“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
Zeteo Nov 2, 2025 Mehdi Unfiltered How does one fight illegal National Guard deployments, the kidnapping of immigrants, and creeping fascism? Well, if you’re a mainstream Democrat, there seems to be only one strategy – sternly-worded letters and weak press conferences. At least, that’s how it seems to people like AOC’s former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who is challenging former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her seat in Congress. He joins Mehdi on this week’s episode of ‘Mehdi Unfiltered.’ In this interview, Mehdi asks Chakrabarti – the co-founder of Justice Democrats – why he believes Pelosi’s response to Democrats’ loss last November was, “completely insufficient.” Chakrabarti also takes aim at Democrats’ current House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, with Mehdi asking the former Hill staffer whether Jeffries needs a primary challenger. This interview was published several days ago on Zeteo’s Substack. If you would like early access to more exclusive content like this, then head over to zeteo.com and become a paid subscriber now! It costs less than a monthly cup of coffee and goes a long way in supporting our mission of fearless, independent journalism. So, what are you waiting for? Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:09 Running For Congress 3:49 Seeking Change 6:46 Broken System 8:15 Tech 15:05 Hakeem Jeffries 16:50 AOC 19:52 National Guard Subscribe to Zeteo to support independent and unfiltered journalism: https://zeteo.com/subscribe
Michael Mezzatesta and Saikat Chakrabarti Feb 12, 2026 Better Future podcast episodes My guest today is Saikat Chakrabarti – former chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, co-founder of Justice Democrats, co-author of the Green New Deal, and now a candidate for Congress running to replace Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. We discuss whether the Democratic Party can be transformed from within, why corporate money has hollowed out American politics, and what it would take to build an economy that works for everyone. We also dive deep into AI – who should control it, and why leaving decisions about humanity’s future in the hands of a handful of tech CEOs may be the most dangerous form of deregulation yet. Support Saikat’s campaign for Congress: https://www.saikat.us/ Support the Better Future podcast on Substack: https://michaelmezzatesta.substack.com/
Scientists are warning that the collapse of Antarctica’s massive “doomsday glacier” could eventually redraw large parts of America’s coastline, threatening major cities from Florida to California with severe flooding and rising seas.
Researchers say the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is becoming increasingly unstable, raising fears that its eventual collapse could contribute to dramatic long-term sea level rise.
While the glacier itself could add around 65 centimeters (roughly 2 feet) to global sea levels, some scientists worry it could destabilize much larger sections of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—potentially contributing to sea level rise approaching 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) over time.
Such a rise would dramatically alter large stretches of the U.S. coastline, threatening homes, infrastructure, airports and major cities across several states.
Glacier On The ‘Cusp of Collapse’
The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is seen in this undated NASA image. Right now, Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets both contribute under or near 1 …Read More | NASA/Reuters
David Holland, a professor of mathematics and atmosphere/ocean science at New York University, told Newsweek that the glacier is on the “cusp of collapse,” and that he was “concerned” about it.
“It is held back on its sides by the buttressing provided by the ice shelf in front of it, which is now about to collapse,” he explained. The glacier is also held back by “a hump in the seafloor at its current grounding line,” he added, which he said “may be next to go, given the high rate of melt occurring there.”
The result of the glacier’s collapse would be vast. Holland said that “certainly, low-lying cities and states in the U.S. would experience floods,” while many other cities and countries would “undergo stress” as well.
Which American Cities Could Be Flooded?
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projection maps show that a 3-meter rise in sea levels would inundate major parts of the U.S. coastline, with some of the country’s most populated urban areas facing chronic flooding or partial submersion.
Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast
Florida would be among the hardest-hit states. Large parts of the coastline could disappear beneath rising seas, while cities including Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Panama City would face severe flooding risks. Large stretches of low-lying coastal communities across the state could also become uninhabitable.
Large sections of the Gulf Coast would also be exposed. Cities and communities along the Texas coastline near Galveston Bay, Freeport and Surfside Beach could see extensive inundation, while low-lying parts of Louisiana, including areas around New Orleans, would remain especially vulnerable.
Other coastal cities at risk include Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia; Wilmington, North Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; and parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Mississippi.
New York City would face widespread flooding risks across parts of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Lower Manhattan. Critical infrastructure, including Newark Liberty International Airport and nearby transport links, could also be affected. MetLife Stadium in New Jersey—one of the venues for the 2026 FIFA World Cup—lies within an area vulnerable to flooding under NOAA’s projections.
West Coast
A screenshot of an NOAA map showing which U.S. cities would be underwater if there was a 10-foot sea level rise. | NOAA
In California, areas around the San Francisco Bay, Oakland, San Mateo and parts of Southern California near San Diego and Oxnard would also face major impacts.
Notable parts of the landscape and wildlife reserves could also be affected, including Big Lagoon, the Brush Creek/Lagoon Lake Wetlands and Coastal Dunes Natural Preserve, the Ventura County Game Reserve as well as vast amounts of the California Coastal National Monument.
Why Scientists Are Worried by the Thwaites Glacier
Thwaites is the widest glacier on the planet, stretching around 120 kilometers (75 miles), and its basin measures around 192,000 kilometers squared, meaning it is larger than the state of Florida.
Over the years, Thwaites—located in West Antarctica—has been losing ice at an increasing pace, and since 2000 the glacier has experienced a net loss of more than 1 trillion tons of ice.
The tongue of the glacier—which is the extension that floats out over water—has continued to fracture and separate from the ice shelf in recent years, as images from NASA show. The floating ice is now melting, given that the seawater is a few degrees above freezing as warmer water temperatures have recently been recorded in the region.
Update 5/20/26, 8:15 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from David Holland.
The DNC finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign, and it doesn’t mention Gaza. The Democratic leadership’s refusal to acknowledge the party’s shift on Israel could spell another defeat in 2028.
US President Joe Biden and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris wave to members of the audience after speaking at a campaign rally at Girard College on May 29, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on May 22, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign.
The rollout was highly on-brand for the Democratic establishment. The 192-page document seems slapped together, is full of typos, and was released only because CNN obtained a copy. In an accompanying note, DNC Chair Ken Martin said the report didn’t meet his standards, but that it was being released “because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”
In fact, the report has further eroded that trust by omitting some big, obvious reasons why Harris lost. Concerns about Biden’s age and his inexplicable decision to run for reelection are barely mentioned, and there’s virtually no analysis of the Democratic policies that might have helped propel Trump to another victory.
If one were compiling such a list, support for the Gaza genocide would presumably be near the top, but the issue is not mentioned once in the massive report.
You’ll recall that Harris never distanced herself from Biden on this question. In her first interview after becoming the nominee, she maintained the party line on Israel, reciting the usual claptrap about the country’s right to “defend itself.” Asked point-blank whether her foreign policy would differ from Biden’s at all, she said it would remain the same. That is to say, the United States would continue to send weapons to Israel while the country carried out a genocide.
A couple of months later, she reiterated her position on The View, telling the hosts that she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently. Although later in the interview she said that, unlike Biden, she would put Republicans in her cabinet.
Throughout the Harris campaign, Palestine advocates called on the former Senator to shift her position and take a firm stance against Israel’s actions.
“By taking a strong stand against Netanyahu’s authoritarian policies, the Biden-Harris administration can unify the Democratic Party and regain the trust of key voter bases, including young people, Arabs, and Muslims,” read an open letter to Harris from the Not Another Bomb coalition to Harris at the time. “This decisive action will reinforce the administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights, contrasting sharply with the far-right extremism embodied by Trump and his supporters. It sends a clear message that the Democratic Party stands for peace, justice, and the protection of all people, thereby strengthening the coalition needed to secure victory in the 2024 elections and beyond.”
She wouldn’t budge.
At the Democratic National Convention that August, the Uncommitted Movement pushed for a Palestinian speaker to be included. “The difficulty in approving even a single Palestinian American speaker among the dozens of speakers on the convention stage sends a troubling message to our anti-war voters, suggesting they aren’t truly included in this party,” explained a statement from the organization’s founders.
The request was denied.
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It’s inaccurate to say the campaign simply ignored these issues. On the contrary, they leaned in from the opposite direction, embracing hawkish former House member Liz Cheney and sending Rep. Ritchie Torres to Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans, to tell voters that Harris would stand with Israel.
There’s a certain kind of centrist pundit who likes to wax sarcastic about the 2024 election and point out that Trump is also an ardent supporter of Israel. The inference is that people concerned about Gaza accomplished nothing by voting against Harris.
However, this brand of snark often presupposes that people fed up with the genocide actually voted. Yes, some people backed Trump because they irrationally believed that the guy currently bombing Iran was antiwar, but the actual number of people that foolish is presumably negligible. Much hay is also made over the Green Party, but Jill Stein got fewer than 900,000 votes and thus had no discernible impact on the ultimate result.
One of the biggest stories of the 2024 race is how many people stayed home.
“The most telling fact in this race is the drop in voter turnout,” wrote Mitchell Plitnick days after the election, pointing out that Harris netted millions less votes than Biden did in 2020.
“Theories will emerge, but the cause of Harris’ disastrous failure will forever be debated,” he wrote. “Still, there are good reasons to believe the Middle East in general and Gaza in particular played a significant role.”
“Nobody is going to get excited about the ‘politics of joy’ and ‘endless brat summer’ when they’re watching a kid raising his hands while he’s being burned to death attached to an IV,” political consultant Peter Feld told me at the time. “It pretty much puts an end to any of the vibes that they were trying to run on.”
“I don’t think you can explain this election without explaining the non-voters, and I think some of the post-election polling that’s come out and attempts to explain it by talking to voters is going to miss this story,” he continued. “If you haven’t spoken to non-voters, you haven’t explained the election.”
Insofar as polling exists on this issue, it backs up the assertions of Plitnick and Feld. A January 2025 YouGov survey found that 2020 Biden voters who stayed home in 2024 cited Gaza as the top reason.
If you need further proof that Gaza hurt Harris at the polls, just look at what’s happened since November 2024. Israel critics are prevailing in Democratic primaries, and groups like AIPAC have become entirely toxic, and support for Israel has plummeted to historic lows amid the war on Iran. A recent NBC News poll found that just 32% of U.S. voters view Israel positively, which is down from 47% in 2023.
It’s difficult to overstate the incompetence of the DNC, but leaving this kind of stuff out of the “autopsy” report certainly feels like much more than oversight. Officials formerly connected to Biden and Harris are openly admitting as much.
“What’s important is what’s missing, what they’re not releasing,” Harris’s former communications director, Ashley Etienne, toldPolitico. “It feels like what the DNC is doing is cherry-picking the parts of it that it wants to actually release, that [are] less problematic for the party going forward.”
It’s an oversimplification to say Gaza is what cost the Democrats the election. There are multiple factors in every presidential race, and many of them have nothing to do with foreign policy. However, ignoring the genocide’s obvious impact on voters is malpractice and suggests that Democratic leadership could be poised to repeat the same mistakes in 2028.
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Permanent observer for the state of Palestine Riyad H. Mansour speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on February 18, 2026.
(Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“A Palestinian vice presidency at the General Assembly would not change power realities on the ground, but it would normalize Palestinian statehood claims… That is precisely what the United States is attempting to block.”
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations withdrew his bid to become a vice president of the UN General Assembly on Thursday following threats from the Trump administration to strip the visas of the entire Palestinian delegation, according to NPR.
The Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s actions toward Palestinians, particularly since the beginning of the genocidal war in Gaza, which he said has entailed “the collective punishment of over two million Palestinians.”
He has been Palestine’s permanent UN observer for more than two decades and had earlier this year planned to run for president of the General Assembly, though he bowed out following US pressure.
The Guardian reported that on Tuesday, the US State Department sent a diplomatic cable to the US embassy in Jerusalem instructing it to pressure the Palestinian Authority (PA)—the governing body of the occupied West Bank—to withdraw its bid for one of the 21 vice presidencies of the General Assembly as well.
General Assembly vice presidents have a role in setting the body’s agenda and filling in when the president is absent. The UN is scheduled to hold elections amongst Assembly members on June 2.
Riyad Mansour, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, has condemned the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention. His remarks come as outrage grows over Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s treatment of the Sumud Flotilla activists while in… pic.twitter.com/qsfcT0vAMr
The US cable said Mansour “has a history of accusing Israel of genocide”—as leading human rights groups and experts have—and that his presence would “undermine” the objectives of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” in Gaza, which a recent Human Rights Watch report said has fallen fall short of its promises to provide aid to Palestinians and has allowed Israeli forces to continue killing them with little pushback despite a ceasefire.
The cable said, “We will hold the PA responsible if the Palestinian delegation does not withdraw its [vice presidential] candidacy” by Friday, “and consequences will follow.”
The cable threatened to revoke the US visas of all Palestinian officials. The US already revoked most of them back in August, but rolled back the ban on those who were visiting as part of the annual UN summit. “It would be unfortunate to have to revisit any available options,” the cable said.
It also threatened that Israel would continue to withhold tax revenue that it owes to the Palestinian Authority, which was blocked by Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, at the beginning of the war in October 2023. The money being withheld by Israel accounts for 60% of the PA’s revenue.
A person familiar with the matter told NPR that Mansour specifically would refrain from running for the position for the next two years, which was interpreted as a reference to the end of Trump’s term as president.
The US is prohibited from blocking UN officials from visiting the body’s New York headquarters under a 1947 agreement. However, the US has blocked visas for officials from enemy countries, including Russia and Iran, as well as the former leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat.
Hady Amr, who served as a senior State Department official on Palestinian affairs under the Obama and Biden administrations, told NPR that expelling diplomats is extremely rare outside of “extreme situations like Russian espionage or election interference.”
Amr said, “Generally, it’s counterproductive because you need diplomats to work out problems between countries, and by expelling diplomats, you’re undermining not only their ability to solve problems, but the abilities of the United States as well.”
Tawfiq Al-Ghussein, a London-based researcher who specializes in modern Middle Eastern history and the displacement of Palestinians, said on social media that “the significance of this is not merely procedural.”
“Washington is effectively trying to prevent even symbolic Palestinian institutional visibility within the UN system because it understands that international legitimacy matters politically, legally, and diplomatically,” Al-Ghussein said. “A Palestinian vice presidency at the General Assembly would not change power realities on the ground, but it would normalize Palestinian statehood claims within the architecture of international governance itself. That is precisely what the United States is attempting to block.”
“The irony is extraordinary: The same power that lectures the world endlessly about democracy and international order is reportedly threatening visas and diplomatic consequences to stop Palestinians from holding a largely ceremonial UN role,” he continued. “It reveals once again that the issue was never ‘peace negotiations’ as such, but control over who is permitted institutional legitimacy in the international system.”
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Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos speaks onstage ahead of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Blue Origin in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 2, 2026.
(Photo by Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images)
“The political danger in Bezos’ argument” to eliminate income taxes for the bottom 50% of American earners, said one op-ed, “is that it lets billionaires sound generous while leaving the structure of wealth largely untouched.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ decision to wade into the tax the rich debate raised eyebrows Thursday, as progressives who have long demanded a wealth tax for billionaires said they’d be happy to include him in the ongoing discussion about how the US tax system can be reformed to benefit working people.
In an interview with CNBC this week, the world’s fourth-richest person claimed that doubling his taxes would do nothing to help working people, and attempted to shift the conversation on the tax system to a proposal that the bottom 50% of earners in the US should pay nothing in income taxes.
“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens,” said Bezos. “I promise you.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdanireplied, “I know a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ.” The democratic socialist has been relentlessly focused on making the city more affordable for working people and last month announced his plan to tax second homes valued at more than $5 million.
Critics of Bezos were quick to point out this week that the 1% effective tax rate the billionaire paid between 2014-18 was due to his avoidance of the income tax that working Americans have to pay, with the executive “offsetting earned income with other investment losses and various deductions.”
Progressive leaders like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have argued that billionaires including Bezos pay a lower effective tax rate than working people because a vast amount of their wealth comes from unrealized capital gains and other investments instead of income from labor.
Bezos has also not faced a tax on his immense overall wealth of $275.4 billion, which US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other progressives have long called for, saying that taxing a relatively tiny amount of the assets held by billionaires like Bezos, Tesla founder and President Donald Trump megadonor Elon Musk, and other tech and business executives could fund essential services for the rest of society—including many that have contributed to the affordability crisis for working families.
“Let’s have that debate” regarding reforms to the US tax system, Sanders said Thursday evening, addressing Bezos on Musk’s platform X.
The senator has proposed a 5% annual wealth tax, which he said would leave Bezos still sitting on $269 billion in total wealth, while providing enough revenue to fund guaranteed universal childcare, an expansion of Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing care for senior citizens, a nationwide starting salary of $60,000 per year for public school teachers, and more.
In his interview with CNBC and on social media this week, Bezos repeatedly attempted to shift attention away from his taxes and onto the income taxes paid by the bottom 50% of earners, claiming that the “top 1% pay 40% of taxes, the bottom 50% pay 3% of taxes.”
“The United States has the most progressive tax system in the world,” he asserted. “We can make it even more progressive by zeroing out taxes on the bottom half. It’s a small amount of the total tax revenue but very meaningful to people in this group.”
Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman, who has also called for a wealth tax and last month co-authored a Guardian op-ed with Mamdani explaining how the regressive tax system of the US has helped ensure the top 0.0001% of the global population holds the equivalent of 16% of the world’s wealth, said Bezos was misrepresenting the conclusions of global economists regarding the US system.
“Your claim that the top 1% pays 40% of taxes and the bottom 50% only 3% is misleading: It captures just one tax—the federal income tax—and ignores all the rest: payroll taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes, excise duties, etc., many of which are regressive,” said Zucman.
Bezos continued debating the issue on social media on Wednesday, sharing an article that explained how numerous analyses have determined he has paid an effective tax rate hovering around 1%.
“Great to see Bezos keeps bringing up his own massive tax avoidance. Keep digging! This travesty needs a real public debate,” said historian Rutger Bregman, sharing a graph from Zucman’s research, which shows how the average tax rate of the richest Americans has plummeted in recent decades.
At Newsweek on Wednesday, the magazine’s editors wrote that Bezos was correct in his CNBC interview that “one billionaire’s larger tax bill will not fund a modern state by itself.”
“The deeper issue is whether the tax system asks comparable civic seriousness from wages, capital gains, inheritances, consumption, and payroll,” wrote the editors. “A nurse’s paycheck is easy to tax because it is visible. A billionaire’s wealth can grow through assets that may remain untaxed until sale, or perhaps sheltered safely in some offshore domain.”
“The political danger in Bezos’ argument” to allow the bottom 50% of American earners to pay nothing in income tax, the editors added, “is that it lets billionaires sound generous while leaving the structure of wealth largely untouched.”
Thom Hartmann of The Hartmann Report said Bezos’ push to eliminate income taxes for a huge swath of Americans benefits him and other billionaires in three ways, while ultimately harming those he claims to be trying to help save money:
First, it gets millions of Americans on the “we shouldn’t ever pay any income taxes at all” train that’s been rolling for billionaires ever since [former President Ronald] Reagan first gutted our tax code, leading to an explosion of the morbidly rich.
Second, it gets those same average, tax-paying voters on board with Bezos’ second claim, that America’s debt problem isn’t because we’re taxing too little but because we’re “spending too much.”
If we just got rid of—or privatized/profitized—all those pesky “socialist” programs like Medicaid, food stamps, free public highways, fire and police departments, Social Security, food and drug regulation and inspection, air traffic control and TSA, housing subsidies, Pell grants, free public schools, etc., then even billionaires could safely live tax-free.
Third, it means that Bezos will be able to reduce his own labor costs, because the marketplace in which pay rates exist are always exclusively reacting to “after tax” dollars.
Hartmann highlighted Bezos’ resistance to a wealth tax and a fair tax rate with an anecdote about “a very wealthy German businessman” he once saw interviewed by an American reporter on Bloomberg News.
The businessman asked the reporter “how he could possibly live in a country” that taxes “very wealthy and successful people” at about 60%.
“Why don’t you lead a revolt against those high taxes?” he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American rebellion-making.
The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.
He stared at the man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, “I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”
In contrast, Hartmann wrote, “the billionaires and foreign oligarchs who fund the Republican Party and right-wing media think it’s perfectly fine to rip the financial and political guts out of their own nation and turn its people against each other if it lets them keep a few extra bucks.”
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Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin makes a speech during the press conference for the DNC site visit at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado, on May 6, 2026.
(Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
“The DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand.”
The disastrous release of the Democratic National Committee’s 2024 election “autopsy” report on Thursday has brought about a reckoning for the committee’s chair, Ken Martin, who is facing calls to resign from legislators and other influential figures in the party.
The 192-page report, written by strategist Paul Rivera in the wake of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President Donald Trump, was panned as amateurish and incomplete, even more than 18 months after the election. Rivera was reportedly fired on Friday.
Aside from being filled with glaring spelling and factual errors and containing several unfinished sections and self-contradicting annotations, it neglected key issues widely believed to have contributed to the Democratic nominee’s defeat: Most acutely, her continued backing of Israel as it perpetrated a genocide in Gaza, her inability to address working- and middle-class voters’ concerns about affordability, and the shambolic attempt by former President Joe Biden to run for a second term despite his old age and his earlier indications he would serve for only four years.
Many Democrats now see it as a damning indictment of Martin, who was elected as DNC chair last year in part on promises to conduct a thorough and transparent review of the party’s defeat. Not helping was his sudden pivot in late 2025 to attempt to bury the report he once championed, only releasing it this week after it leaked to CNN despite mounting pressure from party members.
On Friday morning, Axios quoted an ideological mix of Democratic legislators describing the report’s release as the final straw for Martin.
“He should resign,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told Axios, citing “his lack of leadership” and saying it is “utterly nuts it took us this long to release the autopsy.”
In a radio interview Thursday, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to a caller who argued Martin should be replaced: “I agree… Having what we have right now is not doing it.”
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) told Semafor that “there doesn’t seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking… I believe it’s time for him to move on.”
Despite a push by Martin’s allies to arm state party chairs with talking points expressing that they are “fully confident in his leadership,” NOTUS reported that inside private DNC group chats and one-on-one conversations, dissension is brewing, and there is even talk of forcing a vote of no confidence to oust the chairman.
“People feel gaslit” by Martin’s flip-flopping, one unnamed DNC member told the outlet. “You kept telling people it was coming, then when you didn’t release it, you didn’t even tell everyone the real reason why.”
“While I don’t believe that there are enough votes to pass a vote of no confidence yet, I think there’s more of a permission structure now to have a more open conversation about it,” said another member who NOTUS described as an ally of Martin’s. “If they think this is going to make things go away, no, this is only going to ramp up now.”
That’s the hope of many in the party’s grassroots, who said the entire saga demonstrated Martin’s unfitness for a role with major responsibilities as Democrats head into existentially important elections in 2026 and 2028.
Dan Pfeiffer—a former Obama administration staffer whose Pod Save America podcast cohosts held Martin’s feet to the fire as he fought to keep the autopsy hidden—called the release “a disaster of his own making.”
“He didn’t pick a qualified person to run the autopsy. The fact that he was apparently shocked by the work product shows there was no oversight of the process,” Pfeiffer said on social media. “Once he saw that the report was poorly done, he just decided to start lying to everyone about why it wasn’t being released.”
“In ‘28, the DNC will set the primary calendar, decide how delegates are awarded, sponsor the debates, and put on the convention,” he said. “If no one trusts the DNC, it will be harder to unite the party around the eventual nominee.”
Amanda Litman, the president of Run For Something, a group that recruits progressive candidates for office, said in a video posted to social media Thursday that putting together a report composed of “pure gibberish,” without access to any of the underlying interviews or materials that buoyed its conclusions, called into question the DNC’s ability to be “a fair, competent… conductor of the Democratic presidential primary.”
“Ken Martin is not up to the task of being DNC chair—the most important part of which is preparing to run the presidential primary process with trust and competency—and should resign,” she added on Friday.
David Hogg, who served as the DNC vice chair in 2025 before being pushed out by Martin over his efforts to support primary challengers against some entrenched party elders, said the autopsy saga was a “demoralizing joke” for the party.
In a release from his political action committee, Leaders We Deserve, Hogg said, “Martin should resign, and the DNC should select a new leader who demonstrates competence, creativity, moral clarity, and a relentless commitment to actually changing the broken Democratic Party brand.”
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Dozens of East Bay residents stage a “die-in” in Oakland to protest against the reductions in healthcare and food assistance funding under President Donald Trump on Thursday, May 21, 2026. Credit: Roselyn Romero/The Oaklandside
Demonstrators warned that the slashing of federal healthcare funds will hit low-income communities, older adults, and people with disabilities the hardest.
On Thursday afternoon in East Oakland, dozens of people lay side by side under the beating sun. Above their heads stood cardboard gravestones, some reading, “No suicide hotline,” “Died unhoused,” “Can’t afford insurance,” and “Rural hospital closed.”
Many of the people were hospital and ER staff and recipients of Medicare or Medi-Cal.
More than 100 of these East Bay residents staged a “die-in,” protesting President Donald Trump’s cuts to healthcare funding outside Oakland’s Eastmont Town Center.
H.R. 1 — formerly called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Trump signed into law last July — includes cuts to Medicaid totaling nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office estimates nearly 12 million Americans may lose their medical insurance as a result.
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In California, up to 2 million residents could lose their Medi-Cal coverage — California’s Medicaid program — including many low-income people, people with disabilities, older adults, children, and veterans, according to an analysis by the California Budget & Policy Center. Alameda County’s hospital system stands to lose hundreds of millions in Medicaid funding.
H.R. 1 also puts over 3 million households statewide at risk of losing food assistance due to cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called CalFresh in California. Around 179,000 people in Alameda receive these benefits. Last year, the county spent extra money on food aid to try to soften the blow.
Activists Brittanie Hernandez-Wilson, left, and Ciara Lovelace join Thursday’s demonstration against the Trump administration’s slashing of healthcare funding. Credit: Roselyn Romero/The Oaklandside
Some of the bill’s impacts are about to go into effect. Starting June 1, Californians ages 18 to 65 without children will only be able to keep their CalFresh benefits for more than three months if they can prove that they work up to 20 hours per week or 80 hours per month. (The state provides some exemptions.) This marks the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that California will enforce this work requirement on CalFresh recipients.
Critics fear the Medicaid cuts will lead to hospitals and clinics shutting down, healthcare staff getting laid off or burnt out, and patients losing access to vital services or having to travel farther to receive healthcare.
The demonstrators in Oakland lay on, or held up, makeshift tombstones symbolizing people who could die, and services that could disappear, due to these cuts.
“These policies end up being more disabling than our own disabilities,” said Brittanie Hernandez-Wilson, an organizer with Hand in Hand, a nonprofit advocating for domestic workers. Hernandez-Wilson has a physical disability.
Gabriela Galicia, executive director of Street Level Health Project, said many immigrants and day laborers have already either lost medical insurance or have avoided seeking treatment due to fears of deportation or being unable to afford medical bills.
Protesters push for California billionaire tax
Demonstrators created 100 makeshift tombstones, each one representing $100 billion in federal healthcare funding cuts. H.R. 1 is estimated to reduce Medicaid funding by $1 trillion over 10 years. Credit: Roselyn Romero/The Oaklandside
Protesters also called on voters to approve the California Billionaire Tax Act, a proposed one-time 5% tax on anyone with a net worth exceeding $1 billion. This would apply to roughly 200 Californians and would raise an estimated $100 billion over five years, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The revenue would go toward healthcare and food assistance.
Demonstrators said the tax is necessary to backfill the programs that stand to lose funding under the Trump administration. Critics say they’re worried the tax would drive wealthy people out of California, resulting in revenue loss over time.
David Tobis, an organizer with Grand Lake Vigil, which holds weekly anti-Trump protests outside of Grand Lake Theatre, said he’s a Medicare recipient and demonstrates to protect healthcare coverage for older adults, people with disabilities, and low-income Black and brown people.
“Trump wants to privatize Medicare so people can make a profit off the elderly. It’s awful,” Tobis told The Oaklandside.
Ciara Lovelace, a counselor for patients at The Center for Independent Living in Berkeley and a Medi-Cal recipient, said she and other people with disabilities have endured “decades of our necks and backs being stepped on, trampled over, and essentially left to rot.”
“I just want folks to see us as humans, and unfortunately, we have to fight just to be seen as such,” she said. “But the fight will not die.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s budget is brutal; it’s impossible at this point to list all the crucial programs that the mayor wants to decimate to pay for tax cuts and more cops. But among the many counter-intuitive moves: The mayor wants to cut support for the Free City College program.
It’s yet another example of the city’s chief executive diverting money that was approved by the voters to other priorities.
It’s also a violation of a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding that San Francisco signed with City College in 2017.
Anjelica Campos, a student rep on the City College Board, testifies about the important of the Free City College program.
Free City College has its roots in a 2016 ballot measure, spearheaded by then-Sup. Jane Kim, that slightly raised the transfer tax on properties selling for more than $5 million. The money, the voters were told, would pay for free tuition at City College for any needy resident of the city. It also covered cash grants to cover books, food, rent, and other expenses for students.
Under state law, any tax that is dedicated to a specific purpose requires a two-thirds vote of the people. A general tax, with no earmarks, can pass with just a simple majority.
So supporters of taxes for things like free City College tuition and affordable housing have no choice but to propose general taxes, and hope that the mayor abides by what the voters intended.
But Lee and Kim cut a deal. The city would fund free tuition, and an oversight body would make sure it went to the right place (to the students, not to City College administration). Some $16 million in transfer tax money was designated for Free City College.
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That’s worked miracles. Thousands of students have taken advantage of what many testified today was a life-changing program. It’s really cheap: Full funding at this point requires only about $11 million, City College officials told the Budget and Appropriations Committee today.
From the People’s Budget Coalition:
“Free City is the reason I can afford to attend City College,” said Angelica Campos, a sociology major and student-elected representative on the College’s Board of Trustees. “I am working, studying, and building a life in San Francisco, and even small costs can decide whether I can stay enrolled or need to drop out. These cuts tell students like me that our education is optional. But my future is not optional.”
Lurie wants to cut funding about in half, to $6.5 million.
Sup. Cheyanne Chen asked Aliya Chisti, a City College Board member, where the $6.5 million figure came from. Chisti, who is on the oversight board, said she had no idea; the Mayor’s Office didn’t say.
Most of the members of the Budget and Appropriations Committee made clear that they aren’t going for this. After more than an hour of public comment, Chen, Chair Connie Chan, and even Sup. Matt Dorsey, who generally goes along with Lurie, said they wanted Free City College fully funded.
That may well happen, but in the end, I have to wonder: Why did Lurie want to cut this in the first place—and why do we allow mayors to unilaterally defy the will of the voters?
48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
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