electoralism

MAGA is clear about its intentions to attempt another coup, and the centrist forces at the heart of the Democratic Party have proven that they will be unable to resist it. We need a movement led by the socialist left and a presidential candidate like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to both resist the coup, and move our nation toward a functioning democracy.

The ascendant faction of the Republican Party is organizing to steal the 2028 Congressional and Presidential elections and cement minority rule over all three branches of the government of the United States. The centrist leadership of the Democratic Party is clearly inadequate to the task of stopping them.

Over the next three years, the Left must seize the initiative and lead a broad-based popular mobilization to try to prevent authoritarian rule.

The urgency of forming such a movement makes the 2028 presidential campaign a critical site of intervention for the Left—we need a campaign that both can win the Democratic primary and lead an organized, mobilized popular movement into confrontation with the forces of authoritarianism.

Programmatically, that movement will fail if it is based on an abstract appeal to “democracy” alone: instead, it must be rooted in an ambitious, popular program that connects with working people and is grounded in the reality of our daily lives. In scope, the movement needs a broad base of many millions of people who do not just passively oppose the Trump administration but are prepared to take action to confront it. In terms of structure, that mass base cannot be held together by a thin layer of NGOs or by labor unions (representing only 10% of US workers), but must instead be united by a committed layer of organic leaders across every sector of our society.

I'm not currently a DSA member but I'm consistently impressed by what Red Star publishes so here's this.

🗳️ POLL | Reform lead by 11pts

➡️ Ref: 30% (+2) 🔵 Con: 19% (-1) 🔴 Lab: 17% (-2) 🟢 Grn: 15% (+2) 🟠 Lib: 14% (-1)

-- Seats -- ➡️ Ref: 361 🟠 Lib: 84 🟢 Grn: 54 🔵 Con: 47 🟡 SNP: 44 🔴 Lab: 33

Poll: @TechneUK , 13 Feb (+/- vs 16 Jan)

https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/2022355125688295757

Remember how the current Minnesota ICE fiasco started with a "just asking questions" false acusation against use of public funds in minority immigrant neighborhoods? Dearborn is one the largest concentration of Arabs in the country.

Census: Arab Americans now a majority in Dearborn as Middle Eastern Michiganders top 300K

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aric_Nesbitt

Hillsdale college

The Christian Liberal-Arts School at the Heart of the Culture Wars

The College That Wants to Take Over Washington

LANSING, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – State Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt of Van Buren County is asking the U.S. Attorney General to investigate two Dearborn-based nonprofits.

Nesbitt wants a review of ACCESS and the National Association of Yemeni Americans along with the grant oversight practices of several state agencies, saying he has concerns about “red flags” in their operations.

He says their use of taxpayer funds has raised questions.

ACCESS is the country’s largest Arab American community nonprofit and issued a response, saying they abide by the laws and “are a gold standard in accountability, with full compliance to our funding requirements.”

NAYA’s president called the letter from Nesbitt “uncalled for” and rebutted the claims made.

Nesbitt is running for governor.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43076490

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed the Zionist leader of a liberal Jewish community group to lead his Office to Combat Antisemitism.

Phylisa Wisdom, who will be leading City Hall’s fight against Jew-hatred, has led the New York Jewish Agenda since 2023.

The group opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, an anti-Israel initiative Mamdani has previously expressed his support for.

The group been instrumental in calling out antisemitism over the years. Last month, after a protest outside a synagogue saw activists chant “we support Hamas”, NYJA condemned it as “unambiguous and unacceptable antisemitism”.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/27236

A pair of experts warned this week that President Donald Trump is clearly telegraphing his intention to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections.

Stephen Richer, former recorder of removedpa County, Arizona, said during an interview with The Atlantic published Wednesday that he's grown worried that "something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been."

When asked to flesh out how Trump could potentially rig the upcoming elections, Richer said it was unlikely that he would deploy US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to polling places across the country, if for no other reason than he lacks the manpower to accomplish such an operation.

However, Richer did express concern about the president's ability to muddy waters in tight races and put pressure on his Republican allies to refuse to seat Democratic winners when he is claiming there are disputes about the results.

"Where I think President Trump is most potent is still in the post-election procedures," he explained, "still in sowing doubt in the minds of enough Americans that they don’t think the elections are legitimate and, therefore... the Congress doesn’t have to seat its new members. That’s certainly a popular theory that’s floating about: that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the outgoing speaker, will choose not to seat the new members, because they’re in allegedly disputed elections."

Richer argued that California could be particularly vulnerable to this, since the state infamously takes so long to finish tallying its votes.

In a New York Times editorial published Thursday, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center for Justice's voting rights and elections program, argued that Trump's "campaign to rig our elections is well underway," and he pointed to the president's mass pardon last year of rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 as the beginning of his election subversion campaign.

"We have every reason to expect more actions like these in the coming months," wrote Morales-Doyle. "A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump reiterated his threats to prosecute election officials who ran the 2020 election. Just days later, FBI agents seized ballots and election records from 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia."

However, Morales-Doyle also said there was reason to believe that the American system can withstand the president's assault on its election integrity, and he gave a nod toward several efforts across the country to fight back, including states resisting Trump's demands to hand over their voter rolls and Democrats refusing to let new voter suppression legislation pass through Congress.

"We are already seeing how effective people can be in pushing back," he concluded, "whether on the streets of Minneapolis or at town halls hosted by their representatives in Congress. It will be incumbent on all of us—election officials, advocates, state law enforcement, and voters—to see the administration’s efforts for what they are and to fight back."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Totally not a political podcast for a not political anime

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26817

Congressional Republicans on Tuesday held hearings on a pair of bills that watchdogs, election experts, and Democratic lawmakers characterized as brazen and dangerous efforts to suppress voter turnout in service of President Donald Trump's broader assault on democracy—which has included a call for the GOP to "nationalize the voting."

Tuesday's hearings, held by the House Committees on Rules and Administration, featured a revived version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) Act and Rep. Bryan Steil's (R-Wis.) newly introduced Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which one analyst described as possibly the "most dangerous attack on voting rights ever" unveiled in the US Congress.

During his opening remarks at the House Administration Committee hearing on the MEGA Act, the panel's ranking member, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), said that "this scheme is not just how Republicans plan to take over our elections, it's how they plan to take over our country."

"Republicans know that they have one hope at winning the next election: change the rules of the game, destroy the rule of law, and desert any last remaining shred of allegiance to the United States Constitution," Morelle added.

@RepJoeMorelle on the anti-voting MEGA Act:

“This scheme is not just how Republicans plan to take over our elections, it’s how they plan to take over our country.”

👇Learn more:https://t.co/kkm6ISuedX pic.twitter.com/g2kRbLIxGX
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) February 10, 2026

Both the SAVE Act—which is expected to get a House vote this week—and the MEGA Act would impose severe restrictions on voting access by effectively eliminating voter registration by mail, implementing nationwide photo ID requirements, banning universal mail-in ballots for federal elections, allowing massive voter roll purges, and threatening nonpartisan election officials with imprisonment if they fail to uphold the bills' strict voter documentation requirements.

If passed, the SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to furnish documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, in person. The Brennan Center for Justice has estimated that 21 million people in the US "lack ready access to these documents," noting that "half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example, and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote."

"Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting," the Brennan Center wrote in an analysis of the legislation on Tuesday. "It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb."

The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition placed the voter suppression bills in the context of Trump's "yearslong campaign of election lies and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 results" as well as "his recent attempts to nationalize election administration, and weaponization of the Department of Justice to intimidate voters and officials."

"Republicans are falling in line by attempting to silence American voters under the guise of 'election integrity,'" the coalition said. "House Republicans are doing Trump's bidding instead of holding him accountable. The real threats to election integrity sit in the White House and among those enabling his authoritarian agenda. Our democracy depends on rejecting this charade and confronting Trump's documented attacks on free and fair elections."

The Trump White House has publicly endorsed the SAVE Act amid mounting fears that the president—animated by false claims of large-scale voter fraud—is moving to undermine the midterm elections later this year.

"It will be up to Democrats to hold their ground and ensure the SAVE Act’s ultimate defeat. It will be up to all of us to not be fooled by the myths and the lies—and protect our elections so they remain free and fair," wrote Brennan Center president Michael Waldman. "And we should stand with election officials who now face threats of groundless criminal prosecution for doing their jobs."

"For voters, who must have the most powerful voice in our democracy," Waldman added, "the stakes are high, and getting higher."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26595

Zohran Mamdani behind a DSA banner

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A watchdog group that bills itself as crusaders against “disinformation” is calling on the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that helped to propel Zohran Mamdani to victory last year.

The nonprofit Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) just rolled out a 29-page report accusing DSA of “convergence with hostile foreign states,” the operative word here being “convergence” because coordination isn’t shown. Instead, the researchers used things like AI modeling to argue that the DSA's talking points on things like sanctions and election integrity "synchronize" with the narratives of the Venezuelan, Cuban, and Chinese governments. This along with some DSA delegation visits to these countries was enough for the report to demand a Justice Department investigation into whether they are foreign agents.

The report is pure McCarthyite guilt-by-association, dressed up in 21st-century tech. It employs charts and graphs to give an air of rigor to claims that essentially boil down to: if your tweets sound like someone else’s, you must be working together. NCRI points to "in-kind benefits"—like a stay at a posh hotel in Caracas—as the hook for a FARA inquiry, turning a political junket into a potential federal crime.

It’s a classic anti-communist throwback, but with a creepy data-science twist that major outlets like The New York Times are increasingly buying into, judging from how often these major media outlets cite NCRI.

Screenshot of NCRI’s report on DSA

The DSA report formed the basis of testimony to Congress today, by NCRI founder Adam Sohn. After acknowledging that there’s no evidence of direct foreign funding of DSA, he went on to allege a more nebulous “threat vector” that he links to the growing public opposition to ICE.

“This testimony does not allege that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) received direct foreign funding,” NCRI founder Adam Sohn told Congress . “It documents a distinct and increasingly consequential threat vector: the combination of foreign-facilitated access, in-kind benefits, narrative synchronization, and domestic operational activation directed at U.S. enforcement institutions.”

By “enforcement institutions,” he’s referring to ICE; the idea being that the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis and across the country are somehow the result of foreign adversaries manipulating groups like DSA.

Here’s what Sohn told Congress:

“NCRI has documented DSA chapters play[ing] a central organizing role in nationwide anti-ICE protests … they explicitly linked domestic law-enforcement activity to U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela, Cuba, and China, using shared slogans such as ‘No ICE, No War,’ ‘Hands Off Venezuela,’ and ‘ICE Out for Good.’ This pattern reflects a consistent anti-legitimacy and moralized resistance framing applied across both foreign and domestic contexts. NCRI’s analysis finds that the same narrative structures used by DSA to defend sanctioned authoritarian regimes abroad are redeployed to delegitimize U.S. enforcement institutions at home, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security. Large-language-model–based classification of DSA-affiliated texts shows dominant blame attribution toward U.S. institutions across ICE-related activism and foreign policy solidarity content, indicating convergence rather than issue-specific framing.”

When I reached out to NCRI to see what precipitated their interest in DSA, co-founder Finkelstein said it was simply motivated by a “search for the truth.”

“The [DSA] report was not produced under the influence of any politician or agency,” Joel Finkelstein, NCRI’s director and “chief science officer,” told me via email. He maintains that the organization receives no government funding and that its donors—all U.S. citizens—simply support a “search for the truth” that “sometimes frustrates political people on both sides of the aisle”.

But one group certainly isn’t frustrated: right-wing lawmakers are already using the report to fuel the Trump administration’s broad assault on free speech and civil liberties. This crackdown is formalized under NSPM-7, a national security directive targeting “anti-American” sentiment and “organized political violence”.

The report took center stage today during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing titled, “Foreign Influence in American Non-profits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond.” NCRI founder Adam Sohn used the platform to present the institute’s findings as evidence of a “threat vector” inside the U.S..

Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) has explicitly leaned on NCRI research to justify investigations into the tax-exempt status of what he calls “radical” and “anti-American” nonprofits. By adopting the same chilling rhetoric used in NSPM-7, the committee is signaling its desire to strip tax protections from organizations that deviate from the administration’s ideological line.

The Network Contagion Research Institute is a New Jersey-based organization that describes itself as dedicated to exposing “how foreign and domestic actors engage in malicious narratives” in order to “destabilize institutions and divide communities.” It utilizes pseudo-scientific language like “foreign-facilitated access,” “narrative synchronization,” and “domestic operational activation” to sound authoritative. Just as Finkelstein labels himself its Chief Science Officer, it purports to use data analysis of social media to discover hidden sentiment and manipulation of the public.

In recent months, the NCRI has set its sights on left-wing groups like DSA, casting Mayor Mamdani as some kind of nefarious extremist.

In October, NCRI linked DSA to Mamdani in a release because DSA held a summit that the scientific organization says espoused “narratives closely aligned with North Korean state propaganda.” It went on to call DSA a “radical political organization to which NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been deeply involved in for years.”

Then in September, NCRI issued another release highlighting the DSA, Mamdani, and their opposition to Zionism.

“The DSA, which counts Zohran Mamdani among its endorsed candidates, has been overtaken by a radical ‘anti-Zionist’ resolution that seeks to delegitimize Judaism’s historical and religious connection to Israel while imposing exclusionary and discriminatory membership conditions,” the release said.

The timing of its vibe shift is not accidental, given that Russian disinformation no longer sells. And Mamdani is a new fruitful target for NCRI. As part of the national security panic over the Mayor and his views and affiliations, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation has already filed criminal referrals with the Department of Justice and the Manhattan DA, alleging his campaign accepted roughly $13,000 in “foreign” donations—a sum that includes a $500 contribution from his mother-in-law in Dubai.

While Mamdani’s campaign has noted that the vast majority of these donors are U.S. citizens living abroad, the “national security” framing allows politicians like Rep. Andy Ogles (TN-5) to go further, calling for the DOJ to “denaturalize and deport” the Mayor.

Asked how the report on DSA was funded, NCRI’s Finkelstein told me in an email: “The resources which funded this DSA report are the same resources that funded our work exposing Nick Fuentes,” referring to the openly anti-Semitic conservative commentator, also the subject of another report.

I’ve always thought the obsession with the threat of “disinformation” is a stupid moral panic masquerading as some defender of the public rather than what it is: an agent of censorship and control. The disinformation industry emerged in 2016 as a way for liberals and others traumatized by the election of Donald Trump to explain away his victory with the belief that Russian influence somehow played a determinative role.

Over the past decade, disinformation has become Washington’s catch-all explanation for what’s wrong with everything from the decline of the mainstream media to youth disaffection, to the emergence of voices (like Mamdani’s) that don’t fit a world of sanctioned thought. NCRI is the worst of this ilk, pretending to use math to determine intent, and then pretending to uncover “influence” to explain away political views that are deemed unacceptable. In other words, it is a tool of censorship.

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— Edited by William M. Arkin

From Ken Klippenstein via This RSS Feed.

Zohran Maoist arc in 2026 challenge

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26509

A progressive organizer beat the odds against millions in outside spending to win the special primary election for a congressional seat in New Jersey, offering a promising sign to left insurgents in the coming midterms and revealing a severe miscalculation on the part of the pro-Israel lobby.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski conceded the race in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District on Tuesday to Analilia Mejia, former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, after initial results showed a slim margin between the two candidates for several days.

Mejia won “despite being outspent essentially ten-to-one by not just AIPAC and outside groups but also the New Jersey political machine,” said Antoinette Miles, state director for the New Jersey Working Families Party. Mejia previously led the group, which backed her campaign and helped organize her field operation.

[

Related

AIPAC Donors Fail to Elect Last-Minute New Jersey House Pick](https://theintercept.com/2026/02/04/aipac-new-jersey-israel-lobby-donors/)

“No one would really categorize this district as being a left district,” Miles said, pointing to the race as a sign progressive candidates can connect with voters in more moderate districts. A Republican represented the district until 2019, when former Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen retired and former Rep. Mikie Sherrill was elected.

With the deck stacked against Mejia and little public polling in the three months since Sherrill vacated the seat to take office as New Jersey governor, there was no clear front-runner in the race. Internal polling in the final weeks of the race showed Malinowski and Mejia pulling ahead and almost equally matched, with New Jersey Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way further behind in third place, according to a source with knowledge of the data.

Rather than targeting Mejia, the pro-Israel lobby spent more than $2 million against Malinowski, likely splitting moderate voters, while known pro-Israel donors directed funding in Way’s favor. United Democracy Project, the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent on ads attacking Malinowski, and AIPAC donors flooded Way’s campaign with more than $50,000 in the final weeks of the race. The strategy, which UDP said was meant to help them elect the more pro-Israel candidate because Malinowski had previously questioned the provision of unconditional aid to Israel, appeared to backfire, as some observers predicted.

“This election is a clear rejection of AIPAC by Democratic voters — AIPAC’s spending and support for candidates is becoming a kiss of death in Democratic primaries because of the work our movement has done to expose them,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. The group did not endorse in the race but said Mejia’s win was a positive sign for the left as midterms progress.

“This is a clear sign that the Democratic electorate is desperate to elect new leaders — like the dozen of working-class champions we’re supporting in primaries this cycle — that aren’t bought by AIPAC, crypto, AI, or any other corporate lobby that has created the intentionally weak and ineffective Democratic Party failing us in Congress right now,” Andrabi added.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Malinowski pointed to AIPAC’s influence in the race.

“Analilia deserves unequivocal praise and credit for running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters on Election Day,” Malinowski wrote. “But the outcome of this race cannot be understood without also taking into account the massive flood of dark money that AIPAC spent on dishonest ads during the last three weeks. I wish I could say today that this effort, which was meant to intimidate Democrats across the country, failed in NJ-11.”

On Friday, United Democracy Project issued a statement signaling it’s still paying close attention to the race ahead of the general election in April.

“The outcome in NJ-11 was an anticipated possibility, and our focus remains on who will serve the next full term in Congress. UDP will be closely monitoring dozens of primary races, including the June NJ-11 primary, to help ensure pro-Israel candidates are elected to Congress,” UDP said in a statement posted on X.

Some corners of the Democratic establishment are also reeling from the results of the race. After spending close to $2 million to back Way, the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association has not made any public statements since results started rolling in on Thursday evening. DLGA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an email to supporters on Thursday night, the Democratic National Committee prematurely congratulated Malinowski on winning the race. The release was later removed from the DNC website.

The Democratic establishment hasn’t recently had to run in competitive primaries in the district, Miles pointed out, while progressives had been preparing for this moment.

“That says something about the shift that is happening in New Jersey right now,” Miles said. “This is the first race — at least at the congressional level — in which there is an open primary, the possibility for better candidates to run, the possibility for new ideas, and the machine is being tested.”

The post AIPAC Just Helped Put a Bernie Sanders Alum in Congress appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26180

A Democrat running to pick up one of the party’s top target House seats recently worked for two defense contractors looking to help the federal government use artificial intelligence for border surveillance and military projects.

Cait Conley, a Special Operations combat veteran and former national security adviser under former President Joe Biden, is running in the crowded Democratic primary to challenge incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Her candidate financial disclosures show that she earned more than $80,000 between January 2024 and July 2025 from two companies, Primer AI and Hidden Level.

Both companies partner with far-right billionaire Peter Thiel’s surveillance tech firm Palantir to help government agencies use AI. Both are military contractors; Hidden Level holds an active contract with the Department of War, and Primer’s most recent one was paid out last year. Primer has also praised President Donald Trump’s AI policy and advertises on its website that it “helps” the Department of Homeland security with data and intelligence work and that “Primer AI platforms support DHS missions,” but it does not appear to have an active deal with the department in a federal contracting database.

“Cait believes AI can be both an opportunity and a risk to the middle class and is determined to shape AI policy so that it grows and strengthens middle-class New Yorkers, rather than being used to further enrich billionaires,” said Conley campaign manager Emily Goldson in a statement to The Intercept. “She’ll be a leader in Congress, ensuring working Americans are included in the growth created and aren’t left behind.”

Running in a swing district north of New York City, Conley has walked a fine line on matters of immigration and the national security apparatus, blasting Trump for deploying the military to U.S. cities and criticizing immigration agents for killing protesters. On her campaign website, she pledges to “stand strong on our national security priorities,” including “defending the homeland, fighting crime, and fixing our broken immigration system.”

Conley’s close ties to companies at the intersection of AI and national security policy aren’t a surprise given her military background. But her connections to the firms raise questions about how she might approach those policy sectors in Congress, said Albert Fox Cahn, a civil rights attorney who previously led the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and is a lifelong resident of New York’s 17th District.

“At a time when we see so many Silicon Valley companies having their technology weaponized against immigrant communities, these sorts of consulting roles raise questions about what exactly she did and what lines were drawn,” Cahn told The Intercept.

It’s unclear what exactly Conley did at the companies, according to her candidate disclosure filed with the House Clerk.She started consulting for Primer at some point after January 2024, when she left her previous job as an adviser for the Department of Homeland Security under Biden. In the period ending in July 2025, she earned $12,500 for her consulting work.

[

Related

Lawmakers Pave the Way to Billions in Handouts for Weapons Makers That the Pentagon Itself Opposed](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/12/pentagon-defense-contractors-budget-interest-payments/)

Touting the candidate’s military service, Goldson said that Conley “has worked with a range of private and public sector entities, either through her work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) or as a consultant, to help keep American families and American infrastructure, like stadiums and other public spaces and our energy grid, safe from terrorist attacks.” The campaign did not comment on The Intercept’s questions about whether Conely was still employed by either firm.

Between January 2024 and July 2025, Conley earned $68,000 from Hidden Level, which works in radio-frequency sensing and airspace security, including monitoring unauthorized drone activity. Hidden Level’s data is used in Palantir’s Maven platform, which Trump’s Pentagon awarded a $480 million contract in May. When Trump announced his plan to build a “golden dome” missile defense system  — described by one critic as “more of a political marketing scheme than a carefully thought-out defense program” — Hidden Level released a statement applauding his plan and saying it “stands ready to support this mission today.” Of a White House directive to cut waste in commercial technology in April, the company said the “policy shift doesn’t just validate the model Hidden Level was built on, it demands it.”

“I get nervous when people are quick to invoke the language of national security and counter-terrorism. It raises more questions than it answers.”

Both companies have received lucrative contracts from the federal government under previous administrations. Primer has won at least $7.2 million in contracts from the Department of Defense since 2021, according to federal spending records. Hidden Level earned just under $3 million in Pentagon contracts to monitor airspace and bolster the federal system that manages drone traffic between 2022 and 2024 under former President Joe Biden.

“We’ve seen just how brazenly people can manipulate the label ‘national security and counterterrorism’ and the ways it can mask government efforts aimed at people who never pose a threat to our country. As a civil rights lawyer and activist, I get very nervous when people are quick to invoke the language of national security and counter-terrorism,” said Cahn, the civil rights lawyer. “It raises more questions than it answers.”

The seat in suburban New York, which includes north Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, and Dutchess Counties, is a top priority for Democrats. It was one of four New York House seats the party lost to Republicans amid a slew of upsets in the 2022 midterms. The winner of the June Democratic primary will take on Lawler, a Republican who flipped the seat that cycle after a combination of redistricting and Democratic infighting helped him beat former Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.

Conley is one of six candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Other contenders include local official and tech founder Peter Chatzky, who has funded his own campaign with more than $10 million; Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson; lawyer and former television reporter Mike Sacks; nonprofit executive Effie Phillips-Staley; and Air Force veteran John Cappello.

Conley has campaigned on her military experience and highlighted the fact that the Russian government banned her from the country because of her work on Biden’s National Security Council. She said she hopes voters in the swing district will see her lack of traditional political experience as a positive. “We need people who take public service seriously, who are not politicians, who are actual leaders and problem solvers,” Conley told the New York Times in March.

Her campaign originally focused primarily on issues of affordability and improving Hudson Valley infrastructure, including criticizing Trump’s economic policies. As the campaign progressed, Conley has become more aggressive in criticizing Trump’s intensifying attacks on cities around the country and his nationwide crackdown on immigrants.

Goldson said that Conley believed in holding ICE accountable, investigating the officials responsible for the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Congress must pass legislation ensuring ICE operates lawfully like local law enforcement, including banning masks and requiring judicial warrants for arrest, and sending CBP back to the border where it belongs,” she added.

Lawler, meanwhile, has urged immigration agents to “reassess their current tactics,” while refraining from criticizing Trump.

Conley has faced criticism throughout the campaign — much of it from Republicans — for not voting in recent midterm elections and registering as a Democrat just before she launched her campaign. Critics attacked her for moving to the district in January from Virginia, though she grew up in the Hudson Valley.

Her detractors have pointed out that many of her donors come from outside the district, several of them from the defense and tech industries.

Conley has received $10,000 in contributions from Matt and Kimberly Grimm, the former of whom is the co-founder of Anduril Industries. Anduril, which was heavily backed by Thiel, builds autonomous drones, systems to surveil the border, andsurveillance towers powered by AI.

“There’s a lot of questions to answer, and I think that this is true for candidates across the country who have worked for these companies in the past or who you know are receiving large donations from their employees,” Cahn said. “There’s a growing recognition that many of these tech firms are carrying out a mission that is fundamentally at odds with the values that Democrats hold and most Americans hold.”

Conley’s donors also include a vice president and other employees at the top Washington lobbying firm BGR group, which has represented the Saudi government – until it cut ties with the country in 2018 – and companies like defense giant Raytheon and the energy behemoth Chevron, as well as big pharmaceutical firms. BGR vice president Joel Bailey gave Conley’s campaign $500 in July, while BGR principals Syd Terry and Fred Turner each also gave Conley’s campaign $250. BGR senior director Hai Peng has given Conley’s campaign $5,500 to Conley’s campaign since May. None of the BGR donors listed residences in New York.

In a statement to The Intercept, Peng said he met Conley at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill close to two decades ago and made the contribution in his personal capacity. “I genuinely believe she is the kind of leader our country needs right now,” Peng said.

Conley has been endorsed by several political action committees including MD PAC, previously known as Majority Democrats PAC, which has given $90,900, VoteVets, Equality PAC, and Giffords PAC. She’s also endorsed by several local officials and political leaders, as well as Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y.

Cahn said he wasn’t sure who, if anyone, he would vote for in the primary. But he sees the race as an example of the opportunity voters have to hold Democrats to a higher standard of accountability than in the past, particularly when it comes to policy issues like technology, surveillance and artificial intelligence.

“We’re at a new moment of accountability within the tech sector more broadly, as we start to recognize that so many tech companies are part of the apparatus that is powering ICE’s attacks,” Cahn said. “This is especially notable for someone who’s running based off of their time in military defense roles.”

The post NY Democratic House Candidate Worked for Palantir Partners Pushing AI Border Surveillance appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25955

Earlier this week, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Governor Kathy Hochul in her primary bid against Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, who was running decidedly to her left and whose running mate, India Walton, is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Mamdani justified the endorsement through an appeal to party unity, effective governance, and the need to maintain a cooperative relationship with Albany to deliver reforms.

In Mamdani’s framing, avoiding open confrontation with the governor is the price of “getting things done.” But that logic has consequences. It commits his administration to backing a governor who is currently using emergency executive powers to help hospitals staff around the nurses who are on strike in New York City with scab labor — subordinating a real working-class struggle to the demands of bosses who pay for the Democratic Party.

Mamdani is not alone in his endorsement and has been joined by the entire Democratic congressional delegation from New York. The bloc stretches from centrist Democrat Tom Suozzi — who has defended capitalism and has openly demanded Mamdani and other “socialists” leave the party — to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the city’s most prominent progressive figure, who declined to endorse Hochul in the 2022 primary.

These politicians are often described as representing different wings of the Democrats, but when it comes to maintaining the “unity” of the Party and its electoral viability, they are all united, even if it means betraying the workers’ struggle. What unity are we seeking with Democrats who repress our movements?

Mayor Mamdani has been openly supportive of the nurses’ strike and was greeted with cheers at the picket lines. While such gestures of solidarity may help consolidate an electoral base, they do nothing to shift the balance of forces in negotiations with Albany, which responds to material pressure from below — not simple symbolic alignment with workers. In a moment of open class struggle, the Democratic Party, directly or indirectly, is doing what it always does: closing ranks across its internal factions to, directly or indirectly, defend the authority of the capitalist state against workers who disrupt the interests of their donors.

In many ways, this situation mirrors the Democratic Party’s move to neutralize class struggle by crushing the rail strike in 2022. During that conflict, rail workers voted down a contract and prepared to strike. The Biden administration intervened at the direct request of the rail bosses, first delaying the strike through a Presidential Emergency Board and then pushing Congress to impose a contract workers had already rejected. Progressive Democrats did not break ranks. Figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman voted for legislation that stripped workers of their right to strike, urged rail workers to accept the outcome, and funneled anger toward a symbolic sick-days vote that leadership ensured would fail. The strike was stopped, the bosses got their contract, and workers were told there was no alternative.

The same logic is now at work in New York. Mamdani has gone to the nurses’ picket lines, shaken hands with dozens of striking nurses that consider his administration a friend, and spoken words of solidarity. At the same time, he has endorsed Hochul, who is actively intervening to break the strike.

This is not a contradiction in tone. Rather, it’s a political choice that has material consequences for the strike. In moments like a strike, when class lines are openly drawn, that choice matters. One action signals support for workers; the other strengthens the state and the bosses. And it is the second that carries real weight: hospitals can wait out the strike, nurses’ leverage is drained, and the balance of forces shifts back toward management.

This contradiction is sharper because Mamdani presents himself as a socialist and rose to office on the strength of a campaign that spoke that language. Socialism, at its core, means siding with workers when they confront capital and the state — especially in moments like a strike, when class lines are openly drawn. What’s being revealed here is not a personal inconsistency, but how quickly socialist language loses its meaning when it is tied to a strategy of working within a party that exists to maintain capitalism and step in against workers when their struggles threaten the status quo.

The Backlash Sharpens the Debate over Working Inside the Democratic Party

Much of the backlash to Mamdani’s endorsement has been pushed into informal channels like social media, group chats, and private conversations, precisely because no official space exists to debate it. Rank-and-file members have been writing openly online, trying to make sense of a decision that cut across ongoing strike support and organizing efforts. At the same time, there has been no clear space inside NYC-DSA to collectively process or debate the endorsement. At the organization’s October general body meeting,leadership made clear that criticism of Mamdani was out of bounds— reinforcing a pattern in which strategic disagreements involving elected officials are quietly foreclosed rather than confronted.

The controversy over the Chi Ossé endorsement vote also helps to explain why the current backlash feels familiar to many organizers. Ossé was not proposing an independent break from the Democratic Party — he was exploring a Democratic primary challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and sought the backing of NYC-DSA**.** At that point, Zohran Mamdani stepped inpublicly to oppose the run. He argued at a DSA forum and in media interviews that such a challenge would be “divisive” and would make it harder for his administration to deliver policy wins — effectively urging the organization not to endorse Ossé. Shortly after NYC-DSA voted against endorsement, Ossé withdrew, under pressure from Mamdani to bow down to the Democrats.

What that episode revealed was not a disagreement over electoral tactics, but a pattern that is consistent with the strategy of the right wing of DSA: Mamdani intervening to shut down debate and independent challenges in order to protect Democratic Party leadership and unity. That memory is resurfacing now because the same dynamic is playing out at a larger scale. Tens of thousands of people joined DSA over the past few years — many radicalized through Palestine solidarity and opposition to Democratic governors and mayors, including Hochul, who presided over repression and criminalization of the movement. For those members, Mamdani’s role was understood as an expression of that rupture with the party of war, imperialism, policing, and strikebreaking. His endorsement of Hochul, like his intervention against Ossé, signals something else: that when pressure mounts, he is more willing to discipline the movement on behalf of Democratic Party stability than to break with it on behalf of the people who organized to elect him

Recent events have only intensified this tension. After the NYPD shooting of Jabez Chakraborty during a mental health crisis, Mamdani was criticized for avoiding to name police responsibility. On Mamdani’s watch, NYPD carried out arrests of anti-ICE protesters, like the repression during recent demonstrations at Columbia University and the protest at the Hilton Garden Inn. He also stood by as his NYPD arrested 13 striking nurses outside the headquarters of the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) on Thursday. All of this reveals well whose interests Mamdani’s administration really ends up protecting.

For many organizers, his decision to retain Jessica Tisch as police commissioner — a move that raised alarms before Mamdani took office and sparked debate within the DSA — makes the Hochul endorsement feel less like an isolated misstep and more like a pattern impossible to ignore.

Within this context, NYC-DSA leadership released a statement responding to Mamdani’s endorsement that avoided naming the endorsement itself or confronting its implications for the strike. The statement functioned less as a political reckoning than as damage control. It offered criticism without drawing lines and thus avoided intervening on a key debate involving working class and socialist politics at a moment when clarity was urgently needed.

Other responses on the Left have tried to smooth over the contradiction instead of confronting it. Figures like Eric Blanc have framed Mamdani’s endorsement mostly as a question of timing or leverage — that he should have waited, pushed harder for concessions, or played the endorsement more strategically. Writers associated with the Bread & Roses caucus go further, arguing that the endorsement itself was a mistake in the middle of an active class fight: backing a governor who is intervening to weaken an ongoing nurses’ strike doesn’t just send a bad message, it materially undercuts the pressure needed to win.

But for a lot of activists, even this framing stops one step short. The problem isn’t only that the endorsement came at the wrong moment, or even that it weakened a specific struggle. It’s that the same pattern keeps repeating whenever left figures try to govern inside the Democratic Party. Each time, the logic of governing pulls them away from confrontation and toward managing conflict, calming things down, and keeping institutions running — even when those institutions are being used against workers, migrants, and protesters. That’s why this contradiction no longer feels theoretical. People are living it, learning from it, and finding it harder and harder to ignore.

The Lesson Clear Is Clear: We Need a Party of Our Own

Again and again, movements are told that proximity to capitalist power can be turned into leverage — that staying inside the Democratic Party, avoiding open rupture, and maintaining relationships with party leadership will ultimately strengthen struggles from below. Yet each time class struggle sharpens, the opposite occurs. The party closes ranks. State power is deployed to contain disruption. And left-identified figures are pulled into legitimizing that process, whether through votes, endorsements, silence, or appeals for patience.

This is not a failure of individual judgment; it is the normal operation of a party that exists to govern capitalism. The nurses’ strike makes this impossible to ignore. Nurses aren’t debating strategy in the abstract. They’re standing in the cold, on an open-ended strike, trying to stop hospitals from grinding them down and replacing them. From that vantage point, an endorsement isn’t neutral. It doesn’t land as “we’ll work this out later.” It lands as a signal about whose side the state is on — and who is expected to absorb the cost. Whatever the intention, it weakens the fight that’s actually happening.

When people say “this is just how politics works,” they mean that this is where working-class power is supposed to stop. That strikes can pressure, but not disrupt too much. That movements can push, but not force a break. Anyone who’s actually been in these fights knows that’s false. We’ve seen what happens when workers self-organize, escalate together, and stop waiting for permission.

Minneapolis showed that. Not because it was clean or complete, but because it stripped things down. When people acted on their own terms — in workplaces, neighborhoods, and the streets — power became visible fast. Not institutional power. Collective power. The kind that doesn’t ask first.

Now, more militants are recognizing a pattern they’ve lived through repeatedly: you can’t build independent working-class power while remaining politically tied to a party whose job is to contain that power once it becomes disruptive.

The answer isn’t abstention or retreat from politics. It’s not “giving up on elections.” It’s the opposite: We need a political organization that answers to people in struggle — not to party leadership, donors, or the need to keep the system stable. A party that does not mediate class conflict, but takes sides in it. A party that uses elections not to contain movements, but to strengthen strikes, organize mass resistance, and prepare for confrontation with capital.

A party worthy of nurses on strike. Worthy of the tens of thousands of DSA members who keep organizing anyway. Worthy of the Zohran canvassers who knocked doors because they believed they were building something real and for the rank and file of DSA that is organic part of the struggles, from Minneapolis to California.

It’s a conclusion people are reaching by living through this again and again — watching how the Democratic Party pulls left figures into line as soon as struggle sharpens. The task now is to break the cycle by organizing toward a socialist, working-class party — independent of the Democrats and rooted in real struggles.

The post Why Is Zohran Mamdani Endorsing Strikebreaker Kathy Hochul? appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25976

Today, we received the news that 100,000 people have chosen DSA as their political home and vehicle of struggle. This news should be received with pride by all who fly our banner, whether they’ve been in DSA for 25 years or for 2 days. How did DSA get 100,000 members? Ultimately, through involvement in various trenches of struggle, and the declining international and internal situation changing bystanders into activists. The atrocious scenes of ICE hunting our class siblings through the streets of Minneapolis and Chicago, the glorious scenes of the masses fighting back, the struggle for a free Palestine, a free Rojava, and liberation of all colonized people across the world, the struggle against economic woes at home and imperialism abroad, and ever more apparent manifestations of escalating fascism at home and abroad have convinced more and more people that they can no longer sit and watch. The Democrats have failed, and only a fool believes that we can rely on them to deliver us justice and relief. Justice comes from our own hands. This is the truth realized by every revolutionary movement from China to New Afrika to Vietnam to Rojava to Cuba. The enemy yields nothing except to greater force, and power is the ability to define a phenomenon and make it act in the desired manner. Elections are not enough, especially when the enemy is rapidly encroaching on our democratic rights.

It is time to escalate the struggle, bring more and more people into the mass movement, sharpen our political line, and turn more and more of our activists into steeled, disciplined cadres. Every revolutionary party in history has relied upon cadres as the backbone of the movement, and DSA will be no different. Cadres have a mastery of revolutionary theory, a commitment to the well-being of the masses and the Party over their own personal interests and careers, a burning rage towards the class enemy, and an all encompassing, pure love of the people. A cadre does not endorse a governor that is actively breaking a strike using budget concerns as an excuse, nor does a cadre throw colonized Palestinian organizers under the bus for the sake of their own well-being with regards to the Democratic Party establishment. A cadre does not lambast other comrades in narcissistic fashion, talking down to them as if they were children. This is food for thought for those who tail behind electeds, seeing the masses and their fellow Party members as employees and numbers. We cherish the masses and cherish our comrades.

DSA could not have grown to 100,000 comrades without thoroughly excising the spirit of the reformist and Zionist Michael Harrington from our organization. We cannot have a reformist cake and a revolutionary cake, we must, in Mao’s words, lean to one side, that of revolution. Our comrades in the Global South and internal colonies demand that we continue to sharpen our line, and struggle against the “more for me” mentality that has bedeviled the American so-called left for so long. As we meditate on this important milestone, we must not grow arrogant. Self-criticism and struggle spirit remains the order of the day, and we must continue to go among the masses, and paint our organization the colors of the rainbow. We must bring migrant workers, prisoners, gig workers, single parents, unhoused comrades, and all who have been used up and thrown away by this system under our banner, and empower them to seize the time. Victory is not given, it is wrenched from the enemy by force.

All Power to the Proletariat, Woe to the Pigs

Liberation

From Liberation via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25628

This is a developing story... Please check back for updates...

Progressive organizer Analilia Mejia emerged late Thursday as the leader of a crowded Democratic primary race for a vacant US House seat representing New Jersey's 11th Congressional District, potentially notching a stunning upset in a contest that saw outside groups—including one linked to AIPAC—spend millions.

The bulk of that money came from the United Democracy Project (UDP), a billionaire-funded pro-Israel group that spent big to defeat former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) in favor of its preferred candidate, Tahesha Way. The investment appears to have backfired in embarrassing fashion: Way is currently sitting in a distant third place, while UDP's attacks on Malinowski—regarded as a pro-Israel Democrat during his time in Congress—appear to have harmed him enough to propel Mejia, who has called Israel's assault on Gaza a genocide.

While the primary race is officially too close to call, some analysts said they expect Mejia to win after the remaining ballots are counted. As of this writing, Mejia—whose campaign was backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and other prominent progressives—is holding to a 486-vote lead.

"New Jersey, I am so excited to say that we have delivered people-powered victory," Mejia, a supporter of Medicare for All and other progressive policy ambitions, said in a video posted to social media shortly after midnight. "It is time for us to focus on what really matters: unrigging this economy, making sure we reclaim our democracy—and it starts right now."

My message to New Jersey voters. pic.twitter.com/8u8EBy02f7
— Analilia Mejia for NJ (@AnaliliaForNJ) February 6, 2026

Prominent outlets, including Decision Desk HQ, were forced to retract their earlier projections of a Malinowski win after the progressive candidate took the lead. Mejia rubbed it in by posting to X the famous photo of Harry Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune that featured the erroneous banner headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman."

The winner of the 11th Congressional District primary and April 16 general election will fill the remainder of New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill's congressional term, which expires in January 2027.

Progressives who backed Mejia's campaign attributed her late surge to persistent organizing and a last-ditch advertising push. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted that while Mejia "was outspent by millions," strategic spending by progressive PACs helped boost her campaign in the final days of the primary.

"When there’s a real organizer running, we don’t need to match $ for $—we just need to be in the ring," Jayapal wrote on social media late Thursday.

Observers also marveled at AIPAC's blundering intervention in the race. UDP's ads against Malinowski did not mention Israel; rather, one of the spots condemned the former congressman for voting in 2019 to fund President Donald Trump's "deportation force," possibly pushing voters toward the candidate who has called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"ICE is not reformable nor fixable, and New Jerseyans know this," Mejia said last month. "We need members of Congress who are willing to stand up to authoritarianism and terror. The same old blue just won’t cut it."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

"Defended" lol... but in a Democrat way I guess. You practically held the door open for those freaks!

Where's the guy who shot one of the MAGAs? Is he running for something?

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25416

Democratic leaders in Congress are already backing down on one of their key demands in the fight to reform the federal immigration agencies terrorizing Minnesota and other parts of the country.

On Wednesday, Democrats laid out a list of 10 "guardrails" they said they wanted to see put in place to protect the public from abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, before agreeing to a new round of funding for their parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The list called to "prohibit ICE and immigration agents from wearing face coverings" to conceal their identities, which Democratic leaders have stressed as a key reform for weeks.

But during a press conference on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) raised many eyebrows when they introduced a heap of caveats to their demand.

“I think there’s agreement that no masks should be deployed in an arbitrary and capricious fashion, as has been the case, horrifying the American people,” Jeffries said.

Schumer added that agents “need identification and no masks, except in extraordinary and unusual circumstances.”

When a HuffPost reporter attempted to ask Schumer if the party had changed its position on masks, Schumer sidestepped the question. But other top Democrats clarified that they were looking at certain exceptions.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that while masks should generally be "prohibited by law" as a part of everyday enforcement, there are "sometimes safety reasons why you may need a mask."

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who went against the majority of the party earlier this week to vote for two weeks of DHS funding to keep the government open, said they were discussing when to implement "narrow exceptions" with members of law enforcement and suggested that "dealing with a cartel" could be one of them.

Of course, the Trump administration has often asserted that all the immigrants they target are dangerous criminals—"the worst of the worst"—including cartel members, even when this is not the case, raising questions about who might be in charge of determining when masks are necessary.

Critics have been underwhelmed by many of the other demands on the list as well.

Journalist and commentator Adam Johnson said it was a collection of “mostly cosmetic, pointless, unenforceable, or actively harmful ‘reforms,’” with some—including the requirement for judicial warrants and a ban on racial profiling—already being mandated by the Constitution but flouted by agents regardless.

He described it as outrageous that Democrats were demanding "zero reduction in DHS’ obscene budget which... tripled, just 12 months ago."

Civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis, the founder of the group Civil Rights Corps, called the list "one of the great political failures of our time" and said "it must be immediately denounced by all people of goodwill."

Meanwhile, Axios reported on Thursday that many rank-and-file members of the Democratic caucus are fuming over party leadership's refusal earlier this week to use the threat of a government shutdown to force reforms.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the CPC's chair emerita, pondered "'What are we going to get in 10 days that we didn't get?'"

"Every time that we are winning, we seem to somehow sabotage [it]," said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

She noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has already ruled out several Democratic demands, including the requirement of judicial warrants.

ICE agents do not need a warrant to make arrests, but the Fourth Amendment prohibits them from entering private residences without a judicial warrant. An internal memo last month advised agents to ignore that law. Johnson said this week that requiring federal agents to obtain judicial warrants is "a road we cannot and should not go down.”

Other Democrats anonymously expressed their distrust in Schumer, who has caved in other hugely consequential fights in the second Trump era, most recently regarding the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies during last fall’s record-breaking government shutdown, which left tens of millions of Americans facing doubled health insurance premiums.

"The main feeling among members is a lack of trust in his strength and ability to strike a hard bargain," one anonymous Democrat said.

Another said, “All those spending bills, that is the most leverage,” adding that “many folks in the [House] Democratic caucus wish that we had more confidence in Schumer’s ability to navigate a good, tough deal.”

Sixty votes will be required for a deal to pass the Senate, meaning at least seven Democrats will need to join Republicans for DHS to receive full funding and avoid shutting down on February 14.

While this still gives Democrats some leverage to push demands, Ramirez said previous fights give her zero confidence in Schumer's willingness to hold the line.

"I'm gonna continue to tell you that Schumer needs to get the hell out over and over and over until he does," Ramirez said. "He continues to demonstrate to us that he can't meet the moment."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25282

President Donald Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, announced Wednesday that 700 immigration agents are leaving Minnesota, but with around 2,000 expected to remain there, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, declared that the drawdown is "not enough."

As part of Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have invaded multiple Minnesota cities, including Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and committed various acts of violence, such as fatally shooting Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

In a pair of social media posts about Homan's announcement, Omar argued that "every single ICE and CBP agent should be out of Minnesota. The terror campaign must stop."

"This occupation has to end!" she added, also renewing her call to abolish ICE—a position adopted by growing shares of federal lawmakers and the public as Trump's mass deportation agenda has hit Minnesota's Twin Cities, the Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, multiple cities in Maine, and other communities across the United States.

In Congress, where a fight over funding for CBP and ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is playing out, Omar has stood with other progressives in recent votes. The bill signed by Trump on Tuesday only funds DHS through the middle of the month, though Republicans gave ICE an extra $75 billion in last year's budget package.

During an on-camera interview with NBC News' Tom Llamas, Trump said that the reduction of agents came from him. After the president's factually dubious rant about crime rates, Llamas asked what he had learned from the operation in Minnesota. Trump responded: "I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough."

"We're really dealing with really hard criminals," Trump added. Despite claims from him and others in the administration that recent operations have targeted "the worst of the worst," data have repeatedly shown that most immigrants detained by federal officials over the past year don't have any criminal convictions.

Operation Metro Surge has been met with persistent protests in Minnesota and solidarity actions across the United States. Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that "the limited drawdown of ICE agents from Minnesota is not a concession. It is a direct response to Minnesotans standing up to unconstitutional federal overreach."

"Minnesotans are winning against this attack on all our communities by organizing, resisting, and defending our constitutional rights. But this moment should not be a victory lap," Hussein continued. "It must instead be a call to continue pushing for justice. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration agents remain uninvestigated, and communities and prosecutors alike have raised grave concerns about violations of their oaths and the Constitution. This is not the time to pull back, it is the time to deepen our resilience, increase our support for one another, and keep fighting for our democracy and accountability until justice is served."

The Not Above the Law coalition's co-chairs—Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Brett Edkins, of Stand Up America—similarly said that "Tom Homan's announcement that 700 federal immigration agents will be withdrawn from Minnesota is more a minor concession than a meaningful policy shift."

"The vast majority—approximately 2,000 federal agents—remain deployed in the state, and enforcement operations continue unabated," the co-chairs stressed. "This token gesture does nothing to address the ongoing terror families face or the constitutional crisis this administration's actions have created."

“The killings of Minnesotans demand real accountability," they added. "Families torn apart by raids and alleged constitutional violations deserve justice. Real change means the complete withdrawal of all federal forces conducting these operations in Minnesota, full accountability for the deaths and violations that have occurred, and congressional action to restore the rule of law. The American people deserve better than political theater when constitutional rights hang in the balance."

On Tuesday, the state and national ACLU asked the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to "use its early warning and urgent action procedure in response to the human rights crisis following the Trump administration's deployment of federal forces" in the Twin Cities.

"The Trump administration's ongoing immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota are being carried out by thousands of masked federal agents in military gear who are ignoring basic constitutional and human rights of Minnesotans," said Teresa Nelson, legal director of the ACLU of Minnesota. "Their targeting of our Somali and Latino communities threatens Minnesotans’ most fundamental rights, and it has spread fear among immigrant communities and neighborhoods."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25275

Former Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way is not the clear front-runner in New Jersey’s special congressional election on Thursday. She’s seventh in fundraising out of 10 candidates as of last week’s Federal Election Commission deadline, and public polling has been sparse. But as the race drew close to the finish line, the Israel lobby made her the beneficiary of a last-minute push.

In the final weeks before the election, an Intercept analysis has found, 30 donors to groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its super PAC, and Democratic Majority for Israel have poured more than $50,000 into Way’s campaign. On Friday, amid the fundraising push and less than a week before the election, DMFI officially endorsed her.

The lobby is known for spending against progressives and the most vocal critics of the state of Israel, but in New Jersey, it appears to be backing one moderate to pick off another. Yet more pro-Israel money in the race comes at the expense of Tom Malinowski, who is no progressive on Israel policy but nevertheless has become the subject of AIPAC ire — marking a reversal for the group, which supported him in 2022.

AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent more $2.3 million on ads against Malinowski**.** The ads do not mention Israel but attack Malinowski on immigration, saying he helped fund “Trump’s deportation force” because he voted in favor of a 2019 bipartisan appropriations bill that funded the Department of Homeland Security. The majority of Democrats, including many supported by AIPAC, voted for the bill.

In a statement to The Intercept, UDP spokesperson Patrick Dorton made no mention of Malinowski’s DHS funding vote. He said Malinowski had fallen afoul of the group’s policy priorities by discussing the possibility of conditioning aid to Israel.

“It’s our goal to build the largest bipartisan pro-Israel majority in Congress. There are several candidates in this race far more pro-Israel than Tom Malinowski,” Dorton said.

[

Related

AIPAC Is Retreating From Endorsements and Election Spending. It Won’t Give Up Its Influence.](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/30/aipac-campaigns-elections-israel-congress/)

Way and Malinowski are competing in a crowded race in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District to replace former Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who vacated the seat after she was elected governor.

Way and Malinowski’s campaigns did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Also running are Analilia Mejia, the former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign; veteran Zach Beecher; Passaic County commissioner and election lawyer John Bartlett; former Morris Township Mayor Jeff Grayzel; and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill.

Way already had substantial support from the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, which endorsed her and has spent more than $1.7 million backing her campaign, almost half of what it spent in total last cycle. But even with close to $4 million in outside spending on her side, she has lagged behind her opponents in fundraising. She’s raised just over $400,000 — compared to Malinowski’s over $1.1 million, more than $800,000 for Gill, and over half a million for Beecher. Bartlett has raised more than $460,000, Grayzel has raised $428,000, and Mejia has raised just over $420,000.

Now, pro-Israel donors who have given to AIPAC to boost other pro-Israel candidates are trying to help Way close the gap. They include retired investor Peter Langerman, who has given $75,000 to AIPAC’s United Democracy Project since 2023 and $12,000 to AIPAC since 2022. Another Way donor, Florida loan executive Joel Edelstein, has given $25,000 to UDP since 2023 and $$3,500 to AIPAC since 2022.

Among Way’s other donors are Bennett Greenspan, founder of the genealogy company Family Tree DNA, who has given $40,000 to United Democracy Project, $4,000 to DMFI PAC, and $1,250 to AIPAC PAC since 2022. Way donor and New Jersey real estate developer Michael Gottlieb gave $25,000 to UDP in 2023. Another Way donor, founder and former president of Microsoft partner HSO, Jack Ades, has given $10,750 to AIPAC since 2024. Gottlieb and Ades have given to Republican candidates including Reps. Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik in New York; Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.; Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign; and the Republican group WinRed.

More than half of these contributions all landed on January 14.

More than half of the contributions to Way — $33,000 of the $53,000 in total — all landed on January 14, a common sign that outside groups have sent out a fundraising push to their network**.**

Another donor to Way’s campaign is Joseph Korn, a New Jersey real estate developer who served on the New Jersey board of the Jewish National Fund, a controversial national organization that has funded settler groups in the West Bank.

Way is campaigning on a relatively centrist platform that primarily includes fighting against President Donald Trump’s agenda. She’s also running on strengthening the Affordable Care Act, ensuring access to reproductive care, protecting democracy and voting rights, and lowering costs without raising taxes, including raising the cap on state and local tax deductions, or SALT. Her website does not mention foreign policy or Israel.

Way is also endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC; the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State; IVYPAC, which backs candidates who are members of the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority; and several other New Jersey organizations.

The Israel lobby’s support for Way may not ultimately help its policy priorities. As a recent column in the Forward points out, by pitting Way and Malinowski against each other, AIPAC donors might help a more progressive candidate get elected.

The post AIPAC Donors Flood Last-Minute New Jersey House Pick With Cash appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

Full Version https://x.com/Arin_Yumi/status/2019055101323989389

1. From backing big corporations to supporting people’s everyday lives, Supporting people’s lives through wage increases and shorter working hours, Major wage increases that outpace rising prices

Enacting a “Non-Regular Worker Treatment Improvement Act”

Cut the consumption tax, increase budgets for social security and education, and provide peace of mind in everyday life

2. No to turning Japan into a heavily armed, war-driven state that follows the Trump U.S. administration’s openly declared “rule by force” Work for a peaceful Japan and Asia through diplomacy based on Article 9 of the Constitution

Stop building Japan into a U.S.-subservient “war state” and return to being a “peace state”

Halt construction of the new U.S. military base in Okinawa and fundamentally revise the Japan–U.S. Status of Forces Agreement

The Communist Party's Peace Diplomacy In April 2024, the Japanese Communist Party announced its “East Asia Peace Proposal,” aimed at developing a framework for regional peace cooperation across East Asia in collaboration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and it has devoted its full efforts to realizing it.

in seeking a positive breakthrough in Japan–China relations as well, it is important to return to the principles agreed upon in the Joint Communiqué at the time of the normalization of Japan–China relations and at the 2008 Japan–China summit meeting: that the two countries are “partners who cooperate and do not pose a threat to one another.” From this standpoint, the Japanese Communist Party has made efforts to move Japan–China relations forward by directly conveying, on various occasions, to the Chinese side what needs to be said while maintaining dialogue.

3. Promote gender equality and politics that respect everyone’s rights, lifestyle, and dignity Push back the gender backlash and advance equality through politics

A backlash against gender equality is underway, exemplified by moves to legislate the use of “common names” in order to block the introduction of an optional separate-surname system for married couples. The Japanese Communist Party stands in solidarity with the persistent movement seeking a gender-equal society in which everyone can live with dignity as a human being, and will devote its efforts to expanding this main current.

Toward politics that value children’s rights and support child-rearing

Based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we will advance the protection of children’s human rights. The national government will establish an independent body for the protection and remedy of children’s rights

We will improve conditions at childcare centers and after-school care programs so that each and every child is valued. We will substantially raise staffing standards in childcare, improve working conditions, and increase the number of childcare workers. We will eliminate waiting lists for after-school care, promote multiple staff placements, and improve待遇 for instructors.

How to respond to the population decline issue How to respond to the issue of population decline is a critical challenge facing Japan.

At its root is the fact that economic and social circumstances are preventing people from freely choosing their future lives. What is required is to change a society that is difficult to live in: reducing the heavy financial burden of child-rearing, achieving wage increases that can keep up with rising prices, shortening working hours and increasing workers’ free time, eliminating discrimination against non-regular workers, advancing gender equality, and ending inequalities that place the burden of housework and childcare disproportionately on women.

4. Expose and correct the darkness and corruption of politics

Clarify the full extent of the collusion between the Unification Church and the LDP

Clarify the truth behind the slush fund scandal and ban corporate and organizational donations

The biggest reason for the LDP’s crushing defeat in the 2024 general election and the 2025 House of Councillors election was the slush fund scandal. Despite this, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi appointed lawmakers involved in the slush fund scheme to key party posts and parliamentary secretary positions, insisting that they had carefully fulfilled their responsibility to explain.

We will not allow cuts to the number of National Diet members that disregard the will of the people

5. Advance politics that ensure security and prosperity

Toward overcoming the climate crisis: politics that confront it head-on

We oppose nuclear restarts and new construction, and aim for a nuclear-free Japan

Revitalizing agriculture and rural communities, ensuring a stable food supply, and promoting primary industries

Japan’s food and agriculture are facing an unprecedented crisis. The so called “Reiwa rice turmoil” of recent years has exposed a government incapable of properly supplying even staple foods

This crisis is the direct result of agricultural policies pursued by successive Liberal Democratic Party governments, based on ideas such as “we can just buy food from abroad” and “we don’t need agriculture that lacks competitiveness.” These policies have promoted unlimited import liberalization of agricultural products, cuts to agricultural protection, and the large-scale and industrialization of farming.

Putting residents’ lives and livelihoods first to build a disaster-resilient society and national land Greatly strengthening national support to rebuild the lives and livelihoods of disaster victims

Putting digitalization and AI progress to work for the people by eliminating risks through legislation and using them to support daily life and the economy

Stop forcing the My Number health insurance card and restore the health insurance card

Shift to a housing policy based on the principle that “housing is a human right,” and ensure homes where people can live with peace of mind