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housing
Maricarmen, Whose Eviction Sparked Housing Protests Across Spain, Dies at 87
Her parting message to the people of Spain was: "Keep fighting. Keep fighting for what belongs to you."
Oct 07, 2026
María del Carmen Abascal Martín, an 87-year-old Spanish woman known as Maricarmen whose eviction led to massive housing protests and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling early elections, died this week, before she could return to her longtime home from the hospital.
In a joint statement cited by El País, the Madrid Tenants' Union, Abascal's family, and her lawyer announced that she died at Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Spain's capital city. They said that "although a historic agreement was reached that would have allowed her to return to her home, that solution came too late."
The 87-year-old was evicted on September 23, after the property where she'd lived since 1956 was acquired by the real estate firm Urbagestión, which raised her monthly rent. Abascal was carried out of her apartment in Madrid's Retiro district on a stretcher and taken to the hospital. As Common Dreams reported last month, under the deal, she was supposed to return home with an eight-year lease and pay no more than 30% of her income, approximately €500, or $560, per month.
The events that came after her eviction marked "a before and after in the history of this country," according to the joint statement about her death. Still, "the cost of getting here has been far too high," her representatives asserted, adding that Maricarmen asked them to share the message: "Keep fighting. Keep fighting for what belongs to you."
In response to the protests, Sánchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)-led Cabinet announced a pair of decrees with largely temporary policies. They would regulate short-term and room rentals, protect vulnerable tenants from evictions, prohibit "vulture funds" from buying homes, extend some existing rental contracts, and mandate automatic renewal of such contracts.
Spain's Parliament rejected the proposals last week, prompting Sánchez to dissolve the legislature and call a snap election, which was previously planned for next year. As Reuters reported Tuesday, "Calling the election, on November 29, has allowed Sánchez to bring in the new rules with the support of a smaller caretaker body."
The news agency explained:
The measures will come into effect temporarily when the decree is published in the official state gazette but must then be sent for approval by the caretaker lawmakers who remain in place after parliament was dissolved, Sánchez said.
The standing body of 69 members, when including lower house speaker Francina Armengol from Sanchez's Socialist Party, has a slim majority in favor of the measures, according to state broadcaster TVE.
A second decree proposing the automatic renewal of rental contracts would only come into effect if approved by the reduced legislature since the government did not have a majority to validate it, Sánchez said.
The prime minister also acknowledged Abascal's death, writing on social media Wednesday: "All my love to Maricarmen's family and loved ones. A hug also to everyone who today feels this loss as our own. Rest in peace."
As The Associated Press reported, "The emotions ran into anger on the street among the protesters gathered near Spain's Parliament who chanted 'Maricarmen lives, the fight goes on!'"
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Housing Protests Across Spain Win Concessions After Eviction of 87-Year-Old Sparks Uprising
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez approved two decrees aimed at protecting tenants, but Spain's leftist social rights minister called the two-part strategy a "trap."
Sep 29, 2026
Spain's Cabinet on Tuesday agreed to take other measures meant to address a growing housing crisis amid nationwide protests triggered by an 87-year-old woman's temporary eviction—but some leftists warned that splitting the proposed reforms into two parts was an intentional ruse designed for one key demand to be rejected by lawmakers.
María del Carmen Abascal Martín's eviction on September 23 sparked demonstrations in Madrid and cities across Spain, including Barcelona, Sevilla, Málaga, Santiago, Murcia, Palma, and Zamora. On Saturday, around 30,000 people marched in Madrid, while hundreds of tents subsequently sprang up in the Puerta del Sol, where protesters have been camping out for days, demanding major reforms to Spain's housing system. On Tuesday, protesters in Madrid also successfully stopped a planned eviction on Calle Navas de Tolosa, with the expulsion postponed until October 14.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)-led Cabinet announced two decrees on Tuesday, which must now be approved by lawmakers if they are to take effect. One of the measures would guarantee protections against evictions of economically or socially vulnerable tenants through 2030, extend certain existing rental contracts until the end of 2028, regulate short-term and room rentals, and bar so-called vulture funds from purchasing homes until 2028.
The second decree seeks automatic renewal of rental contracts—a key demand of tenant organizers—although that measure faces a more uncertain path to parliamentary passage.
Abascal's eviction had quickly become a symbol of a housing crisis driven by rising costs and a supply shortage that has priced many people out of the market in Europe's fourth-largest economy. The 87-year-old, who had lived in her Retiro apartment since 1956, was evicted after the property was acquired by the real estate firm Urbagestión, which reportedly jacked up her monthly rent from roughly €500 to €1,650.
Images of Abascal being removed from her home on a stretcher by police sparked global outrage and demands for Spain's socialist-led government to halt her eviction and protect vulnerable tenants from forced displacement.
Under an agreement reached with Urbagestión, Abascal will return after leaving the hospital under an eight-year lease, paying no more than 30% of her income—approximately €500 a month. The agreement was reached after more than four hours of negotiations involving her family, lawyer, the Madrid municipal housing agency, and the Madrid Tenants Union.
Activists attributed both Abascal's return home and the government's concessions to the power of mass mobilized people.
"Seeing that this has an outcome gives us hope," one protester, Laura, told Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. Another demonstrator, Gracia, declared, "Every night here is a victory."
Simón, a protester who spent the night at the encampment, told EFE: "We’re not camping out just for the sake of camping. We’re making a demand. It’s great that Maricarmen is getting her apartment back, but more measures are needed.”
Fina Parra, a spokesperson for the Madrid Tenants Union, called Abascal's eviction “the straw that broke the camel's back because it touched all of our hearts.”
Parra stressed that the protesters' objective is not “a half-measure law,” but legislation that “actually stops the bleeding of evictions.”
Sara Barros, a protester interviewed by Democracy Now!, said, “What we are demanding is that the rental market be regulated, because rents are unaffordable and people simply cannot afford them.”
Progressive politicians also welcomed the reversal of Abascal's eviction—which Sánchez called a "social tragedy"—and looked forward to implementing reforms.
"The street got Maricarmen to stay," said Gerardo Pisarello, the leftist first secretary of the Congress of Deputies, the lower chamber of Spain's Parliament. "If we have already achieved one victory, we can achieve another."
Some leftists are wary of the Sánchez government's decision to split the housing package in a way that makes the most important tenant protection easier to defeat in Parliament.
Minister of Social Rights Ione Belarra of the Podemos party called the decision "a trap" whose "only objective" is to "whitewash the government and contain social mobilization."
Belarra further contended that Sánchez's strategy is "the opposite of what should be done when you really want to solve the housing problem."
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Critics Decry Trump HUD's Proposed Rollback of Flood Protections for Low-Income Homes
One group said that the proposal "puts poor and working families that rely on HUD assistance at greater risk of danger, displacement, and homelessness."
Sep 08, 2026
Housing and environmental advocates on Tuesday condemned the Trump administration’s planned rollback of flood protections for federally funded housing, warning that the move will leave low-income households exposed to increasingly severe climate-driven flooding while shifting more costs to taxpayers.
In July, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed rescinding key portions of the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS), a Biden-era policy that required federally financed projects in areas prone to flooding to account for current and future inundation risks.
Proponents of the move, which would strip a layer of federal flood requirements, argue that local governments know their flood conditions better than Washington bureaucrats.
However, the National Housing Law Project (NHLP), a San Francisco-based advocacy group, warned Tuesday that the proposal "puts poor and working families that rely on HUD assistance at greater risk of danger, displacement, and homelessness by reducing notification and mitigation requirements for homes that are vulnerable to flooding."
NHLP called the move "part of the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the government programs that keep people housed, safe, and healthy."
On Tuesday, NHLP submitted a comment to HUD noting that “flooding events have become more frequent and widespread, and put the health, safety, and livelihood of low-income families at risk."
"Tenants displaced from federally subsidized housing face an even more acute crisis, because they often endure temporary or permanent loss of their housing assistance,” the group added. “Due to the personal and societal harm of extreme flooding events, HUD should work toward increasing the resilience of HUD-assisted properties. This proposed rule does the opposite.”
The proposed FFRMS rescission is part of the broader regulatory rollback that began during President Donald Trump's first term. In 2017, Trump repealed Obama-era executive orders that had updated the federal flood standard for the first time since the Carter administration and established regulations meant to ensure that federally funded infrastructure projects were climate-resilient.
In March, Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to identify and eliminate regulations deemed unnecessarily costly or burdensome to housing construction.
Responding to HUD's proposed FFRMS rollback, Liz Zepeda, federal regulatory director at the Virginia-based legal advocacy group Southern Environmental Law Center, said in July that “it’s discouraging to see the federal government ignore climate science and put some of our most vulnerable communities at greater risk, especially as we head into hurricane season."
"Reckless deregulation like this is why we need Congress to step up and pass reasonable emergency management policies,” Zepeda added.
In 2021, an NPR investigation revealed that, dating back to at least the Obama administration, the federal government sold homes it had previously purchased after repeated flooding to new buyers—often without adequately informing them about the properties’ flood histories and risks.
Historical data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show 45 billion-dollar flooding disasters between 1980-2024 that caused an estimated $215 billion in combined damages, adjusted for inflation. As the climate emergency worsens, the frequency and severity of such flooding have increased dramatically, from an average of 3.3 billion-dollar disasters in the 1980s, to 6.7 in the 2000s, to 23 in the 2020s.
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Bring Back the Sears Home! Proposal Calls for 500,000 High-Quality, Affordable Starter Houses to Ease Crisis
"Policymakers must pursue creative, tangible, and lasting solutions that bring homeownership back into reach."
Aug 19, 2026
As young families are increasingly priced out of the housing market, a group of economic researchers is pushing to revive an idea from the past to bring the distant dream of homeownership back within reach: mass-produced homes.
A report published Wednesday by the Groundwork Collaborative proposes a federal program to subsidize the creation of 500,000 prefabricated houses over the next eight years—starter homes that they estimate would be drastically more affordable than the ones currently on the market.
The report was written by three economic policy analysts who served under former President Joe Biden: Noah Ball-Burack and Emily DiVito, who worked on policy for the Treasury Department, and Alex Jacquez, who was Biden's special assistant for economic development and industrial strategy at the White House National Economic Council.
The proposal draws from history: From 1908-40, around 75,000 Americans ordered mass-produced homebuilding kits from Sears, Roebuck & Co. through catalogs, which provided pre-cut lumber, doors, windows, and other materials to construct a home that ended up being considerably cheaper to build than those constructed conventionally.
These "Sears homes" were not only fully functional but also durable: More than 80 years after the program was discontinued, thousands of them are still standing today.
Groundwork's researchers argued that, by marshaling the government's resources, a modern Sears home program could go great lengths toward combating the housing affordability crisis.
"For too many families, homeownership has gone from a milestone to a mirage. Decades of under-building have left us with an affordable housing shortage that’s pricing people out of their communities," DiVito said. "Policymakers must pursue creative, tangible, and lasting solutions that bring homeownership back into reach. The Modern Sears Home program does just that.”
The group called for Congress to appropriate between $44 billion and $75 billion over eight years—less than the US spends on the military in a single month—to guarantee large orders of factory-built homes, acquire and prepare land for them, and then sell the completed houses to eligible buyers with government-backed affordable mortgages.
They estimate that factory-produced single-family homes could be sold for roughly $170,000-$215,000 each. That's around half the median price of a new single-family home, which has increased nearly 25% since the start of the decade.
"Sears offered these homes for profit," the researchers wrote. "The federal government—with greater resources, lower borrowing costs, and unmatched power to scale—can do it better."
Unlike private capital, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which would administer the program, doesn't have a profit motive and is capable of guaranteeing large amounts of demand so that manufacturers can build scale.
And since the goal is to ensure that people are housed rather than to increase profit margins, the researchers argued that the homes are less vulnerable to the fluctuations of the housing market, which currently disincentivizes lowering rent.
"Private developers build only when projects pencil, meaning that expected rents, net of construction and financing costs, clear the rate of return their investors demand," the report explains. "This math ties new housing supply to high rents. If rents begin to fall, private capital will walk away.”
The researchers argued that their proposal would not just benefit those who are able to purchase new Sears homes, which HUD would target at households earning 60%-100% of a local area's median income, but everyone in the housing market, by driving up supply.
"Sustainably lowering housing prices relative to other prices in the economy requires public investment," they wrote. "The government can either build housing itself or finance private construction at below-market returns. It should do both.”
The proposal comes as pre-fab homes are being viewed increasingly as a policy solution to confront the housing crisis and as an opportunity for developers looking to attract young homebuyers.
Eager to build cheap starter homes fast, developers are experimenting with entire subdivisions of factory-built houses, as The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
New York state, meanwhile, is trying out a miniature version of what Groundwork has proposed, building 1,500-square-foot homes in Syracuse, Schenectady, and Newcomb. The state has completed three homes so far and awarded funding for 211 more.
According to a 2023 report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, these kinds of higher-end manufactured homes, known as "CrossMods," cost 27% less on average compared to an identical home built on-site.
The ones that have gone up in New York have borne out these cost-saving projections. They took about a third of the time to construct as traditional homes and cost about $250,000 to build and install, about half the cost of a comparable house, according to the state's affordable housing agency.
An affordable housing law that passed Congress in June also took steps toward expanding factory-built housing with a bipartisan bill passed last month that removed regulatory barriers to manufactured homes and sought to make construction easier to finance. However, the law does not provide any new federal funding for housing production.
The researchers said this was a good start that could help speed up the process of building homes. But they said it was far too narrow to really address the problem.
"It will take a government willing to act not at the margins of the market, but at its center—financing cheaply, building at scale,” they wrote. "The technology and policy levers to realize this vision already exist. The question is not whether the federal government can act at this scale—but whether it will."
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Voters Are Realizing that Trump Doesn’t Care About Them
Attempting to rig elections, fighting wars nobody wants, and constructing gaudy vanity projects are apparently more important to him than whether his own voters can afford food, housing, and healthcare for their families.
Jul 23, 2026
This month, the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law—without President Donald Trump's signature, exactly as he'd threatened. It's a small, recent example of a much bigger habit: Trump keeps showing voters exactly how little he thinks of them. The bill wasn’t controversial at all. It was negotiated by both parties’ top committee members and aimed squarely at lowering housing costs. But Trump let it sit for weeks rather than sign it, hoping to extract an unrelated voter-suppression bill in return.
At this point, childish behavior from the president shouldn’t be surprising.
In his first inaugural address, President Trump claimed to be the champion of America’s “forgotten men and women.” But it was a lie from the start. He never cared about the poor and marginalized. He cared about cutting taxes for his friends; scapegoating immigrants for the struggles of the working class; and restoring a mythical era of American “greatness” characterized by the supremacy of straight, white, Christian males.
Although his lie was obvious, it was also effective. In 2016, Trump won around one-eighth of voters who’d supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primaries. In 2024, he significantly increased his share of the Black and Hispanic vote. It might seem surprising that supporters of a democratic socialist would vote for a Reagan-style tax cutter or that minorities would support someone who campaigned on mass deportations, but desperation and repeated betrayals make voters do unnatural things. They (rightly) believed that the establishment of both parties had failed to serve their interests, so they voted for the candidate who portrayed himself as the enemy of that establishment.
Trump is perfectly happy to sacrifice the well-being of Americans, including his own supporters, to serve his own ego.
Thankfully, Americans are waking up. Trump’s approval rating has dropped to around 36% as it’s become increasingly obvious where his priorities lie. One source described as a “White House ally” recently told Politico that Trump “doesn’t care about anything beyond SAVE, Iran, and the ballroom.”
Attempting to rig elections, fighting wars nobody wants, and constructing gaudy vanity projects are apparently more important to him than whether his own voters can afford food, housing, and healthcare for their families.
He doesn’t even try to hide it anymore.
He said that the housing bill he recently refused to sign was just “of minor importance.” A few months earlier, he explicitly said he wants to keep housing prices high, favoring elderly GOP voters sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in unearned equity over young families struggling to buy their first home. These gaffes give Democrats an opening they can’t fail to ignore—and a path forward to lead on housing, which is the No. 1 issue for young voters according to a CNBC survey released in July.
Democrats should skip the smaller fixes, like banning rent-pricing algorithms—that’s kind of like blaming the weather forecaster for the rain, and it’s why Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed such a ban. Instead, they should marshal public and private funds toward large-scale building projects with generous affordable-housing quotas, the approach Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pursuing in New York.
They should also seize on the opportunity that Trump’s highly unpopular war in Iran presents.
Trump revealed his total apathy on this front when he told a reporter in May that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation” when conducting his war with Iran.
In this case, he’s telling the truth. Trump is perfectly happy to sacrifice the well-being of Americans, including his own supporters, to serve his own ego.
All he cares about now is being remembered as “a capital G, Great Man of history,” Jonathan Swan, co-author of the new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, explained in a recent interview. "He wants to reshape the world. I don’t think he would have gone to war in Iran in the same circumstances in Term 1. I don’t think he would have rolled the dice on what he did in Venezuela… He wouldn’t have started a trade war with the whole world.” But now that he has no more elections to win, Trump is perfectly willing to show his true colors.
Democrats running for office can seize this opportunity as well by throwing Trump’s “no new wars” campaign promise back in his face and by promising to banish the liberal warmongers who staffed previous Democratic administrations.
Republicans have done everything they can to give themselves an edge in the midterms: racist redistricting, a new court ruling that injects even more money into politics, and contrived fearmongering about communism. But if Democrats can finally convince voters that Trump doesn’t care about them—which shouldn’t be too hard since he’s constantly saying exactly that—we’ll get the blue wave we’re hoping for and then some.
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'Sign the Damn Bill!' Anger at Trump Grows as US Housing Prices Hit All-Time High
US Sen. Amy Klouchar said that the housing bill has "been sitting on President Trump’s desk long enough."
Jul 09, 2026
With President Donald Trump still refusing to sign bipartisan legislation aimed at lowering the cost of housing, fresh outrage erupted Thursday as new data shows buying a home in the US has never been more expensive.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) on Thursday released its monthly report on home sales showing that the median sales price of existing homes grew to $440,600, a record high.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR, said that housing supply remains a major barrier to making owning a home more affordable.
"Progress on long-term housing affordability could be hampered if inventory growth continues to stall," said Yun. "Without consistent gains in inventory, home prices can accelerate. It is critical to introduce more supply to the market to widen the opportunity for homeownership."
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the US Congress last month, was designed specifically to address the housing shortage in the US.
Among other things, the bill prohibits large Wall Street investors from buying up new single-family homes, streamlines environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and creates a $200 million annual competitive grant program to benefit communities that have demonstrated success in expanding their housing supplies.
Trump, however, refused to sign the legislation, insisting that it be paired with the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill that will curb ballot access but Republicans in Congress do not currently have enough power to pass.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who co-wrote the housing bill alongside Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), took to social media on Thursday and pointed to a poll showing that the legislation has overwhelming support throughout the country.
"The American people have a message for President Trump," Warren wrote. "Sign the damn bill."
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also took a shot at the president for dragging his feet on the legislation.
"Over two weeks ago, Congress passed the ROAD to Housing Act with overwhelming bipartisan support," Klobuchar wrote. "It will pave the way for more housing, make it easier to build, and help more Americans find a place to call home. It’s been sitting on President Trump’s desk long enough. Sign the bill."
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), currently a candidate for the US Senate running in New Hampshire, urged Trump to finally take action.
"It's never been more expensive to buy a home," wrote Pappas. "I helped pass a bipartisan housing bill to bring down home prices, and I'm calling on the President to get it over the finish line."
Trump's illegal war of choice with Iran has also not helped the housing affordability crisis, as it has led to an inflation spike that has left the Federal Reserve with little room to lower interest rates without risking further price acceleration.
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Proving He 'Does Not Care About Your Cost of Living,' Trump Calls Housing Bill 'Big Yawn'
"A yawn? Try telling that to the families who can't afford rent, can't afford to buy gas or groceries, and are one paycheck away from losing everything."
Jun 29, 2026
Democrats in the US House of Representatives quickly fired back on Monday after President Donald Trump called pending affordable housing legislation a "big yawn" compared to the attack on voting rights that he wants Republicans to pass.
Trump last Wednesday canceled a planned signing ceremony for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act and demanded that Congress, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans, pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America, Act.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday sent Trump the bipartisan housing bill—which will become law with no action by the president after 10 days.
Asked by reporters whether he'll sign the housing legislation, Trump replied: "It hasn't been sent to me yet. It's coming, I understand, and then I'll make a de—Here's what I would like to say... It's a yawn. Some people say it's wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn."
Sharing a clip of the president's remarks on social media, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) declared, "He truly doesn't give a damn about you."
Other Democrats delivered similar responses. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) said that "Trump does not care about lowering housing prices," while Rep. Becca Balint (Vt.) wrote of his comments, "Donald Trump literally does not care about your cost of living, part one million."
Democratic Colorado Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen said: "A yawn? Try telling that to the families who can't afford rent, can't afford to buy gas or groceries, and are one paycheck away from losing everything. Believe him when he tells you who he is."
Rep. Christian D. Menefee, a Texas Democrat, charged that "Trump cares more about rigging elections than Americans affording homes."
The Democratic National Committee's (DNC) rapid response director, Kendall Witmer, said in a statement that "Donald Trump continues to mock what everyday Americans are experiencing. Time and again, Trump has had the chance to lower costs for working families, but without fail, he has chosen to prioritize his own interests and those of his wealthy friends."
"As Americans struggle to put a roof over their heads and afford basic necessities," Witmer added, "Trump continues to double down on his disastrous policies and self-serving agenda—and Americans are fed up."
Trump's comments came just over four months away from the November midterm elections, in which Democrats aim to regain control of both chambers of Congress.
In the lead-up to the midterms, Trump has ramped up pressure on Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would force Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and photo identification at the ballot box. Critics have warned that the former requirement could disenfranchise millions of Americans who may not have access to documents such as a birth certificate or passport with their current name.
Johnson said Sunday on Fox News that "we're going to try to pass it again, and this time we’re going to try to put it on a reconciliation bill," which "prevents the necessity of 60 votes in the Senate."
The speaker on Monday also sent a message to his GOP colleagues who might block unrelated legislation in a bid to pressure senators to pass the SAVE America Act: "Whomever is thinking that stopping the work of House Republicans to make Americans safer right now and to bring down the cost of living—impeding that progress just because stubborn Senate Democrats won't do the job of the American people is self-defeating. It doesn't make any sense."
Punchbowl reported on Monday that GOP leadership has also expressed interest in creating a $4 billion grant program that would incentivize states to enact parts of the bill. Some Republican state lawmakers have already pursued copycat legislation.
As elected Republicans attack voting rights at the national level, the US Supreme Court—whose right-wing supermajority has often rubber-stamped Trump's agenda—delivered a surprise victory for voting rights on Monday: Two conservatives joined the three liberal justices in rejecting the Republican National Committee's (RNC) challenge to states counting mailed ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received afterward.
"The DNC is proud to have stood with the state of Mississippi to defeat the RNC's latest attack on Americans’ voting rights," said the Democrats' chair, Ken Martin. "Trump and Republicans are attacking our elections and trying to rig the system in their favor because they know the American people are ready to reject their chaos and corruption this November."
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This Fight Within the Democratic Party Is About Which Future We Get
The party is trying to get born again. This is a fight worth having.
Jun 25, 2026
The Democratic Party is trying to get born again.
For forty years it didn’t want to be. Since Reagan, the Democrats stopped fighting the world he built and started managing it. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and sent the factories south. He signed the crime bill Joe Biden wrote and helped fill the prisons. He ended welfare and called it reform. He tore down the wall between the banks and your money, and a few years later the banks lost your money and got bailed out for it. Obama bailed them out, let the houses go, deported people by the millions, and kept the drone war and the surveillance state running without missing a step. On the things that decide who holds power, money and war and the police and the spying, our party and theirs were one party. That was never where they fought.
What they fought over was the rest of it, and even there they did the least they could get away with, because anything real would have cost their donors. They told us things were getting better and better. They told us they were on our side. They put out a statement for women and Black people and immigrants and Latinos every time one was due, and then they went back to managing the decline. And every couple of years they came back and told us this was the most important election of our lifetimes, so hold your nose and vote, and we did, and the rent went up anyway.
The left is connecting now because it tells the same truth and points it the right way. America is falling apart, and it didn’t fall by accident, and the people who broke it are not the busboy or the kid at the border.
Then Trump stood up and said the whole thing was a fraud and the country was a wreck. Media talking heads were appalled. They laughed at him. But he connected, because it rang true. We’d been told for thirty years that we’d never had it so good while the ground gave out under us, and here was a man saying out loud that it was a lie. The trouble was where he pointed. Trump took the truth of our condition and aimed it straight down, at the immigrant and the poor and the weak and the despised, the people with the least power in the whole arrangement. He found the real anger and fed it to the worst part of us.
The left is connecting now because it tells the same truth and points it the right way. America is falling apart, and it didn’t fall by accident, and the people who broke it are not the busboy or the kid at the border. We’ve been unjust. We’ve been immoral, paying for a genocide in Gaza with our own tax money while we couldn’t house our own people. We are failing, and we need to be redeemed. Trump never offers that last part, because his whole act runs on it being someone else’s fault. The left says it plain. We did this, and we can undo it, and we can make this country great, the real kind, not the red hat version.
So this is a fight about which future we get. One is the future the war party keeps selling, a trillion-dollar arsenal standing guard over a pile of money while the killing goes on. The other one has to be built, and it starts by telling the truth about where we’re standing. The whole question is which one we choose.
On Tuesday we got our first real look in a while at people choosing the hard one. Zohran Mamdani is the mayor of New York, and he spent his own standing to back primary challengers against sitting Democrats. Three of the House candidates he backed won, two of them democratic socialists. They ran against the party that signed the checks for Gaza, and they won anyway. Krystal Ball put it as plain as anybody, that the real radicals are the politicians who back the killing of children. Jaime Harrison, who used to run the party machine, told people like Mamdani that if they hate the Democratic Party they should stop using its name and go build their own. We’re not going anywhere. The party was never Harrison’s to hand out, and the people who actually built it just voted for the truth.
It’ll be loud and it’ll be ugly, and men like Jaime Harrison will keep telling us to leave. We’re staying, because the country is worth saving and we’re the ones who’ll do it.
We’ve been here before, and the last time we got it right. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, Democrats and socialists fought over the future and then they built one. They passed Social Security and the right to a union into law. They strung electric lines out to farms that had never seen a light bulb. They sent a generation to college on the GI Bill and gave the old and the poor a doctor with Medicare and Medicaid. They put us on the road to the moon. They built the biggest middle class the world had ever seen and pulled millions out of poverty doing it. They argued the whole way, and the country came out stronger for the fight.
But we forgot the other half of the job, which was the building. A roof you can afford. A doctor you can see. A job that holds a family together. We handed all of it to the market, and the market handed us back rent we can’t pay and care we can’t afford and kids who don’t believe they’ll ever own a home. The rights we won, for Black people and women and immigrants and gay and trans people, were real and worth every fight, but they don’t pay the rent, and the party that told us to clap never wanted to talk about the rent.
The Democratic Party needs a rebirth not a rebrand.
We’ve done it before, so we know it’s not a dream. We need a politics and an economy and a democracy and a country that works for all of us, and not for the shrinking few who bought up the last one. We can build that. And the thing they have left to stop us with is fear.
Jesse Watters went on television and said the New York socialists aren’t even socialists, they’re communists, and you can’t reason with them, you have to crush them. That’s the same move Trump makes, the powerful turning your fear on someone weaker than you. Be scared of your neighbor, and keep trusting the people who paid for a genocide and couldn’t fix a thing here at home. We’re done taking that.
So the party is trying to get born again. It’ll be loud and it’ll be ugly, and men like Jaime Harrison will keep telling us to leave. We’re staying, because the country is worth saving and we’re the ones who’ll do it. We tell the truth about how far we’ve fallen, and then we build our way back up. We make it great for real, or we don’t get it.
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'Totally Crazy': Trump Holds Bipartisan Housing Bill Hostage to Push Evisceration of Voting Rights
"Trump just threw a tantrum," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "He's refusing to sign bipartisan legislation to make housing more affordable in a bizarre effort to try to rig the elections."
Jun 24, 2026
Congress this week passed a bipartisan bill "to build more housing, lower costs, and stop private equity's housing grab," as US Sen. Elizabeth Warren highlighted after the final vote, but President Donald Trump on Wednesday scrapped his plans to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act over a stalled GOP attack on voting rights.
Trump initially took a swipe at Warren (D-Mass.) on his Truth Social platform Wednesday morning, writing that "the Elizabeth 'Pocahontas' Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT. That is what Americans, both Dumocrats, Republicans, and everyone else, care about."
"Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF," Trump continued. "The Dumocrats will do it in hour one, 100%. Republicans will feel very stupid if they don’t do it first. I'll be watching with tears in my eyes!!!"
Less than an hour later, he added, "Today's Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency."
Trump and other backers of the anti-voter bill argue it is needed to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting in US elections—which is already illegal, and research shows is remarkably rare. Critics warn that the legislation would disenfranchise eligible voters who lack access to proof-of-citizenship documents.
While Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) responded by stressing that he and other Republicans in the House of Representatives support the SAVE America Act, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said the canceled ceremony was Trump's "call to make" but expressed hope that he'll "find his way to sign" the housing bill, other lawmakers—including Warren—and supporters of the legislation took aim at the president over his move.
"Congress overwhelmingly passed a housing bill to bring down costs. But Trump just threw a tantrum," Warren wrote on social media. "He's refusing to sign bipartisan legislation to make housing more affordable in a bizarre effort to try to rig the elections. Nope—I'll keep fighting to lower housing costs."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told journalists that "Trump is running away from one of the very few accomplishments that could actually help the American people," and urged the president not to veto the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.
Approved by the Senate in an 85-5 vote on Monday and the House in a 358-32 vote on Tuesday, the bill contains dozens of provisions to promote the rebuilding of older homes and development of vacant buildings, encourage local governments to build more housing, streamline regulations for construction, ban corporate investors from buying single-family homes to rent out, and more.
Stressing that the bill passed "overwhelmingly in a bipartisan way," and would "save American families a lot of money when it comes to housing," Sen. Andy Kim (D-Calif.) said that "I honestly can't believe that the president is holding this hostage."
"I hope the American people see this for what it is, which is that he doesn't care at all about the high cost of living that a lot of Americans are struggling with," Kim declared. "He doesn't care about the housing crisis. He is just continuing to push forward on his extreme agenda."
In the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) replied to the president: "The housing crisis is a national emergency. Do something to make life more affordable for hardworking American taxpayers. Sign the bill."
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) pointed to Trump's campaign pledges, writing: "The president who promised lower costs on Day 1 is refusing to sign the largest housing affordability bill in a generation. It's a slap in the face to millions of Americans struggling to afford a place to live. My Republican colleagues need to find some courage and stand up to this mad king."
In a video, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) warned the public that Trump "is taking away your housing for his personal projects that can never pass and are unconstitutional."
Longtime human rights advocate Kenneth Roth, who's now a visiting professor at Princeton University, similarly summarized: "Trump to America: I [couldn't] care less about affordable housing. So I won't sign a bill to advance it unless Congress endorses my autocratic efforts to restrict the right to vote."
Although Trump has not decisively said whether he will formally block the bill, Roth wondered, "Will the Republicans have the backbone to override his veto?"
Either way, The New York Times noted that "Trump's decision threatened to deprive Republicans, in particular, of an opportunity to showcase a legislative success in a year with very few of them—one that spoke directly to voters' economic concerns."
In a Wednesday statement, Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, looked to the midterm elections, in which Democrats aim to retake majorities in both chambers of Congress.
"Donald Trump has been clear: The SAVE Act is his #1 legislative priority—not lowering costs for working people, creating good-paying jobs, or helping families afford a roof over their heads," said Edkins. "Today, he decided it was more important to help Republicans avoid accountability for the cost-of-living crisis than actually do something about it."
"Trump was born on third base, and it shows. He has no clue what it’s like to struggle to make rent, save for a down payment, pay a mortgage, or worry that your kids will be able to afford a home of their own," he added. "Trump could've signed bipartisan legislation today to help lower housing costs and give Republicans something—anything—to show voters that they deserve reelection this November. Instead, he told working families to screw themselves. It's selfish, petty, and self-defeating."
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Thousands of NYC Tenants to Get Millions in Back Rent Forgiven After Mamdani Targeted Their Prior Landlord
A representative from the Union of Pinnacle Tenants said the agreement to forgive back rent is "a big victory" for tenants and represents a "real direct monetary redress of people's issues."
Jun 09, 2026
Thousands of tenants in New York City will no longer have to pay back rent after their prior landlord was targeted by democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani earlier this year.
Gothamist reported on Tuesday that Summit Properties, which in March bought 93 properties from bankrupt owner Pinnacle Group, has agreed to forgive tenants' back rent, which some refused to pay because of what they said were unsafe living conditions in their buildings.
Vivian Kuo, a representative from the Union of Pinnacle Tenants, said the agreement to forgive back rent is "a big victory" for tenants and represents a "real direct monetary redress of people's issues."
Mamdani took action against Pinnacle in January as one of his first official acts after being sworn in as mayor, noting that the landlord was responsible for "more than 5,000 housing violations and 14,000 complaints."
In buying the buildings from Pinnacle, Summit agreed to cure half of all reported violations within 60 days and to invest at least $30 million over a five-year period to repair and improve the buildings.
According to Gothamist, Summit had already lined up its purchase of the buildings before Mamdani took office, although the mayor worked with the tenants union to extract commitments from the company to make much-needed fixes.
Jordan Barowitz, a spokesperson for Summit, told Gothamist that the company "fixed hundreds of apartments, cured thousands of violations, and exceeded our commitment."
Mamdani has regularly put New York City landlords on notice, holding "rental ripoff" hearings where tenants have the opportunity "to tell the city exactly what your landlord’s been getting away with” and help bring about "real policy changes."
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