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The 'Iron Stache' Is Back: Wisconsin Ironworker Randy Bryce Announces 2026 House Run
"With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress."
May 20, 2025
As congressional Republicans and the administration of President Donald Trump set their sites on slashing vital social services, former union ironworker-turned-progressive Democratic U.S. House candidate Randy Bryce announced Tuesday that he will seek to oust the incumbent Trump ally in 2026 and help save Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Bryce—also known as the "Iron Stache" due to his prominent moustache—is a disabled veteran who launched his 2018 campaign with a viral video skewering then-House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) attacks on healthcare. Bryce, who raised over $7 million with donations averaging around $25, won the Democratic primary but lost to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) in the 2018 general election.He aims to face Steil in the next cycle.
"Every great story begins with a spark. Ours began in 2018, when one man stood up to Washington," Bryce said in an ad released Tuesday announcing his new campaign for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District seat. "Now, as old enemies come out of the shadows, we need him one more time."
"Trump promised to bring manufacturing back," Bryce continued. "Eight years later, we're still waiting. We can't afford to wait any longer—not for jobs, or healthcare, or a damn living wage."
"This isn't about left versus right," he added. "This about the billionaires versus the rest of us, and we've got the numbers!"
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Tuesday:
At the time, Bryce ran on supporting "Medicare for All" legislation, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and boosting unions. He remains a member of the Ironworkers Local 853 and in the years since his first campaign, he said, has served as a union representative, worked with Social Security Works, an advocacy group seeking to expand Social Security, and more recently has helped people with disabilities find work.
Like his ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Bryce believes that Democrats lack a coherent vision for defeating Trumpism and the oligarchy that's enriching itself at the expense of working-class Americans.
The solution? "With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress," Bryce told Capital Times associate editor and Nation national affairs correspondent John Nichols on Tuesday, referring to de facto Department of Government Efficiency chief and world's richest person, Elon Musk.
Working-class Dem Randy Bryce Takes On Trump Ally Bryan Steil For Key Wisconsin House Seat. — Bryce is the union Ironworker whose 2018 challenge to Speaker Paul Ryan went viral and, ultimately, saw Ryan decide to quit. Bryce says he’s running in 2026 to save Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
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— John Nichols (@nicholsuprising.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 8:20 AM
"What Trump's doing, and what Bryan Steil is helping him do, is really scaring people," Bryce told Nichols. "I'm talking to veterans, to people who rely on Medicaid, to families that can't keep up with rising prices, to workers. They're all angry."
"You've got an administration that is strangling the Social Security system, laying off people, cutting services," he added. "The Republicans in Washington are pulling what's left of the rug out from under us. I just think this is a going to be an election where people in the 1st District say, Enough!"
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Progressive Movement Mourns Loss of Beloved Media Scholar Robert McChesney
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss," said Common Dreams' managing editor.
Mar 27, 2025
Robert McChesney—prominent media scholar, Free Press co-founder, dogged defender of democracy, and friend of Common Dreams—died Tuesday at the age of 72.
McChesney's many books, nearly three dozen in total which he either wrote or edited, include: Rich Media, Poor Democracy (2000); The Problem With the Media (2004); The Death and Life of American Journalism (2010, co-authored with John Nichols); Dollarocracy (2012, also with Nichols); Digital Disconnect (2013); and Digital Democracy (2014).
He was the Gutgsell endowed professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and also co-founded the Illinois Initiative on Global Information and Communication Policy with Dan Schiller.
"Bob McChesney was a brilliant scholar whose ideas and insights reached far beyond the classroom. He opened the eyes of a generation of academics, journalists, politicians and activists—including me—to how media structures and policies shape our broader politics and possibilities," said Free Press president and co-CEO Craig Aaron.
Free Press mourns the passing of co-founder Robert W. McChesney, a brilliant scholar & generous mentor who captured corporate media's profound influence on the health of our democracy. https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-mourns-death-co-founder-and-scholar-robert-w-mcchesney
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— Free Press (@freepress.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 8:08 AM
"While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public's ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people's needs and sustains democracy," Aaron continued.
"His ideas were bold and transformative, and he had little patience for tinkering around the edges," he added. "Rather than fighting over Washington's narrow vision of what was possible, he always said—and Bob loved a good sports metaphor—that we needed to throw the puck down to the other end of the ice."
A Common Dreams reader, contributor, promoter, and supporter for over 25 years, McChesney will be deeply missed by all those associated with the independent, nonprofit news organization.
"Both in my personal political development earlier in life and as a working journalist in the profession," said Common Dreams managing editor Jon Queally, "McChesney had a profound influence on how I came to understand media systems and the political economy overall."
"Rich Media, Poor Democracy pretty much changed my life, a book that I once taught to high school students—which they loved, by the way—as it explains, in an accessible but penetrating fashion, just how corrupting the news and information landscape can be when it is controlled wholesale by corporate interests," Queally continued.
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of Bob McChesney," he added. "Our hearts go out to his family and many friends."
Rutgers University communications professor Andrew Kennis also highlighted the importance of Rich Media, Poor Democracy. He told Common Dreams that McChesney—who along with Noam Chomsky wrote openers to his 2022 book Digital-Age Resistance: Journalism, Social Movements, and the Media Dependence Model—influenced his own work.
"Bob McChesney's impact on media was immeasurable," Kennis said in a phone interview. "He was a steadfast public intellectual who inspired millions with accessible critiques of capitalism and its corrosive effects on democracy. He argued that the United States' descent into neoliberalism came at the expense of popular sovereignty."
Kennis said he got to know McChesney through Chomsky, adding that "Noam called Bob 'pretty much the best political economist' in the country, and practically the world."
"Bob very much self-identified as a political economist in general, but especially about communications," he explained.
In a 2013 appearance on "Moyers & Company," hosted by Bill Moyers on PBS, McChesney joined with friend and frequent co-author Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, to discuss their book, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.
"Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote," McChesney explained to Moyers during the interview. "Dollarocracy means the rule of the dollars: one dollar, one vote. Those with lots of dollars have lots of power. Those with no dollars have no power."
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote the introduction to Dollarocracy. Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) and founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, called his friend McChesney a "proud socialist" who "told me how glad he was to go door to door" canvassing for Sanders when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
Writing for FAIR, Cohen said that "no one did more to analyze the negative and censorial impacts of our media and information systems being controlled by giant, amoral corporations."
"Particularly enlightening was his 2014 book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy," Cohen continued, "in which McChesney explained in step-by-step detail how the internet that held so much promise for journalism and democracy was being strangled by corporate greed, and by government policy that put greed in the driver's seat."
"That was a key point for Bob in all his work: He detested the easy phrase 'media deregulation,' when in fact government policy was actively and heavily regulating the media system (and so many other systems) toward corporate control," Cohen added.
In 2015, at the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver hosted by Free Press, McChesney sat down with Common Dreams to discuss the importance of independent outlets as well as the inspiring promise of journalism that can "change the world" by exposing one person at a time to news or information they might not otherwise ever learn or come by:
Robert McChesney on Common Dreams
Nichols wrote for The Nation Thursday that while McChesney was a "globally respected communications scholar who was wholly welcome in the halls of academia," he "was never satisfied working within an ivory tower."
Indeed, a lesser-known aspect of McChesney's work was his immersion in one of the late 20th century's emerging music scenes.
"One of the first things that Bob did to have an impact on society was with the grunge movement in Seattle," Kennis told Common Dreams. "That was kind of his street cred before he went full nerd."
"Bob was doing some independent journalism and was studying in Seattle and was closely covering the emergence of Nirvana and other garage bands back then; that's how he got his first big dip into journalism," he said. "And he was a big fan, and part of the fabric of indie rock."
McChesney—who studied history and political economy at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and earned a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1989—co-founded the The Rocket, an alternative weekly newspaper that highlighted groups such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Sleater-Kinney, and Mudhoney as they rose to prominence. Ironically, The Rocket was sold to a big San Francisco publisher whose financial mismanagement killed the once-independent paper.
"Bob was a towering character," Kennis said, "always dedicated from the beginning to the end to the good fight."
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'Disaster for Working People' Looms If MAGA Republicans Take Wisconsin Supreme Court
"The stakes could not be higher. And the contrast between the candidates could not be clearer."
Apr 03, 2023
Progressives in Wisconsin and across the United States are warning that Tuesday's upcoming state Supreme Court election will have implications for working families nationwide, as a liberal judge who has been outspoken about her support for abortion rights and labor unions faces a right-wing former justice funded by dark money.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz is running against former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly. The contest, which will decide whether the high court leans left or right, has become the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with the candidates, political parties, and outside groups pouring $30 million into the election.
Wisconsin Watch at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reported last week that Protasiewicz has raised nearly $12 million more than her opponent as the judge issues warnings that a victory for Kelly would mean the court would almost certainly uphold an 1849 law that went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, making abortion illegal in almost all cases including pregnancies that result from rape or incest.
"I can tell you that if my opponent is elected," Protasiewicz told supporters recently, "that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books."
While Kelly has claimed during the campaign that he is nonpartisan, political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen explained in a video produced with pro-worker media outlet More Perfect Union that the former state Supreme Court justice has made his political leanings perfectly clear in previous public statements and rulings.
"For candidates who have a lot to hide, never talking about your politics is actually extremely convenient," Cohen said of Kelly, who before launching his supposedly nonpartisan campaign ruled that people in Madison, Wisconsin should be permitted to carry concealed weapons on public transit and that a fossil fuel company should not be required to protect the public from water it polluted.
Kelly's funders include Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, "a pair of billionaires who are laser focused on transforming their home state of Wisconsin," Cohen said. The Uihleins have previously donated to anti-democracy causes like "the dismantling of unions" through the passage of Act 10, which eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees and contributed to a dramatic decline in union membership in the state.
Kelly's backers had spent about $2 million more than Protasiewicz's supporters on ads as of March 27, according to Wisconsin Watch.
"If they succeed," said More Perfect Union on Monday, "MAGA Republicans will control the state's highest court—a disaster for working people."
The Wisconsin AFL-CIO and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are working "to reach every union member in the state and as many other voters as possible" ahead of the election, according to IBEW Local 494 political director Ryan Neibauer, by canvassing door-to-door, visiting job sites, and phonebanking.
"We're letting people know that labor is supporting Judge Janet, and we think that can pull her across the finish line with a win," Neibauer said in a statement late last month. "There are so many things on the table and so many things we can do with a pro-worker majority."
Anti-union justices have had a 4-3 majority prior to the election, but with right-wing Justice Patience Roggensack retiring, "a Protasiewicz win levels the playing field and gives working families and their allies a fighting chance," said IBEW.
As progressive Wisconsin columnist John Nichols wrote in The Capital Times on Sunday, electing Protasiewicz to secure a liberal majority on the high court would give the state its first chance to address a "radically gerrymandered" district map drawn by Republican lawmakers in 2011, which allowed the party to hold both legislative chambers for more than a decade even as Democrats have won 14 of the last 17 statewide elections.
"This pattern will not change unless a majority of justices agree to revisit the issue," wrote Nichols. "That certainly won't happen if conservatives retain their current 4-3 majority following the April 4 election... If the seat flips and liberals take charge of the court, however, Wisconsin's legislative and congressional maps could be challenged on a variety of grounds, and perhaps redrawn."
"The stakes could not be higher," Nichols added. "And the contrast between the candidates could not be clearer."
Cohen noted that Tuesday's election could also decide whether former President Donald Trump will be able to successfully challenge the 2024 election results, as he attempted to in 2020, if he continues his campaign for president.
"Just look how close he came to doing it in Wisconsin in 2020," Cohen said. "The state Supreme Court narrowly sided with empirical reality in a 4-3 ruling, and it's not a huge mystery how Kelly might rule if he were presented with a similar case. That's bad news for all of us."
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Only Public Funding Can Save Local Journalism--and Thus Democracy
Under our plan—the foundation of the new Local Journalism Initiative—policymakers in Washington would provide a lump sum to every county in the nation annually based on the county’s population to pay for nonprofit journalism within that county.
Dec 01, 2021
Readers of the Columbia Journalism Review are well aware of the importance of local news media; they have been the foundation of the American free press, and political democracy, since 1776. Daily newspapers have traditionally constituted the heart and soul of local news media, and they have provided the lion's share of original reporting upon which all other news media depend. That remains the case in the digital era as much of newspapering has transitioned online.
We need the funding to support independent, competitive, professional local news media. That money must come from the government.
CJR readers are also aware that local journalism as it has been known for 200 years has all but disappeared in most places in the United States over the past two decades. The business model for commercial journalism, based on advertising providing most of the income, is dead. Thanks to the internet, it will never return. All efforts to find a viable new business model for local journalism have failed, and investors have abandoned the field, except for private-equity funds on the lookout for distressed properties they can strip for parts.
The ramifications are increasingly clear, and endlessly depressing. It is not simply that functional self-government is impossible without credible journalism with all that forebodes; it is that local newspapers have provided the social glue that brought communities to life, as places where people see themselves as participating in a joint enterprise with people they know and understand and care about. That is disintegrating.
What remains less appreciated is that the founders of the United States regarded creating a free press a policy issue of the greatest possible importance. The Post Office was established in large part to distribute all newspapers virtually for free, and that is most of what it did the first century of this nation's existence. Likewise, that has been the opinion of the Supreme Court in its major decisions. As Justice Potter Stewart put it, the free press clause of the First Amendment is "a structural provision of the constitution." [his emphasis]
This is the public policy imperative facing the United States regarding journalism in 2021: We need the funding to support independent, competitive, professional local news media. That money must come from the government. It is the only viable option at a point when the market has shown that it cannot begin to sustain existing media, let alone usher in a renewal of bold speak-truth-to-power journalism. Of course, we cannot allow the government to pick and choose who gets the money, or engage in censorship. Any viable policy to support local journalism must allow the people to make of it what they will, and trust them in the process of self-government. It is time to stop pretending that can be done without public funding.
How best can the federal government intervene to produce these outcomes? The answer we provide herein is what we term the Local Journalism Initiative. Under our plan, policymakers in Washington would provide a lump sum to every county in the nation annually based on the county's population to pay for nonprofit journalism within that county.
Once every three years, people over 18 will be given three "votes" on how the county's funds should be distributed to three different LJI candidates based in their county. Why three votes for each person? A main objective of the LJI is to have multiple well-funded news media in every county, so people should get multiple votes. In lightly populated rural areas, several counties can be merged to generate a sufficient population base. Conversely in large metropolitan areas counties can be merged if the residents of the counties so desire. In the most populous counties people may get four or five or votes to guarantee diversity of voices.
How the money will be allocated will be determined by people in each county for qualified applicants. To be a qualified applicant for LJI funds, an enterprise must:
- Be formally identified and understood as non-profit
- Be functioning for six months prior to the election, so voters can see what the applicant actually does
- Be based in the home county with 75 percent of its salaries going to employees based in the home county
- Be completely independent; not a subsidiary of a larger nonprofit group
- Produce and publish original material at least five days per week on its website
Those candidates getting the most votes get a higher percentage of their county's LJI budget. No single applicant can get more than 25 percent of a county's annual budget, regardless of its vote total. An applicant must get at least 1 percent of the vote to qualify, or 0.5 percent of the vote in counties with over 1 million people. Diversity and competition are crucial.
Everything produced by federal funds must be made available immediately to everyone online and for free. In short, the principle is that journalistic organizations will be paid in advance, and what they produce primarily with public monies will be instantly put in the public domain and made available to all for free. The best check on abuses will be popular voting to determine the recipients.
The process will be overseen by the U.S. Postal Service, with elections taking place online and with print ballots available at or through the Postal Service. This is a renewal of the Postal Service's historic mission of sustaining independent and competitive journalism--a mission initiated by the founders of the American experiment and encouraged by their successors well into the 20th century.
There will be no content supervision by the government, no monitoring content to ascertain that it is "good journalism," or even journalism at all. The stipulations above will go a long way toward eliminating fraud. And if people elect to have disingenuous local news media? Just like elections in general, that is the possibility in a democracy.
The ultimate goal of the LJI is not simply to equal the optimum performance of the U.S. press system through history but to surpass it. Even at its best, U.S. journalism has reflected the view of large property owners and the well-to-do, and left dispossessed communities underserved, especially communities of color. One almost certain positive development from the LJI will be that communities of color across the nation will be in a position to have local news media that actually cover the issues in their neighborhoods, towns and cities seriously and thoroughly, produced by journalists from those communities. The LJI makes real a fundamental civil right, one at the heart of the American experiment: the right to a free press that gives everyone the information they need to make real the promise of democracy.
The immediate beneficiaries of the LJI will be the numerous local nonprofit news media that have already been formed, often by working journalists, in communities around the nation over the past decade. The LJI will prove to be an oasis for them. It will also make it practical for local journalists to take over dying local news media and convert them to nonprofit status. This is already happening in communities across the country, but often with much difficulty. The LJI would provide encouragement and support for journalists and their communities.
In big cities where historic daily newspapers are struggling to survive, and in smaller towns where weekly papers are shadows of their former selves, LJI could help local journalists and editors buy, sustain and reinvent publications that have withered under chain ownership.
Maintaining an existing publication, which has name recognition and contacts in the community, gives journalists a jumpstart. But they won't have so much of an advantage that other journalists cannot start competing publications. Indeed, we believe that, in short order, there will likely be a body of new non-profit news media engaged in generating local journalism and seeking LJI funds. This is the goal of the LJI.
The LJI is not hostile to the remaining for-profit local news media. We recognize how important it is to stop the bleeding in for-profit newsrooms, even as we build a necessary and more viable noncommercial system. To help make the transition, in its first six years (two terms) of existence, the LJI would allow local for-profit news media to compete for LJI funding in their county elections, providing they set up distinct nonprofit branches and use their LJI funding under the exact same terms as nonprofit LJI recipients. All remaining local for-profit newspapers and news sites are desperately searching for a workable business model, and if this grants them a lifeline to find a new way to operate in the black doing journalism, more power to them. And if profitability eludes them, they will be better positioned to transition to nonprofit status.
After the first six years, commercial news outlets--whether they are legacy media or startups--would close their nonprofit arms and become ineligible for LJI funding, unless they convert to full nonprofit status. This proposal has no interest in creating an army of investors and commercial lobbyists preying permanently on the government to bankroll their ventures.
At any rate, the right for anyone to launch their own news medium, commercial or otherwise, at any time will always be inviolate. Indeed, we can imagine how commercial news media could thrive alongside nonprofit journalism. Commercial firms, like anyone else, will always be able to publish anything produced by non-profit LJI recipients at no cost upon publication.
How much will it cost the taxpayers?
It is imperative that any system to solve the crisis must have a budget sufficient to get the job done and done well. Daily newspapers have been a massive industry in the U.S. economy until the past 15 years. The total revenues of U.S. daily newspapers constituted one percent of GDP as recently as 1960; that would amount to $232 billion in 2021. In 2000 the total revenues accounted for by daily newspapers was just under 0.6 of one percent of GDP. At that rate, the local journalism income for 2021 would be $133 billion. In 2021, the total daily newspaper revenues (including digital) will be less than $20 billion, and every year that number continues to decrease.
So providing the nation with a credible free press costs money, but, thanks to immense cost savings provided by the digital revolution, and being nonprofit, we do not need hundreds of billions of dollars. But we do need tens of billions, because the single most important and indispensable element of journalism remains skilled human labor, in competing newsrooms.
There actually is historical precedent. For much of the 19th century, when nearly all newspapers were delivered well below actual cost by the Post Office, the value of the postal subsidy, according to an 1840s government audit, effectively equaled 0.21 of one percent of GDP, which would amount to over $46 billion in 2021.
To be effective, the LJI would require an annual budget in this range. The best way to do that would be to set the annual budget at 0.15 of one percent of the previous year's GDP. Keeping the budget to this formula would account for economic and population growth, as well as inflation in coming years, and provide stability for planning. So for 2022 the budget would be just over $34 billion. After initial set-up and administration costs, that would leave at least $33.5 billion to go directly toward local news production.
The LJI funds would be distributed at the same rate for every person, so a county's LJI budget would be determined exclusively by its population. An annual budget of $33.5 billion divided by the US population of 333 million people, equals roughly $100 per capita. Therefore, a county of 250,000 people would get $25 million to produce and sustain local journalism. A county of 1 million people would get $100 million.
If people elect not to vote, the amount of the budget is not affected; it only means that fewer people would determine where the money goes.
The response of many when presented with a proposed budget like this is sticker shock, followed by "the cost is too high." The correct response, the one that guided our Founders, is what will the cost be if we don't do it? We can see signs all around us of what that looks like. We can no more lowball having a credible press system as our democracy crumbles than we would lowball military spending in the midst of a foreign invasion. The expenditure we propose is just over 4 percent of the annual cost of maintaining the military-industrial complex.
What are the upsides to this proposed solution?
There remains much to flesh out to make the LJI practical, and any plan must be flexible enough to account for unanticipated problems and issues. But there are some current institutions that will immediately benefit, and a few are are worth noting.
Local PBS, NPR and community media services present a special case for the LJI. The stations all do a variety of programming where journalism is generally a small percentage of the programming produced. Indeed, on these local stations, the journalism that is broadcast tends to be national in character, as opposed to local. LJI support seems appropriate, because it will create more local journalism where little or none existed before.
Therefore, local NPR, PBS and community stations can compete for and receive LJI funding, but it must go to dedicated journalism that is specifically within the home counties of the stations--in other words toward journalism they are not doing much of at present--and it must meet all of the LJI criteria otherwise. Public media will retain its existing budget allocation separate and apart from this legislation. The LJI is a tool for enhancing, as opposed to replacing, existing sources of public funding.
Likewise, there are numerous high schools, colleges and universities with student news media and, often, formal journalism education and departments. These programs are often filled with students eager to enter the field and make their mark, but they have nowhere to get gainful employment. The programs are floundering as the profession of journalism disappears. Now these programs and these students, of which there remain tens of thousands of optimistic participants every year, will have an important purpose again and an institutional basis for existence, much like schools of education.
Then there is Big Tech. Facebook, Google and other Internet platforms have become the main purveyors of journalism to people in the United States. This has led to considerable controversy over these companies' political power and their editorial judgment. With the LJI, Internet platforms will have popularly approved authentic local media to distribute in counties across the United States. The Internet platforms need simply acknowledge the popular news media choices in the counties people reside. This would seem to be in their own best interest. This also means the news produced through the LJI project can become ubiquitous in short order. Think of how Google search was able to help put Wikipedia on the map overnight.
The LJI also will offer philanthropists and foundations a way to effectively promote journalism at the local level. For the past 20 years, the philanthropic community has spent a good deal of money attempting to build up nonprofit journalism all across the nation. Most of these ventures have stagnated or failed because philanthropies seek to launch ventures but are in no position to support them in perpetuity. Now a philanthropy can give a two- or three-year grant to get a local newsroom up and running and, if it is well received, the LJI funds can kick in and take over thereafter.
One built-in outcome of the LJI is that it will result in several well-funded journalism outlets in each community, as had been the case for much of American history. By the final decade of the 20th century, this grand tradition of journalists competing to get stories, and to provide distinctive takes on the news, was deep in history's rear-view mirror. One-newspaper towns--with the newspapers increasingly owned by large chains with no particular interest in the community or in journalism--were the order of the day in all but a handful of communities. The LJI will allow for a renewal of the diversity and competitive vigor that is essential for a muscular free press.
We offer this proposal in order to jumpstart a policy debate that is desperately needed. There is no time to lose. To read a longer version of this proposal that includes citations as well as much more material on media economics, the history of journalism, the Constitution and the free press, and important international comparisons, please click here.
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Ron Johnson's Ready to Wreck the Postal Service
Johnson is playing the fool on Trump’s behalf.
Aug 23, 2020
Everyone in America is angry about the dismantling of the Postal Service by Donald Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
Except, of course, for Ron Johnson.
The Republican senator from Wisconsin heads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that should be getting to the bottom of allegations of political scheming on the part of the Trump administration to slow down the mail in advance of a COVID-19 election where most people expect to cast their ballots by mail. But Johnson is, as always, just fine with whatever nefarious activity in which the president engages.
Performing his usual role as the president's political valet, Johnson greeted DeJoy at a hearing on Friday with lavish praise and a nutty conspiracy theory.
"I have no doubt the Democrats are ginning these issues up into a false narrative designed to extract a political advantage," chirped Johnson, before soothingly telling the scandal-plagued postmaster general, "I'm sorry that you're the target of those."
Pronouncing himself to be "highly supportive" of efforts to trash sorting machines and blue mailboxes, cut overtime and more generally reduce service, Johnson claimed, "It is Postmaster DeJoy's commendable attempt to reduce those excess costs that are now being cynically used to create this false political narrative."
The problem with Johnson's conspiracy theory is that DeJoy's mangling of the Postal Service has already caused such a national outcry -- from Democrats and honest Republicans -- that the postmaster general has suspended some of the most egregious abuses. And, of course, President Trump has acknowledged to Fox Business News that he's been messing with Postal Service funding because "they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots."
So, once again, Johnson is playing the fool on Trump's behalf.
Thankfully, responsible representatives are treating the crisis seriously. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Town of Vermont, is leading a congressional effort to hold DeJoy to account. With Massachusetts Democrat Katherine Clark and 88 other House members, Pocan has signed a letter asking the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors to immediately remove DeJoy.
"Mr. DeJoy has used his time as Postmaster General to sabotage the United States Postal Service (USPS) and he must be removed immediately to protect this critical institution," they point out. "Despite recent claims by Mr. DeJoy that implementation of certain changes may be delayed, he has already done considerable damage to the institution and we believe his conflicts of interest are insurmountable."
Those conflicts of interest are political and personal.
"Mr. DeJoy holds a significant investment in his former company, XPO Logistics, a USPS contractor. Since becoming Postmaster General, he has also invested tens of thousands of dollars in stock options in another USPS contractor and competitor," the letter notes. "Both investments represent a tremendous conflict of interest. We cannot trust that Mr. DeJoy will act in the best interest of the USPS or the people who rely on it."
DeJoy is also a major donor to Trump's campaign and to Republican causes, which is as good an explanation as any for why Ron Johnson is praising the worst postmaster general in American history.
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'Green Light to Suppress Votes': Federal Court Reinstates Wisconsin GOP's Early Voting Restrictions Amid Pandemic
"They let this case collect dust for three years. And they decide today, four months out from Election Day, that 'early voting is not a fundamental right' in the middle of a pandemic. Just outrageous."
Jun 30, 2020
A panel of three federal judges on Monday upheld a slate of Republican-authored restrictions on early voting and absentee ballots in Wisconsin, a decision rights groups warned could suppress votes and heighten the risk of spreading Covid-19 in upcoming elections.
The trio of Republican-appointed judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago overturned a 2016 lower court decision and ruled that a Wisconsin law restricting early voting to just two weeks before an election must be reinstated.
"Right-wing judicial activists just gave their Republican allies in Wisconsin's legislature a green light to suppress votes."
-- John Nichols, The Nation
"Early voting is not a fundamental right in itself; it is but one aspect of a state's election system," Judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the 27-page ruling. "As we have stressed, Wisconsin's system as a whole is accommodating."
The panel also ruled that faxing and emailing absentee ballots to prospective voters is unconstitutional and said people must live in a district for at least 28 days, rather than 10, before voting there.
The court did not explain why its ruling came more than three years after it first heard Wisconsin Republicans' 2017 appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down several voting restrictions the state GOP enacted after taking full control of the legislature in 2011.
"They let this case collect dust for three years," tweeted Courtney Beyer, communications director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "And they decide today, four months out from Election Day, that 'early voting is not a fundamental right' in the middle of a pandemic. Just outrageous."
In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, advocacy group Common Cause Wisconsin called the ruling "a huge blow to voting rights in a state that already had among the most restrictive and extreme voting laws in the nation, and not to mention just weeks before the next election in August."
"One positive is that the judges ruled that expired photo student IDs can be used as proof of identity to vote," the group noted.
John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and a Wisconsin native, tweeted that "right-wing judicial activists... just gave their Republican allies in Wisconsin's legislature a green light to suppress votes."
"If there is a Covid-19 surge," warned Nichols, "the court's decision will make voting more dangerous."
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Crisis in Journalism Is a Crisis for Democracy
'We need journalism to expose this dumbing down and bartering off of policy making'
Jul 23, 2019
There is no more ardent champion of Wisconsin's progressive tradition than John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times and the author of many books, including "The Genius of Impeachment," "The Death and Life of American Journalism" (with Robert McChesney) and "The Capital Times: A Proudly Radical Newspaper's Century Long Fight for Justice and for Peace" (with Dave Zweifel).
Nichols became the ebullient face of the uprising against then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2011 (and wrote a book about it, "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest from Madison to Wall Street"). He delivered fiery speeches to giant crowds gathered outside the Capitol building in Madison, and appeared countless times on national television, even bringing his friend Ed Schultz to town to set up a huge MSNBC stage in front of the Capitol.
From his earliest years, Nichols was a journalist. He started writing for the daily newspaper in Union Grove, Wisconsin, when he was 11 years old. When I first met him, in the early 1990s, he was the national correspondent for newspapers in both Toledo and Pittsburgh. I remember catching up with him at the Democratic Convention in 1996, where he was busy filing more than 50 stories in the space of a week.
Despite his frenetic work schedule, Nichols is, as anyone who lives in Madison can attest, always ready to stop and chat. He is a fixture at the local farmer's market, where he can be found greeting thousands of his closest friends with a cheerful "Hey, comrade!" on any given Saturday. He produced many of his books at Ancora coffee shop in downtown Madison, steps away from the Wisconsin Examiner's new office.
Nichols, together with his writing partner Robert McChesney, has thought as deeply as anyone in America about the crisis in journalism, as well as in our democracy, and about how the two are related.
I caught up with him at his home in Madison to talk about what we are trying to do here at the Examiner. As usual, he was happy to share his thoughts.
RUTH CONNIFF: You wrote a book about journalism in Wisconsin. What's your sense of where it stands today?
JOHN NICHOLS: It's in a bad way. There's a void, a gap that we'll talk about in a moment. You and your colleagues will help to fill it, which is vital for renewing and sustaining Wisconsin democracy. But let's start by putting things in perspective.
The editor I wrote about with my friend and colleague Dave Zweifel was William T. Evjue, the founder of The Capital Times who said, "Let the people have the truth and the freedom to discuss it and all will go well." There were not enough truth tellers in Evjue's time. Things were never perfect. But there are even fewer journalists who are employed as truth tellers today.
Newspapers have closed across the state -- including the weekly paper in Union Grove that I started writing for at the age of 11. Radio stations have eliminated local news operations, which has had a devastating impact in small towns where they were essential parts of local life -- broadcasting the high school football games and school board meetings and the reports of births and deaths. Television stations have become increasingly homogenized, with packaged reports that are designed to get ratings rather than to provide coverage of the towns, villages and cities where we live. They overwhelm us with weather reporting but never get around to the steady coverage of city councils and county boards and state government that people have to have if they are going to govern their own lives.
We've seen wave after wave of consolidations and mergers and, above all, cuts to staffing in newsrooms. Over the past decade, according to the Pew researchers, we have lost a quarter of newsroom jobs nationwide. And I would submit that Wisconsin, a state that historically benefitted from a great deal of diverse and contentious journalism, has seen the worst of it. These losses are across the board: in print, broadcast and online. Amusingly, you still hear people suggest that online media will fill the void. But there is scant evidence that this will be the case. In fact, when we studied the numbers a few years ago we found that, for every 10 job losses in traditional newsrooms, there was at best one hire in an online newsroom. Anyone who has been paying attention has seen the reports that online media outlets have been struggling over the past few years with many of the same challenges as so-called "legacy" media. The challenge is an economic one, and it cuts across media platforms.
RC: You believe that a cornerstone of democracy is being weakened. Is that an urgent moment -- especially in states such as Wisconsin?
JN: Absolutely. Advertising no longer sustains newsrooms in the way that it once did, and that means that we're beginning to see news deserts: communities, whole regions, that are simply not being covered in any real sense. While the places where the wealthy cluster may still be covered, vast stretches of urban and rural America are now neglected by major media outlets. By some estimates, as many as 1 in 5 Americans now live in news deserts, and the problem is rapidly growing worse.
By some estimates, as many as 1 in 5 Americans now live in news deserts, and the problem is rapidly growing worse.
Cuts in the coverage of low-income and working-class communities are a huge issue. They make it harder to tackle inequality, to identify environmental racism, to preserve services and to maintain robust democracy. And the damage is compounded by cuts in statehouse coverage.
Unfortunately, when newspapers and broadcast outlets make newsroom cuts, reporting on state capitals and state courts is invariably reduced. That compounds the crisis because people know less about how to respond to the challenges. An overemphasis on coverage of Washington makes people think that answers come from the federal government when, in reality, people have far more ability to influence state government.
The problem is that Wisconsinites and people across the country are getting less statehouse news. The Pew folks found that, over a roughly 10-year period concluding in 2014, the number of statehouse reporters nationwide collapsed by 35 percent. Every indication is that the decline has accelerated since then. There's a recent study out of Oregon that shows the number of statehouse reporters has declined by two-thirds since 2005. And no one would suggest that the picture in Wisconsin is much better.
RC: Yet, statehouse coverage remains important.
JN: Vitally important. The states are still what Robert M. La Follette and Louis Brandeis understood them to be: our laboratories of democracy. The states are where great reforms are initiated, as Wisconsinites know. It's not just that this state led the way on the issues that mattered at the start of the last century: progressive taxation, unemployment compensation, primary elections to break the power of the political bosses. This is the state that led on conservation and environmental protection in the 1960s and 1970s, on LGBTQ rights in the 1980s, on state-based responses to the health-care crisis such as Badgercare and FamilyCare.
Journalists who want to see where new ideas are coming from have historically looked to progressive states such as Wisconsin and Oregon because these are the places where the future is written. It is very rare that policy innovations come from Washington. In part that is because the special interests that defend a corrupt status quo concentrate their resources on electing a Congress that will serve their interests. No matter what party is in charge in DC, there is pressure from bankers and CEOs and their lobbyists for deregulation and tax cuts. The Republicans have tended in recent decades to be more inclined to be subservient to corporate interests than the Democrats, but remember that Bill Clinton championed the disastrous deregulation of Wall Street in the late 1990s and that Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the bailout of the banks in 2008. So Washington is a mess. At best, there's a little more hope in the states.
RC: But that hasn't really been the case in Wisconsin in recent years
JN: Unfortunately, the same forces that seek to influence decisions in DC also spend money on electioneering and lobbying in the states -- as Wisconsin saw when the Koch brothers and their allies poured money into electing Scott Walker and Republican majorities in the legislature. Walker's governorship was a time of retrenchment for Wisconsin. Instead of innovating, Wisconsin's elected leaders literally borrowed templates from right-wing "think tanks" in Washington rather than listening to Wisconsinites. We need journalism to expose this dumbing down and bartering off of policy making.
There are still some fine reporters covering the Capitol here. I'm associated with The Capital Times, Wisconsin's historic progressive newspaper, and I'm very proud of the fact that we maintain serious investigative reporting and a good deal of statehouse coverage -- as well as an aggressive editorial page. The Associated Press and Wisconsin Public Radio still provide some excellent coverage. The [Wisconsin] State Journal makes an effort, as does the [Milwaukee] Journal Sentinel -- especially Dan Bice. I also give high marks to Isthmus, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. But we would be lying to ourselves if we imagined that there is sufficient day-to-day coverage of the legislature, state agencies and the state courts.
RC: How big a gap is there?
JN: An overwhelming one. As I said, we have some fine people making an effort to cover politics and policy in Wisconsin. But it would be absurd, and shameful, to suggest that there are enough reporters on the beat. There simply are not.
One of the big challenges is this: We have media outlets that do important investigations and feature stories. The problem is that traditional beat coverage just isn't happening. Let me give you an example: It has been devastating for Wisconsin that there have not been teams of reporters covering the Foxconn debacle and the mess with WEDC [the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation] and what passes for economic development in Wisconsin. This is a full-on, clown-car parade. National publications have done tons of exposes regarding Foxconn yet many Wisconsinites are still under the illusion that this was a credible economic development deal. It never was credible, and it never would have gotten as far as it did if there was serious and sufficient day-in, day-out coverage.
Of course, that's just the beginning of the void. In a state of 5.8 million people, we really should have multiple reporters from multiple publications and broadcast outlets covering not just the governor and the legislature, but the day-to-day workings of state agencies such as the Department of Revenue, the Department of Transportation and, of course, the Department of Corrections. There has been some fine reporting on some egregious circumstances for incarcerated young people, but understand this: If we had consistent beat reporting on the criminal justice system, we would be see dramatically more progress toward the criminal justice reforms that are so urgent.
The Supreme Court and the state appellate courts should be covered by reporters from different publications with different perspectives -- and there should be several reporters covering the Supreme Court elections beat. Supreme Court elections are different from elections for other state posts -- different rules, different streams of money, different ethical concerns and impacts. Yet, they tend to be covered as standard political campaigns. That feeds into a cynicism regarding the courts and, frankly, empowers those who would corrupt the courts by politicizing them.
But it's not just about the institutions. It's about the issues -- profound issues that are changing Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is experiencing a farm crisis. This state should have reporters covering the state Department of Agriculture and the intersection of its operations and those of the federal Department of Agriculture, Trump's tariff machinations and all the related issues. This is "America's Dairyland," but farm and rural issues tend to be treated as an afterthought by most media.
RC: What's the most serious gap in coverage?
JN: I'd say the corruption crisis. Our political campaigns are guided by out-of-state donors and consultants, not candidates and voters. Our legislative chambers are gerrymandered. Our court races are politicized in ways that are dramatically at odds with how they were designed to be run. And, mark my words, the 2021 contest for state Superintendent of Public Instruction will be a brutal battle that is slathered in outside money.
We need a lot more journalism. Fast!
RC: That's what we're trying to do.
JN: Good. Every expansion in the pool of journalists covering Wisconsin is an exciting prospect. And it becomes more exciting because of the people involved -- experienced men and women who understand the state and the issues. What you and your colleagues are proposing to do is important. It begins to fill the void. I'm afraid the key word is "begins." There will still be a void, but putting more reporters on the beat matters now more than ever. Ultimately, we have to identify new revenue models, new structures. The fight for the future of journalism in Wisconsin and nationally -- indeed, internationally -- is a critical one. What we want is more journalism and, frankly, more competition, with lots of different beats and lots of different perspectives. The point isn't just the journalism. It's the democracy, because Evjue's equation is still the right one: "Let the people have the truth and the freedom to discuss it and all will go well."
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Resolution Condemning Trump's Racist Attacks 'Not Enough,' Say Progressives: 'We Must Impeach'
House Democrats, said CREDO Action, must "use all the power they have to try to remove a racist from the White House"
Jul 17, 2019
After the House late Tuesday passed a nonbinding resolution condemning President Donald Trump's racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen, outside progressives and lawmakers argued a "strongly worded" rebuke is not sufficient to hold the president accountable and called for impeachment hearings to begin immediately.
In a statement after the resolution passed largely along party lines--with just four House Republicans breaking from their party and joining the united Democratic caucus--CREDO Action co-director Heidi Hess said the vote "is not enough."
" Donald Trump is a racist, and it's good to see House Democrats finally calling him out for what he is," Hess said of the resolution, which condemned Trump's "racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color."
But Hess said Democrats must go further, a sentiment that was echoed across social media:
"House Democrats should stand with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley when they push for greater accountability for the Trump administration," said Hess. "And they should either pass Rep. Al Green's articles of impeachment or immediately start an impeachment investigation in order to use all the power they have to try to remove a racist from the White House."
Shortly following the passage of the nonbinding resolution Tuesday night, Green, a Democrat from Texas, introduced new articles of impeachment against the president--a move that was reportedly met with opposition by the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
"To condemn a racist president is not enough, we must impeach him," Green said in a statement. "This will be a defining vote. The world is watching, and history will judge us all."
Green read his impeachment resolution in full on the House floor late Tuesday:
Donald John Trump has, by his statements, brought the high office of the president of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace and disrepute, has sown discord among the people of the United States, has demonstrated that he is unfit to be President, and has betrayed his trust as president of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, and has committed a high misdemeanor in office.
Therefore, Donald John Trump, by causing such harm to the society of the United States, is unfit to be president and warrants impeachment, trial and removal from office.
As the Washington Post reported Tuesday, "Green's move will force House Democrats to deal with the [impeachment] issue in the near term because of the privileged nature of the resolution."
"Under House rules," according to the Post, "Democratic leadership can decide to try to table the impeachment articles, effectively killing them for now and risk criticism from the party's liberal base; refer them to the House Judiciary Committee for possible consideration; or allow the vote to proceed. If leaders do nothing, Green can force a vote on the impeachment articles in two legislative days."
Green's impeachment resolution comes just 24 hours after the four Democratic congresswomen targeted by Trump's racist tweets said during a press conference that they will not be baited by the president's attacks and reiterated their support for impeachment.
"I have not made impeachment central to my election or my tenure," said Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and Somali refugee who Trump has singled out for particularly vile abuse. "But since the day that I was elected, I've said to people it is not if he will be impeached, but when. It is time for us to stop allowing this president to make a mockery out of our Constitution. It is time for us to impeach this president."
Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, echoed Omar, aiming her message at Democratic leaders.
"I urge House leadership, many of my colleagues, to impeach this lawless president," said Tlaib.
In a tweet following the House vote Tuesday night, The Nation's John Nichols expressed agreement with calls for Democrats to do more than pass a nonbinding condemnation of the president.
"The House vote to criticize Trump for being a scorching racist was fine," said Nichols. "But I would prefer to impeach Donald Trump now."
"There is no question that Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office," Nichols wrote in a column this week. "Nor is there any question that, as Rashida Tlaib reminds us, presidential racism is an appropriate place of beginning for the accountability moment that this country so desperately requires."
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Fresh Demands for Labor Secretary Alex Acosta's Resignation Mount After Jeffrey Epstein Arrested for Child Sex Trafficking Charges
Acosta has long faced intense public criticism for helping Epstein secure a "sweetheart plea deal" while serving as Miami's top federal prosecutor
Jul 07, 2019
The arrest of financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on federal child sex trafficking charges elicited fresh demands for the resignation of Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who helped Epstein secure a "sweetheart plea deal" for previous allegations while serving as Miami's top federal prosecutor over a decade ago.
Following news of Epstein's arrest late Saturday, reporters, politicians, and other observers called on Acosta to immediately step down--bolstering demands that have mounted in recent months amid a legal challenge to Epstein's deal filed by survivors.
CNN opinion contributor Raul A. Reyes wrote Sunday that "Acosta's actions are worthy of bipartisan outrage and should offend every American father and mother. Acosta betrayed the vulnerable to benefit the powerful. His deal for Epstein shows a disregard for child welfare, victims' rights and Justice Department procedures. Ironically, as secretary of labor, Acosta is responsible for monitoring human trafficking."
Over the years, Epstein has been tied to various high-profile individuals, including retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz and the U.K.'s Prince Andrew as well as former President Bill Clinton and current President Donald Trump.
According to the Daily Beast, which first reported on the financier's arrest late Saturday:
Epstein was arrested for allegedly sex trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005, and will appear in court in New York on Monday, according to three law enforcement sources. Epstein, who owns a New York City mansion and an island in the Caribbean, was being held at the federal lockup in Manhattan ahead of his court date.
Saturday's arrest by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force comes about 12 years after the 66-year-old financier essentially got a slap on the wrist for allegedly molesting dozens of underage girls in Florida.
For more than a decade, Epstein's alleged abuse of minors has been the subject of lawsuits brought by victims, investigations by local and federal authorities, and exposes in the press. But despite the attention cast on his alleged sex crimes, the hedge-funder has managed to avoid any meaningful jail time, let alone federal charges.
The new indictment--which, according to two sources, will be unsealed Monday in Manhattan federal court--will reportedly allege that Epstein sexually exploited dozens of underage girls in a now-familiar scheme: paying them cash for "massages" and then molesting or sexually abusing them in his Upper East Side mansion or his palatial residence in Palm Beach. Epstein will be charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors--which could put him away for a maximum of 45 years. The case is being handled by the Public Corruption Unit of the Southern District of New York, with assistance from the district's human-trafficking officials and the FBI.
Sources told the Miami Herald that Epstein was arrested at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport and "around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, about a dozen federal agents broke down the door to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse to execute search warrants." A source in New York told the Florida newspaper that Monday's bail hearing "will be critical because if they grant him bail, he has enough money that he will disappear and they will never get him."
In a series of stories from last November titled "Perversion of Justice," Herald reporter Julie K. Brown detailed how Acosta, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, worked with Epstein's attorneys to craft an agreement that was kept secret from Epstein's victims.
Epstein "was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls--with the help of young female recruiters--to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day," Brown reported in November. "Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life."
Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal--called a non-prosecution agreement--essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.
The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to "any potential co-conspirators" who were also involved in Epstein's crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein's various homes or on his plane.
As Common Dreams reported in December--amid previous calls for Acosta to resign, which were sparked by the Herald's series--National Organization for Women (NOW) president Toni Van Pelt said that "Epstein plays by the same rule book as Donald Trump, Les Moonves, Harvey Weinstein, Eric Schneiderman, and other powerful men who have been revealed as serial abusers of women."
"Epstein's scant 13-month stay in a county jail--where he was even allowed to spend twelve hours a day, six days a week, at his office," Van Pelt said, "was made possible by a culture of powerful men, enabling each other, while dismissing, excusing, or demeaning the women and children they brutalize with physical and sexual violence."
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Because 'Drums of War Are Beating,' Bernie Sanders Says Everything Must Be Done to Prevent US Attack on Iran
"Voices of dissent went unheeded in the lead-up to the Iraq war," says the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. "They must be heeded now."
Jun 22, 2019
As the threat of war "looms" amidst a coordinated push by the Trump administration that has ratcheted up tensions with Iran, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling on the U.S. Congress and the American people to work together to ensure that another mistake like the 2003 invasion of Iraq--"the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history"--is not allowed to happen again.
"The constitution is very clear: it is Congress, not the president, who decides when we go to war. It is imperative that Congress immediately make it clear to the president that taking us into hostilities with Iran without congressional authorization would be both unconstitutional and illegal."
--Sen. Bernie Sanders"The drums of war are beating in Washington again," Sanders wrote in a Friday night Guardian op-ed as he demanded Congress "do everything it can to prevent this war" and that people speaking out against the prospect of a U.S. attack--ultimately ignored by lawmakers ahead of the Iraq War--be listened to this time around.
According to the op-ed:
Sixteen years ago, the US committed one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of our country by attacking Iraq. That war was sold to the American people based on a series of lies about weapons of mass destruction. One of the leading advocates for that war was John Bolton, who served as a member of the Bush administration and is now Donald Trump's national security adviser. Incredibly, even today, Bolton is one of the few remaining people in the world who continues to believe that the Iraq war was a good idea.
That war led to the deaths of more than 4,400 American troops, with tens of thousands of American soldiers wounded, many severely, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed. It unleashed a wave of radicalism and destabilization across the region that we will be dealing with for many years to come. It was the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history.
Trump campaigned on getting the US out of "endless wars," but his administration is taking us down a path that has made war with Iran more and more likely.
As Common Dreams reported on Friday, progressive anti-war critics have sounded the alarm over the Trump administration's claim that it has outright authority to launch offensive strikes against Iran. While Trump admitted Friday that he called off a bombing raid just minutes before it was set to begin--a claim and timeline of events that new reporting has now called into question--Sanders argues that the U.S. Constitution is explicit in stating that the executive branch does not possess such power.
"The constitution is very clear: it is Congress, not the president, who decides when we go to war," wrote Sanders. "It is imperative that Congress immediately make it clear to the president that taking us into hostilities with Iran without congressional authorization would be both unconstitutional and illegal."
Congress, he added, "must do everything it can to prevent this war."
Backing Sanders' call, John Nichols, writing for The Nation late on Friday, detailed why, "since the shambling excuse for a president will not stand down, it is time for Congress to stand up."
With several provisions moving through both the House and the Senate, Nichols reports, there are specific ways that lawmakers could exert their authority to curtail the president if they so choose.
"The House and Senate," Nichols demanded, "need to send clear signals regarding the intentions of the branch of government that is constitutionally charged with responsibility for declaring wars and authorizing or rejecting military missions."
With powerful voices--both in government and in the media agitating for war against Iran--Sanders in his op-ed emphasized that the same mistakes that led to the disastrous decision of 2003 must not be repeated.
"Voices of dissent went unheeded in the lead-up to the Iraq war," Sanders said. "They must be heeded now."
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