“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
In yet another remark that triggered alarm around the world, President Donald Trump said Friday that he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz—which Iran has blockaded for much of the past five months over his and Israel’s illegal war—a US territory.
Just two days after the latest inflation figures demonstrated, in the words of one expert, “Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of our economy,” the president ignored the economic fallout from his war, which led Iran to restrict ship traffic through the strait, driving up fuel prices worldwide.
“We’re bringing the prices way down,” he told a Long Island crowd. Trump also said that “after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”
Some critics responded to clips of the comments on X by mocking Trump—an infamous liar. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) quipped, “Awesome! And the Easter Bunny is real.”
Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, said that “this jingoism rings a bit hollow when most of the US bases near the strait have been essentially abandoned due to danger from Iranian missiles and drones.”
Progressive political commentator Kyle Kulinski declared that “he absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up. He’s a completely unhinged lunatic, and he’s a sadistic violent menace to the world.”
After high initial claims about lower prices, Trump admitted that gasoline has soared due to his war, but said: “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—a country, really it’s the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world—we don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So, remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s OK. I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.”
Trump’s threat over the strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman came just before a monthlong ceasefire between the US and Iran is set to expire on Monday. A senior White House official told Politico that the situation is “static.”
“It doesn’t matter how close or how far we are,” said the official, who has heard no mention of a potential extension of the ceasefire. “What matters is if Iran wants to come to the table and agree to a deal. Right now, they haven’t done that.”
The Associated Press reported Friday that “the Trump administration appears to be reaching out to a broader swath of countries that might be able to help pressure Tehran,” and Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, told the outlet that “everyone is just urging both sides to stop this reckless game of chicken.”
In addition to launching an illegal war on Iran in February, and invading Venezuela in January to abduct its president, Trump has made threats against various other nations during his second term, including Canada, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, and Mexico. He’s also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and killed hundreds of people by blowing up boats allegedly smuggling drugs.
Wetiko (also spelled windigo or wendigo) is an Algonquian-rooted concept describing an evil, cannibalistic spirit or destructive force driven by insatiable greed, selfish consumption, and a total disconnect from community and nature. In modern psychological and spiritual contexts, it is widely interpreted as a contagious “mind-virus” or collective psychosis that compels humans to act against their own best interests. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Traditional Origin
Cannibalistic Spirit: In Algonquin, Cree, and Ojibwe traditions, wetiko represents a monster or spirit embodying greed, excess, and a literal or figurative “heart of ice”. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Behavioral Warning: Legends warned that individuals who gave in to extreme selfishness, gluttony, or harm toward their tribe could become possessed or transformed by the wetiko force. [1]
Modern Psychospiritual Interpretation
The Mind-Virus: Authors like Paul Levy and indigenous scholars like Jack Forbes describe wetiko as an invisible, contagious psychic parasite. [1, 2, 3]
Core Traits: It manifests as consumption for the sake of consumption, systemic exploitation, environmental destruction, and an egocentric illusion of absolute separation from others. [1]
The Antidote: Writers on the subject emphasize that recognizing wetiko within our own blind spots and unconscious reactions is the first step toward breaking its cycle. [1, 2, 3]
In the context of modern capitalism, scholars and activists use wetiko as a conceptual lens to critique systemic exploitation, viewing hyper-accelerated globalized capitalism not just as an economic structure, but as the ultimate institutionalized manifestation of the wetiko “mind-virus.” [1, 2, 3, 4]
When applied to modern market systems, the concept highlights several structural parallels:
Insatiable Growth
Endless Accumulation: Capitalism’s core imperative is continuous, infinite growth. This directly mirrors the wetiko monster’s defining curse: the more it consumes, the larger, hungrier, and more desperate it becomes. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Consumption as Salvation: Culturally, the system encourages consumerism as a fix-all solution for human discontent, equating personal value with material possession. [1, 2]
Commercial “Cannibalism”
Life as a Commodity: Indigenous scholar Jack Forbes defined cannibalism under wetiko as “the consuming of another’s life for one’s private purpose or profit.” [1, 2]
Exploitation: Under this framework, transforming natural ecosystems into dead commodities (ecocide) and reducing human time, health, and labor to mere line-item expenses are seen as forms of systemic cannibalism. [1, 2]
Institutionalized Blindness
Externalized Harms: Modern market mechanics separate consumers from the consequences of their purchases (e.g., hidden environmental degradation or sweatshop labor). This distance numbs social accountability.
Amputated Empathy: The classic wetiko symptom—an “icy heart”—is institutionalized when corporations are legally obligated to prioritize quarterly profit and shareholder returns over community wellbeing or ecological safety. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Alternative Vision
Writers like Alnoor Ladha and Paul Levy argue that to fix global crises, we must look beyond policy tweaks. They advocate for: [1, 2]
“Undreaming” the System: Seeing the global economy as a collective psychological projection rather than an unchangeable law of nature.
Shifting the Goal: Moving from extractive economics to reciprocal, sustainable systems modeled on Indigenous stewardship. [1]
Jeffrey Epstein survivors including Sharlene Rochard (right) and Liz Stein (second from right) attempt to hand a copy of the Epstein files to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on July 29, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/AP Images)
Liz Stein, a public face for survivors, says the Senate confirmation is a setback — but she isn’t backing down.
Every minute of every day, Liz Stein has to relive the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. She does it during news interviews and when meeting lawmakers on Capitol Hill to demand justice for herself and other survivors of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And she’s had to do it throughout the attorney general confirmation process for Todd Blanche, a man who rose from being President Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer to the top official overseeing the U.S. Department of Justice. Blanche has served as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 at DOJ, since March 2025. He then became acting attorney general in April after Trump fired his predecessor, Pam Bondi, and officially nominated him to oversee the department in June.
Since that time, Stein and her fellow survivors have consistently urged senators to vote against Blanche’s confirmation, arguing that he has shown no urgency or concern with expanding the Epstein investigation. Despite some initial pushback from two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche cleared that first hurdle to advance to a full Senate vote, in part by meeting with survivors — something he’d previously declined to do.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins, who is in a tough re-election race in Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska then announced that they would join Democrats in voting against Blanche, raising the tension heading into the final vote. With last-minute support from GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the Senate confirmed Blanche, 50-49, early Saturday morning.
Stein told The 19th that just last year she felt momentum toward accountability growing, driven by public outrage from across the political spectrum and the Epstein survivors’ decision to step into the national spotlight as a unified group calling for transparency. However, Blanche’s confirmation crystalizes another feeling for Stein: “It feels like the DOJ is weaponizing this case for political reasons, and it feels like we’re the pawns being used in that game,” she told The 19th.
That momentum feels stagnant for now, Stein said, but she wants people to know that it won’t be a deterrent. “I think that every attempt the Department of Justice has made to make us go away has not worked,” she said. “We’re not going away.”
The Epstein cloud has hung over the Trump administration since the president began his second term, and included a series of perceived missteps by Bondi that drew criticism from both Democrats and Trump’s base.
In February 2025, Bondi claimed in interviews that her office would be releasing new documents tied to Epstein that would make people feel “sick,” and stated that she had a list of Epstein’s clients sitting on her desk. At a White House meeting the same month, she handed out binders to a group of right-wing social media influencers that contained no new information.
By July 2025, DOJ had released a memo stating it “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” Trump supporters began to weigh in. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who boasts an average of about 11 million listeners and viewers per episode, accused the administration of “trying to gaslight” the public about how much information it had on the Epstein case.
For Stein, DOJ’s “nothing to see here” attitude has been a constant. In September 2025, the human trafficking specialist and a group of about a dozen other survivors gathered publicly for the first time, standing in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. They called for investigations into Epstein’s associates, no presidential pardons or concessions for Maxwell and a full release of the Epstein files — documents and images capturing his personal relationships, business dealings and crimes.
Survivors advocated for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which became law in November 2025, and required the department to publish unclassified records and communications related to the investigation and prosecution of Epstein. Between December 2025 and March 2026, the department released hundreds of thousands of documents, photos and videos tied to Epstein.
In the process, DOJ publicly released the names of survivors who wanted their identities concealed, while redacting the names of people associated with Epstein.
Then, the releases stopped.
Behind the scenes, Stein said survivors were “practically begging” for meetings with DOJ officials, “making ourselves available, putting ourselves out there, and saying, like, ‘We want to help you in doing this.’”
“We have tried countless times to engage the DOJ, and they’ve had absolutely no interest,” she said.
That continued after Trump fired Bondi and Blanche took over as acting attorney general, survivors have said in interviews and testimony. On the first day of Blanche’s confirmation hearings on July 15, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he could not meet “directly” with survivors. The next day, survivor Dani Bensky questioned that reasoning as part of her testimony before the panel, citing news reports that Blanche met with Maxwell for four hours last year.
The meeting between Blanche and survivors happened later that week, after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring at the end of his current term, said Blanche must first meet with them before he would vote to advance the nominee to the full chamber.
Stein described Blanche’s energy in the meeting as “very dark.” She believes that he was simply checking a box to get a promotion. Survivors wanted to know about the redaction process for the Epstein files and why DOJ had not identified new investigative leads, she said, adding that they did not receive satisfying answers.
“There’s no humanity,” she said. “There was no ability to connect on a human level whatsoever. He was impenetrable as far as having any amount of real compassion or understanding of our experience.”
Leading up to the Senate Judiciary vote, Stein said survivors dropped off stacks of Epstein files that they had marked with potential investigative leads for members of the judiciary committee to look over. They also walked the halls of Congress “desperately” trying to meet with lawmakers. Stein said that they met with representatives for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas — one of the Republican holdouts heading into the Judiciary Committee vote. They did not, however, get a meeting with Tillis.
But Republicans, including Tillis and Cornyn, voted along party lines to advance Blanche’s nomination to a full Senate vote. Collins and Murkowski were the only Republicans to vote against Blanche’s confirmation. In a statement, Collins cited his efforts to shield the Trump family from IRS audits, and comments that he would approve national abortion restrictions. Murkowski noted an “acceleration” of the politicization of the DOJ, which she said includes “sweeping immunity protections granted to the president.” She also took issue with the DOJ handling of the Epstein files and Blanche’s comments to anti-abortion groups.
Reflecting on survivors’ advocacy over the last year, Stein said that “more often than not” they have had productive conversations with members from both parties. As a group, Epstein survivors have accomplished things that felt impossible years ago. Still, Democrats are generally more willing to engage and work with them, she said. While survivors may receive validation and positive feedback from Republican members privately, the lawmakers hesitate to voice those feelings publicly, Stein said, even when many of them have been champions for anti-sex-trafficking legislation.
Stein said she believes this issue — one in which young women and girls were abused by some of the country’s most powerful people — should not be political, but it is. The reality of having to spend her days convincing leaders to take action has an emotional cost, she said.
Moving forward, Stein said the survivors’ strategy is to remain resolute in their mission and goals. They will not back down, she said.
“But we’re human beings,” she added. “Imagine the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, having to confront it every minute or every day, and talk to people about it all the time, and just constantly rehash it. That’s a challenge for anyone.”
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Candice Norwood, The 19thCandice Norwood is a breaking news reporter for The 19th. Before The 19th, she was a digital politics reporter for the PBS NewsHour, a staff writer for Governing magazine covering state and local government, and a freelancer for the Bloomberg News White House team.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Maryland, on July 31, 2026. Photo: Aaron Schwartz/AFP via Getty Images
The War Department delivered its unreleased annual report on civilian casualties to members of Congress on Tuesday, two government officials told The Intercept — one of whom called the report “a fucking joke.” The report found that U.S. attacks likely killed or wounded hundreds of civilians.
The other official deemed the report, which covers allegations of civilian harm stemming from military attacks in Iran, Somalia, Yemen, and the campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, a “total whitewash.” It’s the latest in a series of recent Pentagon reports that have called attention to U.S. failures to prevent, mitigate, or adequately track civilian harm after self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth gutted civilian harm mitigation and response or CHMR programs.
Shockingly, the Pentagon’s review of its 2025 attacks found that no civilians were killed in the Trump administration’s campaign of boat strikes, according to the officials, despite the fact that the U.S. killed more than 120 civilians last year in attacks that experts call extrajudicial killings or outright murder. The Trump administration has asserted repeatedly and without evidence that the boat strike victims, who now number more than 220, were “narcoterrorists.” In a classified briefing last fall, a high-ranking officer on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff said that some of the people killed in the initial September 2, 2025, attack may have been the victims of human trafficking, according to an Intercept investigation.
“They have absolutely no credibility,” the second official told The Intercept about the boat strike claims, adding that the report was “sickening.”
Known as the 1057 report, this year’s accounting of civilian casualties reflects a backlog of incidents from the Trump administration’s strikes against Yemen’s Houthi government in the spring of 2025. The report found that U.S. attacks killed 153 civilians and wounded almost 250 during the campaign of air and naval strikes, codenamed Operation Rough Rider. The second official called these “lowball numbers.” At least 238 civilians were killed and 467 injured, according to the Yemen Data Project.
One attack killed 68 people, the second official said. That attack on an immigrant detention center in Yemen killed and injured dozens of Ethiopian civilians and no combatants and was detailed in a report by Amnesty International shared with The Intercept last year. At the time, U.S. Central Command said it was still “assessing all reports of civilian harm resulting from operations during that time period.”
The 1057 report determined that three incidents “likely” harmed civilians, according to the second official. Another 15 attacks are still under review, he said.
“The idea CENTCOM still has fifteen cases on Yemen to adjudicate doesn’t bode well for the war in Iran,” said the first official. Both officials spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the report.
Under Section 1057 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon is required to provide Congress and the public with data on civilian harm, mitigation steps, and assessments. The officials said the Pentagon had sent the report to members of the Armed Services Committees.
The report does not cover Trump’s ongoing failed war on Iran, which the United States and Israel launched in February, because it includes only military attacks from 2025. The second government official said that the number of incidents of civilian harm to investigate from the current war with Iran will dwarf the number in Yemen. Reports of civilian harm were recorded every day from the beginning of the war on February 28 to the first ceasefire on April 8, according to the U.K.-based air strike monitoring group, Airwars. The World Health organization put the death toll in Iran at 3,375 people — before the ceasefire fell apart last month.
The second official said the backlog would likely carry over several years, referencing the fact that the 10-person civilian harm mitigation team at CENTCOM has been reduced to just one individual. The first official echoed the same concerns. “How will they get through hundreds of cases for Iran if their one civilian harm person still hasn’t finished Yemen?” they asked.
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Currently, CENTCOM is clinging to the fiction that the U.S. attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, that killed more than 150 people, most of them children, is the lone civilian harm incident of the current war. “There is one active civilian casualty investigation from the 13,629 munitions,” Admiral Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM chief, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.
The Annual Report on Civilian Casualties in Connection with U.S. Military Operations in 2025 comes after Hegseth’s Pentagon has spent more than a year slashing measures to prevent civilian casualties, including firing the military’s top lawyers, who advise leaders on international laws of armed conflict.
A group of Democratic lawmakers told Hegseth in a July letter that his “gutting civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) efforts” has left the Pentagon unable to “comply with the law and its congressionally-mandated CHMR responsibilities.” They added: “The Trump administration — potentially in violation of federal law — has defunded and impeded civilian protection efforts.”
That letter, sent by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and nine other lawmakers, echoed concerns raised by a War Department inspector general report that described civilian protection efforts as largely “inactive.” The May report by the Pentagon’s top watchdog says cuts to civilian harm mitigation and response efforts have been so severe under Hegseth that the United States cannot adequately protect civilians in conflict zones or track harm when it occurs.
These criticisms were echoed in an another-yet-unreleased official report revealed by The Intercept that found Hegseth’s Pentagon gutted its premier center devoted to preventing civilian casualties in war zones. The War Department’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence slashed its staff from 40 personnel in January 2025 to just nine by the end of the year, according to the report.
“In the coming months, the Department will submit its annual report regarding casualties resulting from United States military operations during the 2025 calendar year,” a Pentagon official told The Intercept when asked about the U.S. officials’ comments. “We have nothing to preview or announce at the moment.”
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
Troy Jackson, the Democratic US Senate candidate for Maine, speaks in a photo shared on Facebook by his campaign on August 11, 2026.
(Photo by Troy Jackson/Facebook)
“They’re scared of a movement that demands Medicare for All, prescription drug coverage, and a government that everyday people can be proud of and know works for them.”
Troy Jackson, the Maine Democrat running to unseat Republican US Sen. Susan Collins in November, took aim at Elon Musk and other billionaires Wednesday evening for supporting his GOP opponent directly or through a key super political action committee.
“Look, the billionaires in the country know whose side they’re on, and it’s not ours,” Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, said in a brief video shared on social media, including Musk’s platform X.
Jackson—chosen as the Democratic nominee via a convention process last month, after primary winner Graham Platner left the race following a rape allegation that he denied—pointed to a $42 million investment in the contest from the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), whose backers include Musk and various other right-wing megadonors.
My response to the billionaires and failed trillionaire Elon Musk and their super PAC that announced today that they're dumping $42 million into this race. pic.twitter.com/dWptsctjK8
“They’re here to prop up Susan Collins because they want her to continue to be a rubber stamp and get their income tax cuts,” Jackson said. “They’re already out with an ad attacking me and my family, to try and make sure that they totally don’t talk about the issues.”
SLF’s 30-second ad, which launched Wednesday, notes his son’s lobbying work and smears Jackson as “another dirty politician.”
According to Jackson: “They’re scared of a movement that goes against the things that they want. They’re scared of a movement that demands Medicare for All, prescription drug coverage, and a government that everyday people can be proud of and know works for them.”
Wednesday isn’t the first time Jackson—who previously ran for governor—has called out billionaires, specifically Musk. After The New York Timesreported last month that through his America PAC, Musk intends to spend up to $120 million on a program to help elect Republicans in at least eight states, including Maine, Jackson released a video stressing that the billionaire “doesn’t care about us. Really doesn’t care about Susan. He cares about him.”
“So I would say to you Elon: Maine and really the whole United States doesn’t want your dirty money in our politics,” Jackson continued. “You don’t get to buy the government that you want. This is about all of us coming together and fighting for the government that we deserve, and you’re not in it.”
Musk became the world’s first trillionaire in June, when his company SpaceX made its public market debut, but his current net worth is estimated at over $860 billion, according to the regularly updated Bloomberg and Forbes lists. His trillionaire status came after the early months of the second Trump administration, when Musk was the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Reuters reported Thursday that new data from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations shows how Musk’s controversial compensation plans for SpaceX and Tesla are benefiting other chief executives. Fred Redmond, the AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer, said that his pay “changes the dynamic when other CEO compensation plans come up, boards use it as a reference.”
The average ratio of CEO to worker pay at S&P 500 companies rose from 285:1 in 2024 to 312:1 last year, excluding Musk’s Tesla compensation. When that is included, the ratio becomes 5,387:1. Redmond told Reuters that “as we talk to our members, they’re pissed off over what’s happening to them, and they feel as though they should be more vocal in terms of calling attention to inequality.”
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People march during a protest after the killing of Renee Nicole Good on January 8, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
One First Amendment advocacy group called the investigation a “disturbing, invasive, and utterly unjustifiable attack on freedom of expression and political dissent.”
“These are the actions of an authoritarian state,” said US Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Thursday regarding new reports of a broad investigation by the Department of Homeland Security into numerous left-wing groups in Minnesota earlier this year, in the wake of Border Patrol agents’ fatal shooting of Alex Pretti at a protest against the agency’s anti-immigration crackdown.
As The New York Timesreported, days after Pretti was killed in the street as he tried to help a woman who had been violently pushed by the agents, the DHS office in St. Paul opened an investigation into groups including the climate-focused Sunrise Movement, major labor groups like the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Democratic Socialists of America, and a collective called Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN).
The Trump administration began the probe under the auspices of investigating whether the groups had provided “help and money,” as the Times reported, to people who had participated in protests across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where tens of thousands of residents rallied against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and defended their neighbors from immigration raids last winter.
Newly released government documents, which were uncovered after an attorney filed a motion with the federal District Court in Minnesota demanding information about the DHS investigation, show that the agency characterized the protesters who opposed ICE as “violent opportunists and agitators.”
The investigation included DHS’ use of administrative subpoenas to obtain financial records from Sunrise Movement, Communications Workers of America, and the SEIU, scrutinizing what the agency called “domestic terrorist financing.”
Undercover agents also infiltrated Signal chats and meetings at libraries and churches, recording attendees’ comments criticizing ICE and calling for the agency to be abolished—a view held by roughly 50% of Americans, according to a recent poll by YouGov—as well as their names and license plate numbers. They also scoured the individuals’ social media accounts for images and information.
“None of these individuals did anything other than engage in protected First Amendment speech in a church meeting room,” wrote Kevin Riach, the lawyer who filed the motion. “Yet now their personal information is memorialized in a DHS dossier.”
The investigation “concluded, with no evidence (but obvious political animus), that numerous Twin Cities unions and nonprofit organizations were involved in a widespread conspiracy,” said Riach. “It surveilled and surreptitiously gathered financial records generated by these organizations despite the lack of any connection between those organizations and criminal conduct.”
As the Times reported, the indictment in June of 15 organizers who led direct actions against federal agents, announced by US Attorney Daniel Rosen, came out of the sprawling DHS investigation.
When Rosen announced the indictments, he cited National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a memo issued last September and mandated a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts”—with an exclusive focus on left-wing groups.
Before the indictment, the Times reported, investigators showed a PowerPoint slide to grand jurors linking 18 groups including the AFL-CIO, Vets for Peace, and a local teachers union to a “conspiracy” against ICE agents.
The news of the indictment, said Paul Blest of the labor rights media organization More Perfect Union, “should be the biggest story in America.”
“Just so everyone clearly understands, the Trump administration’s approach to dissent is to exhaust every avenue to put dissenters in federal prison,” said Blest.
The First Amendment advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent called the investigation a “disturbing, invasive, and utterly unjustifiable attack on freedom of expression and political dissent.”
“The inquiry comes amid President Trump’s escalating crackdown on freedom of speech across the United States,” Defending Rights and Dissent added. “Last year, Trump issued NSPM-7, a directive which tramples the First Amendment in weaponizing the federal government to root out his political adversaries and cast all activism against the administration as ‘domestic extremism.’”
“Defending Rights and Dissent calls for this investigation to be dropped immediately,” said the group, “and strongly condemns all attempts by the Trump administration to intimidate ordinary Americans exercising their freedom of speech.”
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From left to right, District 8 candidates Gary McCoy, Darshini Patel, Manny Yekutiel and Michael Nguyen on August 12, 2026. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman.
The opening question at the District 8 supervisor debate cut right to the chase: “There has been presscoverage about a sexual assault allegation from six years ago that a political activist reportedly made against Manny Yekutiel, who has denied the charge. What do you think voters should take from this?” asked Patrick Hoge, the San Francisco Examiner reporter moderating the debate hosted by the United Democratic Club.
“These allegations are untrue,” replied Yekutiel, who, prior to the June accusations, was the race’s most prolific fundraiser and the presumed frontrunner. “The police investigated the allegations, they found nothing and decided not to bring charges to the DA.”
At this, candidate Darshini Patel shot back: “I think when we consider the fact that our police department has a 14 percent clearance rate, which is half the national average, it makes it difficult for anyone to even want to come forward.”
Michael Nguyen and Gary McCoy, the other two candidates, kept it simple. “We should always believe and support survivors,” McCoy said.
“We as a community need to demand accountability and also support all survivors,” Nguyen said.
At the Wednesday night debate, a crowd of around 100 people gathered outdoors in the cold at Noe Valley Town Square to hear from the four supervisor candidates, who are vying to represent the Castro, Noe Valley, Twin Peaks and Cole Valley.
After the opening question, the candidates discussed more typical civic issues like housing, transportation and street conditions. Still, a clear division emerged between Yekutiel and his opponents, who quickly piled on to paint many of his ideas as unrealistic.
When asked about where he would direct funds for Muni, McCoy called for “expanding transit later at night and earlier in the morning. San Francisco is a service industry town.”
But Yekutiel offered a grand plan for a fully built-out subway system with new underground stations at 24th and Castro streets, as well as the Fillmore and the Marina. The Central Subway could be extended to North Beach, he added, and Muni could add tunnels under Geary and 19th Avenue.
Yekutiel’s opponents threw cold water on his plan.
Darshini Patel and Manny Yekutiel at the District 8 supervisor debate at Noe Valley Town Square on August 12, 2026. Photo by Io Yeh Gilman.
“We need to refocus on the basic things, which may not be as exciting and sexy, but certainly is what we need,” Patel said. If she were elected, she added, she would make sure estimate Muni arrival times were accurate.
“I believe in a San Francisco where we can take care of the small things while thinking big,” Yekutiel countered. The Central Subway expansion cost about $1 billion a mile, but San Francisco ought to be able to build subways for less, he added.
Elected officials should focus on homelessness, addiction and affordability right now, McCoy said, “not these huge pie in the sky ideas that are wonderful but we’re not going to get there in four or eight years.”
Yekutiel was accused of grandstanding again after he mentioned his plan to build 10,000 new housing units in District 8 in eight years — 1,000 by making it easier for people to add extra units in garages, basements or backyards, 3,000 from “high-opportunity housing sites” in the district, and 6,000 from creating a “housing priority district” on Market between Castro and Octavia where all “barriers” to building new housing, such as fees, taxes, building height limits, as well as many building and planning code requirements, would be removed.
The other candidates agreed that District 8 needs more housing — they all want the Safeway at Church and Market redeveloped, as well as speedier permitting, and McCoy and Patel support San Francisco’s recent upzoning. But, they have not promised 10,000 units.
“I’m a drag queen and I love the fantasy,” Nguyen said. “But I’m not going to promise you unicorns and rainbows just to win your vote. Ten thousand units is really just not grounded in reality.”
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District 8 has only built 17 units so far this year, Patel pointed out.
But Yekutiel defended his plan. “It is not pie in the sky,” he said. “We just need to believe it can be done.”
When the debate shifted to homelessness and drug use, McCoy, Nguyen and Patel once again aligned more with each other than with Yekutiel.
Nguyen called for more city investment in mental health outreach, citing a story from Mission Local about a worker who helped de-escalate a woman in crisis when police were unable to. “This is the kind of humane response that we need,” Nguyen said.
Patel said her focus would be on building out the safety net for preventing homelessness, citing the statistic that for every one person who gets housed, another three people become homeless.
McCoy agreed with them both. “We’re not scaling up the things that we know work,” McCoy said — the street outreach team is, in fact, slated to be cut by the city. “Oftentimes we resort to just pushing people around our neighborhoods in San Francisco,” McCoy continued. “We need to stop that.”
Yekutiel offered a much rosier picture. Mayor Daniel Lurie “is doing an excellent job,” Yekutiel said. “I’m running because I want to keep the positive momentum that many of us are seeing in the city are continuing to move forward.”
After a few more questions, it was time for the candidates to give their closing statements. McCoy, Nguyen and Patel all made sure to mention how unrealistic a certain candidate’s plans seemed.
“I’m tired of seeing people running on promises instead of plans,” Patel said.
“We need leadership in San Francisco that, again, is rooted in reality,” McCoy said.
“What my friend here, Manny, is talking about a lot of times is very extreme,” Nguyen said.
Still, Yekutiel stood his ground. “If you want the same old, same old, there’s options on this stage you can choose from. But if you want someone that’s actually built things,” Yekutiel said, “then I’m your candidate.”
Election Day is Nov. 3, 2026. This race will use ranked-choice voting.
District 8 includes the Castro, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Twin Peaks, Duboce Triangle, Dolores Heights, Parnassus Heights, Ashbury Heights, Corona Heights, and Diamond Heights.
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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?
Io is a staff reporter at Mission Local covering city hall and S.F. politics. She is a part of Report for America, which supports journalists in local newsrooms.
Io was born and raised in San Francisco and previously reported on the city while working for her high school newspaper, The Lowell. She studied the history of science at Harvard and wrote for The Harvard Crimson.
2018 was a historic blowout for the Dems. This year, primary turnout is much higher.
It was a mixed bag for the left in Tuesday’s primary elections. In Wisconsin, DSA candidate Francesca Hong, who was far ahead in the polls and expected to win easily, instead lost in a squeaker to David Crowley. But in Minnesota, the state’s lefty lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan easily whipped the moderate Rep. Angie Craig in the primary for that state’s U.S. Senate seat, by a nearly 20-point margin. While the Wisconsin result was disappointing, if progressives had to pick, it was likely more important for Flanagan to win than Hong. In Wisconsin, what state Democrats can do will depend more on whether they can take control of the state legislature in the upcoming election and win total control of state government for the first time since 2010. Moreover, by all accounts Crowley is a fairly standard-issue liberal who would probably sign most progressive legislation; he has already announced plans to campaign alongside Hong. Craig, by contrast, is a loud centrist who voted for the Laken Riley Act, which granted sweeping powers to ICE—which would, of course, go on to mercilessly gun down two Minnesota residents—as well as for a resolution thanking the agency. Whatever these races say about the state of the left—I would call it a story of gradual building success over time, with some unsurprising setbacks—the polls and turnout numbers have some more reliable lessons. They show that the Democratic base is boiling with energy and champing at the bit to vote against Republicans. The polls for the Wisconsin race were off by roughly 20 points—about the same amount they were off in Minnesota (though in that case, they underestimated the progressive Flanagan), and in the Michigan race last week. Clearly, something is rotten in the state of cellphone autodialers. Polling primaries was tough business even 30 years ago when everyone had a landline and calls from strangers were not 95 percent spam, because one has to gather data and then estimate how many people are actually going to turn out. That can vary wildly depending on the state, the party, whether it is a competitive race, the national environment, and so on.
Incidentally, the vaunted prediction markets also completely flubbed this one. They couldn’t even sort out who was likely to win when votes started coming in and the political pros could guess with increasing accuracy who was likely to win based on where the remaining votes were located. They were quite obviously just swinging wildly back and forth with the headlines. It turns out markets are not some infallible distillers of Truth from the celestial ether. I’d guess that the pollsters are not getting good samples for these races, but they almost certainly missed the turnout. Let’s compare this year to 2018, the last time there was a contested Democratic primary in Wisconsin and an uncontested Republican one, to make it a fairly apples-to-apples comparison. Six years ago, about 539,000 people cast Democratic ballots, as compared to 455,000 Republicans. This year, with a few thousand votes still to count, it was more like 825,000 Democrats and 490,000 Republicans. It’s a similar story in other recent primaries, where 2018 is once again the most recent similar year. In Minnesota in 2018, about 584,000 Democrats and 320,000 Republicans turned out; this year, the numbers were 700,000 and 405,000, respectively. In Michigan in 2018, about 1.1 million Democrats and 990,000 Republicans turned out; this year, the numbers were 1.5 million and 931,000, respectively. The 2018 elections were nearly a clean Democratic sweep in these states. They won the U.S. Senate seats and the governorships in all three, and missed control of the Minnesota Senate by one vote. They would have won the Wisconsin State Assembly too if Republicans hadn’t rigged the district boundaries so egregiously that an eight-point defeat in the popular vote became a nearly two-thirds majority in seats. (Luckily, thanks to Democrats flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the state legislative maps are now reasonably fair.) Primary turnouts are a decent, albeit imperfect, historical proxy for general-election performances. And if there is any major difference between today and 2018, it’s that Donald Trump, with his lunatic tariff obsession and unwinnable war in Iran, is substantially less popular than he was back then. Unless something big changes, Republicans are liable to be looking at a generational wipeout in November.
The media is propping up “centrist” analysts warning voters that the progressive and democratic socialist candidates winning elections are “unelectable.” But they’re not disclosing that those analysts are funded by billionaires and mega-corporations.
Matt Bennett, Jonathan Cowan, and Jim Kessler, three of the five co-founders of Third Way. Photo By Chris Maddaloni/Roll Call/Getty Images.
As progressive, DSA, and DSA-adjacent candidates win primaries throughout the US, corporate media is rushing to prop up their favorite “centrist” and “moderate” critics—who, ostensibly, are just looking out for the wellbeing of the Democratic Party—to explain why these candidates people are voting for are actually dangerous and “unelectable.” What the media is refusing to do, on an institutional level, is disclose the glaring conflicts of interests these groups—backed by billionaires, health insurance giants, pro-Israel lobbying firms, and massive corporations —would have in attacking candidates who undermine their sponsors’ bottom lines and ideological agendas.
As progressive, DSA, and DSA-adjacent candidates win primaries throughout the US, corporate media is rushing to prop up their favorite “centrist” and “moderate” critics—who, ostensibly, are just looking out for the wellbeing of the Democratic Party—to explain why these candidates people are voting for are actually dangerous and “unelectable.”
As I noted in TRNN in June, certain personalities and parties with blatant conflicts of interest are being boosted by US media—presented as mere neutral observers who are Deeply Concerned About Electability—to dump on insurgent candidates such as Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila-Chevalier, Melat Kiro and, most recently, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed’s primary victory in Michigan signaled serious upward momentum for the latest progressive insurgency within the Democratic Party—and triggered a PR crisis for the Democratic establishment. That momentum was stemmed this week, if only for now, as DSA-endorsed candidate for Wisconsin Governor Francesca Hong was narrowly defeated—a defeat that was reportedly due, in part, to voter concerns over “electability.”
But who shapes “electability” perceptions in our media?
Let’s examine a recent article in The New York Times, which broke the news on August 6, in the wake of El-Sayed’s primary victory, about a $15-million effort by “moderate” group Third Way to attack the DSA specifically and socialism more broadly (despite El-Sayed explicitly being neither a socialist nor a DSA member, but he still champions Medicare for All and cutting US support for Israel, so the distinction to these groups is purely academic). In response to socialist and progressive primary wins, Third Way President Jonathan Cowan told the Times he is “preparing for war” against candidates he views as insufficiently “moderate.” Central to Third Way’s argument are supposed concerns over the “electability” of Democratic candidates facing MAGA Republicans in the November midterms—a motive taken at face value by The New York Times.
Third Way does not publish their donors and refuses to answer media inquiries about who keeps their operation financially afloat.
Not once did Times reporter Shane Goldmacher inquire about or address—much less investigate and unearth—who is funding this operation. The money is simply said to come from Third Way. But Third Way does not generate revenue. They are backed by specific interests. “Who are these interests?” seems like a fairly obvious question that a reporter should ask. Alas, it’s not one Shane Goldmacher seems the least bit interested in.
So who is backing Third Way?
Third Way does not publish their donors and refuses to answer media inquiries about who keeps their operation financially afloat. But reporting in The Nation in 2013 revealed the group was being backed then by the US Chamber of Commerce, Deutsche Bank, Intel, the Business Roundtable, and the Pharma lobbying giant PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America). More recent digging by The Sludge revealed major donors now include the Republican-run insurance industry front group Better Solutions for Healthcare, PhRMA, CVS Health, pharma giant Johnson & Johnson, and the Business Roundtable. Other major corporate backers include Entergy, Yum! Brands, Amazon, and Meta––all corporations with much to lose in the event Congress passes measures to impose higher taxes on corporations and the rich, or to provide single-payer healthcare for all.
Additionally, Goldmacher quotes two other “centrist” groups in his Times article—the Center for New Liberalism and Welcome PAC—without noting the patronage they receive from billionaire and corporate interests. The Center for New Liberalism, as I documented in 2023, is a front group for Third Way Foundation (which also goes by the name Progressive Policy Institute) and is funded by ExxonMobil, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Walmart, and Amazon. (The Third Way Foundation used to be related to the aforementioned Third Way, but is now its own independent corporate front group.)
WelcomePAC, for its part, is funded directly by mega-billionaires: LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman; six different relatives and heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton (the richest family in America); Bain Capital co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein; Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch; and Mark Heising, the founder of private equity firm Medley Partners, among others.
Shouldn’t these obvious conflicts of interest at least be mentioned? Noted in passing, maybe? Especially in an article specifically about one of these groups spending $15 million to attack “the left,” shouldn’t a reporter be asking where exactly the $15 million came from?
Shouldn’t these obvious conflicts of interest at least be mentioned? Noted in passing, maybe? Especially in an article specifically about one of these groups spending $15 million to attack “the left,” shouldn’t a reporter be asking where exactly the $15 million came from? Or where the money behind these other Deeply Worried Centrist Groups comes from? Isn’t it relevant to note Third Way’s long history of being funded by Wall Street and the health insurance lobby? For a high school reporter, this would obviously be the first line of questions to ask. Presumably, Third Way didn’t just manifest the money out of thin air… So who is footing the bill? And shouldn’t potential voters know who is paying for this campaign, and others like it, to bombard them with falsely “objective” arguments about who is and isn’t “electable” in America?
The Times isn’t alone. Recent softball coverage of, op-eds by, or interviews with Third Way and other “moderate groups” in mainstream media also did not disclose who is bankrolling Third Way, which has quickly emerged as a Sensible Voice opposed to the “radical left.”
Shouldn’t potential voters know who is paying for this campaign, and others like it, to bombard them with falsely “objective” arguments about who is and isn’t “electable” in America?
Last week, CBS News did a five-and-a-half-minute puff interview with Third Day’s Jon Cowan, in which Cowan was given free rein to bash the DSA and El-Sayed without mentioning that Cowan’s salary is paid by private health insurance companies and other corporate America behemoths that would all stand to lose a lot of money and power in the event Medicare For All became a mainstream Democratic position. The Washington Post, likewise, published an op-ed by Cowan and Third Way Executive Vice President Matt Bennett the next day, in which they lambast El-Sayed and other progressives’ supposed lack of “electability” without disclosing who backs their astroturf “think tank.” Earlier that same week, CNN ran an otherwise balanced segment on “The Left Insurgency” that nevertheless featured an interview with Cowan and introduced Third Way as a “Democratic centrist group” without mentioning the corporate funders paying him to go on CNN and lament about “electability concerns.”
Why is discussion of “electability” almost entirely being shaped by astroturfed corporate front groups with obvious conflicts of interest?
It’s not that US media should never report on potential “electability” dynamics—with both the center and left––but why not turn to parties with fewer obvious conflicts of interest? Why not consult independent pollsters or academics? Why not ask Left-aligned experts as well as those on the dole of the Health Insurance lobby? Why is discussion of “electability” almost entirely being shaped by astroturfed corporate front groups with obvious conflicts of interest?
Journalism is supposed to, at least in theory, be about questioning the motives of the powerful, following the money, and connecting the dots. It’s not supposed to be the practice of credulously reprinting the opinions of powerful people presenting themselves as having only the noblest of motivations.
But here’s the rub: these billionaire- and corporate-backed groups, and their media mouthpieces, can’t talk about the forces propping them up, because to do so would give the game away. They can’t openly discuss or defend their attendant ideologies of capitalism, deregulation, imperialism, and Zionism because these are increasingly unpopular among the Democratic voters whose interests they allegedly care about. So what’s left? If they can’t speak openly about their elite patrons and make arguments from first principles, all that’s left is feigned concern over the “electability” of the “other guy.” That’s why it’s all they talk about. They can’t make arguments for “centrism” or against Medicare for All, so all they have is a nonstop posture of Deep Concern Over Electability, which, over time, gets repeated into becoming conventional wisdom despite no empirical basis for the narrative that “moderate” “centrists” are more electable. It apparently doesn’t matter how many times the centrist wing of the party loses Congress or blows it to Trump, they still claim, through sheer assertion and dogma and endless media spots, that they are uniquely positioned to “defeat republicans.” And this is a posture our media pundits echo without an ounce of skepticism.
It apparently doesn’t matter how many times the centrist wing of the party loses Congress or blows it to Trump, they still claim, through sheer assertion and dogma and endless media spots, that they are uniquely positioned to “defeat republicans.”
“Moderate” groups like Third Way are fronts for corporate America and billionaire interests; they’re not just aw-shucks groups of concerned citizens with organic worries about Democrats losing in November. Those claiming to be journalists should ask deeper questions, follow the money, and provide readers essential context that the person being held up as a neutral—if vaguely ideological—expert on winning elections is sponsored by the very health insurance industry that stands to lose a great deal should the progressives they’re bashing ever ascend to positions of power.
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Ryan Cooper
