The Smoke Pit with 50501 Veterans · Wednesday, September 23, 2026 · Pillar II: Democracy, Peace, and Constitutional Duty

Host: Carl Able

Guest: Alex Rikleen, former Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts

Panel: Bryan C. Winter, Steph Money, Brit Robinson

THE SHORT ANSWER

Starting a campaign is easy. A website, a treasurer, an FEC filing. Getting anyone to pay attention is the hard part. Alex Rikleen, a history teacher from Acton, challenged Sen. Ed Markey in the Democratic primary with no machine, no money, and no name recognition. He made 235 public appearances in a year, then withdrew on May 27, 2026 and endorsed Markey. Here is where the machinery stopped him, and what he would fix.

WHAT WE COVER

He wrote to 500 Democratic town, city, and ward chairs and heard back from fewer than 100. Soft pressure from the state party that never has to say no. What a statewide convention costs a candidate. Why a three-minute launch video took 21 hours. Then policy: multi-member districts with ranked choice voting, expanding the House, and whether an independent can win without being rich or famous.

CHAPTERS

0:00 235 appearances and the question on the table

3:04 Why challenge a sitting senator

6:02 500 committee chairs, fewer than 100 replies

11:59 Gatekeeping from inside the party

21:09 Was it worth it? Putting Supreme Court reform on the map

25:43 How to start a campaign: FEC, treasurer, launch

29:19 21 hours for a three-minute video

31:05 Politics is not a solved game

37:52 Multi-member districts and ranked choice voting

42:53 Expanding the House

46:21 Independents and the two-party system

50:14 What it costs: conventions, merch, union printing

57:29 Why he dropped out and endorsed Markey

1:01:49 What he wishes he had known

1:05:23 Safety Brief

QUESTIONS THIS EPISODE ANSWERS

How do you get on the ballot for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts?

A statewide candidate needs 10,000 signatures and at least 15 percent of delegate votes at the party's state convention. House candidates need signatures but skip the convention.

When does a federal candidate have to register with the FEC?

Once you raise or spend more than $5,000, you must file a statement of candidacy within 15 days.

Can multi-member districts stop gerrymandering?

Rikleen argues that combining multi-member districts with ranked choice voting makes the map matter less, producing bodies closer to the population they serve. Cambridge, Massachusetts already elects its city council and school committee this way.

Why did Alex Rikleen drop out and endorse Ed Markey?

He said his path to winning fell to zero, and endorsing before the convention let him steer the delegates he had won toward Markey rather than Rep. Seth Moulton.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Live Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8PM ET. Veterans from across the political spectrum argue current events against the oath they took. Issues over party. Straight talk over spin.

Guests and panelists speak for themselves. 50501 Veterans does not endorse candidates.

Questions for the panel: 50501vets.com/ask

Host: Carl Able, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC (Ret.) Panel: John Moses, Bryan C. Winter

Three times in 2026 the House of Representatives voted to end the war in Iran. The third one passed on September 15 at 10:32 PM, 220 to 204. Not one of those votes can end anything, and every member who voted yes knows it.

This episode takes apart three levers Congress and the courts pulled in one week, and asks which is a record, which is a rehearsal, and which is theater.

Congress did not end the war. It passed a concurrent resolution, which never goes to the president, cannot be vetoed, and carries no force of law. A member filed eight articles of impeachment against the Secretary of War using the one procedure a single member can still force, and the House went home before the clock could run. The Supreme Court blocked the Postal Service ballot rule for this election only, on timing, without ruling on whether it is legal.

Roll Call 307, H. Con. Res. 93, September 15, 10:32 PM. Agreed to 220-204, nine not voting. Democrats voted 213-0 in favor. Republicans voted 7-203. One independent voted no. Sponsored by Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran.

The seven Republicans who crossed: Nancy Mace (SC), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Zach Nunn (IA), Tom Barrett (MI), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Warren Davidson (OH), Thomas Massie (KY). Three of the seven were not there in July. Four voted for the July measure as well.

Section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution says forces shall be removed on a concurrent resolution. That provision has been widely read as dead since INS v. Chadha in 1983, which held that Congress cannot bind the executive without presentment. Only a joint resolution binds. The June and July resolutions are still sitting in the Senate. Nobody has scheduled them. Nobody has to.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Thomas Massie filed eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth from the House floor as a privileged resolution, which forces the House to take it up within two legislative days. He did not tell his own leadership.

By Wednesday evening the House announced last votes at 4:45 PM and adjourned until after November 3. Legislative days only pass when the House is in session, so the clock never ran. The articles are still live. The vote happens when the House comes back.

The eight articles as read on air: unlawful war, defying Congress, blowing the 60-day clock, intentionally causing civilian casualties, extrajudicial strikes in the Caribbean, retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly over rules that do not apply to him, the removal of Maduro from his own country, and the Yemen operation with the Signal chat at the start of it.

A privileged resolution is the one lever a single member can still pull without anyone's permission. Everything else that happened this week required somebody to schedule it.

The same week, the Supreme Court refused to let the Postal Service ballot rule take effect for this election. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that there is "at least a fair prospect" the rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority, but that applying it to the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, because election officials do not have time to implement it.

Read that carefully. It is a ruling about the calendar, not about whether the rule is lawful. The rule is still on the books and it comes back after November. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented.

Nothing changed for November 3. Request your ballot, fill it out, send it in. If you can vote in person, do that. Check your state's rules before you go.

We swore to defend it. Tonight we argue about fixing it.

Seventy-seven percent of Americans say the system needs major change. Twenty-seven percent think it can actually happen. On the eve of Constitution Day, Carl Able, Katie Chorbak, John Moses, and Tim Boivin put three amendment ideas on the table and fight about them.

One, a bigger House and a different ballot. Washington asked for one representative per thirty thousand people. Today it is one per 761,000, and the 435 cap is a statute, not a constitutional rule.

Two, eighteen years on the bench. Article III says judges serve during good behaviour. It does not say for life.

Three, every vote counts the same. The National Popular Vote compact sits at 222 of the 270 electoral votes it needs.

No talking points. No consensus. Four veterans arguing in good faith about the document we all swore an oath to.

Operation Roll Call is September 26. Show up.

Godfrey Wade came to Georgia from Jamaica in 1975. He was 15. He held a green card for 50 years, served in the U.S. Army in Germany, raised six children, and has three grandchildren. In September 2025 a traffic stop in Rockdale County ended with him in ICE custody on a removal order from 2014, tied to a hearing notice that went to an address he had not lived at.

He spent five months in detention at Stewart in Lumpkin, Georgia, and then Richwood in Monroe, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied his emergency stay in November. On February 5, 2026, he was put on a plane to Kingston with the clothes on his back. His appeal before the Board of Immigration Appeals is still pending.

His fiancée April Watkins sat down with the panel and walked through all of it. The bail she paid that did not free him. The attorney who told her flatly he would be deported and quoted six thousand dollars to fight it. Twelve days sleeping on a floor. Twenty-five pounds lost. The cough that went through the pod. Four months in Jamaica before he could get identification. And the question she has been asked more times than she can count, which is why a man who lived here 50 years never became a citizen.

Panel: Katie Chorbak, Carl Able, Lisa Wohlrab, Bryan Winter.

Support Godfrey Wade: http://spot.fund/pw33v31sc. Family income went from two incomes to one, and April is supporting him in Jamaica while covering costs here.

Questions for the guest or the panel: 50501vets.com/ask

Note on the record: Godfrey Wade's appeal and habeas petition are active. Nothing in this episode is a finding on the underlying 2006 and 2007 matters.

Thursday the Speaker sent the House home. Two weeks of work cancelled. The House has taken 295 recorded votes this year, against 362 last year, which was already the fewest this century. Same week, the Secretary of Homeland Security said federal agents could be at polling places if there is "a threat," a poll found most Americans under 30 view socialism favorably, and the President, asked about a third term, said "I'd love to run, but the law is very strong."

Every veteran watching swore an oath to a piece of paper. This episode asks who is actually holding the sword that makes that paper mean anything.

Three blocks. Who guards the polls. Why socialism is winning the under-30 vote. And the growing case, from the left and the right both, that the Constitution should be set aside.

Each block pairs a man who wrote the manual for how this is supposed to work against a man who described how it is actually working. Madison, Locke, Weber and Przeworski on elections and legitimacy. Marx and Engels against Frankfurt on who gets what. Jefferson against Madison on whether the thing can be rewritten at all. Then the panel says what it looks like from inside a uniform.

Nobody on this panel is a lawyer or a professor. Three of the four are veterans. The fourth grew up a Marine's daughter and is a military spouse. That is the expertise in the room, and it is the only expertise being claimed.

Full video broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsa--m6zxSo

Questions for the panel: 50501vets.com/ask
Join 50501 Veterans: [email protected]

General contact: [email protected]

Operation Take Up Space, led by Common Defense: 300-mile ruck, Asheville to Wilmington https://commondefense.us/otus/

September 26 nationwide day of action: https://www.mobilize.us/vetsandneighbors/c/roll-call/event/create/

Major Richard Star Act discharge petition: one signature short

Next episode: Left Behind, April Watkins on Godfrey Wade, Saturday September 12

Issues over party. Straight talk over spin.

American elections are infrastructure. Like any infrastructure, they have an attack surface, a set of failure points, and people whose job it is to defend them. This week the Smoke Pit runs a threat assessment on the whole system, from the voter roll to the certification, and asks the question veterans are trained to ask about anything worth protecting: where is it weak, and who is standing watch.

The panel works through what actually threatens an American election versus what only gets talked about. Physical security at polling places and tabulation centers. The people who staff them and why they are quitting. Voter roll integrity and the difference between maintenance and purging. Certification as a chokepoint. Foreign influence operations against the information environment rather than the machines. And the piece that gets the least attention and deserves the most: the recruitment and retention of the election workers who make the whole thing run.

Veterans have a specific stake in this. The oath is to the Constitution, not to an outcome, and that oath does not expire on separation. Election defense is constitutional duty carried out in a church basement on a folding table.

IN THIS EPISODE

Where the real attack surface is, and where it is not
Election workers under threat, and why staffing is the quiet crisis
Voter roll maintenance versus voter roll purging
Certification as a pressure point
Influence operations aimed at trust, not tabulation
What a veteran can actually do about it before November

TAKE ACTION
Serve as a poll worker in your county. Contact your local board of elections directly.
Submit a question for the show: 50501vets.com/ask
Watch live and find the archive: 50501vets.com

The panel works the week across all three pillars. Veterans' Care, Rights, and Dignity. Democracy, Peace, and Constitutional Duty. No Veteran Left Behind. What broke, what got buried, what deserves a second look, and what the coverage got wrong.

Got something you want the panel to take on? Submit your question before the show at 50501vets.com/ask

Live on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and 50501vets.com every Wednesday and Saturday at 8PM ET.

The Smoke Pit is the flagship broadcast of 50501 Veterans, and is produced by Crayon Eater Media

Issues over party. Straight talk over spin.

Looking for information on how to support deployed service members? Visit militaryfamiliesspeakout.com

Brit Robinson is running for Congress in Florida's 4th District (FL-04). She joins The Smoke Pit to talk policy: where she stands on veterans' care, the war powers question around Iran, and the money driving congressional campaigns.

The conversation covers VA funding and staffing shortages, continuity of care and the community care debate, mental health treatment and veteran suicide, access to experimental therapies like ibogaine and ketamine, and military families facing food insecurity on SNAP. Robinson and the panel also dig into vote-by-mail and military voting access, gerrymandering and the dilution of the veteran vote after Florida redistricting, campaign finance reform and Citizens United, and the real barriers working-class candidates face getting on the ballot.

A military spouse with family stationed across the country, Robinson talks military residency, the cost of running a volunteer-led campaign, and why she believes the system is built to keep working people out of office. The panel pushes back where it counts, from term limits to healthcare-for-all and how it intersects with VA benefits.

Brit Robinson faces Aaron Bean in the FL-04 race. The Florida primary is August 18. Find more on her campaign at brittforcongress.com.

Issues Over Party. Straight Talk Over Spin.

50501 Veterans does not endorse candidates. All candidate appearances on The Smoke Pit are framed around issues, not party or electoral outcomes.

Veterans and military families are joining forces for a mass march in Philadelphia on July 4th, and on this episode of The Smoke Pit, the organizers tell you exactly why. Katie Chorbak (50501 Veterans), Hanna Lafko (Common Defense), Billie Winner-Davis (Military Family Speak Out), Steph Money (50501 Veterans Policy Director), and Carl Able (50501 Veterans Media Director) break down what is driving veterans and their families into the streets, what they hope to build, and why the 250th birthday of this nation is the moment to say enough is enough.

From the drone program and moral injury to deported veterans, active duty troops on SNAP, and the constitutional case for dissent, this conversation covers the full weight of what is at stake. The panel traces the legacy of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, reflects on the April 20th action in Washington, D.C., and makes the case for why veterans showing up in uniform and in public changes the conversation in ways nothing else can.

If you cannot make it to Philadelphia, there are ways to support. Visit mfso.org to donate, sponsor a veteran or military family member's travel, or connect with Military Family Speak Out on Facebook, Instagram, and Blue Sky.

The Smoke Pit airs every Wednesday and Saturday at 8PM ET on YouTube, Twitch, and Riverside. Produced by 50501 Veterans.

Ceretta Smith has been planning this run since 2015. That was the year she walked into her congressman's office in Washington, D.C., leading a union delegation on veterans' and federal worker issues, and got a polite thanks-for-coming and was shown the door. She looked at her delegation and said, "One day I'm coming for that seat." Eleven years later, she's on the ballot in Georgia's 12th Congressional District, and she brought everything with her.

Smith is an Army veteran, a former Physical Evaluation Board Liaison Officer who spent two decades working inside the military healthcare system, an elected official, and a member of the American Federation of Government Employees. She knows what the VA looks like from the inside, what it costs families when it fails, and what it means when 30,000 positions sit vacant by design.

In this episode, host Katie Chorbak and panelists Lisa Wohlrab, John Moses, and Bryan C. Winter sit down with Ceretta for a conversation that covers VA staffing, rural healthcare deserts, the balance of power, and what joyful politics actually looks like when you're an African-American woman running in a MAGA district — and winning.

Topics covered:

VA Healthcare and Rural Healthcare Gaps — Georgia's 12th has 24 counties. Most of them are rural. Two hospitals closed in the district. The nearest VA for some veterans is two and a half hours away. Ceretta breaks down what that means for amputees without transportation, women waiting months for mammograms, and veterans who can't access specialty care at all — and what she'd do about it.

Fully Funded, Fully Staffed — Over 30,000 VA vacancies. A brand-new mammogram department with no one to run it. Ceretta argues the understaffing isn't incompetence — it's strategy. Defund it, declare it broken, privatize it. She's not having it.

Take Back Congress and the Five Pillars — Ceretta is part of a coalition of over 100 everyday candidates running on a shared reform platform: term limits, overturning Citizens United, banning congressional stock trading, a five-year moratorium on the revolving door to lobbying, and a code of ethics for the Supreme Court. Katie pushes her on the constitutional path to term limits, and Ceretta holds her ground.

The Oath and the Balance of Power — Bryan Winter asks her what the oath means for a member of Congress right now, in this moment. Ceretta's answer: there is no compromise on that document, and anyone who thinks otherwise shouldn't be there.

Offensive Weapons Funding to Israel — Direct question, direct answer.

Stolen Valor and Her Own Opponent — Her opponent has claimed for nearly a decade to be a Gold Star widow. She is not. Ceretta was told not to say anything. She did the interview anyway, and she explains exactly why.

Joyful Politics in a MAGA District — She has won elected office in a majority-Republican district, twice, as a Black Democrat. She credits joyful politics — not as softness, but as strategy.

On the panel:

• Katie Chorbak — Host | President, 50501 Veterans | Army veteran
• Lisa Wohlrab — Vice President, 50501 Veterans | Army veteran
• John Moses — Mass 50501 Ambassador | Army
• Bryan C. Winter — Mass 50501 Writer | Army
  

Guest:

• Ceretta Smith — Congressional candidate, Georgia's 12th District | Army veteran | Former PEBLO | AFGE member | Elected official
  

Links:

• SorettaForGeorgia.com — campaign website and donation
• VetsAgainstFascism.org — July 4th action, Philadelphia