Dispatches, October 2026

 GOP FRETS AS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DESPERATELY SPINS RECORD HIGH DIESEL PRICES. The price of diesel fuel in the US hit another record high on Sept. 5, as data published by the American Automobile Association showed the average cost for a gallon of diesel reached $5.88, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/5).

According to a report from Axios, incumbent Republicans are fretting about the impact that skyrocketing gasoline and diesel prices will have on the 2026 midterm elections, particularly since their own internal polling shows voters are placing blame for the price hikes on President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran.

“Diesel’s at an all-time high,” one GOP operative told Axios. “Gas is about $4 a gallon. We can’t message that away.”

Another Republican source told Axios that GOP candidates don’t even have the option of distancing themselves from the president and his unpopular war given the iron grip he has on voters they will need to turn out in crucial races.

“We have no choice,” said the source. “We’re stuck on the boat with him whether we like it or not.”

US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy tried to spin the record-high diesel prices as something outside the president’s control during a Saturday interview on Fox News.

“When you look at diesel, you have to look at Russia and Ukraine,” Duffy said. “Russia was a major exporter, the second-biggest exporter in the world, on diesel. They stopped their exports, so that puts pressure on the global market. But President Trump has pushed American energy dominance, we are producing more energy now than in the past.”

Duffy added that “it’s only President Trump who’s trying to drive these prices down,” even though the president’s war has been the primary reason they’ve been going up.

‘ABSOLUTELY BONKERS’ AND ‘UNACCEPTABLE’: TRUMP POSTS MAP SHOWING U.S. TAKEOVERS OF OTHER NATIONS. US President Donald Trump has spent his second term threatening takeovers of various other countries, from Canada and Cuba to Greenland, and on Sept. 7 he shared on social media a map that fueled fresh fears of his imperialist “Donroe Doctrine,” Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (9/7)

The map on Trump’s Truth Social platform showed the US flag over not only the United States but also Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, and multiple countries in Central America and the Caribbean.

The post was swiftly condemned across platforms, with Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) declaring that “this is unacceptable.”

“This man is unwell. 25th Amendment NOW,” Sisson said, cataloging posts on a range of topics, from Trump’s recent renaming of Lake Ontario amid tough trade talks with Canada, to the suggestion that New Mexico should be dubbed “New America.”

The latter was ripped by several Democratic officials, including New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), who responded that her state’s name “isn’t up for debate—it’s been ours since before the United States existed.”

“What is up for debate? Who’s showing up for working families,” she continued. “While the president tries to distract Americans from his disastrous war in Iran, gas prices keep soaring. Americans are also spending more at the grocery store, losing access to healthcare and wondering if they’ll ever be able to afford a home. Under Democratic leadership here in New Mexico, we’re providing families with free childcare and college, protecting access to healthcare, and investing in housing. While the White House wastes time coloring on maps, Nuevo México is busy doing the work.”

In addition to waging an illegal war on Iran, Trump this term has invaded Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and take control of the country’s oil reserves, become the US commander-in-chief to bomb the most countries, and killed over 225 people by blowing up boats allegedly smuggling drugs through international waters. He’s also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and possibly attack nations including Colombia and Mexico.

As Iran has responded to Trump’s war by restricting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the president has teased declaring the key waterway a US territory and naming it after himself. He’s also dubbed the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America” and fought to put his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

With the US midterm elections less than two months away, some Democrats in Congress have stepped up their critiques of Trump’s foreign policy—including a delegation of progressive congressional lawmakers and candidates who headed to Uruguay in August for the third Pan-American Congress.

Shortly after that gathering, delegation member Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) stressed that “progressives reject the violent, imperialistic Donroe Doctrine, and believe in a foreign policy rooted in cooperation, diplomacy, and sovereign equality.”

PLURALITY OF CANADIANS SEE US AS ‘ENEMY,’ THANKS ALMOST ENTIRELY TO TRUMP: POLL. A survey released Sept. 5 by polling firm Leger finds that a plurality of Canadians now view the US as an “enemy” nation thanks to President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on their economy and national sovereignty, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/5).

In all, the poll finds that 41% of Canadians now consider the US an enemy, compared with 22% who say the US is an ally, and 22% who say the US is a neutral country.

In a similar poll conducted in June 2025, Leger noted, only 26% of Canadians said the US was an enemy.

Trump’s trade war is a major driver of negative opinion among Canadians, as 63% of those surveyed say they expect the president’s tariffs to have either a moderate or major impact on their personal financial situations.

Additionally, 74% of Canadians say they agree with their government’s decision to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs, even while acknowledging such retaliation will hurt the economy.

Canadians are also resentful of Trump’s demands that Canada become the 51st US state, with 85% saying they do not want to become part of America.

The disdain toward the US is driven almost entirely by Trump, the survey finds, with 64% of Canadians saying their opinions of the country would likely change if he were no longer president.

In an interview with The National Post, Leger vice president Andrew Enns emphasized the centrality of Trump in Canadians’ deteriorating views of their neighbor to the south, arguing that the US president “can move public opinion like nobody’s business.”

Brian Rathbun, professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, told The National Post that while Canadians aren’t letting their dislike of Trump tarnish their opinions of Americans as a whole, that could change in the coming years.

“At some point, I think Canadians will start to get frustrated if this persists, even if it’s not what the American public wants,” said Rathbun. “They can say, ‘Why is it that no one’s standing up to this particular bully?’ Then I think that you could get into something like a deeper problem that couldn’t be fixed by kicking this guy out.”

TRUMP’S WAR ON MAIL-IN VOTING IS HITTING A BRICK WALL — BUT THE DANGER IS FAR FROM OVER. President Donald Trump’s crusade against mail-in voting is running into a brick wall, although many critics are warning that the dangers to democracy are far from over, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/6).

The Washington Post reported Sept. 6 that Trump is “running out of options” to change mail-in voting rules that “don’t involve significant upheaval,” as states have already started sending out ballots to voters.

In March, Trump signed an executive order that instructed the U.S. Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to its voter lists.

However, that order is currently tied up in court, and both Wisconsin and North Carolina have begun mailing out ballots to voters, the Post reported.

Don Millis, a Republican who chairs the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told the Post that “there’s no practical way for Wisconsin clerks to comply” with Trump’s orders, adding that the president’s schemes targeting mail-in voting are likely to “hurt the Republican turnout more than the Democratic turnout.”

The Trump administration has been pushing the US Supreme Court to intervene to allow the president’s executive order to take effect.

However, as noted in a Politico report published on Sept. 4, nine other states are set to send ballots to voters over the following two weeks, which would make a last-minute ruling by the court an unprecedented disruption in the democratic process.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect,” Ben Hovland, senior fellow for democracy at the Center for American Progress, told Politico. “It’s hard to even imagine ... It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

However, Hovland said that Trump’s election meddling effort could still do real damage to the country because it can “dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote” and “establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland’s concerns about the president’s intentions were echoed in a in The New York Times Sept. 6, which found voters across the country expressing confusion about the voting process and anxiety over whether their votes will be counted this year.

Pima County, Arizona Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly told the Times that her office has received a flood of calls from worried voters, and she said that the president’s relentless push to restrict voting by mail has left her unable to provide reassuring answers.

“I wish that I could tell my constituents to not worry,” said Cázares-Kelly, “and I can’t.”

Rich Cooper, elections manager in Clark County, Washington, similarly told the Times he has been unable to ease voters’ worries about what rules will govern this year’s elections.

“The biggest thing they want to know is if things are going to change,” Cooper said of voters expressing concerns. “We have to tell them we just don’t know yet.”

JD VANCE GETS SLIPPERY WITH LIES ABOUT OIL. JD Vance took his lie-a-palooza act to the White House briefing room on Sept. 3, where he not only lied about … everything … but also brazenly fibbed about recent history, pretending as if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine in 2022, sending energy costs skyrocketing, Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (9/3).

“We had for a very long time the Biden administration draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve purely for the purpose of lowering gas and oil costs,” Vance claimed. “There wasn’t an international crisis. There wasn’t a foreign nation that was trying to disrupt world energy markets.”

After inheriting a mismanaged, pandemic-ravaged economy in 2021, the Biden administration was able to keep the U.S. economy afloat, while corporate gouging greed capitalized on the opportunities the health crisis created. 

In 2022, President Joe Biden authorized the release of 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to stabilize markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before leaving office, the Biden administration replenished the reserve by purchasing 200 million barrels at a lower cost.

On Feb. 28, US military forces began bombing Iran. Since then, oil prices have shot skyward, forcing the Trump administration to draw down the SPR so heavily that the stockpile is at a 44-year low. 

“Who needs former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt when you have Vance willing to lie this cynically?” Einenkel asked.

HEGSETH QUIETLY EXTENDS MIDDLE EAST TROOP DEPLOYMENTS INTO 2027 AS IRAN WAR DRAGS ON. The Pentagon has reportedly extended Middle East deployments of American troops, fighter squadrons, and warships into next year as the deadly, expensive, and deeply unpopular Iran war drags on with no end in sight, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (9/3).

The Wall Street Journal reported that Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth—who, like President Donald Trump, insisted the Iran assault would be over swiftly—has decided that the US military will maintain a “presence of 50,000 troops in the region in part to give the president flexibility on next steps.” The Pentagon “could also keep elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the Middle East well into 2027,” the Journal added, citing a letter that military leaders sent to families.

The Journal also reported that Trump, who has falsely called Iran a “dead” country, is “having discussions with senior aides about whether to declare the Iran war over,” even as the bombings continue, American troops remain in the region, and the administration ratchets up economic sanctions.

“Trump administration seems to excel at bombing schools and weddings,” Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote Sept. 3. “Winning the illegal and unnecessary war with Iran—not so much.”

Hegseth has reportedly backed a plan that would involve “periodic” bombings of Iran in an attempt to keep ship traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategy that analysts say would lead to a “permanent state of war.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued earlier this week that Trump appeared to be leaning toward “maintaining a low-level conflict until the midterms—neither securing a diplomatic deal nor allowing the situation to deteriorate into full-scale war.”

“Iranian officials say, both publicly and privately, that they expect the U.S. and Israel to resume the war after the midterms regardless of the impact of the D-Day sanctions,” Parsi wrote. “Regional diplomats have largely reached the same conclusion. If sanctions weaken Iran over time while the global economy recovers and adjusts to the new reality in the Strait, a prolonged pause will work against Tehran. Iran may therefore decide to escalate dramatically, taking full advantage of Trump’s perceived vulnerability in the run-up to the elections.”

Thousands of Iranians — including hundreds of children — and at least 18 US servicemembers have been killed during the war so far, and the conflict has cost the average American household $1,200 in extra costs as gas prices remain at record levels. Trump has said he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation” when he makes decisions pertaining to the Iran war.

The war is fueling the Trump administration’s push for a record $1.5 trillion in military spending for the coming fiscal year—a budget demand that has intensified concerns of a “forever war” against Iran.

“Washington is betting that sustained military and economic pressure will eventually force Tehran to retreat,” the National Iranian American Council wrote in a blog post on Sept. 3. “Iran appears to be betting that it can survive long enough to force Washington to do the same. For ordinary Iranians, American servicemembers, and civilians across the region, the danger is that testing those two assumptions will require a much longer and more destructive war.”

ICE HIRED UNQUALIFIED GOONS AFTER ‘UNPRECEDENTED LOWERING OF STANDARDS’: WHISTLEBLOWER. A whistleblower is claiming that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dangerously lowered its hiring standards for new recruits, who were given final job offers without undergoing even preliminary vetting, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/3).

The New York Times reported Sept. 3 that the whistleblower, who has worked at ICE for 17 years, filed a complaint in August 2025 with the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security that sounded alarms about what he described as an “unprecedented lowering of standards” for hiring.

According to the complaint, applicants were offered jobs before they they even passed fingerprint and identity checks, which the whistleblower said created “grave national security risks” for the agency.

In an interview with the Times, the whistleblower said that ICE “chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough,” even though “there was a potential to put lives at risk and jeopardize national security.”

This is at least the second whistleblower complaint to raise concerns about the deterioration of standards at ICE.

In February, former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank alleged in a complaint that he “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant.”

Schwank also alleged that “the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” which he warned “can and will get people killed.”

ICE’s hiring standards came under scrutiny this summer after it was revealed that ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, had a lengthy history of allegedly abusive behavior.

As noted by the Times, Brouillette was even rejected for a job at the police department in Hallowell, Maine because he had “too many red flags.”

The ICE hiring surge came shortly after passage of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated more than $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement operations. ICE last year said it would use some of the money to hire 10,000 additional agents, more than double the number of agents who had previously worked at the department.

ANALYSIS FINDS 10 MILLION PEOPLE LOST HEALTHCARE COVERAGE DURING TRUMP’S SECOND TERM. Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba Sept. 3 published a detailed report estimating that more than 10 million people living in the US have lost their healthcare coverage since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/3).

In his analysis, Gaba brought together the most recent enrollment data for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Breaking things down by program, Gaba estimated there are 5.9 million fewer people enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, as well as at least 4.5 million fewer people enrolled in the ACA, since Trump returned to power in January 2025.

These losses in coverage are somewhat mitigated by Medicare, whose enrollment has increased by around 1.6 million people during Trump’s second term.

Losing access to these programs doesn’t mean that the people who were on them have gotten well paying jobs and are receiving insurance from their employer, Gaba wrote. Given that the unemployment rate has risen during Trump’s second term, Gaba suggested it is highly unlikely that there are now more people who get employer-sponsored coverage now than in January 2025.

Depending on a number of variables, Gaba concluded, somewhere between 8.8 million to 10.3 million fewer people now have healthcare coverage.

Adjusting for population growth, Gaba added, “you get a grand total of between 10.27 million and 11.75 million more Americans not enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of May 2026 than in were as of January 2025.”

The healthcare analyst noted that “this isn’t quite the same thing as counting how many lost coverage, but not having healthcare sucks regardless of how you slice it.”

He also pointed out that the lost in healthcare coverage all came before the Medicaid work requirements from the GOP’s 2025 budget law are put into effect.

“Over half the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill have already gone into effect,” wrote Gaba, “and the negative results are already devastating.”

Gaba’s analysis was published days after the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families released a report estimating that nearly 2.5 million children in the US have lost access to Medicaid or CHIP during Trump’s second term.

Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable.

First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.

GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.

According to reporting by Politico, hospitals are sounding the alarm about new regulations being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that they say would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue.

“If the rules are finalized and they lose hundreds of billions on top of Congress’ funding cuts,” Politico reported, “hospitals say they’ll be forced to reduce services, lay off workers, consolidate operations or shutter entirely.”

DEMOCRATS EXPOSE GOP’S DATA CENTER KICKBACKS. Republicans are lashing out after Democratic leaders singled out for criticism a provision in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that is being used to supercharge the construction of unpopular AI data centers in low-income areas of the country, Oliver Willis noted at DailyKos (9/3).

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke about the issue Aug. 31 during a press conference.

“Every single House Republican but one or two voted to unleash data centers on the American people in an unfettered fashion,” Jeffries said, calling Republicans “pro-data center without any restraints.”

The next day, Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts made similar comments on the House floor, chiding Republicans for “bragging about giving tax breaks to Big Tech in order to build data centers” when the bill was under consideration just over a year ago. 

McGovern added, “With November on the horizon, some House Republicans are acting as if they did not turbocharge the data center buildout.”

The Democrats are referring to the “Opportunity Zones” provision of the bill, which gives massive tax breaks to companies for projects that are placed in census-designated low-income areas. 

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” was opposed across the board by Democrats and became law via only Republican votes. In addition to helping data centers, the unpopular law cut taxes for the super rich and slashed Medicaid coverage for millions.

GOP Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, complained to Politico about the Democratic line of attack. He said it was a “huge stretch” to link that specific provision to data centers.

“Opportunity Zones control, like, everything—from child day care centers to manufacturers. Can data centers be used in them? Yes. But so can everything else,” Smith said.

Regarding data centers, Republicans are in a bind of their own making.

Public opinion polling from a host of sources finds strong, bipartisan opposition to data center construction, with even many Republicans opposing it. Voters have voiced concerns about how data centers use vital resources and affect electricity costs.

Undeterred, some leading GOP figures, like Trump, have been pushing the centers, no doubt because many of the party’s top donors and wealthy allies in Big Tech are major investors in data center construction.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

This is not true. But the data center industry is using the law Trump signed to get what they want, and now his party is feeling the heat.

TRUMP ‘LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR ELECTION MEDDLING’ WITH DHS HUNT FOR NONCITIZEN VOTERS. The New York Times’ Sept. 2 reporting on a US Department of Homeland Security “blitz to find elusive voter fraud” by noncitizens is heightening fears that President Donald Trump will try to meddle in the country’s midterm elections, which are just over two months away, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (9/2).

The newspaper revealed that as part of a “hunt for noncitizens among the nation’s registered voters” internally called the Unlawful Voter Initiative, hundreds of DHS agents “are scouring voter rolls managed by the states, and are using personally identifiable information about individual voters, such as their dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, to look them up on those rolls.”

“In some cases, investigators are effectively posing as individual voters by plugging their names and personal information into public-facing websites run by the top election official in each state. Some of these sites declare they are meant for individual use, potentially raising privacy concerns,” according to the Times, which reviewed related documents and training videos.

While DHS said in a statement that it “is committed to ensuring that only US citizens vote in US elections,” and Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin “have made the integrity and security of our elections a top priority,” the newspaper noted the “absence of evidence of widespread fraud,” and that the department “is pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism.”

Trump infamously refused to accept his 2020 loss, launching various unsuccessful legal battles and even motivating some of his supporters to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since returning to power last year, the president has imposed a mass detention and deportation campaign that has killed both immigrants and US citizens while pushing various policies that critics warn are intended to limit legitimate participation in elections, from photo identification requirements to restrictions on voting by mail.

Sharing the reporting on social media Sept. 2, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: “In other words, hundreds of federal agents are being diverted away from their jobs going after serious criminals and instead told to find needles in a haystack—all to find evidence for Trump’s predetermined conclusions. It’s a great time to be a criminal in Trump’s America.”

Democrats on the US House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee similarly declared that “instead of hunting terrorists and human traffickers, DHS is pulling agents away to investigate a conspiracy theory that has been debunked year after year.”

TRUMP LIES THAT MEDICARE FOR ALL WOULD COST ‘ENTIRE BUDGET OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.’ Donald Trump railed against Medicare for All during an Oval Office event on Sept. 2, falsely claiming the proposal would be prohibitively expensive and ineffective despite new research confirming it would save lives and cost significantly less than the corporate-dominated status quo, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (9/2).

The president’s remarks came during an event touting his limited, voluntary, and secretive agreements with leading pharmaceutical companies, deals purportedly aimed at lowering drug prices. Trump again lied by claiming that his efforts are “much bigger” than Medicare for All, which would provide comprehensive health coverage to every person in the US for free at the point of service, eliminating premiums, copays, and deductibles.

Trump said that Medicare for All, which has not been tried at a national level in the US, “doesn’t work,” falsely claiming a single-payer system would cost “the entire budget of the whole country” and send taxes into the stratosphere.

Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works and author of the forthcoming book, “The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action,” told Common Dreams on Sept. 3 that “Trump is once again revealing that he lies about healthcare or is totally ignorant of it.”

Total federal outlays were $7.04 trillion in 2025. According to a study published in August by Yale University researchers, a single-payer system like the one set out in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Medicare for All Act would save the US roughly $1 trillion per year in national healthcare expenditures, which totaled around $5.7 trillion last year. The finding was consistent with past research showing major savings under Medicare for All compared with the current privatized system.

“A universal healthcare system in the US would not require the country to spend more on healthcare,” the Yale researchers wrote. “It would require it to spend less. Our results indicate that the existing budget is more than sufficient to cover everyone at lower total cost.”

The study also found that Medicare for All would save more than 114,000 lives across the US each year by providing the tens of millions of uninsured and uninsured Americans with comprehensive coverage.

The researchers contrasted the life-saving impacts of a Medicare for All system with the deadly consequences of the unprecedented Medicaid cuts that Trump signed into law last summer. Experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania estimated that the sweeping Republican assault on Medicaid could cause more than 51,000 deaths annually as millions are kicked off the program.

PROGRESSIVE SEN. ED MARKEY BEATS SETH MOULTIN IN LANDSIDE. US Sen. Ed Markey, a champion of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, decisively fended off a Democratic primary challenge from his right on Sept. 2, defeating Rep. Seth Moulton by nearly 30 percentage points in a contest that focused heavily on the incumbent senator’s age. Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (9/2).

Markey, 80, and his supporters—including prominent young Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—rejected the notion that “generational change” necessarily means electing the youngest candidate in the race. Markey said in his victory speech Tuesday night that “generational change isn’t about compromising to do the small things better—it’s about fighting to do the big things best.”

“Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement,” Markey added. “It is a progressive movement fueled by young people, demanding more from their leaders, and it’s your voices that are the ones we need to hear right now.”

Moulton, a 47-year-old member of the conservative New Democrat Coalition, attempted to capture momentum that has propelled other younger candidates to victory over entrenched incumbents by making Markey’s age and lengthy tenure in Congress—rather than his policy agenda—a central focus of the Sept. 2 contest. In a recent interview with MS NOW, Moulton removed ideology and policy from the equation completely, lumping Markey in with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as well as elderly Democrats such as former President Joe Biden.

The Democratic representative, who opposes Medicare for All and attacked Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) from the right during his ill-fated 2020 presidential bid, also falsely claimed in a campaign ad that he and Markey “want the same things.”

Moulton’s age-centric message failed, according to Markey’s backers, because voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere are hungry for progressive politics, not just younger politicians.

Editorial: Take Away Grampa’s Sharpie

Republicans were in bad shape going into Labor Day and Donald Trump appears to be determined to make it worse.

Trump insisted on holding a pep rally masquerading as a Republican midterm convention in Dallas Sept. 9-10, in his attempt to make the midterm elections all about himself. That is the last thing many Republican House and Senate candidates want, as Trump’s favorably ratings have dropped to the low 30s range. 

 “BIG NEWS!” Trump proclaimed when he announced the midterm convention on “Truth Social” July 30. “For the first time ever, the Republican Party will hold a MIDTERM CONVENTION. It will be in Dallas, Texas — One of my favorite places in the World. It will be fantastic! It has never been done before, and will be a truly Historic Event. We are going to celebrate the GREAT AMERICAN COMEBACK.”

But Trump’s ratings have continued to drop as his arbitrary and erratic tariffs on imported goods have inflated costs, and his war on Iran stopped Iranian oil exports, increasing demand for U.S. oil, which has increased fuel prices to record levels in the United States. That has played a major part in reducing Trump’s popularity to the level George W. Bush dropped to at the close of his second term, when opposition to the Iraq war was growing and a massive housing bubble and risky subprime mortgages caused an economic collapse. Bush’s recession set up Barack Obama to win the White House in 2008, backed up by a Democratic majority in Congress, including a filibuster-proof 60-seat supermajority in the Senate. 

\During Trump’s second term, he has moved further toward assuming dictatorial powers, even as he shows increasing signs of dementia. He has accelerated use of executive orders, signed with his Sharpie, or simply ordering projects such as replacing the East Wing of the White House with a ballroom on his own say-so instead of seeking approval from Congress, even when Republicans control both chambers. 

Presidents have used executive orders when one or both chambers of Congress are controlled by an opposing party, to try to navigate gridlock and legislative opposition. But analysis by the States United Democracy Center found that from Jan. 20, 2025, to Jan. 12, 2026, despite unified control of Congress, Trump issued 228 executive orders. The volume and pace of Trump’s decrees far exceed every other president in contemporary history. Trump’s use of executive orders has repeatedly overstepped constitutional limits of presidential authority, forcing states and others to push back, resulting in courts invalidating several of his most authoritarian decrees.

Trump has used executive orders to intrude on state authority in administering elections and he’s deployed state National Guards when local police response didn’t satisfy him. These orders have sparked litigation between states and the administration, and Republicans have little taste for challenging Trump’s usurpations.

During Trump’s first term, 246 lawsuits challenged his administration’s use of executive power and regulatory actions. The administration prevailed in only 22% of those cases. In the second term, at least 33 of Trump’s executive orders are facing court challenges.

Among them is Executive Order 14248, which asserts federal control over election practices. It directs the Elections Assistance Commission to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, requires states to reject absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day, and threatens to withhold federal funding for states that do not comply with the order.

State officials have argued that the Constitution clearly puts states in charge of running election.

A federal district judge Sept. 4 issued an injunction blocking the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing key parts of a rule Trump ordered in March  that would restrict voting by mail and would authorize the US Postal Service to implement rules to that end.

Federal judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts ruled the order likely was unconstitutional and unlawful — and enforcing it would make voter disenfranchisement “practically inevitable.”

The administration on Sept. 6 appealed to the Supreme Court to allow the new restrictions on mail ballots in time for the midterms.

Republicans hoped they could build a firewall against Democratic gains in the House when the Republican-majority Supreme Court in April 2025 gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it much harder for voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory vote dilution. That let red states gerrymander Democratic House districts into Republican majorities, and Trump in July 2025 told Texas Republicans to rig their map to flip up to five Democratic House seats. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a legislative session to get it done. 

But a poll conducted in August by Texas Southern University found Democratic nominees were still leading in three heavily gerrymandered districts. Two are held by Democratic representatives whom the GOP sought to oust with the new map.

The Texas gerrymander was based on the belief Republican gains among Texas Latino voters  in the 2024 election were solid. 

However, Latinos’ support for the GOP has dropped as Trump has aggressively targeted Brown and Black immigrants for arrest and deportation, and many Latino citizens know people who have been hassled by ICE agents, if they haven’t been hassled themselves. Latinos also don’t like paying more than $4 a gallon for gas and higher grocery costs than they were paying when Joe Biden was president. In an average of three polls YouGov conducted in Trump’s second term, his net approval among Latino voters has fallen to minus 31 points.

Democrats need a net gain of four districts to win a majority in the House. Republicans can lose no more than two districts to retain a majority in the chamber.

The Senate, once seen as a longshot for Democrats, now appears in striking distance. And both parties are investing major resources in states and districts where Trump won by double digits in 2024.

If Democrats flip Republican seats in Ohio and Iowa while retaining Michigan, they will almost certainly net the four seats total needed to take control of the Senate during Trump’s final two years. Jonathan Martin noted at Politico Aug. 30. Dems are expected to capture North Carolina, and they hope to pick off Senate seats in Maine, Alaska and Texas.

You might hear some lefties discount the hope that Democrats regaining the congressional majority will make a difference. But while Democrats might not succeed in expanding Medicare to cover everybody while Trump can veto such bills, remember that Republicans want to take away all the social gains achieved since the New Deal in the 1930s, starting out with Social Security and Medicare. And Republicans hope to start by reducing Social Security benefits next year. 

A Democratic wave at least can raise Hell with Trump ruling by Sharpie. So prepare to vote early if you can, and if you vote by mail, take your ballot to an election drop boxes (ID may be necessary), or get a postal clerk to postmark your ballot in plenty of time to gt it delivered by Nov. 3. Just vote Democratic. They might disappoint, but Republicans have forfeited your trust.  — JMC

From the October 2026 issue of The Progressive Populist

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.