“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
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United States’ Folarin Balogun fouls Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic resulting in a red card during the World Cup round of 32 soccer match between the United States and Bosnia Wednesday, July 1, 2026 in Santa Clara, Calif. (Jeff Chiu / AP)
SEATTLE (AP) — Images told the story of the United States’ World Cup downfall.
Christian Pulisic sprawled on the field in agony after hurting an ankle.
Matt Freese holding his hands on his head after his gaffe gifted a goal.
Chris Richards crumpling to the ground, his face pressed on the grass.
Mauricio Pochettino kicking a rack in front of the American bench, sending four water bottles flying.
American hopes for a deep World Cup run at home ended when Charles De Ketelaere scored twice and assisted on another goal, helping Belgium expose the U.S. defensive liabilities in a 4-1 win Monday night that earned a quarterfinal berth.
“It stinks,” Tyler Adams said. “This was a moment to have an opportunity to advance and really try and do something special. We fell short.”
The AP’s Jennifer King reports US World Cup dreams crashed down to earth in a decisive 4-1 defeat by Belgium.
While the U.S. was boosted by the presence of star forward Folarin Balogun, whose one-game red-card suspension was controversially lifted by FIFA, American defenders were at fault in a pair of first-half goals and Freese’s howler gave the Red Devils a third early in the second half.
Second-half substitute Romelu Lukaku added Belgium’s final goal in the third minute of stoppage time after Richards’ giveaway. The U.S. hadn’t allowed that many goals in a World Cup game since a 5-1 loss to Czechoslovakia in the Americans’ 1990 opener, when they returned to soccer’s biggest stage after a 40-year absence.
“A very bad day,” said Pochettino, the U.S. coach. “It’s not like you are in a rocket and you improve and you grow. … It’s not linear.”
This loss was a painful reckoning for a team that hoped to boost the sport but instead failed to shake a quarter-century of stagnation since 20-year-old Landon Donovan led the Americans to the 2002 quarterfinals. Since then, the U.S. has lost four times in the round of 16.
“Everyone had nerves, right, because we knew how much this meant for the whole country, not just our team,” said 21-year-old defender Alex Freeman, the youngest U.S. player.
Belgium knocked out the U.S. in the round of 16 for the second time in 12 years and extended its unbeaten streak to 18 games. The Red Devils play 2010 champion Spain on Friday at Inglewood, California, for a semifinal berth against France or Morocco.
“We showed that we’re ready and we want to perform,” captain Youri Tielemans said.
All six CONCACAF nations have been eliminated, with the three co-hosts falling in the round of 16.
Malik Tillman tied the score 1-1 midway through the first half when he became the first player since France’s Bernard Genghini in 1982 to have two free kick goals in a World Cup, but the Americans conceded less than a minute after the ensuing kickoff.
American star Christian Pulisic could only watch the end from the bench after injuring his right ankle when he hit Tielemans’ boot on a 52nd-minute shot attempt. Pulisic was replaced seven minutes later, finishing the tournament with no goals.
“I didn’t quite have the moments I was hoping to and to try to help us to really push and get over this next step of beating a really good team,” he said. “I’m disappointed with myself, of course, but I’m going to try and stay positive. I did a lot of good things and the team did, as well.”
After winning three World Cup games for the first time in this expanded 48-nation tournament, the U.S. lost its seventh straight match to Belgium. The Americans have dropped 11 of their last 12 games against European opponents, winning only their round of 32 match against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
A heralded generation led by Pulisic, Adams and Weston McKennie only partially accomplished their mission of lifting soccer’s stature closer to that of the NFL, MLB and the NBA.
“A goal was obviously to inspire people that the sport was growing in the U.S., which I think we saw. The support was unbelievable,” Adams said. “In this moment we let them down.”
De Ketelaere put Belgium ahead in the eighth minute and Tillman’s goal in the 31st energized a largely red-white-and-blue crowd of 66,925 at Lumen Field. De Ketelaere damped that and assisted on Hans Vanaken’s 57th-minute goal after Freese lost control of the ball in front of his net.
“Obviously disappointed for my involvement and error in judgment on the third goal,” Freese said.
Belgium, which didn’t start stars Jérémy Doku as and Kevin De Bruyne, pressed from the start and exposed a defense regarded as the Americans’ weak spot.
Dodi Lukébakio made a long diagonal pass to the opposite corner, leading to the opening goal. Leandro Troussard controlled the ball and his cross was blocked by Freeman and popped into the air. Freeman headed the ball into the penalty area and Timothy Castagne charged after it and hooked a centering pass around Richards. De Ketelaere split Antonee Robinson and Tim Ream, at 38 the oldest American ever in a World Cup, then with his right foot redirected the ball into an open net.
Pochettino held out his arms, as if to ask: What was going on?
Tillman scored after Brandon Mechele knocked down Balogun about 25 yards from goal. Tillman’s kick deflected off Vanaken’s head and deflected to the left of goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who had dived right.
Troussard got around Sergiño Dest for a cross and De Ketelaere outjumped Ream and headed the ball past Freese in the 33rd minute for his eighth international goal.
Belgium built a two-goal lead when Mechele lofted a long ball that Freese chested after two hops. Freese hesitated with a touch, then scrambled and kicked the ball off De Ketelaere. Vanaken one-timed a shot from 35 yards that deflected in off Ream.
Lukaku entered in the 67th minute and scored his 93rd international goal.
Pochettino replaced Gregg Berhalter after first-round elimination at the 2024 Copa America. His contract expires this summer and he hasn’t decided whether to stay through the 2030 World Cup.
Instead of focusing on Spain, Pochettino has a different near-term agenda.
“To rest a little bit, to think, to have conversation,” he said, “and then see what the decision is from the federation and from us.”
___
AP Sports Writer Andrew Destin and Associated Press writer Eugene Johnson contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump recently told religious leaders that his top priority was “to stop this horrible threat of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
Branding political opponents on the left as communists is a century-old American tradition.
From the Red Scare of the 1920s to the McCarthy era of the 1950s, labeling someone a “commie,” Marxist or “pinko” is a tried-and-true method of stirring nationalistic passions.
When 68 people were arrested at San Francisco City Hall in 1960 for trying to attend a congressional hearing on “un-American” activities, they were quickly vilified as communists.
“I only wish every American could have been in San Francisco and could have seen what I saw there,” the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond said of the protests that greeted the House Un-American Activities Committee.
“It reminded me of a bunch of howling wolves to see the communists and the communist led-people with thwarted minds, and misled people — college professors, students and others — being led by communists and being sucked into that movement.”
In fact, not one of the protesters arrested that day was a communist, nor were any convicted of crimes (among them was Albert Einstein’s granddaughter, Eveylyn, who — like many of the protesters — was a student at UC Berkeley).
Propaganda, however, does not require truth.
This past week, with his popularity at an all-time low, his party facing potentially devastating losses in November’s elections, and perhaps concern that his new term “Dumocrats” isn’t having much effect, President Donald Trump resurrected the “communism” attack in hopes of scaring voters about the Democratic Party.
Trump told religious leaders at the Faith and Freedom Coalition that his top priority was “to stop this horrible threat of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”
A few days later, he told reporters in the Oval Office that communism is the “biggest threat to our nation … maybe since our founding. That includes World War I, World War II, Sept. 11. It includes the Pearl Harbor attack.”
And where does the president see the red menace rising, posing a greater danger perhaps than the Civil War, the Great Depression or Covid-19?
It’s the election of social democrats such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, the latter of whom placed second in the Los Angeles mayoral race and will face incumbent Karen Bass in a November runoff.
“These are not social Dumocrats — these are hardcore, godless communists,” Trump said. “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. They use the word social democrat because its sounds so nice, but it’s really communism you’re talking about.”
Storied military base played a role in every major American conflict from the Civil War through Desert Storm before becoming a hugely popular national park
The Storefront Opportunity Grant Program is infusing commercial corridors with commerce and assisting proprietors with up to $100,000 in funding
Communism is an economic system in which the public, rather than private entities, owns all resources and the means of production. Communists favor a classless society, in which profit motives and other capitalist notions are replaced by communal ownership.
Social democrats are capitalists who call for regulating private ownership, distributing profits more equitably, and providing widespread access to education, housing and healthcare.
Mamdani has called for strict rent control and programs to expand home ownership. Social democrats in Congress, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have proposed a Green New Deal to rein in carbon emissions, not a government takeover of the energy sector.
The one political leader who has openly boasted about public ownership of private companies is none other than Trump. Earlier this year, he bragged about the U.S. government taking a 10 percent ownership share of chipmaker Intel in exchange for a subsidy to promote its products. He said the government was taking a “golden share” of U.S. Steel as part of Japanese firm Nippon Steel’s purchase of the company. He has talked about similar arrangements with OpenAI and Anthropic.
It’s not what Karl Marx had in mind, but it’s a lot closer to communism than what Democrats have proposed.
Trump might believe communism is evil, but — true to form — he boasts that if he chose to become a communist, he’d be very good at it.
“I’ll be honest — I think I’d be the greatest communist in history” he said last week. “It would be so easy.”
Why? Because it involves making false promises, he said, such as promising free rent and free food — not to be confused with his pledges to cut energy bills in half or end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours.
And just in case the label has lost any of its sting in the 100 years since the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin took control of Russia, Trump spelled out in easy-to-understand terms what happens if such candidates win.
“Communism is very easy to sell, but you’ll start living in squalor,” Trump said. “There will be no food; there will be no housing; there will be no military; there will be no law and order. There will be nothing. You’ll be a third world [nation] in every way, and everyone will suffer or die.’
In 1948, as Senator Joseph McCarthy was building momentum, President Harry Truman warned that reckless cries of “communism” threatened the country more than they protected it.
“There is nothing that the communists would like better than to weaken the liberal programs that are our shields against communism,” Truman said.
Marc Sandalow has been writing about California politics from Washington, D.C., for more than 30 years.
Belgium have been granted the right to appeal FIFA’s decision to overturn US striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension, The Athletic reported on Monday, which reportedly took place after an intervention from US President Donald Trump.
Balogun had been slated to miss Monday’s round of 16 match after being issued a direct red card, which carried an automatic one-match suspension. However, FIFA announced on Sunday that the one-game ban had been suspended.
The ruling triggered widespread debate as well as a statement from the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) that said it was exploring “all potential options”.
According to The Athletic, the RBFA formally wrote to FIFA to appeal the matter, which was granted. The RBFA and US Soccer were reportedly asked to make submissions by 5am PT – exactly 12 hours before the scheduled start of the match at Seattle Stadium.
A member of the FIFA appeals committee has been selected to hear the case, according to the report. The member is not associated with a federation in either UEFA or CONCAFAF.
Belgium have not been guaranteed that a ruling will be made before Monday’s match.
Balogun is currently eligible to play and is expected to start. The 25-year-old has a team-best three goals during this World Cup, including what turned out to be the game-winning goal against Bosnia and Herzegovina last Wednesday.
However, Balogun was later issued a red card following a VAR review. He was slated to have to sit out against Belgium until Sunday’s surprising ruling by FIFA.
Trump praised the decision in a Truth Social post, writing, “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!”
A red card or suspension officially cannot be appealed. FIFA, however, posted this message to its website Sunday about its use of the rule book in the case: “By operation of Article 27 FDC, the implementation of the automatic match suspension for USA player Folarin Balogun is suspended for a probationary period of one (1) year.”
US Soccer issued its own statement in response to the action: “We accept the decision of the Disciplinary Committee and are pleased that Folarin Balogun is eligible to complete tomorrow.
“Our full attention is focused on the Round of 16 match against Belgium in Seattle, and we look forward to the continued support of our amazing fans.”
The RBFA countered with a lengthy statement from its football federation decrying FIFA’s decision and citing other pieces of the disciplinary code and competition regulations that made red-card decisions sound final.
“In order to safeguard the legitimate rights of all participating teams and to protect the fundamental principles of fair play in our sport, both at this FIFA World Cup and at future editions of the tournament,” the statement concluded, “the RBFA is investigating all potential options.”
US team’s Folarin Balogun free to play after Trump lobbies FIFA to remove ban
Belgium coach Rudi Garcia began his pre-match press conference Sunday afternoon by declaring he didn’t know the fifth of July had turned into April Fool’s Day.
“A lot of our thoughts and opinions are in the release,” Garcia said. “We’re not defending the national team or the federation, we are defending football.”
European soccer body UEFA criticized FIFA for an “incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision”, saying in a statement that FIFA had “crossed a red line”.
“Sometimes rules are open to interpretation. In this case not,” UEFA said, adding, “the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined.”
Before the start of the World Cup last month, Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo faced a three-match suspension, with the final two potentially keeping him out of group-stage matches. Instead, he sat one match, with the other two suspended and converted to a one-year probation period.
US coach Mauricio Pochettino defended FIFA’s decision to suspend Balogun’s ban.
“For me, there isn’t much debate here, though I do understand Belgium’s perspective and Rudi’s point of view,” Pochettino told reporters Sunday. “I understand why people conflate issues – people always do, because there’s often an agenda to mix things up – but in this case, I don’t think it’s right.”
“If anyone was harmed in this whole situation, it was the United States. Can anyone justify the idea that we weren’t punished? I mean, playing 30 or 35 minutes a man down in a World Cup knockout match? It’s not as if we’re benefiting. No, no. There’s no extraordinary gain we’re getting out of all this. I mean, ultimately, we aren’t victims, but we aren’t the villains of this story either.”
The New York City Democratic Socialists of America hold a Tax the Rich rally in Manhattan on Nov. 16, 2025. Photo: Neil Constantine/NurPhoto via Associated Press
As democratic socialists toppled establishment favorites this midterm cycle, the old guard of the Democratic Party picked up a preferred cudgel against insurgents: These people were propped up by white, urban, coastal, educated electorates — not the ones the Democrats were trying to reach, and certainly not the working class.
It’s true that the four victorious socialists running for Congress — Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York City, and Melat Kiros in Denver — won in major cities where progressive politics are more likely to be popular than in the country’s many more rural, poorer, and less educated districts. But before this cycle’s big surge, the Democratic Socialists of America had spent the past decade backing and recruiting candidates in down-ballot races across the U.S., multiplying the number of people in office by a figure of eight and electing mayors, city councilors, state lawmakers, and other local officials in 39 states.
“Everybody is feeling the crunch. Everybody is deeply concerned for their families, for their security,” said Becky Cooper, campaign manager to Francesca Hong, a Wisconsin state representative and formidable DSA candidate for governor. “That transcends political party, transcends ages, and it transcends geography. This is not just a coastal elites thing.”
Despite the narrative that the socialist model only works among electorates dominated by young, white, coastal elites, the DSA, the largest socialist organization in the U.S., is decentralized and operates chapters in a majority of states. Its members currently hold office in states like Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee. Many of those candidates have been elected to local offices even as far-right campaigns to take over bodies like school boards have dominated in recent years. Since 2018, 305 DSA-backed lawmakers have won their races. Democratic socialists won state legislative primaries this season in Georgia and Kentucky, and they’re on the ballot in upcoming primary races in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where Hong has polled first or second in recent months in a tight gubernatorial primary.
In order to win, they’ve built what some might call a machine, joining forces with more mainstreamprogressive organizations to marshal resources against a well-financed political establishment that buried candidates on the left in 2024.
Their success has sent the Democratic establishment into a frenzy. Dismissing the wins in his backyard, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the socialist victories in New York were concentrated in “higher-income districts” with an “outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East.”
But while Valdez and Avila Chevalier won a majority of voters in areas dominated by the young, wealthy, and college-educated, Avila Chevalier beat longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat among Black voters, while Valdez dominated over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso among majority-Hispanic precincts — suggesting the socialism-curious share of the electorate is more complex than its critics might make it seem.
It’s “a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”
“People are going to keep trying to move the goalposts to pretend like this isn’t a movement sweeping the nation,” said democratic socialist New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport, pointing to another DSA member who won a primary upstate in Buffalo. “It’s an attack line that will keep coming again and again, a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”
According to Cooper, Democratic leaders hold responsibility for the surging popularity of the socialist brand.
“The socialist label is more popular than the Democratic label because people are recognizing that they’ve been fed a bill of lies through capitalism,” she said.
Democratic socialists looking to take over the governor’s mansion in Wisconsin say their message isn’t contingent on geography, race, or class.
“You’ve had throughout history political leaders use socialist policies without actually calling it socialism,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Darrin Madison, the first Black socialist elected in the state. He pointed to policies like the New Deal, the eight-hour workday, and Social Security. “Building systems of mutual aid, that’s a form of socialism,” Madison said.
Wisconsin’s long history of socialist politics has enjoyed a revival in recent years. Milwaukee sent the first socialist to the House in 1910 and elected three socialist mayors over the next half century, but the state’s socialist caucus died out in the early 1930s — after passing close to 300 bills in the preceding decade. Frank Zeidler, elected Milwaukee mayor in 1948, was the last socialist elected in the city until 2020, when voters elected Ryan Clancy to the County Board of Supervisors. Two years later, Madison and Clancy won election to the state Assembly; the first thing the pair did after taking their oaths of office was to found the Socialist Caucus, which had died out in the 1930s. The caucus doubled in size last year to four members, adding Hong and state Rep. Christian Phelps.
Socialists resuscitated their Wisconsin roots at a time when Democrats had earned a reputation for shirking their responsibilities at every level of Wisconsin’s government. After Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2016 Democratic primary, its general election voters swung toward Donald Trump — clinching his first presidency. Until current Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers was elected in 2018, the state was under full Republican control.
“The last time that Wisconsin had a [Democratic] trifecta was 16 years ago now,” Clancy told The Intercept. After Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle did not seek reelection, the Democratic candidate lost the 2011 governor’s race to Republican Scott Walker, and the GOP flipped both state legislative chambers. “The Democrats at the time squandered that opportunity, and they really failed to deliver for the state.”
Those failures, Clancy said, included not codifying abortion rights ahead of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and not raising the minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour, when they had the votes to do so. “They didn’t even bring it up for a vote because they feared what that would mean for their large-dollar donors,” Clancy said.
Cooper said Hong’s campaign is hearing from voters who are increasingly blaming the capitalist system for the problems they see around them. In response, the campaign is talking about what it says is the true definition of socialism, Cooper said: “Taking care of our neighbors, taking care of people’s economic needs.”
“They’re waking up to the fact that it is capitalism at the heart of these issues. It is people profiting off of our neighbors being sick, or not being able to afford groceries or not being able to afford their credit card bills, when we see that people are becoming billionaires while we’re suffering and literally just trying to feed our families,” she said.
Hong’s performance in recent polling shows that socialist policies are resonating with voters, Madison said.
“When folks say this is a reflection of the elites and folks from academia and young folks in college, that does a disservice to community members and their abilities to understand the circumstances that they are in and the ways in which parties have exploited their pain,” he said.
“It doesn’t speak to the reality that folks are facing.”
Nearly 2,000 miles southwest of Wisconsin’s capitol, the city of Los Angeles has all the markers of a coastal haven for democratic socialist politics to thrive: a large working class, high racial diversity, a significant immigrant population with a rich history of progressive organizing, all existing alongside pockets of wealthier, whiter, college educated residents who lean left. The city has its own storied history of socialism and nearly elected a socialist mayor in the early 1900s, riding a wave of labor and working-class support and drawing on the socialist model of Milwaukee.
Since 2020, the LA DSA chapter has gained a foothold in City Council with challenges to the Democratic establishment. When Nithya Raman unseated an incumbent that year with the backing of DSA LA, the victory sent shockwaves throughout an LA establishment — then the DSA repeated the feat three times in subsequent cycles.
Now, Raman has a chance to unseat incumbent Democratic mayor Karen Bass in November, tempting comparisons that suggest the city is on the cusp of its own wave of governmental transformation akin to New York under democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Yet DSA LA has struggled to break out of its main stronghold of the city’s east and northeast sides, into some of the city’s power centers, such as South LA, which has majority Black, Latino, and working-class precincts.
“If we’re serious about building power in the areas where we want to build power, then the process has to begin much earlier than a candidate coming to DSA” for an endorsement, said DSA LA co-chair Leslie Chang. She acknowledged the need to break out of LA’s own “commie corridor,” where many DSA members live.
Like in New York, DSA LA has had to battle accusations that its candidates only draw support from white, college-educated voters, despite winning in multiple districts with majority-Latino residents. This reality played out in two city council races on LA’s west and south sides, where one DSA candidate lost outright and the other made it to the runoff — but trailing the establishment pick by 13 percentage points.
Chang, who spent a week in New York knocking on doors and phone-banking for that socialist slate, said the LA chapter needs to follow New York’s lead to train and identify “homegrown” candidates within the organization.
“We need multi-year power building plans for a lot of the things that we want to achieve,” Chang said. “We have to commit to working on projects, like non-electoral campaigns in districts, to become better embedded in that community that we want to represent.”
While DSA found success in its first citywide race when its endorsed city attorney candidate, Marissa Roy, locked out the incumbent from the top two and made it to a November runoff, its members were split over whether to back Raman for mayor or long-shot candidate Rae Huang. Its city council members endorsed Bass. Now, DSA LA’s larger membership has to weigh whether to endorse Raman in November’s runoff as she faces lingering mistrust among the organization and LA’s left after she diverged from her DSA colleagues on key housing issues and on Palestine and Israel. If she does want to unlock the group’s army of canvassing volunteers, Raman would need to collect at least 50 signatures from DSA members, sit for an interview with its electoral politics committee, and fill out a questionnaire that would likely include policy commitments important to the group.
Still, recent socialist victories have had a reverberating effect on the nation’s second largest city. The LA chapter saw bumps in membership after Mamdani’s election last year and another after New York’s congressional primaries, adding 70 new members to its total of 5,000. Chang said the wins in New York have also energized the chapter to begin building toward electing members to the California State Legislature, where only one current DSA member from the Silicon Valley is serving. Elsewhere in California, Mai Vang, endorsed by the Sacramento DSA chapter, is headed to a runoff after leading longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui; the previous person who held the seat was Matsui’s husband Bob.
“When New York wins, LA wins,” said Sean Wakasa, a DSA LA co-chair with Chang, also mentioning the wins in Philadelphia and Denver. “We’re building politics that working-class people can see themselves in, and it’s built around addressing universal issues around affordability around the ability for people to work.”
DSA might bristle at the suggestion that it’s becoming a political machine. The group prides itself on getting buy-in from its members before taking a position on policy issues and having a painstakingly democratic structure — not the top-down politics they say has led to the downfall of the Democratic Party.
But DSA is playing the game. It’s one group in a coalition of lefty organizations whose chapters have beefed up their coordination this cycle to power socialist and progressive candidates.
In all four of its congressional primary wins so far this cycle, DSA chapters have teamed up with Justice Democrats, the left insurgent group that rose to prominence in 2018 when it helped get the first two DSA members of Congress elected — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — but suffered last cycle when two of its newer incumbents, Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, were ousted by AIPAC-backed challengers. Now, joining forces with DSA chapters and Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate group that has expanded its ambit to oppose war and authoritarianism, Justice Democrats is receiving mea culpas for previous death knells — as JD spokesperson Usamah Andrabi told The Intercept when Kiros won: “We’re just having an amazing fucking cycle.”
Groups on the left have also massively increased their spending in this year’s primaries after losing candidates last cycle who faced tens of millions of dollars in attacks from deep-pocketed super PACs and dark-money groups. Several pro-Palestine PACs are working or spending on primaries for the first time this cycle. The super PAC American Priorities, funded by Mamdani donors, has spent more than $4 million so far. Those investments have helped shift the dynamics in congressional races even in the face of similar outside spending against the left.
“Justice Democrats has the expertise to run federal challenger primaries — embedding in campaigns as staff and advisers, managing budgets, recruiting and training candidates, coordinating donors and leading independent expenditure programs,” Andrabi told The Intercept. “Combining that expertise with local DSA’s immense field and organizing power, which is unmatched in cities like NYC, delivers these monumental victories.
The national groups that helped power Kiros, Valdez, Avila Chevalier, and Rabb’s congressional campaigns don’t work on state-level races. But the DSA’s local Wisconsin chapters and another three campus chapters of the Young Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed Hong and are helping to boost her campaign by canvassing, fundraising, holding events, and calling voters. A new DSA chapter for Central Wisconsin formed last week and is also expected to endorse her.
Still, Hong’s campaign expects to face a surge in outside spending against her. “We know that super PAC money is going to come in, especially with Fran’s stance on data centers. We know AI money is going to come in,” said Cooper, Hong’s campaign manager. She also said she expects to face money from the pro-Israel lobby, though its flagship national group does not spend on state races.
“We know that we are never going to raise the most money.”
“That doesn’t change our message or our work. We know that we are never going to raise the most money. We know that we’re not going to have a ton of independent expenditures coming in to rescue us. We have 6,000 volunteers on the ground,” she said. The weekend after the New York primaries, the campaign knocked 10,000 doors in a day and a half. “That is how we will offset paid media and the spending and all those kinds of things, is getting people out to have real conversations.”
In addition to outside spending, Cooper said the current pearl-clutching around the rise of democratic socialist candidates was to be expected.
“Any time within the larger pendulum swings, there’s smaller ones as well.”
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Join our first Immigrant Justice Summer virtual training call THIS Thursday, July 9 to learn how to respond when ICE surges in your community (8pm ET/5pm PT). Across the country, communities are getting organized to respond to ICE’s cruelty — and it’s working. ICE is already offloading 7 of the 11 warehouses they bought to turn into concentration camps, but with its recent $70 billion cash infusion, our fight isn’t over. This summer’s five-part virtual training series will give you the tools you need to respond to ICE surges with your neighbors in a safe, immigrant-aligned way.
Email your Members of Congress and urge them to reject right-wing plans to deepen US-Israeli military entanglement and insulate the Netanyahu government from accountability. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) moves through Congress each year, giving lawmakers an opportunity to sneak in other policies that would not typically pass on their own. This year, Congress is being asked to consider provisions that would enable even deeper entrenchment of the Trump-Netanyahu military relationship, while shielding it from typical congressional oversight — even as Netanyahu sabotages ceasefire efforts and continues gross human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza. This is bad policy that should not be passed into law.
If you have a Democratic senator, call and urge them to OPPOSE a toothless CLARITY ACT, and push for real crypto regulation instead. Financial disclosures show that Trump has profited from his crypto coins to the tune of a billion dollars since leaving office. It’s some of the most startling corruption in presidential history — but somehow Congress is advancing a “crypto regulation” bill that would not address it — or address other critical consumer protection and corruption issues around cryptocurrency. 78 House Dems helped pass the CLARITY Act last year — our senators can’t make the same mistake.
The wealthy and powerful few have dominated the masses throughout most of human history. This is starkly visible now more than ever—today, the gulf between oligarchs and the average citizen is larger than any gap that existed during European serfdom or the slave society of Imperial Rome. We have arrived at the most blatant version of oligarchy that most modern states have endured, with politicians bought and paid for across the political spectrum.
The strange thing we aren’t in open revolt against this system. In fact, we keep voting to prop it up. Why?
In The Blind Spot, political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters delivers an urgent, incisive account of how we reached this era of in-your-face oligarchy, exposing how modern democracy was developed to protect the interests of the ultra-rich. By tracing the evolution of oligarchy across the globe and through modern history, he demonstrates how the rule of the wealthy isn’t just a flaw in our democracy, it has been built into its very foundations. Now, in an extraordinary paradox, we exist in a state of “participatory inequality”: a world in which 99.99% of us participate openly and freely—democratically, even—in our own ongoing exclusion and disenfranchisement.
But powerful change can begin when we have a clear understanding of where we are, and where we deserve to be. As well as shining a light just how bad our political reality has become, The Blind Spot introduces bold ideas for how we might shift the balance of power. While the rich and powerful do not cede power quietly, this period of shocking inequality is, Winters shows, an opportunity for transformation.
Jeffrey Alan Winters is an American political scientist at Northwestern University, specialising in the study of oligarchy. He has written extensively on Indonesia and on oligarchy in the United States. His 2011 book Oligarchy was the 2012 winner of the American Political Science Association’s Luebbert Award for the Best Book in Comparative politics.
In the mythology of history, 1776 belongs to Philadelphia: declarations, rebellion and the birth of the United States. Yet on the far edge of a continent the revolutionaries hadn’t fully imagined, another founding was quietly unfolding that same year.
While Thomas Jefferson drafted ideals of liberty and self-government in the East, Spanish conquistadors and Franciscan missionaries were establishing a tiny outpost beside one of the world’s greatest natural harbors. That settlement would become San Francisco.
The coincidence is more than historical trivia. It is a revealing dual narrative about the American experiment itself: one founding devoted to principles, the other to possibility.
The United States was born from an argument about freedom. San Francisco was born from geography, ambition and grit. Together, they tell the story of a nation forever oscillating between ideals and reinvention.
In 1776, the future San Francisco — located on the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone people — was mainly known for windblown dunes and rolling hills.
Then, Spain — worried about Russian and British encroachment on the Pacific coast — moved to secure Alta California. That summer, colonists established the Presidio of San Francisco and Mision San Francisco de Asis, today better known as Mission Dolores.
Mere days before the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence, Juan Bautista de Anza planted a cross in the ground establishing the Presidio on the bluffs above the Pacific. The contrast between the two foundings could not have been sharper.
The American Revolution announced itself with soaring language about equality and liberty. San Francisco’s founding emerged from empire. One was loudly ideological; the other deeply pragmatic — but over the centuries, San Francisco would evolve into perhaps the most vivid expression of the very ideals articulated in Philadelphia.
For most of its early life, San Francisco remained obscure. No one could have predicted that this remote village would one day become one of the most influential cities on Earth. Then came 1848.
The discovery of gold transformed San Francisco almost overnight from a sleepy port into a global magnet for ambition, becoming — in a matter of years — the most cosmopolitan place west of New York.
The California Gold Rush did more than enrich prospectors. It created a civic culture built around reinvention. In older societies, identity often depended on class, ancestry or inherited status. In San Francisco, identity became fluid. Here, a laborer could become a merchant, a refugee could become a restaurateur, and an immigrant could become a titan of industry.
The City rewarded audacity more than pedigree. That ethos still defines San Francisco today.
The rest of America often imagines San Francisco as a place of contradictions: radical and wealthy, bohemian and corporate, idealistic and relentlessly ambitious. But beneath these polarities lies a coherent civic philosophy.
San Francisco has long believed that talent matters more than origins and that the future belongs to those willing to invent it. That is the deeper connection between the two foundings of 1776.
The founders of the United States envisioned a society in which individuals were not permanently trapped by aristocracy or inherited hierarchy. Their vision was incomplete and deeply flawed in practice, especially in a nation still burdened by slavery and exclusion.
But the democratic aspiration was revolutionary: Ordinary people could shape their own destinies. San Francisco became one of the ultimate realizations of that aspiration.
The City’s history is a procession of outsiders arriving with little and building something transformative. Chinese railroad workers and merchants helped define its commercial and cultural identity despite fierce discrimination. LGBTQ communities found refuge and political power in San Francisco decades before much of America accepted them. Artists, activists and entrepreneurs repeatedly turned our home into a laboratory for social and technological change.
And then came Silicon Valley.
Though the region geographically exists outside the city limits, the Bay Area spawned a technological revolution over the 20th century that cemented San Francisco’s place in the global imagination as the cradle of innovation. The personal computer, the internet economy, social media, artificial intelligence and venture capital culture all carry the unmistakable imprint of San Francisco’s frontier mentality.
This place has always attracted people who believe the world can be remade.
The Storefront Opportunity Grant Program is infusing commercial corridors with commerce and assisting proprietors with up to $100,000 in funding
From prospectors searching riverbeds for precious metal to engineers in laboratories searching for semiconductor breakthroughs to today’s founders exploring frontiers in AI, biotech, climate technology and space exploration, the tools have changed but the underlying impulse remains strikingly similar: Come west; start over; build the future.
That is why San Francisco occupies such a singular place in popular imagination.
To many around the world, New York represents power, Los Angeles represents fame and Washington, D.C., represents authority. San Francisco represents possibility. Its steep hills and Victorian houses are only part of the iconography. Our home symbolizes a belief that new ideas can overturn old systems.
But today, San Francisco represents something more urgent than possibility. It represents defiance.
The ideals that animated 1776 — that all people are created equal, that liberty is not a privilege of the powerful, that government exists to serve its citizens rather than to subjugate them — these are not abstract principles safely preserved behind museum glass. They are living commitments, and they are under pressure.
Across the country and in the halls of national power, forces have emerged that would concentrate wealth and authority in fewer hands, that would use the machinery of government to punish dissent, that would cast immigrants as threats and vulnerable communities as burdens, and that would replace the expansive promise of American democracy with a narrower, harder vision of who belongs and who matters.
San Francisco has answered that pressure not with resignation, but with resolve.
When federal policies have targeted immigrant communities, San Francisco has reaffirmed its commitment to being a sanctuary city, insisting that human dignity does not depend on documentation.
When LGBTQ rights have faced legal assault, San Francisco has stood as a place where queer people do not merely survive but lead, govern and thrive.
When the social safety net has been frayed by ideology and indifference, San Francisco has continued to invest in housing, mental health, public health and the radical proposition that a city’s worth is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable residents, not its most powerful.
These commitments are not without struggle. San Francisco is not a finished city or a perfect one. It wrestles daily with inequality, with the displacement of longtime residents, with the unresolved tension between its progressive ideals and the enormous private wealth generated within its borders.
But its willingness to wrestle openly with those tensions is itself a democratic act.
What is emerging now is something the City’s founders could not have anticipated but might have recognized: San Francisco stepping into a role not merely as an American city, but as a global symbol of what humane, democratic governance can look like when it refuses to surrender its values.
Cities around the world watch San Francisco not just for its technology or its culture, but for its example. They watch to see whether a major city can protect the marginalized while remaining open to the world, whether it can hold fast to civil liberties while confronting deep inequality, whether it can say to immigrants and refugees, to artists and dissidents, to people who have been turned away elsewhere: You are welcome here, and your presence makes us stronger.
In this moment, that message is not merely civic pride. It is a moral stance.
The United States was founded on the audacious proposition that human beings could govern themselves, that no person was born to rule and no person was born to be ruled. Throughout American history, every generation has been asked to decide whether that proposition holds.
San Francisco has consistently answered that question with a stubborn, imperfect and living yes.
Two foundings, one nation — and one city fighting for the soul of both.
In Philadelphia, America declared its ideals. On the shores of San Francisco Bay, a city grew that has never stopped insisting those ideals must be honored in practice, not just in principle — that freedom is not merely a word to be celebrated, but a standard to be met, a promise to be kept and, when necessary, a flame to be carried forward against the wind.
A young visitor shields themself from the sun at the Great American State Fair during Fourth of July celebrations on the National Mall on July 4, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
“How we confront the climate crisis will determine a lot about the next 250 years of American history, including if we make it that long,” one climate advocate said. “The revolution we need today is the clean energy revolution.”
The US reliance on and promotion of fossil fuels is interfering with its ability to celebrate its 250th birthday, as several July 4 events were canceled due to a dangerous, record-breaking heatwave in the Central and Eastern US that scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” without the climate emergency.
As millions of people sweltered under heat alerts, extreme heat and humidity led to the cancellation of both Washington, DC and Philadelphia’s Independence Day parades. Nearly 30 other events in states including Alabama, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia were modified, postponed, or canceled, according to USA Today.
“The US having to cancel major 4th of July celebrations because of extreme heat is almost too spot on as a metaphor for the country’s failure to combat global warming,” Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn told Common Dreams. “How we confront the climate crisis will determine a lot about the next 250 years of American history, including if we make it that long. The revolution we need today is the clean energy revolution so we can finally declare our independence from fossil fuels.”
Temperature records were tied or broken in 22 locations on Thursday and 17 on Friday, according to CNN, with DC breaking a 120-year record on both days with temperatures above 102°F.
The heat forced the temporary closure Friday afternoon of the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, and seven attendees required “advanced life support,” probably due to heat exposure, according to CNN.
Matt Rein, the Democratic National Committee’s influencer and creative partnerships director, reported from the state fair on Saturday that local emergency workers said guests were “dropping like flies” due to the heat.
Meanwhile, one group who tried to draw attention to the climate emergency at a July 4 event was evicted for its efforts by the US Coast Guard, as the Times Union reported. The nonprofit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater had attempted to join Saturday’s Sail4th 250 parade of tall ships to New York Harbor when its sailboat was removed by the guard. The Coast Guard later said it was due to banners the boat was displaying reading, “Save the Clean Water Act” and “Indigenous rights, racial justice, climate solutions,” despite the fact that the group had the event organizer’s permission to participate.
A sailboat, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, was removed from the Sail4th 250 Parade of Ships for displaying banners about climate justice and clean water.
The heat dome that has settled over the Central and Eastern US over the July 4 weekend is so dangerous in part because it includes high humidity along with high heat, with heat indexes of 105-115°F expected in some places. This corresponds with a Wet Bulb Global Temperature (WBGT)—a measurement that accounts for heat, humidity, and air flow—of 28-30°C, at which point it is dangerous for even healthy people to be physically active outdoors. According to World Weather Attribution, the current heatwave broke regional records for WBGT.
“It is still a relatively rare event even in today’s climate, that has warmed by 1.4°C due to the burning of fossil fuels. In a 1.4°C cooler climate, WBGTs as high as those forecast in early July 2026 would have been so extreme as to be virtually impossible,” the group wrote on Friday.
Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, told CNN, “When a historic 4th of July celebration is disrupted, and World Cup matches are played in conditions that are unsafe for players and fans, it shouldn’t take another scientific study to wake people up.”
Otto continued, “Climate change is here, it’s already impacting the things we enjoy in our everyday lives, and it will continue to get worse the longer we drag out the inevitable transition to net zero emissions.”
Climate scientist and communicator Katharine Hayhoe encouraged people to use this opportunity to talk about the climate emergency to their friends and family:
Heatwaves aren’t new. But I’m a climate scientist, and I can tell you heatwaves like this are virtually impossible without fossil fuel pollution. Not only that, but when extreme weather hits, research shows that connecting it to climate change helps people understand why it matters. And you know who the most trusted people to do that are? Not scientists. You! Yes, people we know are the most effective messengers to have these conversations. So if you’re worried about what’s happening and how extreme heat puts us at risk—talk about it!
“Trump’s promotion of coal burning and cancellation of wind turbines make him the Benedict Arnold of America’s current struggle, not its George Washington.”
Just two days before the nation’s birthday, Energy Secretary and fracking CEO Chris Wright bragged on social media that the Trump administration would end subsidies for new wind and solar on July 4.
Climate scientist Rebekah Jones shot back: “During a record heatwave, no less. Fossil fuel industries have received $549 BILLION in direct subsidies, and $7 TRILLION in tax benefits. They average $30 billion per year in upfront taxpayer money. All of renewable energy recieved $400 million per year from 1994-2009.”
Tennessee state Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-20) also called out the move: “Talk about ‘slugs for salt’—it’s 119 degree heat index in the Eastern US this week—these guys are all in on the rapture.”
In a July 4 post, scholar Juan Cole argued that President Donald Trump’s climate policies were tantamount to treason.
“Since 2018, some 13,000 Americans have died from heat,” he said. “Trump’s promotion of coal burning and cancellation of wind turbines make him the Benedict Arnold of America’s current struggle, not its George Washington.”
Cole pointed out that the current heatwave was part of a pattern of hotter summers in the nation’s capital due to the climate emergency, noting that the last decade was its hottest on record.
He continued:
The bad news is that this is only the beginning. Summers in the capital are going to be more dangerous every decade unless we halt dangerous carbon emissions.
The average summer temperature in DC could be 97°F in the 2080s if we go on farting out CO2 at our current rate. Humidity will also increase, as the Atlantic heats up and puts more water vapor in the atmosphere. The ability of the atmosphere to hold water vapor increases 7% with every 1°C increase in temperature.
That combined with more frequent storms and sea-level rise opens up the possiblity that DC “will be unlivable in the summers within the lifetime of my younger readers,” he wrote.
“Trump is helping climate change accomplish what British military might could not, putting in question the future of America in places like Washington, DC and Baltimore, at least in the summers,” Cole said.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A commuter sits as members of the group Patriot Front ride the metro on the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence on the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2026. REUTERS/Cheney Orr TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY (REUTERS)
U.S. President Donald Trump sits at his desk, behind a hat that reads “America is back” at the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 3, 2026. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Eighteen states have turned their complete voter files over to the Trump Justice Department, including the driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers of every registered voter in them. That count comes from Protect Democracy, which names all eighteen; Texas, Florida, and Ohio are among them. Together those eighteen states have 148 US House seats, 36 US Senate seats, and 184 electoral college votes, roughly two thirds of what it takes to control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. The question in the headline has an answer, and it is fewer than eighteen.
Since early 2025, the Trump administration has been trying to take control of voter rolls, mail ballots, and registration rules away from the states and hand it to the federal executive branch.
A March 2025 executive order demanded changes to state voting procedures and ordered federal election money withheld from states that refused. Courts blocked parts of it, and on June 24, 2026, a federal judge permanently barred key provisions. The Justice Department demanded voter registration data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers. The Department of Homeland Security rebuilt a database called SAVE so states could submit their voter rolls to it for citizenship checks.
A second executive order, issued March 31, 2026, ordered federal agencies to build lists of United States citizens and send them to the states before every election, ordered the Postal Service to create a list of approved mail voters, and told the Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots from anyone not on that list.
DHS has also written new grant conditions, obtained by CNN and expected to go out to the states, that would make states change their election procedures and run their full voter rolls through SAVE to receive homeland security grants from a program worth more than one billion dollars this fiscal year. States that refuse would lose 20 percent of the money. As of this writing DHS has not formally announced the conditions. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said that cutting the funds of refusing states “endangers American lives and democracy itself.”
Most states said no. The Justice Department answered with 31 federal lawsuits against 30 states plus Washington DC to force the data handover, and so far no court, trial or appellate, has ruled in the department’s favor. On June 22, a federal judge ruled that the rebuilt SAVE system broke three federal laws: the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. That judge, Sparkle Sooknanan, wrote that the federal government had “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens.” Two days later, the Sixth Circuit became the first appeals court to rule on the data lawsuits, upholding the dismissal of the case against Michigan. And on June 25, a federal judge in Boston blocked the core of the mail voting order for the November 2026 election in a lawsuit brought by 23 Democratic-led states and DC. The judge, Indira Talwani, wrote that “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”
News stories about these rulings count the states that refused and the rulings the administration lost. Every one of those stories is accurate. They still measure the wrong thing, because a count of refusing states only means something if each state’s choice stays inside that state’s borders. It does not, for two reasons.
The first reason: once voter data leaves a state, the federal government keeps it, and every new state adds to the same federal database. That database works as soon as one state hands over its records, no matter how many others refuse.
Twelve of the eighteen had handed over complete files, driver’s license and Social Security numbers included, by early April; the other six complied partly or later. Texas alone accounts for a large share of the affected voters: it signed an agreement with DHS in March 2025 and ran its more than 18 million registered voters through SAVE. Separately, the DHS agency that handles citizenship began building a registry that combines its own records with data from the Social Security Administration and the State Department.
The Justice Department also asked states to sign a confidential agreement along with the data handover. Under its reported terms, a state that signs agrees to remove any voter the department flags as ineligible within 45 days. Two states signed: Alaska and Texas. Mississippi, South Dakota, and Tennessee handed over their rolls but refused to sign. A state that signs has given the federal executive branch ongoing control of its voter roll.
A court ruling issued after a transfer does not bring the data back. On May 12, 2026, the Office of Legal Counsel issued a written opinion saying federal law lets the Attorney General force states to produce their voter lists and share them with DHS. Losing individual court cases does not erase that opinion.
The second reason is geography. Control of the House and Senate will be decided in a small number of competitive districts and states, and several cooperating states hold those races, including Texas, Ohio, Florida, Iowa, and North Carolina. At least 25 states have run their rolls through SAVE since April 2025, 60 million registrations in a year, plus another 7.4 million from North Carolina, where Republicans control the state election board.
The court wins protect mostly the governments that sued. The June 25 injunction covers the 23 suing states and DC, and the administration told the courts this week that it is moving ahead with the system in the remaining states. Postmaster General David Steiner told the Senate on June 24 that under the proposed rule the Postal Service would refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that do not send their voter lists to the federal government. A voter in Houston or Columbus gets nothing from the injunction, because that voter’s state government joined the federal programs instead of fighting them. One ruling reaches further: in a separate case brought by the NAACP, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan found the plan to deliver ballots only to preapproved voters broke a 2021 agreement with the Postal Service, and his ruling applies nationwide. That ruling protects ballot delivery. It does not touch the data collection, the purge agreements, or the state purge laws. So the court protection concentrates in states whose governments already refused to cooperate. In the cooperating states that hold the races deciding control of Congress, only the ballot delivery ruling applies.
The 60 million registration checks flagged about 24,000 possible noncitizens, and officials also flagged several hundred thousand registrations of people who may have died. Those totals only show how many people the government has flagged so far. It can flag as many as it chooses, and no one has to prove a flagged voter is ineligible before the registration is canceled; the voter has to prove they are eligible. That arrangement is a devastatingly powerful voter disenfranchisement tool.
In Texas, flagged voters got a letter, and if the county heard nothing within 30 days, the registration was canceled; some who did answer turned out to be citizens. A new Ohio law makes local election boards promptly cancel the registrations of people the secretary of state flags as noncitizens in checks he must run at least monthly. That secretary, Frank LaRose, defends the law on the ground that flagged voters can “immediately restore their registration status” by showing proof of citizenship.
The system also discourages people from registering at all, separate from the cancellations. A federal official confirmed that people flagged by SAVE are referred to DHS for possible criminal investigation, and the judge who reviewed the system wrote that a centralized federal database like this would discourage registration because citizens could fear misuse of their personal information. In races decided by hundreds or a few thousand votes, losing voters from only one side, and mostly from one party, can change the result even when the national numbers stay small.
The administration has also arranged its litigation so that losing in court still produces something useful. After losing the voter data cases in California, Michigan, and Oregon, the Justice Department filed emergency appeals warning that the security and sanctity of elections in those states would be questioned without quick rulings, and its filings say that without a final court decision there is “no other process to ensure a fair election in 2026.”
Stated plainly, months before the election, the department put into official court documents the claim that results in refusing states should be treated as doubtful. If a state cooperates, the government gets its data and a purge process. If a state refuses, the government gets a written reason to challenge that state’s results in November. Either way, the administration gains something it can use. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former Justice Department voting section attorney, said of the department’s conduct, “There’s so much lawyering from the DOJ here that is raising ethical questions.”
The same approach is underway with the mail voting order. Within a week of the June 25 injunction, the administration appealed to the First Circuit, asked the district judge to lift her order by July 6, and warned in its filings that the injunction will make it impossible for the Postal Service to build the new ballot delivery system before November even if the administration wins the appeal. Those filings put in writing, ahead of time, a federal reason to call November mail ballots compromised.
Collecting the names of individual election workers and threatening officials with prosecution discourages people from doing that work whether or not charges are ever filed.
President Trump is also pressing Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would make people show citizenship papers to register, limit mail voting to reasons such as illness, disability, military deployment, and travel, and make states submit their voter rolls to DHS and remove anyone the system flags. In March he said of the bill, “It will guarantee the midterms.”
Between June 22 and June 29, federal courts ruled the SAVE overhaul unlawful, permanently barred parts of the 2025 executive order, upheld the dismissal of the Michigan data case on appeal, blocked the mail voting order for 23 states and DC, and upheld Mississippi’s ballot deadline law at the Supreme Court. Those rulings stop specific legal mechanisms.
They do not bring back data already handed over, automatically restore wrongly canceled registrations, reassure naturalized citizens who now connect registering with a federal investigation, protect election workers whose names have been demanded, erase the department’s written claims that elections in refusing states cannot be presumed fair, or stop the grant conditions waiting to go out.
So, how many states is enough? To steal an election, the infrastructure needs only three things: enough voter data, cooperation from states that hold the competitive races, and an official reason to dispute the results everywhere else. Texas alone supplied the first two: 18 million records handed over, a signature on the 45 day removal agreement, citizens with canceled registrations, and competitive House seats inside its borders. The Justice Department’s own court filings supplied the third. The answer is one, and it has already happened.
Want to do something about it? Well it’s our job at the Existentialist Republic to address exactly the issue this article outlines and then hand people tools to make change because when the federal government and a large fraction of states have abandoned fairness, freedom, and democracy, we need a plan.
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