Dispatches September 2026

CAPITAL ONE BANK SAYS IT CLOSED TRUMP ACCOUNTS AFTER MONEY-LAUNDERING REVIEW. Capital One Financial hit back on a lawsuit over its decision to close the Trump Organization’s bank accounts ​in 2021, stating that it did so after a review by anti-money-laundering experts, Reuters reported in The Guardian (8/1).

The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money-laundering concerns to Donald Trump’s family business. Capital One is seeking to dismiss the Trump lawsuit by casting doubt on claims of illegally debanking – or denying services on religious or political grounds – the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization and Capital One did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of money laundering. ​But the July 31 filing argues that “documents and Plaintiffs’ own ‌allegations make clear that Capital One closed ‌Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (‘AML’) reasons.

“The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by ‌Capital One’s AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance.”

Capital One gave notice of its plans to close more than 300 Trump-affiliated bank accounts in March 2021, The Hill reported (8/3).

Roughly two months before it closed the Trump Organization’s affiliated accounts, Capital One received a $390,000 penalty from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — issued after the bank admitted to failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program.

The Trump Organization and Eric Trump, the president’s son, filed a lawsuit in March 2025 in a Florida federal court, alleging the accounts were closed because of Capital One’s “woke” beliefs and its desire to benefit from the political mood after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

Capital One said in its July 31 filing that the Trump Organization’s allegations of political pretext were “misguided” and “based on cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context” of documents submitted to the court.

“The transaction patterns identified by Capital One are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance,” the filing said.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, his administration has put pressure on some large banks, echoing conservative complaints ​that the institutions are deliberately targeting ​the political right. Trump signed an executive order in ​August 2025 barring discriminatory debanking.

In January, Trump filed a suit against JPMorgan Chase on the same ​grounds, underscoring the fraught policy ‌environment Wall Street is ​navigating during the president’s second ​term. In 2019, during his first term, Trump sued Capital One and Deutsche Bank in an attempt to prevent them from sharing financial records with Congress as part of an investigation led by Democratic lawmakers.

Anti-money-laundering professionals at Deutsche Bank reportedly flagged a set of transactions, but executives ignored them; Deutsche Bank denied the report at the time.

The case centers on roughly 385 accounts tied to the Trump Organization, Eric Trump and a collection of affiliated businesses — including a winery, a bottled-water company and a golf course developer — that banked with Capital One for more than a decade before the accounts were shut down in mid-2021, Willem Marx reported at National Public Radio (8/2).

In an amended complaint filed earlier in July, the Trump-affiliated companies insisted the closures had nothing to do with financial crime or money-laundering, but everything to do with politics.

The Trump Organization alleges Capital One moved to distance itself from Donald Trump after the Capitol riot and that the bank’s cited anti-money-laundering rationale was invented after the fact to cover for that decision.

Capital One has flatly denied those assertions, with its lawyers arguing in the new filing that the Trump’s theory rests on “cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context” of the bank’s own records, and that nothing in the complaint shows the anti-money-laundering explanation was a cover story.

The bank’s lawyers also noted that it kept its reasoning for the closures confidential at the time: it “never publicized the termination decision nor its confidential internal process giving rise to the closure,” and gave the Trump companies months — plus several extensions — to move their money elsewhere, which they did.

Large sections of the Trump-linked amended complaint from July remain blacked out under a court-approved sealing order, including an entire portion titled “January 6, 2021: The Political Trigger.”

‘MEDICARE FOR ALL’ NEEDED TO KEEP MATERNITY UNITS OPEN IN MAINE. Democratic US Senate candidate Troy Jackson on Aug. 7 was among the Maine leaders expressing anger over the decision by MaineHealth, the state’s largest nonprofit healthcare system, to close a labor and delivery unit that’s crucial to families in three counties after local residents organized a monthslong grassroots effort to keep the department open, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (8/7).

“I’m angry,” said Jackson, the former state Senate president who officially became the Democratic candidate in July. “This marks the 12th labor and delivery ward we’ve lost in this state since 2015.”

With rural hospitals across Maine expected to continue closing—partially due to nearly $3 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, which were included in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, along with tax cuts for the wealthy—Jackson repeated his call for a government-funded universal healthcare system.

“It’s past time that we fix our broken, profit-centered healthcare system that leaves many of us struggling to get care, and most of us struggling to pay for it when we do,” said Jackson. “We must pass Medicare for All.”

MaineHealth’s Board of Trustees voted Aug. 6 in favor of closing the labor and delivery unit at Lincoln Hospital on the health network’s Miles Campus in the coastal town of Damariscotta. The decision leaves Lincoln, Waldo and Sagadahoc counties without any labor and delivery units, and leaves half of the state’s 34 hospitals without birthing wards.

The hospital system said it had reached the decision because it cannot “continue providing safe, reliable care for every mother and every baby, every day and every night,” according to CEO Andrew Mueller.

Labor and delivery “requires highly specialized teams that are available around the clock and prepared to respond immediately to routine deliveries and unexpected emergencies,” said Mueller. “We concluded that we could no longer consistently ensure that level of staffing and clinical coverage at Lincoln Hospital over the long term.”

Cindy Wade, president of Lincoln Hospital, told community members ahead of the vote that the potential closure was “not driven by finance,” while acknowledging that staffing is a problem for the facility.

The day before the decision was announced, a woman named Corinna Stum, who had been set to deliver her baby at Miles in January—a month after the unit is set to close—filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop the closure. Stum requested an emergency injunction while the court determines whether MaineHealth violated its obligation to serve the public and be transparent in its review process

A grassroots organization called Miles Delivers Action Coalition, started by three women from the area, has held rallies alongside Jackson, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Hannah Pingree, and other local leaders, as well as working with clinicians to determine how the Miles Campus could deliver sustainable care for parents and babies and finding obstetricians who would be willing to work at the hospital.

‘HAS TRUMP INVASION OF GREELAND BEGUN?’ EXPERTS FEARFUL AS MAGA-LINKED OIL COMPANY PREPARES UNAUTHORIZED DRILLING. After appearing to back off earlier this year, President Donald Trump this week renewed his threats to seize Greenland. An Aug. 8 report that a Texas oil company with ties to Trump had begun preparing to drill in the Arctic territory without permission has raised fresh concerns that his push for control of the island may already be moving beyond rhetoric, Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams (8/8).

As The Guardian reported, Greenland’s government issued a “strong warning” after learning that a Texas oil company called Greenland Energy had begun making unauthorized preparations for oil extraction in Jameson Land, a remote area of eastern Greenland, including bringing drilling materials ashore.

The company, founded last year, has claimed that Jameson Land may contain $1 trillion worth of crude oil, and announced plans to drill two wells there—a project that requires approval from Greenland’s government.

The company also has ties to several Trump allies and associates. According to The Guardian, Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, a prominent right-wing former chat show host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters.”

It has also appointed as a director a US Navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defense plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital.”

Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation.”

A Greenland Energy representative falsely claimed in June that the company had permission to place equipment on Jameson Land, before later saying there had been confusion.

But the following month, residents saw a barge arrive with drilling equipment. A Danish outlet confirmed that the delivery was intended for Greenland Energy.

Following the delivery, Greenland’s government said on July 30 that the company “did not have the necessary approvals from the mineral resources authority” and would receive a warning that “all future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority—before they are carried out.”

Two days later, Trump posted an ominous digitally altered image to Truth Social depicting himself as a giant looming over a Greenlandic town, captioned “Hello, Greenland!”

A day earlier, Trump had appeared on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice, where host Steve Gruber reminded him that he had predicted Greenland would be under US control by the time he leaves office in 2029.

“You’ll be right,” Trump replied. “Greenland is important. Not from their standpoint, from our standpoint. You should make that bet.”

As part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense clause, which obligates member nations to defend one another from armed attack. But NATO has no precedent for how Article 5 would apply if one member—the US—attacked another.

“Let nobody think Trump has given up on taking Greenland,” said John O’Brennan, professor of European politics at Maynooth University in Ireland. He warned, “Europe—you are about to be seriously tested.”

EX-TRUMP LAWYER SAYS ‘WE’RE SCREWED’ IF TRUMP PRESSURES NEW AG BLANCHE TO SUBVERT ELECTIONS. One of the many questions swirling around new US Attorney General Todd Blanche is whether he’d go along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the result of another election, Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams (8/9).

In 2020, when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden, his attempts to claim the result was marred by systemic fraud were met with resistance from then-Attorney General William Barr.

But under Blanche, who served for two years as Trump’s personal defense attorney, things may be very different.

That’s according to another of Trump’s former lawyers, Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel for nearly a year during Trump’s first term, as he came under investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller over his campaign’s alleged coordination with the Russian government.

Cobb, who has been an outspoken critic of both Trump and his appointment of Blanche, appeared for an interview released Aug. 8 on Zeteo’s “Mehdi Unfiltered.” Host Mehdi Hasan asked Cobb, “Come 2028, does American democracy survive Donald Trump?”

“I’m not sure they survive it in 2026,” Cobb responded.

Noting Barr’s resistance to Trump in 2020, Hasan asked: “If the midterms don’t go Trump’s way this fall, is there any world in which Todd Blanche stands up to Trump if he’s asked to find some fake evidence of voter fraud, or are we screwed now?”

“We’re screwed,” Cobb said bluntly.

“Great,” Hasan said. “That’s what I suspected.”

Trump has, on multiple occasions, floated the idea of canceling the midterm elections outright and has enacted measures aimed at blocking mail-in voting and seizing voter information from states. He has also said he wants Republicans to “nationalize” elections in Democratic-leaning locales.

Cobb noted that Blanche “has already echoed [former Trump chief strategist] Steve Bannon’s view that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should be on the street during the election,” adding, “I think we’ll almost certainly see that.”

Hasan pointed out that the administration has routinely ignored court orders, especially with regard to its immigration enforcement. Cobb predicted that “the level of noncompliance” so far “is nothing compared to what we’re about to see.”

OCEAN TEMPERATURES PUSHED TO HOTTEST ON RECORD IN JULY. Average global ocean surface temperature was the hottest ever recorded in  July, fueled in part by uniquely intense, fossil fuel-driven El Niño conditions that have wreaked deadly havoc around the world this summer, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (8/10).

The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said Monday that last month—which ranked as the second warmest July on record—“saw exceptionally high temperatures for the month across a large portion of the tropical Pacific, an area where El Niño conditions are present and forecast to further strengthen in the coming months.” Average global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were 20.96°C last month, surpassing the July 2023 record of 20.89°C.

“Around Europe, SSTs reached record highs for July along the Atlantic coast and western Mediterranean, associated with widespread strong or severe marine heatwave conditions,” C3S said.

Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, said the latest Copernicus data “is more than another climate milestone; it is a warning that the natural systems we depend on are being pushed closer to their limits.”

“Governments have become very good at documenting these records. Now they need to become much better at safeguarding the forests, wetlands, and oceans that help regulate the climate and protect communities from the impacts of warming world,” said O’Donnell. “With land and ocean temperatures across Europe breaching records, governments should be investing far more and delivering on their global commitment to protect at least 30% of land and ocean by 2030.”

The new analysis was released as western Europe and other regions faced deadly heat, wildfires, drought, and other extreme weather as the international community, including the US and other leading polluters, fails to rein in fossil fuel use—and as oil and gas giants reap record profits.

“Our leaders’ response has to be swifter and stronger than El Niño,” Anne Jellema, executive director of the environmental group 350.org, said Aug. 10. “We already know that global heating is supercharging extreme weather damage, and the public wants polluters to pay for it. With Big Oil’s earnings skyrocketing while a global food crisis looms, now is the time to act. The only way to stave off a humanitarian disaster is to make those causing it pay upfront—before even more damage is done.”

Scientists have characterized this year’s El Niño, which officially began on June 11, as historically strong and dangerous, earning it the informal “Super El Niño” label.

TRUMP INSTALLS PROJECT 25 AUTHOR AT INTERIOR IG OFFICE. The Trump administration has reportedly installed an author of the far-right Project 2025 agenda inside the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General as the watchdog is facing growing calls to investigate alleged corruption by top agency officials, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (8/6).

Dennis Kirk worked in the White House budget office during Trump’s first term and co-authored a Project 2025 chapter that recommended sweeping action to “decentralize and privatize” the federal government “as much as possible.” Last year, Kirk was placed inside the office of the inspector general of the US intelligence community, drawing alarm.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement Aug. 5 that Kirk’s reported appointment to a role inside the Interior Department IG office “is a fraud on the office and a fraud on the American people.”

“Dennis Kirk is a fake and fraudulent watchdog,” said Huffman. “Everyone should have their eyes wide open. Each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump. This man helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce. Now he sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior, the department that manages our national parks, public lands, Tribal programs, and now, under Trump, gold-slathered statues and a botched Reflecting Pool renovation.”

The current acting head of the Interior Department’s IG office is Caryl Brzymialkiewicz, who ascended to the role after Trump fired the previous watchdog, Mark Greenblatt, in January 2025 as part of a broader purge.

Greenblatt said in a statement posted to his website that reports of Kirk’s installation at the Interior IG office “should concern anyone who values independent government oversight.”

“Placing someone with that background inside an inspector general’s office raises serious questions about the independence of one of the federal government’s most important accountability institutions,” said Greenblatt. “Unfortunately, this development does not stand alone. It follows a series of actions—including the dismissal of inspectors general, proposed budget reductions, and efforts to redefine the role of inspectors general themselves—that have steadily eroded confidence in independent oversight across the federal government.”

UNICEF SAYS 300 CHILDREN KILLED IN GAZA IN 300 DAYS OF ‘CEASEFIRE.’ “The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children.”

That was one United Nations spokesperson’s assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Aug.6 , which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported, and Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams (8/6).

“A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised.”

Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with “painfully simple” and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.

Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: “When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?”

Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel’s withdrawal from the exclave.

UN officials expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.

“Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action,” said Beigbeder.

LEGAL CHALLENGE PROMISED AFTER GOP-CONTROLLED FCC LIFTS TV OWNERSHIP LIMITS, ALLOWING TRUMP ALLIES TO ‘SWALLOW UP STATIONS.’ A press freedom group says it plans to take the GOP-controlled Federal Communications Commission to court after it voted along party lines on Aug. 6 to enact a rule that could allow a small number of media conglomerates to consolidate even more control over local news stations, Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams (8/6).

In a 2-1 vote, the FCC eliminated a 22-year-old rule that prohibited a single company from owning stations that reach more than 39% of American households, replacing it with a rule allowing the FCC to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr said the move was necessary to “restore balance to the broadcast airwaves” and “allow local broadcasters to remain competitive with national ones.”

The FCC’s lone Democrat and dissenting vote, Anna Gomez, argued that the move would not benefit local broadcasters so much as it would benefit the national conglomerates seeking to buy them up.

“The large station groups positioned to grow even larger under this decision are not local broadcasters; they are national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them,” Gomez said. “Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve.”

In a statement after the ruling, Reporters Without Borders said the FCC had “just abandoned one of the last significant safeguards against excessive concentration of media ownership.”

The change is a big win for media conglomerates like Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking a merger with rival TV company Tegna to reach about 80% of households nationwide. The merger was approved earlier this year by the FCC, but blocked by a federal judge.

It would also allow the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conglomerate known for forcing “must-run” segments with right-wing talking points into local news coverage from its corporate headquarters, the ability to continue gobbling up local news stations around the country.

Free Press, a media and technology watchdog, said it planned to appeal the FCC’s decision in court, arguing that Carr had exceeded his power by overriding the 39% threshold, which was enshrined in federal law by the 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

“His goal is to spur more media consolidation involving companies Donald Trump views as ideological allies and corporate cronies,” said Matt Wood, the group’s vice president of policy and general counsel.

Carr, a Trump appointee, has previously sought to use the FCC to crack down on the use of the airwaves by Trump’s ideological enemies and consolidate control for his allies.

He has threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that criticize Trump, most infamously pressuring ABC to briefly pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air last year. Carr also used the FCC’s approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger to enforce ideological conformity at CBS News, which has dramatically altered its coverage and personnel to be more favorable to the administration.

Carr has argued that the FCC has the power to alter the consolidation cap because Congress technically directed the FCC to modify its own regulations to enact the 39% limit.

Gomez has disputed this, noting that when the FCC previously tried to move the cap, Congress “stepped in within months... and made clear the FCC did not have the authority to change it.”

“Changing this limit requires congressional action, but Carr doesn’t care,” Wood said. “He’ll do whatever it takes to clear the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to swallow up stations wherever and whenever they please.”

 

Editorial: Progressive Muslim Scares Rs

 Republicans reacted to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Democratic primary for U.S. senator with predictable Islamophobia. 

El-Sayed is a Michigan native who attended the University of Michigan and Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, earned his M.D. at Columbia University and was an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University from 2014 to 2015. He was executive director of the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017, when he quit to run for governor, but 30% of the vote in August 2018 left him way behind Gretchen Whitmer on her way to the governor’s mansion. He founded a political action committee,to help elect progressive candidates and supported ballot initiatives in Michigan, and served on the Joe Biden–Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force on healthcare from 2020 until 2023, when he became director of the Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services of Wayne County until 2025, when he ran for the seat Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is giving up.

As Kaitlyn Buss noted in the Detroit News Aug. 8, 48 hours after El-Sayed’s narrowly defeated centrist U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens by 14,893 votes — just under 1 percentage point of more than 1.5 million ballots counted in the primary election, Republicans were referring to El-Sayed by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. Ads supporting Republican nominee Mike Rogers juxtaposed El-Sayed with imagery from Sept. 11, 2001, and Osama bin Laden, while highlighting Rogers’ role in the operation that killed the al-Qaida leader.

Sen. Ted Cruz (a Canada native) argued on Fox News there is a “green-red convergence” between “communists and the Islamists,” suggesting El-Sayed supports Sharia law and harbors anti-Christian and anti-American views. Cruz also pointed to El-Sayed’s acquaintance with leftist social media influencer Hasan Piker, who has made inflammatory comments about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

President Donald Trump’s dementia was sparked, as he called El-Sayed “a communist” who is “full of sh*t” and ”a man of hate.” Trump claimed El Sayed hates Jewish people “with a passion that burns in his heart.” Vice President JD Vance echoed the rant, warning of “a President El-Sayed” in 2028. 

“Apparently, Republicans are betting there is such a thing as bad publicity,” Buss wrote.

As Buss noted, “the broader strategy is unmistakable: define El-Sayed by his religion, his associations and his identity before voters define him by his message.”

If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate, and many Republicans say there is no place for Muslims in U.S. government. But El Sayed, a physician and public health activist, is not backing away from his Muslim faith, which he notes is not far from Christian and Jewish traditions.

Before the primary, El-Sayed met with progressive pastors, imams and rabbis and spoke about how his Muslim faith informs his progressive views, the Associated Press reported.

The public health researcher asked the group of faith leaders ahead of the primary, “What does the inspiration of holding yourself accountable to something bigger than you mean for what you do for the people around you?”

El-Sayed added, “If you can’t eat food and I have something to do about it, I better do it.”

Progressive Democratic politicians have won major electoral victories across the country in recent months amid growing frustrations surrounding inequality, affordability and potential threats to job security posed by artificial intelligence. As the economy becomes a flashpoint for the November midterms, many candidates and voters who support them cite religion as a justification for their positions.

“We’re in an era of historical inequality,” El-Sayed told AP. “Most faith traditions — certainly the Abrahamic faith traditions [which include Islam, Christianity and Judaism] — put a lot more burden on the wealthy.”

Republicans prefer to reduce the burden on the wealthy and let working people fend for themselves. They ignore the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew’s Gospel Chapter 25: 31-46, in which Jesus foretold the final judgment would reward those who fed the hungry, gave drinks to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, and took care of the sick and prisoners. The righteous would receive eternal life, Jesus said, while the uncharitable would be cast “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

El-Sayed has made “Medicare for All” a fixture of his campaign, which indicates he is closer to Jesus’ teaching than Republican leaders who are unfamiliar with the Gospels.. 

El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but many of his supporters are members of the DSA or are comfortable with their agenda. Some centrist Democrats are concerned El-Sayed may be too far left to be electable in a swing state, but he got off to a good start with an Aug. 7 unity rally in Detroit, where he reiterated the pillars of his progressive populist campaign: Medicare-for-all, getting corporate money out of politics and taxing the rich to provide more services for the working poor. He didn’t mention Israel, whose military activities he has criticized, or the pro-Israel lobby that spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat him. He also didn’t rail against the Democratic establishment that stood against him in the contentious primary. 

El-Sayed called his former opponents, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the race in July, “incredible public servants.” Stevens and McMorrow quickly and enthusiastically endorsed El-Sayed, with Stevens announcing her “full support” for him, 

El-Sayed did well among young voters and college educated Democrats, who are less affected by red baiting, but he needs to do better among Black voters, who appeared to have questions about him. Stevens won Detroit, a majority-Black city, by 28 percentage points in the primary, and she had an eight-point edge in counties with significant Black population. Several Black Detroit residents told The Washington Post they haven’t heard from or seen El-Sayed enough in their community. Stevens said she “had some Black-owned businesses that maybe he’d want to go talk to.”

Third Way, a leading centrist Democratic group, plans to spend $15 million  between now and 2028 to discredit El-Sayed and other democratic socialism, Jonathan Cowan, Third Way’s president, told The New York Times.

The Democratic Socialists of America movement poses a “mortal danger” for Democrats, Cowan says.

But Charles Pierce of Esquire.com noted the Third Way people are not “moderates.” “They are conservative Democrats, and El-Sayed’s positions are not ‘far left.’ They are well within the mainstream of Democratic opinion, and most of them are popular in the country at large. It is no longer 1992 [when the Third Way propelled Bill Clinton to the White House]. There is a gathering power within the Democratic party, and there is absolutely no need to be afraid of it or of winning.” We say: Let El-Sayed roll.— JMC

From the September 2026 issue of The Progressive Populist

Homeland Security Thug

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin's extremist views would nullify the Constitution with regards to Birthright Citizenship and Voting Rights. This disregard for constitutional law has led to his disastrous tenure as nominal head of ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Egregious behavior by poorly trained ICE agents has led to aggressive, unchecked enforcement tactics that deny people their rights to lawful due process. In several cases, their tactics have led to the deaths of detained individuals.

Spineless

 Trump's popularity amongst his Republican base continues to be strong. Perhaps for this reason, Republican congressmen in the House refuse to challenge him on issues when he is clearly wrong. Besides issues like the Iran war, recent legislation called the SAVE Act was passed by the House of Representatives - setting the stage for millions of American citizens to lose their right to vote. The SAVE Act is Trump's baby and every Republican House member voted for it.

Dispatches August 2026 issue

 WILL CLIMATE-DRIVEN HEATWAVE MAKE THE CASE AGAINST BIG TECH DATA CENTERS? The rise of global temperatures has made oppressive summer heatwaves an annual occurrence, and for many Americans, air conditioning is no longer optional, Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams (7/2).

But as scorching temperatures bear down on the US once again this summer, affecting more than 250 million people across the country, some are suddenly being forced to share the precious cool air with data centers that have popped up in their towns to power the breakneck build-out of artificial intelligence technology.

To keep their massive arrays of computer servers cool, these complexes require large amounts of energy even in normal times. But during a heatwave, the demand becomes even greater.

As power grids become strained, residents of communities with data centers are being asked to make sacrifices in the form of cost, comfort, and potentially safety.

In Henrico County, Virginia, which has 37 data centers, thousands of county employees received an email in Jne from County Manager John Vithoulkas warning them that beginning on July 1, the rate paid by “government and school facilities will increase dramatically—by 25%, increasing costs by an estimated $5 million next fiscal year.”

“To mitigate the impact of higher electric costs, I am asking that we, collectively, make slight adjustments to conserve electricity across our individual workspaces,” he said in the email, which was obtained by 404 Media. “Turn off your lights when leaving your workspace, including when you leave for the day,” he continued. “Turn off your computers/laptops at the end of each workday. If your workspace has windows, adjust the blinds to manage heat from sunlight.”

He also informed them of the high cost of running “space heaters,” which Frank Landymore of Futurism.com suggested was a thinly veiled way of telling residents to turn down the AC, since nobody would be using space heaters in 100-degree heat.

It was a signifier of what’s happened across the entire mid-Atlantic grid, whose largest operator, PJM Interconnection, is experiencing record energy demand.

According to Reuters, the grid that supplies power to 67 million people has seen a roughly 1,000% increase in capacity prices since 2024 as a result of the AI boom, which is already being passed onto consumers in the form of higher bills.

To reduce the risk of outages caused by an overburdened grid, the US Department of Energy granted PJM the authority to require data centers to operate backup diesel generators.

Under the emergency order, Politico reported, data centers are allowed to produce enough diesel emissions that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would categorize it as a “possible human carcinogen.”

The result has been what Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, told The Associated Press could be “a disaster for the local air quality” in communities with data centers.

In Lowell, Massachusetts, where a Markley Group data center sits in the working-class Sacred Heart neighborhood, residents told the AP that they were staying inside to avoid smelling the diesel fumes being belched up near their homes.

TRUMP BRAGS ABOUT BEING SOFT ON CRYPTO INDUSTRY THAT BROUGHT HIS FAMILY $5 BILLION. President Donald Trump boasted about how lax his administration has been in pursuing investigations into the cryptocurrency industry, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (7/6).

Speaking at the White House July 6, Trump attacked former President Joe Biden’s administration for prosecuting cryptocurrency industry figures for a wide variety of crimes related to money laundering and fraud.

“They were very violently against [the crypto industry],” Trump said. “They were putting people in jail. What they were doing to the crypto world, it was horrible. It’s amazing that it survived that onslaught, it was a weaponization of government.”

Trump explained he drew support from the industry by coming out in favor of it during the 2024 presidential campaign, adding that “every time I see a crypto guy where they dropped an investigation, I said, ‘You’re lucky I’m president.’”

During his second term, Trump has not only taken a hands-off approach to the crypto industry; he also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023.

This pardon drew allegations of corruption given that Binance has been a major financial booster of World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by the Trump family that has added billions of dollars to their total wealth.

Even as Trump has personally raked in money from selling his own memecoin, many of his supporters who invested in it have lost significant sums of money.

The New York Times reported that nearly 1 million people who invested in the Trump memecoin have recorded losses totaling $3.8 billion since its launch in 2025.

The Times noted, “Trump profited whether the price of his memecoin went up or down” because he “collected returns whenever anyone traded the tokens, as he repeatedly pushed his followers to do, using his Truth Social account to promote the coin.”

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, ripped the president for boasting about going easy on the industry that he’s personally profiting from.

“The Trump family has made over $5 BILLION in corrupt crypto deals,” Casar wrote in a social media post. “Now Trump is openly bragging that his government won’t investigate cryptocurrency-related crimes. Corruption, plain and simple.”

DESPITE TRUMP’S DEMAND FOR AI INVESTMENT, TREASURY WARNS INDUSTRY POSES ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ TO US ECONOMY. While President Donald Trump’s administration has regularly hyped up the development of artificial intelligence, a draft US Treasury Department report warns that the AI industry could be a financial bubble that will ultimately damage the American economy, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (7/6).

NOTUS, which obtained a copy of the Treasury Department analysis, reported on Monday that it “is a significant departure from the Trump administration’s public tone, which has focused on encouraging unrelenting investment to unlock exponential growth.”

Career analysts at the department find that, while many AI firms are on firmer financial footing than the dotcom companies in the late 1990s, they are also much more deeply integrated with the US economy.

Because of this integration, these firms “pose significant risk to the entire system if financial conditions change, productivity goals are missed, or various chokepoints stymie growth,” wrote NOTUS.

The report also says that the investments being made into AI infrastructure are so big that they risk damaging the entire financial system if they do not meet certain metrics for productivity growth and profitability.

“Fears of an AI bubble have grown over the last year, including on Capitol Hill, among some Wall Street observers and executives, inside think tanks and even within the ranks of top AI principals,” the NOTUS report added. “Prominent economists and institutions... have also raised concerns about overvaluation of AI firms and the risks they pose to the broader economic system.”

Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), noted in an analysis published July 3 that AI’s long-promised boost to productivity isn’t yet showing up in data.

Citing the most recent jobs report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Baker found that AI’s impact on productivity growth at the moment is “invisible.”

“The index of aggregate hours grew at a 1.3% rate in the quarter. With [gross domestic product] growth likely coming in close to 2%, we are looking at productivity growth around 1%,” Baker explained. “That follows growth of 0.3% in the first quarter and 1.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025. There is zero evidence of any sort of productivity uptick in these data.”

Baker argued that this was a contrast with the dotcom era, when productivity growth averaged roughly 2.8% over a four-year period in the late 1990s before the bubble burst.

“We would need rates of productivity growth in the neighborhood of 4% to generate the sort of profits needed to make sense of current market levels,” Baker wrote. “It is surprising that the continuing weakness of productivity doesn’t bother stock investors more.”

There are also questions about AI’s ability to turn a profit.

A July 6 report in The New York Times highlighted the predicament of Chinese tech company Alibaba, whose open-source AI model has become extremely popular while at the same time being unprofitable.

“In the first three months of this year, Alibaba reported $1.3 billion in revenue from AI-related products—less than 4% of its total revenue,” reported The Times. “That pales in comparison with the company’s plan to spend more than $55 billion by the end of next year to build out its AI infrastructure.”

Richard Lin, a vice president at the Silicon Valley firm Datastrato, told the Times that concerns about AI profitability extend beyond Alibaba and to the industry as a whole.

“There isn’t an AI company with a sustainable business model right now,” said Lin. “It’s not a healthy industry.”

TRUMP ADMITS PRO-DEMOCRACY RESOLUTION WOULD DESTROY GOP. US President Donald Trump July 5 attacked a pro-democracy resolution ntroduced by key House Democratic caucus leaders, warning that the measure’s adoption would strike a fatal blow to the Republican Party, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (7/6).

“They do this, and the Republican Party is DEAD!” Trump wrote in a social media post, citing a Politico story on the resolution. The proposal, unveiled in July by the heads of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, calls for the restoration and strengthening of voter protections gutted by the US Supreme Court as well as court reforms—including possible expansion of the number of justices and term limits.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the CPC, wrote July 5 that Trump’s post amounted to an acknowledgment that “the Supreme Court’s attacks on voting rights are about rigging elections for Republicans.”

“At least he admits it,” the progressive leader wrote on social media.

Politico reported that while the resolution “stands virtually no chance of adoption” in the current GOP-controlled Congress, “it is the latest indicator of how the Congressional Black Caucus and other key Democrats want to respond to the April decision that cleared the way for Republican states to redraw their congressional maps and eliminate majority-minority districts”—a reference to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

Trump seized on the ruling to push state-level Republicans to aggressively gerrymander their maps ahead of the critical 2026 midterm elections. The president is also pressuring congressional Republicans to force through legislation known as the SAVE America Act, which would impose strict voter ID and documentation requirements nationwide, potentially blocking millions of American citizens from casting ballots under the pretext of cracking down on noncitizen voting—something that is already illegal and rare.

Trump is currently holding a bipartisan housing affordability bill hostage in a bid to get the stalled SAVE America Act through Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) affirmed that Republicans intend to attach the assault on voting rights to a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package in a last-ditch effort to get the measure through the Senate, where it has not received enough support to clear the upper chamber’s 60-vote threshold. Trump has called for elimination of the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, but Senate Republicans have thus far declined to remove the barrier.

DEMOCRATIC VOTERS ARE KICKING ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATES TO THE CURB. Democratic voters are mad as hell about the state of the country—and they are punishing even their own lawmakers for it, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (7/6).

Five incumbent House Democrats have lost primary bids so far to political upstarts, including most recently longtime Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado, who fell to progressive Melat Kiros in the June 30 primary.

Meanwhile, three House Democrats who ran for statewide office lost their primaries in Illinois and Texas, with three others at risk of succumbing to the same fate. And multiple other longtime Democratic elected officials—including Maine Gov. Janet Mills and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett—were also rejected by Democratic primary voters in their own states.

In sum: Democrats are facing an anti-establishment fervor similar to the one the Republican Party has been grappling with since 2010, with primary voters demanding that their elected officials stop the opposing party’s president—even when their position in the minority prevents them from doing just that.

Most concerningly, however, is that this anti-establishment undercurrent could cost Democrats in must-win statewide races this fall, the same way it has for Republicans over the years.

It’s likely why Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Wolverine State’s Democratic Senate primary on Sunday, which is a race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.

McMorrow’s support had collapsed in the three-way contest between Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, a left-wing former public health official who has the support of high-profile Democratic Socialists, like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“When they go low, we don’t go high,” El-Sayed said, according to Politico. “We take them to the mud and choke them out.”

However, national Democrats fear that El-Sayed and his brand of politics could be less electable in a swing state like Michigan. And political prognosticators now wonder whether McMorrow dropping out paves the way for Stevens to consolidate moderate support and beat El-Sayed in the Aug. 4 primary.

McMorrow, for her part, did not endorse either candidate. She said that whoever wins the primary will have her “full support.”

While Michigan’s Senate field is yet to be set, the anti-establishment rage Democratic primary voters are unleashing is already causing problems in Maine.

Democrat Graham Platner’s victory in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary is imperiling Team Blue’s chances at winning back the Senate, as Platner’s list of personal transgressions could cause him to lose the race to odious and cowardly Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Republicans know all too well how scandal-plagued nominees can cost winnable races.

In 2010, the anti-establishment undercurrents stopped Republicans from winning back the Senate even as the GOP romped its way to victory in the House. That’s because Republican primary voters nominated unelectable freakazoids in races in Nevada and Delaware. 

The same thing happened in 2022, when Republicans nominated scandal-ridden and bizarre candidates in Senate contests in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, leading Democrats to retain their Senate majority.

This November is likely to be favorable to Democrats since President Trump’s unpopularity is dragging Republicans down with him.

But if the past is prologue, even wave years can’t push some candidates across the finish line if they are too radical or scandal-ridden to appeal to voters. Let’s hope Democrats don’t learn that lesson the hard way.

ISRAEL REPORTEDLY PLOTTED TO ASSASSINATE TOP IRANIAN NEGOTIATORS TO DERAIL PEACE TALKS WITH US. Trump administration officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators—including the country’s foreign minister—during peace talks with the US in an effort to sabotage diplomatic progress, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (7/3).

The New York Times reported July 2 that “American concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials — Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament — spiked during delicate ceasefire negotiations that began in April.” In response, the US “went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials,” according to The Times, which cited unnamed current and former American officials.

The US and Israel have killed dozens of top Iranian officials since launching their illegal joint war in late February. But the allied countries reportedly removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their target list in late March, opening the possibility of high-level negotiations to end the war.

But Israel remained bent on targeting the negotiators, according to The Times, whose reporting was corroborated by the Washington Post.

The Times detailed one dramatic incident in April, when Ghalibaf was planning to travel to Pakistan’s capital to meet with US Vice President JD Vance:

Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.

But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.

Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mohammadi and the two officials said.

The Post reported that “cracks emerged” between the US and Israeli approaches to the war following Israel’s assassination of top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March.

“They’ve wiped out everybody,” Trump told reporters in late March, suggesting Israel’s assassination campaign was making it difficult to find potential negotiating partners.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to the new reporting that “Israel is a state that, on paper, is a US partner, but in reality is so extreme in its obsession to undermine US diplomacy that it even tries to assassinate those the US engages with in crucial negotiations.”

“I can’t recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel,” Parsi added.

At present, the Israeli government is endangering tenuous US-Iran peace talks with its continued assault on Lebanon, which Iran has made a key factor in the negotiations.

US OLYMPIC ATHLETE INDICTED FOR TOUCHING TRUMP’S INFAMOUSLY BOTCHED REFLECTING POOL RENOVATION. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro on July 2 announced her office had secured a felony indictment against former US Olympic athlete David Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (7/2).

In a press conference announcing the charges, Pirro accused the 67-year-old Hearn of “forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner” of the Reflecting Pool last month.

“We will not allow our sacred monuments to be roped off or diminished or in any way impacted by disgruntled individuals who think that they and not the rest of the nation have the right to decide what should happen,” Pirro said. “These landmarks and monuments belong to all of us, and they must be protected for generations to come.”

If convicted, Hearn faces up to 10 years in prison.

The Olympian was first arrested last month after he was seen reaching into the pool, which had been undergoing renovations ordered by President Donald Trump.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hearn said that he simply put his hand in the water and touched a piece of lining in the pool that was already peeling off.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told the paper. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Norm Eisen, an attorney who is representing Hearn, accused the Trump administration of using his client as a scapegoat for the botched pool renovation, which has been plagued by intense algae blooms, peeled lining, and dead ducks.

“These charges are outrageous and should be alarming to every American,” said Eisen. “This indictment reflects the administration’s efforts to shift blame from their own failures.”

“On the eve of our nation’s Independence Day,” Eisen continued, “Americans should be deeply concerned by the misuse of government power against an ordinary system based on a concocted narrative.”

JOBS REPORT FOR JUNE OFFERS ‘GRIM WARNING SIGNS’ FOR CASH-STRAPPED WORKING FAMILIES UNDER TRUMP. As President Donald Trump’s team on July 2 tried to paint the June jobs report as positive, economists and congressional Democrats called it “weak” and “disappointing,” with some also ripping the Republican administration’s harmful policies, from sweeping tariffs and the Iran War to the mass detention and deportation of immigrants, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (7/2).

The nation’s economy added just 57,000 jobs in June, or roughly half of what economists had anticipated, according to the latest monthly report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS noted that “both the unemployment rate, at 4.2%, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.1 million, changed little in June.”

The Department of Labor (DOL) agency also revised job gains down for May by 43,000 and April by 31,000, and said that “over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.5%.” That’s notably lower than the 4.2% annual inflation rate detailed by BLS a few weeks ago, as Americans struggle to afford groceries, housing, and other basic necessities during Trump’s second term.

“Today’s weak jobs numbers are grim warning signs of a struggling labor market,” Alex Jacquez, a former Obama administration official who is now Groundwork Collaborative’s chief of policy and advocacy, said in a statement.

“Job gains reflect temporary seasonal hires and other workers separated from the broader economy while the majority of the labor force is frozen,” he explained. “Working Americans increasingly report that their paychecks can’t keep up with Trump’s high prices, but are not confident they’ll be able to find better opportunities. They’re instead focused on trying to keep up with the president’s price hikes.”

Angela Hanks, a former DOL senior official who’s now chief of policy programs at The Century Foundation, similarly called the report “yet more evidence of a fragile economy under President Trump, with job growth coming in well below expectations and sizable downward revisions to the last two months.”

“While the unemployment rate dipped slightly to 4.2%, this number only tells us how many people are working—it doesn’t tell you whether people can afford to live,” she stressed. “The reality behind today’s jobs numbers is that the cost of living continues to outpace paychecks: 43% of Americans now say they’re worse off financially than they were a year ago, and year-over-year wage growth came in at 3.5%, below overall inflation of 4.2%—meaning that real wages are falling.”

“Looking beyond the topline numbers, more than half of all June job growth was concentrated in healthcare and social assistance, continuing a trend of these sectors propping up much of our economy,” she pointed out. “The labor force participation rate declined sharply and widely, with nearly every demographic group seeing declines, which partially explains the drop in the unemployment rate. Moreover, certain racial and age disparities actually worsened: Black youth unemployment rate rose to a whopping 26.8%, as did Hispanic youth unemployment, coming in at 20.1%—a reminder that this economy is not delivering for workers who are struggling the most.”

TRUMP PROVIDES $300 MILLION IN EARTHQUAKE RECOVER MONEY TO VENEZUELA, SITS ON $8 BILLION IN STOLEN OIL REVENES. The Trump administration has seized at least $8 billion worth of Venezuela’s oil wealth since it overthrew President Nicolás Maduro in January, according to The New York Times.

Now, as Venezuela struggles to cope with a catastrophic pair of earthquakes in late June that killed at least 3,300 people and left tens of thousands injured and homeless, and 41,000-50,000 people reported missing, the US is providing just $300 million in humanitarian aid, a small fraction of the money it purloined Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams (7/6).

The Associated Press reported on July 6 that international rescue teams have begun to pull out as hopes of finding missing loved ones alive dwindle each day after the disaster.

Shortly after deposing Maduro, US President Donald Trump declared that the US “took over Venezuela ... and the oil is flowing.”

Economist Francisco Rodriguez has found that during the first quarter of 2026, after Trump overthrew Maduro and the US began expropriating Venezuelan oil, the country experienced the lowest rate of economic growth since 2021, even as oil exports rose.

As Roxanna Vigil, a former senior sanctions policy adviser at the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, explained in an article for the Council on Foreign Relations last month, “almost 100 million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight.”

“While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds,” she added.

According to an initial report by the United Nations Development Program, the quakes caused $6.7 billion worth of damage.

Former US Ambassador to Venezuela Jimmy Story credited what he said was a “robust” US effort to provide aid. But he told Reuters that it called into question “the transparency over the oil fund,” and asked, “Will these funds be released for the disaster response?”

Editorial: Trump Pushes New Red Scare

Republicans hope they’ve found a vulnerability in the Democratic Party after three progressive candidates endorsed by Democratic Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated establishment-backed Democrats in June 23 Democratic primaries. The Greedy Oligarchs’ Party returned to the well-worn attack of calling progressive Democrats communists.

    Donald Trump on “Truth Social” insisted “Many Communists running in badly failing Blue States” and that “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”

    But none of the Mamdani-backed candidates were running as communists. Each of them campaigned on popular issues, such as providing Medicare for All, providing affordable housing, stronger union protections, restoring safety nets for the working poor and stopping Trump’s abusive anti-immigrant regime. 

     “The attack was boringly familiar to anyone who’s paid attention to U.S. politics for the last 60-plus years,” Oliver Willis noted at DailyKos.com. “Conveniently for the right, whoever is in charge of the Democratic Party or is an influential voice within the party is one of the Four Horsemen of communism or socialism.”

    Days after the New York primaries, more than a dozen centrist Democrats signed an open letter declaring “we are capitalist, not socialist,” in an attempt to distance themselves from insurgent progressives.

    A week later, Republicans saw red in Colorado when Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic Socialist and first-time candidate, defeated 15-term incumbent Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette on June 30 in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District primary,

    Trump spent his address July 3 at Mount Rushmore, S.D., the night before the nation’s 250th birthday, raising the Red Scare, shouting about the “communist menace” and suggesting that his Republican Party should take control of elections from the states and implement voter suppression rules that will let Republicans govern the nation for a century.

    

    Before arguing for 100 years of Republican rule, Trump continued the exaggerated anti-communist rhetoric he has employed since progressive Democratic-Socialist candidates won a series of Democratic primary victories.

    “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” Trump said from Mount Rushmore. “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”

    Trump’s remarks, which he repeated in his July 4 speech on the National Mall, clearly implied a false link between communism and the Democratic Party. It’s hard to distinguish between Trump’s hypocrisy and his increasing dementia. But Trump actually has treated himself to slices of communism, as he has acquired equity stakes for the U.S. government in for-profit companies, breaking with decades of free-market economic orthodoxy. 

    After the Biden administration in 2024 extended a $2.3 billion loan to Lithium Americas, which was building a lithium mine and processing plant in Nevada, the Trump administration proposed to convert that loan into an equity stake as a way to accelerate the domestic production of critical minerals that are needed for battery production, Reuters reported.

A similar deal was negotiated with U.S. chipmaker Intel, which had received billions of dollars in grants under the Biden administration to build domestic plants but was losing money and struggling to stay competitive. The U.S. government under Trump took an $11 billion stake in Intel, described as a “passive ownership,” which means it agreed to vote with the company’s board, with limited exceptions, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

    There are few precedents for the Commerce Department agreeing to grant licenses for exports in exchange for a share of revenue. But the unorthodox payments are consistent with Trump’s increasingly interventionist role in international business deals involving American companies. In June 2025, the administration approved Nippon Steel’s $14 billion takeover of U.S. Steel in a deal that included a so-called golden share in the Japanese company for the U.S. government. It gave the U.S. government a say, including veto power over critical decisions, in domestic steelmaking. U.S. Steel later reversed a decision to close a struggling mill in Granite City, Illinois, the Monitor noted.

    Republicans have claimed that concerns about working-class issues looked like communism ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted his New Deal package of legislation to haul the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Conservative politicians, media magnates and critics routinely denounced his New Deal policies, which sought to regulate the excesses of capitalism to protect farmers, workers and small businesses, as “socialist” or “communist.” Right wingers claimed Roosevelt had allowed radicals to infiltrate his administration.

    Later, during the late 1940s and 1950s, despite the economic recovery after World War II, enabled by subsidies for education and training of returning war veterans and establishment of union rights that enabled the growth of a middle class that was the envy of the rest of the world, conservative politicians such as Sen. Joe McCarthy argued that FDR’s administration and his wartime alliance with the Soviet Union proved he harbored communist sympathizers.

    Ronald Reagan gained notoriety in the 1960s and ’70s as a critic of “socialist” Medicare for senior citizens and federally subsidized grants and loans that allowed high school graduates from working-class families to go on to college and learn crazy ideas about challenging elected officials about the wars they got us into. Right wingers complained that students could get law degrees without being anchored by debt, which let many go into public-interest law, where they could pursue lawsuits against state and local governments.

    Republicans depicted former President Barack Obama as a socialist in moderate clothing. They called Obama’s signature policy, the Affordable Care Act, a government takeover of healthcare—which actually offered a free-market option to expanding Medicare, as subsidies allowed middle-class families to get coverage from private health insurance companies that were subsidized to make them affordable. Then Republicans reduced the subsidies in 2025, leaving an opening for Medicare for All.

    We don’t believe Democrats should call themselves socialists, because it lets Republicans put the red target on them. (At least, “socialism” doesn’t appear to scare younger voters.) But “Progressive” is a good label for young and old voters, and we like “New Deal Democrat,” which harkens back to the movement to bring social and economic justice to working people from the 1930s to the 1960s. Democrats should revive the New Deal for the 21st century.—JMC

From the August 2026 issue of The Progressive Populist

The Dangers of Living on Debt

The US currently has $39.2 trillion dollars in debt. It adds another trillion dollars every 3 months. By the end of 2026, it will have $41 trillion dollars in debt.

So far, international banks and governments have been coughing up the cash and 

lending the US money to cover this growing debt. If they decide to call in their loans, 

or not buy this debt, or charge substantially higher interest rates, the US economy will

suffer substantial catastrophic distress.

Living on debt severely hampers US actions - both foreign and domestic.

With our nation so severely compromised, are we becoming a paper eagle?

Dispatches July 2026 issue

‘PAY TO PLAY’ TRUMP BALLROOM DONORS GET $50 BILLION IN FED CONTRACTS. Sen. Elizabeth Warren suggested President Donald Trump is running a “pay-to-play loyalty program for wealthy donors” after a report on June 4 revealed more than half the companies that contributed to Trump’is White House ballroom project have been awarded government contracts over the last six months, totaling over $50 billion, Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams.org (6/6).

Examining 27 publicly known corporate donors to the president’s $400 million gold-plated vanity project, the watchdog group Public Citizen found 14 of them—more than half—had received either new or expanded contracts over the past six months after donating millions to the ballroom and appearing at a lavish White House banquet in October as Trump was preparing to demolish the building’s East Wing.

Over two-thirds, 19 of the 27 companies, received government contracts since fiscal year 2021, totaling over $338 billion. At least 16 out of 27 are also either facing federal enforcement actions and/or have had them suspended by the Trump administration.

“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom fiasco out of the goodness of their hearts. They have massive interests before the federal government, and they hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration,” said Public Citizen democracy advocate Jon Golinger, an author of the report.

By far the biggest monetary beneficiary has been the military contractor Lockheed Martin, which received $43.8 billion in new or expanded contract funding over the past six months after it pledged $10 million to fund the dance hall last fall.

Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company that serves military and intelligence agencies and pledged at least $5 million to the project, received $4 billion in contracts over the same period.

Meanwhile, Palantir—the data-mining surveillance giant with deep ties to the Trump administration—reaped over $1 billion in contracts after giving its own $5 million donation.

“Millions to fund Trump’s bizarre fever dreams are nothing compared to the billions they’re getting back in contracts and favorable government enforcement decisions,” Golinger said. “The American people are paying the price.”

Other ballroom benefactors that have brought in more than $100 million worth of contracts over the past six months include Microsoft, Amazon, HP, and Caterpillar, while T-Mobile, Google, NextEra Energy, and Comcast have all brought in more than $10 million.

Public Citizen noted that while the White House has publicized some of the ballroom donors and others have been revealed by news organizations, not all of the companies that have contributed to the project are publicly known, since the secret funding agreement obtained by the group through a Freedom of Information Act request allows their identities to remain private.

In a statement to the Washington Post, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle suggested that critics should be grateful that Trump was soliciting donations from the wealthy for this very important undertaking.

“The same critics who are alleging fake conflicts of interest would also complain if American taxpayers were footing the bill for these long-overdue renovations,” he said, ignoring the fact that Trump has previously pressured Republicans in Congress to appropriate hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding to secure the ballroom.

Ingle added that “the donors for the White House ballroom project represent a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals, all of whom are contributing to make the People’s House better for generations to come.”

But several Democratic members of Congress have pointed to it as evidence of Trump selling out the government “to the highest bidder.”

“Corporations wrote big checks to build Trump’s golden ballroom,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Col.). “Now they’re receiving billions of dollars in kickbacks—paid for by your tax dollars.”

“Wild coincidence or taxpayer-funded corruption?” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “You be the judge.”

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said that “the part that should make your blood boil” is the fact that many of the companies identified in the report “were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, [or] securities charges.”

“Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear,” Levin said. “That’s not a coincidence.”

“You cannot afford to donate to Trump’s ballroom, so he does nothing to improve the quality of your life,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “But for those who can, there are billions in government contracts.”

FED SHOWS WORKING FAMILIES FALL BEHIND AS TRUMP CHOOSES TO KEEP PRICES HIGH. The Beige Book, a monthly report on consumer spending, labor markets, and inflation from the Federal Reserve’s 12 districts across the country, showed a continuation of the trend that accelerated after President Donald Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran more than three months ago, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (6/5).

The report notes that regional contacts at the Federal Reserve’s districts described middle-income households as “squeezing more life out of every dollar before deciding to spend it,” while low-income families and individuals “showed greater financial strain.”

“Overall, there were reports of increased credit card usage, fewer retail visits, and stronger demand for necessities,” reads the Beige Book.

“Higher-income households remained resilient and less sensitive to price increase,” the Federal Reserve reported, indicating a “K-shaped economy”—in which wealthy Americans are represented by the top angled line and middle- and lower-income households are represented by the line angled toward the lower right.

The report comes as peace talks with Iran are stalled and the Strait of Hormuz—a key waterway for trade, particularly for the world’s oil supply, remains effectively closed following the US-Israeli invasion. Iran’s retaliatory move has sent global oil prices soaring, with gas now costing $4.22 per gallon on average.

“Numerous contacts mentioned the conflict in the Middle East as a source of cost pressures and heightened business uncertainty,” reads the Beige Book. “Higher energy and fertilizer prices contributed to a moderate increase in food prices, especially for fresh produce.”

Manufacturers and retailers are also facing increased shipping costs, while auto repair rates and used-car financing rates “remained very high” in parts of the country.

The report was released days after the administration launched new strikes against Iran last weekend, and as Iran announced it was suspending peace talks with the US over Israel’s continued targeting of Lebanon.

Alex Jacquez, Groundwork’s chief of policy and advocacy, said “Trump is choosing to keep prices high for working families.”

“High prices for essentials like groceries and a tank of gas are busting household budgets and eliminating breathing room for middle- and low-income families,” said Jacquez. “Despite his own party’s opposition, the president is forging ahead with his reckless, costly war—and leaving working Americans in the dust.”

The Beige Book also describes a “low-hire, low-fire” job market, “with workers increasingly reluctant to change jobs because of economic uncertainty.”

“Widespread economic uncertainty from continued tariffs and persistent inflation means businesses are delaying expansion, leading cautious employees to remain in their current roles—even if it means staying in worse-paying jobs,” said Groundwork.

The Federal Reserve pointed to a contact in the construction industry in Cleveland, Ohio who said employees are “nervous and stressed, as well as a human resources firm in Richmond, Va., that reported ”that clients have explicitly slowed hiring for new roles due to uncertainty, while their existing employees seemed reluctant to leave ‘something stable’ for new opportunities.“

Jacquez said that based on the report, “Americans lucky enough to be employed full-time are losing faith in their ability to keep up with inflation as paychecks lag and the labor market stalls out.”

UNIONS CONDEMN EXEC ORDER ALLOWING TRUMP TO REPLACE FEDERAL WORKERS WITH LOYALISTS. Labor unions are warning that an executive order signed June 3 by President Donald Trump will allow his administration to replace thousands of career civil servants with “political loyalists,” Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams.org (6/5)

The order converts around 8,000 federal workers—most of whom are at senior levels in the civil service with major influence over policy decisions—to Schedule Policy/Career (P/C) status, formerly known as Schedule F, effectively making them “at-will” employees whom the president can fire at his discretion.

While a small number, around 4,000 of the roughly 2 million federal workers, are considered political appointees, most federal employees cannot be removed purely for failing to serve the agenda of the president and can usually only be fired for issues like inadequate performance or misconduct, which involves an appeal process.

But as part of the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle what it’s described as a “deep state” of disloyal bureaucrats, a major objective of the Heritage Foundation’s right-wing manifesto Project 2025, those 8,000 employees may now be fired for “subversion of presidential directives.”

According to the US Office of Personnel Management, this could be just the beginning—with as many as 50,000 employees potentially in consideration to be rescheduled.

A fact sheet released by the White House said despite the reclassification, “these remain ‘career’ positions and the non-partisan hiring processes, competitive status, and other aspects of these roles will not change,” while “removal decisions will also be made without respect to political affiliation.”

But Trump-loyal department heads—everywhere from the Department of Justice to the Pentagon—have systematically purged employees across executive departments that are perceived as Trump’s political enemies.

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said on Thursday that “Schedule P/C is the next phase in Trump’s anti-worker agenda to replace government workers with political loyalists who answer only to him.”

“As we’ve seen from his first day in office, the president is determined to tear down the architecture of our federal government and replace it with a system of corruption to benefit powerful CEOs and billionaire union-busters,” she said.

It’s part of a broader attack on the federal workforce in Trump’s second term. Through a combination of firings, layoffs, and forced resignations, he has reduced the number of government employees by nearly 300,000, causing chaos and understaffing at many agencies. He’s also stripped more than 1 million unionized federal workers of their right to collective bargaining, though courts have blocked the implementation for some workers.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents more than 800,000 federal workers, said Wednesday’s order was “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.”

“The practical implications of this action are clear. Workers who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement at their place of employment because they were protected from retaliation will now be afraid for their jobs if they speak out,” he said. “That is a disservice to them and to the millions of Americans who rely on the federal government every day.”

DEMOCRATS SHOULDN’T FOCUS ON ‘CLIMATE CHANGE.” This year has started as the hottest on record. In the United States, the average temperature for the first four months of 2026 was 44.8 degrees, a height unmatched in data that goes back to 1895. But as climate change wreaks havoc at home and abroad, why don’t Americans care that much?

Well, they do care—just maybe not that much about “climate change,” Andrew Mangan noted at DailyKos.com (6/7)

Nearly 9 in 10 Americans say protecting the environment is important, according to a YouGov poll from March. And 62% tell the Pew Research Center that the U.S. and other nations are not doing enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change. And yet, despite that near-universal concern, only 5% call “climate change and the environment” their most important issue, per the latest Economist/YouGov survey. 

The economy and inflation are far and away Americans’ greatest concerns, though climate change heavily affects those issues. For instance, a warmer planet means greater use of air-conditioning, which, in turn, means higher electric bills. Droughts and intense storms, both exacerbated by global warming, are raising water bills. Climate change is a pocketbook issue, but Americans struggle to make the connection.

That struggle is highlighted by a February poll from Data for Progress and the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank. 

The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact.

But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t. 

In fact, the share who said those issues “greatly” affected cost of living (34%) was nearly double the amount who said the same about climate change (19%).

“Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts.

Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.

For example, last year, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied thousands on a speaking tour. Their message of battling corruption and pushing for an economic revolution to benefit the working class has serious national appeal, even in red areas, where the tour sometimes ventured. However, that tour’s name was not “Fighting Corruption,” “Fighting for the Working Class,” or even “Fighting the 1%.” 

It was “Fighting Oligarchy.” 

Yes, the word may perfectly describe the Trump administration: “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” But it’s also a word that begs a definition, and it’s coming from a party that has bled support among those without a college degree, a group that makes up a sizable majority of the presidential electorate.

The Democratic presidential candidate has lost support with non-college-educated voters in each election since 2012, according to left-leaning data firm Catalist. It’s dropped across every racial group, with Democratic support falling by more than 10 percentage points since 2012 among Black, Latino, and AAPI voters without a college diploma.

Clearly, the star power of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez overcame that unwieldy word. But ideally, Democrats would not need to overcome their own messaging at all. 

A good counterpoint comes from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, he is a democratic socialist dead-set on taking on corporate interests and aiding the working class. But he isn’t tossing out many SAT words.

Instead, during last year’s mayoral campaign, he talked relentlessly about cost-of-living issues. His primary policy planks were two- or three-word phrases: freeze the rent, free buses, build affordable housing, no-cost childcare, and more. He messaged about the cost-of-living crisis with tangible, everyday examples, like the soaring prices found at the city’s ubiquitous halal food trucks—and how he’d fix it. Wittily, he termed that particular issue “halaflation.”

As a result, Mamdani built a young, multiracial, and multicultural coalition. In the general election, he blew out his opponent Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat-turned-independent, in majority-Black and -Hispanic precincts. Seventy-five percent of voters ages 18 to 29 backed him. And even after 100 days in office, which he hit in early April, his approval rating was still 18 points above water, according to a Marist poll.

Mamdani’s simple, relentless, and tangible messaging should be the blueprint for how Democrats, moderates and lefties alike, talk about every issue—including climate change. 

DOGE WANTED TO FALSELY LIST MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AS DEAD IN SOCIAL SECURITY DATABASE: WHISTLEBLOWER. A federal whistleblower has revealed plans by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to falsely list millions of people in the Social Security database as dead in a scheme to pressure them to leave the US.

In an interview published June 5 by the Washington Post, former Social Security Administration (SSA) executive Jeremiah Schofield outlined a DOGE-concocted scheme that would have potentially cut people off from wages, banking, and government benefits by falsely listing them as dead, https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-doge-whistleblower(6/5).

Schofield said a DOGE employee told him in a phone call that they wanted to add 2.7 million living people to SSA’s “Death Master File,” cutting them off from essential financial services so they would either leave the country voluntarily or show up to local SSA offices to complain, where they would be promptly arrested.

“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield, who left the SSA in October, told the Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

While immigrants were the primary target of the scheme, Schofield said that the list of people created by DOGE included some US citizens and lawful permanent residents.

One anonymous former SSA employee who spoke with the Post outlined the serious ramifications for the 2.7 million people had they been added to the Death Master File.

“If you’re on the [Death Master File] you can’t have a bank account,” they explained, “you can’t get credit, so no apartment, no way to save money, no way to get paid, no way to get on insurance or carry health insurance. It has a ton of devastating effects.”

Schofield said he refused to carry out the DOGE employee’s request after consulting with SSA lawyers who said falsely marking living people as dead would likely be illegal.

The plan was ultimately shelved, and the Trump administration claimed in recent court filings that it has revoked DOGE employees’ access to SSA data.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said that Schofield’s whistleblower report was yet another example of President Donald Trump’s administration abusing its power and weaponizing the federal government.

“Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security,” Altman said, “but this whistleblower report is the latest evidence of how he really views it: As nothing more than a weapon to wield against his enemies.”

Altman added that removing living people from the database is essentially “financial murder.”

“It means losing access to your bank account, your health insurance, and your credit cards,” Altman explained. “It means getting kicked out of your home. It means that your life is destroyed.”

Whistleblower Aid, the nonprofit legal assistance organization representing Schofield, said their client’s claims show “no one is safe from this type of weaponization of our Social Security data.”

HOUSE GOP, PLUS 4 DEMS, VOTE TO TAKE FOOD AID FROM MILLIONS OF MOMS & KIDS. House Republicans, with the help of four Democrats, voted Thursday to approve legislation that would slash nutrition assistance for millions of young children and pregnant and postpartum women, even as food prices continue to rise nationwide and earlier GOP cuts to federal aid take hold, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams.org (6/5).

In a 213-210 vote, largely along party lines, House lawmakers passed an appropriations bill that would fund the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies for the coming fiscal year. The four Dems who voted with most Republicans to approve the measure were Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), and Don Davis (NC).

The bill, if also passed by the Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, would cut fruit and vegetable benefits that young kids and pregnant and postpartum women receive under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has estimated that the cut would strip modest fruit and vegetable benefits from “nearly 5.4 million toddlers, preschoolers, and pregnant and postpartum WIC participants.” Under current law, CBPP observed, “children receive $26 monthly for fruits and vegetables, pregnant and postpartum participants receive $48, and breastfeeding participants receive $52.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said following Thursday’s vote that “while working families struggle to feed their families, Republicans are cutting funding for fruit and vegetable vouchers for women, infants, and children.”

“Working moms are already stretched thin, and Republicans are making it even harder to put dinner on the table,” said DeLauro. “The president’s tariffs have hurt American farmers, and now the Republican plan is to cut off crucial assistance that they have come to rely on even more.”

The House-passed appropriations bill would cut WIC by a total of $200 million compared to current levels, slashing $141 million in funding for fruit and vegetable benefits. The USDA’s website says that WIC “saves lives and improves the health of nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children,” describing the program as “one of the most successful federally funded nutrition programs in the United States.”

Trump’s USDA chief, Brooke Rollins, has openly celebrated the large-scale loss of federal nutrition aid stemming from the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last summer. That legislation included unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), another highly effective food aid program.

The House vote to cut WIC broadly aligns with the Trump White House’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027—but doesn’t go as far as the president envisioned. The National WIC Association noted that the House bill “cuts WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefits by about 10%, a first step toward an up to 75% cut sought by the White House.”

“The House proposal fails WIC families when they need help most,” said Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the National WIC Association. “It would force WIC to turn away eligible families for the first time in 30 years, breaking Congress’ 30-year bipartisan commitment to full WIC funding. For the families who receive WIC, it chips away at their ability to buy the very fruits and vegetables that federal dietary guidelines say all Americans should eat more of.”

SPINELESS SENATE R’S REFUSE TO BLOCK TRUMP SLUSH FUND. In the wee hours of June 5 Senate Republicans passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill on a strictly party line vote, handing President Donald Trump’s masked goons billions to continue his violent, inhumane, politically and economically damaging deportation agenda, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos.com (6/5).

What wasn’t included in the funding, however, was any language to limit the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund Trump had previously announced—which sought to dole out taxpayer dollars to people Trump said were victims of former President Joe Biden’s “weaponized” Department of Justice, including the traitors who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While Senate Republicans had slammed the fund a few weeks ago, railing on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a closed-door luncheon about how they thought giving money to Jan. 6 traitors was wrong, they ultimately refused to adopt any amendments that would have officially killed the idea.

Instead, they apparently accepted Trump’s DOJ’s mealymouthed assertion that they will follow a court order that temporarily blocked them from giving out money from the fund. 

However, even Trump has been wishy-washy about whether he is actually giving up on the reparations, telling reporters on Wednesday when asked if the fund is dead or just on hold, “I’d have to ask the lawyers. I don’t know.”

“The weaponization fund, as far as I’m concerned, was a beautiful thing,” Trump added. “I love it. I think it’s so important.”

What’s more, the DOJ has since said that they will merely use regular channels to give reparations to insurrectionists and others who helped Trump try to steal the 2020 election. 

Yet Republicans folded anyway, refusing to anger their Dear Leader—likely out of fear of being on the receiving end of Trump’s retributive actions.

Ultimately, just three Republicans voted to put limits on the slush fund—GOP Sens. Jon Husted of Ohio, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine. That’s far less than the 25 Senate Republicans who spoke out against the corrupt reparations fund at the closed-door luncheon with Blanche.

Notably, all three of the Republicans who voted to limit the fund are up for reelection this fall and facing more competitive races than expected, thanks to Trump’s immense unpopularity. The fact that they voted to block the fund shows they are acting like they know they are vulnerable this fall, confirming recent polling that shows Husted, Sullivan, and Collins trailing their Democratic opponents.

OVER 80% OF US VOTERS SUPPORT ENDING DARK MONEY GRIP ON DEMOCRACY. The Brennan Center for Justice on June 2 published a poll showing that American voters believe the country faces a serious corruption problem, and supermajorities support taking major action to end the role of dark money in US politics, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams.org (6/4).

The poll, which surveyed 2,000 registered voters across the country, found 79% support “a constitutional amendment to restore limits on money in elections.” The proposal would essentially overturn the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which opened the door to unlimited corporate spending in US elections.

The poll further found that 85% of Americans support “mandatory disclosure for all federal campaign contributions and spending”; 81% support “the creation of a new federal ethics enforcer”; and 69% support “a constitutional amendment limiting the president’s pardon power.”

Support for these anti-corruption measures was widespread across both political parties, with 84% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans backing the amendment granting government the power to regulate and limit campaign spending. The proposed mandatory disclosure law drew even more widespread support, with 88% of Democrats and 85% Republicans registering approval.

The poll found Republican voters far less inclined to support proposals that would specifically limit presidential powers, but even in those instances, a majority of Republicans favored a law limiting presidential pardon powers and a law that would let the US Congress and state governments sue the president for alleged violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause that bars presidents from receiving foreign gifts.

Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote that he was struck by Americans’ widespread support for the poll’s proposed reforms, noting that “it’s hard to find a set of proposals with a wider bipartisan appeal.”

Waldman also noted that voters see corruption as why the government has become unresponsive to key voter concerns about housing and affordability.

“Policymakers should understand that the public’s conception of what has gone wrong goes far deeper than super PACs or White House ballrooms or even slush funds,” he wrote. “To them, it is a system that is fundamentally misfiring. A government that is not performing. And there is a willingness to name names and assign blame.”

‘BLOCK BLANCHE’ CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED AFTER TRUMP SAY’S HE’LL NOMINATE ACTING A.G. TO LEAD DOJ. In a letter to US senators Thursday, more than two dozen legal and advocacy groups expressed their commitment to “the rule of law and the independence of federal law enforcement” as they urged the Senate to reject President Donald Trump’s impending nomination of acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche to officially take the helm of the Department of Justice, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (6/4).

Considering that Blanche previously directly represented Trump as his defense attorney in three separate criminal cases, said the groups, which form the Not Above the Law Coalition, “Blanche as attorney general would represent a new low, and an unprecedented corruption of the institution itself.”

“In 2023, Blanche left his law firm to become Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney across three concurrent cases: the hush money trial, the federal classified documents case, and matters related to January 6th,” wrote the coalition, which includes Democracy Defenders Fund, End Citizens United, and Public Citizen. “For two years, he had one job: Keep local, state, and federal investigators away from his client Donald Trump, and in particular, to shield Trump from the Justice Department.

“Now he controls that very federal agency,” said the organizations, noting that he still operates as “Trump’s lawyer.”

Since joining the administration—first as deputy attorney general serving alongside former Attorney General Pam Bondi, and then taking over for her in an acting capacity after she was fired—Blanche has refused to recuse himself from all matters pertaining to Trump, considering his former work representing the president; boasted that the FBI “cleaned house” after firing career prosecutors who had been involved in investigating Trump; filed motions to vacate seditious conspiracy convictions of several people who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and created a since-blocked $1.8 billion “slush fund” meant to disburse money to Trump’s allies due to what the president views as unfair prosecutions.

Blanche has also played a major role in weaponizing the DOJ against Trump’s “perceived enemies,” including the Southern Poverty Law Center and former FBI Director James Comey, both of whom he obtained indictments for.

AT LEAST 97 PARDONED INSURRECTIONISTS HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH OTHER CRIMES: ANALYSIS. On the first day of his second term last year, President Donald Trump delivered a mass pardon to more than 1,500 people who were charged with crimes related to the violent riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams.org (6/4).

An analysis published Thursday by Lawfare associate editor Katherine Pompilio finds that at least 97 of these pardoned Trump supporters have been charged with other crimes, including serious alleged offenses such as grand larceny, fraud, and plots to assassinate law enforcement officials and politicians.

The analysis also documents 14 instances of pardoned Capitol rioters being “charged with sex crimes or crimes related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” while “at least six” have been charged with domestic violence.

Some of the pardoned rioters have been charged with more minor offenses, including public intoxication, possession of drug paraphernalia, and property damage.

The most notable finding is that at least five of the repeat offenders committed crimes after being freed from prison as a result of Trump’s actions, suggesting that his pardon “may have actively facilitated criminal conduct.”

The most infamous case involves Andrew Paul Johnson, a Capitol rioter who was freed from prison after receiving the Trump pardon and has since been sentenced to life in prison on charges related to child molestation.

“The criminal conduct for which he was convicted took place both before and after his pardon,” the analysis notes.

Other repeat offenders who committed crimes after being freed by Trump were Zachary Alam, who was convicted of felony and grand larceny months after being pardoned, and Ryan Nichols, who was arrest last month for allegedly “threatening a person with a gun in a church parking lot,” the analysis finds.

According to a June 4 report from The New York Times, the Lawfare analysis more than doubles the number of documented instances of pardoned rioters who have been charged with crimes beyond January 6-related offenses.

“A previous study of January 6 recidivism found that at least 40 defendants faced other criminal charges, with 12 taking place after Trump’s clemency order,” reported the Times. “The Lawfare study found 19 criminal cases that occurred after the clemency.”