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election 2026
Trump Doesn't Rule Out 'National Security Emergency for Elections' Floated by Far-Right Host
"There is zero reason to not take Trump at his word that he and his team are planning something alarming to disrupt the midterms," said CNN host Jake Tapper.
Aug 11, 2026
A right-wing talk show host on Tuesday pushed President Donald Trump to declare a "national security emergency" that would let him meddle in the 2026 midterm elections—and the president did not rule it out.
In an appearance on Real America's Voice, Trump listened as host Wayne Allyn Root rattled off actions he would like to see the president take ahead of the midterms.
"Let me put an idea in your head," Root told Trump. "Because it's so hard to get the Senate to do anything, now they're on recess, they never get anything done. If they never get the SAVE America Act done, you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections."
🚨🚨🚨
WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. If you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail ballots
TRUMP: Let me just say stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at… pic.twitter.com/SvXYoYI0lQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
Root then told the president that "if you do this in the next month" it would allow for the implementation of photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, as well as restrictions on mail-in ballots.
"Let me just say that stranger things have happened," Trump said in response. "I'll leave it at that."
The US Constitution does not give the president power to declare a "national emergency" that would allow him to unilaterally rewrite states' election laws.
Regardless, ABC News reported in February that a group of pro-Trump attorneys were circulating a 17-page draft order that would use the purported threat of election interference from the Chinese government to declare a "national emergency" that would outright ban mail-in ballots and mandate that all ballots be hand-counted.
Trump has not yet signed such an order, but he has issued other election-related directives, including one that instructs the United States Postal Service (USPS) to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to their voter lists.
The USPS executive order and an order that required Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote have been blocked by courts.
Regardless, some observers expressed concern that the president wasn't yet finished in his efforts to meddle in the coming elections.
"There is zero reason," wrote CNN host Jake Tapper, "to not take Trump at his word that he and his team are planning something alarming to disrupt the midterms and beyond."
Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield observed in response to the president's appearance on Real America's Voice that "Trump has no legal authority to do this," but warned "that doesn't mean he won't try."
Journalist Mike Rothschild questioned what the conversation between Trump and Root said about both men’s mental stability.
"Once again, Donald Trump is not a wizard," wrote Rothschild. "He can't just manifest things into existence by saying them or with a tweet. There is no 'right' to do this in US law, nor is there any mechanism that would enable any of this to happen. Both people in this conversation are deranged."
After losing the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden, Trump refused to concede the race, lied about the election being "stolen" by nefarious actors, pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overtake Biden in the Peach State, and pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject certifying the election despite lacking constitutional authority to do so.
When these efforts to overturn the election failed, Trump encouraged his followers to march to the US Capitol, where they broke into the building, assaulted law enforcement officers, and sent members of Congress running for their lives.
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Can Flanagan in Minnesota and Wisconsin's Hong Continue Progressive Wave in Midwest?
The Minnesota official took aim at the "special interests" funding her opponent's campaign ahead of the election, while Francesca Hong rejected claims that her priorities are too "extreme" for Wisconsin.
Aug 11, 2026
As the Democratic establishment and the corporate media continue to grapple with the results of last week's Senate primary in Michigan, which Abdul El-Sayed won after campaigning on Medicare for All, ending corporations' grip on elections, and investing in the social safety net instead of foreign wars, two more high-profile Midwestern races on Tuesday may provide more answers about the direction in which the Democratic base hopes to push the party.
In Minnesota, progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is facing US Rep. Angie Craig in the Democratic Senate primary, while in neighboring Wisconsin, democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong's (D-76) closest opponent is Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
As in Michigan, where Democratic operatives have insisted that Rep. Haley Stevens would have been a better bet to win against Republican candidate Mike Rogers, supporters of Craig claim the congresswoman is more "electable" than Flanagan, who supports Medicare for All, an end to "offensive weapons sales to Israel," and publicly financed universal pre-kindergarten.
“Electability is probably the No. 1 factor,” Joe Radinovich, a Democratic strategist who views Craig as the better candidate to face a Republican in the November midterms, told The New York Times.
But a number of Craig's positions and ties suggest her backers may be working with a flawed understanding of what makes a candidate appealing to voters in 2026, with nearly half of Democratic voters in swing districts last year telling Upswing Strategies that they would avoid supporting a candidate who was funded by the pro-Israel lobby, 78% of Democrats saying in a poll in December that they supported Medicare for All, and half of Americans telling YouGov last month that they believed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be abolished.
Craig has received major support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the past, but says she asked the powerful pro-Israel group not to donate to her this year as Americans sour on US military support for Israel, which, with the backing of the Biden and Trump administrations, has slaughtered more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. AIPAC has continued hosting fundraisers to boost Craig's campaign indirectly.
Craig has refused to call Israel's attacks on Gaza a genocide, while Flanagan has joined top human rights organizations and Holocaust experts in doing so, saying that “American taxpayer dollars should not be used to fuel the horrific violence and suffering that’s being experienced there."
The congresswoman is also out of step with the majority of Democrats on healthcare, pushing for legislation that would "build on" the Affordable Care Act instead of establishing a national healthcare plan, and on immigration policy. She was the only Democrat in Minnesota to support the Laken Riley Act, which gave ICE broader power to detain immigrants. Although Craig initially defended her vote, she expressed regret in March, after two Minnesota residents were killed by federal immigration agents who were part of President Donald Trump's crackdown in the state.
Flanagan has not joined the specific call to abolish ICE, but told The New York Times: “Whatever word you want to use, it can’t exist like this anymore. We have to rip ICE apart and start over.”
Outside groups, including super political action committees (PACs) representing cryptocurrency interests, have poured roughly $20 million into the effort to elect Craig, a co-sponsor of the CLARITY Act. The bill would split regulation of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the industry-friendly Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Flanagan on Monday said she was not intimidated by the special interests that, as she said "think they can buy this Senate seat."
The lieutenant governor has been endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), among others, as well as a number of labor unions, the anti-corruption group End Citizens United, and the advocacy group Indivisible.
Some recent polls have shown Craig with a small lead, while some internal surveys by Flanagan's campaign have shown the lieutenant governor several points ahead of her opponent.
Sanders predicted "a tight race" on Sunday in an interview with Margaret Brennan of CBS News' "Face the Nation."
"I hope very much that Peggy wins," said the senator. "I think what we’re seeing in Minnesota, Margaret, in Michigan, and all across this country, is that people understand that we’re living with an economy that is rigged. You have working families, 60% of our people, living paycheck to paycheck. People can’t afford groceries, housing, healthcare, basic necessities of life."
In Wisconsin, Sanders, Warren, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are among the high-profile progressives who have declined to wade into the race and endorse Hong, who has consistently led by double digits in polls since February.
The gubernatorial candidate has distanced herself recently from what she called "bad takes"—a call in 2020 to "cancel Thanksgiving" and support for abolishing law enforcement.
“I will not abolish the police," said Hong in a debate in July. “I want to focus on stopping violent crime and giving law enforcement the resources and the training that they need but ensure that we are also holding accountable law enforcement that does not follow the law."
But Hong has won the support of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), with Omar calling her a "true champion for working families" and highlighting her support for broadly popular proposals like universal childcare, Medicare for All, and guaranteed paid leave.
Opponents of Hong are striving to attach the word "communism" to her political priorities—a clear sign, said Gustavo Gordillo of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter in New York City recently, that "democratic socialism is not the scary word it used to be" for voters.
When asked by Fox News on Tuesday about alleged "fears that democratic socialism could turn into communism," Hong dismissed the idea, echoing Ocasio-Cortez's recent comment that "we can't even raise the minimum wage" in Congress.
"This is a state where we still have a $2.33 tipped minimum wage and $7.25 minimum wage," said Hong. "I think it's gonna be hard to turn that into socialism soon, but what we can do with this campaign is make sure we fight for policies that put working-class people first."
She added that she rejects claims that she is too "extreme" to win the general election in November due to her support for policies like taxing the rich and abolishing ICE, countering that Republican primary front-runner Rep. Tom Tiffany has displayed extremism by denying the 2020 election results and voting to keep files regarding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former associate of Trump, hidden from the public.
"What's extreme is that Congressman Tiffany, a longtime DC congressman, has voted against the interests of Wisconsinites over and over again," said Hong.
Q: Were you prepared for the pushback you received, especially from Republicans, framing you as far too extreme for Wisconsin?
FRANCESCA HONG: What's extreme is Rep. Tiffany has voted against the interests of Wisconsinites over and over again. What's extreme is that he's an… pic.twitter.com/QW0M5AVIVc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
The Intercept noted that despite the recent hand-wringing in the corporate media over Hong's past comments on Thanksgiving—complete with a Times article that asked whether voters can forgive her—"the Times’ on-the-ground reporting managed to dig up precisely one Wisconsinite who would not."
"Even allowing for the fact that the attacks on Hong follow a well-established right-wing tradition—let us never forget those who laid down their lives in the War on Christmas—why has such a ridiculous controversy come to dominate efforts to quash her campaign?" asked Intercept reporter Sean Bell.
"The answer is simple: Nothing else has worked, and that failure indicates a worrying pattern for the Democratic establishment terrified of an insurgent left," Bell continued. "As the numerous recent victories for DSA-backed or progressive Democratic candidates have demonstrated, attacking the left on policy is not the winning strategy it once was. Many voters no longer recoil at the mere mention of universal healthcare, rent controls, or the dreaded 'socialism.'"
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, which has endorsed both Hong and Flanagan, issued a reminder on Tuesday: "Here’s how electability actually works: The most electable candidate is the one who gets the most votes. This narrative was always manufactured by people afraid of Francesca—and afraid of what happens when working people actually win. Her supposedly ‘radical’ agenda is healthcare, affordable childcare, and making billionaires pay their fair share."
"That’s not unelectable," he said. "That’s what working people are asking for.”
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'Fighting for the Peeping Tom Vote': El-Sayed Calls Out PATRIOT Act Champion Rogers Over Privacy
"You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated," Rogers said in an infamous clip from 2013 as he defended the NSA's mass spying programs.
Aug 11, 2026
Amid an expanding assault on privacy by the federal government, Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has brought the issue of mass surveillance to the forefront of Michigan's Senate race, attacking his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, for his longtime defense of the PATRIOT Act.
"Mike Rogers out here fighting for the Peeping Tom vote," wrote El-Sayed, a former public health official, in a social media post on Monday. "Creepy stuff, Mike."
El-Sayed was responding to an unearthed comment from Rogers, then the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, made during a 2013 committee hearing in Congress just months after whistleblower Edward Snowden's explosive revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless surveillance of Americans.
At the time, Congress was debating whether to enact legislation reining in a provision in the PATRIOT Act, Section 215, which the government had used to secretly collect phone records and other information in bulk from Americans not accused of wrongdoing.
Rogers was pushing American University law professor Stephen Vladeck to agree that the government should be allowed to examine Americans' business records to determine if they were connected to a foreign terrorist organization. Vladeck said he believed it should, but that protecting Americans' privacy needed to be taken into account. "The way we do it matters," he said.
The chair responded that in the decade since the policy had been enacted, nobody had ever complained about it. Vladeck, noting that the program was a secret, responded: "But who would be complaining?”
"Somebody whose privacy was violated," Rogers retorted. "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated."
The quote is highly representative of Rogers' record of support for extensive government surveillance over his decade-and-a-half in Congress. He was one of the PATRIOT Act's leading champions since its introduction in 2001 and led the charge to stop mass collection powers from being curtailed after the Snowden revelations.
“The charge that the program tramples on the privacy of citizens is simply wrong,” he said in a statement with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), then the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.
Rogers and Ruppersberger also coauthored the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in 2012, which would have allowed companies to share cybersecurity-related information with the government, including the NSA, with protections from existing privacy restrictions. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the bill, which failed in the Senate, would have allowed the government to obtain large amounts of sensitive personal data with few restrictions.
"You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated."
In 2026, as artificial intelligence becomes a new tool for even more powerful and pervasive spying, El-Sayed has said the government must be banned from using it to "conduct warrantless surveillance."
As part of an AI policy platform rolled out in June, he said rules should be put in place to prevent its use for "domestic authoritarianism," including "mass political surveillance, protected-characteristic predictive policing, or AI targeting of dissent."
During President Donald Trump's second term, as he's used anti-"terrorism" rhetoric to justify a legal crackdown on domestic opposition, the government's expanding spy powers have become an increasing concern.
With the aid of private surveillance companies like Palantir, the administration has created an unprecedented surveillance dragnet that connects AI-powered facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and phone location tools to piles of data on Americans that have been used to supercharge its mass deportation campaign and aggressively monitor protesters and dissenters.
It has been met with some pushback in the Senate, where Republicans earlier this year narrowly failed to extend Trump's powers to surveil noncitizens under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without warrants. Though US citizens are not supposed to be targeted, civil liberties advocates argue that their information is often collected easily and the government has used it to prosecute them.
Rogers has attempted to back off some of his earlier defense of mass surveillance, though he has not meaningfully pushed to reduce the government's spying powers. During a losing Senate bid against Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024, he said that it's "wrong" for the FBI to conduct warrantless searches against US citizens, but did not call for actually repealing or blocking Section 702.
Since serving in Congress, Rogers parlayed his time overseeing the intelligence community into a lucrative career advising and governing cybersecurity, intelligence, and government-contracting firms.
He served as a senior security adviser to AT&T while the company operated a little-known program that gave law enforcement access to searches of trillions of domestic phone records, though there is no record that he personally worked on the program.
Michigan Advance reported earlier this year that he also made almost $100,000 advising a company that helped the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spy on dissidents.
Noting the Republican nominee's recent pivot to Trumpian election denialism, journalist Spencer Ackerman—who has extensively covered the expansion of government surveillance during the War on Terror—suggested in a post on social media that there is little reason to believe Rogers has changed much after over a decade out of Congress.
"I saw up close his efforts, post-Snowden, to protect the NSA and ensure it continues to nullify your constitutionally-protected privacy," Ackerman said. "He was for impunity then and wants the same thing for himself."
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Analysis Shows Insurance Industry Funding Third Way as It Plots 'War' on Medicare for All Backers
Third Way has received donations from CVS Health, Johnson & Johnson, and an organization that counts the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association as one of its members, tax filings reveal.
Aug 11, 2026
The investigative outlet Sludge published an analysis on Monday showing that the health insurance industry is among the corporate donors to Third Way, a think tank that is reportedly preparing to pour $15 million into an effort to combat the rise of candidates who support Medicare for All and other progressive policies.
Third Way, which has long been hostile to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and Medicare for All in particular, does not publicly disclose its donors. But Sludge's David Moore uncovered some of the group's benefactors by examining corporate tax filings, which revealed that the private insurance industry group Better Solutions for Healthcare (BSFH) donated $50,000 to Third Way's advocacy arm in 2024.
Among BSFH's members are the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the health insurance industry trade group AHIP. Moore noted that BSFH is "run out of the offices of leading Republican digital and strategy firm Targeted Victory in Arlington" and was founded by GOP operative Alexander Schriver.
Sludge's review of corporate tax filings showed other healthcare industry donors to Third Way, including CVS Health and Johnson & Johnson.
"Another corporate lobbying heavyweight, the Business Roundtable (BRT), gave $50,000 to Third Way in 2024, up from the $25,000 it gave in 2023 and down from the $75,000 it gave in 2022," Moore reported. "Each year in 2019, 2020, and 2021, BRT gave $50,000 to Third Way. The CEO group’s health insurance members include the heads of UnitedHealth, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), CVS Health—all members of AHIP (formerly America's Health Insurance Plans), save for UnitedHealth—as well as healthcare company Centene and many Big Pharma firms like Johnson & Johnson."
NEW: Who's funding the dark money Third Way, dug up in most recent tax filings:
- Republican-run insurance industry front group
- Health insurance giant
- Big Pharma
- More insurance lobbyists
...as it fights the Democratic left and Medicare for All:https://t.co/w787PVhxsH
— David Moore (@ppolitics) August 11, 2026
Moore's reporting came days Third Way president Jonathan Cowan told The New York Times that his organization is "preparing for the next war that is coming."
Cowan said that "it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states"—a comment published two days after progressive epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal supporter of Medicare for All, won the Democratic primary for a critical US Senate seat in Michigan.
The Times story characterized Third Way as "a leading centrist Democratic group," without mentioning the organization's corporate ties.
"Post El-Sayed’s win, Third Way has done media hits in NYT, CNN, WaPo, Vox, and not one of these outlets has mentioned who funds Third Way historically or bothered to ask who their current donors are," journalist Adam Johnson wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, praising Sludge's review of tax records.
"Journalists are, in principle, supposed to do what David did here: investigate ulterior motives, follow the money, dig deeper," Johnson wrote. "Alas what mainstream outlets have done for Third Way this past week is credulously take them at their word they are merely 'concerned about electability.'"
Earlier this year, Third Way published a memo attacking Medicare for All and its purportedly "astronomical cost." (The memo does not mention research showing that a Medicare for All system would cost less than the status quo, while providing comprehensive universal health coverage and saving tens of thousands of lives per year.)
A recent study by Yale University researchers found that a Medicare for All system would reduce US national health expenditures by more than $1 trillion a year and "save over 114,000 lives annually."
Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program, told Sludge that "anybody who chooses to attack [Medicare for All] is putting themselves out of step with what I think most people in our country see as the solution."
“People want this, even when they understand that of course it's going to mean a change in their taxes—but they also understand that for 95% of people or so, the change in taxes is smaller than the amount that they would save by not having premiums, not having co-pays, not having deductibles,” said Weisbart. “People are getting that. And if you try to market a political view that's opposite, people see right through that."
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Enfeebled Democrats Are No Match for Corrupt, Cruel, Lying, Outlaw Trump
The establishment wing of the Democratic Party has proven it knows how to lose. Can the party turn itself around to put an end to Trump's fascist advance once and for all?
Aug 11, 2026
A major dereliction by the feeble Democratic Party leadership is their unwillingness to address the political amnesia they have allowed corrupt, lying, cruel, outlaw tyrant Trump to enjoy with political impunity. Trump has been more than willing to fill the vacuum created by this abdication. That is his business and political modus operandi (MO). His daily lies, boasts, and fantasies have polluted the political landscape. Moreover, his false claims are rarely rebutted by the haughty Dems who view his diatribes as beneath them to counter.
The Democratic Party leadership needs a compelling “REMINDERS” platform for their current electoral campaigns that they can pin on the Trump rubber-stamping GOP candidates at the Congressional and state levels. Here is a sample:
1. Trump was a failed gambling czar and a frequent user of bankruptcy as a competitive tactic, as he brazenly described it, to stiff his creditors, employees, and consumers. He also used hundreds of undocumented workers for his construction projects, whom he exploited with low wages and bad working conditions.
2. Trump is a serial sexual abuser of women. There are dozens of credible accusations and legal actions against him by his victims. Michael Cohen— Trump’s former personal lawyer even arranged to pay Stormy Daniels to cover up the story about Trump’s 2006 sexual encounter with her. Remarkably, since 2019, the Dems have been AWOL on this predator’s past, while eating their own for a tiny fraction of Trump’s transgressions. (See the February 24, 2020 OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMEN IN CONGRESS).
Political amnesia by the public is easy to fall prey to because it is so often covered up by the culprits and allowed by incompetent opponents.
3. Trump derided and minimized for weeks in early 2020 the spreading COVID pandemic. A Columbia University report conservatively estimated that between 130,000 and 210,000 deaths were attributable to the failures of the Trump administration’s delays. Have you heard much about his lethal, arrogant incompetence in the Democrats’ campaigns?
4. Trump’s tax cuts for the super-rich and giant corporations mean huge deficits and a lack of these tax dollars for public services, public works and jobs in communities everywhere. Democrats can highlight what specific and recognized needsthese communities were denied because of Trump’s tax giveaways to the fat-cats.
5. Trump is the consummate climate denier. Each time there are uncontrollable wildfires, floods, heat domes related to climate disruptions by burning of fossil fuels, Democrats can remind people of his ridiculous assertions that global warming is a “hoax” or a “scam,” and start naming these disasters “Trump Hurricanes,” “Trump floods,” “Trump wildfires.” Doesn’t he like things named after him?
Moreover, he has starved the budgets of FEMA and other agencies that combat the impact of these disasters. He is also refusing to pay the underpaid firefighters a living wage and or to expand OSHA’s authorization to protect their safety.
6. Dems should remind people how Trump is the extorter-in-chief. He has discriminatorily cut back on FEMA assistance, mass transit assistance, and other federal outlays for Democratic blue states to punish them for their pro-electoral resistance, including their refusing to give his outlaw regime control over state election data and machinery.
7. Trump has never backed down from his outrageous claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The Dems are too sporadic in condemning Trump’s massive drives TO STEAL this Novembers’ elections. Democratic Party leaders almost never use the word “steal” against Trump, compared to his constant harping falsely about the 2020 election being stolen from him. (See The Wrecking Ball Comes For the Midterms by Jonathan M. Winer).
8. Trump is a major league racist against African Americans and Hispanics, among countless other groups with his stormtrooping ICE, his selective military firings, his shattering of safety net programs like Medicaid and Food Stamps disproportionately needed by low-income ethnics, his sick frothing such as “shit-hole” countries, unlawful deportations, and only admitting as “refugees” white South Africans.
9. Trump has pardoned hundreds of convicted violent criminals and fraudsters, politically on his side, many of whom have since committed crimes. By comparison, in 1988 the GOP used unfairly against presidential candidate Michael Dukakis the Willie Horton case (Horton committed a crime while on a prison furlough) to inflict considerable damage on Dukakis.
10. Trump’s words about “law and order” exclude his corporate crime cronies. He has dismissed well over a hundred pending Justice Department cases against corporate crooks stealing from and harming innocent Americans, virtually closed down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and thrown out SEC cases—especially against his cryptocurrency buddies from whose shenanigans he and his family have personally profited. “CORRUPTION” IS THE UNPRECEDENTED “COIN OF THE TRUMP REALM” — THIS IS THE MESSAGE THAT SHOULD RING THROUGH THE LAND.
11. Trump’s cruelty to children knows no bounds. He supports strip-mining the successful Head Start programs, cutting budgets for children’s services, exposing children to unregulated toxic pesticides, and refusing to put forward an authentic child tax credit. His barbaric actions affect both conservative and liberal families.
12. Trump enabled the criminal enterprise DOGE, led by Elon Musk, to rampage through federal agencies in 2025, closing down some vital lifesaving programs and pushing out the door tens of thousands of civil servants doing their work daily for the public. The DOGE criminals were unleashed gangsters goaded on by the hateful, vengeful, unstable Trump. Never in American history has an administration broken or destroyed a sliver of what Elon Musk’s DOGE did on Trump’s orders. Millions of poor people and children abroad will die because of the closing of USAID with its medicines, vaccines, food supplements, and safe drinking water. The annual cost of operating this lifesaving agency is less than a week and a half of the current bloated Pentagon budget that crooked Trump wants to increase by another $500 BILLION!
13. The Dems should remind people of Trump’s crazed hatred of solar and wind energy—life-sustaining—in favor of goodies for the homicidal oil, gas, and coal corporations heating the planet. Psychiatrists, you are needed here. (See the Statement from Medical Professionals, Congressional Record—Senate, April 30, 2026).
14. Finally, voters will be stunned by Trump’s plethora of vote-losing epithets such as “losers and suckers” to describe those who are killed in combat, like those buried World War II GIs in a French cemetery, as this draft dodger related to his chief of staff, retired General John Kelly. Or “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situations.” Or “I like this inflation,” or in 2016, “American workers are overpaid,” and endlessly more. The Dems should demand that Trump’s Republican candidates publicly disavow these and other outlandish lies and defamatory claims during debates.
It is, of course, true that the Democrats have to run on what they are for. Their leaders, who don’t like progressive mandates, have rejected putting forward such cohesive, long-overdue pledges as given them by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, or by the undersigned (see Robert Reich’s “What Democrats Must Pledge to America” December 5, 2025; and my column “LONG OVERDUE DOMESTIC COMPACT FOR AMERICA” August 29, 2025). It is up to the candidates in the field to offer such authentic compacts or their own cohesive agendas.
Most GOP candidates are running on their unbreakable fealty to Trump. Therefore, they should be held accountable for all the ugly drawbacks of Trump that they have been backing to the hilt including his cruel and vicious Cabinet secretaries.
Political amnesia by the public is easy to fall prey to because it is so often covered up by the culprits and allowed by incompetent opponents. The Democratic Party knows how to lose. It allowed Trump’s worst GOP in history to win in 2024!
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'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."
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The Dangerous Corporate-Funded Morons of Third Way
Here's some advice for voters: disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”
Aug 10, 2026
The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day.
“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan.
Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.”
Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potential presidential swing states.”
Well, I find it deeply troubling that faux centrist groups are declaring war on progressives in the pages of The New York Times, without the Times revealing who they really are.
If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way — those that have been made public, that is (Third Way is structured as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that’s not legally required to publicly disclose its donors) — you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.
Odd that The New York Times chooses to describe Third Way as a “leading Democratic centrist group” without revealing that it’s simply a Trojan Horse for corporate America.
Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett has even conceded that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. (That’s the same Matt Bennett, by the way, who helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank” photo-op that helped sink Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.)
Here’s Third Way’s Board of Trustees (the most recent list available):
- Jonathan Vogelstein, chairman of New Providence Asset Management and senior advisor to private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
- David Heller, formerly global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs.
- Bernard Schwartz (chairman emeritus), chairman and CEO of BLS Investments.
- David Horvitz, chairman of the board and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.
- David Coulter, managing director and senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, focusing on the firm’s financial services practice, and former vice chair of JPMorganChase.
- William Daley, vice chairman of Bank of New York Mellon, former vice chairman of JPMorganChase, former board member of pharmaceutical companies Abbott Labs and Merck.
- John Dyson, chairman of Millbrook Capital Management, Inc. (MCM), a private investment firm that manages a manufacturing company, a vineyard and wine group, and a hedge fund.
- Michael Edwards, deputy CIO of investment adviser Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors.
- Andrew Feldstein, CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management, board member of PNC Financial Services Group, former managing director of JPMorganChase.
- Brian Frank, founder and managing partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm seeded by the founder of a large private equity firm.
- David Greenwald, chairman of finance law firm Fried Frank, former international general counsel and a deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs.
- Derek Kaufman, former head of global fixed income at Citadel and a member of the firm’s Portfolio Committee, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Derek Kirkland, managing director and co-head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.
- Doug Lawrence, CEO of DPL Green Investment and also managing principal and co-founder of 5 Stone Green Capital, formerly a managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Joseph Zimlich, CEO of private family financial manager the Bohemian Group, board member of First Western Trust Bank.
- Mark Spilker, founding member of GPS Investment Partners LLC, chairman of Chiron Investment Management LLC, former co-head of Goldman Sachs’s Investment Management Division, former president of Apollo Global Management, former member of Google’s Investment Advisory Committee.
- Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein, former venture capitalist, former partner at Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners & Co. Ventures.
- William Reeves, co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
Oh, and Third Way’s honorary co-chairs have included West Virginia’s former Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona’s former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Enough said about its governing structure.
In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.
Well, of course Third Way attacked Bernie’s plan. Among Third Way’s donors are pharmaceutical giant Amgen, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Health (which acquired health insurance giant Aetna in late 2018), and health products and drug company Baxter International.
Other corporate donors to Third Way are or have been members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that links lobbyists with state lawmakers. Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, CVS Caremark, DuPont, and trade groups the Consumer Technology Association and NCTA - The Internet and Television Association are members.
Third Way donors have also given money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helps elect Republicans who fight federal environmental and other regulations. Among them, Entergy, Facebook, Google, and Reynolds American, according to tax records.
Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland, revealed that Koch Industries secretly funded a report by Third Way intended to promote the Republican free trade agenda to Democrats.
After the Democrats’ 2024 election losses, Third Way argued that the party should reduce its dependence on small-dollar donors. In a five-page memo of “takeaways” from the election, Third Way asserted that small-dollar donors’ preferences “may not align with the broader electorate.”
The memo stopped short of naming alternative funding sources, but the implication was clear: Less grassroots support means more reliance on big checks from super PACs and wealthy donors, which is exactly what Third Way prefers.
The memo also included calls to curb “far-left influence,” adopt a “pro-capitalist” stance, and stop “demonizing wealth and corporations.”
***
So, please, disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”
And pay no attention to headlines about “Democratic centrists preparing for war” against a “rising Left.”
Instead, focus on what’s really happening.
Voters want people in power who are going to fight for them, and not for the super-wealthy or big corporations and Wall Street.
This is especially true now — when the bottom 90 percent of Americans are struggling to pay the bills, a record portion of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent, big corporations and Wall Street have never been as powerful, Washington has been taken over by legalized bribery and corruption, and there’s no “center” between democracy and neofascism.
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'It’s Not Radical to Believe You Should Have Healthcare': El-Sayed Hits Back at Trump, GOP Attacks
"Donald Trump's vision is the one you're living in right now," said the Democratic US Senate nominee. "Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries?"
Aug 10, 2026
Fresh off his victory in the Democratic primary race for US Senate in Michigan, progressive epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed used television appearances on Sunday to respond to increasingly hysterical attacks by Republicans and President Donald Trump while offering a positive vision for the future, underscoring his support for Medicare for All and a humane foreign policy that doesn't fund genocide.
"It’s not radical to believe that people should be able to afford their groceries," El-Sayed, who is set to face Republican Mike Rogers in November, told NBC's Kristen Welker in response to the Senate GOP's first attack ad of the general election. "It’s not radical to believe that you should have healthcare in this country. It’s not radical to believe that you don’t think the president should be able to deny elections or make $2.2 billion off of his role in office. It’s not radical to believe that all of us should be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Those are the things that I’ve been fighting for."
Trump and congressional Republicans wasted no time launching unhinged and bigoted attacks on El-Sayed following his primary victory last week. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump posted an image showing a photo of himself and First Lady Melania Trump alongside a photo of El-Sayed and his wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku. The caption of the photo blared, "Two VERY DIFFERENT America's [sic]."
Asked by CNN's Jake Tapper to respond to the post, El-Sayed said Sunday that the caption is "right."
"One [America] in which your overlords are two people who don't like each other, but joint in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you, or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that that family is going to have the good things," said the Michigan Democrat.
"So, yes, you got two different visions of America. Donald Trump's vision is the one you're living in right now," he continued. "Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries? Do you believe, when you look your kids in the eye, that they're going to have a better future than you did?"
Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed responds to President Trump posting a picture of his wife. pic.twitter.com/j8lGGwPET8
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) August 9, 2026
El-Sayed overcame more than $30 million in spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—and over $60 million in total outside spending—to defeat Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in last week's primary contest. Throughout his primary campaign, El-Sayed criticized AIPAC as a destructive force in US politics and spoke out in support of ending American military aid to Israel—a stance that Trump and Republicans have sought to equate to antisemitism.
"He doesn’t love Israel. He doesn’t love Jewish people," Trump said of El-Sayed last week. "He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart."
During his CNN appearance on Sunday, El-Sayed hit back at the president's smear, saying, "I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people."
"They are not the same as AIPAC in Israel," he said. "I want our tax dollars spent to provide good schools, to pay for healthcare, to rebuild our roads here in Michigan, rather than it being sent abroad to subsidize foreign militaries. That’s not just Israel, by the way. That is also Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Pakistan."
"So I believe in international law," El-Sayed continued. "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for all people. I believe in a process that allows a free Palestinian people and free Jewish Israeli people to come together around what they believe the ultimate peace should look like."
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Ex-Trump Lawyer Says 'We're Screwed' if Trump Pressures New AG Blanche to Subvert Elections
"There's no circumstance under which we shouldn't expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election."
Aug 09, 2026
One of the many questions swirling around new US Attorney General Todd Blanche is whether he'd go along with President Donald Trump's efforts to subvert the result of another election.
In 2020, when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden, his attempts to claim the result was marred by systemic fraud were met with resistance from then-Attorney General William Barr.
But under Blanche, who served for two years as Trump's personal defense attorney, things may be very different.
That's according to another of Trump's former lawyers, Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel for nearly a year during Trump's first term, as he came under investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller over his campaign's alleged coordination with the Russian government.
Cobb, who has been an outspoken critic of both Trump and his appointment of Blanche, appeared for an interview released Saturday on Zeteo's "Mehdi Unfiltered." Host Mehdi Hasan asked Cobb, "Come 2028, does American democracy survive Donald Trump?"
"I’m not sure they survive it in 2026,” Cobb responded.
Meet the Former Trump White House Lawyer Who Says Our Democracy Could Be ‘Screwed’ in 2026 by Mehdi Hasan
Ty Cobb, who represented the Trump White House during the Mueller investigation, questions whether democracy will survive the midterms and accuses Trump of 'unprecedented' corruption.
Read on SubstackNoting Barr's resistance to Trump in 2020, Hasan asked: "If the midterms don’t go Trump’s way this fall, is there any world in which Todd Blanche stands up to Trump if he’s asked to find some fake evidence of voter fraud, or are we screwed now?”
“We’re screwed,” Cobb said bluntly.
“Great,” Hasan said. “That’s what I suspected.”
Trump has, on multiple occasions, floated the idea of canceling the midterm elections outright and has enacted measures aimed at blocking mail-in voting and seizing voter information from states. He has also said he wants Republicans to "nationalize" elections in Democratic-leaning locales.
Cobb noted that Blanche "has already echoed [former Trump chief strategist] Steve Bannon's view that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should be on the street during the election," adding, "I think we'll almost certainly see that."
Hasan pointed out that the administration has routinely ignored court orders, especially with regard to its immigration enforcement. Cobb predicted that "the level of noncompliance" so far "is nothing compared to what we're about to see."
He said that if Democrats take the US House of Representatives and begin pursuing investigations, he suspects there will be "a number of contemptuous acts" by the administration. "We can count on the Justice Department to pursue zero of those referrals."
"That's assuming that the midterms actually produce a Democratic Congress," he continued, noting that even if one were elected legitimately, "whether they get seated or not by [Republican House Speaker] Little Mikey Johnson and his service to the president, that remains to be seen."
Cobb said that's in addition to other "dangers" around the election, including the presence of ICE agents. "Blanche has suggested that people should be happy to see ICE at the polls."
Where Barr refused Trump's requests to do so in 2020, Cobb said, "There's no circumstance under which we shouldn't expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election."
"I think that the president has made it very clear that he doesn't want immigrants or people of color to have the ability to go to the polls," Cobb said. "He's going to do everything he can in blue states and elsewhere to try to prevent this election from going smoothly."
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Michigan Just Put Medicare for All on the Ballot, and Voters Said Yes
In the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, Abdul El-Sayed put guaranteed healthcare at the center of a statewide campaign and let voters decide. They decided.
Aug 08, 2026
You won’t find “Medicare for All” printed on any Michigan ballot from Tuesday’s primary. What you’ll find is a name: Abdul El-Sayed, the Ann Arbor physician who literally wrote the book on single-payer healthcare and then built his Senate campaign around it.
El-Sayed co-authored Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide, with a foreword from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), laying out how the country could guarantee healthcare as a right instead of rationing it by income. He wasn’t a candidate who discovered Medicare for All in a focus group. He ran because of it, and Tuesday night he routed the Democratic establishment’s chosen candidate, Haley Stevens. That’s as close to a referendum on single-payer healthcare as American politics gets, and voters delivered a verdict.
El-Sayed didn’t soften his message for the donor class. He paired “Medicare for All” with a blunt indictment of a country rich enough to end medical bankruptcy but too captured by insurance money to bother. Voters in Washtenaw and Kent counties answered.
What makes this remarkable is who El-Sayed beat and how. Stevens had every advantage institutional Democratic politics can hand a candidate: Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) early backing, a late endorsement from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and roughly $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates, the largest single-race investment in that organization’s history. This was one of the most expensive Democratic primaries ever run, a fire hose of establishment cash aimed at burying a single-payer candidate. It wasn’t enough. Voters weren’t buying what millions in outside spending were selling.
As a practicing physician assistant who has spent years advocating for Medicare for All and working in electoral politics, I've heard the same warning over and over: Don't run on single-payer. Michigan suggests that conventional wisdom deserves another look.
That should terrify the consultant class that has spent a decade telling Democrats Medicare for All is political poison in a state like Michigan, that it scares away suburban moderates. El-Sayed’s night says otherwise: an unapologetic healthcare message is exactly what turns out voters a low-turnout August primary usually leaves behind. Reporting pointed to a young, energized base and a ground game that outperformed expectations where turnout can’t be bought with television ads.
The country is catching up to what El-Sayed put in writing years ago. Over 85 million working-age Americans are uninsured or underinsured, per Commonwealth Fund research, shut out of the system or paying premiums that still leave them exposed the moment they get sick. Millions are one diagnosis away from medical debt they’ll spend a decade paying off. Public patience with an industry that profits by denying claims has curdled into open contempt, visible in viral outrage over coverage denials and a for-profit sector that ranks among the least trusted in America. Strip away the euphemisms, and the arithmetic is obscene. Insurers post billions in profit by finding reasons to say no to sick people, skimming a cut off human suffering as a business model. The United States is the only wealthy industrialized democracy that treats healthcare as a product to be underwritten, means tested, and denied rather than a right owed to its citizens. El-Sayed didn’t invent that anger, and he didn’t just write a book about it. He built a winning campaign on the promise that Democrats don’t have to keep managing that anger on behalf of the industry that causes it.
There’s symbolic weight here too. El-Sayed lost a bruising primary for governor in 2018, written off as unelectable in a state supposedly too uneasy about a candidate named Abdul. Eight years later, running on the same conviction that no one should go bankrupt getting cancer treatment, he built a coalition big enough to beat back one of the most heavily financed efforts to defeat a progressive candidate in recent Democratic primary history. That’s proof of where the Democratic base stands on healthcare, no matter what the party’s risk-averse, industry-funded strategists have told candidates for two decades.
As a practicing physician assistant who has spent years advocating for Medicare for All and working in electoral politics, I've heard the same warning over and over: Don't run on single-payer. Michigan suggests that conventional wisdom deserves another look.
Michigan shows the old fear, that Medicare for All is too risky to run on out loud, was always a story told by people who never tried telling voters the truth about their premiums. Michigan is a battleground state, not a safely progressive one, and El-Sayed won by refusing to hide the ball. He put guaranteed healthcare at the center of a statewide campaign and let voters decide. They decided. That’s not a fluke. It’s a preview of what happens when a candidate treats single-payer healthcare like the popular, morally obvious policy it has always been. AIPAC and the insurance lobby’s allies spent a fortune trying to prove otherwise and lost.
Party insiders will insist this was about mechanics, not Medicare for All. They said the same after every progressive upset this cycle, right up until they had to explain the next one. For one night, the closest thing Michigan had to a ballot question on national healthcare got its answer, and it wasn’t close.
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