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affordability
Beware of JD Vance Changing His Tune
By criticizing the Iran War and touting affordability, Vance is not reconsidering the politics that produced the administration's failures; rather, he is signaling how the interests that control him intend to recover the political ground they have lost.
Nov 07, 2026
Following the supposed “blue wave,” marked by significant GOP midterm losses, JD Vance published an donald extended statement on X that some have interpreted as a meaningful admission of Republican failure, or even a rebuke of President Donald Trump. Vance seemed to offer an unusually candid explanation of why voters had abandoned the administration, citing a pollster's account of what might persuade disillusioned Trump 2024 voters to return to the Republican camp. The four leading responses, he explained, were:
- End the war;
- Focus on cost of living and inflation;
- Put America First; and
- Change our relationship to Israel.
While Vance's statement has ruffled feathers within the GOP, its implications, and the speed with which it was issued, deserve considerably closer scrutiny.
On the one hand, there is nothing revelatory about acknowledging that an increasingly unpopular, unprovoked war on Iran, mounting economic insecurity and crippling inflation, and the administration's unwavering support for the war-dependent, genocidal, apartheid state of Israel have alienated voters. Yet it is notable how readily Vance, a defender and principal contributor to these very ruinous policies and destructive conditions, has identified them, and how quickly that recognition is being read as evidence of political introspection, or even a “break” from Trump.
Vance’s X-essay is thus not a departure from the political project that brought Trump to power, but a swift, billionaire-backed exercise in working out how to repackage its promises and mobilize them again.
At first glance, Vance's statement reads almost like an exercise in democratic humility. He is “shocked,” apparently eager for an “honest conversation” about where the Republican Party goes from here, and graciously inviting voters to explain where his party went wrong. He writes as though GOP voters might actually be invited to participate in the democratic direction of their party:
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, "I told you so," you're right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview.
The performance would be more convincing if Vance were not the vice president of the administration he is now diagnosing and a well-established political puppet of the PayPal Mafia.
It is no secret that Vance's political ascent has been financed and cultivated by Silicon Valley's billionaire class, whose personal and commercial interests and bizarre dystopian visions increasingly depend upon the expansion of the American war machine, the growing privatization of state power, and the accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public services. Most infamously, Peter Thiel was Vance's employer, mentor, political patron, and one of the principal architects of his political ascent.
It is almost too obvious to point out the absurdity of a man explaining to voters what went wrong when he is himself an instrument of the very oligarchs using the executive branch to secure lucrative markets for their data and AI infrastructure, and the development and deployment of autonomous weapons systems. Their fortunes are precisely tied to the expansion of state violence and surveillance at home and abroad. They are the vanguard of a class exploiting public resources, evading taxation, and extracting billions in government contracts.
But exposing Vance's hypocrisy, or reading his statement as a thinly veiled repudiation of Trump, misses the more consequential calculation. Vance is not reconsidering the politics that produced the administration's failures. Rather, he is signaling how the interests that control him intend to recover the political ground they have lost.
It is hardly surprising that Republicans may once again co-opt anti-war and economic populist rhetoric without attempting to deliver on the demands behind it. Trump has demonstrated, in both terms, how readily campaign promises for “peace” and measures to alleviate the cost-of-living squeeze can be altogether abandoned once political power is secured. More consequential is the speed with which the Republican establishment seems to be taking stock of its electoral failures, calculating how to win back the constituencies it has alienated, and laying the groundwork for another political cycle.
Vance's 2028 ambitions offer an important window into the recalibration. His ideological moderation signals no shift in political direction, but rather is a more sophisticated effort to reposition the Republican Party without relinquishing its underlying commitments. Vance and his backers understand that reclaiming their political and electoral appeal requires more than simply appropriating the language of popular demands. The longer-term objective is to accommodate popular discontent rhetorically while severing it from the structural changes necessary to address its underlying causes.
The Republican establishment does not need to defeat anti-war politics if it can detach opposition to a particular war from opposition to American imperialism. It does not need to defeat economic populism if it can detach economic discontent from a critique of corporate ownership and concentrated wealth—narrowing the narrative to prices at the pump or the cost of groceries. Nor does it need to abandon its relationship with Israel if it can present a revised relationship—including through changes to the National Defense Authorization Act—as evidence that it has listened to voters, without challenging the military and financial arrangements that sustain Israeli occupation of Palestine and its broader expansionist project.
The grievances can be acknowledged, the language adopted, and the constituencies courted, without conceding anything to the structural changes those demands might ultimately entail.
The comparison with the Democratic establishment is equally telling. While Republicans are already calculating how to win back voters alienated by their own policies, Democrats seem perfectly ready to mistake another rejection of Trump for an endorsement of their own. The establishment is potentially preparing to restore Zionist PAC-funded, Big Pharma-defending mouthpieces Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) to positions of leadership. The same politicians who have spent years rebuking their progressive wing, dismissing its demands, working only in the interests of their corporate backers, and insisting that voters have nowhere else to go. The establishment seems perfectly content to congratulate themselves on their return.
The same tendency to mistake political repositioning for political change extends beyond the establishment, as some sections of the liberal and supposed left have greeted Vance's statement with enthusiasm or credulity. Liberals eager to find signs of moderation within the Republican Party are helping launder a calculated political maneuver into something resembling introspection. Others, celebrating the “blue wave” and desperate for evidence that electoral politics can still produce a meaningful rupture, seem ready to declare a discursive victory for the movements fighting for economic justice and against militarism. For some, Vance's tweet becomes a kind of political talisman: proof that the administration has been wounded, that voters have rejected its agenda, that the contradictions are finally catching up with it.
In other words, those on the left may see their own demands reflected in Vance's rhetoric and mistake such appropriation for a political victory.
This is the mythology of hope at its most politically debilitating, the naive compulsion to find redemption in a political establishment whose interests remain fundamentally unchanged. The election does not resolve the political and moral incoherence that Vance embodies, just as it does nothing to dislodge the ruling class.
Vance’s X-essay is thus not a departure from the political project that brought Trump to power, but a swift, billionaire-backed exercise in working out how to repackage its promises and mobilize them again.
Trump's bombastic circus, his criminality, his revolving cast of cronies, and his particular brand of reactionary politics are not, in themselves, the full expression of the GOP elite's political project. To mistake the current face of the administration for the true cohort of interests it serves is to misunderstand the political coalition that brought Trump to power and continues to benefit from controlling the presidency, most obviously to inflate their members’ stock portfolios.
The current GOP elite’s chauvinist politics—which combine white nationalism, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black reaction; the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the machinery of mass detention and deportation; and an increasingly normalized use and threat of state violence at home and abroad—are still not bound by a unified ideological movement with a consistent conservative program. It is their shared appetite for power, accumulation, deregulation, and coercion that binds them.
Trumpism has provided a vehicle through which an increasingly volatile coalition of competing capital interests, billionaire networks, military and intelligence contractors, private surveillance interests, religious reactionaries, and political operators can consolidate power. Their political alliances are contingent, perhaps even sustained by blackmail. Their rhetoric is just as expendable. Trump's second administration has made this especially visible, as competing egos often collide despite shared pursuits of industry-wide deregulation and unfettered access to the institutions through which wealth and power are accumulated.
So Vance's apparent signal of a “2028 GOP showdown” are entirely consistent with this world of self-interested networks and political theater. There is no reason to assume that Trump himself must remain the vehicle through which the ultrarich, the Epstein class, and their affiliates pursue their ambitions and interests, including Trump's own.
In other words, Vance et al. are moving fast to preserve their hold on power while shedding the liabilities that have made the current administration increasingly difficult to sustain. Technology and security interests that profit from the expansion of state coercion can back a politician speaking of economic relief and an end to war. There is no contradiction here from the standpoint of capital. The political presentation can change without any corresponding change in the interests being served.
Vance's statement is then worth taking seriously, as it demonstrates that even the techno-utopian, reality-detached oligarchs are capable of explicitly recognizing the political grievances they manufacture and considering how to bring those voters back into the fold. This is a form of political intelligence that the Democratic establishment has repeatedly proven itself incapable of, or deliberately unwilling to, exercise, even when it is deployed, as it is here, in the service of preserving the very arrangements responsible for producing those grievances.
Neither party's electoral fortunes should be mistaken for a transfer of political power to the people whose grievances they claim to represent.
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If 'Trump Wants to Be Mr. Veto, Let's Test That Out,' Warren Says of New Red Hat
"The new Democratic majority in Congress should pass bills to make life more affordable and our government less corrupt."
Nov 06, 2026
One of the easiest ways to spot a supporter of US President Donald Trump is a red hat declaring "Make America Great Again," but after a Democratic "tsunami" in the midterms earlier this week, the Republican leader unveiled a new cap that says "VETO."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an incoming committee chair who's long sparred with Trump, responded Thursday by making clear that Democrats are determined to pass far-reaching legislation after securing significant—but not veto-proof—majorities in both chambers of Congress.
"If Donald Trump wants to be Mr. Veto, let's test that out," she wrote on social media, replying to a White House photo of the hat placed next to the president as he signed an executive order declaring the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room national monuments. "The new Democratic majority in Congress should pass bills to make life more affordable and our government less corrupt."
Warren's X post echoed her Thursday op-ed about "why Democrats won the midterms"—as of Friday, they have at least 54 senators and 253 seats in the House of Representatives—and how they now "must deliver... even with Donald Trump in the White House."
"Trump says he welcomes the nickname 'Mr. Veto.' Well, let's test that out by passing legislation the American people support," she wrote for Time, urging Democrats to stop the Iran War, reverse GOP healthcare cuts while expanding coverage, fund universal childcare, and cancel "the tax breaks Trump and the Republicans handed out to corporations, ultramillionaires, and billionaires."
Other priorities for the progressive—who is set to lead the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs—include "bills to ban stock trading by federal officials or crack down on Trump's corruption in plain sight," as well as efforts to make "Big Tech CEOs, Wall Street executives, and giant corporations... answer tough questions" about "ripping off the American people."
Warren isn't alone in urging the party to call Trump's bluff once Democrats have enough votes to pass bills without GOP support in January. Also responding to the White House's hat post, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) declared Friday, "Let's do it."
"Let's dare him to veto" legislation on the following, Duckworth said:
- Ending the Iran War;
- Canceling $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts;
- Restoring Affordable Care Act tax credits;
- Raising the federal minimum wage;
- Terminating tariffs and issuing refunds to consumers;
- Forcing data centers to pay for their own energy and water; and
- Banning presidential and congressional stock trading.
Democratic victories on Tuesday also generated fresh hope about eventually replacing the US for-profit healthcare system with Medicare for All—a hallmark issue for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is expected to chair the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and has been credited with making the party's policies more progressive via his presidential runs and engagement with voters across the country on his Fighting Oligarchy Tour..
As political observers asserted that "Bernie made the path" for progressive candidates who campaigned on economic populism to win key elections this week, Sanders has said in multiple interviews that the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress should pass Medicare for All—which would save over 114,000 lives and $1 trillion annually—and see if Trump vetoes it.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a possible 2028 presidential contender who previously led Senate Democrats' campaign arm, similarly argued that despite Trump's threats this week, the new majorities should fight to improve affordability and tax the rich.
"It is essential that we show the American people where we stand," Van Hollen told Politico. "If Trump vetoes it, it will just show people that he's on the side of billionaires."
While he is reportedly not going to challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to be Senate majority leader post, Van Hollen has also suggested that Democrats should not back the current minority leader without securing his support for a "bold agenda."
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Time for a Green New Deal 2.0
With Trump’s repudiation in the 2026 midterm elections, it is time to end Green New Deal hushing and instead consider what a Green New Deal revamped for today should be.
Nov 06, 2026
The overwhelming repudiation of President Donald Trump in the 2026 midterm elections may make it possible to constrain his worst depredations. But that will hardly be enough to solve the multiple crises facing the American people or the world. The Green New Deal represents the best vision we have for addressing those realities, but it needs to be updated and expanded for the world we face today. We need a “Green New Deal 2.0.”
Trump’s pet whipping boy was the Green New Deal. His excoriating attacks led many Democratic politicians to engage in “Green New Deal hushing.” With Trump’s repudiation in the 2026 midterm elections, it is time to end Green New Deal hushing and instead consider what a Green New Deal revamped for today should be.
The Green New Deal project has been promoted by a wide array of social forces. It has brought together people operating inside political systems with social movements organizing outside of them. It has used both the institutions of representative democracy and the direct-action power of the people to implement its objectives. The Green New Deal 2.0 will draw on comparable sources of power.
The Green New Deal has proven perennial because it addresses the basic problems faced by our people and planet.
No doubt there are many in both the Republican and Democratic parties who would like to see the Green New Deal where Trump believed he consigned it—in the grave. But the Green New Deal has proven perennial because it addresses the basic problems faced by our people and planet. It is a project that in all its varied manifestations takes the necessity for climate protection as the basis for a broad program for social reconstruction—a visionary program designed to protect the Earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. It will rise again transformed.
The Heritage of the Green New Deal
In 2008, in the depths of the Great Recession, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “investment that fights climate change, creates millions of green jobs, and spurs green growth.” He said what the world needs, in short, is a “Green New Deal.”
The project of a Green New Deal rapidly picked up momentum around the world. Green New Deals became official policy in many countries, endorsed by the UN, the international trade union movement, and even by the International Monetary Fund. China, India, and the European Union began implementing some of the policies envisioned by the Green New Deal. But within a couple of years a global counterattack demanding austerity stymied much of the drive for massive investment to implement climate protection and economic justice. The Green New Deal appeared dead.
Even in the Trump era the Green New Deal has continued as a force in American life—from below.
The Green New Deal was reborn a decade later when the Sunrise youth climate movement held a sit-in in the office of US Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) demanding she support a resolution for a Green New Deal proposed by newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Drawing on the proposals a decade earlier for a Global Green New Deal, the resolution called for a “new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal.” The Green New Deal amassed support among congressional representatives, progressive organizations, and young people across the country. A poll found that more than 80% of registered voters “strongly support” or “somewhat support” the general concepts behind a Green New Deal. A poll five years later found that “the Green New Deal is still incredibly popular.”
Notwithstanding its popularity with the public, the Green New Deal met implacable opposition from the fossil fuel industry and hostile forces in both the Democratic and Republic parties. Upon his election as president, Trump declared the Green New Deal dead and proceeded to devastate both climate protection and social justice.
Nonetheless, even in the Trump era the Green New Deal has continued as a force in American life—from below. It has continued to be implemented through little-noticed initiatives by community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, and other nonfederal actors pursuing the climate protection and social justice goals of the Green New Deal. I have described it as the “Green New Deal from Below.”
The Green New Deal 2.0
The Green New Deal 2.0, like earlier Green New Deals, is a project to abolish the extraction and burning of fossil fuels while rapidly expanding equality, justice, and well-being. To do that it will have to learn from the earlier Green New Deals but also develop far beyond them. It will be aided in doing so by the radical reduction in the cost of fossil free energy and the ways in which energy is used—the Greentech Revolution. But the Green New Deal 2.0 will also have to function within—and help transform—the period of American dysfunction and global disorder that has come to be known as the Polycrisis.
To succeed, the Green New Deal 2.0 will need to be multilevel: local, state, regional, national, and global. From the start it needs to be global in its perspective and to transcend national borders in many of its actions. But it will initially have to be built from the bottom up, community by community, jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Eventually it will need to control and wield the power of national governments.
Achieving the goals of the Green New Deal 2.0—abolishing fossil fuel extraction and burning while rapidly reducing inequality, injustice, and deprivation—will require simultaneous action at many levels from local communities to global institutions.
The Green New Deal 2.0 won’t happen all at once; it will have to develop over time. In the US the Green New Deal 2.0 may start with an Emergency Green New Deal addressing the catastrophe now being experienced by the American people and its impending intensification. This catastrophe includes the crises of food, housing, energy, health, public safety, climate, inequality, democracy, and the rule of law—a veritable American Polycrisis. In some ways it resembles the “Yeltsin Era” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union when systems from employment to food to healthcare to housing to the rule of law broke down; male life expectancy at birth fell by six years just between 1990 and 1994.
There is little likelihood of immediate federal solutions to this catastrophe. The newly-elected Congress has an important role to play in limiting Trump’s freedom of action, proposing alternatives, and supporting popular mobilizations. But as long as Trump remains in office, he can veto legislation and wield the powers of the executive branch. Addressing the crises we face requires people organizing themselves from below to implement an Emergency Green New Deal that will put people to work doing the things are that are necessary to ensure survival and well-being in the face of the American Polycrisis.
Achieving the goals of the Green New Deal 2.0—abolishing fossil fuel extraction and burning while rapidly reducing inequality, injustice, and deprivation—will require simultaneous action at many levels from local communities to global institutions. It will constitute an era of social reconstruction.
Elements of the Green New Deal 2.0
Here are some of the ways in which the Green New Deal 2.0 can incorporate but go far beyond previous Green New Deals:
The Greentech Revolution: Protecting the climate by replacing fossil fuels with fossil-free energy was the central pillar of the original US Green New Deal. Since then, climate catastrophe has truly arrived. But the global Greentech Revolution has created a new basis for moving to fossil-free communities, countries, and world. The Green New Deal 2.0 will accelerate the timetable for the transition to climate safety, while utilizing it as the pivot for other transformations.
Jobs: The original US Green New Deal resolution noted a “four-decade trend of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and anti-labor policies.” It proposed to use climate mobilization as a vehicle to transform the world of work through high-quality union jobs, worker rights, labor standards, and a “job guarantee” that would ensure a job for every worker who wants one doing the work that is necessary to protect the climate and create a more just society. Since then, inequality has exploded and artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to eliminate millions of jobs and turn millions of others into excruciating daily oppression. The Green New Deal 2.0 will expand the jobs programs proposed by the Green New Deal, ensure that there are good jobs for those affected by AI, and empower workers to organize and act collectively on the job.
Affordability: Rising prices for the necessities of life are a crucial concern for working people today. The Green New Deal 2.0 will address this from the start by replacing fossil fuels with far cheaper fossil-free energy, reducing the price of everything that uses energy—that is to say, everything. It will also make massive investment in energy-conserving housing, food production, and other necessities of life that will both protect the climate and reduce the cost of living. It will tax the rich to reduce inequality and provide resources for the 99%.
Human Needs: The Green New Deal specifically addressed the unmet needs for housing, education, healthcare, and other necessities of life as part of the transition to a climate-safe society. Recent bills in Congress have proposed Green New Deals for housing and education. The Trump administration has devastated all aspects of our already inadequate social provision and is taking aim at what’s left. The Green New Deal 2.0 will establish new systems of social provision that empower local communities while providing the resources necessary to meet individual and social needs.
Justice and Equity: The original Green New Deal resolution proposed to use its programs to “promote justice and equity by preventing current and repairing historic oppression” of “indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.” Today the further degradation of all these groups is being actively promoted by the Trump administration and its supporters in all spheres of life. The Green New Deal 2.0 will use resources, policies, democratic processes, and law to reverse both historic and new forms of injustice and inequality.
Democratization: The original US Green New Deal was defeated in large part by the inordinate wealth and power of the fossil fuel industry and its power base within both Republican and Democratic parties. Since then, the Trump administration and the forces of plutocracy have further degraded our democracy and empowered the billionaire class. The initial US Green New Deal resolution called for “ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal.” The Green New Deal 2.0 will rebuild democracy from the bottom up. That includes establishing democratic institutions at the grassroots and establishing genuine political equality for all people. It will also extend democracy within workplaces and the economy. Donald Trump has greatly expanded the role of government in the economy for the worst of purposes, to enrich kleptocrats and war contractors. The Green New Deal 2.0 will utilize that expansion of powers to provide planning and investment to serve the common good.
Constraining Corporations and Technologies: The original New Deal of the Great Depression aimed to control the anti-social behavior of “malefactors of great wealth.” The startling growth of hyperscale data centers controlled by a handful of tech billionaires has forced new attention to the need to constrain corporations and their technology. To realize its objectives, the Green New Deal 2.0 will have to go far beyond previous green new deals in halting the anti-social behavior of today’s malefactors of great wealth, the corporations they control, and the destructive technologies they are seeking to impose. It will need to implement the “precautionary principle” that forbids introduction of new technologies until they are proven safe. More broadly, it will need to make the actions of private economic entities accountable to the public and those they affect.
Global Cooperation: Neither the climate nor the economy can be fixed at a purely local or national level. The growing chaos of the global Polycrisis, with its breakdown of international cooperation, has led to a collapse of climate protection, proliferating warfare, economic chaos, and an inability of any nation to provide security and well-being for its people. The Green New Deal 2.0 will treat a worldwide Green New Deal as a common project of the world’s people and will make cooperation among movements and nations a primary part of its local and national programs. It will promote mutually managed international trade in the interest of protecting the climate and the world’s people rather than either economic nationalism or unconstrained globalization.
The elements of the Green New Deal 2.0 will rapidly improve the lives of workers, communities, and ordinary Americans. The Greentech Revolution will not only retard climate devastation, it will reduce pollution and reverse soaring energy costs. Putting millions of people to work addressing human and environmental needs will not only provide quality employment but rapidly expand provision of food, housing, medical care, public safety, and other necessities of life. Rebuilding democracy from the bottom up will offer protection against the agressions of authoritarian government and promote our ability to control our common life.
By itself the Green New Deal 2.0 won’t quell the global Polycrisis. But working with other forces it can begin to constrain Polycrisis dynamics while also starting to transcend them. The rapid reduction in burning fossil fuels and the transition to fossil-free energy can slow and eventually reverse the destruction of the Earth’s climate. The reduction in inequity and injustice, the meeting of social needs, the provision of full employment, and the constraining of corporate power all address the inequality promoted by right-wing policies and the Polycrisis. The drive for international cooperation can help begin to bring war making, war crimes, nihilistic geopolitics, and global plunder under control and start to develop an alternative world order.
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Post-Midterms Report Stresses Economic Populism Propelled Democrats to Victory
"Americans are hungry for leadership that challenges the status quo, ends America’s forever wars, and takes on entrenched wealth and corporate power," said Data for Progress' executive director.
Nov 05, 2026
Progressive Democrats' midterm victories from Maine to Michigan to Texas signaled that US voters are fed up with GOP officials bought by billionaires and want lawmakers in Congress who fight for the needs of everyday people—and a Data for Progress report released Thursday, two days after the election, supports that conclusion.
The think tank and polling firm's "2026 Post-Election Report: How Democrats Rode Economic Populism to Landslide Victory" lays out "where the election was won," how Democratic candidates attracted voters as "the GOP playbook flopped," the issues that defined this cycle, and what the 2028 contests may look like. It highlights various pieces of polling.
"When swing voters were asked which issue they consider most when deciding whom to vote for, a clear plurality (41%) said the economy, jobs, and the cost of living," the publication says, citing surveys conducted in September and October. "Among that plurality of swing voters, about 3 in 4 (76%) said 'inflation or the cost of living' best explained why the economy was their top issue."
"When asked which political party they trust more to handle inflation and the cost of living, 34% of swing voters said the Democratic Party, while 19% said the Republican Party... A plurality (47%) said they don't know which party they trust more," the report notes. "Democrats also carried a large trust advantage on healthcare (+29) and programs like Social Security and Medicare (+23)," but "at least 40% of swing voters said they didn't know which party they trust more on nearly every issue tested."
Reiterating that lack of trust in both major parties, large majorities of swing voters also said they don't think that either Democrats or Republicans "have a solution for the cost of living." However, over 70% specifically said they don't think GOP President Donald Trump, who returned to power last year after losing reelection in 2020, has a solution.
Since Trump's second inauguration, he has been intensely criticized for enriching his family and wealthy allies while driving up costs for the public with his key policies, including sweeping tariffs, a deadly crackdown on immigrants, and the ongoing illegal war on Iran. Faced with soaring prices for everything from gasoline and groceries to healthcare and housing, voters on Tuesday ousted enough of Trump's fellow Republicans to give Democrats majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Key wins that helped Democrats secure the US Senate occurred in Maine, Michigan, and Texas, which elected Troy Jackson, Abdul El-Sayed, and James Talarico, respectively. Data for Progress surveyed likely voters in all three states in the weeks before the election and found that the economy and cost of living were most important to them, followed by government corruption.
Voters in these three states trusted Democrats over Republicans on cost of living, and also expressed significant support for a range of progressive policies, including higher taxes on millionaires, a $15 minimum wage, a pause on construction of artificial intelligence data centers, making fossil fuel giants pay for climate disasters, creating a Medicare for All healthcare system, and ending military aid to Israel.
While some Democratic leaders and consultants have argued that the party's candidates need to embrace "moderate" platforms to get elected—particularly in districts or states previously won by Trump—Data for Progress found that this cycle, voters "associated Democrats with an economic populist platform" and "the more centrist messages registered far less."
As for Republicans, likely voters believed congressional candidates would "mostly support" the president's agenda if elected, and residents of Maine, Michigan, and Texas similarly thought the party's Senate candidates "would mostly follow Trump's lead." Majorities said that the president hasn't kept key campaign promises, including gasoline below $2, no more wars, ending inflation, cutting electricity prices in half, eradicating veteran homelessness, and capping credit card interest rates.
During Republicans' federal trifecta over the past nearly two years, their biggest legislative "accomplishment" was passing the 2025 budget package they dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The Data for Progress report points out that with Trump's popularity tanking, some GOP candidates tried to focus on that law—but "the argument wasn't convincing."
"When asked if Republican claims that their tax cuts had helped working families were mostly true or false, a majority (61%) said false," the document details. "In the days ahead of the election, a majority of voters (54%), including 61% of independents, also said wealthy people and large corporations benefited most from the bill's tax cuts."
When voters were asked which Trump administration policies concerned them most, passage of the OBBBA ranked second, only behind the Iran War. Other top issues included directing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct mass deportations, the tariff regime, Trump promoting his family's cryptocurrency and enriching properties like Mar-a-Lago, and the Department of Justice withholding files about his dead former friend, sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, while probing the president's political enemies.
Political advertisements attacking Democrats that caught the attention of voters this round often focused on socialism, immigration, and transgender girls and women participating in sports. The report says that the GOP's "focus on culture war issues—and on attacking transgender people specifically—was misaligned with what voters wanted to hear from their candidates."
A majority of all voters told Data for Progress that they wanted candidates to talk more about food prices, fuel prices, healthcare costs, and political corruption—topics that have long been key focuses of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats and ran for the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. In the wake of the "blue tsunami," as some have described Tuesday's results, Sanders has been widely recognized for his impact on the Democratic Party and its priorities over the past decade.
"The Bernie Sanders economic playbook is now mainstream in the Democratic Party—the data is clear that economic populism was central to these historic election results," Data for Progress executive director Ryan O'Donnell said in a statement about the group's new report.
"Candidates across the country made fighting billionaires, elites, and corporations the centerpiece of their campaigns, successfully connecting affordability and anti-corruption," he continued. "But while swing voters strongly rejected Trump and the Republican Party's handling of the cost of living, our data underscores that they are not yet convinced Democrats have a solution either. This gap presents both a risk and an opportunity."
"Data for Progress has found that voters' trust in the Democratic Party increases after hearing it supports anti-corruption and economic populist policies," he added. "Americans are hungry for leadership that challenges the status quo, ends America's forever wars, and takes on entrenched wealth and corporate power."
Sanders himself argued after the midterms that the job of the new Democratic majorities in Congress "is to represent where working families are." Citing a poll that found "well over 60% of the American people want Medicare for All," the senator proposed passing his longtime healthcare policy—and said that "if Trump wants to veto it, that's his constitutional right."
Medicare for All is just part of what many progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups want Democrats to take on in the next two years, whether or not the White House fights back. Other priorities include a federal wealth tax, ending the Iran War, and possibly even impeaching Trump a third time.
While the New York Democrats who currently lead the party in the Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, may become majority leader and speaker in January, progressives have emphasized that "we need commitments" from them, as Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) put it, because "it's not a time for incrementalism. It's a time to move forward a very bold kitchen table agenda."
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) similarly stressed in a post-election op-ed that "now, Democrats must deliver," and the party should force Trump "to do that on the affordability and corruption issues that drove this election—or call his bluff."
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'Blue Wave Was Union-Made': Record 639 Union Members Won Elections, AFL-CIO Says
One labor leader said Democrats must not take union support for granted: "We lifted you up. Now it’s time for you to deliver for us."
Nov 05, 2026
A record number of labor union members were elected to public office across the US in Tuesday's midterm elections as voters nationwide issued a furious rebuke to corporate interests that spent record sums trying to influence the vote.
The AFL-CIO, America's largest labor federation, said Wednesday that 639 card-carrying union members were elected across the country—including Democrats Troy Jackson in Maine, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico in Texas, Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania, Brian Poindexter in Ohio, Randy Villegas in California, Donavan Mitchell in Illinois, and Sam Forstag in Montana, as well as hundreds of others who won state legislative and local offices.
Responding to attacks on organized labor by the Trump administration and a soaring cost of living amplified by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and war with Iran, union households favored Democrats over Republicans by 21 percentage points nationwide on Tuesday, according to the AFL-CIO.
The results mark a significant improvement for the historic party of organized labor from two years prior, when Democrats outperformed the GOP among union households by just nine points.
Gearing up for an election in which fury at the billionaire class was a core theme, labor unions mounted historic efforts to bring disengaged union members to the polls. The AFL-CIO said it reached more than 16 million union voters.
Union members made up a record 15% of the electorate this year, according to the AFL-CIO, compared with 11% in 2024.
“This blue wave was union-made. The billionaires had the money in this election, but working people had the power,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. "The people who make this country run issued a clear mandate... Speaking with a unified voice, workers demanded that their elected leaders fight to raise their wages and lower costs, expand access to healthcare and unions, hold billionaire CEOs accountable, and check the Trump administration’s attacks on their freedoms."
While labor leaders celebrated the large Democratic majorities elected to the US House and Senate on Tuesday, they made it clear that their support cannot be taken for granted.
April Verrett, the leader of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said Democrats must now deliver on their promises to the millions of workers who voted for them.
"Working people voted for change they can feel in their lives," Verrett said. "That hope cannot be answered with politics as usual—a system where billionaires and giant corporations call the shots while the people who keep this country running struggle to get by."
"To the leaders we elected: We are proud of what we accomplished together. We lifted you up. Now it’s time for you to deliver for us. To lower costs, make care affordable, protect immigrant families, and make it easier for every worker to join a union," she said. "SEIU members will bring our energy, our organizing power, and our determination to these fights. And we will hold you accountable for delivering."
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'We Need to Realize How Powerful We Are’: Workers Across France Strike Over Austerity Budget
"People just want to live, not survive," said one organizer.
Nov 05, 2026
Hundreds of thousands of workers across France held demonstrations to protest the high cost of living and the French government's proposed budget that includes a number of austerity measures.
As reported by Euronews, the government of French President Emmanuel Macron is attempting to pass a budget that has been decried by major trade unions for "targeting the most vulnerable and those who are ill, freezing social benefits, and undermining the protective role of the social security system."
Sophie Binet, head of the General Confederation of Labor, acknowledged the need to curb the country's budget deficit, but told Euronews that "we need to reintroduce taxes on the wealthiest individuals and the largest companies," which "will enable us to fund our public services."
The French Interior Ministry estimated that 600,000 people attended Thursday's demonstrations, which took place across 180 different locations, according to Bloomberg.
The Ministry of Public Action and Accounts estimated that nearly 10% of French public servants were on strike Thursday, including almost 16% of all teachers, according to The New York Times.
The nationwide protests began in September when students blockaded their schools to protest staffing shortages, dilapidated buildings, and a widely criticized university application system.
They have since spread to encompass a wide range of grievances in the country, including the cost of living and the high cost of fuel sparked by US President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran.
While earlier demonstrations had been marked by violent unrest, Thursday's protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, and included a festive performance from the Orchestre du Nouveau Monde in Paris.
« J'ai deux passions ! »Ambiance festive pour le concert géant de l'orchestre du Nouveau Monde sur la Place de la République à Paris.#grevegenerale #5Novembre #greve5novembre https://t.co/A5KhOjGxmN
— Luc Auffret (@LucAuffret) November 5, 2026
In an interview with the Times, 27-year-old Antonia Barot said that she attended the Thursday protests because of the government's "disregard for young people's and workers' living conditions," adding that "we need to realize how powerful we are."
Florence Eliakine, 61, told the Times the protests should "make it clear to our government, which pursues right-wing policies, that there is a social and ecological crisis that must be taken into account."
Gaëlle Martinez, national secretary of the trade union Solidaires, told France 24 that the motive behind the demonstrations was a simple one.
"People just want to live, not survive," Martinez explained.
She also said that the government needed to draft "a new budget" that would "tax the biggest companies, the richest companies where the profits are made," while eliminating proposed cuts to vital programs.
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‘Time for Some Accountability’: Advocate Says Democrats Must Subpoena Corporate Price-Gougers
“Haul in corporate CEOs. Put them under oath. Make them answer for the rip-offs,” said Groundwork Collaborative president Lindsay Owens after the midterm elections.
Nov 05, 2026
After receiving a resounding mandate to act on America’s cost-of-living crisis, Democrats are considering bringing corporate executives before Congress in January.
The Washington Sun reported Thursday that House Democrats on the Judiciary and Oversight committees are examining a 181-page dossier created by Groundwork Collaborative, a consumer advocacy group that has chronicled “price gouging” by grocery chains and retailers like Walmart.
According to the Sun, the document singles out some of "the biggest tech giants, artificial intelligence labs, natural gas firms, private prisons and nursing home operators, among dozens of others," including for their alleged roles in driving up prices for cash-strapped Americans in recent years.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is expected to take over as chair of the House Judiciary Committee in January, told the Sun that his staff had been examining potential investigations, but he remained vague about his plans.
“We’re not targeting particular corporations,” Raskin said. “We’re targeting systems and networks of corruption, and to the extent corporations are involved, they are subject to the oversight project of Congress and our subpoena authority like everyone else.”
Democrats steamrolled across the map in Tuesday's midterms, with 48% of voters saying that the cost of living was the single most important issue motivating them, according to a pre-election survey by Reuters/Ipsos.
Lindsay Owens, Groundwork’s president and CEO, said that, to fulfill their campaign-trail promises to fight for “affordability,” Democratic lawmakers must relentlessly pursue accountability for corporate greed.
“Last night made it pretty clear: People are sick and tired of corporate America scheming its way to record profits while the rest of us get stuck with the bill,” she wrote on social media Wednesday. “Haul in corporate CEOs. Put them under oath. Make them answer for the rip-offs. Time for some accountability.”
In a Tuesday podcast appearance with Theo Von before the election, Owens said Democrats must zero in on what she has called corporate America’s “reinvention of the rip-off” over the past five years, which has involved increasingly targeted and sophisticated methods—including algorithmic price-fixing, junk fees, and subscription traps—to squeeze every possible cent out of consumers.
Rather than focusing solely on investigating President Donald Trump and his administration, Owens said Democrats also need to bring in "everyone from corporate America" and take them to task for their pricing tactics.
“Put the CEO of Walmart in the hot seat and [say], ‘Tell me what’s going on with Sparky,’” she said, referencing an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot the company launched last year. Executives have boasted during an earnings call that consumers who use the shopping assistant spend an average of 40% more per order than those who do not.
She said the CEO of DoorDash should also be called to testify over its planned "agitation index," which would have monitored users' scrolling speed, jerky movements, battery level, and other variables to adjust what they see on the app. The company withdrew its patent application for the technology two days after Owens testified before the US Senate, warning it could be used to hike prices on hungry customers.
The CEO of Uber, she said, should also be brought in to explain why customers have been charged dramatically different fares for the same route using algorithms that the company has said are based on what a consumer is willing to pay.
Much of what has already been documented about these practices comes from publicly available sources, such as patent filings and “the stuff they’re stupid enough to say to their investors” on earnings calls, Owens said.
But with control of House and Senate committees, she said, Democrats will have the power to force companies to "turn over their books, their algorithm... all of the stuff that they don't want us to see."
She said, "That will require ticking off some companies and ticking off some lobbyists and doing business a little differently than Washington has done business in the past."
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The 2026 Election Gives Winners a Mandate to Act Big on Climate
Over the last two years, we’ve witnessed the most corrupt, pro-fossil fuel, anti-environmental administration in US history. Last night, voters overwhelmingly rejected those priorities and demanded a total system reset. It's time to deliver.
Nov 05, 2026
Where does Tuesday night’s historic election leave the climate movement? The answer is on the cusp of a huge opportunity—if we know how to seize it.
Two of the issues that voters cared about most in this election—energy prices and corruption—present climate advocates with the perfect framework within which to push exactly the sort of bold agenda we need for this moment in the climate fight.
Let’s take energy first. Above all else, this was a gas prices election. It’s hard to imagine the sort of Democratic blowout we saw last night if gas and diesel prices weren’t the highest they’ve ever been for any election day in US history. The same is true for electricity bills. While not as mediagenic as the price ticking up on the pump, utility bills were top of mind for voters. No surprise considering the impact that they have on a family’s bottom line: it’s easier to cut back on miles driven than the need to light and heat your home.
From utility reform, to new investments in public transit, to rapidly scaling up renewables, Democrats have a mandate to roll out a historic clean energy package that will cut costs and pollution at the same time.
In response, Democrats up and down the ballot made energy affordability a core campaign issue. On Tuesday, voters rewarded them for it. In election after election, Democrats who spoke clearly and passionately about the need to drive down rates, hold big utilities accountable, and build more clean energy won overwhelmingly. The same was true for energy cost-related ballot initiatives, like in Michigan, where over 80% of voters supported an initiative to ban their utility from making political donations that many rightfully saw as bribes for politicians to keep rates high. Down ballot, Democrats also won important seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the Arizona Corporation Commission, and the Texas Railroad Commission, which all have crucial decision-making roles in those states when it comes to prioritizing renewables over fossil fuels.
These wins set up Democrats at all levels to embrace the most ambitious and sweeping clean energy affordability agenda possible. Voters are demanding that politicians drive down rates, and building more clean energy is the fastest and cheapest way to do it. From utility reform, to new investments in public transit, to rapidly scaling up renewables, Democrats have a mandate to roll out a historic clean energy package that will cut costs and pollution at the same time.
But voters want more than just affordability—they want accountability. Corruption emerged as a major issue in this election, from President Donald Trump and his family’s self-dealing, to Big Tech’s backroom deals to push AI data centers, to Big Oil’s profiteering off the War in Iran and invasion of Venezuela. People are rightfully furious at a system that they see enriching a small circle of billionaires (including all those Big Oil CEOs) at the public’s expense.
That anger is the rocket fuel Democrats need to pursue an aggressive agenda that goes after Big Tech, Big Oil, and other corporate polluters. In Congress, that should look like an aggressive oversight agenda to investigate the corrupt dealings between the Trump administration and the fossil fuel industry. From the sale of our public lands, to the attack on our environmental regulations, to the outrageous profits Big Oil and Trump personally has raked in because of the war in Iran, there is plenty for Democratic-led committees to sink their teeth into.
But oversight isn’t enough. Democrats will also have to show that they’re willing to take these corporations head on. That means doing everything they can to stop the massive build-out of AI data centers, which have become the largest new source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, along with their other harms. It also means taking immediate action to rein in the massive profiteering oil companies are engaged in right now—just days before the election, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies announced they’d made a combined $56.2 billion in the last quarter, or $611 million every day. When the new Congress convenes in January, they should pass a permanent Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax that would send the majority of those profits back to the public and ensure prices aren’t allowed to spike like this again.
Voters’ desire for affordability and accountability also provides fertile ground for politicians of all stripes to throw their support behind the growing Make Polluters Pay campaign, which is demanding fossil fuel companies pay their fair share for growing climate damages. As Tuesday’s election was taking place, people across the Southwest were still grappling with the impacts of record-breaking flooding, which has wiped away bridges and homes across the region and made getting out to vote that much harder. The costs of the damage in New Mexico alone could be as high as $300 million. State leaders should fully embrace the push for climate superfund bills, like those passed in Vermont and New York, which would force the oil and gas companies most responsible for the climate crisis to pay into funds to offset the costs of climate disasters and invest in resiliency, as well as squash any attempts by the industry to pass “big oil immunity” bills which would grant them a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Above all else, we need our politicians to act—and act big. Now isn’t the time for small thinking or convoluted triangulation and half measures. Over the last two years, we’ve witnessed the most corrupt, pro-fossil fuel, anti-environmental administration in US history. Last night, voters overwhelmingly rejected those priorities and demanded a total system reset. Our job now is to do everything we can as a climate movement to help deliver on that vision in the most sweeping way possible.
For a new generation of Democrats looking to make a name for themselves as champions of working people, this is an obvious place to start. From making polluters pay to getting every American access to cheap, clean energy, we know what needs to be done in the years ahead—it’s time to go out and fight for it.
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Trumping ™ the Presidency: Buying Elections, Selling Merch
The president is trying to cancel the midterm elections like he cancels culture at museums, at the same time trying to buy the results.
Nov 03, 2026
Someday soon, it will be possible to call for an orange skin cosmetology appointment with your not-made-in-America Trump phone, which has been on back order for 18 months; schedule the appointment with your Trump watch; and pay for it—and a new US passport with a likeness of President Donald Trump—with Trump bitcoins, while staying at a Trump hotel near a Trump golf course. You can already take a cross country trip to visit national parks with your Trump digital pass embossed with a picture of George Washington and a convicted felon. Travel will be safer in a surplus Trump Catering truck® like that Trump used to flee Turkey fearfully from imagined Iranian attacks. Will the Trump Catering truck® be assembled from the bodies of unsaleable Tesla Cybertrucks?
There are limits to Trump merch. When you get cancer you will not be treated in Trump Hospital because there is none and your medical insurance has been eliminated. Nor will you receive support from the Trump Foundation because it was closed for fraud. But citizens will have their Trump-embossed Bible at hand (only $59!!) to use prayer to appeal denied claims with insurers. Recovery will be difficult in any event in the face of patient malnutrition: TrumpSNAP© benefits have been cut by the Big Beautiful Bill™. But patriotic American children, should they outlive their parents, will be able to draw on their Trump Savings Accounts©, with $1,000 never coming from the US government as golden seed money.
Fortunately, when they retire in 70 or 80 years, these citizens will take their huge nest eggs to book a room at the Trump Gaza resort. Here they will be served by TrumpGastarbiter©—undocumented workers who have been vetted by Jared Kushner. Palestinian chefs will be unavailable since they will have been forcefully deported—to Venezuela or Greenland. No one will be able to afford meals at Trump Resorts in any event, as Trump himself proudly noted, suggesting that the $5,000 price of a hamburger and dessert is beyond the means of American spongers. That’s TrumpAffordability©! At least clothing will be inexpensive. We hear that Trump “Nice As*” T-shirts are being produced now. They can be bought in bulk at the “Trump Post-midterm Black Tuesday™” Fire Sale at your local Trump Merchandise Stores or online. They look good when worn with Trump Never Surrender gold sneakers.
This is all chump change to the grafter-in-chief. The president is trying to cancel the midterm elections like he cancels culture at museums, at the same time trying to buy the results. The election fraud has already begun through the Trump Vote Buy2025™ program that consists of a variety of ploys. While Trump and his family have added as much as the $10 billion in digital wealth to their pockets in the past two years, Trump promises $4.5 billion to fund wealth accounts for 10 million children—roughly $450 for each child. A parent can secure the funds through the gold-plated Trump Accounts App. Trump repeatedly promises Trump Tariff© rebates at $2,000, Trump Doge™ savings of $2 trillion, and Trump $5,000 Vote Only Republican© checks (roughly $1.2 trillion). He cynically gifted $500 each to 1 million people for their Affordable Care Act premiums that he previously cut to ensure their indebtedness. He started a $30,000 hotline per tip up to $25 million for Government Fraud Whistleblower Program, a one-time $90 payment for some Medicare B enrollees, and $8 billion farmer aid to cover the $2.4 billion it has cost farmers to date to buy diesel and $33 billion because of tariffs.
As the elections approach, the president will give himself some major award, perhaps the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Since he will never win the Nobel Peace Prize, only the FIFA Peace Prize, the MAGA contingent has already proposed the Bolsonaro Brazil Election Tantrum Prize and the Trump “Sexual Misconduct” Prize (28 accusations counting). It is said that Reporters Without Borders contemplated the creation of the Trump Orange Journalism award.
Finally, we await rumored sale of a signed, limited edition wall-size reproduction of Trump’s loving 50th birthday greeting to Jeffery Epstein, that will go for $1,000. Soon, he’ll take his satchels of money on board his Qatari747 “Air Fraud One” for off into the sunset to Mar-o-Lago, with its $5,000 burgers and gold bathroom fixtures replete with classified documents.
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Protest and Social Change in Europe: Can Students Shift Budget Priorities?
The banging of war drums in France and the student protests there for better schools bring to the fore the class interests of the rulers and the ruled.
Nov 01, 2026
A recent Al Jazeera piece entitled, “Can Protests in Europe Bring About Change?” is instructive. A guest from academia shared a key assumption behind the budget priorities of the Macron government in France, as high school students protested for improved learning and teaching conditions, amid a drop in living standards; the affordability crisis of rising fuel, food, and rent prices; and stagnating wages.
The economic crisis of neoliberal capitalism for the poor and working classes, with youth protesters pushing back against this order, is playing out in the streets of Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, along with Albania and Serbia (non-European Union nations). Back to “Can protests in Europe bring about change?” Rainbow Murray, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, stated in the Al Jazeera piece that there are obstacles to the French government increasing its investments in public services such as education.
Why? The professor cited Russia's threat to France. The corporate and upper class control of the national government is not a threat to the working class majority, apparently.
The political donor class in France’s private sector benefits from Macron's budget priorities. High school students and their teachers don’t benefit. This contradiction seeks a resolution, one that is impossible to predict.
That ideology serves the economic interests of a tiny minority against a laboring many across neoliberal capitalist governments in the Global North. EU student protests for more government spending on public services such as education have no parallel in the US. American student protests that have come the closest to the French uprising have been walkouts against school shootings, such as the recent one in Bend, Oregon.
In the meantime, France is stepping up military spending to defend against apparent threats from Russia, despite or because of its war with Ukraine. President Emmanuel Macron has called for French rearmament to accelerate, doubling military spending in the 2027 budget from its level in 2017, when the first of his two terms began.
French high school students see their government’s funneling money into the military instead of their education as unacceptable. Students' rejection of that budget priority brings its importance to the national but also global radar screen. That's an important development, broadening the boundaries of the possible outcomes for the poor and working class across the Global North.
In the meantime, the political donor class in France’s private sector benefits from Macron's budget priorities. High school students and their teachers don’t benefit. This contradiction seeks a resolution, one that is impossible to predict.
It's easier to look back at government budget decisions. Here's one. “French carmaker Renault has agreed to cooperate with French defence company Turgis Gaillard to produce drones for Ukraine in a move supported by the French Ministry of Defence,” according to the Financial Times. For Renault, profits in drone making versus car making are fine.
Meanwhile, the Russian bear is threatening France. The same bear that lost 27 million people defeating the German Nazis in World War II also threatened the US during the Cold War. In both cases, a threat from Russia has fueled increased military spending.
The geopolitical context of France’s student protests is the unprovoked and unpopular US-Israel attack on Iran and Ukraine’s US- and NATO-backed war with Russia. Geopolitics flows from the profit interests of the domestic donor class. Look no farther than the tech billionaires profiting from fat government contracts after donating millions of dollars to the president, GOP politicians, and so-called opposition Democrats who support forever wars now and in the post-World War II past.
The banging of war drums in France and the student protests there for better schools bring to the fore the class interests of the rulers and the ruled. Will protests in Europe yield social change that improves the lives of protesters? To say that's a heavy lift is an understatement, given the resources that the prosperous few have—beginning with government violence, a fascist option—to maintain a status quo.
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