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pat ryan
Swing-District Democrat Says Midterm Voters Made Clear They Want Party to ‘Take on the Villains Screwing Them Over’
"This was an election about power," said US Rep. Pat Ryan.
Nov 06, 2026
Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, who represents New York's 18th congressional district, said on Friday that his party's victory in this week's elections has given it a mandate to take on billionaires and corporate interests.
In a multi-post thread posted to social media, Ryan sought to challenge predictable political narratives taking shape in the corporate media about the reasons for Democrats’ historic wins.
"While pundits do the same-old tired debate of whether Tuesday’s election results mean Democrats should be more progressive or more moderate, they’re missing the whole damn point," Ryan began. "This was an election about POWER."
"Over the past two years, Trump has made it abundantly clear who’s in power," Ryan continued. "And big surprise, it's not the American people—who are getting screwed over by a political and economic system rigged in favor of the top 1%."
Ryan then listed off a number of bad actors who have been rigging the system even further to their benefit under Trump's watching, including "AI oligarchs getting tax breaks to build a technology that could kill us all," "UnitedHealth denying your insurance claims (from the provider they own!), while you go bankrupt," and "[SpaceX CEO] Elon Musk spending $750 million to buy our elections, while making billions in government contracts."
"Voters see how Trump and Republicans are using their power, and they said HELL NO," Ryan said. "They want to feel in control of their own lives again. They want elected leaders who will listen to THEM, fight for them, and deliver for them. Not for the ultra-rich and the Epstein class."
Now that voters in 2026 have firmly rejected the GOP, Ryan said, it is now up to Democrats to deliver a fairer economic system that doesn't simply funnel money to the ultrarich.
"Democrats who won across the country understood that voters don’t just want lower costs," Ryan emphasized. "They want us to fundamentally fix this broken system. They want us to call out and take on the villains screwing them over, whether corrupt politicians or greedy CEOs, and put power back in their hands. Be a leader who works for the PEOPLE—not the billionaires and corporations funding our politics."
Ryan's post echoes a report published on Thursday by Data for Progress, which found that populist economic appeals were central to Democrats' Tuesday electoral success.
The report also found robust support among voters for a number of specific populist policies, including higher taxes on millionaires, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and a temporary moratorium on building artificial intelligence data centers.
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'Singularly Unqualified' Hegseth Executes Purge of Top Military Brass as Iran War Spirals Out of Control
Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the ousted generals were likely “telling Hegseth his Iran war plans are unworkable, disastrous, and deadly.”
Apr 03, 2026
As President Donald Trump’s war in Iran goes further off the rails, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth carried out a “purge” of US Army leadership on Thursday, ousting its most senior general and two other top officers and reportedly leaving many senior officials stunned.
The Pentagon has not provided an official explanation for the sudden firing of Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, who was jettisoned along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain. But speculation was rampant Thursday as the White House continued to insist its war on Iran is going as planned.
Tom Nichols wrote for The Atlantic on Thursday that those dismissed were likely casualties of “Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army... as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.”
Nichols suggested the latest firings were part of an effort to eliminate allies of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who has reportedly pushed back against Hegseth's attempt to enforce rigid ideological conformity and excise what he views as "wokeness" from the military.
Most recently, Driscoll reportedly objected to Hegseth's demands that he remove four Army officers—two Black men and two women—from a list of those to be promoted to brigadier general, while allowing the other mostly white male officers to be promoted.
NBC reported on Thursday that they were among more than a dozen Black and female officers that Hegseth has attempted to block from advancement across the four branches of the military.
Just before his firing, George—once an aide to former President Joe Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin—had reportedly asked to meet with Hegseth about his demotions of the four Army officers, but Hegseth refused.
The Atlantic reported that Driscoll, who has been rumored as a possible replacement for Hegseth amid embarrassing bungles like last year's "Signalgate" scandal, could be shown the door next.
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a US Army combat veteran who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, described George as "a Patriot who has served our nation honorably and bravely for decades" and said his firing was "a huge loss for our Army and our country."
He added that "Hegseth and Trump firing the highest ranking Army officer, in the middle of a war they started, shows you exactly where their priorities are."
While these sorts of petty grudge matches and power struggles have been a hallmark of Hegseth's term at Defense, Nichols remarked that "dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, theorizes that Hegseth's purge—which is one of the biggest wartime leadership shakeups in recent memory—did not happen in spite of the Iran war, but because of it.
According to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who was quoted by TIME on Thursday, Trump's inner circle—including Hegseth and other military and foreign policy officials—has formed a sort of information bubble around the president, giving him a “rose-colored view” of the war, even as it grows more unpopular by the day with the American public.
The high-level firings come as Trump and Hegseth are beginning what they said would be a multi-week campaign of bombing Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”
Hegseth has also continued to float the possible deployment of ground troops, potentially to invade and occupy critical strategic areas, like Iran's oil export hub Kharg Island, which analysts have warned would be unworkable and put thousands of US troops in harm's way.
"It's likely that experienced generals are telling Hegseth his Iran war plans are unworkable, disastrous, and deadly," Murphy said.
"Also, Hegseth is firing a ton of experienced generals right now."
According to Jennifer Griffin, the Chief National Security Correspondent for Fox News, Hegseth’s most recent firings “[add] to a long list of Secretary Hegseth asking senior military officers to step down with no reason given,” including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of US Southern Command, both of whom were also Black men.
Dan Lamothe, a military affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, added that Hegseth has now almost totally remade the Joint Chiefs of Staff since taking over as defense secretary and that only two original members, Gen. Eric Smith of the Marine Corps and Gen. Chance Saltzman of the Space Force, remain from the original team.
"The American people deserve to know why so many of their top officers are being tossed out of their jobs," Nichols said.
Noting the defense secretary’s penchant for secrecy, he suggested that now that George and other senior officers pushed out by Hegseth are considered civilians, "maybe they can step forward and tell their fellow citizens what on Earth is going on in Hegseth’s Pentagon.“
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