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Opinion
Billionaires Are Trying to Defeat Rep. John Larson—Social Security’s No. 1 Champion
The uber wealthy hate the Social Security 2100 Act—and the man who wrote it. That’s why they are backing Rep. Larson’s primary challenger, corporate lawyer Luke Bronin.
Jan 30, 2026
Democratic Rep. John Larson of Connecticut is an irreplaceable leader in the fight to expand Social Security. As the top Democrat on the Social Security subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee, he combines deep policy expertise with passionate advocacy for Social Security’s 67 million beneficiaries and its 185 million contributors.
Rep. Larson’s signature legislation, the Social Security 2100 Act, would increase Social Security’s modest benefits for everyone. It also includes additional targeted increases for the most vulnerable. And it is paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires, who currently stop paying into Social Security after their first $184,500 in income, to finally pay their fair share.
Not surprisingly, billionaires hate the Social Security 2100 Act—and the man who wrote it. That’s why they are backing Rep. Larson’s primary challenger, corporate lawyer Luke Bronin. Hidden behind shadowy outside groups, they plan to pour enormous sums into the race.
These billionaires know that the clock is ticking. The Social Security 2100 Act has support from nearly 90% of House Democrats. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has pledged that if Democrats take back the House this November, they will hold a vote on the bill—setting the stage for it to become law the next time there is a Democratic trifecta.
Bronin and his Wall Street buddies can’t understand the fear felt by millions of Americans who don’t know how secure our Social Security is, with billionaires like Elon Musk buying political power to try to demolish the system brick by brick.
Thanks to Rep. Larson’s leadership, we are closer than ever to expanding Social Security. It’s no accident that the Social Security 2100 Act has such widespread support among the entire Democratic caucus, including both progressives and moderates. Rep. Larson made that happen by appealing to his colleagues in person at every opportunity—the type of work many members of Congress leave to their staff.
Rep. Larson is legendary for his tenacity. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was first elected to Congress, she was shunned by Democratic leadership and many of her Democratic colleagues. Not Rep. Larson. He immediately went to her office and asked for her support for the 2100 Act. In fact, I was called by her staffer, who asked me who the guy patiently waiting in her office with a folder for her explaining Social Security expansion was.
Rep. Larson works this tirelessly to educate every member of the caucus about Social Security expansion. AOC signed on—and recorded a video with Rep. Larson about their mutual support for Social Security.
Wall Street and its billionaires know that their best shot at stopping Social Security expansion is to take out Rep. Larson. That’s why they are uniting behind Bronin.
Rep. Larson grew up in a public housing project. He went to state university and then worked as a history teacher. In contrast, Bronin went to a fancy prep school and Yale University. He then worked in corporate law and focused on opportunistically climbing the political ladder.
Bronin was elected mayor of Hartford in 2015, on a pledge to serve out his full term. Bronin broke that pledge to unsuccessfully run for governor of Connecticut two years later. At the time, the Connecticut Mirror reported that “even admirers of Bronin, most of whom declined to be quoted by name, said he risked being seen as an opportunist, someone more interested in advancement than completing a difficult job.”
That’s exactly what Wall Street is looking for, and has found in Luke Bronin—someone who wants power for its own sake, and is happy to carry out its preferred agenda. Wall Street wants to deprive Social Security of its greatest champion in the US House, and Bronin is its weapon of choice.
Tellingly, Bronin attacks Rep. Larson for fighting too hard for Social Security. I think that is because Bronin and his Wall Street buddies can’t understand what life is like for the 154,216 residents of Connecticut’s First Congressional district and the 67 million Americans around the country who rely on Social Security to live their lives independently and with dignity.
Bronin and his Wall Street buddies can’t understand the fear felt by millions of Americans who don’t know how secure our Social Security is, with billionaires like Elon Musk buying political power to try to demolish the system brick by brick. President Donald Trump and Musk have closed offices, broken the phones, and most destructively fired thousands of workers needed to keep the system functioning. Larson has been fighting against that destruction and shined a spotlight on it. Social Security is in the greatest danger in its 90 year history, and it is because of Wall Street and its billionaires.
More than ever, we need Rep. Larson leading the fight to protect and expand Social Security.
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Will Democrats Finally Get Real About AI?
If Democrats want to regain trust ahead of the 2026 elections, they need to show they are willing to take on Big Tech with the urgency that everyday Americans are demanding.
Jan 30, 2026
One year ago, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos got front-row seats at President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The images of CEOs enjoying better seats than congressional leaders foreshadowed exactly how much access and influence Big Tech would wield in the Trump White House.
Since entering office, Trump has repeatedly signaled deference to a small group of powerful technology executives, aided by advisors like AI czar David Sacks who have spent their careers profiting from the industry. With Trump’s blessing, companies like NVIDIA are now poised to profit from sales of advanced chips to China, America’s foremost strategic competitor. That choice exposes a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the administration’s AI policy: prioritizing short-term corporate gains over long-term public interests.
In December, Trump signed an executive order threatening states for enacting AI safety laws without offering a credible federal framework to replace them. It was yet another misuse of executive power—and an industry giveaway disguised as a competitiveness strategy. By threatening states for acting while offering no federal safeguards in return, the order attempts to clear the field for companies that have spent years lobbying against meaningful accountability.
While Republicans move to shield companies from accountability and block reasonable state action without offering meaningful protections, Democrats can articulate a smarter approach.
Supporters argue that preemption is necessary to help the United States compete with China. But if that’s true, why is the president offering the Chinese Communist Party access to superior American technology and a clear path to win the AI race?
That contradiction hasn’t gone unnoticed, even inside Trump’s own coalition. Indeed, most Americans continue to express deep concern about Trump’s growing alignment with Silicon Valley.
Still, Trump has only doubled down, pushing a vision of global “tech dominance” with little regard for the real-world consequences of unprecedented AI investment. Even Republicans who were once vocal critics of Big Tech are now taking money from Meta and other companies to accelerate AI on industry-friendly terms.
For Democrats, this should be a moment of clarity—and a moment to lead. While many lawmakers have raised legitimate concerns about AI’s risks, the party’s response has too often leaned on commissions, task forces, and studies when the public is asking for clear rules and accountability.
Democrats must ask themselves: if Big Tech is already working overtime to block meaningful safeguards, why not meet the moment by standing clearly on the side of consumers, parents, and workers? Voters are asking for real leadership, but all they are seeing is a familiar pattern: billion-dollar companies consolidating power, writing the rules, and dodging accountability, leaving children, workers, and democratic institutions to deal with the consequences.
The 2024 election underscored a deeper challenge for Democrats than economic uncertainty or flawed candidates. Many voters struggled to see a coherent vision for the future under Democratic leadership. That vacuum has allowed Republicans to posture as pro-consumer and pro-family while quietly shielding powerful companies from accountability.
The debate over AI offers Democrats a chance to do better. While Republicans move to shield companies from accountability and block reasonable state action without offering meaningful protections, Democrats can articulate a smarter approach: clear expectations for safety; real liability when technology causes harm; serious preparation for economic disruption; and responsible planning for AI’s massive energy demands.
AI is no longer an abstract idea; its impacts are already being felt. But without clear rules, it risks reshaping our economy, labor markets, and democratic institutions in ways that undermine security, opportunity, and trust. When elected leaders prioritize the agendas of their corporate executives over the long-term public interest, trust erodes—not just in institutions, but in innovation itself.
That erosion of trust is already visible. Workers worry about job displacement, recent graduates struggle to enter a rapidly-changing workforce, and parents fear how algorithmic manipulation and AI-generated deepfakes will shape their children’s reality. These concerns aren’t partisan. This shared national anxiety goes to the heart of the American experiment.
If Democrats want to regain trust ahead of the 2026 elections, they need to show they are willing to take on Big Tech with the urgency that everyday Americans are demanding. That means recognizing that AI isn’t just another talking point, and pursuing strong, enforceable standards now—so its extraordinary potential strengthens the middle class, improves our children’s future, and reinforces democratic institutions rather than undermining them.
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Trump's Board of Peace Fits Into a Long, Ignoble US Foreign Policy Tradition
When existing international mechanisms fail to serve US political objectives, new structures are invented; old ones are bypassed; and power is reasserted under the guise of peace, reform, or stability.
Jan 30, 2026
The history of American power is, in many ways, the history of reinventing rules—or designing new ones—to fit US strategic interests.
This may sound harsh, but it is a necessary realization, particularly in light of US President Donald Trump’s latest political invention: the so-called Board of Peace.
Some have hastily concluded that Trump’s newest political gambit—recently unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos—is a uniquely Trumpian endeavor, detached from earlier US foreign policy doctrines. They are mistaken, misled largely by Trump’s self-centered political style and his constant, though unfounded, claims that he has ended wars, resolved global conflicts, and made the world a safer place.
At the Davos launch, Trump reinforced this carefully crafted illusion, boasting of America’s supposed historic leadership in bringing peace; praising alleged unprecedented diplomatic breakthroughs; and presenting the Board of Peace as a neutral, benevolent mechanism capable of stabilizing the world’s most volatile regions.
What is truly extraordinary is that even in its phase of decline, the United States continues to be permitted to experiment with the futures of entire peoples and regions.
Yet a less prejudiced reading of history allows us to see Trump’s political design—whether in Gaza or beyond—not as an aberration, but as part of a familiar pattern. US foreign policymakers repeatedly seek to reclaim ownership over global affairs; sideline international consensus; and impose political frameworks that they alone define, manage, and ultimately control.
The Board of Peace—a by-invitation-only political club controlled entirely by Trump himself—is increasingly taking shape as a new geopolitical reality in which the United States imposes itself as the self-appointed caretaker of global affairs, beginning with genocide-devastated Gaza, and explicitly positioning itself as an alternative to the United Nations. While Trump has not stated this outright, his open contempt for international law and his relentless drive to redesign the post-World War II world order are clear indicators of his true intentions.
The irony is staggering. A body ostensibly meant to guide Gaza through reconstruction after Israel’s devastating genocide does not include Palestinians—let alone Gazans themselves. Even more damning is the fact that the genocide it claims to address was politically backed, militarily financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive US administrations, first under Joe Biden and later under Trump.
It requires no particular insight to conclude that Trump’s Board of Peace is not concerned with peace, nor genuinely with Gaza. So what, then, is this initiative really about?
This initiative is not about reconstruction or justice, but about exploiting Gaza’s suffering to impose a new US-led world order, first in the Middle East and eventually beyond.
Gaza—a besieged territory of just 365 square kilometers—does not require a new political structure populated by dozens of world leaders, each reportedly paying a billion-dollar membership fee. Gaza needs reconstruction, its people must be granted their basic rights, and Israel’s crimes must be met with accountability. The mechanisms to achieve this already exist: the United Nations; international law; longstanding humanitarian institutions; and above all the Palestinians themselves, whose agency, resilience, and determination to survive Israel’s onslaught have become legendary.
The Board of Peace discards all of this in favor of a hollow, improvised structure tailored to satisfy Trump’s volatile ego and advance US-Israeli political and geopolitical interests. In effect, it drags Palestine back a century, to an era when Western powers unilaterally determined its fate—guided by racist assumptions about Palestinians and the Middle East, assumptions that laid the groundwork for the region’s enduring catastrophes.
Yet the central question remains: Is this truly a uniquely Trumpian initiative?
No, it is not. While it is ingeniously tailored to feed Trump’s inflated sense of grandeur, it remains a familiar American tactic, particularly during moments of profound crisis. This strategy is persuasively outlined in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which argues that political and economic elites exploit collective trauma—wars, natural disasters, and social breakdown—to impose radical policies that would otherwise face public resistance.
Trump’s Board of Peace fits squarely within this framework, using the devastation of Gaza not as a call for justice or accountability, but as an opportunity to reshape political realities in ways that entrench US dominance and sideline international norms.
This is hardly unprecedented. The pattern can be traced back to the US-envisioned United Nations, established in 1945 as a replacement for the League of Nations. Its principal architect, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was determined that the new institution would secure the structural dominance of the United States, most notably through the Security Council and the veto system, ensuring Washington’s decisive influence over global affairs.
When the UN later failed to fully acquiesce to US interests—most notably when it refused to grant the George W. Bush administration legal authorization to invade Iraq—the organization was labeled “irrelevant”. Bush, then, led his own so-called “coalition of the willing,” a war of aggression that devastated Iraq and destabilized the entire region, consequences that persist to this day.
A similar maneuver unfolded in Palestine with the invention of the so-called Quartet on the Middle East in 2002, a US-dominated framework. From its inception, the Quartet systematically sidelined Palestinian agency, insulated Israel from accountability, and relegated international law to a secondary—and often expendable—consideration.
The method remains consistent: When existing international mechanisms fail to serve US political objectives, new structures are invented; old ones are bypassed; and power is reasserted under the guise of peace, reform, or stability.
Judging by this historical record, it is reasonable to conclude that the Board of Peace will eventually become yet another defunct body. Before reaching that predictable end, however, it risks further derailing the already fragile prospects for a just peace in Palestine and obstructing any meaningful effort to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.
What is truly extraordinary is that even in its phase of decline, the United States continues to be permitted to experiment with the futures of entire peoples and regions. Yet it is never too late for those committed to restoring the centrality of international law—not only in Palestine, but globally—to challenge such reckless and self-serving political engineering.
Palestine, the Middle East, and the world deserve better.
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Save New START: Nuclear Arms Treaties Must Not Expire
Without New START, there will be no legal limits on US and Russian nuclear arsenals, triggering a costly and dangerous arms race.
Jan 30, 2026
On 5 February 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START—the last remaining arms-control pact between the United States and Russia—is set to expire. Moscow offered to Washington to voluntarily extend it for a year, but US President Donald Trump recently shrugged it off and told the New York Times, "If it expires, it expires.” POTUS has also recently been in the headlines for saying that he doesn’t believe he is required to follow any laws except his own morality, accountable to no one.
I often think about the pre-election live-streamed conversation between Trump and Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is now in charge of orbital dominance for the US Space Force over planet Earth. When Trump expressed fear of nuclear disasters like Fukushima, Musk responded by defending nuclear energy, despite the fact that a country that has the ability to create and maintain nuclear-power facilities is technically capable of creating nuclear weapons, and despite the fact that we still do not have the technology to remediate (detoxify) nuclear waste.
Musk went even further, minimizing the danger of nuclear weapons themselves. During the conversation which took place on August 11, 2025 (just three days after the 80th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Nagasaki), at an hour and 17 minutes Musk said: “It’s like, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again. So it’s really not something that, you know, it’s not as scary as people think, basically. But let’s see.”
No. We do not ever want to see nuclear weapons used again. The basis of any valid moral system means doing everything you can to minimize the harm you cause to others, and making amends for the harm you do cause. Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy entire cities.
A new arms race would not make anyone safer—but it would make weapons manufacturers wealthier.
Those who survive the initial blast endure slow, excruciating deaths from radiation sickness, burns, cancers, and generational genetic damage—as did so many in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is nothing “not as scary as people think” about this.
Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at SpaceX announced that Elon Musk’s Artificial Intelligence software GROK, from Musk’s private corporation xAI, will be integrated into Pentagon networks. Hegseth said:
I demand and we demand that we arm our war fighters with overwhelming and lethal technology right now… This strategy will unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus on investments, and demonstrate the execution approach needed, to ensure that we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the future. In short, we will win this race.
The only race being fueled in the planet’s current polycrisis is the race to extinction, where there are only losers. The current push by the Department of War to accelerate AI-driven warfare alongside the development of new nuclear weapons eerily echoes the War Room scenes in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, where General “Buck” Turgidson treats mass murder and nuclear holocaust as a logistics problem and a branding opportunity. Reality is stranger than fiction when today’s enthusiasm for automation, speed, and “dominance” mimics satire like in Kubrick’s dark comedy. When machines shorten decision time and leaders prioritize advantage over restraint, the system begins to outrun moral judgment.
It was only a few presidencies ago in 1985 when the USA under former President Ronald Reagan reached a joint agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The dialogue implied that neither side would seek military superiority, with the intention to lower the risk of catastrophic conflict and to advance arms-control negotiations.
From survivors of nuclear tests on American soil—like New Mexico, Nevada, and San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point Shipyard—to communities across the Pacific, from the Marshall Islands to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are innocent victims who experienced the horror of nuclear weapons. Their testimonies exist. Their pain is documented. Their warnings are clear.
As Mrs. Yoko Ota, a Japanese writer who put down this description shortly after the Bomb destroyed Hiroshima, recalled:
On the roads I saw thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children fleeing the hell of Hiroshima. All of them, without exception, were covered with terrible wounds. Their eyebrows were completely burned off. On their faces and hands the skin was burned too and hung in strips. If many of them held their two arms stretched toward the sky, it was purely to try and calm the pain. These unfortunate creatures had their whole bodies swollen up, like drowned men who have been a long time in the water. Their eyelids were swollen so that their eyes were completely shut, while the skin all around was bright red. They were all blind… Most of them were naked to the waist… girls completely naked, women without a hair on their heads, an old woman with both arms dislocated, walking along with them hanging by her sides, the flesh, burnt as if on a grill, came away from the bones; blood was flowing abundantly and a yellow liquid like fat mingled with it…There wasn’t a single person who wasn’t wounded. A woman was lying on the ground, her head split open horizontally. The whole inside of her head was red, like a watermelon. In spite of this horrible wound the woman was still alive and crawled along the ground, leaving behind her a long red streak…
Survivors of nuclear weapons deserve to be listened to—not dismissed, not minimized, and not disregarded.
Nuclear weapons should never have been created, yet we live with their existence. If the New START treaty lapses, there will be no legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. A new arms race would not make anyone safer—but it would make weapons manufacturers wealthier. According to The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), “The private sector earned at least $42.5 billion from their nuclear weapons contracts in 2024 alone.”
Companies positioned to profit include defense contractors and tech-military hybrids, many of which already benefit from massive government contracts. Elon Musk’s companies, particularly SpaceX, stand to gain further through expanded “orbital infrastructure” and defense systems. Trump’s proposal for an impossible “Golden Dome” missile defense system would funnel billions more into contractors like SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman—all while creating the illusion of safety rather than actual security—and leaving the working class impoverished and degraded. “Food, not bombs,” has been a persistent slogan among people who demonstrate for peace.
Letting New START expire would end more than a treaty—it would end the last remaining restraint on nuclear escalation. Secretary of War Hegseth announced that the US military will “learn from failure” as a strategy—so wouldn’t it be efficient strategy to learn from the failures of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and take the opportunity now to renew New START?
Contact your senators in writing or call your representatives at the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, and urge them to support extending the New START Treaty before it expires on February 5, 2026. Without it, there will be no legal limits on US and Russian nuclear arsenals, triggering a costly and dangerous arms race. We need immediate diplomacy to preserve New START, as nuclear arms control is a present and urgent challenge.
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