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Billionaire Trump Suck-Ups Owning More News Outlets Is an Existential Threat
This is critical stuff: no democracy can survive the assault of what Jefferson referred to as “an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents” when only one family or political perspective dominates the media.
Sep 24, 2026
A CNN insider told Variety magazine yesterday that the mood inside CNN right now is “like a funeral.” Nepo-baby David Ellison, bankrolled by his father who’s one of the richest men in the world and a major Trump suck-up and donor (and is in the Epstein Files), is on the verge of taking over the company that owns the news network.
The day-before-yesterday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a group of Democratic state attorneys general rolled over and agreed to stop trying to block the $111 billion takover of Warner Bros. Discovery, now to be almost 50% funded by rightwing dictatorships in the Middle East who’ve given billions in gifts, loans, and investments to Trump and his family.
California Governor and presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom hailed the agreement, saying it would both protect California jobs and preserve CNN’s “editorial independence.”
If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge for you in Brooklyn.
As The Lever reported yesterday, the fine print tells the entire story:
Going forward, CNN and CBS will be overseen by an “editorial independence board” composed of people hand-picked by the Ellisons and their agents. When Rupert Murdoch took over The Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft family back in 2007, he ran the same scam, as CBS News then reported:
“As part of the deal package that cemented Rupert Murdoch's longstanding effort to acquire Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., the two sides agreed to create an editorial board that would act as a buffer between the media mogul and the newspaper…”
That worked out real well, right?
There are also squishy promises for movies and jobs that are not backed up with any meaningful enforcement mechanism, and all of Ellison’s commitments can be set aside via a force majeure clause that lets Paramount off the hook in the event of “strikes, labor disruptions, [or] economic recessions.” So, all Trump has to do is extend the Iran war another few months to crash our economy and the oligarchs are free to do what they want!
And if that doesn’t happen, there’s still the sunset clause that ends all their commitments in five years. Lee Hepner of the American Economic Liberties Project called it “a countdown to a cliff.”
These are the same billionaires who handed Trump a check for $16 million to “settle” a frivolous lawsuit against 60 Minutes, then cancelled Stephen Colbert’s show days after he referenced that as a “big fat bribe,” then reportedly offered the Trump White House up to $20 million in free “public service announcements” and installed a Trump-humping “ombudsman” at CBS News to police “bias” at the network.
The simple reality is that in every country that’s slid from democracy into strongman rule over the past half-century, the first step was capture of the media by friends of the regime.
And the FCC, run by Trump’s favorite brown-noser Brendan Carr, has blessed Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar taking a 49.5 percent equity state in the new entity that will control two of the three most important news networks in America.
Don’t expect any future analysis of Saudi involvement in 9/11, critical exploration of what Trump gave up in exchange for a $400 million 747 jet, or the billions that have gone to Kushner and the Trump boys, Uday and Qusay.
Because of momentous decisions made by presidents Reagan and Clinton, freedom of the press in America is now as much an economic issue as a political one. As I laid out in The Hidden History of Monopolies (with a foreword by Ralph Nader), when Reagan came into office 90 percent of the American media landscape was scattered among over 50 companies; now a mere five conglomerates dominate that 90 percent of the media Americans consume.
Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (and others) in 1983, leading to the “M&A Mania” of mergers and acquisitions that characterized the late 1980s and 1990s. As a result, there’s not a single major industry in America that’s not dominated by a handful of companies that generally behave like cartels, and the average American family pays an annual “monopoly tax” — in additional costs for pretty much everything — of around $5,000, according to economist Thomas Philippon.
Cell phone service that costs $15 a month in France or $12 a month in Australia bills out at an average of $61.85 per month in the United States. High-speed broadband that’s a bit over $31 a month in France or $36 in Germany (for higher speeds and better reliability than almost anywhere in the United States) averages nearly $70 per month in the US.
Similar metrics are found with pharmaceuticals, airfares, and medical costs, among dozens of other product and service categories.
But it’s most deadly to democracy when it comes to the media.
Since Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — which eliminated most of the rules about how many outlets one family or company could own — oligarchic monopoly of the media has spread its cancerous tentacles into politics, as well, destroying the ability of government to make policy that allows free people to make their own decisions about their own lives.
As Teddy Roosevelt, the great trust buster, said:
“There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task...”
And as Adam Smith wrote, in Wealth of Nations,
“...the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained...like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.”
And this is no small project by billionaires who explicitly distrust democracy and want complete control over America and her people. I’ve seen how this works up-close and personal when a Republican billionaire came after a media business I helped start.
In 2003, Louise and I had sold our last business and were retired in Vermont; that Thanksgiving, we drove to Michigan to visit my family for the holidays and all the way there I kept tuning across the radio dial looking for an intelligent conversation to occupy my mind while driving. In city after city, all I could find was Sean Hannity.
The outcome of that trip was my writing the initial business plan for Air America Radio and starting the radio show I’m still hosting 23 years later as a “proof of concept.” We were leasing stations from Clear Channel and reached over 90 percent of America; many credited Obama’s 2008 victory to our being on the air.
So, of course, billionaire Mitt Romney — with an eye to running for president in 2012 — had his company Bain Capital buy up all of the Clear Channel radio stations and, one at a time, take us off the air until we didn’t have enough of a signal to make money selling advertising. The network died in 2010 (and Romney lost).
The people who own the media pipes, in other words, get to decide what flows through them.
Remember when Uber was offering rides for half the price of taxis, until they’d put so many of the taxi companies out of business? Or Walmart offering goods at little to no margin just to drive local competitors out of business? Monopolists and wannabe monopolists understand exactly how this works.
While Rupert Murdoch reportedly lost an average of $80 to $90 million a year for about five years before Fox News turned a profit, he never viewed that as a loss: it was an investment. Economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan later did the math and found that Fox News succeeded in shifting 3 to 8 percent of its audience toward the Republican Party, which in Florida alone in the 2000 election was worth more than 10,000 votes for George W. Bush in a state he carried by fewer than 600.
Had there been no Fox “News,” in other words, there would have been no war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis and Afghans would still be alive. And there would have been no Bush tax cuts, so our national debt would be nowhere near so bad. And Al Gore would have done something about the environment.
This is critical stuff: no democracy can survive the assault of what Jefferson referred to as “an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents” when only one family or political perspective dominates the media.
Franklin D. Roosevelt — the Bernie Sanders of his day — saw all of this coming. On April 29, 1938, in his Message to Congress on the Concentration of Economic Power, he told the country what fascism actually is:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
FDR understood that when a monopolized industry gets big enough, its main rival then becomes the government itself because only the government has enough remaining power to break it up. Adam Smith made the same point in Wealth of Nations in 1776, writing that the East India Company and its allies had, “like an overgrown standing army,” become “formidable to the government” and could “intimidate the legislature.”
The simple reality is that in every country that’s slid from democracy into strongman rule over the past half-century, the first step was capture of the media by friends of the regime.
— Four days after Vladimir Putin was inaugurated in May, 2000, ICE-like masked agents raided the offices of Media-Most, the company that owned Russia’s largest independent national TV network (NTV). They threw its owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, in prison on fraud charges and confiscated his stake in Gazprom, then took over the network with the deal finalized in April of 2001. That same year Boris Berezovsky was forced to sell his share of the ORT network to Roman Abramovich, a fellow oligarch but one who’d pledged his total loyalty to Putin. Within a few years, every national channel in Russia was in the hands of the state or a Putin-friendly billionaire, and still are.
— Viktor Orbán’s people were slightly more sophisticated in 2018, having his oligarch buddies buy up media properties after he sued dissenters into bankruptcy by claiming libel. By the following year, the media monitor Mérték estimated that 77.8 percent of Hungary’s news media was directly or indirectly controlled by Orbán’s party, which is why when Péter Magyar successfully ran against Orbán he had to visit virtually every city and town in the country to get around the media blackout on his candidacy.
— In Egypt, el-Sisi was less elegant in his approach to the media. He had his version of the FBI — the General Intelligence Service — use a front company called Eagle Capital to buy up virtually every TV network, radio station, and newspaper in the country. Reporters Without Borders found that a dozen once-powerful media owners were pushed to sell to intelligence-linked companies, while the handful of businessmen who backed Sisi got to keep theirs. The spy agency’s media group now owns the ON, CBC, Al-Hayah, and DMC networks, and those Egyptian journalists who dared criticize the regime all went to prison.
— Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines used regulatory power the same way Trump lickspittle Brendan Carr’s FCC does. The country’s largest newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, was forced to sell to a billionaire Duterte ally under threat of imprisonment for breaking “media rules.” Duterte’s rightwing buddies in Congress then refused to renew the broadcast franchise of ABS-CBN, the nation’s biggest network, which had made the mistake of exposing the extrajudicial killings of his so-called drug war. Eleven thousand people lost their jobs, and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa’s little opposition newspaper The Rappler was ordered shut.
Almost without exception, this is the process autocrats use to destroy democracies, as documented brilliantly by people like Timothy Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
First the strongman’s friends acquire the newsrooms, then the coverage softens, then the elections start experiencing “anomalies,” and by the time most people notice, there’s nobody left on the air to expose the oligarchs and fascists.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1786:
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
So, here we are. Bonta and Newsom have caved, and only the attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Minnesota tried to hold out. You may want to call your own state attorney general and ask where they were on this case; you should be able to easily find their number with a quick internet search.
We should also contact our members of Congress (202-224-3121) and demand hearings on the FCC’s corrupt behavior, restoration of our anti-trust laws, and a return to the media ownership limits that Clinton blew up in 1996.
And please share this piece and hartmannreport.com with anyone who still thinks it can’t happen here. It has already happened everywhere else that’s seen their democracy disintegrate, and the first thing to go into oligarchic hands was always the news.
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The Best Propaganda Money Can Buy Can't Convince Americans to Like Trump's Iran War
Only about a quarter of respondents to a new poll think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.
Sep 01, 2026
A new University of Massachusetts-Amherst opinion poll, conducted August 21-26, finds profound American disillusionment with President Donald Trump, with his Iran War, and with its economic fallout in their lives.
Apparently the Ellison family’s attempt to drum up support for Donald Trump and his Iran War by buying up CBS News and gutting it as a respected news organization was a costly failure. Likewise, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp and his various pro-Trump organs, from Fox Cable News to The Wall Street Journal, have not pulled the wool over the public’s eyes in the ways that Murdoch hoped. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of the effort he expended convincing the American people to go to war with Iran, saying he had a thousand hours on US television , but while he may have prevailed on the gullible and avaricious Trump to fall on that country like a ravenous wolf, he did not succeed in altering the views of the American public on the desirability of such a war. The only significant impact of Netanyahu on most Americans has been to convince them that the Israeli government is a combination of genocidal maniacs and welfare queens that Americans should cut off economically and perhaps even militarily.
The UMass poll asked a weighted sample of respondents how well Trump has handled his Iran War. The response of 55% of those asked this question was “not well at all.” Ouch. Another 13% replied “not too well.” So 68%, over two-thirds, think he has done a piss-poor job on his Iran War, which was his war of choice. Two-thirds is the percentage needed in the Senate to impeach and remove a president, so if our representatives actually mirrored public opinion, Trump would be toast.
That question had to do with Trump’s handling of the war. Asked whether they approved of the war on Iran, a majority, 54%, said they strongly or somewhat disapproved, and another 20% were noncommittal, which I would interpret as not actively supporting the war even if they didn’t particularly oppose it. Those statistics yield a picture of a war that nearly three-fourths of Americans either oppose or about which they just don’t care. It isn’t what the commander of a war would want to hear from his own public.
Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well.
A majority think the war was a mistake and question whether it has made the US safer or forestalled an Iranian bomb.
Another way of putting it is that only about a quarter of respondents think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.
The UMass report on the opinion poll noted that Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, said, “Americans are overwhelmingly negative about Trump on the Iran situation.” He continued: “Only 1 in 4 Americans thinks he is handling Iran well. The real divide is increasingly between Trump’s hardcore MAGA base and almost everyone else. Among Republicans who identify very strongly with MAGA, 87% approve of Trump’s handling of Iran. But that falls to 58% among Republicans who are ‘somewhat MAGA’ and just 30% among Republicans who say they are ‘not MAGA at all.’ The more loosely attached Republicans are to the MAGA identity, the more skeptical they are of the war.”
Conducting a war in the Middle East, as even the cowboys in the G. W. Bush administration recognized, requires at least some allies. But Americans don’t think Trump plays well with other children. Asked how he has handled working with allies in global affairs, 52% say “not well at all” and 12% say “not too well,” showing that nearly two-thirds view his foreign policy performance negatively.
Based on this sounding, we can further project that Americans are even more angry about the main fallout of the failed war on Iran, which is high inflation. Fully 80% of respondents said that the Iran War has increased the cost of gasoline and groceries. Asked about how Trump has dealt with inflation, 57% responded, “not well at all.” A further 18% said “not too well.” That is 75%, fully three-fourths, who disapprove of his handling of inflation. Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well, and I presume they are wealthy investors in Trump’s casino stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 14-16% so far this year.
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In Post-Primary Media Tour, Angie Nixon Refuses to Take Corporate Media's Bait on Hasan Piker, DSA
"I am actually focused on Florida and making sure that I'm talking to voters here, to uplift their needs and their concerns," said the progressive Democrat. "And so that's what my focus is going to be over the next 76 days."
Aug 21, 2026
The corporate media has spent months helping to push the narrative that progressive Democratic candidates are anti-American and have radical foreign policy views that are out of step with a majority of voters—claims that are not backed up by polling—and news outlets were ready this week to pepper Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon with questions after her stunning Democratic primary victory in the US Senate race.
But Nixon (D-13) suggested Thursday night she prefers to discuss her desire to represent working Florida residents' interests in the Senate over the topics that news anchors are eager to talk about, including various positions held by some members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the specific label she would apply to her political views, and the progressive political figures she does or does not plan to campaign with ahead of the November midterms.
On NBC News, correspondent Kristen Welker asked Nixon on Thursday why she recently joined the DSA "if you disagree with various parts of their platform."
Nixon has expressed in interviews in recent days that she does not support the DSA's platform positions of abolishing prisons—noting that she does support abolishing those that operate for profit—or defunding the police.
Welker asked if Nixon's disagreement with some aspects of the DSA's platform becomes "a distraction from your own campaign and your own agenda."
The state lawmaker, who supports Medicare for All, universal childcare, and annual wealth tax on billionaires, replied, "You all are the only ones that are distracted."
KRISTEN WELKER: Why join the DSA if you disagree with various parts of their platform? Does it not just become a distraction from your own campaign and your own agenda?
ANGIE NIXON: You all are the only ones that are distracted. I’m actually going out, talking to voters about… pic.twitter.com/wgEX6csNB8
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 21, 2026
Nixon's hint of exasperation at the question came after a number of interviews in which she was grilled about topics that, she suggested, had nothing to do with the priorities of Floridians whom she's met on the campaign trail.
She quickly pivoted away from Welker's DSA focus and toward the struggles a growing number of Americans are facing with affording healthcare, following the Republican Party's termination of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and cuts to Medicaid.
"The fact remains that there are people who are dying because they don’t have access to quality healthcare," said Nixon as she turned her attention to her GOP opponent, Sen. Ashley Moody. "Meanwhile, Ashley Moody voted to end the ACA subsidies. As I stated, nearly 300,000 people fell off the Affordable Care Act rolls."
"The status quo is broken," she added, "and the people at the top want to stoke division... At the end of the day I have always been about the people of Florida, which is why my campaign is Angie for Florida."
Welker didn't follow up with a question about Nixon's plans to make healthcare more affordable for Florida voters, instead asking whether she views herself as "a capitalist."
The interview was the latest in a slew of media appearances Nixon has made this week after she won the Democratic primary by 12 points despite being outraised by an estimated 13-to-1 average by former national security official Alex Vindman.
The candidate's suggestion that the corporate media is "distracted" when it comes to her campaign came a day after CBS News anchor Gayle King questioned Nixon about who she has campaigned with, incorrectly claiming that left-wing commentator and streamer Hasan Piker had joined her on the trail during the primary race, along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Nixon politely but firmly replied that she has not campaigned with Piker before noting that Tlaib, who has joined her at rallies, "wants the same things that I want, to make sure that government is working for people and not against it."
"So I'll continue to do the same thing, but I have not campaigned with Mr. Piker at all," she said. "Not sure where that came from."
King then pressed her on whether she would be interested in campaigning with Piker—whose involvement in Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was used by the centrist think tank Third Way as an attack line against the progressive earlier this year. The news anchor appeared incredulous when Nixon replied that she didn't "really know who he is."
"I am actually focused on Florida and making sure that I'm talking to voters here, to uplift their needs and their concerns," said Nixon. "And so that's what my focus is going to be over the next 76 days."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented that King's shocked reaction at the news that the progressive candidate didn't know Piker was "so revealing of the insular media mindset."
"It's the only thing we in the media ever talk about," he said sardonically. "You must be fixated on what we're fixated on."
Nixon also used questions from journalist Don Lemon and MS NOW's "Morning Joe" about whether she supports abolishing prisons as a jumping-off point to discuss her opposition to for-profit prisons, which have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts to run immigration detention centers after they donated millions to President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
"They exploit labor, and they usher many of our children into the school-to-prison pipeline," said Nixon.
Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon faced a DSA platform gauntlet on Morning Joe, with hosts pressing her on “defunding police,” “abolishing prisons,” and “open borders.”
🔹Nixon, who recently joined DSA, rejected all three characterizations. She said she supports law… pic.twitter.com/uwh1Lr1UPf
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 19, 2026
Screenwriter Dan Therriault said that "younger left candidates" like Nixon "are dealing with media in an assertive way that the old Democrats don’t have to do because they’re the status quo."
"The push by media against young left Democrats, who are fighting for their voters," he said, "is causing the media’s conservative corporate bias to be exposed day after day."
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Corporate Democrats to Young People: Run for Office! Corporate Press: No, Not Like That...
Instead of being praised for contributing to civic life by participating in democracy, young progressives and democratic socialists have been pilloried as threats to both the Democratic Party and democracy itself.
Aug 21, 2026
As he was leaving office in 2017, President Barack Obama urged Americans concerned about where their country was headed to act. “If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing,” he said (Time, 1/11/17). “If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clip board, get some signatures, and run for office yourself.”
Ten months earlier, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had made a similar comment (The Hill, 3/1/16). At a campaign stop in Minnesota, a young woman pressed Clinton about her past remarks on “superpredators.” After a brief exchange, Clinton said, “You know what, dear? You have a different opinion… Why don’t you go run for something?”
A decade later, it’s clear that a new generation of leaders has taken that advice. But instead of being praised for contributing to civic life by participating in democracy, they and the organizations that support them have been pilloried as threats to both the Democratic Party and democracy itself.
DSA as ‘Parasite’
The Atlantic, which published a 2024 essay (5/17/24) asserting, in the context of Gaza, that “it is possible to kill children legally,” ran an article (7/21/26) on the Democratic Socialists of America headlined “The DSA Is a Parasite.” (I belong to the organization’s New York City chapter.) Writer James Kirchick averred that “ideologues on the left are attempting a hostile takeover of the [Democratic] party.” He suggested that the organization’s rise was enabled by a
yearslong effort by socialists and progressive activists to steer one of America’s two major political parties toward identity politics, isolationism, and hostility to capitalism.
Kirchick’s disdain for those who join standard efforts to influence political parties is anti-democratic, ahistorical, and willfully obtuse. He also conflates and misrepresents the goals of progressive and socialist activists. “Hostility to capitalism” is accurate enough if one is describing socialists—not necessarily progressives—but “identity politics” and “isolationism” are not.
DSA opposes military bases and economic warfare, but it explicitly champions immigration and international law, and working toward “a world without war or poverty”—that’s not “isolationism.” The group also calls for “a world where no one suffers for their race, gender, or religion”—an enormously popular view that Kirchick dismisses, insultingly and inaccurately, as “identity politics.”
Kirchick and his ilk, of course, wouldn’t be able to caricature socialists’ views so easily if they were held to basic editorial standards, and if socialist perspectives weren’t almost entirely excluded from corporate media.
Hijacked by a ‘Radical Fringe’
A recent spate of articles have, like Kirchick’s, sought to repackage normal political practices as novel, violent, or disease-like threats unrelated to the will of voters. An Axios column (7/28/26) by the site’s co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen began: “Republicans didn’t decide to become President Trump’s party. They surrendered to him, one stage at a time, over a decade, in plain sight.” It then posed the (paraphrased) question: Will the Democratic Party similarly surrender to the creeping threat of socialism?
While acknowledging that socialism is popular with the Democratic base, the Axios story portrays it as a disease whose “transmission is slower” than Trumpism. It’s not clear why Axios treats socialism as a pathology; in what way is it harmful to, or impairing the normal functioning of, America or American democracy?
The Hill (7/24/26) also noted “fears” that “the [Democratic] party is being taken over” by democratic socialists.
The Wall Street Journal warned darkly that
DSA’s advances are stirring consternation—and sometimes panic—among mainstream Democrats dreading their own Tea Party moment, in which a radical fringe hijacks the party and taints their brand just as they are trying to appeal to swing voters to win control of Congress.
Odd if true, given that recent socialist wins have coincided with an uptick in favorable views of the Democratic Party, which suggests that DSA’s success may in fact be burnishing the party’s brand.
DSA’s leaders, the Journal continued, “scarcely hide their disdain for a Democratic Party they view less as a partner than a hostile takeover target.” It’s true that DSA does not view most senior Democratic Party leaders as its partners; the organization is succeeding by appealing directly to the party’s supporters. (In the words of DSA member and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “What’s a party if not its voters?”) If those who regularly vote or are inclined to vote in Democratic Party primaries ultimately succeed in changing the party’s platform to better represent their views, that’s not a hostile takeover—that’s democracy.
The “takeover” language is telling: The corporate press sees any assertion of agency on the part of everyday people as a threat to establishment interests. The Free Press (7/21/26) sounded the alarm in an article headlined “What the Movement Taking Over the Democratic Party Wants.” And Fox News (7/27/26) went further with a story headlined “[US Rep. Steve] Scalise Warns ‘Bolshevik Revolution’ Taking Over Dem Party After Socialist Primary Wins.”
DSA does, like the Bolsheviks of more than a century ago, defend people’s rights to peace, land (housing, in a contemporary US context), and bread. But unlike the Bolsheviks, the organization is not armed or violent, and is committed to democratic change (hence the name).
‘Getting Away With’—What?
Seeking to change a political organization by appealing to its supporters and competing in its primaries is what politicians of all stripes do; it is how democracy works. Yet The New York Times(6/20/26) has characterized quotidian political participation as “an uprising from the left,” which poses a larger “threat”—it’s not clear to whom, other than House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who may eventually be primaried from the left. To the Times, DSA is not competing in congressional primaries but “targeting high-profile House races.”
And though the Times (8/10/26) acknowledges that “democratic socialists and their allies have scored a series of victories over traditional Democrats with superior messaging and organizing tactics,” it also reports that these tactics have “terrified” the party establishment, causing them to “burn through gobs of cash,” and leaving them to wonder: “How do progressives keep getting away with this?” Most see winning a primary election thanks to better messaging and organizing as entirely above board; the Times tells readers it’s a scary heist.
Martial analogies are common in political writing, but the corporate press covers intra-Democratic Party tensions as if progressives and democratic socialists were the only combatants. As a recent AP article (7/27/26) noted:
Establishment Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison, have forcefully pushed back against DSA candidates who run in the party’s primaries while criticizing the way the party is going.
But if you’re seeking to change a party’s direction, forming organizations to influence it, running in its primaries, and organizing caucuses within it are the most obvious and common ways of doing so. Centrist Democrats—including Bill Clinton, who went on to win two of his party’s presidential primaries—did this when they founded the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985 and the Progressive Policy Institute in 1989. Clinton and his allies were fighting in what some at the time called a “battle for the party’s soul” (Time, 7/10/95)—a struggle that continues to this day.
Working together to alter the priorities and structure of theoretically representative institutions like Congress and the Democratic Party is a necessary and crucial form of democratic participation. It is precisely what leaders like Obama and the Clintons have repeatedly enjoined Americans to do. And when done by individuals and organizations that are honest and forthright about their intentions—e.g., those with clear public platforms—there is nothing sneaky, underhanded. or sinister about it.
Research assistance: Emily Marie Spencer.
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What the Corporate Media Never Says In Its Coverage of Cuba
Life in Cuba is full of suffering not because of socialism but because of a 67-year-long blockade by the world’s largest superpower.
Aug 20, 2026
Recently, while listening to an NPR interview with Cuban-American musician Arturo Sandoval, I was reminded of the late political scientist Michael Parenti’s classic text, "Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media."
In his 1986 book, Parenti described a situation that is still relevant 40 years later—when the US fears that another country’s non-capitalistic political model (and its attendant advances in social justice and quality of life) could cause US citizens to question their own system, it regularly imposes an embargo and sanctions against the country. Next, the news media reports on the suffering caused by these policies while, at the same time, avoiding any mention of the embargo and sanctions. Finally, when after years or decades of suffering, the people of this blockaded country take out their anger on the closest target and begin protesting against their government, the US steps in. It places a puppet president in power and pours into the country the money it had withheld throughout the embargo. Then, the media reports on how well everyone is now doing without, once more, acknowledging the oversized role the embargo played in the prior devastation.
In the aforementioned NPR interview, host Scott Simon perfectly perpetuated this model of media complicity by announcing towards the interview’s conclusion, “Arturo Sandoval, I’ve got to put you on the spot a little. You’ve been pretty quiet about politics over the years, but obviously you fled Cuba. When Fidel Castro died, you spoke out about your disdain for his regime. It was ten years ago.” Then, with no historical or even recent context, Simon concluded with, “Cuba seems to be almost worse than ever now.”
With this final declaration in which he erroneously implied a connection between Cuba’s current immiseration and Fidel Castro’s rule, Simon led Sandoval into his response: “Sixty-seven and a half years is way too long, man… The people in Cuba are desperate and hopeless.”
Citizens who are not given the context of the news cannot be engaged participants in the democratic process.
Simon allowed his guest to say this unchallenged as if these decades of desperation and hopelessness are the result of Cuba’s 1959 revolution. To the contrary, in addition to footing the bill for Sandoval’s musical education (he attended the free Cuban National Art School, founded by Fidel Castro), the Cuban Revolution redefined human rights as access for all to free education, free healthcare, low-cost daycare centers, and highly subsidized housing.
The desperation Sandoval referred to is the direct result of the 67-year-old embargo against Cuba imposed by the United States, the longest embargo in the history of the world. Combined with its multitude of supplementary sanctions (more than 200 of which were enacted during Trump’s first term in office), these punitive measures prohibit Cuba from purchasing products, including medicine, manufactured abroad if they contain more than 10% of US-origin components. They restrict US residents’ ability to travel to Cuba. They hinder Cubans residing in the US from wiring money to their families, a common way for immigrants from all parts of the world to supplement the income of relatives back home.
The Cuban embargo has received worldwide condemnation. For more than three decades now, the UN General Assembly has annually presented its members with a resolution to denounce the embargo. Year after year, its 193 member states cast a near-unanimous vote affirming the resolution. The only two countries that consistently vote against it—and in favor of the embargo— are, unsurprisingly, the US and Israel.
Unfortunately, the UN resolution, while a significant show of solidarity, has no authority to end the embargo. As codified by US law, only the US Congress has this power.
In addition and sadly, the suffering caused by the embargo is not a mere result of the blockade but the explicit objective of it as stated in a declassified 1960 government document posted on the National Security Archive’s website and abstracted as follows: “This memo, written by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lestor Mallory, provides the original, unvarnished, policy rationale for imposing trade restrictions on Cuba. Fidel Castro’s revolution is quite popular in Cuba, Mallory points out; since there is no effective opposition against him, the only way to undercut Castro’s support is ‘through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.’ Mallory advocates a set of punitive economic actions designed to deny ‘money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of [the] government.’”
Beyond the embargo and its sanctions, the US designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) contributes to what Sandoval referred to as the Cuban people’s hopelessness and desperation. The partisan political boomerang of the SSOT was initiated by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 for Cuba’s support of Latin American leftist groups. It was removed by Obama in 2015, reinstated by Trump in 2021, symbolically removed by Biden on January 14th, 2025, at the end of his presidency, and again reinstated by Trump on January 20th, 2025, at the start of his second term.
Along with other restrictions, the sponsor-of-terrorism status forbids US international aid organizations, including Food for Peace and the Peace Corps, from offering humanitarian assistance to Cuba. It prohibits Cuba from receiving loans from the World Bank and other international financial institutions. These are loans which could be used for much-needed projects such as an overhaul of the island’s aging electrical grid, which has caused multiple nationwide blackouts over the past two years.
Furthermore, as described by the Washington Office on Latin America, the SSOT “has a chilling effect on businesses, including banking or telecommunications investments that are crucial to promoting the type of transformation essential to expanding freedom on the island.” Ironically, this freedom (ie: the opening of business and economic opportunities) is precisely what the US purports to desire for the Cuban people. And it is this lack of this freedom, which Sandoval said in the somber closing statement of his NPR interview, that prevents him from returning to Cuba and will leave him to “die dreaming” of a homecoming.
At this point in the interview, what Scott Simon didn’t say becomes as, if not more, significant than what he did. It is that, in Fidel Castro’s final two years of life, a sense of hope and a feeling of, yes, freedom pervaded Cuba.
Hope came to Cubans with Obama’s 2014 détente, which, while not a revocation of the embargo [only able to be repealed by Congress], still enabled the US Embassy in Cuba and the Cuban Embassy in the US to reopen for the first time in 50 years. Washington’s rapprochement permitted commercial and direct mail flights between the two countries to be reinstated and for restrictions on remittances to be loosened. This, in turn, allowed Cuban-Americans, like immigrants from other countries, to now easily send money to their families on the island.
Freedom came from an opening of the Cuban economy, from the government’s expanded opportunities for private businesses. Cubans responded enthusiastically, opening record numbers of cafés and restaurants and music and art venues, among other enterprises to which their new American friends, now able to travel freely to Cuba, flocked in record numbers.
It was a boon for both sides—and evidence that another way of engaging with Cuba was possible. Until, that is, Trump was elected at the end of 2016 and, soon thereafter, began systematically shutting everything down once more.
If not for the very real damage it inflicts on the country, the SSOT designation could be considered laughable, as, during all these decades as a supposed sponsor of terrorism, Cuba has remained steadfast in its commitment to a peaceful coexistence with its neighbors near and far. For the past quarter of a century, Cuba’s Latin American Medical School, esteemed for both its size (enrollment-wise, it is considered the largest medical school in the world) and its focus on preventative healthcare, has offered a full-ride, plus a monthly living stipend, for students from low-income communities around the world, including the US.
Additionally, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Cuba offered aid workers to the US, although President Bush rebuffed this overture. In the early days of COVID-19, Cuba sent medical brigades to help Italy contain its outbreak. And this was in addition to the doctors Cuba regularly sent to countries in need from Algeria to Honduras to Sri Lanka. Until, that is, in 2025 the US began threatening to deny visas to the leaders of countries accepting assistance from Cuban doctors; and the targeted countries, fearing retribution, terminated their contracts with Cuba.
This past March, as Jamaica’s Cuban doctors headed home following one such termination, hundreds of Jamaicans took to the streets for what they called a “Gratitude Walk.” For three miles, they marched wearing t-shirts reading, “Thank you Cuba for 50 years of medical service” and chanting, “We love Cuba” and “Bring back the doctors.”
Walk participant Rupert Walters, President of the Jamaica-Cuba Friendship Association’s St. Catherine’s chapter and a beneficiary of Cuban care for his prostate cancer, called his government’s decision to cave to US pressure “crazy.” Walters told the Jamaica Observer that he wished the government had “allowed the Cubans to support and give their services to the hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans who can’t afford it,” and warned that, as a result of the medical program termination, Jamaicans would die.
Rather than supporting terrorism, Cuba has long been the target of terrorist attacks by the US government. There was the CIA’s half-century of documented assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, involving everything from poison pens to exploding cigars.
Less comical and more lethal were terrorist attacks led by Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile and CIA operative. In 1976, 35 years before September 11th, Posada Carriles masterminded the Western Hemisphere’s first act of political terrorism against a civilian flight. His bombing of a Cubana de Aviación airplane killed all 73 passengers, 24 of whom comprised the entirety of the Juvenile Cuban National Fencing team. In the summer of 1997, Posada Carrilles began another bombing campaign, this time targeting Havana hotels, restaurants, and discotheques—and killing an Italian tourist. Finally arrested in Panama in 2000 for attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro at a conference he was attending there, Posada Carrilles later fled to the US, where he was detained for illegal entry and then pardoned by President Bush. In 2018, he died a free man in Miami.
Although Scott Simon didn’t say this in his interview with Arturo Sandoval, the current “worse-than-ever” situation he referenced is due to the US’s oil blockade, initiated by an Executive Order from Trump in January. Under this latest act of economic warfare, tankers trying to deliver petroleum to the island are threatened with tariffs and, if they still attempt to do so, they are chased away by US Coast Guard vessels.
Like the embargo, like the sanctions, like the SSOT status, the fuel blockade has caused widespread suffering for the Cuban people. It impedes access to electricity and also to water, which arrives at most houses in Cuba via an electric pump. It prevents the preservation of not just food but also of medicines that need refrigeration.
Many Cubans now sleep outside, on rooftops or on the Malecón seawall, to escape the sweltering summer heat, made all the more unbearable without the electricity to run their fans. Because electricity (which has been prioritized for hospitals and schools) is now available in most houses for just two hours per day, Cubans must wake up whenever it arrives (even if it is at 3 AM) to do all they couldn’t without it—wash clothes and dishes, cook and bathe. And collect water for the next outage. So, sleep too, has become a casualty of this US-provoked humanitarian crisis, referred to by a group of US Representatives who visited the island in July as a “silent Gaza.”
By engaging in de-contextualized reporting rather than shedding light on the reasons why the current situation is as it is, mainstream US media outlets like NPR do their listeners a grave and dangerous disservice. For, as The Washington Post’s motto warns us, albeit a little more ironically after Jeff Bezos’ purchase of it, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Citizens who are not given the context of the news cannot be engaged participants in the democratic process. Without the full story as to why what is happening in our world is happening, we are rendered powerless to change it. Without our consent, we become cogs in the bulldozer of US interventionism and imperialism.
Life in Cuba is full of suffering not because of socialism but because of a 67-year-long blockade by the world’s largest superpower. In a government now absent of checks and balances, we need to call out the offending media. We need to let them know that we’re paying attention, that we hold them accountable for their lies of omission— and that we demand better.
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Book on Media Complicity in Gaza Genocide Pulled From 'Lily-Livered Library' in Australia
"Is the idea that nothing critical of Israel can ever stand?" asked one critic. "Because the lobby groups keep telling us there’s a difference between prejudice and criticism, but they keep acting like there’s not."
Aug 18, 2026
A public library in metropolitan Sydney, Australia confirmed Tuesday that it removed a book critically examining Western media coverage of Israel’s annihilation of Gaza from its shelves, reportedly after a complaint that its prominent display was distressing to a survivor of last year’s mass shooting targeting a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach.
How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, by US journalist and media critic Adam Johnson, was pulled from Waverley Library in Bondi Junction and placed under review. JWire reported last week that the Waverley Council removed the book after a Bondi massacre survivor saw it displayed on the library's “New Release/Hot Item” shelf.
However, Johnson said Tuesday on X that "British-Australia media keep buying this line that my book was pulled from the library after a 'complaint from a Bondi attack survivor.' We have no evidence this is true. This is simply the story they’re telling. Has anyone independently verified this chain of events?"
Johnson also noted that the Bondi massacre, in which two gunmen fatally shot 15 victims, "had nothing to do with Palestinians or Gaza."
"There is ZERO link between the two, and it’s false [to] keep implying there was," he added.
Johnson's book, published in April by Pluto Press, argues that US corporate media have helped enable Israel’s devastation of Gaza through sanitizing Israeli actions, obscuring US responsibility, and dehumanizing Palestinians as Israeli forces killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of them in what United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.
Johnson told The Guardian that critics "seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word ‘genocide.'"
“But ‘genocide’ is not my word, or my finding," he stressed. "The fact of genocide in Gaza is the overwhelming consensus of the human rights world, and it is a wholly mainstream opinion among those tasked with studying and determining such matters."
“That it makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting," he said. "This particular reality is especially upsetting... to the parents of the over 20,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023."
"Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?” Johnson added.
The Sydney dispute is hardly an isolated case of the silencing of pro-Palestine speech or criticism of Israel's well-documented crimes against humanity and war crimes, for which alleged perpetrator Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
In March, Adelaide University canceled a venue booking for a literary event featuring Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Organizers accused the university of bowing to political pressure.
In the United States, college campuses were the epicenter of suppression. New York University withheld a graduating student's diploma after he condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza during his commencement speech. New York authorities also violently cracked down on NYU's anti-genocide protests, and the school adopted a definition of antisemitism conflating anti-Zionism and hatred of Jews.
Seven miles uptown, Columbia University suspended its chapters of the nonviolent groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
George Washington University in Washington, DC banned a graduate from campus after she criticized the university’s ties to Israel, while earlier this year the University of Southern Maine withdrew its support for a Palestine conference because it was slated to include remote participation by Albanese. USM officials cited the dubious sanctions imposed on Albanese and her family by the Trump administration.
There has also been widespread censorship and suppression of pro-Palestine speech in countries including Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
These incidents are indicative of a wider pattern documented by Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, who in 2024 reported that courses, lectures, and panels on Palestine have been canceled and that institutions in Western Europe and North America have restricted books, art, scholarship, and speech concerning Israel and Palestine.
While some Jewish leaders and groups welcomed the removal of Johnson's book from Waverley Library, others decried the censorship.
“Public libraries belong to all of us, and should host a range of views and topics, be they books about queer families or Israel’s widely condemned war crimes," Bart Shteinman, an executive member of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, told The Guardian. He also called the decision to pull the book "deeply alarming."
One Palestinian account on Bluesky posted: "Is the idea that nothing critical of Israel can ever stand? Because the lobby groups keep telling us there’s a difference between prejudice and criticism, but they keep acting like there’s not."
Another social media user, this one on X, lambasted what she called the "lily-livered library" for "pandering to the vile zealots who protect Israel, despite the evidence before our eyes."
Rhonda Garad, a researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, bluntly said on X that "we've reached the book-burning stage of the fascist takeover."
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Independent Interviewers Expose How Mainstream Media Lets Politicians Off the Hook
Two recent podcasts demonstrated what happens when establishment politicians, whose prepared talking points never stray from what serves as the conventional wisdom about Israel-Palestine, run up against interviewers unwilling to give them a pass.
Aug 18, 2026
Two July podcasts hosted by progressive media stars and featuring leading Democratic lawmakers brought home the deep disconnect that exists between the way establishment politicians and media operate and the way both come to speak about the Middle East and the realities that exist in that region.
Late last month, Mehdi Hasan hosted Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) on his podcast “Mehdi Unfiltered,“ while Congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) joined Krystal Ball on her program “Breaking Points.” Because Warner is the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Smith is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, one might have expected more from them. The conversations were respectful, but neither of the lawmakers was prepared for the grilling they received from their respective hosts.
Both programs demonstrated what happens when establishment politicians, whose prepared talking points never stray from what serves as the conventional wisdom about Israel-Palestine, run up against interviewers unwilling to give them a pass. Two observations must be made: one is about the relationship that has come to exist between establishment politics and mainstream media; the other is how Israel-Palestine is playing out in the US.
One can see the incestuous relationship between political and media elites in full bloom at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. President Donald Trump has painted the media as “the enemy” and purveyors of “fake news,” establishing an adversarial relationship with the mainstream media. He can afford to do so because for the last 30 years far-right Republicans have set up their own multi-platform alternative media. They have their own TV networks, newspapers, social media sites (including Trump’s own “Truth Social”).
The lesson that comes through so clearly in both interviews is the important role being played by new independent progressive media.
In Washington, most politicians (liberal Democrats and centrist Republicans alike) and the mainstream media figures who report on them work and live in close proximity to one another. Their homes are in the same neighborhoods; they send their children to the same schools, attend the same houses of worship, and socialize together. There’s also a “revolving door” factor, as some former government officials leave their posts to become highly paid TV hosts or commentators, and some journalists leave their positions to accept government appointments.
At the White House correspondents’ dinner, “celebrities” from both of these worlds mingle. They throw polite jabs at one another, but their respective jobs require them to use the occasion to be seen and make contacts. This fraternization causes some in the media to temper their coverage—especially as, in the competitive world of today’s media, if a journalist aggressively crosses the wrong officials or breaks from conventional wisdom on a controversial issue of some importance, they may end up losing access to the officials they cover or even losing their positions.
This problem is most pronounced when it comes to media coverage of the Middle East. There’s no doubt that public opinion regarding Israel-Palestine has changed, but this isn’t the case when it comes to the media and political elites. For evidence one can point to polling data, votes in Congress, the number of elections in which critics of Israel have won, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that pro-Israel groups have poured into both defeating what they call “anti-Israel radicals” and attempting to influence the public discourse. But these two shows revealed the impact of the changes in other ways.
For example, when senior political figures from either party appear on major network TV shows to discuss the Middle East, the conversations are usually constrained by the uninformed conventional wisdom shared by both politicians and their interviewers. This is the case for two reasons. First, almost no major network media figures know the history, culture, or politics of the Middle East. For most reporters, that region’s history began the day they got the assignment. Even those who have spent years reporting on the Middle East tend to view it through the conflicts they’ve been assigned to cover or briefings they’ve received from policymakers, who in turn generally have no direct knowledge of the people impacted by their policies. And the stable of experts the networks regularly invite as commentators are largely former government officials who have failed in the past, learned no lessons from their mistakes, and therefore continue to propagate the same views that have defined their sad careers.
It’s much the same when we look at the way lawmakers approach the Middle East. Most are either ignorant about the region or its history or have “willed ignorance”—not wanting to know because the cliches of the conventional wisdom have served them well. Why make things complicated? “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East,” “Israel is an ally that protects US interests,” or a variation on “Israel wants peace, but the Arabs only want to destroy Israel.”
Regardless of what other Middle East-related issues elected officials are discussing, cliches like these form the backdrop to their thinking. Accepted wisdom shared by politicians and media alike. So when Rep. Smith and Sen. Warner sat down with interviews with Ball and Hasan, they were clearly unprepared to be grilled on: how the US can continue to provide advanced military support to Israel when it uses this aid in violation of international law; whether millions of dollars from pro-Israel super-PACs are negatively impacting our elections; or whether Palestinians should be guaranteed equal rights in Israel-Palestine.
For example, when Krystal Ball pressed Rep. Smith on why he would support a provision that would provide for Israel to co-produce weapons with the US military, he immediately fell back on the very tired cliche that since 1948 Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel. She reminded him of the expulsion of Palestinians and asked if he believed in equal rights and whether that applied to Palestinians’ right to return, he felt compelled to answer in the negative. He did so arguing that if Palestinians had equal rights, then Arabs might become the majority, and Israel would no longer be an ethno-national state.
Smith might have gotten away with these answers on a major network news program, but Krystal Ball was unwilling to accept the false historical narrative that has become the conventional wisdom. As she challenged him, it became clear that Smith was uneasy. He was no longer given a pass allowing him to remain in his comfort zone.
Much the same occurred between Mehdi Hasan and Sen. Warner. When Hasan asked Warner whether he would agree that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, he awkwardly sidestepped the question with a non sequitur saying that he wouldn’t use that term because he was concerned that it only served to fuel those who want to eliminate Israel by chanting “from the river to the sea!” Mehdi would have none of this nonsense and continued pressing the senator. Equally confounding were the senator’s convoluted evasions when he was asked whether he felt that campaign contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee played a negative role in US politics.
Some evidence of the changing public mood on Israel did come through in both interviews since both lawmakers indicated that they were feeling enough public pressure forcing them to oppose some of the proposed Israeli military aid packages included in the new budget, but then displayed their lack of understanding by falling back on the “new conventional wisdom” of saying that they were doing so only because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the problem and they didn’t want to reward him.
The lesson that comes through so clearly in both interviews is the important role being played by new independent progressive media. They know the issues they cover, their questions aren’t scripted, and they are not afraid to challenge elites.
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Establishment Media: Narrow Wisconsin Loss for Hong Is Massive Defeat for the Left
Her defeat was welcomed by conventional media and pundits impatiently awaiting some sign that a wave of progressive victories was finally being halted by sensibly moderate Midwestern voters. But is this accurate?
Aug 17, 2026
Mainstream media voices reflexively advising “moderate” politics for the Democrats have unveiled a comfortably reassuring explanation of the razor-thin 3,796-vote defeat of democratic socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Her defeat was welcomed by conventional media and pundits impatiently awaiting some sign that a wave of progressive victories—especially by democratic socialists—was finally being halted by sensibly moderate Midwestern voters. Apparently, Beltway observers had no problem discounting left-wing progressives in places including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and most recently with Senate primary winner Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota on August 11.
Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary provided the opportunity to serve up a pre-baked narrative favored by many journalists. Following democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s narrow defeat by just 3,796 votes, “The socialists met their match,” The New York Times concluded smugly. Axios similarly declared, “Hong's loss blunts progressives' recent momentum and hands moderate Democrats a chance to prove their electability.“ For other outlets, too, the central narrative was depicted as a decisive repudiation of progressive politics in a swing state.
This theme was rapidly spread across conventional media despite Francesca Hong’s notable inroads for a combative and visionary brand of fighting for economic and social justice.
But the fact remains—much to the discomfort of establishment media and centrist Democratic leaders—that Francesca Hong got over 311,000 votes, just shy of victory.
But in Wisconsin with Hong’s defeat, mainstream media sources found an opportunity to stretch the real picture to fit their established frame. Rather than a major setback for the spreading success of progressive and democratic socialist candidates across the nation, Hong convincingly demonstrated that Wisconsin has a large and powerful base for innovative progressive policies.
Hong, 37, is a former chef and restauranteur and was first elected to the State Assembly in 2020. A diminutive and soft-spoken Korean American making her first run for statewide office, Hong supplied the vision and energy to build a massive statewide campaign machine while running as an unabashed democratic socialist. She was rightly perceived as reviving the traditions of Wisconsin’s much-revered anti-corporate populist governor “Fighting Bob” LaFollette and Milwaukee’s “sewer socialist” movement that ruled the city for much of the 20th century.
But the fact remains—much to the discomfort of establishment media and centrist Democratic leaders—that Francesca Hong got over 311,000 votes, just shy of victory. This outcome was hardly the momentous repudiation of progressive politics in a key swing state that was frequently portrayed.
Hong demonstrated the broad hunger for policies like taxing the super rich, calling for the termination of school privatization, substantially raising revenues for public schools and urban areas, marijuana legalization, and universal healthcare, proposals that far exceeded what "moderate" Dems in Wisconsin have been offering.
Second, she also showed the power of grassroots organizing as a potent political strategy. She amassed an army of 7,000 volunteers, mostly young people. This youthful infusion of energy seems certain to be a major force in Wisconsin politics to be reckoned with in the future.
Third, where Axios headlined Crowley’s victory as the win of a “moderate,” Crowley explicitly labeled himself as a "progressive" in his TV ads, stressing his pro-labor credentials and his support for “guardrails” on highly unpopular data centers.
(However, while Crowley campaigned as a “progressive,” many progressives are troubled by his opposition to the elimination of education privatization via “school choice,” which transfers funding away from public education.)
Fourth, Hong compiled 311,00 votes in her run for governor and brought in more votes—excepting of course the winner Crowley—than any previous Democrat running in a contested gubernatorial primary.
The excitement ignited by Hong’s bold campaign helped in part to produce a huge Democratic turnout. The Democratic gubernatorial candidates raked in a record 792.009 votes, a level normally attained only in presidential campaigns. Meanwhile, the Republican primary winner Tom Tiffany and a marginal candidate pulled in just 490,819 votes.
While The New York Times and other media have dwelled on the meltdown of her big polling lead on election day, Hong’s strong final results show that her democratic socialist politics were not somehow disqualifying for hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters. The campaign showed an enormous base for policies like taxing the super rich, a $20-an-hour minimum wage, a state-owned bank as in North Dakota, paid family leave, an end to school privatization, and universal healthcare that far exceeded what "moderate" Dems have been offering in the state.
With the pressure of Hong’s ambitious program and substantial lead in polling, Crowley felt compelled to label himself as a "progressive" in his TV ads, stressing his pro-labor positions and criticism of data centers.
Crowley is a Black man who overcame a childhood that included homelessness to rise to become the largest county’s top elected official. After entering the primary, Crowley, becoming discouraged by low poll numbers, temporarily dropped out of the race. But the state’s establishment Democrats pulled him back into the race with promises of all-out support, and they delivered. Top Dems like Gov. Tony Evers almost instantaneously uncapped a gusher of funds fueling a flood of Crowley TV ads in the closing days of the primary.
In her first statewide campaign, Hong found herself hammered in the closing two weeks by a relentless media spotlight on her old social media posts. Carelessly left online by her campaign, these posts—calling for “defunding the police” and criticizing traditional holidays like Thanksgiving—do not reflect her current perspective. But they generated derisive headlines and overwhelmingly unfavorable discussion. With the terrifying specter of the Republican nominee hard-line MAGA acolyte and election denier US Rep. Tom Tiffany eagerly poised to feast on her old social posts and aspirational and ambitious program, even some of Hong’s loyal following seemingly trickled away. This late-arriving erosion was likely enough to tip the final outcome away from her to David Crowley.
Still, Francesca Hong came within 0.5% of access with an aspirational program and an innovative grassroots campaign strategy. Yet the dominant media frame for Hong’s narrow defeat—as supposed proof that serious progressive politics are a fatal formula outside the coasts—has been simmering in recent months. Centrists among leading media voices and top Democrats have uneasily watched a parade of left-wing successes in Democratic primaries across the nation, in states as diverse as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and in Minnesota with the election of Peggy Flanagan.
Although Hong fell just short of winning the primary, she powerfully demonstrated the growing demand for a bolder vision by voters.
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Legal Challenge Promised After GOP-Controlled FCC Lifts TV Ownership Limits, Allowing Trump Allies to 'Swallow Up Stations'
"Media consolidation and deal approvals are now explicitly a way for President Trump to further consolidate his dictatorial power," said a filing by Free Press, which is suing the FCC.
Aug 06, 2026
A press freedom group says it plans to take the GOP-controlled Federal Communications Commission to court after it voted along party lines on Thursday to enact a rule that could allow a small number of media conglomerates to consolidate even more control over local news stations.
In a 2-1 vote, the FCC eliminated a 22-year-old rule that prohibited a single company from owning stations that reach more than 39% of American households, replacing it with a rule allowing the FCC to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
FCC chair Brendan Carr said the move was necessary to "restore balance to the broadcast airwaves" and "allow local broadcasters to remain competitive with national ones."
The FCC's lone Democrat and dissenting vote, Anna Gomez, argued that the move would not benefit local broadcasters so much as it would benefit the national conglomerates seeking to buy them up.
“The large station groups positioned to grow even larger under this decision are not local broadcasters; they are national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them," Gomez said. "Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve.”
In a statement after the ruling, Reporters Without Borders said the FCC had "just abandoned one of the last significant safeguards against excessive concentration of media ownership."
The change is a big win for media conglomerates like Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking a merger with rival TV company Tegna to reach about 80% of households nationwide. The merger was approved earlier this year by the FCC, but blocked by a federal judge.
It would also allow the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conglomerate known for forcing "must-run" segments with right-wing talking points into local news coverage from its corporate headquarters, the ability to continue gobbling up local news stations around the country.
Free Press, a media and technology watchdog, said it planned to appeal the FCC's decision in court, arguing that Carr had exceeded his power by overriding the 39% threshold, which was enshrined in federal law by the 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
"His goal is to spur more media consolidation involving companies Donald Trump views as ideological allies and corporate cronies," said Matt Wood, the group's vice president of policy and general counsel.
Carr, a Trump appointee, has previously sought to use the FCC to crack down on the use of the airwaves by Trump's ideological enemies and consolidate control for his allies.
He has threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that criticize Trump, most infamously pressuring ABC to briefly pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air last year. He's also used the FCC's approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger to enforce ideological conformity at CBS News, which has dramatically altered its coverage and personnel to be more favorable to the administration.
Carr has argued that the FCC has the power to alter the consolidation cap because Congress technically directed the FCC to modify its own regulations to enact the 39% limit.
Gomez has disputed this, noting that when the FCC previously tried to move the cap, Congress "stepped in within months... and made clear the FCC did not have the authority to change it."
"Changing this limit requires congressional action, but Carr doesn’t care," Wood said. "He’ll do whatever it takes to clear the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to swallow up stations wherever and whenever they please."
John Bergmayer, legal director at the public interest group Public Knowledge, argued that removing the cap was not only illegal but "also bad policy."
"Consolidation does not serve local broadcast audiences or give them more local news and information," Bergmayer said. "It gives distant corporate headquarters more control of what is aired, and it creates pressure to cut local reporters and air the same programming across many markets."
Free Press' filing argues that Carr is not just violating the law but seeking to help Trump "use the commission’s licensing authority to exert total control over the media.”
"Media consolidation and deal approvals," the filing continues, "are now explicitly a way for President Trump to further consolidate his dictatorial power, through explicit loyalty tests and pledges to use the public airwaves as a propaganda tool against the American public."
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Nicaragua Banned US-Backed Coup Leaders From Elections, and Corporate Media Lost It
In his national address on July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stated that when the country’s next elections take place, none who promoted a violent anti-government insurrection in 2018 will be allowed to stand for office. Western media outlets reported this as a total ban on voting.
Aug 01, 2026
July 19 is a key date in Nicaragua’s calendar—the anniversary of the victory of its Sandinista revolution in 1979 and the overthrow of the vicious US-backed Somoza dictatorship that terrorized Nicaraguans for 43 years prior. Every year, huge crowds gather in celebrations across the country, culminating in a nationally broadcast speech by President Daniel Ortega. In recent years, Ortega has used the moment to discuss the country’s successes in the year prior, and lay out the agenda for the following year, while lauding not just the Sandinista Revolution’s triumph in 1979 but also the country’s resistance to the 2018 coup attempt—and lamenting the death and destruction it caused before peace was restored.
This July 19, while discussing that violence, Ortega proposed a blanket electoral ban on candidates who participated in fomenting the riots which plagued Nicaragua for months in a violent, US government-sponsored coup attempt that left hundreds dead:
There will be no elections like that again here—no more elections through which they can try cheating their way to government or cheat their way to taking power. We need to create laws that will put up a wall, a barrier, against the coup-plotters, against those who are traitors to their country. And no matter how much money the Yankees give them, they won’t succeed!
Even for casual observers, it was clear that the head of the Nicaraguan government was proposing restrictions on candidates funded and directed by a hostile foreign power situated in the US. But in corporate newsrooms across the country, editors pounced on the phrase “there will be no elections.”
Only days before Ortega’s speech, Trump railed against foreign interference in US elections, promising measures to protect their integrity.
Quoting the president’s statement completely out of context, The New York Times shrieked that Daniel Ortega planned to abolish elections completely, strengthening his “authoritarian grip” on the country. A headline in business journal Bloomberg blared: “Nicaragua’s Dictatorship Should Be Marco Rubio’s Next Problem.” Right on cue, Rubio issued a statement accusing the Nicaraguan government of “thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.”
At US legacy media outlets, clarification was sought not from the government or its supporters, but from right-wing apparatchiks financed and directed by Washington. The Times went to Felix Maradiaga, leader of an opposition group which “operates in secret in Nicaragua,” who claimed that “Ortega buried Nicaraguan democracy a long time ago.” Unmentioned by the NY Times was that Maradiaga is aligned with the far-right Atlas Network and was a key actor in the 2018 coup attempt, for which he received copious US funding.
As Max Blumenthal revealed in The Grayzone in 2018, the Yale-trained Maradiaga’s Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) had received at least $260,000 from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy since 2014.
The BBC, falsely asserting that Nicaragua’s next elections were now “cancelled,” rolled out another opposition activist, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, who labelled Nicaragua “the North Korea of Latin America.” Chamorro and his oligarchic family have historically been the biggest recipients of US funding directed at regime change in Nicaragua and almost certainly still are.
During the 2018 coup, Juan Sebastián Chamorro promoted the strategy of erecting tranques, or roadblocks, where opposition hooligans kidnapped, brutalized, raped, and even killed common Nicaraguan citizens in a failed bid to strangle the country’s economy and ultimately take over its cities.
It’s no secret that Maradiaga and Chamorro are competing to be Washington’s favored candidate if regime change were to ever occur. Reuters described Maradiaga as a “presidential hopeful,” while Chamorro is joint author of a new Atlantic Council report calling for Washington to back his “transition plan” for Nicaragua. Opposition media put this pair at the top of a list of eight potential candidates.
Washington’s plans for regime change in Nicaragua are hardly a secret, either. The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee in February that his organization is funding media in Nicaragua with an eye to undermining its Sandinista government. Commenting on latest developments, he said: “The Ortega-Murillo regime may seek to abolish elections, but it cannot abolish the Nicaraguan people’s desire for democracy. We will stand with them until that right is restored.”
The NED, a CIA cutout, currently spends over $2 million annually on Nicaraguan opposition groups—its highest funding level for any country in the region. And of course, the NED is only one source of US regime-change support for political groups who failed to overthrow Nicaragua’s government in 2018 and intend to try again.
In Nicaragua itself, figures such as Maradiaga and Chamorro have little credibility. Opinion polls consistently show that the government has significant popular support. For example, its approval levels ranged from 40-60% in Argentina’s CB Global Data polls over the course of 2026. This is hardly surprising in a country which now has the most modern and extensive public health system in Central America, the region’s best highways, and is building over 7,000 homes each year for those on the lowest incomes, all the product of 19 years of Sandinista rule.
Most Nicaraguans are well aware of what a government headed by the likes of Maradiaga or Chamorro would entail. Not only do they recall the violence and destruction of the coup attempt, but many remember that the last US regime-change operation—a heavily manipulated election in 1990—resulted in 16 years of neoliberal government which left the country with barely functioning schools, potholed highways, and only intermittent electricity supply. Ortega’s call for elections that bar the golpistas (coup mongers) from taking part was therefore met with cheers from the July 19 crowds.
Next-door Honduras provides a lesson of US electoral interference. Not only did President Donald Trump threaten Hondurans with aid cuts if they failed to vote as he wanted in last December’s poll, he also freed the convicted, narco-trafficking former president, Juan Orlando Hernández. To the horror of most Hondurans, he is returning to the country as I write this.
Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is being pushed by Florida Republicans such as Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez to ensure that “after Cuba, Nicaragua is next.” Yet he must be aware the opposition has virtually no support in Nicaragua itself. This week, one of Ortega’s most prominent critics, Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue, admitted to CNN, “Nobody is thinking about what it would mean for the United States to remove these people from power when there is no opposition, the public does not know who the leaders in exile are, and there is economic stability.”
While proclaiming “the statement by Daniel Ortega that under his family’s dictatorship Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature,” Rubio threatened, “The Trump Administration and the international community will not stand by as the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship deepens repression at home and manufactures instability that threatens US national security.”
Nicaragua has already been included in a fresh round of US tariffs, and economic sanctions and attacks on its trade with the US will certainly continue. However, the political focus is likely to stay on electoral interference, now that Nicaragua’s National Assembly president has repeated earlier assurances that elections will indeed take place.
This brings us back to Daniel Ortega’s declaration during the celebrations in Managua. His government has the sovereign right to fight foreign interference in its electoral process. The US exercises the same right itself: Only days before Ortega’s speech, Trump railed against foreign interference in US elections, promising measures to protect their integrity.
Rubio’s statement supporting Trump’s address seems especially ironic in light of his escalation against Nicaragua. “Under @POTUS,” Rubio declared, “the Trump Administration will rout out foreign interference in our elections and safeguard our democracy. America’s future belongs to Americans.” Change the wording to refer to Nicaragua rather than the US, and you have a summary of what Daniel Ortega promised to Nicaraguans just two days afterward.
The original version of this piece appeared in The Grayzone.
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