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Working Families Party Goes 'All-In' to Support El-Sayed in Michigan
"We’re excited to work with Abdul to win Medicare for All, create good union jobs, and end the influence of big money in politics," said the progressive party.
May 26, 2026
Following the victories of Working Families Party-endorsed progressive candidates like Rep. Analilia Mejia in New Jersey and Pennsylvania state lawmaker Chris Rabb, who won a Democratic US House primary last week, the organization announced Tuesday that it is "all in" on former public health official Abdul El-Sayed's primary campaign in the key state of Michigan.
“Abdul has dedicated his career to making government work for regular people and fighting to improve our broken healthcare system,” Maurice Mitchell, WFP’s national director, said in a statement. “He’s not afraid to stand up to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or any of the greedy billionaires screwing over our communities."
El-Sayed's race for the August 4 primary has been contentious, with his two opponents—Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (8) elevating attacks on their opponent's decision to campaign with left-wing streamer and commentator Hasan Piker, an outspoken critic of Israel and US military support for the country.
Following those attacks, El-Sayed was shown to gain momentum in polls; he was 10 points ahead of Stevens and 11 points ahead of McMorrow in a survey by Mitchell Research and Communications earlier this month, and 80% ahead among voters under the age of 45.
El-Sayed is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights—differentiating him from Stevens, who has received donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and McMorrow, who has criticized Israel's assault on Gaza but also reportedly wrote a position paper for the influential pro-Israel lobby group.
But the push for Medicare for All, which he published a book about, has been an even more central focus of his political career.
Stevens and McMorrow both reportedly support a public option, and the latter candidate asserted in a recent interview that "the support for a true single payer system isn't there yet"—despite the fact that Medicare for All had the support of 78% of Democrats and 65% of overall American voters in a Data for Progress poll late last year, and has been found to have broad support in other surveys in recent years.
"We’re excited to work with Abdul to win Medicare for All, create good union jobs, and end the influence of big money in politics," said Mitchell on Tuesday.
On social media, the group highlighted public health successes El-Sayed led while heading Detroit’s Health Department and the Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services in Wayne County, Michigan, which serves 1.8 million residents.
"He is the kind of candidate we need in office," said WFP.
Distill Social, a Michigan-based grassroots news organization, said the endorsement "says a lot" to voters weighing their options ahead of the August primary.
WFP's "lane is clear: workers, healthcare, clean water, corporate accountability, and a government that actually fights for people," said the group.
El-Sayed said the group "understands that finding and keeping a good job, guaranteed healthcare, being able to afford a home, and having the freedom to spend time with your family aren't radical ideas. They should be the baseline."
"I'm honored to earn their endorsement," said El-Sayed.
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Rights Groups Warn of Disaster as Trump-GOP Work Requirements Risk Mass Medicaid Loss
“These work requirements address a problem that doesn’t exist," said one researcher. "They just strip healthcare from millions of low-income people by making it harder for them to prove they qualify.”
May 26, 2026
A pair of leading humanitarian groups warned Tuesday that millions of people will soon be "at risk of an avoidable loss of healthcare coverage" as states move to implement new Medicaid work requirements, which were at the center of the reconciliation package enacted by congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump last year.
Oxfam America and Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned in a joint letter to top federal health officials that the work requirements—which mostly target adults in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act—will result in a massive surge in the uninsured population if concrete steps aren't taken to mitigate coverage losses.
The groups point to a Congressional Budget Office analysis projecting the Trump-GOP budget law "will cause roughly 10 million people to lose health insurance coverage by 2034," increasing "the number of uninsured people in the US by nearly 50%, exposing millions of people to high drug and hospital costs, and forcing many to forgo or ration healthcare."
Under the 2025 law, people subject to the work requirements must document 80 hours per month of work or another qualifying activity.
"Work requirements are sold as sensible, pragmatic reforms, but the lived reality couldn’t be more different."
Analysts have warned that the new work reporting mandates—which account for around $326 billion of the Trump-GOP law's total cuts to Medicaid—will create massive administrative hurdles and burdens for Medicaid recipients and for states. Given that most Medicaid recipients already work, experts say coverage loss from the new mandates will largely be attributable to enrollees' failure to comply with byzantine reporting procedures.
“Work requirements are sold as sensible, pragmatic reforms, but the lived reality couldn’t be more different,” said Jackson Gandour, senior policy advisor for economic justice at Oxfam America. “In practice, evidence shows they can create unfair and effectively insurmountable barriers for people who need coverage and are making every effort to meet the requirements.”
The federal work requirements are set to formally take effect in most states by January 2027—though some states are rushing forward with the mandates ahead of schedule, heightening fears of chaos and large-scale coverage loss. By June 1, federal agencies must issue guidance to states on how to implement the new Medicaid work requirements.
Oxfam and HRW urged the Trump administration to do all it can to mitigate coverage loss, including by "reducing documentation requirements, broadly interpreting exemptions, and recognizing a wide range of qualifying activities that reflect real labor conditions, including gig work, unpaid caregiving, and seasonal employment."
A 36-year-old woman in Atlanta, Georgia—which has state-level work requirements that predate the Trump-GOP mandates—told the humanitarian groups that she lost Medicaid and nutrition assistance after her child was born late last year, despite working sufficient hours to comply with Georgia's requirements.
“After I had the baby, my Medicaid and food stamps were turned off,” she said. “[They] said that I failed to report that I was working."
The woman said she's spent months trying to restore her coverage, encountering chaos and administrative barriers.
“It’s hectic,” she said. “You’re not able to reach anybody.”
The Urban Institute has estimated that even if strong mitigation measures are put in place, around 3 million people could lose Medicaid coverage due to the new federal work requirements.
“These work requirements address a problem that doesn’t exist since most Medicaid recipients are already working,” said Matt McConnell, economic justice and rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They won’t fix the budget. They just strip healthcare from millions of low-income people by making it harder for them to prove they qualify.”
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No Matter Who Wins the Iran War, the Global Economy Is Losing
The most vulnerable populations of the Global South are suffering ever-increasing distress, while most of the world has been experiencing rising inflationary pressures and increasing interest rates on government bonds.
May 26, 2026
For all the uncertainty about what will happen next on the military and diplomatic front in the Iran war, there is certainty about what has already happened on the economic front. And it is not good.
The world has seen a spike in oil prices that has been moderated so far by large drawdowns in global oil reserves. In addition, the most vulnerable populations of the Global South are suffering ever-increasing distress, while most of the world has been experiencing rising inflationary pressures and increasing interest rates on government bonds. And even if the US stock market appears relatively unperturbed, a version of this unpleasant mix has also hit the United States.
Global oil prices are much higher than they were before the war, with the financial market benchmark price of Brent crude late last week (down to $91 on weekend news of a possible deal), well above the $60 per barrel of early January. That said, crude prices have been relatively stable within a broad range over the last two months despite a dramatic drop in energy shipments out of the Persian Gulf since the war began.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as of May 13, the cumulative shortfall in global oil deliveries from the Gulf was roughly 1 billion barrels. This shortfall has been absorbed by reduced oil demand (a consequence of higher prices); increased production outside the Gulf; and by a drop in global oil inventories of roughly 250 million barrels, as these were released to hold down prices in the absence of new production from the Gulf coming to the market. However IEA head Fatih Birol warned last week that inventories were dropping at an unsustainable pace, particularly with summer driving season approaching in the Northern Hemisphere.
For all that US energy exporters might benefit from higher global oil prices, US consumers do not.
The biggest shock from the higher cost (and outright shortage) of fuel, petrochemicals, and fertilizers is being felt by the poorest in the Global South. A recent story in The New York Times described how the price for transporting corn into refugee camps in Somalia had doubled or even tripled, as had the price of water at diesel-powered public tubewells. Meanwhile, protests this week in Kenya against fuel price hikes have led to four deaths, and political and financial stresses are mounting across the continent.
In India, sharp jumps in the price of Liquid Petroleum Gas have hit urban households hard, particularly those whose breadwinners work in small-scale industrial establishments. Many such enterprises rely on LPG as fuel and have shut down, displacing a workforce composed of recent migrants from the countryside. And because informal migrant workers in the city do not have access to India’s price-controlled public distribution systems, they have been forced to purchase cooking fuel on the black market at exorbitant rates. The combination has sparked fears of a repeat of a mass return to the countryside, as happened in the Covid-19 summer of 2020.
Stories like these abound across the Global South. A report from the World Food Program (WFP) two months ago (when the war was two weeks old) projected that 45 million more people could be thrust into acute hunger if the war persisted. And a panel of global officials had already warned the world at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington in mid-April that even an immediate cessation of the war would require at least two months before global shipping approached a semblance of normalcy.
Weakness in the real economy of many developing countries has been compounded by financial pressures in the form of larger trade deficits driven by the jump in oil prices, higher inflation, depreciating currencies, drawdowns in central bank reserves, and the threat of central bank rate hikes to keep inflation in check even if the economy is weakening.
In the face of such pressures, many countries were forced to sell foreign exchange or gold reserves to defend their currencies from further depreciation. According to Bloomberg, losses in the Philippines amounted to 8.1% of all reserves, in India to 5.1%, and in Indonesia to 3.8%. India has also imposed stiff tariffs and other restrictions on gold imports, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged Indians to avoid “unnecessary foreign travel,” in additional efforts to limit further pressure on the Rupee from non-energy imports or tourism. And Malawi is reportedly selling not just gold reserves but also semi-processed gold bars bought from local miners.
Europe is less dependent on Persian Gulf oil, with only 7% of it sourced there, as opposed to Asia, which draws roughly 60% of its oil from the region. Even so, it is not immune to the impact of higher prices, with the European Commission’s economic czar warning that the continent faces a stagflationary shock. As a relatively wealthy continent, the EU (and the UK) can afford to grant fiscal subsidies to affected businesses, thus reducing the pain there. However, such measures also force the need to reduce oil demand on the poorest countries that are unable to afford such backstops.
Latin America has proven more resilient to the shocks from the Iran war, helped by the fact that Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador are all net energy exporters, while Mexico runs a small energy deficit but buys most of its natural gas from the US. Chile is the sole large outlier on the front. Still, the energy trade might cushion most major Latin American currencies from sharp depreciation and financial stress, but as an agricultural exporter, the region is vulnerable to higher fertilizer prices and to inflation that could force central banks to raise interest rates.
In the United States, the administration has downplayed the impact of the war on the American people and emphasized how the dramatic increase in US oil production has led to a substantially lower reliance on imported energy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the administration's policies of “energy abundance” have helped the country withstand the shocks from the Iran War. And President Donald Trump said in April that “the United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future…We don’t need it.”
In his recent remarks, Bessent observed that the war had also allowed the US to “focus on the opportunity at hand” as global demand for US energy surged. And, indeed the war has led to a dramatic increase in US exports of crude oil and downstream products. A recent piece in The New York Times noted that the US has exported an additional 145 million barrels of oil since the war began, leading to an increase in revenues of roughly $50 billion.
However, the flip side to this is that US consumers have reportedly spent an extra $40 billion on gasoline prices since the war began. For all that US energy exporters might benefit from higher global oil prices, US consumers do not. And research from the New York Fed suggests that lower-income households were hit much harder by higher energy prices, changing travel patterns in order to keep their gasoline budgets from getting out of hand.
American agriculture, meanwhile, has been hit with a double whammy as two major operating costs, fertilizer and diesel, have both seen sharp price increases. A report last month by the Farm Bureau suggested that 70% of all farmers say they are unable to afford all the fertilizer they need. This in turn could translate into lower crop yields and higher food prices—a worry that is even more pronounced among smallholders in the Global South, underlying the global effects of this war.
And while the US stock market has remained relatively buoyant through all this, boosted primarily by Artificial Intelligence and Semiconductor stocks, there are signs of deeper worries in global bond markets, including in the United States. Concerns over inflationary pressures driven by rising energy and food prices have combined with worries over the rising fiscal costs associated with increased defense budgets, fuel subsidies, and massive reconstruction needs to push global bond yields up significantly.
After annual consumer price inflation in the US jumped to 3.8% (far above the Federal Reserve’s 2.0% inflation target), the US Treasury’s 30-year bond hit its highest yield in 30 years last week. And while that might be good news for those who own newly issued bonds and will receive the interest paid on them, it is less favorable for those looking to buy or refinance a home as mortgage rates rise alongside US government bond yields.
Thus, the impact of this war within the US might not be as severe as that in large parts of the Global South, but even within America, there will be many more who lose than gain from the economic consequences of this war.
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Tax Refunds From GOP’s Big Ugly Bill ‘Largely Erased’ Thanks to Illegal Iran War: Expert
"By our reckoning, wage growth has steadily lost ground relative to the pace of inflation since the middle of last year," said one economist.
May 26, 2026
Congressional Republicans had been hoping their political standing would improve this spring when American voters received larger refunds thanks to changes in US tax law made under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
However, The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that much of the projected fiscal stimulus from the larger refunds has already been swallowed up by the rise in gas and energy prices caused by President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, and the financial situation could grow even worse in the coming months.
Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon, told The Financial Times that "the tax refunds have been largely erased by the increase in Middle East price pressures," and warned that "the longer the conflict lasts, the more we move to an adverse scenario where inflation proves more persistent and erodes consumer spending growth."
Nathan Sheets, global chief economist at Citigroup, told The Financial Times that the Iran war has only accelerated problems for US consumers who were already facing high pressures from the cost of living.
"By our reckoning, wage growth has steadily lost ground relative to the pace of inflation since the middle of last year," Sheets said. "First President Trump’s tariffs and, more recently, Iran-related pressures on oil and commodity prices have pushed up prices relative to wages."
US retailers have been expecting the positive impact of the tax refunds to dwindle, with Target CFO Jim Lee telling The Financial Times that they "will be fading over the rest of the year" as Americans are using larger shares of their incomes to pay for basics such as food and energy.
Lee's concerns were echoed by Walmart CFO John David Rainey, who told CNBC last week that while tax refunds have been helping Americans buffer the costs associated with the Iran war, that financial cushion is shrinking by the day.
“I think higher tax returns muted some of the pressure related to higher fuel prices," said Rainey, "and as we’re in a period of time right now where those tax refunds are largely not coming in, I think consumers are going to feel more of that pressure from higher fuel prices."
Walmart's stock price on has fallen sharply over the last week despite strong quarterly earnings, as investors express concerns that low-income consumers are feeling squeezed financially.
As reported by The New York Times, Walmart noted in its most recent earnings call that "sales continued to be driven by its low-price private label goods and higher-income households trading down to stretch their budgets," suggesting that consumers are under increasing distress.
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