Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California Feb 23, 2026 The CCWA YouTube Podcast This fireside chat will feature the various Democratic candidates running to be California’s next governor in conversation with Nancy Tung, who is currently serving as the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, about the biggest issues facing the state of California. This conversation is taking place as delegates from throughout California arrive in San Francisco for the Democratic Party Convention weekend. Delegates will be evaluating the candidates and casting their votes on whom to endorse for governor as part of our special CADEM coverage of the state convention. Gubernatorial candidates will each have a 15-minute period to share their vision for the future of the Golden State one-on-one with Chair Nancy Tung. February 20, 2026 Speakers Xavier Becerra Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services; Former California Attorney General; Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Ian Calderon Former State Assemblymember (D-57th District); Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Matt Mahan Mayor of San Jose; Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Katie Porter Former U.S. Representative (D-California 47th District); Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Tom Steyer Entrepreneur; Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Eric Swalwell U.S. Representative (D-California 14th District); Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Tony Thurmond California Superintendent of Public Instruction; Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Antonio Villaraigosa Former Mayor of Los Angeles; Former Speaker, California State Assembly; Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Betty Yee Former California State Controller; Candidate for Democratic Nomination for California Governor Moderator: Nancy Tung Chair, San Francisco Democratic Party Program Partner: San Francisco Democratic Party Speaker photos courtesy the speakers. Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.
Ours is the age of the strongman. Russia, India, Turkey and America are ruled by men who, as they have risen to the top, have reshaped their countries around them, creating cults of personality which earn the loyalty of millions. And as they do so, they draw on a playbook of behaviour established by figures such as Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddafi and Adolf Hitler.
Here, political historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat draws on analysis of everything from gender and sexuality to diplomatic strategy to explain who these political figures are – and how they manipulate our own history, fears and desires in search of power at any cost.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an internationally acclaimed historian, speaker, and political commentator for the Atlantic, CNN, the Washington Post, and other publications. She is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and lives in New York City.
Children attend a meeting of the Education K-12 subcommittee in the Tennessee legislature on March 11, 2025, in Nashville. A bill to restrict undocumented kids’ access to education was tabled last year — and is now up for consideration again. Photo: George Walker IV/AP
Tennessee Republicans are pushing forward with a bill that could force undocumented children out of public education and turn school administrators into immigration informants against their own students, making Tennessee the frontier of an effort led by the Heritage Foundation to fundamentally injure the right to public education.
The state’s proposed “trigger laws,” which will be heard in committee on Wednesday, are direct challenges to Plyler v. Doe, a narrowly decided 1982 Supreme Court case that enshrined the right to a free K–12 public education regardless of immigration status. The parallel bills would also likely violate federal statutes that codify the same right.
The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, has officially called on other states to pass similar laws challenging Plyler, situating Tennessee’s push as among the first in a broader national effort to overturn the decision.
“Illegal aliens should not be eligible for federal, state, or local government benefits, including through their children,” wrote Lora Ries, the director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center, in a February 17 post, “because the receipt of such benefits facilitates longer unlawful residence in the United States and takes resources from American citizens and lawful immigrants.”
So far, six states — Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Indiana, New Jersey, and Tennessee — have introduced bills that would violate Plyler. If passed, their implementation could force a challenge at the Supreme Court.
Educators and immigration advocates told The Intercept that if Tennessee and other states were to get Plyler overturned and enact legislation to track and potentially expel undocumented children from public school, it would “end public education as we know it.”
“This feels like a credible threat,” said Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. “The ramifications of this are huge … denying children carte-blanche education would create an uneducated, potentially illiterate underclass of children and then adults in this country.”
Last year, the Tennessee state legislature introduced a bill, H.B. 793, that would allow schools to refuse to enroll students who cannot prove “lawful presence” in the United States or charge them tuition, but it was tabled due to concerns about potential federal funding losses because the law violated federal statutes. The bill would also require schools to report the number of students who enroll without a birth certificate. The Tennessee Senate version would allow schools to choose to deny enrollment to undocumented students only if they are unable to pay.
Now, the bill is back — and scheduled for a state House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. A companion bill, which would require schools and other entities that receive state funding, like hospitals, to report to the government on recipients’ immigration status, moved out of committee last week. The second bill is also scheduled to be heard by the House State & Local Government Committee on Wednesday. It can only be enacted if H.B. 793 passes and Plyler is overturned.
Sam Singer, a high school teacher who teaches English language learners in Tennessee, said she’s had “numerous students” who’ve heard of the bills ask if they’re still allowed to go to school.
“They’re questions that no child should ever have to ask, much less come to school and wonder about,” said Singer. “The expectation should be, of course, you’re supposed to be here, you’re a kid. This is where you belong.”
School should be a “safe space” for children, said Singer, “where you can trust that teachers are here to help you become your best self as you grow into the young adult you want to be.” Instead, the bills would effectively turn school administrators and teachers into immigration agents.
Across the state border in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said that he would seek to overturn Plyler for years. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican Texas congressman now running for attorney general, has called for the 1982 ruling to be overturned as well.
“For illegal alien children, the Supreme Court said we have to fund education for them. The fact of the matter is that it is a massive tax burden on the people of Texas,” Roy said in an interview last week. “I don’t believe that the Constitution requires that the state of Texas should fund it, and we should make a new precedent by taking it to court.”
The Texas state legislature previously introduced two bills challenging Plyler. The first bill would allow public schools to charge undocumented children to attend, and the latter bill would require proof of citizenship to enroll in public school. Both of those bills have stalled, but Krystal Gómez, managing attorney for the Texas Immigration Law Council, said she expects more challenges to Plyler in the next legislative session.
“It used to be that we had a federal government in the Department of Education that didn’t seem interested in it, and was able to sort of put this to kibosh and have like a backstop to states that got a little out of hand in trying to create these chilling effects or overturn Plyler outright,” said Gomez. “We don’t have that now. So it’s sort of the wild, wild West, and whatever sad, terrible thing that a state can dream up, they can probably get away with.”
The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
In Texas, immigrant student attendance has already declined dramatically since the start of Trump’s immigration enforcement ramp-up. The Houston school district lost nearly 4,000 immigrant students this year, a decline of roughly 22 percent of the school district’s immigrant population. It’s unclear how many of those students left the United States willingly, or were deported, and how many children still living in Houston are simply too afraid to return to classrooms.
The stress of constant raids weighs on many of the immigrant children still attending school, said Klara Aizupitis, 34, a high school English teacher in Terlingua, Texas.
“You’re living under the constant threat of either being picked up and deported or your parents or your siblings being picked up and deported,” said Aizupitis. “That stress is going to have an impact on, certainly, academic performance, but also your ability to manage your emotions in everyday life.”
“You’re living under the constant threat of either being picked up and deported or your parents or siblings being picked up and deported.”
Further eroding protections for immigrant students would devastate the border community where Aizupitis teaches. “We do really have a shared culture, on both sides of the [Rio Grande] river,” she said.
The district’s funding is based on average daily attendance, so losing undocumented students would “threaten the existence of our school district,” said Aizupitis. “Moreover, it would threaten the existence of our entire community.”
An estimate from FWD, a criminal justice and immigration policy organization, found that undocumented students would lose a collective $1 trillion — or 600,000 individually — in lifetime income if they were denied access to public education.
Heritage frequently suggests that undocumented students represent a substantial burden on taxpayers, arguing in a statement to The Intercept that “unaccompanied alien children sent to states cost them hundreds of millions of dollars for one year of public education.” But according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented people in the U.S. pay nearly $97 billion in federal, state, and local taxes annually. Tax contributions from undocumented people far outweigh the financial burden of K–12 education for undocumented children.
The Heritage Foundation’s argument, said Zimmer-Wong, “does not hold up to any kind of basic scrutiny.”
The FWD report found that educating undocumented students provides $633 billion more money in state and local income tax contributions than the cost of their education. The report also found that, if Plyler were overturned, the U.S. workforce would decrease by 450,000 workers in critical jobs that require at least a high school or college education.
None of that accounts for the expense of implementing a widespread immigration surveillance system in schools. “It would be extremely costly,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Votes.
Schools would have to acquire “new software, new computers, new administrative processes and staff” to track and determine the immigration status of the tens of thousands of children within any given school district, not just students who are undocumented, she said.
“The Heritage Foundation reports notes the burden placed on schools, [from undocumented children],” said Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, policy council at the National Immigration Law Center, “yet their solution is for school personnel to become essentially DHS and TSA agents, verifying, reviewing documents, and recording immigration status.”
“Their solution is for school personnel to become essentially DHS and TSA agents.”
The Heritage Foundation pushed back on criticism of its plan, telling The Intercept that undocumented children would still have the option to receive an education — if they paid tuition, self-deported, or left the state.
“These are the consequences for the decision the parent or student made to break our law. American taxpayers should not have to pay for law breaking. Nor can American taxpayers afford it,” Ries wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which originally litigated Plyler, said that he doesn’t believe the Supreme Court will allow these bills to be implemented. Because the bills would violate federal statutes, they would run up against the supremacy clause of the Constitution, Saenz pointed out.
However, if the courts were to look favorably on a challenge to Plyler and its corresponding federal statutes, Saenz said, the consequences would be devastating.
“It would have the impact of ending public education as we know it, because when a certain cohort of kids is allowed to be out of school, what happens next is that their siblings and friends don’t go to school,” Saenz said, “and rapidly, no one goes to school.” Share
Democratic gubernatorial candidates Xavier Becerra, left, Betty Yee, and Katie Porter took part in a forum at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
Photos: Screengrabs via KNBC-TV
Seven Democratic candidates seeking to succeed California Governor Gavin Newsom said that they stood with the LGBTQ community during a forum Monday evening. One, however, was sharply critical of the state’s chief executive for recent comments he made suggesting Democrats be more “culturally normal.”
The candidates, all straight allies, appeared separately at “Centering Equality: California’s LGBTQ+ Gubernatorial Forum” co-hosted by statewide LGBTQ rights group Equality California and the Los Angeles LGBT center. It was held Monday, March 2, at the center.
Moderators Colleen Williams of KNBC-TV and Dustin Gardner of Politico said at the outset that all the major candidates had been invited. Two Democratic candidates, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former state lawmaker Ian Calderon, as well as Republicans Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco did not appear.
Candidate Tony Thurmond pushed back against the question about Newsom’s desire to see fellow Democrats change the way they talk about LGBTQs. During a recent interview on CNN, Newsom called for his party to be “culturally normal,” and specifically to stop “spending a disproportionate amount of time on pronouns [and] identity politics.”
“The governor is flat-out wrong,” said Thurmond, currently the elected state superintendent of public instruction. “We don’t need to placate the conservative right.”
Thurmond added that while he agrees with Newsom on a lot of things, LGBTQ people should “just go ahead and be who you are.”
In response to the same question, candidate Katie Porter said, “I don’t think any leader gets to sit in judgment.” Porter previously represented Orange County in Congress and ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2024.
Betty Yee, the former elected state controller, also had critical words on the topic. “I think there’s a little bit of scapegoating these people,” she said, referring to LGBTQs.
Gardner and Williams generally asked each candidate the same questions, but time constraints prevented them from asking all of them about Newsom’s suggestion Democrats “pivot” in how they talk about the queer community.
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Candidates Tom Steyer, left, and Congressmember Eric Swalwell answered questions at a forum. Photos: Screengrabs via KNBC-TV
Trans issues On issues affecting the transgender community, all of the candidates spoke in support. Tom Steyer, a billionaire who’s self-funding his campaign, was the clearest on the matter of trans girls and women playing on female sports teams, a contentious issue in California and across the country. Several states have passed bans on trans athletes, while California attempted a compromise last year regarding high school sports. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has launched investigations into some colleges who had trans women on their sports teams.
Steyer, who said he has played sports “my entire life,” said, “I strongly feel trans people should participate in sports.”
“I come back to how vulnerable and stressed trans youth feel,” Steyer said. “Sports is some form of community.”
Xavier Becerra, who served in Congress, as California’s attorney general, and as health and human services secretary in the Biden administration, said he has long fought against discrimination.
“I’ll protect it the way I did when I was attorney general,” he said of issues such as trans people participating in sports. “Health care and education are not the prerogative of the federal government. The Constitution left health care, education, and public safety to the states. Obviously, there are some constraints if you take federal money, [such as] Medicare. I know the law.”
Porter said that she’s had conversations with health care companies and parents over providing gender-affirming care to trans youth.
“We need to provide state funding for this,” she said, pegging the cost at about $26 million. “That is a number that is out there that we can find.”
Congressmember Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), advocated a “human approach” to issues affecting trans people.
“Life is already hard for a trans kid,” he said.
He was critical of President Donald Trump and his efforts to roll back rights for trans Americans.
“This president has declared war on kids,” Swalwell said, with bans against gender-affirming care that many hospitals in California and elsewhere have implemented due to the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funds. “We need a fighter and protector in Sacramento.”
Candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, a former state Assembly speaker and mayor of Los Angeles, said that he has been an ally to the LGBTQ community for decades.
“I started at the beginning,” he said, rattling off support for early legislation providing rights to LGBTQ Californians. He also said that as mayor, he removed trans women prisoners from the men’s jail.
“I continue to be at the forefront,” Villaraigosa said.
As for the threat of the state losing federal dollars, Villaraigosa said the way to combat that would be to backfill the cuts with state money. “We have a $300 billion-plus budget,” he said. “Budgets are a statement of values.”
Candidate Tony Thurmond. Photo: Screengrab via KNBC-TV
Grading themselves The candidates were asked at the outset to grade themselves with the LGBTQ community in mind.
Bacerra didn’t assign himself a letter grade, but pointed out that when he was in Congress, the House voted on the Defense of Marriage Act, which limited marriage to between one man and one woman. He was one of 67 representatives to vote no. (A section of DOMA has since been repealed by the U.S. Supreme Court; in 2022 then-President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed what was left of DOMA.)
Porter said that she’d “give myself an A.”
Swalwell, who said his record on the Human Rights Campaign’s congressional scorecard has been 100%, gave himself “an A for ally.”
Steyer touted an endorsement from gay Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Hollywood), who is a former executive director of EQCA. “For me, the question is what people in the community think,” he said.
Thurmond noted his work on behalf of the community. “I’m a work in progress,” he said. “I’m not going to sit on my laurels.”
Villaraigosa gave himself an A+.
Yee said she’d give herself an A. “I’m a lifelong ally,” she said.
Candidate Antonio Villaraigosa. Photo: Screengrab via KNBC-TV
Polling, tough question A poll released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California shows a statistical tie between Democratic candidates Porter, Swalwell, and Steyer and the two Republicans, Hilton and Bianco. The five poll between 10% and 14%. The rest of the Democratic field polls at 5% or lower, according to the PPIC survey.
The strong showings by Hilton and Bianco have left many Democrats worried that two Republicans could win in the June 2 primary, shutting out Democratic contenders in a deep blue state. Under the state’s open primary, only the top two finishers, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the November 3 general election.
That concern was evident at the recent California Democratic Convention in San Francisco, as the Bay Area Reporter noted. In a rare move, on Tuesday Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, urged struggling candidates to withdraw by the Friday, March 6, filing deadline.
And it was brought up at the LGBTQ-focused forum. The candidates were asked if they would endorse someone else if they dropped out of the race.
Becerra, polling at 5%, said it was interesting that the candidates most often mentioned as ones to possibly drop out were people of color such as himself. He declined to endorse someone else.
Porter said she was “worried about the two Republican thing,” but added that she’s polling at the top of the Democratic field. She’s polling at 13%, according to the survey.
Swalwell, polling at 11%, said, “I’ve made the decision to win. We’ve built the biggest coalition and I need all of you on the team.” He referenced his place at the end of the debate stage back in 2019 when he briefly ran for president. “I’m now in the center of the stage,” he said.
Steyer, who’s polling at 10%, said that there were “a lot of people in this race that I respect.” He did acknowledge that if he had to endorse one of the other candidates, it would be Yee.
Thurmond, polling at 2%, said that he’s run two statewide campaigns for state schools chief and won each time despite millions of dollars spent against him.
“My team has already seen a path to victory,” he said, though he did not elaborate.
Villaraigosa, polling at 5%, said he would support Yee and Thurmond.
Yee, also pulling in 5% support, said she would support Villaraigosa and Steyer. Of the former, she said he’s been the “biggest champion” and of Steyer, she said, “He brings something new to the race.”
For highlights of the forum, click here. To view the forum, go to KNBC-TV’s YouTube channel.
He turned Bob Dylan onto pot and Woody Guthrie. He organized underground poetry and political protest. He was part of the city’s radical soul, and we will miss him
Diamond Dave Whitaker died March 2, and with him went a part of San Francisco’s soul.
Diamond D, as he called himself whenever he got me on the phone, was an icon, the kind of person who made this city a beacon for the wild, the crazy, the poets, the artists, the radicals, the beats, and the hippies. He was all of that.
He was also one of the sweetest, kindest people I have ever met.
The legends are more than legend, they are true: Diamond D was, indeed, the first person to smoke pot with Bob Dylan. He introduced Dylan to the writing of Woody Guthrie, which Dylan freely admits changed his life. Some of Dylan’s earliest songs were recorded at Diamond D’s house in Minneapolis.
Diamond D never lost faith in San Francisco’s promise. I have no idea who took this photo, but Dave was not a believer in copyright so I am not going to worry about it; contact me and I’ll give you credit. (Update: CreditGabreila Remy,, The Guardsman.)
Diamond Dave lived much of his life in San Francisco. He did pirate radio, and I was on a bunch of his shows. He organized underground poetry readings. He lived in later years in a place that was somewhere between a squat and a converted warehouse behind the Farmer’s Market on Alemany; out the window of his room was an unpermitted skateboard park. He didn’t skate, but he loved the outlaw skaters.
In fact, Diamond Dave seemed to love everyone. He had that old, wonderful, hippie vibe that hate and anger were just a waste of time and energy.
Every time he read poetry or presented or lead a demonstration, he would end by saying, “don’t panic; keep it organic.”
Once upon a time, San Francisco had plenty of room for people like Diamond D, and John Ross, and folks who cared more about peace and love and art and rebellion than about income and wealth. The city is much, much poorer without them.
Don’t panic; keep it organic. Rest in peace and power, Diamond Dave. The city you made into your home will miss you.
48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
This article is adapted from my new booklet, “Grab Them by the E.A.R.R.: How to Make Politicians Do What You Want.” The full booklet is available as a free download here: https://buymeacoffee.com/theer/e/487906
If you can contribute, please do. We are printing physical copies and putting them directly into the hands of every state Attorney General, every Governor, and every state legislator in America. We are mailing them, handing them out at fundraisers and town halls, and distributing them to activists on the ground. We exclusively hire humans and use union labor wherever it’s available. Contribute here: https://buymeacoffee.com/theer
State legislators say that six to eight contacts on one side of an issue feels like a landslide of public opinion. Show up at their district office with four other people and staff starts sweating about reelection.
Six phone calls. Five people in a lobby. That is how thin the margin is between being ignored and being taken seriously.
We have been lied to about our own power because people with power benefit from us not using what we have.
I spent nearly a decade learning how power actually works. Air Force veteran, law enforcement, national security, politics. Training in behavioral intervention, open-source intelligence, and the mechanics of influence that stay buried in agency manuals most people never see. I learned how institutions move, and I learned what makes the people who run them nervous.
Then I watched good people waste years on activism that accomplishes nothing. Marches that feel good as regressive policies were passed. Petitions that get filed in the trash. Phone calls made once, then never again. Organizations that spend 95 percent of their energy on bylaws and board meetings and 5 percent on actual pressure. People who show up for one protest, see no immediate result, and conclude the whole thing is rigged.
The system is rigged. But we can still win.
It moves every single day for lobbyists. It moves for organized money. It moves for anyone who shows up consistently, knows exactly who to pressure, stays on message, and never stops. The people who run things are not geniuses. They are not invincible. Politicians are busy and frequently lazy. They are terrified of losing their jobs, and they will move if you make standing still more painful than moving.
I wrote a booklet to make that happen. It is called “Grab Them by the E.A.R.R.” Educate yourself on the targets and who funds them. Activate by showing up and applying pressure. Recruit others so it multiplies. Repeat until we have toppled tyrants and their grand old parties.
Here is what makes it different from everything else you have read about civic engagement.
It is leaderless. Not because leaders get targeted, though they do. Because requiring leaders is a bottleneck. It limits who can participate and when. This model has no bottleneck. You figure out what you can sustain and you do it. Others do the same. No permission needed. No gatekeepers. No waiting for someone to tell you it is time to start.
It balances independence with collaboration. You can act alone, right now, on your own initiative. You can also coordinate when it helps, collaborate when it makes sense, invite people to participate, and accept invitations. But you never need permission or orders to be an effective activist. You never wait for approval. The choice to act is always yours.
It flips the ratio. Traditional activism tells you to form an organization, file for 501c3 status, elect a board, draft bylaws, get permits. Most organizations spend 95 percent of their effort on this bureaucracy and 5 percent on actual pressure. This model inverts that. 95 percent action. The rest takes care of itself.
It is designed for the long haul. The goal is sustained pressure at an intensity you can maintain for years. Start with five minutes a day. One phone call. One email. That is enough to build the habit. Once the habit exists, you expand. You are not sprinting toward a single event. You are training in a practice that becomes part of who you are.
It is self-multiplying. Each person brings in others. Not through campaigns or advertisements, but through relationships. You invite a friend into something you are already doing. They invite someone else. The network grows through people who actually know each other, which makes it resilient in ways top-down organizations never are.
And the math is on our side. A hundred persistent people can shape policy for a town. A thousand for a city. Ten thousand for a state. We don’t need a majority. We need a committed minority that never stops.
It works. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth studied 323 campaigns across a century and found nonviolent movements succeed more than twice as often as violent ones. The civil rights movement took fourteen years. Marriage equality took eleven. They won because they outlasted everyone who told them there was no chance. And 83 percent of the movements Chenoweth studied that succeeded never hit the famous 3.5 percent threshold. They still won.
The booklet gives you everything. How to find your targets and who funds them in fifteen minutes. How to hit them on every platform simultaneously so they cannot escape. How to structure demands with deadlines that pin them down. How to escalate when nothing moves. How to contact their donors and create friction that travels back fast. How to work local media so their name shows up in print attached to your issue. How to file public records requests that make officials realize they are being investigated. How to recruit so the pressure compounds instead of burning out.
Download it. Read it. Use it. Share it.
The system counts on us giving up. Most people do. They try once, see no immediate result, and conclude it does not work. They were never a threat.
The threat is the person who keeps showing up after the first setback, and the tenth, and the fiftieth. The person who understands that fighting is winning. Every hour they spend dealing with you is an hour they are not spending on something worse. Every sleepless night you cause is a victory. Every resource they burn responding to pressure is a resource they cannot use against us. And sometimes they actually face consequences. The threat is the person who treats this like a fun practice instead of an occasional burden.
If you can contribute, here is what your money funds:
We are printing physical copies and distributing them to every state Attorney General, every Governor, and every state legislator in America. We are mailing copies directly. We are organizing distribution at fundraisers, town halls, and public events so these booklets end up in the hands of both politicians and the constituents pressuring them. We are building a grassroots network so activists across the country have physical copies to hand out. We are also working on an entire distributed activist toolkit based off of these principles.
This takes printing, postage, logistics, and labor. We exclusively hire humans and use union labor wherever it is available.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks alongside other Republicans during a news conference about voting legislation on February 11, 2026 at the Capitol in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The SAVE America Act and related bills “aren’t about keeping our elections free and fair,” warned the ACLU. “They’re about politicians setting the stage to interfere with election results they don’t like.”
In a pair of Truth Social posts on Thursday, President Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to pass the voter suppression bill that is stalled in the US Senate after being advanced by the House of Representatives last month.
“The Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT—And not the watered down version. This is a Country Defining fight for the Soul of our Nation!” Trump wrote Thursday morning.
In a separate post about an hour later, the president added:
THE SAVE AMERICA ACT! 1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!). 2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP IN ORDER TO VOTE. 3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!). 4. NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS. 5. NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN APPROVAL OF THE PARENTS
The posts came just eight months ahead of the midterms that will determine which party controls each chamber of Congress for the rest of the president’s second term—which is also supposed to be his final, under the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, but the 79-year-old with a history of lying about election results and voter fraud has repeatedly teased trying to stay in power.
Trump and other advocates of the SAVE America Act—and its state-level copycats—have claimed that the bill is necessary to prevent immigrants from participating in elections, even though noncitizen voting is already illegal and research has made clear that voter fraud is incredibly rare in the United States.
The House-approved version of the bill, led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), would require states to regularly submit voter rolls to the US Department of Homeland Security, and to obtain proof of citizenship, in person, when registering someone to vote. It would also force voters to present eligible photo identification at the polls.
Critics of the bill have argued that rather than tackling the nonexistent issue of noncitizen voting, the SAVE America Act would disenfranchise eligible voters who don’t have access to proof of citizenship documents—such as people who have lost paperwork, can’t afford replacements, or have changed their names.
The ACLU has a tool to help Americans contact their senator to oppose the SAVE Act, SAVE America Act, and Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act. The automatic message says in part that “these bills aren’t about keeping our elections free and fair. They’re about politicians setting the stage to interfere with election results they don’t like. Please reject these dangerous, anti-voter bills.”
While House Republicans were able to approve the legislation mostly along party lines—the only Democrat who supported it was Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who notably received a pardon from the president recently—the Senate GOP’s majority is too slim to get most bills past the 60-vote filibuster without some Democratic support.
Trump also renewed his call for passing the legislation in his State of the Union address last month, specifically calling out Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). The following day, the Associated Pressreported that Thune backs the bill, and Republicans were discussing how to send it to the president’s desk.
According to the AP:
Senate Republicans “aren’t unified on an approach,” Thune said on Wednesday after Trump’s speech.
In an effort to get around Democratic opposition, Trump and others have pushed a so-called “talking filibuster,” which would bring the Senate back to the days of the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, when senators talked indefinitely to block legislation. Today, the Senate mostly skips the speeches and votes to end debate, which takes 60 votes in the Senate where Republicans have a 53-47 majority.
Republicans wouldn’t have to change the rules to force a talkathon. They could simply keep the Senate open and make Democrats deliver speeches for days or weeks to delay taking up the legislation. But Thune would still need enough support from his caucus to move forward with that approach, and he said this week that “we aren’t there yet.”
Absent progress in the Senate, several state legislatures are considering similar bills. Citing the Voting Rights Lab tracker, Talking Points Memoreported Tuesday that 15 states have 26 active election bills with proof of citizenship requirements.
“I think what we’re often seeing in these states is that there’s an effort to send political messages that don’t necessarily comport with the reality of election integrity or the needs of election officials,” David Becker, a former US Department of Justice lawyer and executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told TPM.
“Like the SAVE Act, this would require citizens to regularly work to make up for government deficiencies, digging out and showing their citizenship papers over and over and over again when they’ve already shown them,” Becker said of state-level proposals. “Why are we insisting that citizens have to work for government, rather than government working for us?”
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Advocates hold signs during a news conference on Medicare Advantage plans in front of the US Capitol on July 25, 2023 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“We don’t allow banks to call themselves the U.S. Treasury Investment Fund,” said Rep. Mark Pocan. “We don’t allow anyone to call themselves USPS Plus. So why allow insurance companies to call private insurance Medicare Advantage?”
A group of Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday reintroduced legislation aimed at reining in for-profit insurance companies who use the Medicare name to market their plans.
The “Save Medicare Act,” being reintroduced by US Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), bars private insurers from using the word “Medicare” in marketing their plans, imposing “significant fines” for any insurer that doesn’t comply.
At issue, the lawmakers said, is that insurers are flooding the airwaves with ads for Medicare Advantage plans during open enrollment periods. The ads are deceiving Americans into thinking their plans are just variations of Medicare services offered by the federal government, they said.
“Let’s be clear: Medicare Advantage is not Medicare,” said Schakowsky. “These private insurance plans use Medicare’s trusted name while too often denying medically necessary care, restricting providers, and overcharging taxpayers by billions. That is unacceptable. We have seen insurers exploit the system to boost profits at the expense of seniors.”
Khanna noted that Medicare Advantage is “a private insurance program that too often boosts profits by limiting coverage,” even as it “misleads seniors into thinking it’s traditional Medicare.”
“That’s wrong,” Khanna emphasized. “This legislation will stop private insurers from cashing in on the Medicare name. We should be working to protect and expand real Medicare instead.”
Pocan declared that “only Medicare is Medicare,” adding that Medicare Advantage plans “often leave patients without the benefits they need while overcharging the federal government for corporate profit.”
“This bill makes clear what is—and what is not—Medicare,” added Pocan, “and ensures this essential program will continue to serve seniors and other Americans for generations to come.”
Pocan also posted a video on social media where he talked about his elderly mother being unable to see the physician that came to her assisted living home because she relied on Medicare Advantage and the doctor in question was out of network.
“She would have had to go all the way across town to get that care,” Pocan explained. “The problem is, she wasn’t very mobile and she never got the medical care.”
We don't allow banks to call themselves the U.S. Treasury Investment Fund. We don't allow anyone to call themselves USPS Plus.
So why allow insurance companies to call private insurance Medicare Advantage?
“We don’t allow banks to call themselves the U.S. Treasury Investment Fund,” said Pocan. “We don’t allow anyone to call themselves USPS Plus. So why allow insurance companies to call private insurance Medicare Advantage?”
Many progressive critics have for years pointed to Medicare Advantage as a legitimate example of wasteful spending by the federal government.
A report released in January by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency that advises lawmakers on Medicare, estimated that overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans could total $76 billion in 2026.
One major factor in the overpayments is that patients using Medicare Advantage plans tend to be healthier than patients on traditional Medicare, with the result being that private insurers charge the government more than is necessary to meet these patients’ needs.
On Wednesday, Schakowsky said that the “crucial legislation” she joined Khanna and Pocan in introducing “will end deceptive marketing and ensure beneficiaries understand the difference between traditional Medicare and private insurance plans.”
“Seniors deserve transparency, accountability, and the full benefits they have earned,” she said.
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Wajahat Ali Mar 3, 2026 As Trump’s wars rage and income inequality soars, corporate Democrats are doubling down on crushing progressives ahead of the 2026 elections. The party’s establishment prioritizes donors over voters, leaving the left base frustrated and disillusioned. Joining me to break down what this means for the Democratic Party, its future, and the progressive movement is Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a key architect of grassroots progressive organizing. We discuss whether the party can be saved from its centrist chokehold or if it’s already too late to reclaim its soul. Listen in to hear what it will take for progressives to fight back, reshape the agenda, and challenge the broligarchs controlling both parties. https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/wa…
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Milk Club Trans Caucus Meeting Date: Tuesday, April 28 Time: 5-7 PM Location and Zoom Link: Meeting info available to members of the Milk Club Trans Caucus. Please reach out to trans@milkclub.org if you would like to join the Milk Club Trans Caucus.
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