Ralph welcomes “New York Times” reporter Natasha Singer to discuss her new book, “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.” Then, Ralph talks about Donald Trump’s midterm convention speeches and the latest impeachment drive with Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein.

Natasha Singer is a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of technology, business and education. She has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade, and her school tech reporting helped prompt California to enact a landmark student online data protection law. In 2019, she was part of a Times team whose tech coverage won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting. She is also the author of the book Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.

It’s not about the companies immediately making money off schools. It’s about influencing kids, getting customers early and for life. But I think more importantly, it’s about imprinting Silicon Valley worldviews and values on young people. So that you get docile consumers who maybe aren’t worried about wholesale surveillance and data gathering, and docile employees who are not going to push back against being surveilled by their employer or using AI tools or having AI replace them. And so I think this story about tech companies capturing the classroom is not just about how they’re shaping learning. It’s about how some of the most powerful, wealthiest corporations on the planet are able to influence school systems.

Natasha Singer

Since the time of Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley has attached this fancy word “literacy” to whatever product they have, and then told schools they needed to teach it. So in the era of Steve Jobs, there was suddenly this fervor that we had to teach “computer literacy” because Japan was ahead and if we wanted our country to compete, we needed computer literacy. And then the internet came and we got “internet literacy” and “smartphone literacy” and then “digital literacy”... And now we’re in this moment where Silicon Valley and tech-funded nonprofit groups are pushing “AI literacy”, except we don’t know what AI literacy is and we don’t know how to teach AI. And so it makes it sound really fancy: “AI literacy”. But oftentimes the companies are really just talking about: “Learn how to use our chatbot.” And now you have asked: When are we going to stop listening to these people? When are we going to stop rushing to teach whatever product “literacy” Silicon Valley is pushing us to do this week, and then pivot with whiplash to whatever they’re pushing next week? And I think that’s the question of the hour.

Natasha Singer

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

They’re playing to dodge accountability by saying, “We’re neither for nor against this,” like someone who’s claiming they’re agnostic. Now, how you could be agnostic on Donald Trump, whose impeachable offenses are proven out of his own mouth? All these statements that he’s made are open and notorious. And so it’s almost implausible to suggest that these people don’t know that he has committed impeachable offenses and are deciding to duck for political, partisan purposes (their calculation as to what would help them politically). Now, that, of course, is directly contrary to their oaths of office. Hakeem Jeffries, like his colleagues, has taken an oath (without mental reservation or purpose of evasion) to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. At present, the Constitution is in flames under Donald Trump. And to sit and do nothing—to declare neutrality between the firefighter and the fire—is itself an impeachable offense for which they should be impeached and be prosecuted for perjury when they were sworn into office.

Bruce Fein

News 9/18/26

* Our first stories this week are about impeachment. On the Democratic side, outgoing Congressman Al Green, long a champion of impeachment, introduced a resolution which “sought to impeach Mr. Trump over the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection…[citing] the killings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero by federal immigration agents this year,” per CBS. House Democratic Leadership punted, announcing that they would neither whip votes for nor oppose the resolution, opting instead to simply vote “present” on the motion to table Green’s resolution. Ultimately 47 members voted present and 147 voted against tabling, but even put together it would not have been enough to overcome the 232 votes in favor of setting the resolution aside. Impeachment has resurfaced as a major question for Democrats as they appear poised to retake the House and perhaps even the Senate. Jamie Raskin, who would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the majority, said earlier this month that Democrats “will not hesitate” to use the tool if needed and that Mr. Trump has “undoubtedly” committed impeachable offenses. However, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar said this week that impeachment is “not anything that is top of the agenda for House Democrats.”

* On the other side of the aisle, outgoing Congressman Thomas Massie also introduced articles of impeachment, with these singling out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for frustrating “Congress’s ability to exercise its most solemn constitutional responsibility” and allowing an “unlawful war” to continue in Iran. Axios notes that this resolution also includes articles concerning “U.S. military operations in Venezuela and Yemen, including accusing [Hegseth] of illegally directing the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without congressional authorization.” Massie lost his re-election primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed opponent; he has since made noises about pursuing the creation of a third party in conjunction with other dissident right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It remains to be seen what he will do once he is out of office come January.

* Speaking of bucking one’s party, this week POLITICO reported that conservative House Democrats Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez again broke with leadership to “advance a slate of GOP bills in a procedural vote that was otherwise on track to fail.” The rules in question set up votes to grant yet more power to President Trump, including “new authorities to sanction Russia’s trading partners…[and] rolling back…EPA regulations.” This same duo voted with the GOP several weeks ago, after which House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised a “serious response.” However, he “later indicated that there would be no public consequences.” It is impossible to imagine a progressive being given this kind of long leash by leadership. For his part, Golden is not seeking re-election, but Gluesenkamp-Perez is and if she wins – no guarantee as her district went for Trump in 2024 – she will certainly come into the next Congress with a substantial amount of enmity built up from the rest of the Democratic caucus.

* In more news from the Hill, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) went into crisis mode earlier this week when some of the high-profile progressives in the caucus, namely AOC and Nydia Velázquez, found out that the institute’s Annual Awards Gala – at which Velázquez, who is not seeking re-election is to be presented with a lifetime achievement award – had agreed to be sponsored by Palantir. Apparently, the deal was brokered by CEO and President of the CHCI Marco Davis and Velázquez went “ballistic” upon hearing the news. Congressman Darren Soto, the Chair of the CHCI claims to have been “unaware of the donation” and that as soon as he learned of it, Soto “ordered Davis to return the money.” CHCI “has not said publicly what tier Palantir bought, what it paid, or…whether CHCI has any written policy governing which corporations may sponsor its events.” Palantir is the corporation responsible for the “ImmigrationOS platform used to target immigrants for arrest and deportation.” This from Migrant Insider.

* In a final story from the nation’s capital, AP reports the celebrated John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will close, following a vote from the Trump-controlled board which came on the heels of a ruling blocking the president from returning his name to the building without the approval of Congress. According to this story, “Trump said the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was allowed to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.” All involved agree that the building is in need of major repairs. The administration however is hinting that if they do not move ahead with the plan to inscribe Trump’s name in multiple locations in the complex, “the building may need to be demolished,” a threat with added gravity in the wake of his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.

* Turning to the campaign trail, this week former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat-turned-Independent, endorsed his former colleague, Maine Republican Susan Collins. In a statement, he said “[if you] lose the Susan Collinses of the Senate, you’re losing the soul of the Senate.” Whether that “soul” is worth preserving is not something Manchin addresses. Manchin has also expressed support for Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan, and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. Collins for her part said she was “honored” to have Manchin’s support, calling him “a dear friend and trusted colleague,” though many have noted she never broke ranks to endorse her “dear friend” from across the aisle. In July, Manchin launched the Independent Leadership Council, a group dedicated to building up a centrist political base outside of the major parties. This from CNN.

* In Michigan, the Detroit News reports the Democratic Party has, at long last, added progressive climate activist and Democratic nominee in the state’s 7th Congressional District to its heralded “Red to Blue” list. Lawrence, celebrating being added to the list, called it a “validation of all the hard work we’ve been doing and the movement we’ve built,” adding “I’m just proud of all the volunteers and the whole team. This shows this is one of the most critical races in the whole country that will determine control of the U.S. House in November.” This week, Lawrence also scored the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign, which called Lawrence a “Pro-Equality Champion.” The News highlights that Lawrence has “raised about $1.2 million from July 2025 through July 2026, and had about $383,000 on hand as of July 15…[he has also] organized a large grassroots movement to support his campaign and knocked over 100,000 doors ahead of his primary.”

* In Los Angeles, new polling shows progressive challenger Angela Gonzales-Torres edging out embattled incumbent Congressman Jimmy Gomez. The new poll in question, conducted by Upswing Research and Strategy and commissioned by “Guardrails Alliance…[which] was formed this year to counter the influence of pro-AI groups like the Leading the Future super PAC network,” shows Gonzales-Torres at 41% and Gomez at 38%, with 20% undecided. The margin of error is calculated to be just under 5%. Guardrails Alliance is “keeping a close eye on the race,” because Gomez is considered among the most progressive Democrats who is close with the AI industry, being endorsed by Leading the Future, a Super PAC funded by and opposed to most government regulation of the AI industry. According to the same poll, “Gonzales-Torres leads 63% to Gomez’s 22% after voters are told he is backed by Leading the Future.” This from Semafor.

* Meanwhile, in the final primaries in the nation, Spotlight Delaware is reporting a progressive sweep in state house races throughout the “First State.” According to this piece, the Working Families Party won eight out of the 13 races in which it endorsed candidates, including “five new House members, one incumbent House member, [and] one new State Senator,” as well as a new council member in New Castle County. This piece also highlights the victory of Tyeisha “Tye” Grier, who defeated Rep. Bill “Lumpy” Carson, a “nearly 20-year incumbent who represents the Smyrna-area 28th House District.” Another highlight is the victory of Delaware DSA-backed candidate Shay Frisby, who defeated incumbent State Senator Ray Seigfried. While centrist incumbents higher up the ballot, namely Senator Chris Coons, sailed to re-election, these down ballot victories will help build up a bench of progressive candidates for the future. Now, with the primary season officially over, we begin the final countdown to election day 2026.

* Our final story this week takes us “across the pond,” where the unity of the United Kingdom is at a breaking point. On Monday, the political leadership of the three semi-autonomous regions of the U.K. – Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – signed a pact affirming that “Scotland, Wales and Ireland have distinct histories, identities and political traditions…[including] the right to self-determination.” Elsewhere in this document, the parties agree that “the future of [their] nations [belong] in the European Union,” and “Westminster’s time is coming to an end.” ABC notes that this is “the first time the leaders of all three countries are either from pro-independence parties,” referring to the Scottish National Party and the Welsh Plaid Cymru or pro-unification in the case of Northern Ireland, which is led by Sinn Féin for the first time in its history. The pact ends with a demand for the “British Government to prepare for, plan and facilitate constitutional change in each jurisdiction,” such that the “voices of [their] nations are heard, that [their] people have the opportunity to thrive, and that cooperation between Scotland, Wales and Ireland can be strengthened.” This stunning declaration surely presents a crisis to the Labour government of Andy Burnham, who only took control from former Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the end of July. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Keira Havens a United States Air Force veteran and the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment a grassroots organization that lobbies Congress and supports candidates who are willing to impeach and convict Donald Trump for a myriad of Constitutional violations. Then Michael Marx, founder of the group CorpEthics that conducts marketing campaigns that apply public pressure to corporations to change their behavior, joins us to discuss his new book “Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.”

Keira Havens is a United States Air Force veteran, a former scientist, and a longtime political activist. She is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment.

I am a veteran. I was in the United States Air Force. My job was to launch nuclear missiles. I was an ICBM crew commander for four years. And that entire system, that entire weapons system is based on trust that the person at the top has a handle on what needs to be done and has good faith and good leadership to navigate this country. That is not the case right now. That cornerstone is beyond weakened—it has just crumbled straight into dust. The trust and faith in the American President as a capable leader, capable of effective leadership, is an assumption we can no longer make.

Keira Havens

His entire cabinet, everybody that gets appointed to the judicial system under his people, everybody that is building out the roadmap for what the economy looks like, all of these failures of leadership—yes, they roll upward to the President. But it is an entire administration of people that do not respect the Constitution, and are not planning on upholding it, and require impeachment, removal and conviction at the bare minimum. Because these folks have had a taste of power now, and they will be back for more. And impeachment is the only way to insist that they never be allowed to hold power again.

Keira Havens

[Democrats] will talk about how bad things are (and they will fundraise off it repeatedly over and over again), but they will not take the additional step and say: “And that is why I will impose consequences.” Our recommended consequence is: impeachment, conviction, removal. But there is more that can be done. There is their making a more plain-spoken assessment of the current situation. And people are hungry to hear it. You don’t have to pretend that this is business as usual. You can actually identify this as a crisis for the Constitution and for this democracy and outline the steps that you will take in your own legislative power.

Keira Havens

Michael Marx is one of the world’s premier environmental corporate campaigners. He served as campaign director for both Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club. He was the co-founder and executive director of ForestEthics (now Stand.earth) and founder of CorpEthics. He is the author of  Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed.

I think we’re a corporatocracy. I think we have the illusion of being a democracy, but really we’re controlled by corporations. Because from the beginning, they control the way we think with their advertising, with the kind of programs they put on, with their investments in local and state and federal political campaigns. And then, they own the government. I mean…not only can they literally get away with murder (particularly not just in the U.S., but worldwide) but the government protects them from liability.

Michael Marx

If you want to fight these companies—right now we’re on the defense, and particularly on the defense in the government. And the only thing saving us right now is legal cases in the courts by Earth Justice and NRDC and Sierra Club and groups like that. And we need to go on offense even stronger in the marketplace because companies don’t own civil society. They can’t buy the advocacy wing, the more ethical wing of civil society. And they don’t know how to play that game as well as they know how to play the government game.

Michael Marx

News 9/11/26

* Our first story this week comes to us from New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the occasion of Labor Day to launch the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power (MOWP). According to the city’s website, the MOWP is the “first office of its kind in the nation, [designed] to use the resources and convening power of City Hall to help workers get informed, connected and organized.” The MOWP will be led by Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and United Auto Workers (UAW) organizing director. Mayor Mamdani is quoted saying, “Every day, working New Yorkers show up, do their jobs, and keep this city running. Too often, they have no say in the conditions they work under…The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will make sure workers have a seat at the table before exploitation becomes a crisis and violations become routine. We’re connecting workers to their rights, to each other and to the organizations ready to stand with them. Because when workers have power, this city works better for everyone.” Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice and former Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su added “This office allows us to get ahead of exploitation instead of simply responding to it…By building relationships with workers, unions and worker centers, we can understand what is happening on the ground and act before problems become crises. That is how we build an economy that delivers for working people.”

* On the other end of the spectrum, ProPublica is out with a new report on the abject capitulation of the Trump administration to corporate interests in the field of consumer protection. This piece explains how Russell Vought – Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until August of this year – previously “boasted” that he’d “refashioned” the CFPB’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans, focusing instead on deregulation, embracing “humility” and adopting a “collaborative approach” to its dealings with companies that harm consumers. This article highlights the example of Bilt, which “fumbled a critical transition” earlier in the year, and instead of using the tools the CFPB might have in the past, such as investigating Bilt’s technology platforms for potential flaws, questioning its third-party contractors or issuing subpoenas, Vought’s hollowed out shell of a CFPB instead bragged that they were able to solve the issue “before it got to the adversarial part of the process.” Lo and behold, just two weeks later “Bilt cardholders received mistaken debt collection notices and saw their credit scores go down as a result, sparking more embarrassing news stories and angry complaints.” This story just goes to show that whatever issues the CFPB might have had in the past, companies simply will not change their bad behavior if there is no proverbial stick in the incentive structure. This piece characterizes Vought’s plan as turning the Bureau from a watchdog into a golden retriever; the problem here is that the retriever has no bite.

* Meanwhile, at least one Democrat is courting a key faction of Trump’s base: POLITICO reports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seeking inroads into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) world. According to this story, AOC’s team has undertaken a monthslong effort behind the scenes to find common ground with this slice of the MAGA base on “pesticides, corporate power and access to safe food,” among other issues. AOC’s team argue that pesticides and chemicals are issues “the traditional left has cared about for decades.” Additionally, influential figures in this world are coming to the realization that these issues transcend partisan politics, something Ralph Nader has preached for his entire career. Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America is quoted saying “I don’t agree with socialism…but…do believe in corporate responsibility…Even if somebody is into

socialism or a conservative, I think we should agree that everyone should have access to

nontoxic food.” Even Alex Clark of Turning Point USA is quoted saying “MAHA voters are not Republican…They’re so focused on health issues. They don’t care who it is that is saying they’re going to get it done.”

* In more democratic socialist news, the LA Times reports DSA LA has voted to endorse mayoral candidate Nithya Raman in her race against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. DSA LA requires a 60% yes vote in order to endorse a candidate; Raman came in just over that threshold, with 937 yes votes out of almost 1,500 cast. Raman’s relationship with DSA LA has been rocky in the past. She was a member before she ever ran for city council in 2020, becoming the first DSA member on the council following her victory, but was formally censured by DSA in 2024 for seeking the endorsement of the liberal zionist group Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles. This complicated relationship led many to wonder whether or not DSA LA would ultimately vote to endorse Raman in this election. However, Tal Levy a member of DSA-LA’s electoral politics committee, which voted 3 to 2 to recommend the endorsement of Raman, is quoted saying that “socialists are fed up with the status quo and really want to see a significant change in how the city is run,” and while acknowledging Raman’s imperfections, maintained that “there is near-unanimity that she is the better candidate in the race in the general election.” Bass and Raman finished first and second respectively in the June primary, meaning they will face each other head-to-head in November; Republican candidate and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt failed to advance to the general election.

* DSA LA endorsed other candidates as well, most notably Angela Gonzales-Torres, who is running for Congress against incumbent Jimmy Gomez in California 34th congressional district. Gomez has come under intense scrutiny by progressives for his ties to AIPAC – which spent heavily on his behalf last cycle to help him fend off a primary challenge from his left – as well as the cryptocurrency industry and his previously close relationship with fellow California Democrat Eric Swalwell. In August, NPR reported that Gomez was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over “allegations of sexual misconduct” including “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.” As for his AIPAC connections, Track AIPAC estimates Gomez has received over $2.6 million from pro-Israel PACs. The LA Times, in a piece about Justice Democrats also endorsing Gonzales-Torres, notes that Gomez fended off a challenge from his left by David Kim in the last three cycles. Kim has now endorsed Gonzales-Torres.

* In more local democratic socialist news, state legislator David Morales emerged victorious from this week’s mayoral primary in Providence, Rhode Island, defeating incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley by approximately five percentage points. A POLITICO article published shortly before the election, which framed Morales as the Mamdani of Providence, drew attention to the fact that Providence is considered the least affordable rental market in the country, with the “average cost of an apartment topping $2,000 per month while the median income for renters was roughly $50,000.” Morales ran on “establishing a rent-regulation system that would cap annual increases at 4 percent,” to be enacted within his first 100 days; Mayor Smiley “vetoed a similar proposal passed by the Council earlier this year.” Smiley also drew the ire of progressives for his support of Flock camera deployment. The Rhode Island primaries were also notable because they saw the first successful primary challenge against a sitting governor since 2018, with Dan McKee losing nearly two-to-one against Helena Foulkes, scion of the Dodd political dynasty. The final primary elections for this cycle will be held in Delaware next week. Then, it is on to November.

* Yet, despite – or perhaps because – of the Left’s success, the Democratic Party refuses to provide the support infrastructure for these progressive candidates the way they would others. This is manifesting very clearly in the case of Will Lawrence, the climate activist who won the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s seventh congressional district. CNN reports that progressives are “fuming that…The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee [DCCC] has so far declined to add Lawrence to a coveted list of their priority House candidates,” called 2026 Red to Blue – widely seen as effectively a “stamp of approval” from party leaders. According to CNN’s sources, this reluctance to promote Lawrence is being driven by the Congressional Black Caucus over Lawrence’s past comments about moderate Black Democrats’ “defang[ing] the White left.” Lawrence has apologized for his “choice of words.” Ironically, this blacklisting of Lawrence would seem to support that very hypothesis. This article also notes that, for as much as the left is a thorn in the side of the establishment party leadership, it was the “centrist bloc that humiliated leadership last week when some of its members showed they were willing to defy the party line on key priorities — even if it meant helping Republicans…[triggering] a messy internal feud” and prompting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his team to discuss “ways to crack down on any of their members voting for procedural motions that hurt the party – a proposal that has infuriated the left and centrists alike.” Jeffries, who took over the top spot in the House Democratic Caucus in 2023, has never had to lead the caucus while they held a majority in the chamber. He will no doubt face a trial by fire from multiple sides if the Democrats do successfully retake the House, as they seem poised to do.

* Turning to foreign affairs, Bloomberg reports, “The European Union and Canada are working toward a new, all-encompassing relationship that will range from trade to security, as the transatlantic partners seek to build a new alliance to offset the global power politics dominated by the U.S. and China.” This new relationship, which could include “everything short of actual membership,” in the EU is particularly focused on areas of cooperation in defense, space exploration and scientific research. This piece notes that “Canada is the first country outside of the EU to join the EU’s…$174 billion…military procurement fund last year.” More details are set to be announced at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s state of the union address in Strasbourg, France set for September 16th. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will “attend the speech then address European lawmakers the following day.” The two parties are also scheduled to hold a summit in Canada in October.

* In addition to strengthening trade and security relationships, Canada also seems to be willing to throw their diplomatic weight behind EU priorities. Le Monde reports that this week, Canada and a large group of European nations – including France, Spain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, and more – agreed to impose “sanctions against products originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.” This piece notes this group is taking their own independent actions, still to be defined, because the 27 EU member states could not agree on a joint action plan. However, as Le Monde puts it, this move “signals a shift toward sanctioning all settlements – not just a handful of violent actors and organizations – while rejecting the gradual normalization on which Israel had long relied.” Joining Canada and the EU member states in this agreement is the United Kingdom, where Foreign Secretary and former Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband – himself the Jewish grandson of a Holocaust survivor – is promising a “broad reset” of the UK’s relations with Israel, centering a more active approach by the Labour government of Andy Burnham in supporting the Palestinian cause, the Guardian reports. Le Monde also emphasized Miliband’s speech to the British Parliament, wherein he used far stronger language than previous administrations, including words like “Ethnic cleansing,” “war crimes,” “violations” of “international humanitarian law,”and “settler terrorists.” In Israel, the Guardian adds, the country’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, appeared to respond to the reports by saying: “Expel the British ambassador tonight!”

* Finally, in more Israel news, Haaretz is out with a bombshell report showing that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed explicitly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Hamas attacks planned for October 7th before they occurred. According to this piece, bin Zayed – commonly called MBZ – called Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi a week and a half before October 7th and spoke with him for 45 minutes. In that conversation, MBZ “warned that Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel,” and “expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords,” an impressively accurate and far-sighted prediction. MBZ, who signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, urged Netanyahu to “find an economic solution for the Strip and calming the West Bank to prevent escalation.” Netanyahu apparently brushed off not only this but the warning itself, saying “Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area,” and assuring bin Zayed that Israel was “prepared for any scenario.” This article goes on to detail meetings between UAE mediators and Sinwar, who told them in no uncertain terms: “Convey a message to [Israel] that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary…[a] zilzal [an earthquake]...Please convey to the Israelis what I am saying word for word.” This reporting has sent shockwaves through the Israeli political class, but it remains to be seen whether even such a clear example of Netanyahu’s malevolent cynicism will be enough to dislodge him politically – either due to domestic resistance or a withdrawal of support from the United States.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes sportswriter Dave Zirin to talk about his new book, "The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn." Then Ralph speaks to labor activist Gene Bruskin about their upcoming Labor Day event at Busboys and Poets in DC, "Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact."

Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation, a columnist for the Progressive, and the author of eight books on the politics of sports, including What’s My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States and A People’s History of Sports in the United States. His new book is The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.

There’s a despondency that exists now, I believe, among people who are also very angry about the state of our politics. And the thing that Howard always insisted upon—he was an activist who happened to be a historian, not a historian who was an activist. And that doesn’t denigrate his incredible skills as a historian, it just says where his priorities were in his time on this planet. And one of the things that Howard believed so strongly is that the movements themselves needed to have a strong sense of history. The movements needed to know that we live in a time of great ups and downs.

Dave Zirin

People did step up to create the Zinn Education Project. And every book event I’m doing, I’m showing up with copies of their materials and they usually have somebody on the ground doing the organizing at the event. And at the very least, we’re helping it be a little bit sticky. You know what I’m saying? Like, it’s not just a book event. It’s not just celebrating Howard. But it’s also something that allows us to be able to make it matter in a way that it otherwise would not—because it’s not just about selling books, it really is about building a movement.

Dave Zirin

Gene Bruskin is a veteran of the labor movement as a local union president, an organizer, and campaign coordinator for numerous local and national unions. He has done extensive international labor solidarity work, including with Iraqi workers and unions, and is a founder of US Labor Against the War.

What we’re breaking through here now (and partly this has been the definition of this resistance movement) it’s workers versus billionaires. And I think the labor movement in general coming out of World War II has been captured by this mythology that “What’s good for General Electric is good for the nation.” And the more the economy “prospers,” the more it’s good for everybody. And it turns out that that’s not really the case, because we don’t have that kind of equality. And also what’s in the national interest in terms of our foreign policy is not in the interest of the average working class person. A lot of that stuff is being challenged and reversed—not enough, but it’s forcing some of the more moderate forces to the left, just as we’re seeing in some of these Senate and House elections.

Gene Bruskin

I think this is a really important moment for Labor Day because Labor Day, among other things, is generally the kickoff for whatever elections are happening in November. And it’s going to be that on steroids this year. But I think the important thing is that, of course, we want to throw out a bunch of these Neanderthal Republicans in the House and Senate. But it’s not just a matter of restoring a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. The question is: to what end? And what is on the agenda of a Democratic-majority Congress at this minute? What is the vision that we have for our future that we have to be fighting for? … We have to change this whole climate so that people have some kind of hope, some kind of vision for what we want and what we deserve. And the same old, same old, whether it’s a Democratic Congress or not, is not acceptable anymore.

Gene Bruskin

Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact (Sep 7, 2026 2:00 pm ET): Busboys and Poets and Ralph Nader present Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact, a discussion of how unions can maximize the impact of Labor Day to mobilize workers and voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and afterwards. (Event is in-person @ Busboys and Poets 14th & V + Livestreamed. Free and open to all, but registration is required.)

News 9/4/26

* Our top story this week is the neo-colonial oil extraction deal that has been struck between the Trump administration and the government of Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. This government has been running the country under the barrel of a gun since Trump sent Delta Force to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro from his home in the Bolivarian Republic in January. According to the BBC, the new deal “grants a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields in Venezuela, amounting to a staggering 65 billion barrels of crude,” or over one-fifth of the country’s proven oil reserves. The White House has released a fact sheet, stating that much of the new extraction will be conducted by North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), and that the U.S. government will have “veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors, and a majority of Nabep’s board of directors must be US citizens.” The announcement of this deal drew scorn from a wide variety of sources. These range from Trump’s former special representative on Venezuela and Iran, Elliott Abrams who called the deal “terrible” and sees it as Rodríguez “simply complying with the demands she’s getting from Washington,” to Rafael Ramírez, who served as the head of the state-run energy firm, PDVSA, and as the oil minister under former President Hugo Chávez, who is quoted saying the deal “hands over [the oil] and opens the doors to a new colonialism of the United States.”

* In more outrageous foreign policy news, Reuters reports the Trump administration has designated the United Kingdom-based pro-Palestine activist group Palestine Action a ”terrorist organization,” part of the administration’s “campaign to crack down on left-wing groups” using post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws. The United Nations has decried this move, with the UN’s human rights office chief Volker Turk calling it a “disproportionate and unnecessary ⁠restriction on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association as well as the right ​to participate in public affairs,” adding that the “expansive use ​of the term ‘terrorism’ has been documented to have a chilling effect on civic space.” The UK has sought to bring the legal hammer down on Palestine Action, though these efforts have been somewhat stymied by the courts. Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar of global expression at free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Free Expression (FIRE), ​said that the US “must reject that censorship - not import it.” Reuters notes that “Israel’s foreign ministry welcomed the designation.”

* This is not the only case wherein the Trump administration has gone to extreme lengths to punish pro-Palestine activism. California District Judge Noel Wise highlighted this in her recent decision, excoriating the State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their attempts to deport noncitizens over protected speech. This ruling, stemming from a lawsuit filed by FIRE, “centred on how the second Trump administration revoked visas and detained international students studying in the US after they engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.” Judge Wise stated in her decision that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people..It is not the government’s to take.” She added that the strength of our democracy is “diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.” Mahmoud Khalil, the most prominent victim of the administration’s policy of seeking to deport activists they want to silence, applauded the decision, saying “No one should fear speaking up for Palestine.” This from Al Jazeera.

* Our final Palestine-related story for this week takes us to Hollywood, where prominent actor and activist Mark Ruffalo’s recent comments in opposition to the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger, related to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s ties to his father’s software company Oracle, have been cynically branded as “antisemitic tropes.” According to the LA Times, Ruffalo shared a clip of Safra Catz, Oracle’s former CEO and a current Paramount board member speaking at an Israeli-American Council National Summit conference, where she said that “she couldn’t discuss Oracle’s work with Israel’s military, but ‘we have some profoundly scary technology at Oracle and we wanted to make sure that it was available’ to Israel,” after October 7th. Paramount’s lawyers quickly sought to smear Ruffalo with the charge of antisemitism, including by deploying their allies in pro-Israel groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League. In response, over 150 Jewish filmmakers, academics, writers and even rabbis, signed an open letter which reads, in part, “Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.”

* In other news, NBC reports the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday that “federal commodities-trading law does not preempt Nevada’s gambling law as to the regulation of placing wagers on sports.” This piece notes that the 3-0 ruling marks the prediction markets industry’s most significant legal setback yet and sets up a showdown at the Supreme Court, since the Third Circuit has already ruled that New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi. The Trump administration has sought to keep regulation of betting markets under the jurisdiction of the federal body known as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Notably, the commission, usually composed of five appointees, currently boasts only one single member: Michael S. Selig. Selig is extremely friendly to the prediction market industry and has sought to stave off state-level regulation by arguing for federal preemption.

* Kalshi has been in the news for other reasons as well, namely for its attempts to self-regulate. For one, the Wall Street Journal reports that Kalshi issued its first ever lifetime ban this week, to none other than former Congressman and notorious grifter George Santos. This ban was precipitated by Santos’ making over $17,000 by “placing bets on his attendance at President Trump’s State of the Union address.” Kalshi adds that they issued a $71,356 fine to Santos. For his part, Santos tweeted “Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform…Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for.” Newsweek reports that at the same time, Kalshi fined and suspended North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout for betting on her own race. Buckhout dismissed her bet as a “dumb mistake” and joked that her “career as a Kalshi trader was short-lived.” Buckhout is running against incumbent Congressman Don Davis in a newly-redrawn district engineered to favor Republicans, but polling shows a tight race. If Buckhout narrowly loses, many will point to this “dumb mistake” as a key reason why.

* Another legal battle is unfolding in New York City, where landlords are challenging Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants. PIX11 reports that the suit, originally filed in Staten Island but now moved to Manhattan, centers on complaints from landlords that the decision by the rent guidelines board (RGB) to keep rents flat on one and two-year lease renewals for NYC’s million rent-stabilized apartments was “predetermined and illegal.” They argue that the board “cherry-picked data and was packed with supporters of Mayor…Mamdani’s campaign promise to freeze rents,” while the Mamdani administration maintains that the board is an “independent body and considers both tenant and landlord concerns.” The mayoral administration will defend the decision in court, while the Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC have filed a request for the court to dismiss the suit entirely. An article in POLITICO from earlier this month reports that the plaintiffs in this suit hope to bring this case all the way to the US Supreme Court.

* Our final stories this week take us back to the campaign trail. First up, Alaska Public Media is out with a report about a “chain of political maneuvers in the governor’s race,” kicked off by former Anchorage mayor Tom Begich’s “decision to step down to give fellow Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins a better shot at winning.” Kreiss-Tomkins finished first in the August primary, followed by Begich in second place and two Republicans in third and fourth respectively. Under Alaska election law, the top four finishers advance to the general election. This piece recounts how Begich’s withdrawal sent shockwaves through the Republican candidate field. With Begich out, “Republican Treg Taylor moved into the fourth spot. But on Sunday, Taylor called for [fellow Republicans Bernadette] Wilson and [Dave] Bronson to consolidate their campaigns and pledged to endorse a combined Republican ticket. In a statement, Taylor urged Republicans to unite behind a single candidate, to counter Kreiss-Tompkins.” While fascinating for political junkies, many have observed that the maneuvers on display here and in Alaska’s Senate race seem to undercut many of the arguments in favor of ranked-choice voting, with more effort being put into confusing voters or seeking to induce so-called “ballot exhaustion” rather than facilitating a more enlightened civil discourse.

* Our final two stories cover the Massachusetts primaries held this Tuesday. The topline, as Semafor reports, is that incumbents swept their primaries in a stark reversal of the insurgent trend in Democratic primaries this cycle. The most notable of these was the crushing victory of 80-year-old incumbent Senator Ed Markey over his 47-year-old challenger, Congressman Seth Moulton. Markey won with approximately two-thirds of the vote. This piece notes that Moulton, younger but running to Markey’s right, was never able to establish the “generational change” dynamic he wanted in this race, as “progressives and LGBTQ rights groups rallied behind…[Senator Markey].” On this latter point, Moulton was roundly criticized by Democratic voters, even in his own district, for “scapegoating” transgender people in the wake of the 2024 election. Reporter Dave Weigel adds a coda to this piece: “The subtext of Markey ‘26 was that he would be a reliable progressive vote for whatever the movement wanted for six more years, and then Ayanna Pressley could come in and replace him. Pressley campaigned [with] Markey, starred in ads; [and] at rallies he gushed about how she was the ‘north star’ and if you wanted to know what the right side of an issue was, it was the side she was on.”

* Finally, with all of that said, the pro-incumbent wave in Massachusetts did cut both ways. Progressive challengers to moderate Democrat incumbents fell short in the state’s eighth congressional district – reelecting Congressman Stephen Lynch for a 14th term over progressive voting rights advocate Patrick Roath. Meanwhile, in the first district, WAMC reports Congressman Richie Neal, a longtime scourge of progressives, fended off a primary challenge from teacher Jeromie Whalen in his bid for a 20th term in the House – though Whalen, a political newcomer, won an impressive 46% of the vote. Neal will however face the formidable independent candidate Nadia Milleron in the general election. Milleron won nearly 40% of the vote against Neal in 2024; perhaps, if she wins over enough of Whalen’s primary supporters, she can pull out a victory in November.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph speaks with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, about the fall of the American Empire and self-proclaimed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Then we welcome the CEO and co-founder of the Canadian-based organization Corporate Knights, Toby Heap, to break down Trump’s unprecedented trade war with our closest ally. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for Hakeem Jeffries and his meeting with Jared Kushner and for Hillary Clinton and her take on the war with Iran

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Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum.

Two-thirds of the world now thinks that we are an enemy of their state. Two-thirds of the world. And it happens to be the two-thirds that has the greatest amount of the GDP in the world.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

I’ve lived for 81 years, almost 82, and I’ve watched my country go to hell right in front of my face… And the billionaires who want all of this to happen, they do not want a democracy. A democracy is fallible. A democracy can’t beat China. A democracy can’t beat Russia. A democracy can’t even beat Iran. They want a technocracy that is run by them, armed by them, technical revolution by them. They want all of this, and oh by the way they want to live to 150 while they’re doing it too.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Every freaking hour they create a series of war crimes in Iran. Every freaking hour they perpetrate war crimes in the Persian Gulf. Every freaking hour they perpetrate war crimes in Lebanon with Israel. “What’s new?,” I want to say. We are a criminal state. There is no other way to describe it. We are a criminal state. We pay no attention whatsoever to domestic or international law. Only when it benefits the person who is doing the deed do we pay any attention at all.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Toby Heaps is the CEO and co-founder of Corporate Knights, and Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Knights magazine. He spearheaded the first global ranking of the world’s 100 most sustainable corporations in 2005, and in 2007 coined the term “clean capitalism.”

What we’re seeing is a sort of political physics—for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. Canada has in many ways benefited and rallied around our nationhood. We’re often not the most boisterous or loudest type of folks. But this continued disrespect for our statehood and the continued attacks and the unreasonableness and the unfair play, our prime minister said something to the effect of: when the United States signs something, it’s in pencil. It’s really denigrating the United States’ reputation globally and in Canadians’ minds.

Toby Heaps

News 8/28/26

* This week, the left-wing insurgency in the Democratic Party scored several new victories. First, NBC reports that in Oklahoma, N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Markwayne Mullin, who Trump selected to lead the Department of Homeland Security following the resignation of Secretary Kristi Noem. Thomas will go up against Republican Congressman Kevin Hern in November. Unfortunately, Thomas stands little chance of winning the state, which has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1990. Thomas is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and identifies as a Democratic Socialist, but is “not yet” a member of DSA.

* Next, in California, Democracy Now! reports progressive state lawmaker Aisha Wahab has prevailed in the special election to fill the seat vacated by disgraced former Congressman Eric Swalwell. This piece notes that Wahab “overcame a flood of attack ads from pro-Israel groups,” which sought to bolster her Democratic primary rival, Melissa Hernandez. In an interview, Wahab said that she “appreciates” voters in her district for “seeing through” the “lies that were spread by AIPAC.” Wahab will make history as the first Afghan American in Congress and has called for the United States to engage with the Taliban government and attempt to “[steer] them in the right direction” on human rights.

* In Georgia, the Hill reports another progressive – Everton Blair – won the special election to fill the seat of Congressman David Scott, who passed away in April during his 12th term in the seat. Blair, the former chair of the Gwinnett County School Board, defeated Scott’s daughter Marcye Scott. However, Blair will only represent this seat until the end of the year. Beginning in January, State Rep. Jasmine Clark, who won the May primary, will fill the seat for the 120th Congress.

* Meanwhile, in the Cornhusker State, the Nebraska Examiner reports that the “Legal Marijuana NOW U.S. Senate candidate Mike Marvin announced he can’t put more ‘energy’ into the Senate race because of health issues and endorsed nonpartisan U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn.” Marvin will remain on the ballot, but is “urging all who supported [him] to now support…Osborn.” This piece notes that this announcement comes on heels of reporting by Flatwater Free Press showing that two staffers from Osborn’s 2024 independent Senate campaign joined the Legal Marijuana NOW executive board and sought to dissolve the party from the inside. This, combined with the fact that former Democratic Senate nominee Cindy Burbank paid Mike Marvin’s $1,740 candidate filing fee and dropped out of the race one day after the secretary of state verified Osborn’s signatures to be on the fall ballot has fueled speculation that these were coordinated efforts to clear the field for Osborn. Marvin for his part disputes this and says he never planned to leave the race. Osborn is quoted saying “We hope to earn the support of the LMN voters and hope that we can represent their concerns well in the US Senate.”

* In more third party news, Trump has launched new broadsides against the emerging ex-MAGA clique – consisting of Tucker Carlson, Congressman Thomas Massie, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to the Hill, Trump attacked the group, said to be exploring the possibility of founding a new right-wing party, calling Carlson “a loser,” Greene “a highly neurotic woman” and Massie a “real JERK” on Truth Social. The president added, “What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!...The only chance they have is to join the Radical Left Dumocrats, and try breaking into the Primary System. To all of them I say, PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!” The proximate cause of this latest flare-up between the camps is Trump’s decision to allow in 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported in the next 90 days, a move Massie called “worse than socialism.” Greene, who has been perhaps the most vocal defector from the MAGA camp, said “He attacks us with such vitriol because we actually are everything he claimed to be…he has proven as President that he is nothing more than a neocon puppet for Israel, corporations, big donors with special interests, and his dear friends in the Epstein class…We never changed, Trump did.”

* Another story from this side of the aisle comes to us from NOTUS, which reports that an “unknown actor” has stolen over $16,000 from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). This incident, alternatively characterized as a “theft” from a “foreign country” or simply a “fraud,” occurred in early July, when the NRCC “attempted to pay a bill from Ranger Wi-Fi Consulting, a Texas-based firm that specializes in helping clients ‘optimize their wireless networks while ensuring healthy security measures are in place.’” Seeking to assuage the fears of donors, NRCC spokesman Will Kiley told the press that “Protecting donor funds is a top priority for the NRCC,” and vowed that the committee is “working to recover the funds, and…taken steps to ensure it can’t happen again.” Listeners might remember that in July, the DNC admitted that they had fallen prey to a scammer, losing almost $30,000 in the process. It would seem that these committees do not have functional safeguards against such schemes.

* Our final stories this week all deal with the Middle East. First up, Axios reports that while AIPAC was gearing up for a major ad blitz in Michigan against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed and on behalf of Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, those plans have apparently been iced at the behest of the Rogers campaign. According to this story, Rogers believes that AIPAC spending in the Democratic primary – over $30 million on behalf of El-Syed’s rival Haley Stevens – actually helped boost El-Sayed’s candidacy, making his opposition to AIPAC a “centerpiece of his…campaign, using the group’s spending against him to portray Democratic opponent Haley Stevens as beholden to the pro-Israel lobby.” Rogers fears the same fate, so he has sought to keep his distance from AIPAC while his allies are urging AIPAC to “get involved without putting the group’s name front and center.” However, Rogers’ attempts to put some daylight between his campaign and AIPAC has resulted in the latter turning cold towards the Republican candidate. Republicans now worry that AIPAC will “sit out the general election entirely.” As for the perception of AIPAC in Michigan, a recent poll found that “55% of Michigan voters oppose continued U.S. aid to Israel.”

* On the other end of the Michigan political spectrum, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding that he “ensure the immediate

and permanent release of U.S. citizen Sama Safi, a 20-year-old university student with a severe complex chronic health condition, who the Israeli military has arbitrarily and wrongfully detained since June 2nd.” This letter goes on to describe how “armed Israeli soldiers raided her family’s home in the occupied West Bank in the middle of the night and tore her from her family,” and that since then, she has “suffered under appalling conditions in Israeli military detention including “frequent physical assault, shackling, and the throwing of gas and stun grenades into already overcrowded and poorly ventilated cells,” among other horrors. 40 more members of Congress signed this letter, including six senators, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen among them. 85 civic groups also signed onto this demand, ranging from faith-based groups to human rights organizations and beyond.

* In the region itself, a broad coalition of Muslim states – including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and, perhaps most notably, the United Arab Emirates – have issued a categorical condemnation of Israel’s new “E1” settlement plan. This plan relates to new settlement activities east of occupied East Jerusalem and the signatories decry the plan as constituting “a dangerous escalation that further advances settlement expansion and annexation and undermines the geographical contiguity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory…thereby threatening the viability and realization of an independent, contiguous Palestinian State based on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.” The UAE was the most significant state in the region to sign onto the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, which sought to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors at the expense of the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia was said to be on the verge of signing the accords prior to October 7th and Israel’s subsequent genocidal military campaign in Gaza. The UAE taking a new stand against Israel on behalf of the Palestinian cause is widely seen as the final death knell of the Abraham Accords and the beginning of a new era of relations in the Middle East.

* Finally, the Economist reports that a group of seven top officials within the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is consolidating power in Iran. The man rumored to be leading this junta is Mohsen Rezaei, the new national-security adviser, former presidential candidate and the longest-serving chief of the IRGC, having led the corps though the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Others include the head of the navy, currently overseeing Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the IRGC’s commander-in-chief and founder of the Quds Force. Notably absent from this group is Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. This piece judiciously avoids making any definite predictions about whether this new clique will rule as hardliners or pragmatists, but emphasizes that the late Ali Khamenei expertly “balanced the competing interests of his realm” while these military men favor action.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Dr. Mimi Syed to discuss the recent report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project: “Lethal Precision Without Accountability: Israeli Government ‘Quadcopter’ Use in Gaza.” Then, Ralph speaks to Joel McCleary (former Deputy Assistant to President Jimmy Carter and international consultant) about his “Dancing in the Dark” essay series on the strategies that Trump is using to hold onto power at almost any cost.

Dr. Mimi Syed is an emergency medicine physician and assistant clinical professor at University of Washington and Washington State University, and a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Syed served in Gaza at both al-Aqsa Hospital and Nasser Hospital, where she documented severe injuries from drone strikes and she has firsthand experience treating civilians targeted by the IDF. She is co-author of the Costs of War Project’s new report: Lethal Precision Without Accountability: Israeli Government “Quadcopter” Use in Gaza.

A lot of the attention has essentially fallen off from Gaza because of this so-called ceasefire…And the media (Western media) unfortunately is complicit in this—has no interest in covering Gaza, has no interest in covering the ongoing slaughter that’s happening in Gaza.

Dr. Mimi Syed

The irony of all of this is that the drones and the capabilities that these drones have to shoot and to distinguish between a civilian and a combatant—the whole purpose of this is to mitigate civilian harm. And instead, perversely, they’re being used for the opposite. They’re being used to target civilians and children. And in the U.N. report, they specifically talk about a soldier describing the experience, saying that it’s like a video game. He can be sitting somewhere far away, away from the dangers of a military zone, away from the dangers of combatants, and essentially target whoever he wants, and shoot. And these drones have the capability of distinguishing between a child, an adult, a combatant. And most of these cases that I documented, the child was by themselves. There was no other adult harmed.

Dr. Mimi Syed

Joel McCleary served as Deputy Assistant to the President during the Carter Administration. As president of the Sawyer-Miller Group he oversaw international strategic advisory work for fourteen prime ministers and presidents. Currently, he is Managing Partner of Four Seasons Ventures, which has conducted in-depth studies for the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security on biodefense. These studies reviewed the emergency powers of the President in the event of a pandemic or major biological weapons attack. He is co-founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit Keep Our Republic.

November 3rd is just the prelude to January 3rd—the game (so to speak) is who controls the Speakership. And that is determined by the certified members who are certified by the current House—they will determine who meets on January 3rd. So obviously what Trump does not want (or any President does not want) is there to be an opposing party’s Speaker.

Joel McCleary

We’re not saying that anything is inevitable. We’re just saying what is possible if you look at what they’re saying and if you look at where they might go if they feel compelled to do so. So NSPM-7 is probably the most frightening aspect of this whole thing. And what’s most frightening is how few people have focused on it. All of us need to read these documents at the ACLU (the Brennan Center has done fantastic work). And Mark Medish and I just are appalled that still, in Democratic circles or other circles, we are not yet comprehending the meaning of NSPM-7 and how it threatens each one of us in reality.

Joel McCleary

News 8/21/26

* This week, another round of primaries were held, most notably in Florida. For progressives, the biggest victory is that of Angie Nixon, a DSA-backed member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing Jacksonville. Nixon trounced her opponent – Alex Vindman, who testified against Trump during the 2019 impeachment effort – winning 56% of the vote to his 44% despite being outspent by a margin of 16 to 1. Forbes reports that in her victory speech, Nixon said “We have proved that everyday people are more powerful than corporations and billionaires…We went up against the political establishment, against millions of dollars of outside spending…and we won. This win was for the little guys and girls…We, the hardworking everyday people of Florida, sent a shock wave to the Washington, D.C., establishment.” Unfortunately, Nixon’s candidacy, like that of any statewide Democratic campaign in the Sunshine State, remains a long shot. The last Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in Florida was former astronaut Bill Nelson in 2012.

* More disappointing were the down-ballot results in these primaries. In the 20th congressional district, a majority-minority district centered on Broward County, Debbie Wasserman Schultz won with 45% of the vote, according to NBC. She defeated four Black candidates, including young progressive Elijah Manley. Wasserman Schultz previously represented the 25th district, but following the Republican-led mid-decade redistricting program carried out in Florida, she opted to seek reelection in this heavily Democratic seat. The Black candidates had tried and failed to consolidate behind a single choice.

* And in Florida’s 25th congressional district, ultra-zionist incumbent Congressman Jared Moskowitz “warded off” a challenge from his left in the form of Oliver Larkin, a DSA-backed union organizer. Larkin drew substantial media attention, first when he appeared on Fox and, asked about immigration and crime, he demanded accountability for “this pedophile president Donald Trump” and others implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and again during an interview with WPLG Local 10 when Larkin was “faced with genocide denial.” According to the Middle East Eye, Larkin “raised the topic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, pointing to statements and findings from institutions such as the United Nations, Amnesty International and Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem,” which the interviewer, Glenna Milberg incorrectly dismissed as “factually incorrect.” Larkin “outlined Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians, restrictions on humanitarian aid and attacks on churches, schools and other places of worship,” and Milberg again “interrupted and said his account was ‘factually not correct.’” The Middle East Eye writes that the exchange was then “cut short when Milberg said she was being told they had to wrap up the interview.”

* Turning to Texas, NOTUS reports Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico – capitalizing on the acrimonious primary battle between sitting Republican Senator John Cornyn and his victorious primary opponent Texas AG Ken Paxton – has taken the extraordinary step of bringing a Cornyn aide onto his campaign. According to this piece, “Jacob Smith, who worked for Cornyn for five years as a deputy legislative director and policy adviser, is taking on the role of deputy policy director for Talarico’s campaign.” In a statement, Smith said that he is “proud” to join Talarico’s campaign and that “Instead of playing partisan politics, Talarico speaks to the needs of everyday people who day in and day out work too hard for too little.” Smith also laid into Paxton, calling him “the most corrupt, self-dealing politician in Texas who would sell their futures to the highest contributor just to hold onto power,” and urging “fellow Republicans who know Ken Paxton is unfit to serve in the Senate to finally hold him accountable at the ballot box.” This piece quotes an anonymous “Republican operative” who characterized this kind of “cross-party hire” as “unheard of.” He added that Talarico has a “better chance than any Democrat has had in the state in a very long time.”

* In more primary news, last week we discussed the victory of former Hartford, Connecticut Mayor Luke Bronin over 14-term incumbent Congressman John Larson. That same day, the Lever published an exposé of Stephen Mandel, a Connecticut-based billionaire hedge fund manager and Democratic mega-donor who is the “largest bankroller of a nascent political machine promising to ‘redefine’ the Democratic Party.” Via two organizations – Majority Democrats and the Bench – Mandel and his wife have funneled tens of millions of dollars to candidates of their choosing in an attempt to form a “new [political] center.” According to this report, Bronin amassed a “sizable war chest,” during his primary challenge against Larson, much of which traces back to Mandel. Not only that, apparently, Bronin “used to be on the payroll of a nonprofit funded by the billionaire,” and his campaign’s policy stances reflect the network’s preferences and priorities. The Lever notes that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Mandels did not return their requests for comment.

* In more Connecticut news, in the wake of Larson’s defeat, local media is beginning to question whether Senator Richard Blumenthal should run for another term in 2028, with WTNH noting that he will be 82 at the end of his current term. While Blumenthal has not formally announced that he will run for a fourth senate term, he did confirm that he has a campaign committee and it is raising money. This piece notes that Blumenthal is the second oldest member of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, behind only Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, 83, who represents the state’s third congressional district. With the increased scrutiny on aging Democrats, and donors like Stephen Mandel bankrolling primary challenges by younger candidates, Blumenthal’s decision of whether or not to run or anoint a successor could prove critical. For his part, Blumenthal is quoted saying “Age is a state of mind…and I am very, very happy doing my job right now, as energetically as I feel is appropriate.”

* Senator Blumenthal features prominently in another story this week from a different part of Washington. NOTUS reports that on K Street, lobbyists for the defense industry – literally the military industrial complex – are “girding for aggressive investigations of President Donald Trump’s Pentagon and the companies that do business with it,” if the Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections. This piece emphasizes that Democrats have “spent two years seething that the Trump administration shut Congress out of decisions about the Pentagon, from the Iran war to politically connected contractors and a defense budget that’s ballooned to $1.5 trillion.” Lobbyists are reported to be particularly wary of their clients being caught between outraged congressional Democrats and an uncooperative White House for the next two years. Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, is already zeroing in on 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is an investor, and American Ventures, where Eric Trump is an investor, both of which received billions of dollars in government awards. He is quoted saying “We need to look into whether Trump’s sons are profiting from investments in defense contractors that involve insider information or contracts awarded in ways that compromise defense interests.” Other investigations he signaled they might pursue include a probe of “the administration’s growing reliance on single-source contracts and whether the administration has given preferential treatment to companies with political ties, particularly those that donated to Trump’s White House ballroom project.” In the House, Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will likely focus on “military strategy, acquisition decisions and the Pentagon’s rapidly growing budget,” while the Oversight Committee, is more focused on “corruption, conflicts of interest, companies connected to Trump allies such as SpaceX and other ethics issues.” When Republicans won control of the House, Senate, and presidency in 2024, many lobbying firms axed their Democratic staff. It seems they are beginning to regret that decision.

* Our next two stories have to do with the AI boom. First, in Wisconsin, the politics of AI data centers have come to in large part define the ongoing race to succeed Democrat Tony Evers as Governor. DSA-backed candidate Francesca Hong rode her vow of a moratorium on new data center construction to front-runner status in the primary, only to lose by a hair to Evers’ last minute chosen successor, David Crowley. Since becoming the nominee, Crowley has refused to adopt Hong’s signature issue and his opponent, Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany is taking full advantage. According to Wisconsin Public Radio, Tiffany’s campaign has released a new TV ad labeling his opponent “data center David Crowley.” In the ad, Crowley is “seen saying Wisconsin has the opportunity to be ‘an AI and a data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe.’” Ironically, Tiffany himself has cast “pro-data center votes in Congress” and Crowley’s campaign argues that Tiffany “wouldn’t be as hard on developers as his campaign claims,” though he is now campaigning on “ending state subsidies for data centers and creating additional protections for ratepayers and the state’s farmland and water.”

* Next, a stunning feat of reporting by 404 Media exposed how “Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.“ To investigate this, the outlet placed a tracking device in a rare book that they suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data. Then, when indeed it was, they followed the book around the country to its final destination – an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada – where employees say that “all [they] do is scan books..Some are assigned to cut books, and others go to receive where they get books and scan the bar codes.” The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands. The piece notes that the AI company Anthropic has previously been sued for engaging in the practice of destroying rare books in order to feed them into their large language models, or LLMs, on copyright grounds, but the “judge in the lawsuit ruled it was fair use and not a copyright violation for Anthropic to scan a book for training data in part because it destroyed the original, printed copy.” The author of this piece notes that these rare books are not necessarily monetarily valuable – they could be rare because “not many copies of them were ever printed,” or “they are in a foreign language not many people speak.” Still, as one bookseller said “There are different types of value…[besides monetary value] There’s historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.”

* Finally, we turn to the Vatican, where, Drop Site reports, Pope Leo XIV is using his pulpit to call for the opening of humanitarian corridors for civilians in Sudan. In his weekly Angelus address, the first American Pope highlighted “the plight of civilians in the besieged city of el-Obeid.” In addition to his call for humanitarian corridors, the pontiff called for both sides to “cease attacks on civilian targets.” Drop Site explains that El-Obeid, the largest city in Kordofan – the region comprising central Sudan – has faced intense drone attacks as the rebels of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) battle the Sudanese army for supremacy in the region. An RSF siege has “left over 500,000 people in famine conditions for months and without supplies.” The United Nations warns that if El-Obeid falls, it could follow in the mold of el-Fasher, which fell to the RSF last year and resulted in “mass ethnic cleansing massacres by the RSF that killed an estimated 60,000 people.” We can only hope that the world will heed the Pope’s plea for peace and humanitarian assistance to the civilian population of Sudan.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph speaks to Baroness Beeban Kidron, a member of the UK House of Lords and a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment, whose book is “Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back.” Then we welcome back whistleblower Becky McClain a biotech scientist injured in an unsafe lab and author of “Exposed: A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies, and Betrayal, and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower.”

Baroness Beeban Kidron is a member of the UK’s House of Lords and a former film director. She is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment and a global authority on digital regulation. She has played a central role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world. She is the author of Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back.

The things that children experience online are deliberately designed to distract them. Now, they are there to distract them because those companies want the attention so they can advertise. They want their data so that they can perfect their commercial terms,their product. And they even want their attention to compete against the other people who are competing for their attention. So here we have an absolute arms race for a child’s attention.

Baroness Beeban Kidron

I do want to say very clearly to anyone listening: This is a battle you shouldn’t be fighting on your own. And there is a responsibility for politicians—for both local politicians and federal politicians (national in our case, here in the UK) —to actually put these companies under the same sort of strictures that all other corporate companies do… One of the things I’m looking at is whether we can recategorize apps as products. And then they’ll have all the product liability, the product safety, consumer rights—all the things that we expect of everything else in our life from our food to our cars to our toys. That they would actually have to think before they roll them out: Are they safe? And when they’ve proven unsafe, we would have a very clear set of legal approaches to address that.

Baroness Beeban Kidron

Becky McClain is a retired biotech worker and research scientist. She is known as the first successful biotech whistleblower who spoke and reported on biolab safety issues of public concern. On April 1, 2010, Ms. McClain won a federal court whistleblower trial against Pfizer, Inc., which centered on free speech rights concerning biosafety and public health. She is the author of Exposed: A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies, and Betrayal, and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower.

The public wants transparency to ensure that biolabs are run ethically, safely, responsibly, and with accountability. Transparency into these matters builds public trust with science and with government. But without free-speech protections for scientists and also medical physicians, transparency fails, accountability is dismissed, and the public trust hits rock bottom.

Becky McClain

News 8/14/26

* This week, a new round of primaries was held in the upper midwest and New England. The biggest shock of the night was the defeat of Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary. Hong, a Wisconsin State Assemblywoman and member of Madison DSA, went into election night leading in the polls and while she won an astonishing 311,000 votes, her opponent – Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, with the endorsement of sitting Democratic Governor Tony Evers – maintained a lead of approximately one-half of one percentage point throughout the night. As the final margin will be under 1 percent, Hong is entitled to request a recount, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but WKOW reports she has conceded the race. Hong was seen as the best chance for the insurgent, DSA-aligned left to capture a gubernatorial nomination this cycle, particularly in a crucial swing state, but her campaign was dogged by electability concerns and unpopular past statements made by the candidate. Crowley will face Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, who cruised to an easy victory in the GOP gubernatorial primary, in November.

* The Minnesota primaries delivered more encouraging results for the left. In the high-profile Senate primary to replace retiring Senator Tina Smith, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan emerged victorious over her opponent, Congresswoman Angie Craig. Flanagan was backed by a broad, progressive coalition – including Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and outgoing Senator Tina Smith herself – while Craig was backed by more centrist Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and ultrazionist Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer. If elected, Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, would be the first Native American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, per the Minnesota Reformer. Flanagan has also gone on record saying that Chuck Schumer, who would be poised to lead the Senate Democrats as Majority Leader if the party retakes that chamber, needs to be replaced with a “progressive champion” though she has not gone as far as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan who explicitly called for Schumer to be replaced by Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, as reported by Semafor.

* In more Minnesota news, Congresswoman Craig’s decision to vacate her old seat in the state’s second congressional district “created a crowded primary for her seat,” according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. On Tuesday, progressive candidate Matt Little triumphed. Little is a strong proponent of Medicare for All and does not blanch at describing Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a genocide. Little overwhelmingly won the endorsement of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and of congressional progressives like Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Greg Casar, as well as the Progressive Caucus PAC. If Little wins in what the Star Tribune describes as a swing district historically, it will send a strong signal that progressives can win even in tough districts.

* In New England, the results tell a somewhat different story. Specifically, in Connecticut’s first congressional district, 14-term incumbent Congressman John Larson lost his primary to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, over 30 years Larson’s junior, by over 20 points. However, Bronin is far from a progressive challenger. Whereas Larson enjoyed the backing of the Working Families Party and Congressman Jamie Raskin – though he also had the backing of AIPAC – Bronin’s only major national endorsement was from former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. In short, this would best be described as a non-ideological, but rather age-based primary challenge. This will surely set off major alarm bells for another aged incumbent in New England facing a much younger primary challenger: Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Additionally, as Ryan Grim notes, “John Larson was/is the champion of the bill to expand Social Security, which was up to…200+ cosponsors but [former Speaker Nancy] Pelosi would never allow it to get to the floor. There’s now an extremely popular bill that could actually pass that needs a lead sponsor.”

* Another recent primary loss is worth examining: that of Kshama Sawant in Seattle. Sawant, a former Seattle City Councilmember aligned with the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative party, resigned her council seat and sought to unseat her local Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, running as an independent in Washington’s ninth congressional district. The state of Washington has a top two primary system, so Sawant would have only had to get the second most votes to secure a head-to-head matchup against Smith in November. Yet, instead Sawant finished a distant third behind Smith and the Republican candidate Doug Basler. Perhaps that doesn’t seem surprising – independent and third party candidates are often outspent by huge margins. Yet, the facts belie that explanation. In fact, a new piece on the Joe Wrote substack finds that “Sawant’s campaign wasn’t the rag-tag, bootstrapped operation that we typically see from insurgent socialists. Sawant reported $607,493 in campaign spending, meaning she outspent Republican Doug Basler by over six-to-one and still lost to him.” Wrote goes on to state that “The Sawant campaign spent $25.33 per vote, the highest for any candidate in the race…The only registered PAC that spent on the race was Sawant’s Revolutionary Change PAC, which raised $5,600 through ActBlue and spent it on billboards.” If nothing else, this test case demonstrates that money is not enough for the left to break through the two-party duopoly. A candidate also needs institutional, organizational support – like that of DSA – and, perhaps most importantly, broadbase solidarity with the other component parts of the movement. Going it alone simply will not get the job done.

* In more independent and third party news, we have an update to a previous story about the race for Congress in Pennsylvania’s seventh congressional district. Last week, we discussed Andrew Tupone, a candidate running in this race on the Green Party ballot line, despite the GP of Pennsylvania distancing themselves from him – and spokesman Chris Robinson even calling him a “a nice Republican.” According to Lehigh Valley Public Media, the Green Party is now going a step further, formally requesting the Pennsylvania courts “either kick Tupone off the ballot or require him to identify himself as a member of another party.” In their petition to the court, the Green Party argues that “Candidate Tupone and his agents or affiliates who circulated his nomination papers misled voters into signing the nomination papers on the mistaken belief that they were helping to place a candidate supported by the Green Party onto the ballot.” This piece also notes that three Lehigh Valley residents are challenging the petitions Tupone presented to get on the ballot, arguing that technical errors would disqualify thousands of these signatures. For his part, Tupone “has denied having any ulterior motive to enter the race or accepting financial assistance from any outside groups.”

* At the same time, in Nebraska, it seems there are two, dueling faux third parties seeking to siphon off votes from the other side. The Nebraska Examiner reports that both the “Nebraska Democratic Party and the national Working Families Party have sued Nebraska’s Working People Party to block it from the fall ballot.” The Democrats and WFP are seeking to block Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen from officially recognizing the party, and to “declare that the party’s name is breaking state law because it is meant to confuse voters.” Apparently, Nebraska election law includes a provision allowing the secretary of state to “reject a candidate’s filing if…that someone is not a ‘good-faith candidate’ or is trying to cause confusion for voters,” and that “objections to party names can be considered.” The kicker is that last week, the Nebraska Republican Party filed a lawsuit alleging that the “America First Party” is a similarly bad-faith attempt to confuse and deceive voters and thereby undercut the fortunes of Nebraska Republicans. A Nebraska judge has issued an emergency injunction stopping certification of both the Nebraska Working People Party and America First Party through August 20th.

* Turning to local news, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appears to be moving against Councilmember Nithya Raman, her Democratic rival for the mayoralty in the general election. LAist reports that while Raman has chaired the Council’s powerful Housing and Homeless Committee since 2023, Bass’ close ally, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson is “planning to announce…that the city will split the committee into two parts — one on housing, the other on homelessness — neither of which will be led by Raman.” In a campaign video, Raman alleged that the move constituted political retaliation, saying “I called for an audit of our homelessness programs…and now I’ve been removed…I might be getting punished for running against Mayor Bass, but Angelenos are the ones paying the price for these political games.” Mayor Bass and Councilmember Raman finished first and second respectively in the June primary, meaning they will face off in November with no Republican on the ballot.

* In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced this week that he will throw his weight behind a new bill in the city council seeking to curb Amazon’s practice of utilizing subcontractors instead of directly employing delivery workers. The Wall Street Journal explains that although these subcontractors “aren’t direct employees of…Amazon [or other companies], they often wear branded uniforms or vests and drive corporate-branded vans or trucks,” but are not entitled to the same workplace protections and are excluded from collective bargaining. In a statement, Mamdani highlighted how “Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting.” The Journal reports the bill would also “require warehouse operators to obtain licenses from the city,” and in order to get a license, ”operators would have to adhere to new safety, training and employment requirements, including hiring thousands of the city’s contract couriers.” In response, Amazon is, as usual, threatening to move its business out of the city, but also deploying its secret, New York-specific weapon: their chief lobbyist, Jessica Schumer, daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to the American Prospect. This sets up a major clash between an array of titanic forces in New York politics and whether or not Mayor Mamdani emerges triumphant will be a huge test of his political clout.

* Finally, AP reports the parliament of Lebanon voted this week to abolish the death penalty, making it the first nation in the Arab world to do so. This piece notes that the country has maintained an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment for over 20 years; while death sentences have been issued since then, they have all been suspended or commuted. The official sentence of capital punishment will be replaced with “life imprisonment with aggravated hard labor,” a somewhat vague legal concept that will have to be defined and refined as time goes on. AP adds that this vote comes amidst the Lebanese parliamentary debate over a proposed general amnesty law, that could “reduce sentences or even release convicted militants,” from the country’s various civil wars, as well as others convicted of drug-related crimes. The parliamentary bloc of Hezbollah voted against the law. Lebanon banning capital punishment stands in stark contrast to the Israeli Knesset, which voted in May to adopt a new death penalty statute described by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as perpetuating “racial discrimination against Palestinians” and amounting to “a grave erosion of human rights.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph welcomes Robert Reich (professor of Public Policy and former Secretary of Labor) to discuss his "Pledge to Make America Affordable Again." Then, Ralph speaks to Derek Shearer (former economic policy adviser and US Ambassador to Finland) about his recent work, "A Bold Economic Program for America."

Robert Reich is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, including as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Mr Reich has written eighteen books, including The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, The Common Good, Supercapitalism, and Coming up Short: A Memoir of My America. He is co-founder of Inequality Media, co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute, and co-founding editor of The American Prospect.

Democrats have an opportunity now to talk to the working class about—and not just the working class, the middle class too—about prices, about affordability in ways that are terribly important and meaningful and that really could get prices down or at least stop the onslaught of inflation. And also that are very, very consistent with what we believe as Democrats, as progressives, as people who want to see the nation move back toward its pursuit of social justice.

Robert Reich

You can bet that the right, the apologists for wealth in this country are going to say, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t do that because wealthy people will leave the country!” I mean, what they always do reflexively is say, “If you do that, we’ll leave.” And I say in California the same thing I would say about a national wealth tax—if they want to leave, let them leave. But they’re not going to leave because there are so many advantages to staying in California in terms of: this is where a lot of the high tech talent actually is. This is where the infrastructure for high tech is already. The climate, as I talk to you, I’m looking at a beautiful day out here. You know, who wants to leave California? And if you are a billionaire, and you are just so intent on leaving California because of this one very, very minor tax, then frankly, goodbye.

Robert Reich

I am a believer, though, in the common sense of the American people. Now, if that makes me naive, if that makes me gullible, so be it. But I think at the end of the line, the bottom line here is that the American people will make a decision starting with the midterm elections coming up in just 96 days (something like that). And those elections are going to be critical in terms of trying to constrain Trump and the people, the sycophants and lapdogs behind him and Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and all these people who are ripping the social contract to shreds. And I think that the one way that (this brings us back to my pledge, my affordability pledge for Democrats), I think one way the Democrats can be sure to get the House back and maybe even possibly the Senate in 96, 97 days, is to pledge to make America affordable again. And using these 10 particular steps that are widely, widely supported.

Robert Reich

Derek Shearer served as the US Ambassador to Finland from 1994 to 1997. Previously, he worked in government at the national, state, and local levels, including the founding board of directors of the National Consumer Cooperative Bank in 1978 and Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs in 1993. He is emeritus Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College and Diplomat in Residence at Occidental for 2025-26. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Ambassador Shearer was a senior policy adviser to Bill Clinton and helped to write the campaign’s economic program, Putting People First. He has continued this policy work by co-authoring the comprehensive proposal A Bold Economic Program for America and exploring its political path forward in his recent article, Planning for the Day After Trump.

The point of our program is not that it should be endorsed in its entirety. It’s almost meant to be a discussion document to show what is possible—that this can be done. It doesn’t require some dramatic change in the way the government operates. It just demands a change in priorities and some new laws

Derek Shearer

You can’t get to those issues until you are actually in the government. And if we don’t win back the House and at least have a shot at winning back the Senate, talking about these issues while Trump and the MAGA Republican Party controls the government (and might continue to control it), makes us feel good, but it doesn’t change anything. What I’ve learned about the so-called leaders of the party is you don’t really expect them to lead. They will follow when they see where the voters are going. And they’ll also follow when they see if there is a Presidential candidate who takes off on these kinds of issues…I don’t expect the leadership to lead on these issues. So I don’t rail against them. Because what I’m doing (and I’m doing it with a lot of different people out there, including a lot of young people) is trying to find good candidates, provide them with economic ideas to run on, and then hope that we win back the House and that these kinds of then-elected officials who share our viewpoint become the Democratic Party. I mean, that’s how you do these things. If we don’t win these elections, then we’re just kind of crying in the wilderness.

Derek Shearer

Let’s Start the Revolution

Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People

In his latest eye-opening exploration, political maverick Ralph Nader dissects the astonishing twists and turns of the 2020 presidential election, a race that left the nation on the edge of its seat. Although Joe Biden clinched victory with a substantial popular vote lead, Nader unveils the precarious nature of the outcome, where a mere 100,000 votes in key swing states could have catapulted Donald Trump back to the presidency. Get your copy here.

News 8/7/26

* This week, a new wave of Democratic primaries were held, most notably in the state of Michigan. In the closely watched Senate primary, which came down to a two-way race, Bernie Sanders-backed progressive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed emerged triumphant. Some have played up the fact that his opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, overperformed relative to her polling in an attempt to downplay the significance of El-Sayed’s victory. Yet, this narrative ignores the fact that Stevens enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Establishment and AIPAC, which gave her an 12-to-1 spending advantage according to Axios, and that she ran misleading ads that made it seem as though former President Barack Obama had endorsed her campaign. Viewed in this light, it is clear just how impressive El-Sayed’s victory – statewide, in a must-win swing state for Democrats – is. El-Sayed will now face off against former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in the general election.

* In Detroit, the left scored another major win with the victory of Donavan McKinney. McKinney, a DSA member and Michigan state representative, won his primary race against incumbent Congressman Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th congressional district, the Detroit Free Press reports. Thanedar, a millionaire businessman, was a DSA member but left over disagreements over Israel. Thanedar fought hard to keep this seat, which he won in 2022, and was supported by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries despite many members of the Congressional Black Caucus supporting McKinney. Given that this is a heavily Democratic district, McKinney is essentially guaranteed a seat in the next Congress, bringing the number of DSA-backed House Members to an unprecedented high of seven. Moreover, between McKinney and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the city of Detroit will now enjoy all DSA representation in Congress.

* In Michigan’s seventh congressional district, progressive climate activist and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement William Lawrence pulled out a win in his primary as well. NBC notes that Lawrence defeated his two more moderate opponents, retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former Ambassador to Slovakia Bridget Brink, in part by aggressively criticizing the construction of new AI data centers. Some have alleged that Lawrence received support from Republicans using dark money to boost his campaign because they believe him to be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election. However, the Hillary Clinton campaign’s “pied piper” strategy to boost Donald Trump in 2016 proves that this is ever a risky strategy. Michigan’s seventh district is seen as a critical battleground seat. Donald Trump won the district by just one single percentage point in 2024.

* In more data center news from the Midwest, Hell Gate reports former New York City Mayor Eric Adams was in “Wisconsin Rapids—population 18,654—trying to convince residents that they should allow a real estate developer to build a data center in the heart of their town.” In a video of his pitch, the townspeople can be seen heckling, booing and shouting down the former Mayor, with attendees saying “You belong in prison!” and “You’re here to steal our water!” Community activist Kaitlyn Federwitz is quoted in this piece saying “Our whole town does not want him here at all,” adding “We want our resources to be properly safeguarded, our farmers to be protected, our waterways protected.” The Wisconsin Rapids economy had been largely dependent on a local mill, which closed its doors in 2020; Federwitz spoke to this, arguing that “When the mill closed, we lost 900 jobs. We’re aware we need jobs and industry in our city.” However, she added that the people of Wisconsin Rapids are “not willing to accept that a data center is the answer to that problem.”

* In more news from the midwest, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has published a new op-ed in Newsweek contending that “Democrats Must Pick a Side: Billionaires or Working-Class.” Fain cited numerous examples of Democrats in powers betraying their working class supporters, from NAFTA to modern governors like Abigail Spanberger of Virginia vetoing collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers. He criticized Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in particular for vetoing “nine bills restoring pensions, lowering health care costs, and restoring bargaining rights for public-sector workers,” after “Michigan Democrats fought an 18-month legal battle to force the bills to the governor’s desk.” He claims that “When the courts finally ordered [the bills] delivered, Whitmer vetoed all nine the same day—without so much as a phone call to legislative leaders or the unions that helped elect her.” He ends this piece with a call for “every elected official and candidate to…[reject] corporate PAC money,” and “adopt a platform that addresses the needs of working-class people.” This clear-eyed, laser focus on the working class is what has put Fain into conversation for a 2028 presidential run by some on the populist left, particularly if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ultimately declines to run. A recent article in POLITICO quotes Bhaskar Sunkara, the 2020 Sanders surrogate and former vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, saying “If he’s willing to run, [Fain] might be the best candidate for the left…Since he’s progressive but very much says his egalitarian value system comes from his Christianity, [he] can speak in a moral language that can reach more independents than other candidates, and I think it would set a good precedent for labor.”

* For the DSA left, all eyes now turn to Wisconsin, where Francesca Hong’s campaign for the gubernatorial nomination continues to pick up steam. Just this week, per Wis Politics, Hong picked up the endorsement of the SEIU Wisconsin Healthcare and Service Workers. In their endorsement statement, SEIU Wisconsin called Hong “a longtime advocate and fighter for the working class,” who is “committed to building back strong labor protections by overturning Act 10 and so-called ‘Right-to-Work’ laws, expanding Badgercare, and abolishing poverty wages in Wisconsin.” The union added that Hong’s “support for a $20 minimum wage, adopting family-centered policies such as paid family leave and affordable child care, and enacting much-needed regulations on corporate monopolies make her the clear choice for all Wisconsinites, not just the wealthy.” Hong currently leads in the polls, despite the sitting Democratic Governor’s attempts to boost her primary rival, David Crowley. Both Hong and Crowley have racked up labor support, though Crowley decidedly leads among the building trades and firefighter unions.

* In St. Louis, the left experienced its biggest setback this cycle, with former Congresswoman Cori Bush losing her comeback bid against Congressman Wesley Bell by a large margin. Bush was ousted in 2024 as part of “a broader strategy by AIPAC to unseat Israel’s sharpest critics in Congress, including the ‘Squad,’ which Bush was a part of,” per the Missouri Independent. This piece notes that AIPAC spent over $8 million to oust Bush in that cycle and outside groups spent $7.2 million on Bell’s behalf this year. Bell’s official campaign outspent Bush’s by a margin well over 10 to 1. Bush is the first candidate backed by National DSA to lose their race in 2026, which, while disappointing in this case, is a stunning testament to the track record of the group.

* In a totally different part of the country, this week Julian Beaudion, the Democratic nominee for Senate in South Dakota, dropped out of the race. Beaudion cited personal hardships for himself and his family in his statement of withdrawal citing a recent house fire. However, many see this as an acknowledgement that the independent candidate in this race, veteran and former park ranger Brian Bengs, has a better chance of defeating incumbent Republican Senator Mike Rounds in a head-to-head matchup. This dynamic has been playing out in other states; Democratic Senate candidates have dropped out to clear the way for independents in Nebraska and Idaho already and there is immense pressure on the Democratic nominee in Montana to do the same. For his part, Beaudion will not endorse either candidate in South Dakota, according to KELOLAND News, but South Dakota Searchlight reports the South Dakota Democratic Party will not replace Beaudion on the ballot, giving the greenlight for Democrats to coalesce around Bengs in the general election.

* In another primary election story, Lehigh Valley Public Media is out with a story on the strange dynamic emerging in Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district. According to this story, this race – between incumbent Republican Ryan Mackenzie and his Democratic challenger Bob Brooks, who seems to have done the impossible by getting Bernie Sanders and Josh Shapiro on the same side in a primary – has been upended by the entry of one Andrew Tupone. Mr. Tupone, a former Republican candidate, is running on the Green Party ballot line and claims to have “joined the Green Party this spring, drawn by its environmental policies on water conservancy and opposition to data centers, after growing disillusioned with both major parties.” Yet, apparently, “Green Party leaders warned in a statement this month that a wave of candidates may be posing as party members across the state.” Chris Robinson, a Green party spokesman, claims that “The party hasn’t endorsed any congressional candidates in Pennsylvania and has never heard from Tupone.” Robinson adds that he “looked at [Tupone’s] Facebook page, and he seems like he’s a nice Republican.” According to LVPM, “a third-party candidate wouldn’t need to move the needle much,” to influence the outcome of the election, noting that the current Congressman defeated the Democratic incumbent, Rep. Susan Wild by just 1 percentage point, in 2024, while “Tim Silfies, the last third-party congressional candidate to appear on a Lehigh Valley ballot, earned 8,011 votes, or 3 percent of the vote, in 2018.”

* Finally, in more third party news, POLITICO reports several leading figures on the anti-MAGA right – including Congressman Thomas Massie, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and commentator Tucker Carlson – convened last weekend to “[sow] the seeds for a future third-party political organization…aimed at undercutting the Republican establishment.” This gang of three, joined by former Trump national security official Joe Kent, are particularly incensed by the president’s intervention in Iran, with Greene writing “We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise. But he’s betrayed us all.” This group is reportedly mulling a right-wing, third-party presidential campaign in 2028. While Carlson has declined to launch a presidential bid in the past, despite urging from within his circle, a sprawling new “10-point vision for America” he debuted during a recent stream implies that he is increasingly interested in articulating an alternative vision of right-wing politics from those espoused by Trump. This manifesto, as reported by Axios, includes everything from declassifying records on the JFK assasination and 9/11 to enforcing universal sobriety to “halting immigration until the effects of AI become clearer.” We will be watching closely to see if this effort moves forward or peters out as has been the pattern with other recent third party attempts.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Last week, Ralph, along with our constitutional law expert, Bruce Fein, organized another symposium in Washington DC on impeaching Donald Trump. On today’s program, we play you highlights from that symposium with eight of the participants, each of whom are going to give listeners their perspective on why Donald Trump should be impeached even before the midterm elections

.

The rhetoric from many Democratic leaders has not kept up with the horror and the urgency of what [Donald Trump] is inflicting on America and the American people. He has moved very, very quickly to develop a fascist dictatorship embodying a kleptocratic corporate state that is marked by non-regulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and tax escapes for the wealthy and major corporations, as well as expanded corporate welfare in the midst of personal and institutional two-way bribery and extortion. It’s very important to punctuate the seriousness of what he’s already done.

Ralph Nader

Celinda Lake is a political strategist and president of Lake Research Partners.

What I love about polling is: conventional wisdom is wrong about 90% of the time, plus or minus 5%. Beltway conventional wisdom is wrong about 100% of the time, plus or minus 5%. So, “Everybody knows impeachment is unpopular.” No, it’s not. It’s very popular. A majority of people support it. “Everyone knows that it’ll energize the other side.” No. The other side, to the extent they’re going to be energized, they’re already energized. We need to energize our side. We need to get our people out to vote… “Everyone knows it’s very volatile.” No, it’s not. Attitudes about impeachment track with job performance… And finally, “Everybody knows that nobody understands impeachment.” Well, frankly, voters understand it better than a lot of elected officials.

Celinda Lake

Suparna Reddy is the Senior Counsel for Free Speech For People.

Let us be clear: Congress should impeach and remove Trump for each and every one of these hundreds of offenses. And we have a duty to record his every abuse of power. But in the process, we should not miss the forest for the trees— Trump is intentionally and systematically dismantling our democratic institutions to consolidate his own power and line his own pockets.

Suparna Reddy

Richard Painter is the S. Walter Richey professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School and was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007.

We have seen serious, indeed, tragic financial conflicts of interest in the executive branch never before seen in the history of our country—unless we look at our very early Presidents who held vast plantations with slave labor, a clear economic conflict of interest with their official duties. A conflict of interest shared by many Senators and Representatives and Justices of the Supreme Court, and indeed a tragic conflict of interest for the first eighty years of our history that ended only with a bloody civil war. But since then, we have not had at least a President who is embroiled in financial conflicts of interest with his official duties.

Richard Painter

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties.

We need to make a persuasive argument for people, whether they like Donald Trump or not, to understand the Constitution transcends this President. The Constitution transcends future Presidents and future crises. We need to convince Americans across the political spectrum to stand with the rule of law, to stand with accountable government, to stand with an accountable executive, responsible legislatures. History tells us that one person making these decisions is not good. Plenty of authoritarians in the past have made these decisions and brought their countries to disaster.

Douglas Bandow

Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

We’re now at a moment when the federal government is a threat to our rights. The actions of the Trump administration are unprecedented in the violations of the Constitution. And so I think it’s crucial that state and local governments step in so as to protect rights. It’s interesting that through American history, Federalism has always been equated, states’ rights have always been equated with regressive policies… But now it’s time for progressives to use states’ rights and look for the opportunities for states to safeguard our constitution

Erwin Chemerinsky

Keira Havens is a United States Air Force veteran, a former scientist, and a longtime political activist. She is the executive director of Citizens’ Impeachment.

Everybody has agency. Everybody has a role that they can play. Everybody can take action. As a private citizen, I can say, “Man, there are a lot of things wrong with what’s happening.” In fact, I wrote several articles of impeachment: tyranny, treason, obstruction of justice, and of course, corruption, right? Members of Congress have more power than that. They need to do more than say things. They have to take action. Courage is an action. It’s what you do after you say the words that really matters. And every single member of Congress is able to take action. They are able to introduce articles of impeachment, and they are refusing.

Keira Havens

Jessica Denson is a former Trump staffer and founder of the Removal Coalition.

The American people (and particularly Democratic primary voters) are looking for fighters. For God’s sake, what could you do better than to exert the power that you have—this one privilege in the House, Rule 9, that gives any member of the Congress, including the minority, the ability to force a vote any time. Why would you sit on that? Why would you wait? Instead, in my activism, I’ve had to resort to relying on literally one Congressman. This is so pathetic. He is a dear friend, and I am so grateful for him. But to this day, I think it is pathetic that I have to rely on one Congressman to bring forth articles of impeachment and force votes, and that’s Representative Green.

Jessica Denson

News 7/31/26

* Our top stories this week have to do with the Democratic National Committee. Several stories have recently come out about DNC Chair Ken Martin, ranging from interpersonal issues to his utter failure to raise money for the Democratic Party. The most stunning example of this comes from NOTUS, which reports that Martin “put [the DNC’s] physical headquarters up for collateral last year in order to obtain a $15 million line of credit to help invest in off-year elections.” While the party has used this mechanism before, it underlines the gaping disparity between the DNC, which is currently over $2 million in debt compared to the Republican National Committee (RNC), which can boast $128.5 million cash on-hand.

* Compounding the issues of the already cash-strapped DNC, the New Republic reports the Democratic National Committee was scammed out of nearly $29,000 by an email from someone pretending to be Chair Ken Martin last year. DNC spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg is quoted saying “The DNC takes seriously our duty to protect the funds provided to us by millions of patriotic Americans chipping in to fund our mission…this was a one-off mistake that was promptly caught and addressed, and no similar issues have occurred since.” That said, only $7,000 worth of this money has been recovered. As TNR puts it, “This has all been very embarrassing. Martin can’t raise money, can’t keep money, and can’t unite the base under the big tent’ he likes to talk about.” Martin may also be facing an outright rebellion led by party insiders.

* One surprising proposal to this effect is coming from a very unlikely source. The Hill reports veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, while tearing into Martin, opened the door to former DNC Vice-Chair David Hogg taking the reins. Carville said the DNC appears “dysfunctional” and that the committee needs to “figure out a way maybe they could be somewhat relevant,” adding that “If David Hogg wants to take it over, I ain’t stopping you…Go ahead, man, I don’t really care.” This is a stark turnabout from Carville’s position on Hogg when the latter was in DNC leadership; back then, Carville dismissed him as “a contemptible little twerp.” In an interview, Hogg highlighted this exact reversal, while simultaneously saying that he did not want to lead the crumbling Democratic Party organization. Ben Wikler, the former Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair who challenged Ken Martin in 2025 has also resisted calls to take over the DNC, with rumors circulating that he is gearing up to run for Senate in the Badger State next cycle. While pressure continues to mount on Martin, alternative leadership remains elusive.

* Speaking of lackluster leadership, Sources Say News reports Capitol CNCT has launched The Scoop which they describe as “a confidential rating system that lets current and former Hill staffers weigh in on the members and offices they have worked for.” As one might imagine, some reviews are extremely scathing. This piece cites one that reads, “Leadership is abusive. Lies about promotions and bonuses…This place will leach at your mental health like a vampire…Beware.” Sources Say highlights the fact that “Unlike most workplaces, Congress has no HR department, which means bad behavior by members and senior staff can go unreported and unchecked for years.” The new site verifies that the posters are or were real employees of these offices, but keeps their names anonymous to protect them from retaliation.

* In more news from Congress, POLITICO reports Maryland Representative and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin is launching a new investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, this time focusing on whether the deceased sex offender and financier acted as an unregistered foreign agent. In a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Raskin writes that “Jeffrey Epstein never registered as a foreign agent…Yet numerous recently released documents now show he acted aggressively on behalf of multiple foreign governments, including several with interests adverse to the United States, in order to influence policies of the first Trump Administration.” The declassified files reveal that Epstein “offered to serve as a conduit between Saudi Arabia and members of the Trump administration, consulted with Russian officials on engaging with the president and advised former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.” This inquiry is likely to raise fresh questions about not only Epstein’s role working on behalf of foreign governments, but his possible connections with intelligence and espionage organizations including the CIA and Mossad.

* Other progressive members of Congress, led by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, have issued a formal response to a new Trump administration report on Cuba. These members interpret this report – which claims that the tiny Caribbean nation of 10 million people has “waged a sustained campaign” to “conquer” the United States and is backing “left-wing terrorism on American soil” – is in fact an instrument the administration plans to use to persecute “Trump’s perceived political enemies.” Omar, joined by Representatives Jim McGovern, Delia Ramirez, Rashida Tlaib, AOC and more, contend that Trump is “hell-bent on taking America back 70 years to the height of Cold War McCarthyism, when hawkish foreign policy was paired with unsubstantiated accusations of communist subversion and political repression against dissidents at home.” The administration report singled out several organizations and activists, including the National Lawyers Guild, Hasan Piker, and campus activist Isra Hirsi, daughter of Congresswoman Omar. This from Common Dreams.

* In more news from the left, POLITICO reports Donavan McKinney – who is challenging incumbent Congressman Shri Thanedar in Detroit – picked up a major batch of endorsements this week from members of the Congressional Black Caucus. These new endorsers include Representatives Steven Horsford, the former chair of the CBC, along with Lateefah Simon and Ayanna Pressley. These endorsements, particularly that of Congressman Horsford, are notable because Thanedar retains the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his deputies, Representatives Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark. McKinney said he was “honored” by these endorsements, adding that he “[looks] forward to working alongside these incredible leaders to pass critical legislation to protect voting rights, get big money out of our politics, and ensure all families have access to the resources they need to not just survive, but to truly thrive.” McKinney’s primary will be held on August 4th, along with the more closely watched Senate primary between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and his moderate, establishment-backed opponent Haley Stevens.

* Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to fulfill campaign promises at an astonishing rate. First, Forbes reports that Mamdani has officially introduced a $124.7 billion city budget which includes funding for five city-run grocery stores which will sell staple foods at a 30% discount compared to private grocery stores. These staples are set to include produce, dairy, bread, select meat and seafood, and approximately 20 other products. Being city-owned, these stores will not have to pay rent or property taxes, ensuring they can operate more cheaply than their competitors in the private sector. This piece notes that similar experiments in smaller cities like Baldwin, Florida, and Erie, Kansas proved unsustainable financially, while proposals in Chicago and Kansas City struggled to get off the ground. There is reason to believe New York will prove a different matter entirely, but that remains to be seen. At the same time, Jacobin reports Mamdani is launching a new initiative called “Talk to Tenants,” which will “send volunteers door-to-door in buildings with chronic housing code violations, connecting renters with organizing resources, neighborhood organizations, and training on tenants’ rights and how to build tenant associations.” This effort will be led by the Office of Mass Engagement in partnership with the Office to Protect Tenants. It is extremely encouraging to see Mamdani utilizing a varied array of tools at his disposal – including both direct action by the city as on grocery stores or using city resources to promote the formation of non-governmental organizing efforts – in order to achieve his vision of a just and affordable American metropolis.

* In more troubling, if not surprising, news, the Wall Street Journal is out with a new report finding that the Department of Justice is giving a green light to corporate criminals. The Journal cites examples ranging from Alibaba to Boeing and EagleBank to Abbott Laboratories where the Trump DOJ “declined to charge companies even when prosecutors thought executives or managers were involved in the wrongdoing.” This follows from directives given by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has “said prosecutors shouldn’t view prosecuting companies as their goal and should instead focus on holding individual wrongdoers accountable.” This piece cites a December speech by Blanche in which he stated that “Companies don’t go to jail, people do.” Yet, it seems that under the Trump Justice Department, neither do.

* Finally, in more corporate news, the antitrust lawsuit filed by over a dozen state attorneys general has at least temporarily succeeded in halting the mega-merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and the Ellisons’ media conglomerate, Paramount Skydance. After the lawsuit was filed, a federal judge in Oakland ordered a pause on the deal, and since then, the Ellisons themselves have agreed to put the merger “on ice” pending the outcome of the trial, Variety reports. This piece also highlights the private sentiments of anonymous Warner Bros. executives who apparently hope that the deal hits a “legal landmine” and is ultimately “nixed.” However, in an internal memo, David Ellison maintained that “the facts and the law are on our side, and a full hearing will demonstrate why the plaintiffs’ arguments should not prevail.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Ralph speaks to Judge Andrew Napolitano about two of Ralph’s abiding concerns: the death undercount in Gaza and the impeachment of Donald Trump. Then, Ralph responds to some of your listener feedback.

Judge Andrew Napolitano is a former Superior Court Judge, a syndicated columnist, and host of the Judging Freedom podcast. Judge Napolitano has taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at Delaware Law School and Seton Hall Law School, and he was Fox News’ Senior Judicial Analyst from 1997 to 2021. He is the author of several books on the U.S. Constitution, including Freedom’s Anchor: An Introduction to Natural Law Jurisprudence in American Constitutional History.

Amongst the mainstream media, with respect to the Netanyahu regime and what it has been doing, there is no intellectual honesty. The mainstream media in the United States is controlled by the lobby. And the lobby, of course, is the Israeli and American donors who control the media and control the government. Our friend Pat Buchanan famously referred to the Congress as “Israeli-occupied territory”. The same may be said about the mainstream media… Don’t expect intellectual honesty from the mainstream media, because anybody who tries it will be looking for a job.

Judge Andrew Napolitano

[Donald Trump’s] behavior has simply been tyrannical to the nth degree. Look, he’s been impeached twice—both times for, compared to what he’s done in the second term, a pittance. What he’s done in the second term is absolutely and utterly profound. He has failed to take care that the laws be enforced. He has failed to abide due process. He has failed to protect the right to free speech. He has failed to protect the right to privacy. He has failed to seek Congressional approval before starting wars. He has ordered murders on the high seas. This is a long litany.

Judge Andrew Napolitano

Ralph welcomes back his old running mate, Native American activist, Winona LaDuke, who has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices to talk about her latest incarnation: hemp farmer. Then, we’ll speak to Hal Weitzman, from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, about how Elon Musk’s feud with Delaware may transform corporate America. Plus, we tick off Robert Reich’s ten policy prescriptions the Democratic Party should fight for to beat the GOP in the upcoming midterms.

Winona LaDuke is an activist, economist, and author, who has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices. She is also a two-time vice-presidential candidate with Ralph Nader. Ms. LaDuke lives and works on the White Earth Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, where she runs Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm. She is also a member of the Indigenous Hemp & Cannabis Farmer’s Cooperative.

I’m looking first at seed sovereignty. We’re growing [European hemp] varieties and then we’re growing these feral hemp varieties. They’re called feral varieties (which of course, that’s something that I love) which means that when they eradicated hemp in the 1930s with the Marijuana Prohibition Act—well, they missed some spots. And those guys kept growing. And so 80 years of being illegal—isn’t that great? Something that’s illegal for 80 years is still with us, rocking out. And so I figure if you grew illegally for 80 years, you are really a tough hemp plant…And so we are growing out these hemp varieties and built a cooperative because we want to own the seeds and we want to own the technology (the value-added processing), and we want to use this hemp as a part of our future as tribes.

Winona LaDuke

My grandsons are farming. I don’t know who else can say their grandchildren are farming—let me know. My grandchildren are farming. They’re running the horses. They’re running the farms. You know, that’s a retirement plan. My 401k will be worth nothing, but my grandchildren will feed me. This is my strategy.

Winona LaDuke

Hal Weitzman is Executive Director for Intellectual Capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Review, and host of The Chicago Booth Review podcast. A former Financial Times editor and foreign correspondent, he is the author of Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering and What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.

There is a race to the bottom. There’s been a race to the bottom for many decades. That’s not new. I think it’s accelerated somewhat. Delaware has joined that race from having been something of a “premium product” in terms of incorporating companies—Delaware has become a bit more “cut-price” I would say, and in that sense has followed Texas and Nevada. So the conclusion that we have a race to the bottom and it may be worse than Delaware—actually I think Delaware’s already there. So it’s not that it’s getting worse outside of Delaware, it’s getting worse including Delaware.

Hal Weitzman

The trend I think we’re seeing is the exclusion of small shareholders completely—regardless of the status of your shares, this is about how big you are. And if you’re a small shareholder there is no corporate democracy for you… It was practice in the past for activist groups, campaigning groups, to buy one share of a company and then to go to the shareholder meeting so they could make the point that they wanted to make. Now that kind of shareholder democracy is being encroached on. And the extent now is to say: unless you have a large position (regardless of the size of the company and the cost of the shares), you will not be allowed to bring suits against the executives for the correct running of the company.

Hal Weitzman

News 7/17/26

* Our top story this week is New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to impose a one-year “pause” on the construction of AI data centers across the state. ABC7 reports that this is the first such moratorium in the nation, despite similar attempts in several states, most notably Maine where Governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill to this effect. Hochul argues that the pause is necessary so lawmakers and regulators can formulate “Guardrails to reduce the risk to our energy grid, minimize land disruption, noise pollution, and protect our natural resources, especially our water supply.” Hochul’s move comes amidst a broader push against AI data centers from the left. Semafor reports Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a nationwide ban in March and many progressives running for state and local office in the midterms have made this a cornerstone of their campaigns. According to this piece, “In February, polling from Marquette Law School found 70% of all Wisconsinites agreeing that ‘the costs of the data centers outweigh the benefits.’ Among Democrats, the number was 85%.”

* Another progressive Member of Congress quite literally stepped into another hot-button political issue this week. While visiting a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank Wednesday, Al Jazeera reports armed settlers stopped the van of Representative Ro Khanna and were “later joined by Israeli soldiers who continued to block the road.” In a video, Khanna points out, settlers can be seen “brandishing M4s [rifles], kicking the tyres of our van, laughing at us, mocking at us, videotaping us.” This continued for over an hour and was only resolved when he reached out to the American Embassy, according to Khanna. Israel has responded to this fiasco by blaming Khanna, accusing the congressman of failing to coordinate his trip with the Israeli government; Khanna retorted that “The [Israeli military] is lying” and called for the arrest of the violent settlers. Conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson excoriated U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, writing “An American member of congress is threatened by foreign terrorists carrying American rifles, backed by a foreign military paid for by American taxpayers, and the US ambassador to that country says not a word in defense of his own countryman…It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America.”

* Following his return from occupied Palestine, Khanna again teamed up with Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky to sponsor an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which would have removed the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” from the must-pass legislation. Responsible Statecraft describes the initiative as “an unprecedented integration of the U.S. and Israeli military industrial complexes,” by creating “an executive agent within the Department of Defense whose sole responsibility is furthering U.S. and Israeli military tech integration across nearly every facet of the defense process.” This article also notes that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described this shift in the U.S.-Israel relationship as ‘my plan.’” However, House leadership is not backing this commonsense, bipartisan amendment. In a letter, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he would vote against the amendment, calling it “overly broad” and claiming the amendment would “restrict our country’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region who are sworn enemies of both the United States and Israel,” per the Times of Israel. However, Jeffries pledged not to whip votes against the amendment and indeed the House Minority Whip, Congresswoman Katherine Clark, voted for the amendment as did Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, despite the opposition of Jeffries and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar. The Congressional Progressive Caucus reportedly whipped votes in favor of the amendment.

* In more Israel-related news, this week Marco Rubio – who serves as Secretary of State as well as the acting National Security Advisor – announced that the State Department will launch a “sweeping campaign to dismantle…the International Criminal Court.” CNN observes that “The administration’s ire against the ICC goes back to President Donald Trump’s first term, when it targeted the ICC for seeking to investigate alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan,” and that since taking office for the second time, the Trump administration has “imposed a slew of sanctions against ICC officials for their attempts to investigate the US and Israel.” CNN also quotes a State Department official who said that top officials, including Secretary Rubio and US ambassadors, “are calling countries as part of a campaign to diplomatically isolate the International Criminal Court.” It is worth noting that “all American presidents since the ICC’s ratification have maintained that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans,” and that Congress even passed a law calling for an invasion and occupation of the Hague if any American serviceman was ever prosecuted by the ICC, implying that this crackdown on the court is not about American sovereignty at all but rather the prosecution of Israeli officials for their war crimes in Gaza.

* In another stunning story starring Marco Rubio, the New York Times reports the Secretary of State is functionally “running Venezuela from afar.” The Times story characterizes Rubio’s position as the “de facto viceroy of Venezuela,” effectively controlling the country’s “finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government.” This story makes clear that while Delcy Rodríguez, the former Vice President of Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro, nominally occupies the presidency, Rubio is the one really calling the shots, with Rubio setting the conditions on what Venezuela’s export revenue “can be spent on, and by whom,” and having the authority to approve or deny key governmental appointments in the country, such as the minister of defense. In short, the United States has established a shocking explicitly neo-colonial regime in the country, fulfilling the gravest prognostications of anti-imperialist critics of American intervention in the Bolivarian Republic.

* Closer to home, Bloomberg reports the federal government has officially launched a grand jury investigation into the United Auto Workers and the union’s outspoken president, Shawn Fain. The investigation stems from accusations made by the union’s Vice President, Rich Boyer, who alleged that Fain used his position to secure benefits for his fiancée and her sister – and when Boyer refused to approve the benefits, Fain retaliated by stripping Boyer of his duties as chief negotiator with Stellantis NV. Fain has called the allegations “false” and is accusing Boyer of seeking to influence the upcoming UAW leadership election. Fain also claims that Boyer is the one retaliating after Fain “refused the vice president’s request to hire family members to positions in the union.” Fain has long maintained that the Justice Department, and specifically the DOJ-appointed monitor, Neil Barofsky, has a political grudge against him because “the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza.” According to Bloomberg, “Both Fain and Boyer have slates running and each is accusing the other of attempting to abuse their positions to benefit family.”

* This week, another victim of harassment by the federal government, student activist Mahmoud Khalil, filed a landmark civil rights suit alleging that the government conspired with a number of private groups – including the Heritage Foundation, Betar, and Canary Mission – to “suppress criticism of Israel through a coordinated campaign to dox, jail and ultimately deport student activists.” According to the lawsuit, said activists were “nearly automatically targeted by the Federal Defendants for arrest and removal.” Khalil’s lawyers argue that this “public-private partnership” could violate the “Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups.” The suit is led by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The AP reports “Soon after his arrest, both Canary Mission and Betar boasted of their role in flagging Khalil’s noncitizen status to the government.” Since Khalil’s arrest, Betar has agreed to “dissolve its nonprofit status,” following a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James accusing Betar’s members of harassing Palestinians.

* Turning to the state level, this week 12 state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, filed an antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Trump-aligned David Ellison. The proposed, $110 billion merger was approved by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department last month, which reached the dubious conclusion that the merger is “not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers.” In the filing, Bonta and the state AGs for Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington allege that the merger “would extinguish competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. and inflict substantial harm on movie theatres, basic cable distributors, and, ultimately, audiences nationwide.” This from Reason.

* In the world of philanthropy, CNBC reports Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has “excluded the Gates Foundation from his sizable annual charitable donations.” As this report notes, the Gates Foundation has been among the top recipients of his annual Berkshire donations, totaling $47 billion worth of Berkshire stock since 2006. The reason for the exclusion of the Gates Foundation has been much speculated upon, in particular, whether it was due to the recent revelations about Gates’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Asked about this, Buffett said that he had “read a great deal…in terms of what happened, with Bill and Epstein,” calling their relationship “distasteful,” but also saying that he “found nothing in there that was beyond what [he] could picture [himself] doing.” Instead of the Gates Foundation, all of this year’s donations will go to foundations linked to the Buffett family.

* Finally, British multinational diamond conglomerate De Beers, famous for coining the “A Diamond is Forever” tagline in 1947, reported this week that they plan to halt work at their “flagship” Venetia mine in South Africa as demand for the stones wanes. The BBC highlights both slackening consumer demand as well as competition from lab-grown diamonds, particularly those produced in China. That said, the closing of the Venetia mine – the biggest in South Africa, accounting for over 40% of the country’s diamond production – will send shockwaves through that country’s already shaky economy. That mine alone employs more than 4,000 people, while the mining sector employs nearly half a million. De Beers said they plan to reopen the mine in two years; in the meantime, they are looking to expand copper mining to keep up with demand from AI data centers.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.