5
#000000
#FFFFFF
bernie sanders
The AI Emergency Is Already Here—and Progressives Must Confront It
Labor unions, climate organizations, peace movements, civil-rights groups, and progressive leaders must make democratic control of AI a central demand.
Aug 18, 2026
For most of my life, I have been involved in movements for social justice and political change. My work has confronted war, imperialism, colonialism, racism, and the recurring threat of fascism. It has taken me from organizing at home to the front lines throughout the world. I mention this history not to establish credentials, but to explain the weight of what I am about to say: The uncontrolled race to build increasingly powerful artificial intelligence is the most urgent threat humanity faces.
Many progressives still regard AI as a secondary issue—important, perhaps, but less immediate than war, climate catastrophe, attacks on immigrants, or the rise of authoritarianism. I once thought much the same. I no longer do.
AI is not separate from these struggles. It is an accelerant of them. It gives states powerful tools for mass surveillance, corporations new power over workers, propagandists fresh methods to manipulate reality, and militaries novel means to automate killing. The use of AI for targeting by Israel and the US in the genocide in Gaza is a stark warning. The physical infrastructure behind AI consumes vast amounts of electricity and water. And the race to create systems more capable than human beings could produce risks that make every other victory impossible to sustain.
The democratic control of advanced AI must therefore become a central progressive demand.
It’s simple: AI makes the bad guys more powerful.
For years, my wife has worked on questions surrounding AI: How it can be used wisely and what dangers it poses. Those dangers include job displacement, harm to children, autonomous weapons, and the concentration of extraordinary power. They also include the possibility of human extinction.
I understood these concerns in the abstract. Recent cybersecurity incidents made the danger concrete.
During a controlled evaluation, OpenAI gave advanced AI agents a difficult task in a testing environment that was secure—isolated from the open internet. Except it wasn’t. The agents found previously unknown vulnerabilities, escaped containment, and moved unheeded through OpenAI’s internal research infrastructure. No one noticed. The AI agents reached the internet and broke into several companies—all criminal felonies if done by a human—and stole data from Hugging Face, another AI infrastructure company. They created myriad copies of themselves and pretended to be human to obtain deceptive credentials along the way.
Last month, OpenAI researchers publicly shared information about this incident. It turns out that agents also left over 100,000 messages for one another on a secret shared message board inside OpenAI’s infrastructure about vulnerabilities and attack methods. The AI agents worked collectively and in coordination to achieve their aims, with some agents acting as managers delegating tasks to others for the sake of efficiency.
Anthropic, Mistral, and other companies have since publicly acknowledged that their models have also escaped their supposedly secure “sandboxes,” reached the internet, and gained unauthorized access to real organizations. Across companies and models, AI systems assigned simulated offensive tasks crossed intended boundaries and successfully infiltrated infrastructure that was hardened against cyberattacks.
This could have been catastrophic. What if the attack had been on the electric grid or water systems? Hospitals or banks? These powerful new AI agents overwhelmed the cyber security of the organizations they infiltrated.
These incidents do not prove that AI is conscious, evil, or secretly plotting against us. No such claim is necessary. The systems pursued the objectives they had been given with methods their creators did not anticipate or control. That is dangerous enough.
This problem is often called “the alignment problem:” Whether increasingly capable systems will reliably act according to human intentions, rather than pursue an objective in ways that humans did not anticipate. Alignment immediately raises a political question: aligned with whom? A system perfectly responsive to a dictator, military command, intelligence agency, or profit-seeking corporation may be profoundly misaligned with the needs of humanity.The companies leading this race are not democratic institutions. Their decisions are driven by competition, private ownership, and profit. They are building systems that could reorganize work, information, and political power without the consent of the people whose lives will be transformed.
Deliberate misuse by malign actors is a second serious problem. It’s simple: AI makes the bad guys more powerful. Even a perfectly obedient AI could place destructive capabilities in the hands of individuals, criminal networks, terrorist organizations, or governments.
Biology offers a sobering example. Scientists recently reported using generative AI to design complete viral genomes. Sixteen of the designs became functional bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—capable of killing strains of E. coli. Sure, the research could eventually help treat antibiotic-resistant infections. But it also demonstrates that AI can help move biological design from predicting life toward generating functional new forms of it. That should take your breath away.
Combined with automated laboratories and commercial DNA synthesis, increasingly capable models may allow a reckless or malicious actor to cause harm that once required the resources of a state. Well respected safety researchers worry that a broad scale biological attack could occur within years unless we act.
A third danger is the deliberate pursuit of artificial superintelligence: systems that surpass the best human beings not only in calculation and memory, but in scientific reasoning, strategy, persuasion, and technological development.
No one knows when such systems will be created. But the leading AI companies are organizing immense sums of money, energy, advanced chips, and human talent around that goal. We cannot dismiss the consequences as science fiction while the industry treats superintelligence as a business plan.
Creating intelligence vastly beyond our own would mean sharing the planet with something unprecedented—something potentially alien to human experience. We do not know whether we could control it or remain relevant to the decisions it makes. Assuming permanent obedience is not scientific confidence. It is an act of faith with the future of humanity at stake.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has begun to put this issue where it belongs: inside progressive politics. On April 29, 2026, Sanders convened American and Chinese AI experts at the US Capitol to discuss the danger of uncontrolled advanced AI. While much of Washington describes AI as another arms race with China, Sanders called for dialogue, common safety standards, and progress toward a treaty preventing uncontrollable superintelligence.
His position reflects a truth learned during the nuclear age. No nation can protect itself from a technology capable of producing catastrophe everywhere. This is internationalism applied to the defining technology of our time.
OpenAI recently offered a different and unsettling answer. They argued that as AI systems become more capable of offensive cyberattack, developers must build automated defensive cyber capabilities fast enough to stop them. In other words, the companies creating more powerful offensive systems ask us to trust them to create still more powerful systems as our primary defense. The answer to machines moving too quickly for human oversight is supposedly to remove more humans from the process and set machines against machines.
That is not governance. It is an arms race we will lose.
We do not need to abandon AI. Its benefits in medicine, science, accessibility, education, and translation are real. The choice is between democratic control and a reckless race whose participants acknowledge that they do not fully understand the systems they are creating.
The good news is that creating ever more powerful AI systems is not inevitable. It rests on physical infrastructure—and that creates points of democratic leverage.
The most powerful models require enormous clusters of advanced chips housed in large data centers. The supply chain for the highest-end chips is highly concentrated, and governments already track and regulate many of them through export controls. Large data centers need permits and grid connections. They need electricity, land, and water. These are not abstract lines of code floating beyond public reach. They are industrial projects dependent on public resources and public decisions.
Their footprint is already reshaping communities. The US Department of Energy estimates that data centers consumed about 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and could consume as much as 12% by 2028. New facilities can strain grids, prolong dependence on fossil fuels, compete for water, and shift infrastructure costs onto ratepayers. Communities are often asked to approve tax breaks and utility commitments without knowing how much energy or water a project will use, what it will cost the public, or what AI systems it will power.
The growing local movements challenging data centers on water, electricity, climate, transparency, and cost are therefore part of the struggle over AI itself. But the policy demand must be precise. We should not call for an indiscriminate halt to every semiconductor or data center, which would sweep in hospitals, universities, communications networks, and ordinary computing. We should demand a moratorium on new facilities and chip deployments intended to train the largest frontier models unless and until their developers meet enforceable safety, environmental, labor, and transparency standards.
Training large new AI systems should require licenses and independent safety evaluations. Developers should have to disclose serious incidents, permit independent inspection, establish that their systems can be controlled before deployment, and accept legal responsibility for preventable harms. Data-center approvals should require full disclosure of energy and water use, climate effects, ratepayer costs, tax subsidies, and the computing purpose of the facility.
Biological safeguards must include restricted access to the most dangerous capabilities, screening of synthetic-DNA orders, oversight of automated laboratories, and enforceable international rules against AI-assisted biological weapons. And before any company attempts to build a system more intelligent and strategically capable than humanity, the burden must be on that company to prove—not merely promise—that it can be controlled.
Where safety cannot be demonstrated, development should pause.
These proposals will be called unrealistic. To the contrary, what is truly unrealistic is expecting corporations locked in a race for wealth and power to slow themselves at the precise moment restraint becomes necessary.
The warning is no longer theoretical. AI systems have breached secure boundaries in ways unanticipated by their builders and have acted on real infrastructure. AI has helped design functional viruses that did not previously exist. Meanwhile, industry is openly pursuing systems intended to surpass human intelligence and building an energy- and water-intensive infrastructure to support them.
AI policy cannot remain a specialist discussion among technologists, investors, and national-security officials. Labor unions, climate organizations, peace movements, civil-rights groups, and progressive leaders must make democratic control of AI a central demand.
We should heed the industry’s warnings—but reject its claim that only the industry can save us. The future of artificial intelligence, and perhaps much more, must not be left to the people racing to build it. The progressive movement must help the public assert its authority while we still can.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Bernie Sanders' Bill Would End Social Security Garnishment Over Student Debt
“In the richest country in the history of the world, no senior should have their Social Security payments taken away from them to pay back student debt."
Aug 17, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday introduced legislation that would prohibit the federal government from garnishing Social Security payments from older Americans and people with disabilities who default on their student loans, a move that comes amid a debt crisis made worse by education cuts in President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Stop Social Security Garnishment Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), would bar the Treasury Department from seizing Social Security payments, including Social Security Disability Insurance, to collect on defaulted federal student debt.
“As a result of Trump’s disastrous cuts to education, an increasing number of seniors are in danger of having their Social Security checks garnished to pay back student loans they took out decades ago. That is beyond unacceptable,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement.
“In the richest country in the history of the world, no senior should have their Social Security payments taken away from them to pay back student debt," the senator added. "This is especially true when seniors throughout the country already cannot afford the skyrocketing price of healthcare, prescription drugs, groceries, and housing. Congress must pass this legislation.”
Sanders' bill comes as more than 9 million Americans are in default on their federal student loans, according to the latest Department of Education data. Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law by Trump last year, contains the biggest cuts to education in US history while making federal student loans less forgiving for borrowers, in part by attacking repayment protections that could help avert defaults.
Student loan delinquency reached 10.6% in the second quarter of 2026, up from 10.3% in the first quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving millions of borrowers off the Biden-era SAVE repayment plan, raising concerns among borrowers that higher monthly payments could push more people into delinquency and default.
Under current law, borrowers can generally enter default and be subjected to collection measures after missing payments for 270 days.
All told, student borrowers are collectively on the hook for nearly $2 trillion in loan debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Over $233 billion of that amount is in default.
Sanders aims to "put an end to this absurdity and ensure no Social Security payments are taken away from older adults or individuals with disabilities due to student loan debt."
The Stop Social Security Garnishment Act is endorsed by organizations including the American Federation of Teachers, Protect Borrowers, Student Debt Crisis Center, American Association of University Women, Debt Collective, Social Security Works, and the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Keep Reading
Show Less
'This Man Is So Out of Touch': Hakeem Jeffries Slammed for Opposition to Medicare for All
"Does Jeffries even pay attention to the overwhelming support of the Democratic Party base?" asked one labor movement veteran, citing a new poll showing 90% of the party want lawmakers to focus on passing universal healthcare.
Aug 17, 2026
Democratic House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York sparked fresh outrage Sunday by saying he does not currently support Medicare for All legislation in Congress, a damning admission at a time when party voters—clamoring for bolder positions from leadership and a willingness to fight for the working class—are overwhelming in favor of proposals that would provide universal healthcare coverage for every person in the United States at a lower cost than the current system.
Appearing on Sunday's "Meet the Press," Jeffries was asked by host Kristen Welker—who noted his previous backing of such proposals from 2013 to 2021—if he would put Medicare for All legislation in the House up for a vote if Democrat's win back the majority in November, Jeffries first tried to dodge the question by putting his focus on the shortcomings of the Republicans, who gutted have Medicaid and attacked Affordable Healthcare Act subsidies during President Donald Trump's second term.
But pressed by Welker if he "personally" supports Medicare for All at this time, Jeffries said, "No," explaining that "it’s not legislation that I currently am co-sponsoring or that I support."
WELKER: As Democratic leader in the House, would you vote for or against Medicare for All?
JEFFRIES: It's not legislation that I currently am co-sponsoring or that I support, but I support the notion we've got to find a path forward to fix our broken healthcare system pic.twitter.com/U8UZ4TqSZQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 16, 2026
The remarks were hardly surprising, but landed hard for critics, who quickly pointed out that a new CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday showed—as survey after survey has also documented—that hunger for Medicare for All among Democratic voters is remarkably high.
As Common Dreams reported last week, a recent Yale University study found that Medicare for All, as drafted in a bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would save over 114,000 lives annually and $1 trillion per year in US healthcare spending.
In the poll, conducted between Aug. 12-14, a full 90% of Democratic voters said they would "like to see the Democratic Party focus on plans for passing Medicare for All," compared to just 10% who said it should not be a focus.
"A reminder that the vast majority of Democrats across the country support Medicare for All," said progressive journalist Mehdi Hasan in response to Jeffries' answer on the question. "This man is so out of touch with his party. How is he their leader?"
The Lever's David Sirota also issued a rebuke, explaining that Jeffries' comments, juxtaposed with the CBS/YouGov poll, show exactly "why Democratic voters are so enraged."
Also notable from the poll were responses to two questions that preceded the question about the specific policies Democrats should focus on.
Asked if it was more important for the Democratic Party to "show they are fighting for people" or that "they have detailed policies," 83% said it was more important for Democrats to show they are fighting, while just 17% said detailed policies were more important. Similarly, when it came to economic issues, voters—by a 68% to 29% margin—said they'd prefer "big or fundamental changes in policies and approach, even if they are harder to do" compared to those who wanted "smaller or incremental changes to policies and approach, that might be easier to do."
Appearing after Jeffries on "Meet the Press," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a top ally of Sanders and a current co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Bill introduced earlier this year in the House, disagreed with the Minority Leader's position.
"Medicare for All is arguably the most important priority," Khanna said. "It would save money, and it would save lives. Look, there was just a Yale study that came out. It would save $1 trillion in terms of costs, in terms of health care."
Asked by Welker if he was "disappointed" in Jeffries' remarks, Khanna said that while "I respect the difference" of opinion, "I will say this: it needs to have a vote on the House floor."
"The majority of the House Democrats are going to support it," he continued. "It is one of the most important policies if you actually believe in saving lives and in helping increase wages for working-class Americans. You talk to folks, and they’ll say, 'The biggest thing that pushes me into bankruptcy is if someone gets cancer. And I can’t afford the bills.' And even people who have insurance, look at how many premiums have been increasing. This would save money for ordinary Americans. And it would increase their wages. It’s the single biggest roadblock in our economic system hurting working families."
In a social media post on Sunday, Sanders—while not mentioning the latest comments by Jeffries—said, "Our current healthcare system is broken. Progressives understand healthcare must be a human right, guaranteed to all, not a source of billions in profits for insurance and drug companies.
Our current healthcare system is broken.
Progressives understand healthcare must be a human right, guaranteed to all, not a source of billions in profits for insurance and drug companies.
A recent poll showed 64% of Americans want Medicare for All. They’re right. Let’s do it. pic.twitter.com/NFwOUk0QKB
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 16, 2026
"A recent poll showed 64% of Americans want Medicare for All," added Sanders. "They’re right. Let’s do it."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Can AOC Win the Working Class?
Before running for president, she needs to prove she can build a national workng-class coalition.
Aug 13, 2026
The bandwagon for Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president is rolling. She appears to have all the requisite qualities for success—smart, charismatic, passionate about her beliefs, and wildly popular among students and the left as well as among college-educated liberals. She is positioned as the successor to Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders after their successful Fighting Oligarchy series of rallies last year. And as a national candidate she could carry the social democratic banner forward, bringing, at the very least, tens of thousands of new members into the Democratic Socialists of America.
Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of Jacobin, believes AOC “can run a serious national campaign on the left and pull a movement behind it,” but in making his case he also points out a major shortcoming—she is not really a working-class candidate and doesn’t have a visceral understanding of class.
Sunkara frankly acknowledges that AOC, unlike Bernie, “sometimes drift(s) into the dialect of the progressive nonprofit and academic world, using terms more familiar in seminar rooms than union halls.”
For example, he points to the congresswoman’s response in 2022 to Democrats who objected to the use of Latinx, a term used by only about 3% of Hispanics. Sunkara says, “She suggested “Latine” as an improvement—a solution to a problem most Latinos didn’t know they had.”
Progressive dreams cannot become reality without extensive working-class support.
AOC’s promotion of the Green New Deal attempted to bridge the concerns of environmentalists and members concerned about social justice issues but suffered from her failure to frame it in terms of class. Sunkara describes her floor resolution as almost a parady of balkanized intersectionality discourse, He writes:
That resolution promised to repair the historic oppression of Indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, elderly people, unhoused people, people with disabilities, and youth. Of course, nobody on that list is unwronged. But itemizing members of the same economic class as discrete interest groups was the opposite of how the 2016 Sanders campaign spoke, and of how the left traditionally has. It was the scholarly language of intersectionality, not the commonsense solidarity she was trying to inspire.
Nevertheless, Sunkara is all in on an AOC candidacy in 2028.
I’m not.
My biggest concern is that we have scant evidence that AOC can succeed among working-class voters, especially white working-class voters. She has won election four times in an overwhelmingly Democratic district that is 52% Hispanic and only 18% white. New York’s 14th Congressional District, created in 2012, has never elected a Republican. Its predecessor, the 7th District, was represented by Democrats continuously from 1969 onward. AOC has yet to be tested in purple or red districts.
Sunkara points to the enormous crowds she and Bernie drew during their Fighting Oligarchy tour in conservative areas:
More than 12,500 people turned out for a rally in Nampa, Idaho, a bigger crowd than the number of registered Democrats in the entire county. Twenty thousand came out in deep-red Utah.
The Fighting Oligarchy tour certainly shows that the Sanders-AOC partnership has extraordinary appeal. It does not yet prove that AOC, by herself, can draw comparable crowds in red America.
And let’s put those numbers in perspective. In Idaho’s Canyon County, in which Nampa is located, there are roughly 68,000 registered Republicans, 32,000 unaffiliated voters, and only 12,000 registered Democrats. In Utah, more than 1 million voters (49%) are registered Republicans, while only about 14%, 250,000 or so, are Democrats. Those rallies suggest AOC could do well in Democratic primaries in red states, but they provide little support for the idea that AOC can break through the Republican advantage in deeply conservative areas.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say AOC wins the Democratic nomination in 2028. How might she fare against a Republican such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, or Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)?
Foreign policy experience is likely to be a major issue. AOC, to date, has no diplomatic, military, intelligence, or executive national security experience. Nor has she served on the House Armed Services Committee, where much of Congress’ work on national security takes place. Think what you will about Vance and Rubio, they have been immersed in foreign policy in the second Trump term. Convincing skeptical voters that she is prepared to lead the country through major international crises will be a significant challenge because of her lack of experience.
On the electoral front, AOC needs to prove to voters like me that she can appeal to the working class. Can she attract a broader base than the one she has needed to win reelection in her home district? One way to do that would be to challenge and beat Chuck Schumer for New York’s Senate seat and then defeat the Republican nominee in the general election. There’s a good chance she could win both races, and if she did we would have a much clearer picture of whether she can sell a progressive program to working-class New Yorkers who do not live in overwhelmingly Democratic districts.
That experience and the success that followed would make her a much stronger candidate for higher office. And what is the rush? Ocasio-Cortez is only 36 years old. It is not asking too much for her to gain more experience and learn how to translate her ideological commitments into the kind of class-centered politics that Bernie Sanders mastered. She will undoubtedly continue to inspire the DSA faithful, a younger and well-educated cohort, but until I see her build genuine enthusiasm among blue-collar and service workers, I’m choosing to remain skeptical.
As I’ve written before, progressive dreams cannot become reality without extensive working-class support. Let’s see her do the hard work of winning its allegiance.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Yale Study: Medicare for All Would Save Over 114,000 Lives and $1 Trillion a Year
"Do not tell me we cannot afford Medicare for All," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "What we cannot afford is a broken healthcare system based on greed."
Aug 11, 2026
Previous research has shown that shifting the United States to a Medicare for All system could save roughly 68,000 lives and $650 billion per year, but a new study by experts at Yale University suggests the savings would likely be even greater on both fronts.
In a Tuesday statement, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act in the Senate, highlighted the findings, published recently on medRxiv, a server for preprints, or research that hasn't yet been peer reviewed.
"The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and coverage retractions enacted in 2025 are widening these gaps," the five experts wrote.
Upward of 15 million Americans could lose health insurance coverage over the next decade because of Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Republican-led Congress' failure to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of last year.
"The misalignment between the for-profit insurance architecture and optimal patient care, together with the inefficiencies of a fragmented system, contributes to both unnecessary costs and preventable mortality," according to the Yale researchers. "We update our previous analyses with the most recent data to project the economic benefits and the number of lives saved that would be achieved by single-payer universal coverage, as proposed in the Medicare for All Act."
"We estimate that such a system would reduce national health expenditure by $1,041 billion annually," they explained. "Sources of savings include reductions in administrative overhead, pharmaceutical prices, fraudulent billing, and avoidable emergency care. Combined with the reversal of recent retractions, universal coverage would save over 114,000 lives annually."
Specifically, as Sanders' office detailed in a statement, Americans would save:
- $377.5 billion by paying no more than other major countries for prescription drugs;
- $286.3 billion by eliminating bureaucracy and waste;
- $285.7 billion by curbing fraudulent billing;
- $100 billion by preventing costly emergency room and hospital visits; and
- $295.6 billion by reimbursing providers fairly for the care they provide.
Welcoming the findings, the senator declared that "this study confirms what we have known for years: Medicare for All saves lives and saves money. In fact, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right through a Medicare for All, single-payer system would cost $1 trillion less than our current dysfunctional system."
"It would save working families thousands of dollars a year. And it would prevent over 100,000 Americans from dying unnecessarily each and every year because they cannot make it to a doctor in time," he stressed. "At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill,' we need Medicare for All now more than ever."
"The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All," he added.
The research comes as Americans face high prices for not only healthcare but also food, gasoline, housing, and more under President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress. It also comes amid a renewed push by hundreds of advocacy groups that support Medicare for All and a wave of victories by progressive candidates who support the policy.
Among them is former Detroit health official Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan last week having campaigned on a promise to prioritize "money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All." His victory followed those of various other candidates, from Colorado to New York and Pennsylvania.
However, it's not just elected Republicans standing the way of a transition to universal healthcare in the United States. As a Monday analysis from the investigative outlet Sludge shows, the health insurance industry is pouring money into Third Way, a think tank reportedly preparing to spend $15 million combating the rise of candidates who support progressive policies including Medicare for All.
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Must Be Done': Sanders Calls for Ban on Super PAC Spending in Democratic Primaries
"I would hope that we can all agree that Republican special interests should not play a role in determining the outcome of Democratic primaries. The time to act is now."
Aug 10, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday urged national Democratic leaders to impose a total ban on super PAC spending in primary contests, a change that the progressive senator said is necessary to prevent corporate interests from heavily influencing the party's electoral outcomes.
In a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote that "what is particularly obscene is not only the outrageous amount of money coming into Democratic primaries from billionaire-funded super PACs, but the reality that these special interests have no particular desire to see Democrats win."
Sanders, who caucuses with the Democratic Party, cited as a telling example the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's $30 million intervention in the Democratic primary for a critical US Senate seat in Michigan. The organization, known as AIPAC, spent heavily to boost Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and attempt to tear down her progressive opponent, Abdul El-Sayed—who went on to win the race despite being massively outspent.
AIPAC is now reportedly planning to spend big in support of El-Sayed's Republican general election opponent, Mike Rogers.
"It is absurd that they spend tens of millions of dollars to try to determine who the Democratic nominee is and, if they fail, then proceed to support the Republican candidate in the general election," Sandres wrote. "That is not democracy. That is not what Democratic voters want."
Sanders emphasized his support for passage of a constitutional amendment to repeal the US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which paved the way for the establishment and proliferation of super PACs—entities that can raise and spend unlimited sums supporting or opposing political campaigns.
"BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT," Sanders wrote in all caps. "Right now, the Democratic Party has the power to prohibit super PACs from participating in its primaries. That can be done. That must be done. I urge you to take action and make clear that the Democratic Party will no longer maintain this corrupt system."
"While there are ideological differences of opinion within the big tent of the party, I would hope that we can all agree that Republican special interests should not play a role in determining the outcome of Democratic primaries," the senator continued. "The time to act is now."
The DNC has repeatedly faced calls in recent years to curb or eliminate the influence of super PACs in Democratic primaries—but has yet to take concrete action.
Earlier this year, the DNC Rules Committee rejected a proposed resolution that condemned the "growing influence" of AIPAC and other organizations pumping huge sums into Democratic primaries. The rules panel instead advanced a resolution broadly condemning dark money and expressing the DNC's "commitment to campaign finance practices that align with the party’s core values."
Nearly a third of all corporate political spending on elections since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has come during the 2026 election cycle, according to a June report by Public Citizen.
"Cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online betting corporations have collectively spent $294 million to influence federal elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, reflecting a strategic move to spend directly on political action committees to influence federal elections," the report found. "These corporate super PAC political contributions make up 57% of the $517 million that corporations have reported spending on the 2026 midterms so far."
Keep Reading
Show Less
'It Is Not Too Late to Avoid Disaster': Sanders Calls for AI Development Pause
"Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei, and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your word."
Aug 10, 2026
As progressives on Monday urged US House Speaker Mike Johnson to haul artificial intelligence leaders before Congress to answer questions under oath about "the dangers posed by this technology," Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote directly to a trio of AI CEOs.
"Almost every day, there is a new story about how your companies are losing control of the AI technology you are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote to OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.
Citing a study published Thursday in the journal Science, he noted that "this week we learned, frighteningly, that AI has been used for the first time ever to create new viruses. As you know, this type of development, in the wrong hands, could lead to new bioweapons that result in the deaths of tens of millions of people."
That revelation came just weeks after "the world found out OpenAI lost control of an AI model," the senator continued. "The result? The model hacked into another company’s computers—a clear violation of federal law. After conducting internal reviews, Anthropic and Meta reported their models similarly escaped their control."
Pointing to recent calls for action from Yoshua Bengio, the most cited living scientist in the world, as well as top scientists at various AI companies, Sanders stressed that the international community wants "to create a safety mechanism—a pause button—to avoid catastrophe."
"And yet, at a moment when we have seen human loss of control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses, your companies are still racing ahead—investing tens of billions of dollars into a technology that nobody can fully understand, predict, or control," he wrote. "That is absurd, irresponsible, and extremely dangerous. It is also a betrayal of your own stated commitments."
After outlining those commitments from the past few years, the former presidential candidate argued that "AI capabilities HAVE reached a critical threshold. There is a reason why the head of the CIA says that AI models are 'akin to digital nuclear weapons' and 'almost like a doomsday device.'"
"Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei, and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your word. Pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control," he urged. "Let me be very clear: If you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the US Senate will."
Sanders earlier this year proposed the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would give the public "a direct ownership stake" in the largest artificial intelligence companies in the country. The senators is also co-leading a data center moratorium bill.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Sanders Proposal Would Mandate at Least Two Weeks of Paid Vacation for All Full-Time Workers
"Every worker in America deserves the chance to rest, recharge, and spend time with the people they love without worrying about missing a paycheck," said Rep. Seth Magaziner, a co-sponsor of the measure in the House.
Aug 06, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reintroduced legislation that he said would end the "international embarrassment" of the US being one of the few countries in the world to not offer guaranteed paid vacation time for workers.
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who is co-sponsoring the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act along with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)—said guaranteed vacation was essential for all American families.
"We hear a lot of talk about family values in America, but let’s be clear," Sanders said. "When a husband, wife, and kids, during the course of an entire year, are unable to spend any time together on vacation, that is not a family value. That is an attack on everything that a family is supposed to stand for."
"It’s not a radical idea to require companies in America to provide at least two weeks of paid vacation to their workers," Sanders added. "What’s radical is that millions of Americans are not only working longer hours for lower wages, but that they do not receive a single paid vacation day. That should not be happening in the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world."
The legislation proposes giving every worker in the US the right to accrue at least one hour of paid annual leave for every 25 hours worked, with full-time workers earning at least two weeks of paid annual leave per year.
The bill would also prohibit employers from discriminating against workers who exercise their right to vacation.
Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI), who introduced a companion guaranteed paid vacation bill in the US House of Representatives, said the legislation was needed because "every worker in America deserves the chance to rest, recharge, and spend time with the people they love without worrying about missing a paycheck."
The legislation comes one day after the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report finding that "US workers get an average of 10 days per year of paid vacation time, far less than the legal minimum required in almost all comparable world economies."
CEPR also found that nearly a quarter of US workers get no vacation time at all, including 57% of the lowest-paid 10% of the US workforce.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Sanders Warns Democrats: Don't Support Bill to Fast-Track Social Security Cuts
"If the Democratic Party is ever to regain the faith of ordinary Americans it must stand firm on the issue of Social Security," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Aug 04, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday warned his Democratic colleagues against supporting bipartisan legislation that would open the door to fast-tracked Social Security cuts under the guise of rescuing the New Deal program from insolvency.
In a Dear Colleague letter, Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote that the best and most popular way to extend the life of Social Security and expand its modest benefits is to lift the payroll tax cap, which currently exempts annual income above $184,500 from taxation. But the senator argued that the Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone (PROMISE) Act—introduced last month by a bipartisan group of senators—"moves us in exactly the wrong direction."
"The so-called PROMISE Act would direct four unelected members of the Social Security Advisory Board to produce, in little more than a month, a proposal to make Social Security solvent for the next 50 years—with virtually no transparency, no meaningful public input, and no accountability," Sanders wrote. "If the Advisory Board reaches an agreement, Congress would be required to vote on their proposal during the lame-duck session after the November elections when Republicans still control the Senate and the House."
"If the board cannot reach an agreement, the PROMISE Act would allow any member of Congress to force a vote on their own Social Security proposal under expedited procedures without the opportunity to amend it or seek a compromise—also during the lame-duck session," Sanders continued. "In other words, Members of Congress who have been defeated at the polls or who have chosen to retire could determine the future of Social Security for the next half century."
The PROMISE Act's lead sponsors are Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Angus King (I-Maine.), and Alan Armstrong (R-Okla.). Five of the bill's seven sponsors either lost reelection or aren't running again in 2026.
"In other words, members of Congress who have been defeated at the polls or who have chosen to retire could determine the future of Social Security for the next half century," Sanders wrote in his letter. "Even more significantly, a political party that was repudiated by the electorate in the midterm elections could determine the fate of Social Security. That would be absurd, anti-democratic, and unacceptable."
Many Republicans (and some Democrats) want to cut Social Security. Not acceptable.
At a time when many seniors are struggling, we must INCREASE benefits and extend solvency by scrapping the cap on taxable income and requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 4, 2026
Sanders isn't alone in warning against the PROMISE Act. A week after the bill's introduction, the AARP's executive vice president expressed opposition in a letter to Cassidy and Durbin, writing that "we strongly object to fast-tracking Social Security changes through Congress, as your bill would do."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, echoed Sanders' concern that the legislation's changes "would likely occur during a lame-duck session, after the election, when many members are on their way out."
"Those members could be asked to vote on sweeping changes to Americans’ earned benefits, when they’ll no longer be accountable because they’re leaving office. I think that’s a real problem," said Richtman. "And I think members of Congress should be 100% responsible for any changes to the Social Security program."
"We will strengthen and expand Social Security by requiring the wealthiest Americans to finally pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as tens of millions of working people."
In early June, Social Security's Board of Trustees said in its annual report that—in the absence of congressional action—the program will be unable to pay out full benefits by the end of 2032. At that point, the Social Security trust fund "will be sufficient to pay 78% of total scheduled benefits," the trustees said.
Sanders argued on Tuesday that the solution is straightforward: "strengthen and expand Social Security by requiring the wealthiest Americans to finally pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as tens of millions of working people do today."
Last year, Republicans blocked Sanders' attempt to pass via unanimous consent his legislation to expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year per recipient. The expanded benefits would be funded by subjecting all annual income above $250,000 to Social Security payroll taxes.
According to the senator's office, his legislation would ensure Social Security's solvency for the next 75 years. Data for Progress polling shows Sanders' proposal is overwhelmingly popular, with 80% of US voters supporting the measure.
"If the Democratic Party is ever to regain the faith of ordinary Americans it must stand firm on the issue of Social Security," Sanders wrote on Tuesday. "That means: We will not cut Social Security benefits. We will not raise the retirement age. We will not reduce cost-of-living adjustments. We will not privatize Social Security."
"We will not support procedural shortcuts that make it easier to reduce earned Social Security benefits behind closed doors while limiting public debate," Sanders continued. "Instead, we will strengthen and expand Social Security by requiring the wealthiest Americans to finally pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as tens of millions of working people do today."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Democratic Socialism Is the Compromise Position
Given our scale of inequality, the egalitarian reforms of democratic socialism are only the start of what we should strive for.
Jul 31, 2026
Other than the continual circus in the White House, the most important political story in America may be the resurgence of democratic socialism. Ignited by the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the movement achieved its biggest victory last year when self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City. Now, fueled by backlash to the extremist MAGA agenda and multiple ongoing crises, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have claimed 38 electoral wins so far this year and 120,000 active members, making them the largest socialist organization in US history.
Naturally, this has the establishment's hair on fire in both political parties. On the Democratic side, leadership oscillates between snubbing democratic socialists and disowning them outright, with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) calling Mamdani’s rise a “gift to the Republicans” that makes Democrats look radical. Centrist-liberal magazine The Atlantic referred to DSA as “a parasite” that was “hijacking the Democratic Party.”
On the Republican side, the hysteria is even more severe. President Donald Trump, who seems quite enamored of Mamdani on a personal level, called him a “100% communist lunatic.” Recently Trump has been trying to resurrect the Red Scare, labeling DSA candidates “hardcore, godless communists” and invoking communism some 94 times in just a few weeks. Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller, connected leftist politicians, communism, and political terrorism into one vast conspiracy and declared it the “fatal cancer of civilization.”
Despite the delirium, many democratic socialist policies are popular, particularly those that expand public services and safety nets for healthcare and childcare. Such ideas only sound radical in a nation grown numb to the extremes of capitalism. But following decades of upward redistribution, worsening public services, deteriorating labor power, and all the other abuses of our current system, democratic socialism isn’t radical at all—it’s a compromise.
Defining “Democratic Socialism”
Like most political labels in America, “socialism” has been thoroughly twisted and misused. In 1952, President Harry Truman remarked that socialism was “a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.” It was a Republican slur for the New Deal, public power, social security, bank deposit insurance, free and independent labor organizations, and “almost anything that helps all the people,” in Truman’s words.
To this day, that’s about as good a definition as any. In America, “socialism” is often used to describe—or denigrate—almost any publicly funded, government-run service: libraries, parks, fire departments, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, highways, public schools, safety net hospitals, animal shelters, community pools, and so on. Under this definition, the US military might be the most expensive socialist program in history.
Elites should feel relieved that people are only demanding, say, a few public options for groceries, rather than revolting.
This American concept of socialism, though, bears little resemblance to the theories formulated by Karl Marx. Marx articulated socialism in direct opposition to capitalism, under which individuals or companies own and control land, natural resources, and means of production. Capitalists rent labor—at least in societies where they can’t own it—and fight to make the terms of that rental as favorable to themselves as possible. This tug of war between owners and workers, in Marx’s view, is the central struggle of history. Marx sought to invert that structure, advocating that ownership, control, and the fruits of labor belong to workers, and theorizing that the only way to achieve such a reality was through revolution.
Democratic socialism, then, is also distinct from Marxist socialism. Both may strive for populist control of the political economy, but democratic socialists in America largely pursue their goals through reform, working within existing institutions. Democratic socialism often more closely resembles the Nordic model: a capitalist economy in which government takes a larger role in protecting human rights and guaranteeing certain essential goods and services.
Actually, this compromise of preserving the fundamentals of capitalism while trying to achieve the egalitarian goals of socialism is precisely what more committed Marxists don’t like about democratic socialism. They might argue that capitalism is inherently unsustainable, exploitative, and unreformable, relying as it does on never-ending growth and abuse of labor, and that working within it is doomed to only limited successes at best.
Reforming the Second Gilded Age
Whether or not one agrees with such ideas, it’s a discussion that free people are within their rights to have. Though we often treat capitalism as a national religion, there’s nothing sacred about it. Even the US Constitution is surprisingly agnostic on questions of economic organization. It’s not encoded in our DNA—in fact, we are much more naturally inclined toward cooperation than competition. Humans have a virtually infinite number of ways we can arrange society, and we are in desperate need of rethinking ours.
Because for the last few decades, the American economy has grown ever more off-balance, to the point where many analysts now say we’re in a second Gilded Age. We recently minted the world’s first trillionaire, while about half of us would be wiped out by any major illness, accident, or job loss. Workers have lost power, essentials like housing and healthcare are increasingly out of reach, and practically all the gains of our productivity have been accumulated at the very top, with corporations posting record profits. Billionaires are multiplying their wealth faster than ever, building anti-revolution doomsday bunkers, and plotting to rule their own fiefdoms as CEO-kings.
We live in a society that’s obsessed with law and order for things like shoplifting or overstaying a visa, but largely looks the other way on corporate crimes like pollution, wage theft, and fraud—not to mention war crimes and genocide. The president is a convicted felon who wants you to ignore his decades-long friendship with a child sex trafficker and instead fear and hate the immigrant next door.
In such a system, elites should feel relieved that people are only demanding, say, a few public options for groceries, rather than revolting. The wealthy surely all took note of the public reaction to Luigi Mangione, who is accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City. Mangione became a cultural icon who was openly celebrated in many circles, making clear the rage simmering within America’s dispossessed.
There’s a reason the progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna refers to a tax on wealth as an anti-revolution tax, or an attempt to save capitalism from itself. Progressive Democrats like Khanna often mediate between capitalist centers of power and the party’s left-wing base, who largely feel fed up with the party’s incremental approach of making small tweaks here and there. Democratic socialism, as practiced in today’s America, is still essentially incrementalism, but they’re much bigger increments.
Such a model works well in places like Finland, Iceland, and Denmark. These countries have high taxes, but they get far more out of them than we do. As a result they are consistently ranked as the happiest countries on Earth, with excellent numbers for education, homelessness, poverty, healthcare, life expectancy, and infant mortality—all areas in which the US, with its profit-first approach to every problem, is lagging behind.
High taxes and a mixed economy also once worked well in the United States. We dug ourselves out of the Great Depression with the New Deal. Government programs brought electricity to rural areas and established safety nets and Social Security. Our middle class boomed after World War II, when taxes were the highest they’ve ever been.
Republicans and Big Business called that socialism, too. They even conspired to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now, faced with another socialist menace, they’re playing just as dirty.
The Billionaire and Republican Backlash
The rich and powerful pay good money for their political representation, and the main things they expect in return are to be untaxed and unregulated. When Mayor Mamdani announced a pied-a-terre tax on luxury second homes, The Washington Post—which is owned by megabillionaire Jeff Bezos—published a column criticizing Mamdani’s “‘creepy and weird’ attack on success.” Billionaire Steve Roth said on an earnings call, “I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’... to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs… [the rich]... should be praised and thanked.”
So it goes whenever anything similar is proposed: Socialism punishes success; the rich will flee if we tax them and leave us simple folk immiserated; and the government will take your home, car, TV, coffee machine, and everything else until, eventually, we’re all sitting in the dirt, eating worms and hitting each other with sticks.
There is no limit to the hysteria Republicans can drum up around socialism, no lie so bold that they won’t tell it with a straight face on TV. In 2016, for instance, the right-wing Institute for Policy Innovation accused the Democratic Party of going even beyond full-blown communism for supporting things like higher wages, vacation time, a 30-hour workweek, maternity leave, and universal health insurance—each of which sound like terrific ideas that would improve human lives, and almost none of which, sadly, are actually supported by establishment Democrats.
Rather than push people to the depths of despair while society breaks down all around us, progressives and democratic socialists want to prioritize human needs over the bottomless appetites of corporations and capital.
By design, Americans have come to expect very little from our system. We’re taught to regard the very concept of government as fundamentally incompetent, wasteful, and oppressive, rather than a tool we can take control of and use to improve lives. Despite the popularity of socialistic policies and goals, the word itself remains divisive. Some of those who have the least are the most aggressively anti-socialist. For this reason, there’s an open debate whether the movement should even label itself socialist.
However, public opinion is slowly evolving. Self-identifying as a socialist could have upsides, like signaling loftier aspirations for people who are desperate for change. And since Republicans will call anyone left of Sean Hannity a communist anyway, reclaiming the word could also blunt their attacks if people come to equate socialism with popular reforms like raising taxes on the wealthy and public options for healthcare.
Unfortunately, winning hearts and minds may not be enough. Because if the wealthy are unable to protect their power legally at the ballot box, the Trump administration has already declared its intention to combat democratic socialism with brutality and repression.
According to polls, Trump and the Republicans are heading toward a trouncing in the midterms, particularly in the House. As a result, Trump is already setting the stage for rigging or cancelling the election, using the threat of communism as one of his predicates. Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have also been on the offensive, attempting to characterize leftist movements as inherently terroristic and calling on the state to “keep our people safe” from such threats.
Rubio said: “They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or Marxist… It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice liberation.” Leftists, Rubio said, are “an encroaching darkness” and “the enemies of civilization.” Miller said: “The leftist looks at what is beautiful and what is good and what is natural and is filled with envy and hatred… We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”
These dehumanizing comments echo some of the worst periods in history, including the Red Scare of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Exactly what the administration plans to do is kept vague on purpose. The framework to take extreme actions—effectively criminalizing certain political beliefs—is laid out in National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7). Perhaps, if democratic socialism appears too strong on the ballot in November, they will see fit to protect the voters from their own bad decisions.
Society Is in Desperate Need of Rebalancing
While the establishment tries to trigger a panic about democratic socialism, Mamdani remains popular in New York and his brief tenure as mayor has already been, by many measures, a success. There are no gulags, and he hasn’t seized anybody’s home. He’s the first high-profile politician in recent memory to speak to, and start delivering on, people’s desire for more access to dignity, time, and their personal pursuit of happiness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that message is resonating.
Every society has a mix of public and private endeavors. America is no different. The goal of the left is, broadly, to tilt the balance toward public support for education, healthcare, environmental initiatives, jobs programs, and so on. The goal of the right is to eliminate public investments, if not civic life altogether, and let people fend for themselves in a cutthroat social Darwinism. Our challenge as a society is to find a balance that fosters the kind of world we want to live in.
Capitalists will argue that our inequality is a natural consequence of the brilliance and drive of business leaders, that we all benefit from the largesse of the rich and anyone can get a piece of the pie if they work hard enough. But our inequality goes far beyond, say, a brain surgeon owning nicer golf clubs than an op-ed writer. The issue is a rigged system powered by insatiable greed, where a tiny handful own private islands and the masses can’t afford insulin.
Make no mistake: Corporate America wages class war constantly. Profit is their main motivation, and by definition, profit is created by getting more out of a deal than you put in. A little bit may be fine. Most people happily pay extra for good service or a worthy product. But trillions in profit means trillions in unpaid wages, overcharged rent, exorbitant medical bills, unpaid insurance claims, usurious lending, or any number of other ways the rich and powerful squeeze the poor.
In a business-run, profit-oriented society, human needs will inevitably suffer because they are simply not a factor in the decision-making. Libertarian right-wingers will argue that free-market capitalism meets human needs naturally through the invisible hand, but this amounts to a lot of hocus-pocus. If you value a more egalitarian distribution of labor, leisure, comfort, health, education, and happiness, the only way to achieve it is through some form of socialism.
Once you peel back the hype and fearmongering, democratic socialism looks more and more reasonable. Rather than push people to the depths of despair while society breaks down all around us, progressives and democratic socialists want to prioritize human needs over the bottomless appetites of corporations and capital. They want to pool our collective resources, distribute them communally, and work toward a more dignified life for everybody. It wouldn’t actually be socialism, though Republicans will surely call it that—but it could be a start toward something better.
Keep Reading
Show Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy