespread opposition to war is at the left’s back.
But mysteriously missing from Democrats' messaging about costs that have gone up as a result of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a key expense that 40 million Americans are battling in the shadows—student loans. For many student debtors, the increase in their monthly student loan bill will be their largest bill increase of the year by a significant margin. This leaves a massive hole in Democrats’ messaging cadence that must be filled immediately. A successful affordability message requires engaging with the true reality of Americans’ purses, and holds a mirror to the specific financial burdens that working people lose sleep over each night.
A willingness to ignore such a massive systemic cost increase reveals that Democrats, at least in this moment, are not taking their own "affordability" messaging seriously—posing grave electoral problems.
Take a typical student debtor in a family of four who earns a median US household income of $81,000. Under former President Joe Biden’s SAVE plan, their monthly student debt payment was $36. Under Trump’s Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) plan, that payment would increase to $440—well over 1,000% more than under SAVE. In an internal Debt Collective survey of more than 1,500 student debtors on the SAVE plan, 50% of student debtors reported an average expected payment increase of $500 a month—just a few bucks shy of the average monthly payment for a newly used car. Yet despite this grave expense, of which Trump and his Republican allies are solely to blame, student loan bill increases have seldom made it to Democrats’ November stump speeches. Except for a few sparing moments of attention—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has used his platform to showcase the absurdity of rising student debt for seniors—student loan bills have largely fallen off the radar for congressional Democrats. But for the millions on the receiving end of the Department of Education’s confusing and frightening emails, student loans dominate workers’ ability to make financial decisions.
Massive errors have rendered the student debt system dysfunctional at an unprecedented level. Millions of debtors have payments gone uncounted by their servicer, inaccurate balances, are awaiting cancellation for relief programs they’ve been eligible for, or are in limbo to simply enroll in a repayment plan that works for them. Weeks ago, Secretary Linda McMahon’s Department of Education admitted to a massive glitch in which thousands of student debtors were wrongfully told their monthly payment would be $50 a month, only to find out weeks later that the plan they’re now stuck in requires a monthly payment hundreds of dollars more. In recent days, debtors serviced by MOHELA were wrongfully sent delinquency notices asserting that they owed back-payments for the months in which courts have legally paused their payments. Separate ongoing litigation moving its way through a DC district court has called out a “shadow repeal” of the REPAYE plan, asserting that the Trump administration's refusal to allow student debtors to enroll in a repayment plan that may be their best option is illegal. Today, no member of Congress has called on the Trump administration to reopen the plan.
Worse than remaining quiet on student debt, some Democrats have seemingly regressed on the issue. In July, a dangerous student debt bill that would exempt—yes, exempt—state-based lenders from transparency laws passed in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. If the vote advances further, the new law of the land could give schools a financial incentive to push predatory loan products onto desperate students seeking to use private loans to pay for school. Nine out of 11 Democrats sided with Republicans on this measure, ensuring bipartisan support for deepening the student debt crisis and worsening the lending system.
Democrats' silence on the rising costs of student debt will fall flat with voters in November, many of whom are already dejected from the Biden administration’s botched attempt to cancel student debt broadly and the Supreme Court’s decision to side against debtors. A willingness to ignore such a massive systemic cost increase reveals that Democrats, at least in this moment, are not taking their own "affordability" messaging seriously—posing grave electoral problems.
The Debt Collective—the nation’s first union of debtors whom I organize with—is calling on Congressional Democrats to step up to the plate. At this moment, Democrats could call for an immediate pause on student debt payments—which Trump was the first to administer through executive authority in 2020—amid significant administrative errors, a costly rise in payments amid a worsening economy, and ongoing litigation. Without mentioning the one monthly bill that, for millions of Americans, rivals their mortgage, the blue wave Democrats will need to take back the House may resemble something more like a small splash.
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As More People Die In Their Custody, ICE Is Working Hard To Hide Its Abuses
By rescinding policies that mandate accountability and oversight, while simultaneously purchasing privately held detention centers, the Trump administration is working to hide the abuses, death, and violence occurring at their facilities.
Aug 07, 2026
On August 1, Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a Salvadorian migrant imprisoned at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, died.
While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) insists that Lopez-Cornejo “received proper medical care and was seen by medical professionals” while in custody, there are reasons to be doubtful. In May, 300 detainees launched a labor and hunger strike protesting medical neglect, being fed spoiled and rotten food, and other “torturous” conditions.
In June, Gothamist reported that more than 70 detainees at Delaney Hall had filed federal lawsuits alleging medical neglect. That includes 30 who claim they were denied prescribed medications for chronic conditions such as asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, and cancer.
Lopez-Cornejo likely experienced the same. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) said he spoke with ICE officials who told him Lopez-Cornejo had expressed feeling dizzy and fatigued earlier that day. Menendez further added, “We asked certain medical questions, which ICE couldn’t give us answers to.”
Detention centers have always been deadly. Under Trump, ICE is doing everything it can to make them even more dangerous.
Lopez-Cornejo had been prescribed medication for diabetes, high blood pressure, and seizures—conditions that, if not properly treated, can lead to those symptoms as well as death. In an interview, his mother, Maria Cornejo, explained, “That is one of the reasons that I believe caused the death of my son, the negligence—that he wasn't given his medication that he had to take.”
Lopez-Cornejo is at least the 23rd person to die in ICE custody this year. In 2025, at least 33 people died in detention centers—the highest total in more than two decades according to the National Immigration Project.
Importantly, those numbers only represent the deaths that ICE has reported. During his visit to Delaney Hall on August 3, Menendez learned that another detainee had died at the detention center last month. That death was not reported because ICE agents had granted him a “discretionary release” in the middle of his medical emergency.
In June, ICE rescinded a Biden-era policy that required them to report on the deaths of detainees that occurred within 30 days of their release. ICE is now exploiting this change to obscure their death count.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In July, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased the Otay Mesa Detention Center and the California City Detention Facility for $1.5 billion from the private prison company CoreCivic.
According to an ICE spokesperson, these purchases were necessary because “the state’s sanctuary politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.” Shifting ownership from CoreCivic to the federal government circumvents these measures, thereby allowing ICE to retain “crucial” detention capacity.
This, however, is not all it does. In 2025, California passed legislation that granted its Department of Justice (DOJ) oversight to regularly inspect and report on the conditions of “county, local, or private locked detention facilities in which noncitizens are being housed or detained for purposes of civil immigration proceedings.” In June 2026, the California DOJ found that conditions at Otay Mesa were overcrowded and dirty. Medical recordkeeping was “disorganized and violated PBNDS [Performance-Based National Detention Standards] requirements” which resulted in “lapses in basic care.” At California City, the department found that detainees spent “unnecessarily long periods locked down in their cells” and experienced “extremely cold temperatures, with leaks during rainy periods.” California DOJ reported that healthcare infrastructure and systems at the center were “inadequate,” including “crisis-level health care understaffing.”
By taking ownership of those detention centers, the Trump administration is placing them beyond the reach of state inspections. As Alexa Van Brunt, the Director of the Illinois office at the McArthur Justice Center, explains, inspection reports are crucial in lawsuits alleging constitutional violations. Without them, it is far more difficult to obtain evidence of ICE’s wrongdoings. “To that point,” she remarks, “it will make it more onerous to hold DHS liable.”
It is also worth emphasizing that while ownership is being transferred, CoreCivic will remain in charge of managing those facilities. Same management, same abuses, but now with less oversight—the perfect recipe for more unaccounted detainee deaths.
In July, CBS News reported that only 15 of the 45 detention centers holding 500 or more people had been inspected by ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight in the last 12 months. This follows a shift in ICE’s policies whereby dedicated facilities, which exclusively hold ICE detainees, are now inspected once a year rather than twice; and non-dedicated facilities, such as county jails, are inspected every other year.
Notably, ICE’s detention center purchases extend beyond sanctuary cities. On August 5, CoreCivic announced that ICE had purchased the Prairie Correctional Facility in Minnesota and the Midwest Regional Reception Center in Kansas for a total of $734 million. Both facilities were previously shut down—the former in 2010; and the latter in 2021 as the Biden administration shifted away from private prison contracts. CoreCivic had been struggling since last year to reopen Midwest Regional amid protest from local residents—in a famously pro-prison town that Trump won with more than 60% of the vote in 2024—and legal challenges from city officials. Now it will, despite their objections and with possibly fewer guardrails.
Officials with CoreCivic and The Geo Group—which owns Delaney Hall—have reportedly discussed selling several more sites to the Trump administration.
By rescinding policies that mandate accountability and oversight, while simultaneously purchasing privately held detention centers, the Trump administration is working to hide the abuses, death, and violence occurring at their facilities. At the same time, these purchases have been a major windfall for CoreCivic, which has used our taxpayer dollars to pay down its $600 million debt.
Detention centers have always been deadly. Under Trump, ICE is doing everything it can to make them even more dangerous. Before it's too late, Congress must act immediately to not only abolish ICE, but punish everyone involved in enacting their campaign of domestic terrorism and death.
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2 Men Were Killed by ICE on Their Way to Work; Every Employer Now Has to Pick a Side
A movement that spent years avoiding a labor identity can't afford that caution anymore.
Aug 07, 2026
Last month Immigration and Customs Enforcement killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and Houston construction worker, on the way to a job site. Just six days later another ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero on his way to work, who left behind a partner and 3-year-old daughter.
When I helped organize the fight for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), we put young people in caps and gowns and asked the country to see them as exceptional, college bound, English speaking, worthy of protection in a way that set them apart from the majority of undocumented people, who were not students but workers. It was a strategy built for a specific moment, and it won us what respectability politics ever can: temporary inclusion that separated us from the rest of our community. Many of us also shied away from the economic argument on principle, even though mainstream organizations were already making it, because it had become associated with more middle-of-the-road groups. We narrowed our own lane instead of widening it.
That caution has run its course. Two men were killed on their way to work within a week of each other. No amount of careful language changes it.
What's needed now is to say plainly that this happened to people doing exactly what all workers do every day, and that everyone who depends on immigrant labor, starting with employers and extending through the broader labor movement, has to decide what they owe them.
Employers, unions, and labor organizations cannot afford to look away while businesses that have relied on workers like Lorenzo and Johan for years stay quiet as their own workforce is targeted by the government.
None of this is about making immigrants prove they deserve safety by pointing to what they contribute. Nobody should have to justify their right to exist with a paycheck.
But there's a difference between demanding immigrants justify their worth and simply describing how this economy runs. Construction, hospitality, agriculture, food delivery, garment production, whole industries in this country would not function without an estimated 10 million undocumented workers, most without any union protection at all. That labor isn't a contribution to the American economy. It is the American economy.
My mother came to this country to work, and to build something for her family, and so did the workers I've spent my career organizing alongside. That desire, to work hard and provide rather than be given something, isn't unique to immigrants.
Every night, at kitchen tables across this country, whether the family is undocumented or not, people are asking each other, "How was work?"
Wanting to work and provide for the people you love is one of the most ordinary parts of being human, and there is real pride in the work itself. That labor is an identity, not just the exploitative relationship it's so often reduced to, one that wouldn't change even if our immigration status did.
I organized car wash workers in Los Angeles, in shops where owners stole wages and denied bathroom breaks because workers had no path to citizenship and no union behind them. A boss who can threaten to call ICE on one worker has leverage over the whole shop floor, and in plenty of workplaces that threat is the boss' whole labor strategy, cheaper and more effective at stopping organizing than firing people or hiring anti-union law firms ever was.
Employers have a different kind of leverage too, not the threat they can hold over a worker, but the influence of being a major employer, the kind that gets a phone call to the White House answered, or makes silence too costly to just sit on.
Last year, farmers raised alarms about the raids loudly enough that President Donald Trump's own agriculture secretary carried the message to the White House, and enforcement paused, for four days, before Stephen Miller pushed to reverse it and the raids resumed.
In Minneapolis this year, more than 60 CEOs signed a joint letter calling for "de-escalation" after federal agents killed two residents. The letter didn’t name ICE, and it didn’t ask for anything specific. The letter added to the scrutiny that was already mounting against ICE and Border Patrol after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Within a day, the Border Patrol commander was pulled from the city. Within two days, Trump himself was using the language of de-escalation. A vague joint statement helped move that. Imagine what an actual one could do.
The choice to speak up for workers, clearly and specifically, should be harder to dodge in the days since the killings of Lorenzo and Johan.
Rather than address why agents opened fire on unarmed men on their way to work, the administration's border czar, Tom Homan, went on Fox News and warned that there would be more "bloodshed" unless Democrats who criticize ICE stop talking. Homan is trying to make silence about these ICE killings the price of safety, and to put the blame for these two deaths anywhere but on the agents who pulled the trigger.
Every employer, every union, every business owner who has ever depended on an immigrant showing up to work now has to pick a side. Either stand with the workers whose labor built their businesses and industries, or fall in line behind a White House that is driving a white nationalist agenda. There is no third option where staying silent counts as staying out of it.
The administration isn't waiting to see whether employers choose workers or fall in line. The same crackdown that's killing and deporting workers who are already here is also causing real labor shortages in construction, agriculture, and dairy, and the administration has an answer for that shortage that has nothing to do with accountability.
This year alone, it has added 65,000 new H-2B guest worker visas and, for the first time, opened dairy farms to guest workers under a program where a worker's legal status, housing, and wages all depend on the same employer. Advocates have documented what that leads to for years: wage theft, confiscated passports, and workers threatened into silence because there is nowhere else for them to go.
Formerly enslaved people fought for this same principle a century and a half ago, insisting that only full citizenship, not tolerated presence, guaranteed they wouldn't be treated as less than fully human. This summer, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that exact principle when it struck down Trump's attempt to strip citizenship from children born to undocumented parents.
If the labor and immigrant rights movements don’t make the case ourselves, loudly and now, that immigrant workers deserve full rights and not just a job, that’s the model we’ll be handed. The alternative gets built for us either way, one where people are welcome only as controllable labor and for exactly as long as an employer finds them useful.
Employers, unions, and labor organizations cannot afford to look away while businesses that have relied on workers like Lorenzo and Johan for years stay quiet as their own workforce is targeted by the government. Unions and labor advocates also have a responsibility to clearly say that worker safety does not end at the shop door. Workers have the right to get to a job and get home without risking their lives.
Two men are dead because they went to work, and the mistake the immigrant rights movement cannot afford right now is forgetting that it is also a labor movement.
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