“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.”
Call your Congressperson and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121
brabantstraat Sep 20, 2017 PBS Frontline “Sick around the World” 2008, an enlightening documentary about different approaches to health care in 5 countries. They each have their pros and cons, described in this evenhanded report, but they all appear to be superior to the US system in the important ways. Uploaded as a public service. More here: • Healthcare Around the World
OpenAI — headquartered at 1455-1515 3rd St. in Mission Bay — is one of the firms that has made San Francisco the center of the artificial-intelligence world.Craig Lee/The Examiner
In San Francisco, the artificial-intelligence boom still has a remarkably clean public image. It looks like office towers refilling, restaurants getting lunch traffic again, young engineers moving into Mission Bay and city leaders building political careers on the narrative of recovery.
Across the rest of the country, it looks very different: Data centers the size of small towns; new substations, diesel generators and gas turbines; water issues; noise complaints; backroom deals; and local residents once again being told that the national interest requires them to absorb the costs.
As the global center of AI, San Francisco can no longer pretend these are separate stories.
For years, our city has wanted to be seen simultaneously as a climate leader and technology capital. It’s always been a difficult balance, but the AI boom is making it impossible to avoid choosing which should take priority.
OpenAI, a San Francisco-based company, is on track to lease a 10-gigawatt, 100% fossil-fuel-powered data center in Ohio. If completed, it would release as much greenhouse gas as nine average coal plants and increase total U.S. emissions by 0.5% each year.
That’s just one project. The International Energy Agency estimates the AI industry will dump 320 million metric tons of carbon pollution into the air by 2030 — the equivalent of putting tens of millions of new gas-powered cars on the road each year.
And it’s not just carbon emissions. Across the country, data centers used to train and run models for local companies such as Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI are draining millions of gallons of drinking water daily, spiking utility bills, slowing water pressure to a trickle and even turning tap water brown.
The AI boom is turning rivers, aquifers and wildlife habitat into collateral damage — more development, more noise, more water consumption, all to power Bay Area products sold as frictionless and inevitable.
San Francisco residents should be deeply uncomfortable with our role in this project. We have spent decades defending this city from bad-faith attacks by people who hate San Francisco because it is gay, liberal, immigrant, artistic, unruly or unwilling to apologize for itself.
Those attacks are dishonest, and they usually say more about the attackers than they do about The City. But if millions of people around the country come to resent San Francisco because companies based here are raising their utility bills, draining their water, polluting their air and reshaping their communities without consent, they will be right.
And if those same companies go public at fantasy valuations, make thousands of San Franciscans rich on paper, and then get folded into the pension funds and retirement accounts of ordinary Americans, the backlash will not stop at Wall Street when the bubble pops. People will know where the bubble was built — and they will hate us for that, too.
If San Franciscans and our elected leaders overwhelmingly embrace the AI boom because it fills office space, boosts high-end real estate, funds startups and makes downtown feel alive again, we are saying The City’s recovery matters more than the consequences of the industry driving it.
Mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz said that performing for the LGBTQ community is a form of empowerment, even resistance
We are saying a company can be part of our local comeback while creating national harm, so long as that harm happens out of sight: Not in our backyard.
It doesn’t have to be this way. San Francisco should become the first major American city to insist that AI companies headquartered here fully account for the infrastructure they use everywhere else.
Any AI company seeking city contracts, public partnerships, tax preferences or a mayoral Instagram promo video should be required to publicly disclose the full environmental cost of its operations: data-center capacity, water use, emissions footprint, electrical-grid effects and community-benefit agreements.
Anthropic leased its headquarters building at 500 Howard Street in September 2023.Craig Lee/The Examiner
The City should pass legislation banning AI tools from companies that use unpermitted power generation, hide infrastructure effects or shift costs onto residential ratepayers. Supervisors should hold hearings not only on how AI will affect city services, but on how San Francisco-based companies are affecting communities far beyond city limits.
Pension funds, universities, philanthropies, sports teams and local institutions could follow suit and ask the same questions before investing in or partnering with these firms, too.
None of this is anti-business. For too long, San Francisco has acted as though asking its most powerful industries to meet basic public standards will send them running. We’ve always had higher tax rates than Miami or Austin, Texas, but AI companies came here because they crave what this city has: world-class talent, capital, universities, political legitimacy, cultural relevance and the mythology of building the future.
We should stop negotiating like we have no leverage, and start demanding that local businesses — even ones worth $1 trillion — actually live up to San Francisco’s professed values.
People across the country are revolting against the true cost of the AI boom. They’re feeling the pain in their utility bills, backyards, kitchen sinks and communities. San Francisco can either keep pretending that it has nothing to do with us, or we can stand up and hold these companies accountable to the values of the city that built them.
If we do, we can prove that being the capital of AI does not have to mean being the capital of extraction. If we do not, people will remember where this boom was built — and they will be right to blame us.
Michael Redmond is a San Francisco-based writer and communications strategist. He has a Master of Engineering from the University of Michigan and is a graduate of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahustated on Wednesday that he will not end the military occupation of Lebanon even if it tanks US President Donald Trump’s peace deal with Iran.
“As long as I am prime minister, we will maintain the security zone in southern Lebanon,” he said, referring to Israel’s occupation, which has cleared about one-fifth of the country of its inhabitants.
About 1.2 million residents have been displaced by Israeli attacks and forced evacuation orders since March as part of a military campaign that’s killed about 4,200 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
As Trump seeks an end to his war with Iran, the Iranian delegation has stressed that it must be peace “on all fronts,” including Lebanon, which was outlined in the memorandum of understanding that has served as the basis for ongoing negotiations.
Netanyahu:
As long as I am Prime Minister, we will maintain the "security zone" in southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/9V4AcfCmPs
Behind the scenes, Trump has reportedly fumed that by ramping up attacks on Lebanon, Israel is trying to sabotage the deal and drag the US back into war.
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But while he and Vice President JD Vance have offered some uncommonly blunt criticism of Israel over the past week, they’ve not yet gone beyond words. And Israel’s leaders seem to believe they won’t.
Echoing the prime minister, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Israel Defense Forces were “not withdrawing” from Lebanon “even if there is an American demand to do so.”
But he also stated that despite a US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, “as of this moment… there is no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon,” which he described as “a political achievement.”
That’s not likely to sit well with the Iranians, who, in response to a wave of Israeli attacks this weekend, announced that they were once again closing off the Strait of Hormuz, threatening more of the economic pandemonium that Trump wants to quell by ending the war.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that Israel will not withdraw from southern Lebanon, even if the United States demands it.
"The IDF is prepared on the line and we are not retreating," Katz said in Tel Aviv.
“For us, a ceasefire in Lebanon is as important as a ceasefire in Iran and, further, an end to the war in Lebanon is as important as an end to the war in Iran,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and lead negotiator, on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attempted to thread the needle by claiming on Wednesday that “the Israelis have been clear they don’t have any quarrels with the Lebanese people, nor do they have any claims on the territory of Lebanon.”
But this was undercut somewhat by Katz’s statement on Wednesday that the 200,000 civilians whom Israel ordered to leave southern Lebanon “will not return” to their homes because of the risk they allegedly pose to Israeli soldiers.
“Soldiers in, residents out,” Katz said. “The infrastructure is destroyed, the houses are dangerous and ruined. We are not withdrawing.”
Critics have pointed out that Trump does have ample amounts of leverage to coerce the Israelis to get with the program, including threatening to cut off US weapons shipments, and that his failure to do this may destroy any chance at peace with Iran.
“The Israelis are going to continue testing what they can get away with,” said Rania Khalek, a journalist for BreakThrough News, on social media. “Iran was very clear that a deal with the US is dependent on a ceasefire in Lebanon.”
“How embarrassing for Trump that the Israelis don’t care about his orders. They are trying to preserve their ability to kill all their neighbors,” she added. “Words are not enough to restrain the Israelis. There have to be real consequences.”
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Lashon Warren, 53, who has been homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles, California for eight years, wipes her face while talking about the stress and decrepit conditions on the street on June 25, 2025.
(Photo by Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“Trump just threw a tantrum,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “He’s refusing to sign bipartisan legislation to make housing more affordable in a bizarre effort to try to rig the elections.”
Congress this week passed a bipartisan bill “to build more housing, lower costs, and stop private equity’s housing grab,” as US Sen. Elizabeth Warrenhighlighted after the final vote, but President Donald Trump on Wednesday scrapped his plans to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act over a stalled GOP attack on voting rights.
Trump initially took a swipe at Warren (D-Mass.) on his Truth Social platform Wednesday morning, writing that “the Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT. That is what Americans, both Dumocrats, Republicans, and everyone else, care about.”
“Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF,” Trump continued. “The Dumocrats will do it in hour one, 100%. Republicans will feel very stupid if they don’t do it first. I’ll be watching with tears in my eyes!!!”
Less than an hour later, he added, “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
Trump and other backers of the anti-voter bill argue it is needed to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting in US elections—which is already illegal, and research shows is remarkably rare. Critics warn that the legislation would disenfranchise eligible voters who lack access to proof-of-citizenship documents.
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While Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) responded by stressing that he and other Republicans in the House of Representatives support the SAVE America Act, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said the canceled ceremony was Trump’s “call to make” but expressed hope that he’ll “find his way to sign” the housing bill, other lawmakers—including Warren—and supporters of the legislation took aim at the president over his move.
Huge bipartisan majorities in Congress passed a bill to lower housing costs.
But at the 11th hour, Donald Trump is refusing to sign it into law. His policies have made your costs go up — and he doesn't care. pic.twitter.com/BmcwGxCaNs
“Congress overwhelmingly passed a housing bill to bring down costs. But Trump just threw a tantrum,” Warren wrote on social media. “He’s refusing to sign bipartisan legislation to make housing more affordable in a bizarre effort to try to rig the elections. Nope—I’ll keep fighting to lower housing costs.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told journalists that “Trump is running away from one of the very few accomplishments that could actually help the American people,” and urged the president not to veto the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.
Approved by the Senate in an 85-5 vote on Monday and the House in a 358-32 vote on Tuesday, the bill contains dozens of provisions to promote the rebuilding of older homes and development of vacant buildings, encourage local governments to build more housing, streamline regulations for construction, ban corporate investors from buying single-family homes to rent out, and more.
Stressing that the bill passed “overwhelmingly in a bipartisan way,” and would “save American families a lot of money when it comes to housing,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-Calif.) said that “I honestly can’t believe that the president is holding this hostage.”
“I hope the American people see this for what it is, which is that he doesn’t care at all about the high cost of living that a lot of Americans are struggling with,” Kim declared. “He doesn’t care about the housing crisis. He is just continuing to push forward on his extreme agenda.”
In the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) replied to the president: “The housing crisis is a national emergency. Do something to make life more affordable for hardworking American taxpayers. Sign the bill.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) pointed to Trump’s campaign pledges, writing: “The president who promised lower costs on Day 1 is refusing to sign the largest housing affordability bill in a generation. It’s a slap in the face to millions of Americans struggling to afford a place to live. My Republican colleagues need to find some courage and stand up to this mad king.”
In a video, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) warned the public that Trump “is taking away your housing for his personal projects that can never pass and are unconstitutional.”
This is totally crazy.
Trump cancelled the signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to help lower costs because he’s insisting we pass the SAVE Act to take away voting rights from people across this country.
Longtime human rights advocate Kenneth Roth, who’s now a visiting professor at Princeton University, similarly summarized: “Trump to America: I [couldn’t] care less about affordable housing. So I won’t sign a bill to advance it unless Congress endorses my autocratic efforts to restrict the right to vote.”
Although Trump has not decisively said whether he will formally block the bill, Roth wondered, “Will the Republicans have the backbone to override his veto?”
Either way, The New York Timesnoted that “Trump’s decision threatened to deprive Republicans, in particular, of an opportunity to showcase a legislative success in a year with very few of them—one that spoke directly to voters’ economic concerns.”
In a Wednesday statement, Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, looked to the midterm elections, in which Democrats aim to retake majorities in both chambers of Congress.
“Donald Trump has been clear: The SAVE Act is his #1 legislative priority—not lowering costs for working people, creating good-paying jobs, or helping families afford a roof over their heads,” said Edkins. “Today, he decided it was more important to help Republicans avoid accountability for the cost-of-living crisis than actually do something about it.”
“Trump was born on third base, and it shows. He has no clue what it’s like to struggle to make rent, save for a down payment, pay a mortgage, or worry that your kids will be able to afford a home of their own,” he added. “Trump could’ve signed bipartisan legislation today to help lower housing costs and give Republicans something—anything—to show voters that they deserve reelection this November. Instead, he told working families to screw themselves. It’s selfish, petty, and self-defeating.”
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All three Mamdani-endorsed congressional candidates won in New York’s Democratic primary yesterday, ousting two party-backed incumbents, and proving there’s a huge appetite for something new in American politics.
The media are calling it a victory for the mayor, for the Democratic Socialists of America, for progressives, for Bernie Sanders. But I see something different. It is a victory for the common voter who is saying that they don’t want party-approved operators to represent them anymore.
Democrat and Republican alike, I find it hard to believe that the old parties will ever recover.
In New York, the Democratic party’s heaviest hitters — both from the state — lost big. House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed the incumbents and campaigned hard against the Mamdani slate. Chuck Schumer, the other great power of New York Democratic politics and Senate Minority leader, said almost nothing about his own party’s candidates — which tells you how eager he was to distance himself from the fight. New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul lined up behind Rep. Dan Goldman in Manhattan.
Between the three, they couldn’t deliver a single race.
To say simply that they “lost” doesn’t do the turnabout justice. They lost the way the Knicks beat the Hawks 140-89 in this year’s playoffs. They lost bigly!
There’s already a flood of punditry working to downplay the results. The favorite move is some version of “but this is New York and it doesn’t apply anywhere else” — as if anyone is out there demanding a clone of Mamdani in, say, Wisconsin. Whether Wisconsin or Wyoming, the lesson is that the New York/DC-dominated Party’s monopoly on who people get to vote for is waning.
The point here isn’t that Mamdani “won” or New York is turning “left.” I’m saying that even in New York, ordinary voters reached past the gatekeepers, picked their own nominees, and ignored the party-approved darlings. And that matters because parties have long had a stranglehold on our politics that is corrosive to democracy.
George Washington saw the danger of excessive Party rule coming. In his Farewell Address he warned, with a clarity that today seems eerily prescient, against “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.”
Party loyalty left unchecked, he argued, “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” agitating the public “with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms.”
And he saw where it ends. The endless war between factions, Washington warned, eventually exhausts people so completely that they go looking for “security and repose in the absolute power of an individual” — handing a strongman the keys on the ruins of public liberty.
Sound familiar?
The media won’t talk about the tyranny of party control for largely the same reasons it can’t talk about the tyranny of national security: it is an appendage of it, relying on it for access and the like. If you’d like to support journalism that’s genuinely independent, subscribe below (or chip in via my GoFundMe here).
Oh, and the portion of George Washington’s farewell address excoriating the party system is worth reading (included below).
Subscribe if you don’t trust party bureaucrats to choose who you get to vote for
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
Federal police removing the chains used to block the entrance to 630 Sansome St. on Dec. 16, 2025. Photo by Mariana Garcia.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement can no longer arrest immigrants at courthouse hearings or detain them for over 12 hours in short-term holding cells anywhere in the country, a federal judge in California ruled Tuesday.
The ruling expands a temporary order from December that had prohibited both practices in Northern California.
Courthouse arrests came under legal scrutiny last year. Dramatic scenes of ICE agents arresting people during routine hearings were broadcast from 26 Federal Plaza in New York and other courthouses. In San Francisco, protesters clashed with federal agents outside the main immigration court, where hundreds were arrested.
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The practice had all but ceased in San Francisco since October 2025. However, it continued in other parts of the country like New York and Texas, said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.
When immigrants were arrested after their hearings, they were often held in cells meant for short-term detention, sometimes for several days, before being transferred to a long-term detention center. San Francisco attorneys, in their lawsuit, demanded and won an end to the practice of holding people longer than 12 hours in these short-term cells.
ICE’s recent practices of arresting people outside court and then detaining them for days in a holding cell were new.
In January 2025, ICE and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review reversed years of guidance against courthouse arrests when it issued a policy that agents could “conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses” whenever they believed a noncitizen would be present, not just someone who posed a public safety threat.
ICE also used to require its agents to ensure that no one was detained in a holding facility for longer than 12 hours. As enforcement increased, however, the number of people in detention “significantly increased,” an ICE official wrote.
In June 2025, the agency said field offices nationwide could begin detaining people for up to three days or longer in “exceptional circumstances.”
Judge Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California court wrote that neither decision was backed up by clear reasoning required by Congress’ Administrative Procedures Act. He banned both practices, describing them as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Pitts’ ruling was a “crushing blow to some of the Trump administration’s most extreme immigration enforcement tactics,” the plaintiffs wrote in a press statement.
“The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE,” wrote Jordan Wells, a senior attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. “No one, immigrants included, should be forced to choose between their liberty and their day in court.”
We won’t ignore your neighborhood
When a San Francisco neighborhood has a Mission Local reporter, it means someone is there. We’re following new housing projects proposed on your block, keeping tabs on what your district supervisor is up to at City Hall, and letting you know when longtime businesses close (and new ones open). When big news breaks, we already know the context.
Most neighborhoods don’t have that. Yours could.
That’s what Mission Local is building. Our reporters don’t parachute in — they write consistently on San Francisco, so you’re never reading about your neighborhood from someone who just looked it up.
So far we are in five of San Francisco’s neighborhoods. But we know all San Franciscans deserve our kind of coverage. Will you join us?
Abigail is a staff reporter at Mission Local covering criminal justice and public health. She got her bachelor’s and master’s from Stanford University and has received awards for investigative reporting and public service journalism.
Abigail now lives in San Francisco with her cat, Sally Carrera, but she’ll always be a New Yorker. (Yes, the shelter named the cat after the Porsche from the animated movie Cars.)
“Atypical restraint on compensation increases has been evident for a few years now, and appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity. The willingness of workers in recent years to trade off smaller increases in wages for greater job security seems to be reasonably well documented.” [1]
Alan Greenspan was an American economist who served as the 13th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. He worked as a private adviser and provided consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. Wikipedia
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Shutterstock
With trillions of dollars on the line, it should come as no surprise that tech companies are spending gobs of cash on the upcoming US midterm elections. What is surprising is the scale of electoral financing, as certain newly-founded AI super PACs are now spending more on candidates than the candidates are spending on themselves.
According to reporting by the Los Angeles Times, political finance groups linked to tech companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are already some of the top spenders in the 2026 elections. So far, they’ve distributed a combined $37 million on various campaigns, a number which is expected to skyrocket as November draws closer (and those are just the ones we know about, as numerous tech-backed PACs are alleged to have evaded federal reporting requirements.)
While one might expect these companies to flock to the typically pro-business and small-government Republican party, an LA Times infographic shows that they’re cynically playing both sides. ChatGPT maker OpenAI, for example, is heavily linked to both the American Mission PAC, which has donated $8 million to Republicans, and the Think Big PAC, which has spent $14.1 million on Democrats so far.
Anthropic, meanwhile, is linked to the Jobs and Democracy PAC and Defending Our Values PAC, which gave $11 million and $5.2 million to Democrats and Republicans, respectively.
As former Google public policy executive Adam Kovacevich told the Times, AI companies are quickly becoming “comfortable with using their power to achieve a political goal.”
Zooming out a bit, funding both sides of the aisle makes tactical sense, at least if you’re an AI company. One of the key benefits of backing mainstream political contenders seems to be the crushing effect it has on non-partisan candidates, who may come into office with populist ideas like regulating generative AI or restricting data center construction.
These include figures like Al Olszewski, a candidate who styled himself as a “grassroots conservative” in Montana’s Republican primary. While Olszewski had the benefit of running as an incumbent, he got walloped in the party primary after a super PAC affiliated with OpenAI’s co-founder spent nearly $900,000 backing his opponent.
“There was no way as a grassroots person that I could compete with that kind of money,” Olszewski told the Times. “I got crushed.”
The proposed Affordable Housing Guarantee Act continues a vision for that San Francisco voters have repeatedly endorsed at the ballot box, writes Dean Preston, seen in 2024.Craig Lee/The Examiner
A grassroots coalition of San Franciscans assembled recently in Dolores Park to kick off a signature-gathering effort to put a measure on the November 2026 ballot.
The measure, the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, builds on progressive wins of the past to commit City Hall to a future in which working people can afford to live in San Francisco.
This measure continues a vision that San Francisco voters have repeatedly endorsed at the ballot box.
In 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed a tax on the ultrawealthy to fund social housing. A whopping 74% of voters demanded 10,000 units of social housing through Proposition K, and they also decisively passed Proposition I, a tax on sellers of skyscrapers and mansions, in order to fund that vision.
At the time, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation to use the tax revenue for housing. The plan was hatched by my office and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and, for the first two years, it worked remarkably well.
We moved more than $200 million into innovative solutions to the affordability crisis. We launched the biggest local rent-relief program in US history, stopping 20,000 evictions. We acquired five sites for the development of more than 500 homes, funded the development of another 60 affordable homes for educators, invested $20 million in public-housing repairs, committed $10 million to fix broken elevators in permanent supportive housing, and made an unprecedented investment in community land trusts that stop displacement and provide permanently affordable homes for San Franciscans.
For a time, Prop I was working as voters intended. But after two years of considerable progress, billionaires and cynical politicians sprung into action to prevent those successes from being scaled up.
In 2023, City Hall stopped using Prop. I funds for housing and diverted them to other priorities, squandering hundreds of millions of dollars that could already be working to make San Francisco more affordable. Earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors dissolved the oversight body tasked with guiding the investments into social housing.
The real estate lobby interests and the very wealthy would love to repeal the tax. Unfortunately for them, Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood’s attempt to do so has proven politically unviable.
The so-called BUILD Act — which would have overturned the Prop. I tax increase — was announced back in February, but it died last week without ever receiving a hearing. The groups that would have benefited from such a tax break are hard at work pushing similar fare in Sacramento. They’ll try it again in San Francisco in a heartbeat if only they can convince the public it’s something it isn’t.
The transfer-tax increase initiated by Prop. I only affects those who sell property for $10 million or more: corporate landlords, billionaires, and, increasingly, private-equity firms. The same billionaires and corporations that have benefited from tax reductions under the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act would get a further tax sweetener if Prop. I were repealed.
But this isn’t just knee-jerk tax avoidance. It’s an attempt to nullify a competing vision of the city before it gains momentum. If San Francisco successfully builds social housing at scale, rents will finally come down as a result. That would be good news for everyone — except this tiny group of extremely wealthy investors, who much prefer the current situation in which they alone dictate how much new housing is built and what it costs to live there.
And if San Francisco solves its massive and enduring affordability crisis, other jurisdictions would be keen to follow, as Los Angeles did by passing a similar tax program after the passage of Prop. I. That poses a threat to the continued growth of private equity in the residential real-estate market and the viability of real-estate speculation as a sector — once again, great news for everyone but billionaires.
The Affordable Housing Guarantee Act would preserve the transfer tax on billionaires and dedicate every penny to the housing that working-class San Franciscans desperately need, guaranteeing that San Francisco acts on the vision its residents have voted for. The transfer tax raises far more money than any other pending proposal. It is the only revenue stream that isn’t limited to traditional housing models, but can fund innovative alternatives such as mixed-income social housing.
And it is precisely the sort of direct democracy that San Francisco would lose if Mayor Daniel Lurie’s charter amendment to raise the threshold for ballot qualifications passes this fall: volunteer-led, funded through non-corporate donations, and contesting the dominant power structure in City Hall.
City Hall has committed to securing 46,000 new affordable homes by 2031, but has no actual plan to do so. Preserving Prop. I and dedicating the funds to housing should be a no-brainer. Combined with the expansion of the Housing Trust Fund recently announced by the mayor, we have an opportunity to finally solve this crisis once and for all.
Prop. I has already raised over $500 million. It’s projected to raise another $350 million in the next three years. We can ensure that City Hall uses those funds to scale up social housing and make San Francisco a city for all, not just the wealthy.
San Francisco voters can end the pattern of begging the for-profit real-estate industry to fix a housing crisis it has no financial interest in solving and make certain that working-class people — bus drivers, nurses, teachers, nannies and artists — can afford to live and raise families here.
Dean Preston is a tenant-rights attorney, democratic socialist and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
By Joe Garofoli, Political Columnist June 23, 2026 (SFChronicle.com)
Gift Article
Xavier Becerra addresses supporters on election night in downtown Los Angeles on June 2.Jen Osborne/For the S.F. Chronicle
San Francisco Democratic leaders on Wednesday will consider recommending a plan designed to avoid a repeat of what some saw as a nearly disastrous blunder — the statewide party not endorsing anyone in the primary election for governor.
Until weeks before the June 2 primary, Democrats were worried they might be locked out of the governor’s race as polls showed two Republican candidates ahead of the glut of Democratic candidates. Yet none within the crowded field had received the support of 60% of delegates at the state party’s February convention in San Francisco, needed to receive its endorsement, which could have united voters around a single candidate.
That wasn’t an outlier. The state party didn’t endorse a candidate in five of the eight statewide races.
What followed was a period of chaos during which the state party spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling in a bid to nudge lower-polling gubernatorial candidates out of the race. The effort backfired, as only one candidate dropped out and many observers recoiled at the idea of white party leaders asking candidates of color to step aside.
The proposed solution from San Francisco Democrats? Take a cue from the city.
Much as voters in San Francisco choose their mayor by ranked-choice voting, party delegates would rank their favorite candidates in order of preference. In each round of counting, if the leader does not reach a to-be-determined threshold, the lowest-ranking candidate would be eliminated and their votes redistributed to the next-ranked candidates on those ballots.
If “no endorsement” is the highest-ranked option chosen by the delegates, then the party would not extend an endorsement, according to the plan.
“We wrote this resolution with the idea that the state party should be adopting a new way of endorsing or not endorsing,” Eric Kingsbury, a member of the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee who co-authored the proposal, told me. “Let’s not have any more ‘no consensus’ candidates. Let’s either affirmatively say we’re not getting an endorsement, or let’s endorse someone and provide the leadership that voters deserve, because they’re busy.”
An additional part of the proposal would address what to do if a leading candidate implodes halfway through the race, as former Rep. Eric Swalwell did after the Chronicle reported allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman who used to work for him.
Though the state party didn’t endorse Swalwell (or anyone else) for governor, it would have been handcuffed if it had. Kingsbury said the party’s by-laws don’t include a “mechanism to rescind an endorsement.”
Kingsbury isn’t prescribing how to rescind and revote on an endorsement. He’s leaving the details to the state party. His hope is that if San Francisco Democrats pass the resolution, they can propose it to the state party executive board later this year.
California Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
After the panic of the primary, some in the party were calling for an end to the top-two system and a return to the previous format, in which Republicans and Democrats chose their own nominees during the primary who met in the general election.
“That is something that the broader state of California should have a conversation about, but this is about operating in the system that we have now,” Kingsbury said. “This is the start. You begin a conversation there.”
Kingsbury, who co-authored the proposal with fellow San Francisco Democrats Mike Chen and Emma Hare, isn’t the only party delegate who wants the system to change. So does Leslie Baxter, a member of the Contra Costa County Democratic Party’s central committee. After attending the state party convention this year where the party deadlocked on an endorsement for governor, Baxter was frustrated.
“This is wrong,” she told me this week. “This means that the Democratic Party has ceded its power to support a Democratic candidate. There has to be a better way.”
Baxter submitted a similar proposal to overhaul endorsements to the state party.
Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, covering national and state politics. He has worked at The Chronicle since 2000 and in Bay Area journalism since 1992, when he left the Milwaukee Journal. He is the host of “It’s All Political,” The Chronicle’s political podcast. Catch it here: bit.ly/2LSAUjA
He has won numerous awards and covered everything from fashion to the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings to two Olympic Games to his own vasectomy — which he discussed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” after being told he couldn’t say the word “balls” on the air. He regularly appears on Bay Area radio and TV talking politics and is available to entertain at bar mitzvahs and First Communions. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and a proud native of Pittsburgh. Go Steelers!
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