“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
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Phoenix Suns, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Phoenix.Rick Scuteri/AP
By Gabe Fernandez, Sports Reporter May 9, 2026 (sfgate.com)
The Warriors’ offseason of uncertainty has gotten a whole lot more certain with the return of the team’s head coach, Steve Kerr.
The 60-year-old former NBA player and executive will extend his Golden State tenure for a 13th and 14th year, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, who also said that the two-year deal will keep Kerr as the highest paid coach in the NBA annually. He made $17.5 million last season.
It was far from a guarantee that Kerr would come back and coach the Dubs. While he said he wouldn’t want to abandon his longtime players in Steph Curry and Draymond Green — especially with Curry’s return being a given — a few reports in the aftermath of Golden State’s play-in elimination made it more a matter of if he’d be at Chase Center for another year, rather than when.
First came what sure looked like an emotional goodbye to Curry and Green in the final moments of the loss to the Suns last month. Green himself even said he believed this would be the end of Kerr’s time with the Warriors on his season-end podcast. NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole added to that sentiment with a report that Kerr likely would be “comfortably jobless” soon. Then there were the multiple reports that Warriors brass wasn’t too keen on the coach’s political outspokenness, as well as reported plans of a major overhaul in case of Kerr’s departure.
Kerr also didn’t do much to dispel the rumors between the sudden New Yorker profile and hanging around ESPN senior writer, and profiler extraordinaire, Wright Thompson toward the end of the season. Speaking of ESPN, the network also reportedly tried to get him to come back to the broadcast side of things.
There’s still a lot for Golden State to figure out this offseason as its greatest player in franchise history prepares for another late-career season, but at least the organization can check one thing off its long list.
Gabe Fernandez is an award-winning sports reporter at SFGATE and has been yelling about sports online since he first had an internet connection. A Maryland native, Gabe graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He’s covered sports — focusing on football, basketball and sports history — for Sporting News, Deadspin and CBS Sports. You can reach him at gabe.fernandez@sfgate.com.
Hasan Piker, the Twitch streamer and political commentator, appeared at a May Day rally on May 1 in St. Louis to support Cori Bush’s congressional run. Photo: Tristan Beatty
In a letter to Twitch and Amazon, New York Democratic Rep. Richie Torres once slammed Hasan Piker, the popular political streamer, for his “depravity” and called him “the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism.” While mainstream Democrats and their allies have for months weighed the “problem” of Piker for the party, his star has only continued to rise. Insurgent candidates on the left are now making him their go-to surrogate, with Piker as a new kind of kingmaker, one they hope can shepherd his mass of online supporters behind them.
Piker recently touched down in Missouri to lend his star power to Cori Bush, who is looking to reclaim her position in the House after serving as the first Black woman to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District from 2021 to 2025. During her first term in office, Bush authored a bill calling for an “immediate deescalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” In what was widely read as retribution, Bush was primaried by a Democratic opponent, Wesley Bell, who ended his own Senate campaign against Republican Josh Hawley for the run; Bell defeated Bush with the help of an unprecedented nearly $9 million in spending from the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.
Now Bush is back, and like Piker, is unbowed: During the rally, she wore a T-shirt with her campaign slogan “FIGHT BACK” in big, bold letters.
“I love seeing you all,” Bush told the May Day crowd. “I just don’t love why I keep seeing you all.”
Bush, who rose to prominence as an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement, quickly gained a reputation in office for bucking establishment Democrats — even outpacing other members of “the Squad” — and being outspoken in her criticism of party leadership.
On his wildly popular Twitch stream, Piker has argued that “80 percent of the Democratic Party now agrees with the principles that Cori Bush was defending at a time when it was inopportune for her to do so.” Piker’s visit to St. Louis coincided with weeks of national media scrutiny condemning the popular streamer’s views as antisemitic, culminating in Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., pushing a bipartisan bill to explicitly denounce Piker.
But for the left, the criticism rings more like an endorsement, and Piker has hit the campaign trail for a number of progressive Democrats including Abdul El-Sayed, who’s running for the Senate in Michigan; Dr. Adam Hamawy, who’s running for a New Jersey House seat; and Rep. Ilhan Omar, who’s up for reelection in Minnesota.
On stage with Bush, Piker described Bell as an “AIPAC stooge,” and urged St. Louisans to rally around the Bush campaign. “Republicans are monsters who traffic in hatred,” said Piker. “But we’re no longer going to vote for do-nothing Democrats, either.” He told the crowd about a St. Louis woman at the airport who was shocked to see him, visiting the city. “There’s this attitude in places like Missouri where city slickers like myself, the bicoastal elite, don’t come to places like St. Louis. Like, she genuinely was shocked,” Piker said on a stream re-cap.
At the rally, Piker described St. Louis as part of a growing coalition of the discontented. “I’ve seen a lot of places like St. Louis. Places that have been left behind by wealthy corporations that pollute your waters and steal your productive output … but today we say, ‘No more!’”
In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for Bell pointed to common criticisms from mainstream figures over Piker’s past online comments. “If Cori Bush spent as much time meeting with her constituents as she does associating with people who condone sexual assault and blame America for September 11th, she may have fared better in her last election,” said Bell campaign spokesperson Jordan Blase.
“Republicans are monsters who traffic in hatred. But we’re no longer going to vote for do-nothing Democrats, either.”
Before Piker and Bush, historian Ángel Flores Fontánez took the stage as an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, anchoring the day in proud St. Louis labor history. One of the first American general strikes took place in the city in July 1877, when railroad workers across the United States objected to immiseration imposed by Gilded Age robber barons.
In 1877, railroad workers across the United States shut down rail line capital from New York to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania to Ohio, all the way out west to Missouri. In St. Louis, the strike escalated, evolving into a general action which drew river levee roustabouts, coopers, newsboys, foundry workers, and refinery laborers into a weeklong action.
The strike was a multiracial coalition, and the strike’s executive committee briefly ran St. Louis as one of the first commune governments before it was violently suppressed.
Fontánez recalled the city’s legacy of socialists, which dates back to the abolitionist German ’48ers, and the Funsten Nut Strike of May 1933. As University of Missouri history professor Keona Ervin notes in “Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis,” the Funsten strike was one of the first successful strike actions of the era, with the Communist Party USA using the strike as a moment to “mark the urban Midwest as a new hotbed for radical labor politics spearheaded by black working women.”
In the aftermath of the 2014 Black Lives Matter movement, which began in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, many hoped to see St. Louis once again become a beacon of progressivism. But Missouri poses a cadre of challenges: The 1st District is a gerrymandered product of a red state that used to be purple. Missouri was a bellwether for a century, but as polarization intensified in the early 2000s, Missouri Republicans successfully drew maps that neutralized the state’s urban progressive centers.
Most Missourians live in the blue islands of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield, which also make up 80 percent of the state’s annual GDP. Previously, the state elected Democratic governors, senators, and controlled a handful of congressional seats. But now the 1st District is one of the few remaining positions not controlled by Republicans.
Decades of state and federal Republican rule have been disastrous for the Greater St. Louis area, plunging the city into a pattern of capital flight and population loss. The city is still reeling from the May 2025 tornado which ripped through the city and hit historically Black neighborhoods in North St. Louis the hardest.
From the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the St. Louis mayor’s office, many residents feel the recovery has been botched and worry that the North Side will not be rebuilt. Last month, protesters confronted Mayor Cara Spencer over the sluggish cleanup effort, where houses have been left half-destroyed and their residents sleeping in tents.
“When we’re going to our electeds, we’re saying fully fund the North Side,” Bush told the crowd. “If you can’t stand up to Donald Trump and his administration — at the city level, the state level, or the federal level — then you’re no representative for us. If you can’t stand up to Donald Trump and his allies, then how are you supposed to stand up for us?”
St. Louisans are calling on their elected officials to fight for more disaster relief, and also against attacks by the state legislature. At the direct request of President Donald Trump, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, a former car dealership owner turned Republican politician, is attempting to further gerrymander the voting map for Kansas City.
Kehoe also wants to abolish Missouri’s income tax, which critics say will send the state into a budget tailspin not unlike Sam Brownback’s failed tax-cutting policy, the “Kansas Experiment.”
Hasan Piker on stage during Web Summit Qatar 2026 in Doha. Photo: Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images
The governor also caused an uproar by legally invading St. Louis in 2025, taking over state control of the city’s police department. In doing so, Kehoe defied a 2012 statewide vote which granted local control of the police to the St. Louis mayor. Missouri is the only state in the U.S. where the governor controls the police of the major cities, including the police budget.
Many St. Louisans are vehemently opposed to the police takeover and disgruntled with the status quo, but Missouri’s 1st District includes several neighborhoods in St. Louis County that went heavily for Bell in 2024. G Gamache, a union organizer with Starbucks Workers United who attended May Day rally, told The Intercept that Bush is still the fighter St. Louis needs.
“When you see her in person, you see how much she hasn’t changed who she is. … She’s still 10 toes down on things like Medicare for All, affordable housing, and ending the genocide of Palestinians by Israel. A wide majority of Democratic voters, and even many Republican voters, even in Missouri, support all these things,” he said.
Back in August 2025, Bush’s opponent, Wesley Bell, held his first and only in-person town hall, which was disrupted by protesters. Local activists challenged the congressman on his support of Israel, his refusal to call Gaza a genocide, and his trip to Tel Aviv, which was sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation.
During the town hall, a man providing security for Bell was caught on video attempting to forcefully physically remove the protesters.
Between Missouri Republicans and Bell, the 2.8 million St. Louisans living in the greater metropolitan area are generally represented by pro-Israel politicians. According to the Pew Research Center, most U.S. voters have soured on Israel, which is now engaged in an invasion of Lebanon, continued violence in the West Bank, the further annihilation of Gaza, and now an ongoing conflict with Iran, which has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane. As of April 2026, 60 percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent last year, and the trend seems to be accelerating.
Bell has tried to square this circle by recognizing the Armenian genocide, voting against Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, and denouncing Kehoe’s attempts to redraw Missouri’s congressional maps. Since the initial almost $9 million, AIPAC has continued supporting Bell, directing donors through its PAC’s portal to fund his campaign.
Blase, the Bell spokesperson, told The Intercept that “Congressman Bell remains focused on standing up to Trump and fighting for the people of Missouri’s first Congressional District.”
While Bush called for a ceasefire early on, her criticisms of Israel don’t quite explain why AIPAC would spend so much on a Missouri congressional campaign.
A more complete answer may lie in Missouri as a node in the country’s military–industrial complex. St. Louis is home to several Boeing facilities, with the Seattle-headquartered aerospace company selling a range of weapons to the Israeli military, including F-35 and F-15IA fighter jets, missiles, and smart bombs.
In 2020, pro-Palestine student groups in St. Louis protested the St. Charles Boeing facility over a $2.2 billion contract to manufacture small-diameter bombs sold to foreign nations, including Israel, and in 2024, the Washington University Student Union Senate passed a resolution to divest from Boeing.
In one of its corporate PR products, a 2025 Boeing video highlighted St. Louis as “Fighterland U.S.A.,” nicknamed for its importance in military jet manufacturing across the Lambert International Airport and Scott Air Force Base complexes. In February 2026, the company announced the return of its Defense, Space & Security headquarters to St. Louis. Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, near Kansas City, made headlines in June 2025 as playing a key role in launching strikes against Iran.
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St. Louis is also home to a number of companies on pro-Palestine boycott lists. The North American headquarters of Israeli Chemical Limited Group — which manufactures fertilizers, metals, and chemical products including white phosphorus — is in Creve Coeur, Missouri. As Human Rights Watch reported, Israel used white phosphorus in populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon in October and November 2023.
Bush told The Intercept that Missouri voters are agitated enough to show up and oust Bell, pointing to polling that shows the race to be neck and neck. But Bush is positioning herself as a fighter for people who have long felt left behind by the Democratic Party.
“If you hurt my people, I can’t sit back and do nothing. … If we wait on the feckless people in some of these seats to do it, it’ll never happen,” she promised.
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
House of Representatives candidate Matt Dunlap and Senate candidate Graham Platner, both Democrats, cheer during a May Day rally on May 1, 2026, in Portland, Maine. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Getty Images
Locals in Maine are bridling at the decision by a powerful Washington Democratic group to throw its weight behind one candidate in the contested primary race for the House seat in the state’s 2nd Congressional District.
On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued a coveted endorsement of state Sen. Joe Baldacci in the primary race, prompting angry protests from the three other candidates in the race to replace outgoing Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.
In response to the endorsement, the Penobscot County Democratic Committee — in Baldacci’s home county, which includes the city of Bangor — will vote Saturday on a measure to condemn the endorsement. The language of the proposal, which was put forward by former Maine state Senate President Charles Pray, denounces the endorsement as being in “total disregard and willfully ignoring” local party rules that bar the Democratic state and county chapters from backing a candidate in a primary.
“Let the people decide. Let the voters in the primary make that determination.”
“With the DCCC deciding to throw itself into the mix here, truthfully that just kind of aggravated me,” Pray told The Intercept. “I’m going to support whoever wins the Democratic nomination, but I just think it was an unfair position on their part of trying to dictate or trying to boost up a candidate. Point is, let the people decide. Let the voters in the primary make that determination.”
Pray, who previously worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations and described himself as “a progressive moderate with liberal tendencies but conservative perspectives,” has personally backed State Auditor Matt Dunlap in the race, but said his pique at the DCCC’s endorsement isn’t about any one candidate.
“This has nothing to do with Joe — I think all four of them have an equal chance,” Pray said. “It’s a primary, and, by the way, our state party rules and our county rules are that the party organization cannot endorse or support a candidate.”
A spokesperson for the DCCC said the group was focused on winning in the general elections and beating back President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“It’s imperative that Democrats must take back the House to hold Trump accountable and deliver on what truly matters to voters,” said the spokesperson, Viet Shelton. “That’s why we are proud to announce our latest round of Red to Blue candidates who span the ideological spectrum, are authentic voices in their districts, and are best positioned to win in November.”
The race to replace Golden — who announced in November that he would not seek reelection — is being closely watched nationwide ahead of the midterm elections. Whoever takes the Democratic primary will square off against Paul LePage, a brash, plainspoken businessman and Republican former governor whose time running Maine was marked by proto-MAGA far-right populism.
Baldacci is facing off against Dunlap, who is also a former Maine secretary of state; Jordan Wood, a longtime Democratic fundraiser and political operative; and Paige Loud, a social worker and first-time candidate. In the wake of the DCCC endorsement of Baldacci, the other candidates in the race took aim at D.C. Democrats for picking a side.
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“It’s undemocratic for national establishment Democrats to put their thumb on the scale in any primary,” Dunlap said. “Just like in certain other races across Maine this year, they won’t decide this one — the people of Maine will.”
With Dunlap picking up endorsements from Our Revolution, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and other progressives, Baldacci — who enjoys name recognition as the brother of former Gov. John Baldacci — is widely seen as the establishment candidate in the race. Reached by phone Thursday, Baldacci declined to comment on the Penobscot County party proposal condemning the endorsement, but said he was glad to have the backing of Democrats in Washington.
“I’m pleased that they did it,” Baldacci said, referring to the endorsement. “My understanding is they based it on polling to determine who is the best candidate to run against LePage.”
Wood said the DCCC move demonstrated the problems with Washington party politics.
“The fact that the national Democratic Party would come in and try to decide this primary literally weeks before we vote is just another example of how broken our Democratic leadership is,” he said.
“It’s annoying that the DCCC thinks they know better than Mainers.”
A Pan Atlantic Omnibus poll in March put Baldacci well ahead of his opponents, but there is little in the way of recent polling to indicate a current popular favorite in the race. Following the stunning collapse of Gov. Janet Mills’s bid for the U.S. Senate — despite the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — against populist insurgent Graham Platner, not everyone in Maine sees the DCCC as the best political oracle to follow.
“It’s annoying that the DCCC thinks they know better than Mainers,” said Loud, the left-leaning social worker. “We just saw the DSCC’s endorsement of Janet Mills, and we all saw how that turned out. I don’t think they have the finger on the pulse.”
Update: May 7, 2026, 5:12 p.m. ET This story has been updated to include Jordan Wood’s experience as a political operative.Share
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
The Recount May 5, 2026 What if the 2028 election isn’t decided by the electoral college? After recent moves, it’s becoming a real question. In April, Virginia officially joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a potentially pivotal moment in the agreement’s history. The nearly 20-year-old compact was conceived as an end-run around the electoral college, a pact among states to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide, rather than the winner of each individual state. In recent years, the agreement has ticked steadily towards the 270 electoral votes needed for adoption: Virginia is the 19th state (including D.C.) to join, placing it at 222 electoral votes, more than 80% to adoption. Now, the 2026 elections, and Democrats’ quest for control in several key swing states, look increasingly pivotal — for the party’s future, for the 2028 presidential election, and for how we vote for president. 0:00 History of abolition efforts 1:03 The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, explained 3:00 The huge 2026 stakes 6:55 The two wildcards 8:55 What a popular vote election could look like 10:15 Why the electoral college has already changed Subscribe to Steve’s newsletter: TheLongRun.news
The Recount Aug 21, 2025 Go to https://groundnews.com/therecount for a better way to stay informed. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access to world-wide coverage. The gerrymandering wars are on. All over the country, red and blue states are scrambling to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. Republicans in Texas, led by President Trump, fired the first shot, but Democrats like Gavin Newsom are eagerly joining them. The result is an arms race between the parties unprecedented in the modern era. But what if there’s another way? The United States’ system of national elections is extremely unique in two key ways, and any hope of ending gerrymandering runs through reforming both. From proportional representation to expanding Congress by raising the cap on the number of House seats, there are real solutions to the current crisis — if we want them. 0:00 The gerrymandering wars are on 1:14 Gerrymandering 101 2:09 How states redistrict 3:52 Why gerrymandering is getting worse 5:49 Why Republicans are worse 8:21 Compact districts vs. fair districts 10:46 The fix
E. For Immediate Release (trigger warning) Reports of Severe Physical & Sexual Violence by IOF Soldiers Against Participants Emerge Following Illegal Israeli Interception of Flotilla…..May 7, 2026
1. Sunday, 12Noon – 2:30pm, 20th Anniversary: Mother’s Day Golden Gate Bridge Walk for Peace
“Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Plaza”: Gather at SF Side of Golden Gate Bridge on the East side of Hwy 101. Northbound 101 traffic: Exit just before bridge entrance Southbound 101 traffic: Exit just after exiting bridge.
Limited parking!
We honor all mothers: “All Mothers Have the Right to Raise Their Family in Peace!” “Every War is a War on Children!”
Our Calls: -US-Israeli Hands Off Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon -STOP THE GENOCIDE -Tax $$ for Human Needs, NOT War! – Abolish Colonialism -Abolish War -War is Ecocide!
Fun Flashmob dance; Bring flags from around the world to wear as capes on the bridge to create a global presence: “The People of the World Demand Peace.” (Especially needed – flags from: Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela, Cuba and Somalia!) Bring signs (maximum allowed: 2’x3′). Extra signs will be available. (Flags not allowed on poles.)
Bring your mother, grandmother, children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and friends! Join the global call: ABOLISH WAR NOW…For Our Mother Earth!
11:30-Noon: Gather at the “Welcome Plaza” on the SF side of the bridge.
Noon-12:30: -Group Public Reading of The Mother’s Day Proclamation – written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, after the carnage of the U.S. Civil War; A call for women of the world to unite for the noble cause of world peace! -Flash Mob Dance to: “War, What is it Good for? Absolutely Nothing!” Instructional video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZS_LxsUFWLRB03Mdx1yESE_iVYNHnPiQ/view
Don’t dance? Help us display the international flags!
12:30-1:30: Peace Walk to middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and back to the Plaza, including short vigil in middle of bridge facing the traffic with signs. “The People of the World Demand Peace!” (About a 1.25 round trip walk)
1:30-2:00: Short Rally with speakers, Music/song.
2:00-2:30: Informal Celebration for World Peace: Bring light snacks to share!
Will your organization co-sponsor or endorse the event? Please contact us! For More Info: toby4peace [at] sonic.net
That is not public safety. That is abuse, displacement, and a complete disregard for human dignity.
Today, Turner holds a top leadership role at BART overseeing so-called “Progressive Policing and Community Engagement.” There is nothing progressive about violence. There is nothing about this that reflects community.
Turner previously served as an Internal Affairs investigator at BART Police, a role meant to uphold integrity and investigate misconduct. Instead, she stood by and enabled harm. At the same time, she holds regional leadership positions, including Vice President of the Bay Area chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and participates in youth engagement through the Boys & Girls Club.
5. Tuesday, 12Noon – 1:00pm, STOP Musk & Altman’s Threat To The Workers Of The US & The World! (Press Conference)
Oakland Federal Building 1301 Clay St. Oakland
Join trade unionists and working people about the dangers of AI and it’s introduction in every working place and for the public. From education, artists, writers to healthcare and logistics with autonomous vehicles, millions of workers are threatened with the loss of their jobs and not only are workers threatened but the public and the commons. We cannot allow the tech billionaires to destroy our world for more profits and provide support for the Trump dictatorship. Project 2025 which is being implemented ends any oversight and regulation of all technology and this is an existential threat to workers, the public and our society. Working people and the rights of the public are above the interests of these billionaires. There will be presentations from NUHW Kaiser licensed clinical social worker Ilana Marcucci-Morris about the dangers of the use of AI and chat boxes to replace workers in responding to patients with mental health problems.
We will also have a speaker from the CFA about the CSU contract with Open AI which has military contracts to profit from wars and genocide. They will also discuss the dangers of the Chancellor’s $17 million contract with Altman’s open AI to make the CSU the first AI powered University without consultation and consent with the faculty and puts the profits of Open AI above the public interests of the CSU students and the public of California.
6. Wednesday, 12Noon – 1:30pm, Rally to Fight Back Against SFDPH Program Cuts & Clinic Closures that Will Kill
South East Mission Geriatric Clinic 3905 Mission St. San Francisco
In addition to laying off all 4 clinical nurse specialists at Laguna Honda, the SF Department of Public Health plans to close 3 community clinics serving vulnerable populations. They are also making moves to undermine and potentially eventually dismantle the Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Program.
These clinics, programs, and positions are vital to the people they serve and the entire SF community. They are unique and will leave their patients without accessible options. Join us for a rally to fight back.
SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Department of Public Health are threatening to close three healthcare centers that provide critical care including for youth, poor and seniors. Southeast Mission Geriatric clinic which is close to Bernal Heights and in the Excelsior said they offer wraparound care for seniors, including mental health care for many immigrants who endured trauma and witnessed atrocities in their home countries.
(located 7 blocks from Civic Center BART and on/or near the Muni #5, 19, 27, 31, 38 & 49) Wheelchair accessible entrance
Reading and Discussion Group — “The Revolutionary Party: Its Role in the Struggle for Socialism” by James P. Cannon
The 99% is rising up against war, repression, and crackdowns on civil liberties. Mass protest is a crucial component, but conscious collective action by workers is key. How can we ensure that our struggles for systemic change are inclusive of those who need change the most? What is the way to foster accountable leadership, free of opportunism and ruling class influence?
Participate in this three-session discussion exploring the role of a revolutionary party in organizing an inclusive movement for radical change.
UC workers deserve better than second-class treatment from UC. UC continues to break the law, making it impossible for workers to get the contract that they deserve.
We have filed two Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs) against UC over their unlawful imposition of healthcare increases and other unlawful terms, and their refusal to bargain over our housing benefits, and UC still hasn’t made things right. Our ULP committee says ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
We are ready to Strike UNTIL WE WIN!
Our strike is legal, and the Labor Board has ruled that virtually all service and patient care workers can go on strike. A small number of employees will report to work, and some workers will be required to be on call to take care of patients.
9. Thursday, 4:00pm – 6:00pm, Tell Target to Stand Up To ICE!
Metreon Target:
789 Mission Street. Meet on the sidewalk by the Mission Street entrance. SF
Tell Target: We will boycott until they Stand Up To ICE!
Join us to say: Until Target acts to protect its workers and guests from ICE, we will not shop at Target! We will hold signs, hand out flyers, and explain why we must all boycott Target until they Stand Up To ICE! Bring a sign if you have one.
Oliver Milman , Environmental Reporter – The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: If you have ever been to Europe, Japan, Taiwan, or China, you will recall how easy and comfortable mass transit was. The average train speeds in Japan are 149-198mph, in Europe 155-186mph, and in China 155-217mph. In the U.S. it is 40-55mph. Then there are the easily available buses and subways. As with so many things, Americans are told by politicians and Right-wing media that the United States is the leading country in the world, when the truth is that the U.S. is second or third tier in almost everything
The only train station in Houston, the US’s fourth-largest city and one of the fastest-growing conurbations in the country, is a diminished, morose sight. Intercity trains arrive at this squat, shed-like Amtrak building, which cringes in the shadows of roaring highways, just three times a week.
That such a meager train station could ostensibly serve a metropolitan area of about 7 million people is a stark symbol of how the sprawling, car-dominated US has fallen behind cities around the world where people can rely on extensive, high-quality public transport to get around.
The gap is now so large that for major American cities to bring their public transit up to “world-class” status, it would cost an enormous $4.6tn, involving 7,500 miles of new dedicated infrastructure for trains and buses, over the next 20 years, a recent report found.
American cities languish badly compared with global leaders such as Sydney, Hong Kong and Barcelona, based on the number of transit vehicles per 100,000 residents, according to the Transportation for America study.
Chief Justice John Roberts attends the State of the Union at the U.S. Capitol, February 24, 2026. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
If there’s one thing Chief Justice John Roberts would like the American people to believe, it’s that his Supreme Court is not at all political. Like the transparent eyeballs at The New York Times politics desk—such as Peter Baker, who doesn’t vote, as doing so might indicate the dreaded partisan bias—Roberts sees his role as “to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat,” as he put it in his confirmation hearing in 2005.
After the Court’s most recent decision gutting what’s left of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, which sparked volcanic outrage across the country and the destruction of not only several majority-Black House districts but representatives for many of America’s cities, Roberts is back on his routine. At a judicial conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, this week, he squalled that people were misunderstanding his project and being very mean to him personally. “I think [people] view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do,” he said. “We’re not simply part of the political process and there’s a reason for that and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate.”
He also lamented a shift “from criticism of the opinion to criticism of the judge … As soon as you personalize, it can become problematic.”
Judging from the preposterousness of these remarks, I suspect that Roberts himself is starting to question whether this time he and his fellow right-wing hacks in robes have, at long last, gone too far.
As an initial matter, it is a priori impossible for legal decisions to be nonpolitical. (The same thing is true of journalism.) The Supreme Court is part of the government, its members are appointed by politicians, and its decisions have obvious political effects. Even the most neutral imaginable adjudication of some technical legal dispute rests on an assumption that the rule of law is a good way to organize society—a political opinion not shared by everyone. Donald Trump, for instance, does not believe it. (Although he’s at least the most honest of the lot on this point, that legal decisions are clearly political. That’s why he thinks the Court should side with him on whatever he wants, because he appointed them.)
That doesn’t mean that all judicial decisions are equally fraudulent, of course. There is no escape from politics, but there are such things as good and bad faith. And John Roberts is the most bad-faith chief justice at the head of the most dishonest Court majority at least since Melville Fuller, who presided over the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legally sanctioned Jim Crow tyranny, and arguably ever. Not even Fuller or Roger Taney ever argued that the president is above the law.
The Callais decision is a perfect example. Not only does the 15th Amendment very obviously authorize the VRA’s requirement for majority-minority districts in certain places, it also specifically sets out a results-based test for whether something is discriminatory. After all, the mass disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South under Jim Crow was often carried out through facially neutral tactics, precisely to create plausible legal deniability. That was why Congress amended the law in 1982.
In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito ignores the Constitution and the text of the VRA to return to an intent-based test, while claiming that he is rooting out “race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.” Just like in Jim Crow, so long as the jug hooting Ku Klux Klan members in the Alabama state legislature are smart enough to not write down “we are taking voting rights away from minorities, because we are personally fervent racists” then they can disenfranchise minorities to their hearts’ content.
The Court’s flagrant political bias can also be seen in the fact that the majority allowed an illegal racial gerrymander to stand in Alabama in 2022 because it was supposedly too close to an election to change it, but today is allowing Florida, Tennessee, and Louisiana to redraw their districts less than a month before their elections. Indeed, in Louisiana voting had already started when Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the elections to give time for additional gerrymandering.
And Callais is only somewhat more preposterous than Shelby County v. Holder, the Roberts-written opinion that struck down Section 5 of the VRA. He didn’t even bother to point out which part of the Constitution the law supposedly violated in that decision.
Everyone can see what is happening. These are a pack of partisan hacks ruling by decree. Disenfranchising Black people benefits Republicans because Black people vote for Democrats, and Roberts and his fellow party activists on the Court will delete nearly any law that stands in the way of that. The decision might as well have been copy-pasted from the lorem ipsum text. To adjust the saying somewhat, Roberts is micturating directly in our collective eye sockets and then saying “it isn’t raining at all, no sir, and frankly you’re very rude for even mentioning the word ‘wet.’”
The reason the Court has hitherto gotten away with this is a handful of lucky Republican presidential victories, and the timidity of the Democratic Party. President Biden, confronted with Court reform activists who warned him that the rogue Court majority was going to disembowel his presidency and pave the way for Trump to return, punted the issue to a blue-ribbon panel of credentialed experts, which naturally went nowhere. The Court went on to repeatedly overturn Biden’s policies based on invented doctrines and then anointed Donald Trump as king.
The problems with the Court have only gotten worse since then. This is a rogue institution corrupt to its very marrow, and even moderate Democrats are starting to see that it is an imminent threat to the American republic itself. That’s why 16 years after the epic Republican gerrymandering spree began, Democratic states have started to respond in kind. Efforts are afoot to raise the stakes once again in reaction to this fresh round of GOP election-rigging.
Hence Roberts’s indignant harrumphing that nobody is allowed to criticize him and his fellow law wizards. Outrageous, flagrant lying got him this far; he might as well keep it up. But let’s hope it is no longer enough.
Britain’s centrist Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer crashes while Spain’s Socialist Pedro Sánchez shows how to lead from the left. Could there be a lesson here?
Agri Stats collected proprietary information from all meat producers and encouraged price increases for decades. After a Trump DOJ settlement, it’s allowed to stay in business.
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Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs. More by Ryan Cooper
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Saikat Chakrabarti at his campaign’s “Change the Party” rally on May 7, 2026. Photo by Kelly Waldron.
Congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti is an outsider to San Francisco politics who has not been welcomed by the city’s political establishment, progressives and moderates alike.
But instead of seeking their vote of confidence, he’s bringing other outsiders in.
On Thursday evening, Chakrabarti’s “Change the Party” rally drew many hundreds of attendees who packed City Nights, a nightclub in SoMa, to the brim. Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” blasted from the speakers while attendees waved “Fight Trump” and “Lower costs” signs in the air.
Jamaal Bowman, former representative for New York’s 16th District, flew in for the event, as did Darializa Avila Chevalier, Angela Gonzales-Torres, and Melat Kiros, who are running for seats in the House of Representatives for New York City, Los Angeles and Denver, respectively.
“We have to completely change the direction of leadership of the Democratic party. We need a Democratic party that knows how to fight to stop authoritarian rule,” said Chakrabarti.
But the biggest draw, and most controversial aspect, of the night was ostensibly not Chakrabarti, but Hasan Piker, a popular left-wing commentator who has over three million followers on Twitch, and according to Wired, streams for seven to eight hours a day.
When Mission Local waited to speak with Chakrabarti before the rally, the candidate was backstage, in the middle of streaming with Piker.
At the rally, Piker’s comments echoed Chakrabarti’s.
“We deserve a better party that will put your interests first,” he said.
He likened Chakrabarti to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who was elected mayor of New York City last year, and reappropriated a popular Maoist slogan: “We can let a thousand Zohrans bloom,” Piker said.
Chakrabarti, both as a candidate and in his previous role as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, has positioned himself as a combative foil for mainstream Democrats. While his campaign is staunchly anti-Trump, he has taken particular aim at the Democratic Party and what he calls its failure to stop Trump’s authoritarianism. ❮❯
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“We ruffled some feathers with the Democratic establishment,” Chakrabarti said to the roaring crowd. “And I’m glad we did.”
Unlike his opponents, State Senator Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan, Chakrabarti has not held office in San Francisco and, before putting his hat in the ring and spending $4.8 million on his own campaign, had little name recognition here.
When asked how he plans to build trust with voters who may not know him, Chakrabarti said he is focused on getting as much face time with voters as possible.
“I’m not part of the local political establishment,” Chakrabarti said. “The way that we’ve been running this campaign from the start is to be as physically available as possible. We’ve done more public events, more direct voter contact, more conversations with real people in San Francisco than any of my opponents — I think all my opponents combined, at this point.”
The centimillionaire former Stripe engineer, who is likely worth more than $100 million and has paid gobs to hire an army of door-knockers to get his name out, is also turning to social media and its influencers.
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On Thursday night, Chakrabarti took interviews with both members of the press and members of what his campaign dubbed “new media:” Content creators and internet personalities with millions in combined followers.
The content creators filed in line, waiting to speak to Chakrabarti backstage and get a few dedicated minutes with the candidate.
But Piker is the most popular (he is sometimes stylized the “Joe Rogan of the Left”), and has subsequently drawn the most ire from moderate Democrats here.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey authored a resolution the same day as the rally asking the San Francisco Democratic Party to condemn Piker and reject any attempt to “change” the Democratic Party to align with Piker’s views.
Dorsey has taken issue with Piker’s outspoken criticism of Israel — Dorsey is, in his own words, a “self-proclaimed Zionist” — and Piker’s comments saying that “Americans deserved 9/11,” plus a bizarre rant in which the streamer called a Vietnamese refugee a “fucking idiotic old lady” for opposing communism and supporting President Donald Trump.
Dorsey and others have sought to paint the online tirade as anti-Asian, though Piker has said that “while my sentiment is vulgar,” his statements have been taken out of context — he is streaming for much of the day, after all.
And on Thursday, no one in the hot and crowded room seemed to pay much attention to Dorsey’s flogging. The crowd was more focused on stump chants like “Abolish ICE,” “Tax the Rich” and “Medicare for All.” While flyers posted around the city had advertised a planned counter-protest outside the rally, no one showed up.
“There’s a lot of people who didn’t want me to be here today from the San Francisco Democratic Party, from numerous astroturf organizations that put fliers all around San Francisco,” Piker said on stage. But, he added, “not a single person showed up to protest. They have the money and interest, but we have the people.”
This May we have a $50K match!
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Having reporters on-the-ground, asking questions is what makes Mission Local stand out — it’s our biggest strength, and we intend to bring that to every neighborhood we cover.
Our goal this May is to raise $125,000 — the price of adding a reporter to one neighborhood for one year. If you donate to our fundraiser today, your gift is doubled thanks to the match.about:blank
Kelly Waldron is a data reporter at Mission Local. She studied Geography at McGill University and worked at a remote sensing company in Montreal, analyzing methane data, before turning to journalism and earning a master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School. You can reach her on Signal @kwaldron.60.More by Kelly Waldron
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