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.”

Editorial: Still Lying After All These Years

Donald Trump has been lying all his political life and much of his personal life. And he apparently doesn’t care what damage his lies do. 

The latest manifestation occurred June 5 when the counting process in the California primary election showed Democrats leading in the open primaries for governor and Los Angeles mayor — which shouldn’t have been a surprise in a blue state surrounding deep blue LA. 

Republicans hoped Democrats would split their votes for governor among 62 candidates in the all-comers “jungle primary,’ where the top two votegetters will meet in the runoff for the general election on Nov. 3. Team Red saw the chance to promote Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and political commentator Steve Hilton to the runoff, shutting out the Dems. But the top votegetter in the governor’s race appears to be Democrat Xavier Becerra, former state attorney general, with 27.7% of the vote on June 8, with 82.9% of the ballots counted. That left a race for second place between Hilton, with 25.1% and Democrat Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmental activist and founder of Farallon Capital, with 22.4%. 

In the LA mayor’s race, with 80% of the votes counted, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass was leading with 34.3% and progressive Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman, a Democrat with 28.5% of the vote, overtook former reality TV character Spencer Pratt, a Republican with 25.8%, for second place in the “jungle primary,” The open primary for mayor put 17 candidates of all parties and independents on the ballot, with the top two votegetters going into the Nov. 3 general election runoff. Voters had to mail in their ballot or turn them in at voting places by June 2, and a lengthy counting process was expected.

Trump sat for an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker in Chippeway Falls, Wis., June 5 for “Meet the Press,” but the discussion didn’t get far after Welker challenged Trump about his repeated lies that the 2020 election was rigged, the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol was staged by the FBI, and his new unfounded claims that new election rigging was happening in California.

Trump was agitated when Welker asked him about the $1.8 billion fund he sought to get the federal Treasury to pay people claiming they were victims of politicized prosecutions. His Justice Department agreed with Trump’s lawyers to set up the fund to settle the president’s lawsuit against the IRS, but acting Attorney Generasl Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, backed off amid court challenges and pushback from Republican senators.

Trump told Welker he still wants to establish the fund.

“If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve,” he said. “People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them. … If they get it approved, that’s great. If they don’t get it approved, I’d be disappointed.”

Trump said the 172 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers were victims of “dirty cops” in the FBI who ushered the protesters into the building (while Trump was president, by the way). 

Asked if he was OK with the Jan. 6 protesters getting taxpayer dollars, Trump replied, “Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea, because people like you, the fake dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden, he’s not smart enough to know what’s going on, but people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, what they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.”

When told there was “no evidence of weaponization,” Trump replied, “There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.”

Welker replied, “Well, it’s not been presented in a court of law.” Trump replied, “The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. … And it’s happening right now in California.”

Trump claimed that because the results had not been officially decided after three days of counting by election workers in California, the nation’s largest state, with millions who vote by mail, “They’re cheating on the election.”

“Do you have evidence to support that?” Welker asked.

“All I have to do is look … and I listen,” Trump replied.

“But that’s not evidence,” Welker countered.

After talking over Welker’s continuing questions, Trump concluded, “Your elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked. … And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. … You’re a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

When Welker pleaded that “I traveled all the way to Wisconsin” to meet him, he replied that he had given her enough time. “You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what? … A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”

And the country gets even less with a dishonest president.

When it comes to contempt for the truth, Trump is in a league of his own. Republican members of Congress must be held to account for  allowing Trump’s disgraceful behavior.

The Washington Post’s fact-checking staff of four, led by Glenn Kessler, counted 30,753 false or misleading claims made by Trump in his first term. 

Kessler noted in his Jan. 23, 2021, wrapup of Trump 1.0, Trump started his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2017 with 10 misrepresentations and five more on the second day. 

“Over time, Trump unleashed his falsehoods with increasing frequency and ferocity, often by the scores in a single campaign speech or tweetstorm. What began as a relative trickle of misrepresentations … built into a torrent through Trump’s final days as he frenetically spread wild theories that the coronavirus pandemic would disappear “like a miracle” and that the presidential election had been stolen — the claim that inspired Trump supporters to attack Congress on Jan. 6 and prompted his second impeachment.”

After Trump lost the 2020 election — and yes, Joe Biden beat Trump fair and square, as judges, including those appointed by Trump and other Republicans found no widespread fraud in more than 60 cases brought by the Trump team — the Post scaled back its fact-checking department. Kessler continued through 2024, but when Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Post decreed that the opinion pages would be less confrontational, Kessler chose to accept a buyout in January 2025 as Trump was returning to the White House and the Post no longer has a regular fact-checking column.

No other news outlet has taken up the comprehensive fact-checking role the Post performed in Trump’s first term, but Linda Qiu noted in The New York Times Jan. 20, 2026, that in the first year of his second term Trump continued to rely on inaccurate superlatives and evidence-free assertions to justify his policies. The administration has dismissed media fact-checks as “hoaxes” or “fake news.”

The press can tell the truth, but only Republicans can stop Trump from lying., by calling him out on them.     — JMC

From the July 2026 issue of The Progressive Populist