It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, July 05, 2026
Happy 250th Birthday, American Democracy—You’re Under Attack!
The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it. Signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. (Photo: Shutterstock)
This Fourth of July marks the 250th birthday of a new kind of nation state — based not on ancestral ties to a land or on the territorial reach of monarchs, but on shared principles about the rights of citizens and the purpose of the state.
The Founding Fathers set forth those principles in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal” and have “unalienable Rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” To “secure these rights,” Jefferson wrote, the government must “derive just powers from the consent of the governed.”
America has come a long way over two and a half centuries, but today we face a grave challenge from within — and especially from our own leaders.
Of course, those founding ideas have always been more aspiration than reality. In a sense the Declaration of Independence was an invitation to struggle over the inequalities that marred the new nation: slavery and white supremacy, the subjugation of Native peoples, the legal subordination of women, the limitation of voting rights to the well-off.
In the course of 250 years, those struggles have achieved tremendous progress.
A bloody Civil War won what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” Slavery was abolished and the Constitution amended to strengthen the government’s ability to safeguard the rights of African Americans and other people.
Women were eventually enfranchised and achieved formal legal equality. The lawless subordination and genocides of Native Americans were eventually recognized as the evils they are. The Civil Rights Movement repealed American apartheid and restored rights that had been stripped away.
But equality and democracy are openly contested today in a manner not seen in a century. Those who oppose the Founding Fathers’ fundamental values are using our government to attack equality and democracy. The good news is that tens of millions of Americans are fighting back.
America is and always has been a nation of diverse peoples — a multi-ethnic, multi-racial mix — and that is what the Framers and their successors had in mind.
Indeed, the Declaration of Independence complained that the King obstructed the “Naturalization of Foreigners” and failed to “encourage migration hither.” Enslavers brought millions of Africans to our shores, and America became their land as well. National expansion westward incorporated French, Spanish, and Mexican peoples into America, too.
But today the Trump regime seeks to erase the diversity essential to our national character. White supremacy and white nationalism are threads running through nearly every policy — from ending civil rights enforcement to discriminating against African-American military leaders, terminating refugee programs for nonwhites, slandering Haitians, and calling Hispanic migrants “the worst of the worst.”
Free elections, majority rule, and democracy itself are Trump’s targets — from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to his unrelenting assault on voting rights and representation today.
Today, gerrymanders demanded by Trump are likely to eliminate one third of African-American members of Congress. The Supreme Court has erased the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Evidence-free voter suppression laws are making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots, while Trump seeks to outlaw voting by mail and his backers threaten to deploy ICE to intimidate midterm voters.
On this 250th anniversary of our first struggle for American freedom and democracy, Americans are fighting back against this war on what makes America America — in the voting booth, in the courts, in the streets, and in our hearts.
The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it. The vision of our Founding Fathers depends on you, me, and all of us to safeguard it.
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Mitchell Zimmerman Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller "Mississippi Reckoning" (2019). Full Bio >
A Citizen’s Declaration of Independence for July 4, 2026
The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people.
Hundreds of people gather for a “No Kings” protest to defend democratic values and constitutional government on October 18, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska, USA. (Photo by Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the bands which have subjected them to a government which has burdened and oppressed them, and to restore the powers and rights to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation upon such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to seem to them most likely to them to effect their future safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shown that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under an absolute despotism it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient suffering of the American people, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their present government.
The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
On repeated occasions, the current government has manipulated elections from which officials have assumed their offices.
A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people.
Its current president has allowed his subordinates to suggest a postponement of the constitutionally required date of a presidential election, a step unprecedented in United States history, even in times of war and civil rebellion. While doing so, he has suggested that no further national elections will be necessary.
The current government has repeatedly undermined access to equal voting rights, and has promoted the power of the dollar to replace the voice of the people in elections.
It has compromised the security of the people in their persons, homes, workplaces, schools, travels, papers, and effects by sponsoring actions that harass the people with both open and clandestine searches and surveillance.
It has denied immigrants their rights under asylum law and the Constitution, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest and cruel and unusual punishment.
It has refused detainees under its authority access to counsel and security from physical mistreatment, in violation of international covenant, the supreme law of the land, and the English-speaking tradition of law dating from Magna Carta.
As has been the case for nearly two generations, it has failed to erect adequate safeguards against domestic terrorism and the massacre of children and young people in our schools and colleges.
It has long evaded international covenants for the protection of the environment, the humane treatment of prisoners of war, the security of nations from invasion, and the prevention of war crimes, thereby subverting the law of nations and the supreme law of the land. The current president’s actions in this respect are especially cruel and malign.
It has acted to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.
It has weakened enforcement of environmental laws most wholesome and necessary to the public good, has compromised others, and has allowed corporations to poison the environment on which the public’s health, prosperity, and well-being depend.
It has hollowed out the nation’s civil service and established bribery as standard government practice.
It has further endangered public health by weakening legislation that would remedy the people’s woefully inadequate access to essential medical care.
It has reduced benefits and medical care to veterans of current and previous wars and their families.
It has created a population that lags behind the rest of the developed world in educational attainment, life expectancy, access to decent housing, and prevention of infant and maternal mortality.
It has eaten away at the substance of ordinary people by denying them a living wage, and initiated class warfare in our nation by promulgating laws and taxes that favor the already wealthy at the expense of the people at large.
It has failed to protect the people’s hard-won savings from obscure and deceptive investments, and usurious mortgages on their homes, thereby undermining their material security and driving hard-working citizens into the street.
It has lavished financial support on failed investment banks and corporations while denying the working class, the poor, and the jobless minimal support for their existence.
It has at times deprived federal workers pledged to protect the nation’s security the right to bargain collectively to secure fair compensation for their labors.
It has promoted international trade regulations that deprive laborers of rights protected by international agreement.
Through economic policies that have extended over a generation, it has plunged one-eighth of its population and one-fourth of its children into a permanent state of poverty and hunger.
It has undermined the security of future generations and burdened them with debt by turning record federal surpluses into unprecedented deficits.
It has on occasion neglected to provide its troops at war personal equipment that is necessary to their safety and comfort in the field, and violated the terms of their original enlistments.
It has promoted the development of weapons systems beyond any rational military requirement, and equipped its armed forces with weapons dangerous to their users.
In like manner, it has evaded the obligations of international law and common decency by holding all humanity hostage to an existentially perilous nuclear arms race.
It has distracted the nation from the necessary struggle against terrorism and arms proliferation by initiating offensive war abroad without sufficient cause and has subjected civilians abroad to the horrors of combat, in violation of international covenant, its own rules of engagement, and the supreme law of the land.
In defiance of international law, it has threatened neighboring and allied nations with invasion and annexation, and misused our tax money to finance and abet genocide directed against a foreign people.
It has replaced the world’s respect for the United States of America with apprehension, contempt, and fear.
In every stage of these oppressions, which our current president has encouraged and promoted, the American people have petitioned for redress in most humble terms; our repeated petitions and supplications have been answered chiefly by repeated delays and indifference. A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to its individual members. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts to extend an unwarranted jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our common heritage here. We have appealed to their sense of decency; and we have conjured them, by the ties of common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. More often than not, they, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and common citizenship.
We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare, that all political connection between ourselves and the present federal administration is hereby abandoned. And for the support of this declaration and the restoration of our liberty, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
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John Raby John Raby is a retired history teacher and conscientious objector who is currently co-chair of Peace Action Maine. From 2014 to 2021, when he lived in New Hampshire, he was active with New Hampshire Peace Action and wrote the clean energy policy for New London, New Hampshire. He centers his activism around war and peace, environmental, and social justice issues. Full Bio >
America at 250 Should Not Put Citizenship Behind a Paywall
I have walked into hundreds of naturalization ceremonies with immigrants. I have always walked out with Americans.
Participants recite the Pledge of Allegiance during a naturalization ceremony for new U.S. citizens at Seattle Center on July 4, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. The annual event drew hundreds of participants from approximately 80 countries. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
A democracy that makes citizenship harder to reach should not pretend it is merely managing paperwork. It is deciding who gets full political voice.
I have attended naturalization ceremonies for more than three decades. I have watched courtrooms fill with nurses, engineers, truck drivers, scientists, caregivers, parents holding young children, and older immigrants who waited years to hear one sentence that would change their lives.
Before administering the Oath of Allegiance, judges often remind new citizens that American citizenship is about more than receiving a certificate or passport. It is about responsibility — to vote, serve on juries, obey the law, participate in civic life, defend the Constitution, and leave America stronger than they found it.
That reminder captures something we too often forget. Citizenship is not just a collection of rights. It is freedom joined to duty, opportunity joined to service, and belonging joined to responsibility.
A door that only the wealthy, the fluent, the well-connected, or the legally sophisticated can navigate is not truly open.
Unlike those of us fortunate enough to be born here, every person in that courtroom made a conscious decision.
They chose America.
As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, we should ask whether we still understand the power of that choice. One of America’s greatest accomplishments has not simply been welcoming immigrants. It has been making Americans.
Those are not the same thing.
The earliest naturalization laws reflected the exclusions and prejudices of their time. But America also preserved a revolutionary idea: a person born somewhere else could become fully American through allegiance to the Constitution and commitment to the Republic.
Naturalization was never just an immigration process. It was a democracy-building process.
Today, more than 9 million lawful permanent residents are already eligible to become American citizens. They are nurses, entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, factory workers, researchers, caregivers, veterans, farmworkers, small-business owners, and neighbors. They pay taxes, raise families, volunteer, worship, organize, serve, and build communities.
They have already invested in America. Now they are asking to invest even more deeply.
But at the very moment America should be inviting eligible immigrants into full civic membership, the government is moving in the opposite direction.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed raising the naturalization application fee from $760 to $1,330 for paper filings and from $710 to $1,280 for online filings — roughly a 75% to 80% increase. The proposal would also eliminate the reduced filing fee option and the availability of fee waivers for Form N-400.
That is not a small administrative adjustment. For many working families, it is the difference between applying now and postponing citizenship for years.
The real cost of naturalization is not just the government filing fee. It is lost wages, transportation, child care, English classes, document costs, legal help, and the anxiety of navigating a system that too often feels designed for the fluent, the wealthy, and the legally sophisticated.
For a nurse working double shifts, a home health aide caring for elders, a farmworker, a refugee parent, an elderly green-card holder, or a veteran’s spouse, the path to citizenship can become a gauntlet: higher fees, longer waits, more forms, more documentation, more scrutiny, and more fear that one mistake could derail everything.
A democracy should not celebrate citizenship in speeches while making it harder to obtain in practice.
The way we talk about naturalization matters.
For much of our history, becoming a citizen was understood as the successful completion of the immigrant journey. Today, the language too often sounds like it came from a risk-management manual: cost recovery, fraud prevention, compliance, security screening, background review, discretion.
Each of those concerns has its place. But when they become the only language we use, the future citizen slowly becomes a file, a cost, a risk, or a problem to manage instead of what he or she truly is: a future American.
A confident nation can protect the integrity of citizenship while still encouraging qualified immigrants to become citizens. A fearful nation raises costs, increases complexity, lengthens delays, narrows relief, expands suspicion, and then pretends the door is still open because it has not been formally locked.
But a door that only the wealthy, the fluent, the well-connected, or the legally sophisticated can navigate is not truly open.
When we make citizenship harder to reach, we do not just burden immigrants. We weaken democracy.
Every new citizen is a potential voter, juror, volunteer, parent advocate, union member, school-board participant, taxpayer, entrepreneur, caregiver, and community leader. Naturalization does not dilute the Republic. It strengthens it.
We should not reduce citizenship to a user fee. We should not treat qualified future citizens as customers purchasing a private benefit from government. Citizenship is different. It is the mechanism by which a democracy renews itself.
This does not mean abandoning standards. It means remembering the purpose of the standards. The goal is not to make citizenship feel like a privilege reserved for those who can survive an expensive bureaucratic maze. The goal is to welcome qualified immigrants into full participation in American civic life.
Congress and the administration should treat naturalization as civic infrastructure: protect fee waivers, invest in timely processing, expand language access, support community-based citizenship programs, simplify forms and procedures, and celebrate naturalization as one of the most important acts of democratic renewal this country performs.
At a time when Americans worry about democracy, it is remarkable that millions of people are still waiting for the chance to raise their hands, take the oath, and accept the responsibilities of American citizenship. We should not make that harder. We should honor it.
Over the years, I have watched refugees become election poll workers, veterans become citizens of the country they served, and parents beam with pride as they introduced themselves — for the very first time — as Americans.
I have walked into naturalization ceremonies with immigrants. I have always walked out with Americans.
As America turns 250, Congress should ask a larger question than how much a citizenship application should cost.
It should ask: What is a new American worth?
Every generation inherits the American experiment. Every generation decides whether to strengthen it or merely administer it. Our generation has a quieter but urgent responsibility: to remember that citizenship is not merely something government processes. It is something a great democracy cultivates.
I have never left a naturalization ceremony believing America had become less American.
I have only left believing America had become stronger.
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Richard T. Herman Richard T. Herman has practiced immigration law for over 30 years and is the founder of Herman Legal Group, a Cleveland immigration law firm. He is the co-author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy and writes frequently on immigration law, economic development and community building. Richard is regularly quoted by The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Forbes, and numerous international media. Full Bio >
‘How Small They Are’: Mamdani Takes Apart MAGA’s Vision of America in July 4 Address
“At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power for themselves by turning us against one another.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States of America at City Hall on July 3, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Anna Connors - Pool/Getty Images)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday delivered a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America that drew a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s vision for the country.
Speaking from New York City Hall, Mamdani recounted how his city had long served as a refuge for people from across the globe who came seeking a new life an opportunity.
It was these immigrants who ultimately shaped New York and made it into what it is today, said Mamdani—who is an immigrant and among the rising number of democratic socialists who have recently won at the ballot box.
The mayor then moved to the present day, where he took aim at the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies emanating from Trump and his MAGA movement.
“The story of America has been written by those who have so often been told by those with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional,” Mamdani said. “For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best.”
Mamdani took aim at the ideology espoused by many rich and powerful people who see America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”
“America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes,” the mayor continued. “America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”
“How small they are,” Mamdani remarked. “How weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power for themselves by turning us against one another.”
The mayor then pivoted to a more hopeful tone by arguing that “time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”
Mamdani insisted that the greed shown by American oligarchs and the division sown by its current political leadership are “not all we see when we look for America.”
“We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on her ailing neighbor,” he said. “Yes, we see in America corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed in a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work, and who still believes this country can do better by his family.”
In his conclusion, Mamdani paid tribute to “those ideals upon which our nation was built,” which he described as “strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”
“Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived,” he said. “A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America: The striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape.”
In First 2026 Senate Endorsement, AOC Backs El-Sayed in Crucial Michigan Race
“Together, we’re proving that even in the face of unprecedented outside spending, a movement powered by the people can win,” El-Sayed said.
Democratic Senate candidate for Michigan Abdul El-Sayed stands with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in a photo posted to social media on July 2, 2026. (Photo from Dr. Abdul El-Sayed/X)
As the progressive movement builds its momentum in Democratic primaries, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued her first endorsement in a competitive Senate primary on Thursday, throwing her support behind Dr. Abdul El-Sayed as he battles for the party’s Senate nomination in Michigan.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a likely 2028 presidential candidate and one of the most popular figures among the Democratic base, is perhaps the biggest player yet to back El-Sayed, the former public health director for Detroit, who polls currently show leading the more establishment-friendly Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8).
The primary, which will take place on August 4, will determine who faces Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a race that could decide whether Democrats flip the Senate in November.
AOC’s support for El-Sayed—who has championed Medicare for All, an arms embargo against Israel, raising taxes on the wealthy, and overturning Citizens United—puts her at odds with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has backed Stevens, and with other progressive Democrats like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) who prefer McMorrow.
“Despite our ideological differences and whatever disagreements there are in the party, every single one of us sees this moment as existential,” Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times. “And I think many people are willing to put aside differences in order to give us the best chance at winning. And I think that Abdul gives us that right now.”
Though he appears to be in the driver’s seat with just over a month before the August 4 Michigan primary, El-Sayed still faces a perilous path to the nomination that AOC’s endorsement may help him to weather.
While El-Sayed has sworn off big money donors, Stevens—the candidate closest behind him—is armed with more than $16 million in super PAC spending, including millions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) political spending arm, the United Democracy Project, which has begun to blanket the airwaves with ads boosting Stevens, who also has the backing of nearly 100 other corporate PACs representing the health insurance industry, Wall Street banks, fossil fuels, and Big Tech, among others.
The alliance between AOC and El-Sayed is nearly a decade in the making. Fresh off the stunning primary upset that led her to Congress in 2018, she endorsed the doctor’s then-longshot bid to become governor of Michigan.
Sharing a photo of the two at a campaign event eight years prior, El-Sayed celebrated AOC as someone who “has spent her career taking on the powerful on behalf of everyday people, and she has shown all of us what courageous, smart, values-driven leadership looks like.”
He added that she “has changed the trajectory of American politics and inspired a generation to believe that government really can work for working people.”
“Together, we’re proving that even in the face of unprecedented outside spending, a movement powered by the people can win,” El Sayed said.
Indeed, that movement has been winning of late.
AOC’s endorsement of El-Sayed comes after three House candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—including multiple self-identified democratic socialists—cruised to victory over establishment Democrats in their primaries last week.
This week showed that the left-wing insurgency was underway nationwide, with 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros stunning longtime Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado’s primary.
Pollster Adam Carlson said that El-Sayed’s race in Michigan will go a long way towards demonstrating the extent to which AOC and her movement truly have reshaped the political landscape.
“If El-Sayed wins the primary and the general election in the swingiest of swing states, ahead of 2028,” he said, “it would give the progressive wing of the party a proof of concept that the conventional wisdom of ‘more moderate equals more electable’ has some serious holes in it, at least in the second Trump era.”
Who Is Funding the Democrats Who Say ‘We’re Capitalists, Not Socialists’? Probably These Billionaire Capitalists
An investigation found that the anti-socialist group Promise to America has ties to a PAC funded by billionaires such as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, leaves the U.S. Capitol after the House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Thursday, May 22, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
More than a dozen corporate Democrats last week responded to upstart progressive wins in primaries by pledging their support to a political manifesto called “Promise to America,” which emphasizes support for capitalism, law enforcement, and “fiscal discipline.”
A Thursday report published by Sludge about the Promise to America found that it “is closely tied to the Welcome Party, a group whose PAC has received more than half of its individual contributions from billionaires.”
According to Sludge, the Promise to America appeared in public for the first time last month at Welcome Party’s annual WelcomeFest conference, where it was signed by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Adam Gray (D-Calif.).
Other prominent Democrats who have signed the pledge include Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Vincente Gonzalez (D-Texas), and Don Davis (D-NC).
Although Sludge uncovered no evidence that Welcome Party is financially supporting the Promise to America, the manifesto’s presence at the group’s conference was notable given that billionaire donations account for more than 60% of the $10.8 million in donations that it has received over the last five years.
Major donors to the PAC include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who has donated a total of $1.8 million, and former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, who with his wife Kathryn has donated $2.5 million.
Other notable billionaires who have contributed to WelcomePAC include Bain Capital co-founder Joshua Bekenstein, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and several members of the Walton family.
Sludge’s investigation also found that “more billionaires may have donated to the Welcome Party’s two ‘dark money’ nonprofit arms, which do not disclose their donors publicly.”
The Promise to America manifesto has drawn heavy criticism from progressives.
In a recent interview with political commentator Santita Jackson, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that the corporate Democrats’ pledge was a reactive document that lacked policy solutions to the problems facing Americans.
“Okay fine, if you’re against [democratic socialists], that’s okay. But what do you believe?” said Ocasio-Cortez. “And that I think is the core of the weaknesses from that wing at this moment. There’s no affirmative vision really coming from most places in the Democratic Party with the exception of democratic socialism.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) last week also challenged the corporate wing of the party in a speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives in which he defended the vision being laid out by progressive insurgents.
“The progressive movement is winning across the country, from the heart of New York to Michigan to Maine,” Khanna said. “The people are saying no to foreign wars and they’re saying no to genocide in Gaza. They’re saying no to the unfair and lopsided economy that has allowed a few people to hoard extreme wealth and power, and they’re saying yes to Medicare for All.”
‘Vote YES on Prop 40’: California Billionaire Tax Opposed by Newsom Gets Ballot Name
“In November, California voters will at last have a chance to make billionaires pay their fair share,” said the coalition behind the proposal.
Supporters of the California Billionaire Tax Act rally in Los Angeles on February 18, 2026. (Photo: Billionaire Tax Now/X)
It’s official: The proposed California Billionaire Tax Act, which last week was certified for November’s election, has a ballot designation—Proposition 40.
“The people of California now have the opportunity to decide what kind of future they want,” Service Employees International Union-United HealthcareWorkers West (SEIU-UHW) vice president Debru Carthan said on Thursday.
“Proposition 40 asks a simple question: At a time when hospitals are reducing services, working families are being squeezed, and essential services are under attack, should a few hundred billionaires contribute their fair share to protect the state that helped make their extraordinary wealth possible?” Carthan asked. “We believe Californians will answer with a resounding yes.”
Drafted by SEIU-UHW, Prop 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on people worth $1 billion or more, to be paid in annual installments of 1% over five years.
The bil would require the state to spend 90% of revenue from the tax on healthcare and the rest on food assistance and public education. Proponents say the tax would raise roughly $100 billion in revenue. Critics argue that it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California and stall economic growth.
Prop 40 supporters include the Teamsters union and progressive groups like the California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Our Revolution, as well as individual progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Democratic congressional candidate Connie Chan, who is running to replace retiring longtime San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
The measure is opposed by Republicans, business groups, the Democratic Party, and even some progressives, including Chan’s opponent, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11).
Prop 40’s most prominent Democratic opponent is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom critics accuse of trying to bamboozle voters with his recently unveiled plan for a national billionaire income tax. Some observers skeptical of the presumed 2028 presidential hopeful contend that his support for an income tax is rooted in knowledge that very rich people actually have relatively little income when compared with their investments and other assets.
Some progressive groups opposing Prop 40—including the California Teachers Association (CTA) and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California—point out that it is a one-off tax on wealth, not income. CTA is backing a separate ballot measure, the Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act, which would permanently extend Proposition 55, California’s existing high-income-earner tax, which is set to expire in 2030.
In response to Thursday’s ballot designation, Billionaire Tax Now said in a statement that “the measure qualified for the ballot after supporters submitted more than 1.6 million signatures from Californians across the state—nearly twice the number required to qualify—making it one of the strongest citizen-led ballot qualification efforts in California history.”
“Voters consistently support the billionaire tax by large, double-digit margins,” the coalition continued. “For healthcare workers who have dedicated their lives to caring for patients, today’s news isn’t just welcome, it’s critical. With no other viable alternatives proposed by Gov. Newsom, the billionaire tax is the only available option to stop a cascade of hospital and clinic closures spurred by massive federal cuts in HR 1, known as President [Donald] Trump’s so-called ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’”
“In November,” Billionaire Tax Now added, “California voters will at last have a chance to make billionaires pay their fair share to help prevent widespread hospital closures, through a commonsense ballot initiative that places a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of approximately 200 billionaires who reside in the Golden State.”
US Voters Rank Billionaires, Then Corporate Landlords as Top Villains to US Society and Economy “Effective populist messaging requires calling out the actors actually making life worse for Americans, and right now, that includes Big Tech and the billionaires behind it,” said the head of Data for Progress.
Michigan residents rally against the planned $7 billion Stargate data center in Saline, Michigan on December 1, 2025. (Photo by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
After finding last fall that a majority of voters believe life in the United States is getting worse, and many are “extremely worried” about issues including cost of living, division, authoritarianism, wealth inequality, and the climate crisis, the polling firm Data for Progress decided to have Americans name the “bad actors” most responsible for the country’s concerning conditions.
In a pair of surveys conducted last month, Data for Progress asked more than 2,000 Americans to rate the impact of various groups or industries on the US economy—“things like jobs, prices, and economic growth”—as well as American society, or “things like feelings of community, well-being, and social trust.”
The top villains, according to respondents, are the nation’s nearly 1,000 billionaires, then corporate landlords. Rounding out the top 10 were sports gambling marketplaces, artificial intelligence companies, cryptocurrency firms, payday lenders, the Republican Party, social media giants, the Democratic Party, and for-profit universities.
Respondents were asked to rank each group or industry on a seven-point scale from “extremely negative” to “extremely positive.”
Those with the most positive views were small businesses, libraries, regional banks and credit unions, charitable organizations, hospitals, churches, public K-12 schools, online shopping platforms, large grocery companies, big box retailers, and urgent care clinics.
“Within categories, we see some meaningful differences between individual actors—mom-and-pop landlords, small regional banks, public K-12 schools, and renewable energy companies are viewed more positively than their counterparts: corporate landlords, multinational banks, charter K-12 schools, and oil and gas companies,” the progressive polling firm noted.
With the November midterm elections just four months away, and Democrats trying to seize control of both chambers of Congress as progressives within the party notch key wins over more moderate candidates, Data for Progress executive director Ryan O’Donnell said that “effective populist messaging requires calling out the actors actually making life worse for Americans, and right now, that includes Big Tech and the billionaires behind it.”
“As AI continues to impact people’s lives directly—whether it’s a data center in their backyard or a job replaced by automation—AI companies and tech billionaires are setting themselves up to be the next big villains in American politics,” he added.
Earlier this week, as the US Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority “gave their blessing for billionaires to buy even more influence over the politicians who represent us,” the watchdog Public Citizen released a report about soaring corporate political spending since the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, including $517 million in this cycle so far.
Some of the top villains from Thursday’s polling were key contributors to that figure: “Cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online betting corporations have collectively spent $294 million to influence federal elections in the 2026 midterm cycle.”
Blasting the corporate spending as “a disaster for democracy,” the report’s author, Rick Claypool, said that “if the current, broken campaign finance system remains unchallenged—and corporate spending is allowed to drown out the voices of real voters and real people—these corporate campaigns will keep multiplying, even as voting rights for individual Americans face escalating attacks.”
That report and the Data for Progress polling were notably published as more than 250 million people across the United States faced high temperatures tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency—and, as Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, residents of communities with data centers are being asked to make sacrifices due to strained power grids.
Americans are also awaiting the fate of the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act—which includes a ban on corporate investors buying single-family homes to rent out—because Republican President Donald Trump has refused to sign it in an effort to bully GOP lawmakers into passing a legislative attack on voting rights.
In a comment that multiple congressional Democrats said shows Trump “does not care” about Americans’ cost of living concerns, Trump on Monday called the affordable housing bill a “big yawn” compared with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America, Act that he wants Congress to send to his desk.
'Not my America': Veteran conservative says GOP '100 times' worse than Nixon’s party
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House 2026 (REUTERS)
Longtime conservative pundit Bill Kristol says he barely recognizes the Republican Party that helped shut down Richard Nixon’s Watergate wrongdoing in 1974 after roughly a decade under the corrupting influence of President Donald Trump.
“Ten years of Trump as president … has made a huge difference,” Kristol told Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell. “Even though 50 percent of the Republican electorate was still for Nixon the Republican elites turned against Nixon.”
“[Barry] Goldwater, famously, [Republican Senate leader] Hugh Scott went to the White House. The leading conservative columnists and thinkers in America ... Even the [conservative] National Review, by the end of it, was basically for him leaving office. And incidentally Watergate was 1/100th of the stuff that's happening now.,” Kristol said. “ … Congress was run by Democrats, so it was different. But the Republicans ended up splitting and at least enough of them deserted. Nothing like that's happened with [Trump’s] corruption and seizing of power and lawlessness that's 100 times what Nixon did.”
Kristol said he was amazed the party was still largely sticking with Trump, despite what critics are describing as the Trump’s family’s crypto schemes and the likelihood of Trump selling presidential pardons in exchange for money and favors.
“You're not getting any signals that … [you’re normally] getting from decent Republicans [that] things are going too far, or maybe ‘we really don’t like the shooting of Alex Pretti or Renee Goode in Minneapolis,’” Kristol pointed out. “And they're not getting the kind of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush rhetoric from anyone anymore. And … I think that's done a lot of damage.”
Kristol added that public support of Trump and his party is eroding to the point where primarily only the radical 30 percent appear to remain with “Trumpism.” He also said he did not recognize the insane animosity the party felt for birthright citizenship, which has been a part of American life longer than any Republican has been alive. Kristol called this particular brand of nativism outright ‘bigotry.’
“I've become convinced that the immigration stuff, the mass deportation stuff, the birthright citizenship [stuff], it's not just about the immigrants,” said Kristol. “… They are fighting hard for their version of America, and it's not my America.”
Saturday, July 04, 2026
'Simply staggering': Eyes widen as Jack Smith blows the whistle on 'American Gestapo'
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testifies before the House Judiciary Committee about his criminal investigation of U.S. President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 22, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Former special counsel Jack Smith stunned online viewers by revealing how he prepared for prosecution by the Trump administration.
During an appearance on MS NOW, Smith spoke about hiring lawyers when he left his job as a federal prosecutor because he led two criminal investigations into Donald Trump, including for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
"I resigned as special counsel. I know I need to get a lawyer because the president has said he wants to jail me for doing my job," Jack Smith explained. "And so I retain lawyers, as soon as that becomes public, the president and the Justice Department target that law firm."
Online, viewers reacted to Smith's account of how his fears about the Trump administration came true. Veteran political scientist Norman Ornstein responded by describing the administration as "American Gestapo" in a post on X.
"The retribution is simply staggering," wrote civil rights lawyer Leslie Proll.
"We are in such high cotton here," reacted columnist Sophia A. Nelson. "And nobody in power who can stop him or his minions gives a d—."
"What a refreshing example of an honest, moral and non political American hero," architect and political activist Mike Kihn wrote about Jack Smith. "He will not give in to Trump's attempt to intimidate because, like a legal first responder, he will run to danger, personal or otherwise, not away from it."
"Now listen to the women who testified under oath that Trump r— them," posted journalist Robert Young Pelton. "Or listen to the testimony of those who spoke out from inside the Trump administration, like Miles Taylor."
