DSA And Electoral Politics

 

The Socialist Future Is Being Written in New York Branko Marcetic June 24, 2026 Jacobin Tuesday's socialist sweep in New York was built on the organizing power of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has now established itself as the leading political power in the city.

Trump / Fascists to Cancel Voting Rights

 Panic within the Trump White House over their impending demise in the 2026 midterms has reached a fever pitch and they are now pulling out every stop to try to save themselves. 

Last week it was announced that President Trump ordered the US Postal Service to stop mail in voting for every state that does not provide the White House with the state’s list of registered voters. The ban is now moving forward.  However, the fact that they want these voter lists should scare you even more than the cancellation of mail in voting.  The White House is trying to compile these lists so that (1) they can challenge the ballots of every Democrat and ensure their votes don’t count. And (2) so that in the event of civil unrest and or the suspension of habeas corpus, the Department of Homeland Security will have a list of where all registered Democrats live.

The NAACP is challenging the order but unfortunately due to MAGA’s capture of the US Supreme Court, they have us dead to rights.  The US Supreme Court has become the harbinger of American fascism. They must be stopped before they transform our nation into an unrecognizable hellscape.   Though it may be too late to stop the Supreme Court from banning mail in voting, it is not too late to stop the rulings that await in the not so distant future: a national abortion ban, greenlights for mass detentions of Democratic activists and mass killings of undocumented migrants, and so much more.  Terrifyingly, this conservative majority on this court could last until 2065, more than enough time for the far-right to carry out their most depraved desires. That is unless Democrats take unprecedented action to seize the court.  The moment Democrats reclaim power in DC, Democrats can and must move to pack the court with liberal justices to reclaim a majority on the court. We did it under FDR and we can do it again.  Defend our Courts is preparing for exactly this moment. There will be some who claim we need to follow precedent and wait until 2065 to reclaim the majority. It’s on us to steamroll them and ensure everyone does their part to take back this court.  +++++++++++++ This case and others reveal why we will need to use aggressive aactions by States to defend our democracy.  States can act and can resist.  Trump plans to sabotage the midterms, so we're going to need a plan to stop him. As soon as he took office again, Trump started signaling that he intends to interfere with the midterms. There are too many examples to cover everything, so here are some of the lowlights from just the last year: March 2025: An executive order trying to unilaterally overhaul election administration. July 2025: Ordered Texas to gerrymander five new Republican House seats. August 2025: An executive order to "get rid of" mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms. January 2026: Told the House GOP "they should cancel the election.”He regretted not seizing the voting machines after 2020, and then later that month he sent goons to raid Fulton County's election hub. February 2026: Said Republicans should "nationalize" elections. The next day Steve Bannon said, "You're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November," and urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. March 2026: Issues an executive order to create state-by-state citizen lists and orders USPS to deliver mail ballots only to federally approved names. Installed election denier Dan Bishop to run DOJ's "election-integrity" efforts. April 2026: Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for racial gerrymanders in former Confederate states. Trump team threatens to force blue states to redraw their own maps.  June 2026: Raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a voter-registration nonprofit. Even as he meets resistance from the courts and some blue states, he's clearly not backing down. So what's our plan? We need to get into election protection formation -- let’s talk about how. For the last 75 weeks or so, Leah and I have hosted What's the Plan, our live Q&A with the Indivisible movement. It’s a unique space: thousands of people from across the country and the world, together every week, working through the strategy and tactics of organizing against fascism. When we’re at our best, we’re cutting through the noise, demystifying some process or institution, and focusing on what we all can actually do. If Indivisibles are going to plan together for how we organize in defense of the midterms, the place to have that conversation is What’s the Plan. We don’t want to shortchange the big topic, so this week we’re trying something a bit different.

Trump/Authoritarian Regime Attacks Education

 

Unless we act, the first national voucher program will go into effect on January 1, 2027, pouring tens of millions of dollars into unaccountable private and religious schools.   Email your elected officials in Congress right now and tell them to keep public funds in public schools. Tell them to repeal the national voucher program.

Email Congress  ➤

The private school voucher program was championed by Project 2025 and Besty DeVos and designed to funnel public funds into unaccountable K-12 private and religious schools.  Estimates of the program’s total annual cost are as high as $50 billion. The program also requires taxpayers in rural areas to foot the bill for a program that is largely inaccessible to them, as rural areas have little, if any, access to private schools.  Instead of supporting unaccountable private schools, we could use the funds to support our public schools—where 90% of students go—lowering class sizes, feeding hungry students, and offering more after-school programs.   Tell your representatives in Congress to repeal the national voucher program.  Our public schools welcome everyone and help all students learn and achieve their dreams, no matter their race, background, or ability.   We need to strengthen our public schools, not undermine them with voucher programs that take funding away.  In solidarity, The NEA EdAction Team Also Read. Why Fascist Hate Teachers; Public Education and the Future of Democracy.  Why Do Fascists Fear Teachers? https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2026/weingarten_wolfson

Building Democracy

https://youtu.be/2dVtW9VqdUQ?si=nuGVk_ntF8d7jp6y

How Republicans Steal Elections

For Decades, Americans Learned the Treasonous Truth After the Votes Were Counted. This Time Is Different. Thom Hartmann June 17, 2026 Hartmann Report For half a century, the evidence surfaced after the winners took office. This election may be the first where the public sees it beforehand… ,    Republicans have gotten away with it four times now, in a big way. Each time it was because Democrats didn’t realize — until it was too late — the crimes the GOP was willing to perpetrate just to seize and hold power. This time, for the first time since 1968, it may be different. In August of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey negotiated an end to the Vietnam War with both the North and South Vietnamese. Humphrey was running against Richard Nixon for president in that year’s election and planned to announce the deal in September or early October. He was running ahead and would’ve easily won the presidency with the peace deal. Unfortunately, Nixon learned of the deal. His people reached out to the corrupt South Vietnamese administration and promised them riches if they’d refuse to go to Paris and sign the peace deal as planned. The FBI had been wiretapping the South Vietnamese and intercepted one of the conversations and handed it over to LBJ. President Johnson called Everett Dirksen, the head of the Senate Republicans, and pointed out that Nixon was trying to “commit treason.” Dirksen agreed and promised that he’d reach out to Nixon to try to stop it. He failed, and Nixon went ahead and sabotaged the peace deal, leading to another ~24,000 American and ~400,000+ Vietnamese deaths before Jerry Ford ended the war in 1975. Johnson told Dirksen that he didn’t want Americans to know that Nixon was committing treason to become president because he was afraid it’d shatter our faith in the American system; Dirksen agreed, and the secret went to their graves, only to be revealed to the public 25 years later when the LBJ library published the audiotapes of their conversations. If Democrats had known, they could have shown up in the streets and stopped Nixon, but LBJ didn’t think there was enough time (he was probably right; Nixon would have just denied it and claimed it was a political hit job, fake news). So Nixon became president and, with his appointments of justices Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court making it majority Republican for the first time since the 1930s, changed the course of American history. Then it happened again. In November, 1979, Iranian “students” took the US Embassy and its staff hostage. Two months later, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was elected prime minister of Iran on a platform of “release the hostages and normalize relations with the United States.” President Jimmy Carter reached out to Bani-Sadr and the two of them began the process of organizing the release of the hostages. As Bani-Sadr later told The Christian Science Monitor after he fled to America, that year Ronald Reagan was running against Carter for the White House and his campaign reached out to the mullahs, who were the real power base in Iran, and offered them a deal. They had all this US-manufactured military hardware the Shah had bought and they desperately needed spare parts and compatible missiles; Reagan would help cement the power of the radical new regime by selling them the weaponry they needed if they’d just help him become president by hanging onto the hostages until after the election. Carter and Bani-Sadr knew the mullahs had suddenly turned against releasing the hostages but didn’t learn until 1981 that it was because the Reagan campaign had committed treason to humiliate Carter and win the 1980 election. Reagan became president, illegally sold the Iranians weapons for the next five years (Iran/Contra), and used the money to illegally fund neofascists in Central America. He then declared war on unions, cut taxes on the morbidly rich, cut education funding, and flipped us out of the New Deal that had built the American middle class, leading straight to today’s widespread poverty and oligarchy. The hostages were released by the mullahs on January 20, 1981 when Reagan put his hand on the bible to be sworn into office — to the minute — by way of sealing the deal. If Democrats had known before the election, they could have shown up in the streets and stopped Reagan, but nobody learned even the rough details for a year, and it wasn’t until former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes made his confession to The New York Times in 2023 that we finally got solid confirmation from an American source. Reagan’s treason and 1980 election theft, then 43 years in the past, became a one-day story. And then it happened again. In 2000, Bill Clinton’s Vice President, Al Gore, was running against Texas Governor George W. Bush and the election was such a squeaker that it all came down to one state: Florida. Which was then run by George’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush. Jeb ordered his Secretary of State (and the Florida head of George Bush for President) Katherine Harris to obtain a list of mostly-Black and Hispanic felons from George’s Texas penal system and run it against the Florida voter roll. The result was at least 10,000 — and by some estimates as many as 70,000 — mostly Black voters purged from the Florida voter list and unable to vote. As a result, George W. Bush won Florida — and the presidency — by 537 votes. George’s father’s appointee to the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas (whose wife was taking interviews for positions in George’s White House), was the deciding vote on the US Supreme Court to ignore/violate the 10th Amendment and stop the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (which would have revealed how Jeb/Harris had rigged the election). If Democrats had known at the time, they could have shown up in the streets and stopped Bush, but nobody learned even the rough details of the GOP election rigging for several months when BBC reporter Greg Palast broke the story to an international audience and, a year later, a recount done by a group of newspapers found that Gore would, indeed, have won the recount. All of which brings us to today. Trump is openly trying to rig this fall’s election, as multiple mainstream outlets have documented. He’s put “election deniers” willing to commit crimes against democracy into critical positions, crippled the two offices in the Executive branch responsible for election integrity, ordered the Post Office to refuse to carry ballots in Democratic-run states with mail-in voting, is positioning ICE agents to intimidate voters, launched a national gerrymandering campaign, and has a handful of other threatened sleazy actions. Republicans want to outlaw married women voting if they haven’t gone before a judge to change their last names (the SAVE Act), and Trump is trying to build a national voter database — in defiance of the Constitution — so he can help Red states with Blue cities purge their Democratic voters. Unlike with Nixon, Reagan, or Bush, however, this time we know. We can see this coming. They’re doing much of it right out in the open. And that’s a huge advantage that we all must prepare for. You can support the Hartmann Report here If it’s true that Trump became president in 2016, as Robert Mueller’s investigation found, because of major help from Putin, then the last legitimately elected Republican president who didn’t commit or at least flirt with treason was Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). By coincidence, he was also the last Republican president to reject the influence of America’s oligarchs and instead kept the top 90% income tax rate on oligarchs and actually worked to increase union membership and expand Social Security. So, get ready. We know in advance at least some of the dirty tricks they’re going to try to pull. Musk and Zuck spinning their social media outlets; Fox, CBS, and CNN under oligarch’s thumbs; ICE disruption; seized ballots; corrupted mail; and now realistic, highly deceptive AI-generated Republican deepfakes are already appearing in the Texas senatorial election. It’s going to get worse — these guys are now legitimately afraid of suffering the same fate as Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell (who went to prison) — but, once again, this time we can see it coming. Forewarned is forearmed. Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17 languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist, international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality, psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the natural world.

Immigrants Justice

 Join the Immigrant Justice Summer Training Series

When ICE comes to your community, do you know what to do? This summer, Indivisible is giving you a blueprint. 

Immigrant Justice Summer is a five-call national training series that will level up how you show up for immigrant justice. You’ll learn how to build up hyper-local networks and connect to experienced organizations to respond to ICE surges or new concentration camps in your area. 

With ICE buying up warehouses and anti-immigration agencies turbocharged by the GOP’s recent infusion of $70 billion into their coffers, we all need to be prepared. 

By the end of our series, you’ll be equipped to mount a safe, immigrant-aligned response when there’s an emergency action needed in your community to protect your neighbors from Trump’s detention and deportation regime.

Provided by Indivisible.   https://indivisible.org/resources/

Do’s and Don’ts for students and their families, if ICE comes to their homes,

All children have a right to public education.

What the law says about deportations and schools.

Schools must be safe havens, welcoming places of learning, free from racism and the threat of deportations. 

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• Strengthen your local connections and neighborhood response systems. Join local mutual aid efforts, sign up for grocery deliveries, or find other ways to help your neighbors.
• Create space for grief, solidarity, and collective action. 
• Join or start a local rapid response network, so that your community is prepared to mobilize quickly against a new detention facility, a new surge in militarized enforcement from the regime, or other threats posed to you and your neighbors.
• Paint murals, create art installations, host cookouts, and highlight joy in this fight to assert the dignity of our immigrant friends and family members. 
• Support immigrant-led organizations working on the ground; follow their lead and where appropriate propose tangible ways you could help with their next initiative.

 

 

 

Immigrant Rights for DACA

 

June 15 marks the anniversary of President Obama establishing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012. We had hope that between DACA and widespread support for Dreamers, we’d be able to pass legislation to protect them, but for nearly 14 years, Republicans in Congress and President Trump have blocked any meaningful help for Dreamers, leaving hundreds of thousands vulnerable to detention, deportation and separation from their families. The attack on Dreamers is nothing short of horrific. Write to your members of Congress to demand protections for Dreamers. While the Trump administration is undermining the DACA renewal process and targeting Dreamers for deportation, Republicans in Congress just approved sending over $70 billion in new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to expand detention and deportation operations while sowing fear and instability in schools, workplaces and communities across the country. Combined with the more than $100 billion already available for immigration enforcement, this would bring total federal spending on immigration enforcement to nearly a quarter-trillion dollars—an unprecedented investment in detention, deportation and enforcement rather than solutions that keep families together and strengthen our economy. Just this past week, ICE detained two parents at a preschool graduation ceremony in Baltimore. It is an unconscionable assault on the values of safety, sanctuary and common decency that schools are meant to uphold, and it underscores how critical it is that we do all we can to protect our immigrant neighbors. Ahead of DACA’s anniversary, take action now and demand Congress provide Dreamers with the permanent protections and pathways to citizenship they deserve. In the more than a decade since DACA was established, the policy has enabled more than 825,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children to live, work and contribute to the communities in the only country many of them have called home. Dreamers are teachers, paraprofessionals, nurses, healthcare workers, university staff, public employees, students and essential workers. They help educate our children, care for our patients, strengthen our communities and keep our economy moving forward every day. But right now, so many of our friends, family and community members are experiencing delayed renewals, denials, detention and wrongful deportation. Every delay, denial, detention or wrongful deportation puts opportunity, economic security and family stability at risk. Dreamers are part of our communities, our workplaces and our families. They deserve the dignity of knowing that they can build their futures without fear of being torn away from the only home many have ever known. Write to your members of Congress and urge them to place partisan politics aside and give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship now. In unity, Randi Weingarten AFT President P.S. The AFT has resources available for members to keep themselves and their communities safe during enhanced federal immigration crackdowns, which you can find here.

Protect the Fans from ICE and Trump

The World Cup kick-off is finally here. This is our moment, our celebration, Our Copa.    For the next few weeks, we’ll be cheering for every goal our teams score, celebrating with the people that matter the most to us, and feeling the powerful way futbol has always brought us together.    This historic moment belongs to the people– the fans, the workers, the communities who have built this sport from the ground up and make fútbol the beautiful game that it is. It’s a time to celebrate and reclaim this moment for our gente wherever we are: in the stands, at our local watch parties, or in our living rooms surrounded by our family and compas.    If you’re ready to join this celebration, there’s a place for you. Whether you’re an organizer, an artist, a creator, a fan, or someone who simply loves the beautiful game, there’s a place for you in Our Copa.   Here’s some ways you can connect:

Sign the Petition: Protect the Fans   We’re calling for an immediate moratorium on ICE enforcement during the tournament and the lifting of travel bans that prevent fans from Haiti, Iran, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal from sharing in this historic moment.    Join the hundreds of compas who have already added their voice to demand that every fan–where we live, where we work and where we watch– is safe to celebrate the beautiful game.  PROTECT THE FANS Already signed? We need your help to spread the word and grow our message. Check out our toolkit below to share with your compas across social media in less than a minute.  SPREAD THE WORD

Today, and every single day until the final whistle blows, we’re coming together to remind the world that this is Our Copa. 

 

En la lucha, 

Our Copa and Mijente Comité