“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
US President Donald Trump speaks with reporters upon his arrival to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on October 10, 2026.
(Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“The investigation is nonsense,” said one press freedom advocate. “Trump may view the presidency as a business venture, but news outlets’ standing up for their constitutional rights has nothing to do with antitrust law.”
The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether the five major television networks violated federal antitrust law when they briefly halted pool coverage of President Donald Trump amid his administration’s attempt to bar certain journalists from the White House.
The New York Timesreported late Saturday that DOJ officials “contacted networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool.” ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News rotate the responsibility of capturing and distributing footage of the president. The networks paused pool coverage last month after the Trump administration dropped CNN from its scheduled pool assignment.
Emily Covington, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, confirmed the existence of the investigation in a statement on Saturday, saying that “group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act.”
Press freedom organizations and other critics condemned the probe as a politically motivated attack on journalism and questioned the administration’s expressed concern about antitrust violations—particularly given that the DOJ has effectively abandoned antitrust enforcement during Trump’s second term.
Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the investigation “appears to be a pretext for seeking records from the networks about how they are covering daily White House events during a media ban the president himself put in place.”
“The decisions news organizations make about coverage are protected by the First Amendment, and summoning antitrust authority, on top of the retaliatory actions the White House has already taken to bar certain outlets, is another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists,” said Brown.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, called the investigation “nonsense.”
“The investigation is nonsense. Trump may view the presidency as a business venture, but news outlets’ standing up for their constitutional rights has nothing to do with antitrust law, no matter what Laura Loomer says,” Stern added, pointing to the far-right activist’s public call for an antitrust lawsuit against the major TV news networks. “Depriving Trump of the attention he craves is not a competitive harm, and in any case, antitrust law has long recognized First Amendment exceptions even when there is anticompetitive impact.”
News of the DOJ investigation came after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued the president over his attempt to bar the outlets from the White House. Late last month, a Trump-appointed judge ordered the administration to restore White House access to the outlets as the lawsuit proceeds.
Jonathan Kanter, who headed the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division under the Biden administration, told CNN on Saturday that the media networks’ actions in the wake of the attempted White House ban are “not even in the same zip code of an antitrust violation.”
“It’s literally freedom of speech,” said Kanter. “It’s no more an antitrust violation than the reporters coming together to form the pool in the first place.”
It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits.
It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do.
Many people said we wouldn’t last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong.
Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work.
But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever.
We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you.
When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives?
—Craig Brown, Co-founder
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
“The Soul of Man under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde is an essay published in 1891. Wilde presents a libertarian socialist vision that challenges conventional charity and capitalism. He argues that poverty prevents people from realizing their true potential and that well-meaning altruism only prolongs suffering by addressing symptoms rather than causes. Wilde advocates for a socialist society that abolishes private property, freeing individuals from material concerns to pursue creative self-development and artistic
Amid fears that President Donald Trump will send armed agents to intimidate voters during the midterms, the DC Board of Elections told Common Dreams on Friday that it is responding to complaints of National Guard troops stationed outside a ballot drop box near downtown Washington shortly before voting was set to open.
On Thursday, Bryan K. Randolph, a Washington, DC-based political and legal commentator, posted a video to TikTok showing what he said were three members of the National Guard stationed in front of a ballot box outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station, which is located on the campus of George Washington University.
“I stood and watched for a few minutes before I shot this video,” Randolph said. “They were there for at least a few minutes. I don’t know for how much longer they’d been there before that.”
He said that minutes after he began filming, the troops left, possibly because they saw him recording.
Federal law explicitly prohibits the presence of “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held” unless their presence is necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.
Though the statute does not specifically mention ballot drop boxes, legal experts have argued that the phrase “any place” means it should apply not just to traditional polling places, but also ballot drop boxes, election offices, and ballot counting facilities.
While he said it was unclear why the troops were stationed at the ballot box, Randolph noted that it was “a giant white box with the word ‘ballot’ pretty hard to miss,” adding that “they clearly, at best, have not been told to stay away.”
A spokesperson for the DC Board of Elections confirmed to Common Dreams that it “has received complaints regarding National Guard personnel posted near a ballot drop box next to the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station.”
“We are addressing the concerns with the National Guard directly and have requested that they impose limitations on the placement of National Guard service members near drop boxes and other voting locations in the District,” she said.
Joint Task Force-District of Columbia, the military command overseeing National Guard operations in the capital, did not respond to a request for comment.
National Guard Members patrol 14th Street, working with Metro police on August 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
President Donald Trumpdeployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation’s capital last summer. The troops have remained despite widespread public opposition and a federal judge’s ruling that the deployment was unlawful, which an appeals court subsequently put on hold.
Asked about the possibility of deploying troops to polling places earlier this year, Trump did not rule it out. He has also lamented that he did not send National Guard troops to seize election materials while he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Voting rights experts have warned about possible plans by Trump to use federal troops or agents—including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard—to interfere with November’s midterm elections. Though elections are administered by states under the Constitution, Trump has said that Republicans should “nationalize” voting.
Dan Herman and Devon Ombres, two national security and legal policy experts at the Center for American Progress, said that “there is little to no safe or democratic way for the military to be involved with the elections process.”
“Voters may stay home if they fear military presence. Ballots may no longer be trusted if a machine’s chain of custody is broken. Military deployments elsewhere in a city might prevent voters from reaching their polling site in time,” they wrote in a brief published Friday by Just Security.
The recording shared on Thursday is not the first instance of National Guard personnel seen gathered around ballot boxes in DC. In June, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the nonvoting delegate from DC in the House of Representatives, demanded answers about another video in which a resident confronted several troops who were seen outside a drop box.
Asked whether they’d been told to stay away from the boxes, one of the Guard members responded, “No. Not at all.”
“The fact that Guard personnel reportedly had not been instructed to avoid ballot drop boxes suggests a troubling lack of awareness by leadership of the impact these deployments are having on the district and its residents,” Norton said.
A voter uses a ballot drop box at the Bucks County Administration building voting on demand and ballot drop center in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on October 31, 2024. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
With Republicans in Congress projected to take heavy losses in the midterms, proponents of his efforts to overturn his last election defeat have reportedly met with Trump in recent days, urging him to declare a “national emergency” that they claim would allow him to assert direct authority over the elections, an idea disputed by legal experts.
One plan that has reportedly circulated among election deniers has involved invoking the Insurrection Act, which they claim would allow Trump to flood polling locations with military and federal law enforcement.
While the Insurrection Act would permit some domestic law enforcement by the military, Herman and Ombres emphasized that it would not override the laws restricting troops from polling locations.
“Armed troops do not belong near ballot boxes,” Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, told Common Dreams. “At minimum, troop presence at the ballot box creates the appearance of voter intimidation and risks discouraging DC residents from exercising our fundamental right to vote.”
“The deployment of National Guard into the District without the consent of our local government is an affront to democracy here and around the nation,” she said. “National Guard troops must go home.”
It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits.
It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do.
Many people said we wouldn’t last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong.
Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work.
But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever.
We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you.
When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives?
—Craig Brown, Co-founder
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Proposition B’s public bank would give San Francisco another tool to fund civic initiatives such as building affordable housing or providing loans to small businesses.
Manuel Orbegozo/For the S.F. Chronicle
On Election Day, San Franciscans have the opportunity to authorize the first municipal public bank in the country by passing Proposition B. It’s a watershed moment for the city and advocates for a fair economy across the country.
While tremendously exciting, from a global perspective, San Francisco is a little late to the party. Public banks are a proven and tested model. In 2024, over 1,100 of these institutions worldwide held $91 trillion in assets. Public banks are a safe way to put our public money to work for the public good.
San Francisco is rich in culture, innovation and diversity, but still struggles to meet its people’s needs for affordable housing and inclusive economic development. A public bank can help by providing additional, values-aligned finance tools to help make our city greener, more resilient, more democratic and more affordable.
Like conventional banks, public banks issue loans and make returns on those loans. However, public banks put public money to work for the people and do not need to be profit maximizers. Instead, well-designed public banks can function as policy maximizers by making sustainable returns while supporting democratically determined community needs. For example, public banks can support the affordable housing the city badly needs that is underserved by loans from profit-maximizing, private-sector banks. Public banks take into account the public interest in their lending decisions.
Public development banks, of which there are about 500, like the kind San Francisco is considering, finance around 10% to 12% of the world’s total investment as of 2024. And while public banks have been around for hundreds of years (the first public bank was a municipal bank created in 1401 in Barcelona), they have experienced a resurgence in interest following the 2008 global financial crisis, in response to the climate crisis and following the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because public banks can respond to crises as a matter of policy rather than profit.
The publicly owned Bank of North Dakota was capitalized with $2 million in 1919, and since then, the people of North Dakota have benefited from low-cost loans provided in partnership with local credit unions and community banks for unmet needs like helping farmers recover from disasters, building workforce housing, opening childcare centers and providing financial assistance for federal employees affected by government shutdowns. Last year, the Bank of North Dakota generated $353 million in returns for the state, while also directly stimulating the local economy.
The public bank of San Francisco would add another option to the city’s municipal finance toolkit and work in tandem with other mechanisms, like grants and bonds, to more flexibly support public policy priorities. While it’s true that bonds are essential for large-scale capital projects the city doesn’t have funds for, they have some limitations; for example, because of the steep fixed costs of issuing bonds, they are not feasible for smaller projects and non-eligible spending, like fleet electrification, which a public bank can fund more cheaply and efficiently. And because public banks can make money while supporting economic development, they help cities use limited public dollars more efficiently.
San Francisco’s public bank would also be highly regulated, with oversight from state and federal regulators who are tasked with ensuring that all banks meet safety and soundness standards. Comparable municipally owned public banks in Canada and Europe are some of the safest and most economically efficient banks in the world. With as few as 20 employees managing $10 billion in assets, many have never suffered a loan loss — ever.
When designed as such, public banks are some of the most democratic, transparent and accountable financial institutions anywhere. Prop B calls for an independent bank oversight commission, and all board and committee members are appointed and vetted in a public process. That process includes a community outreach committee designed to ensure transparency and public engagement by issuing regular reports on the bank’s work and holding town hall and focus group meetings.
In Europe, public banks widely support public policy goals around social housing. For example, MuniFin (a municipally owned bank in Finland) is a major supporter of not-for-profit housing in the country, with 48% of its long-term loans going to this end. The Municipal Finance Authority of British Columbia, a bank owned by and for cities of the province, is one of the most effective and efficient banks in the world, public or private: some 20 employees manage over $10 billion in assets. While it specializes in infrastructure, like water and sanitation, it supports social housing with low-cost loans when requested by cities.
Setting up public banks takes time, care and attention to detail, which is why advocates have been working for years to design a governance framework that provides democratic oversight, a high standard of professional expertise and controls to limit political influence on the bank’s lending.
About Opinion
Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.
Like with any investment, timing is everything, which is why Prop B doesn’t require the city to put any money toward starting the bank. Passing Prop B empowers San Francisco to pursue external funds to invest in the bank and decide the right way to fund this priority once the structure and safeguards are in place. Failing to pass the measure means the city loses this opportunity.
The best time to start a public bank is 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
Thomas Marois is a professor of political economy at McMaster University in Ontario. He is the author of the book “Public Banks: Decarbonization, Definancialisation, and Democratisation.”
SFDCCC Statement of Accountability and Apology Regarding the District 8 Endorsement Process from Chair Nancy Tung
In 2024, the San Francisco Democratic Party set out with a clear, urgent purpose: to build a responsive, survivor-centered policy framework for victims of sexual misconduct.
This followed an intense public discussion of how the Party should respond to allegations of sexual misconduct, resulting in the decision for the Party to take the lead to make our political spaces safe, accountable, and transparent.
We engaged in an extensive process involving key community organizations, club leaders, advocates, and party members, incorporating direct feedback from survivors.
With hope and commitment, we officially launched a first-of-its-kind Code of Conduct and Policies for Sexual Assault and Harassment in December 2024.
This policy faced its first major test during the recent District 8 Supervisor endorsement process, and regrettably, our framework broke down and did not protect survivors.
Manny Yekutiel has now stepped down from his campaign for Supervisor due to allegations of sexual misconduct, and the survivors who came forward deserve support for what they have endured from Yekutiel and this failed policy.
Most importantly, this policy failed the first survivor to come forward, Brad Chapin, who took the courageous and painful step not only to file a formal complaint, but to stand up and speak directly before our committee during the District 8 endorsement hearing.
What has become clear is that attempting to rely on strict jurisdictional boundaries hindered, rather than helped, our ability to evaluate candidates on their fitness for office, public leadership, and survivor safety.
I publicly and sincerely apologize to Mr. Chapin for how our process treated his complaint and for an endorsement decision that caused him further harm.
As Party Chair, I also apologize for how this endorsement hurt Ryan Clark, his partner, and others.
Many dedicated individuals contributed to crafting and implementing our policy. However, intentions do not erase impact.
I have called for a Special Meeting on October 11, 2026, to reconsider the Party’s endorsement in District 8. I have personally endorsed Gary McCoy and will be advocating for the Party to endorse his candidacy.
At the same meeting, we will begin the work of reexamining and improving our Code of Conduct and Policies for Sexual Assault and Harassment.
I ask all meeting participants to help us outline the next steps required to revise our policy to protect survivors in the future.
You can have all the 250th birthday parties you want for America — that great Democracy! But none of your cake and candles or champagne can obscure the fact that we have never been a true democracy. No matter how many times you say it, it just ain’t so, and never has been.
With the midterms roughly 37 days away, I say we pick up where the Founders left off and grab the ball that they dropped.
Every single day, I must hear this at least five dozen times:
“We must save our Democracy!” Or, “Trump has crushed our Democracy!”
For a nation whose economy thrived on enslaved human beings and the free labor of women who had no say, I’ve never really been sure exactly what those white male property owners were smoking when they went on about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That’s not the system they created. They did a lot of great things, but a DEMOCRACY they did not invent, at least not here.
Let’s start by all of us agreeing on what the word “Democracy” actually means. How’s this:
DEMOCRACY:A system of government based on these THREE Principles:
· One Person, One Vote.
· Total equality amongst all of its citizens. No exceptions.
· All representatives of the people are freely and fairly elected by all of its adult citizens on an easy, convenient and regular timetable. (And according to the 14th Amendment, anyone who participates in an uprising to overthrow those duly elected officials are prohibited from running for office themselves.)
Everybody OK with that?
So, on this November 3rd, should “we the people” succeed in flipping both the House and the Senate from the bigots and supporters of the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, can we then immediately start to finish the job that was started some 250 years ago?
Let me suggest a few simple things the new Congress could get started on this January 3rd in turning the U.S. into a real Democracy:
1. Neutering the Electoral College so that whoever gets the most votes is the one actually inaugurated as the new President of the United States. Check out this group: The National Popular Vote Act.
2. Eliminating the Filibuster. One Senator can kill a bill that will make the lives of millions better?! Insane! No Democracy in the world lets a single man (other than a dictator) block what the other 99% of elected representatives are there to vote on. One person, one vote.
3. Making the Senate truly representative. It’s currently not one person, one vote. In a Democracy, a state like Wyoming with only 500,000 people must NOT get the same number of votes in the Senate (2) as a massive state (California) with 40 MILLION people gets the same amount as tiny Wyoming?!
4. Stop Letting Politicians Re-draw Electoral Maps so they can deny representation to racial, ethnic and religious minorities whom bigots just don’t like. Make Gerrymandering a crime as Michigan did in 2018. This happened after ONE WOMAN decided she’d had enough, and started a voter initiative. Read about it here.
5. There must be five political parties and their candidates on every ballot. There is no way in a nation of a whopping 350 million people that just TWO (!) political parties can truly represent the whole wide swath and diversity of American political thought, opinion, beliefs and policy positions. Not possible! We should, like Canada, have five political parties listed on all ballots:
• The MAGA PARTY (current Republicans)
• The REPUBLICAN-DEMOCRATS (centrists, moderates)
• The FDR PARTY (Progressives) FDR stands for Freedom, Democracy, Redemption
• Democratic Socialists (it’s happening as we speak!)
• Libertarians (whatever)
6. Make Voting Easy and Real. Election Day needs to be declared an official holiday and/or shifted to a weekend. Period. Then, we need to make it as much of a ritualized “day of no work” as other federal holidays.
7. Adopt “Ranked Choice Voting.” Known as RCV, this is already in use in major cities and some states. “The vote” more accurately represents the true direction where people are leaning politically and relies less on traditional parties. This often leads to less negative campaigning; candidates need to say why they should win, not just why the other person should lose! Learn how it works.
There. That’s a start. It’s not just “getting rid of Trump” as if that’ll fix everything. Let’s get smart and create the kind of Democracy that the next Trump won’t be able to mess with. That means electing reps on November 3rd who’ll do just that!
Next Up: (Sept. 28) – Every Block Has a Block Party and a Captain Yesterday (Sept. 26) – Winning Is Easy: A basic starting point to defeat this MAGA Madness
SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS. WE NEED ALL HANDS ON DECK!
(Also, consider making your next vacation to beautiful Wyoming. From Yellowstone to rodeo, there’s plenty to see and do in The Cowboy State.)
Brad Chapin, a political organizer who accused Manny Yekutiel of sexual assault, speaks to the San Francisco Democratic Party on Aug. 26 at the Asian Pacific American Community Center at 66 Raymond Ave. Photo by Junyao Yang.
Brad Chapin, the man who first accused Emanuel “Manny” Yekutiel of sexual assault in June, said that he was so stressed in the months that followed that he could hardly sleep.
Now that Yekutiel is out of the race, he says he’s better, and can rest.
He’s also advocating for other sexual-assault survivors, and today announced his endorsement in the District 8 supervisor race: Darshini Patel.
Patel, Chapin said, was one of the people — along with Supervisor Myrna Melgar and Ivy Lee, the director of the Office of Victim and Witness Rights — he felt particularly supported by when he first came forward.
He remembers appreciating a statement Patel put out on the day his accusation was first reported, which called out the “reflex to question and minimize” survivors.
Later that week, he ran into Patel at a rally in support of sexual-assault survivors.
“Even though I tried to go in disguise, she recognized me immediately, and walked up and gave me a hug,” Chapin said. “I felt really, truly connected to her through that process, and just could tell how much she genuinely cared and not in a self-serving way.”
He endorsed her shortly after, but initially she didn’t want to publicize it.
“People were horrible to him, and I didn’t want it to add to that in some way,” said Patel, who used to work at DoorDash and in the Obama White House. “I didn’t want it to seem like I was politicizing the situation.”
When Chapin came forward, many prominent political figures cast doubt on his allegations. Mayor Daniel Lurie endorsed Yekutiel in September, saying that he had been reassured by Yekutiel that the incident did not happen.
A few weeks prior to that, the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Party endorsed Yekutiel as well, after a so-called investigation that did not examine whether or not an assault had taken place.
Yekutiel dropped out of the race last Thursday after two subsequent allegations of sexual assault were published by the San Francisco Standard. Chapin’s June accusation — that Yekutiel painfully grabbed his testicles at a house party in 2020 — was first published three months before that.
Those three months were traumatizing, Chapin said.
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.
In early August, Chapin lost his job as a city worker, which he attributed to the stress he was living under since speaking out in June. His friends set up a GoFundMe to help him cover his rent.
“Thank God,” Chapin said. “Otherwise, I would definitely be losing my apartment.”
The District 8 race is now a three-way contest between Patel, recovery advocate and former Nancy Pelosi aide Gary McCoy, and attorney Michael Nguyen.
Chapin, for his part, said he was also drawn to Patel because “she knows what she doesn’t know.” He thinks she will consult outside experts and actually listen to them, instead of making decisions “that are just politically advantageous.”
Chapin added that he is also excited to elect a queer woman of color in District 8, which has only ever been represented by gay white men, though, he added, “I would never vote for someone or support someone just because of that.”
Chapin plans to campaign and host fundraisers for Patel in the remaining weeks of the race.
In the wake of Yekutiel’s withdrawal, Chapin said he has met with Nancy Tung, the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, who some are calling on to resign, and is planning a meeting with Mayor Lurie.
He wants both Tung and Lurie to use their political power to work with people advocating for survivors. Lee and Melgar, for instance, are working to improve how the city responds to reports of sexual assault — the police clearance rate for rape cases is half the national average.
What Chapin wanted to emphasize the most, though, is how grateful he is to Ryan Clark and his partner, the two men who came forward about their own alleged experiences with Yekutiel last week, ultimately leading to Yekutiel’s withdrawal.
“Before they came forward, my life, every day, was traumatizing,” Chapin said, explaining that people would regularly harass him in the street.
“People,” he says, “have called me an anti-Semite” — Yekutiel is Jewish. They have also told him he was “un-rapeable” and that “Manny is so sexy,” he added.
Chapin said he had been struggling to sleep and was thinking about leaving San Francisco.
But Clark and his partner going public “gave me my life back,” Chapin said. “Now I feel like I can go outside and not fear people saying just such terrible things.”
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.
Real Time with Bill Maher Oct 2, 2026 Fareed Zakaria and Anand Giridharadas join Bill to discuss why homelessness remains a pervasive problem despite billions of dollars in spending.
Google AI Overview
The person you are thinking of is Anand Giridharadas, an Indian-American author, journalist, and frequent commentator.
During an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher discussing why homelessness remains an entrenched problem, Giridharadas pointed out that cities are unfairly criticized for having large homeless populations. He highlighted that a significant percentage of homeless youth in major cities (particularly LGBTQ youth) actually come from rural areas or small towns where their families failed or rejected them—often choosing “a verse in a book” over their child’s face—driving them out of states like Nebraska, Florida, or Idaho to seek refuge in major cities like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.
By Bernie Sanders,
Contributor
Oct 3, 2026 (SFChronicle.com)
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally supporting California’s billionaire tax on Feb. 18 in Los Angeles. Sanders says Prop 40 is the most important ballot initiative in the country. Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times
Proposition 40, the California Billionaire Tax Act, is the most important ballot initiative in the country because it deals with the most important question facing our country: Can the American people sustain democracy and take on the billionaire class — their power, their greed and their unlimited amounts of money — or are we destined to live in an oligarchic society?
At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, the people of California will decide on the Nov. 3 ballot whether to pass a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires.
This initiative would raise $100 billion, enough revenue to prevent some 3 million low-income and working-class Californians from losing healthcare coverage as a result of President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” House Resolution 1, as the legislation is also known, which made the largest cut to Medicaid in American history to pay for a $1 trillion tax break to the top 1%.
Let’s be clear. No one with a net worth of less than a billion dollars would pay a penny more in taxes under Prop 40.
This tax would apply only to approximately 260 billionaires in California who are now collectively worth over $2.4 trillion.
As a result of a rigged tax code, six Nobel Prize-winning economists who support this ballot initiative recently pointed out that while these billionaires more than tripled their wealth over the past decade, they paid a lower effective tax rate than plumbers or nurses.
Incredibly, billionaires in California became $500 billion richer last year, five times as much as the California wealth tax would raise.
In other words, if Prop 40 passes, billionaires in California would still be $400 billion richer than they were last year and healthcare would be saved for millions of people in California.
Instead of supporting this initiative and paying their fair share of taxes so that children and working-class people in California can get the healthcare they desperately need, the billionaires are now spending over $225 million to oppose it.
This effort against Prop 40 is being led by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, who is spending over $100 million to defeat it.
Brin is the fourth wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of $274 billion. He has become $127 billion richer just since Trump was elected. If Prop 40 is passed, Brin would owe $13.5 billion more in taxes. But don’t feel too sorry for him. He would still have $257 billion left over to feed his family.
And Brin is not alone.
Larry Page, Google’s other co-founder, who became nearly $140 billion richer since Trump’s election, would owe $14.6 billion more in taxes if this ballot initiative is passed, leaving him with $280 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, would owe $13 billion more in taxes under Prop 40, leaving him with $243 billion.
Don’t let these billionaires fool you into believing they no longer live in California and will not have to pay this tax.
Brin still owns at least four mansions in California worth some $103.5 million. Just because Brin bought another mansion a half mile away from California’s border does not give him the right to escape this tax, according to many tax lawyers who have studied this issue.
The same can be said for Page, who still owns a $65 million residential compound in Silicon Valley close to Google’s headquarters, and Zuckerberg, who spent more than $110 million to purchase at least 11 homes near Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park last year.
But what I find outrageous is the degree to which the oligarchs are attempting to extort the people of California. Heads: billionaires win; Tails: working families lose. They are pointing a proverbial gun at people’s heads and bogusly saying: If you vote to provide healthcare for low-income kids by raising our taxes, we’re going to punish you and leave the state. How pathetic, how immoral.
Dangerously, many oligarchs today believe that they have the divine right to rule and that they are masters of the universe. They live lives completely separate from ordinary people and could not care less about the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. And they are obsessed with becoming even richer and more powerful than they already are.
The result: The oligarchs would rather let people in California suffer or die because they can’t afford to go to a doctor than pay just a little bit more in taxes on their massive wealth.
Let’s be clear: These billionaires have more money than they could spend in over 100 lifetimes. How many mansions do they need? How many yachts do they need? How many private jets do they need?
Enough is enough!
Instead of spending over $225 million on TV ads against this wealth tax, I have a better idea for these billionaires: Start paying your fair share of taxes.
In 1933, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
What Justice Brandeis said was accurate 93 years ago. It is even more accurate today.
On Nov. 3, I hope very much that the people of California will lead the nation in addressing the unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality that we are experiencing and demand that billionaires pay a 5% tax on their obscene wealth.
For the sake of our entire country, this is a struggle that must be won.
Bernie Sanders is the senior United States senator from Vermont.
