“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
After appearing to back off earlier this year, President Donald Trump this week renewed his threats to seize Greenland. A Saturday report that a Texasoil company with ties to Trump had begun preparing to drill in the Arctic territory without permission has raised fresh concerns that his push for control of the island may already be moving beyond rhetoric.
As The Guardian reported, Greenland’s government issued a “strong warning” last week after learning that a Texas oil company called Greenland Energy had begun making unauthorized preparations for oil extraction in Jameson Land, a remote area of eastern Greenland, including bringing drilling materials ashore.
The company, founded last year, has claimed that Jameson Land may contain $1 trillion worth of crude oil and announced plans to drill two wells there—a project that requires approval from Greenland’s government.
The company also has ties to several Trump allies and associates. According to The Guardian:
Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, a prominent right-wing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters.”
It has also appointed as a director a US Navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defense plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital.”
Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation.”
A Greenland Energy representative falsely claimed in June that the company had permission to place equipment on Jameson Land, before later saying there had been confusion.
But the following month, residents saw a barge arrive with drilling equipment. A Danish outlet confirmed that the delivery was intended for Greenland Energy.
Following the delivery, Greenland’s government said on July 30 that the company “did not have the necessary approvals from the mineral resources authority” and would receive a warning that “all future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority—before they are carried out.”
Two days later, Trump posted an ominious digitally altered image to Truth Social depicting himself as a giant looming over a Greenlandic town, captioned “Hello, Greenland!”
A day earlier, Trump had appeared on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice, where host Steve Gruber reminded him that he had predicted Greenland would be under US control by the time he leaves office in 2029.
“You’ll be right,” Trump replied. “Greenland is important. Not from their standpoint, from our standpoint. You should make that bet.”
Before this week’s comments, Trump had spoken far less publicly about Greenland since January, when he threatened to use military force to take over the island if Denmark did not cede it. To pressure NATO allies, Trump threatened steep tariffs on several European countries, but backed off after Europe pledged retaliatory tariffs, causing panic in the financial markets.
President Trump just posted, "Hello, Greenland!" 👋 So… when is it happening? 😉 pic.twitter.com/gs4jRH7ZIS
— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) August 1, 2026
“Let nobody think Trump has given up on taking Greenland,” said John O’Brennan, professor of European politics at Maynooth University in Ireland. He added that Greenland Energy’s unauthorized activity “is the latest act of lawlessness his acolytes are engaged in.”
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, responded to the story by asking, “Has Trump’s invasion of Greenland already begun?”
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat suggested it was possible. “Invasions,” she said, “often start with ‘technical’ projects that justify the presence of operatives and ‘technical experts’ who are also doing recon and advance prep.”
The Greenlandic government ultimately said it “would not be proportionate” to order Greenland Energy to remove the drilling equipment, a decision that The Guardian said underscored the difficult position facing its officials.
“They could grant permission for oil drilling, even though the planned wells appear to fall within a conservation area protected by the Ramsar convention on wetlands,” the report explained. “Or they could refuse and, some worry, give Trump a pretext to advance his imperialist agenda.”
Although the project has not been approved, a Greenland Energy representative said a vessel carrying additional drilling equipment would depart Canada in September, with drilling set to begin in October.
Jessica Berlin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, warned that allowing the equipment to remain would signal weakness that Trump could exploit.
“Don’t even think about allowing this,” she wrote in a post directed to the Greenlandic and Danish governments. “If you give them an inch, they’ll take 100 miles. Kick them out now or accept that you just opened the floodgates.”
“Like Putin, you can’t negotiate with Trump,” she added. “Showing weakness will just guarantee the next outrage.”
As part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense clause, which obligates member nations to defend one another from armed attack. But NATO has no precedent for how Article 5 would apply if one member—the US—attacked another.
O’Brennan warned, “Europe—you are about to be seriously tested.”
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US Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a news conference at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building on August 5, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“There’s no circumstance under which we shouldn’t expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election.”
One of the many questions swirling around new US Attorney General Todd Blanche is whether he’d go along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the result of another election.
In 2020, when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden, his attempts to claim the result was marred by systemic fraud were met with resistance from then-Attorney General William Barr.
But under Blanche, who served for two years as Trump’s personal defense attorney, things may be very different.
That’s according to another of Trump’s former lawyers, Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel for nearly a year during Trump’s first term, as he came under investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller over his campaign’s alleged coordination with the Russian government.
Cobb, who has been an outspoken critic of both Trump and his appointment of Blanche, appeared for an interview released Saturday on Zeteo’s “Mehdi Unfiltered.” Host Mehdi Hasan asked Cobb, “Come 2028, does American democracy survive Donald Trump?”
“I’m not sure they survive it in 2026,” Cobb responded.
Noting Barr’s resistance to Trump in 2020, Hasan asked: “If the midterms don’t go Trump’s way this fall, is there any world in which Todd Blanche stands up to Trump if he’s asked to find some fake evidence of voter fraud, or are we screwed now?”
Cobb noted that Blanche “has already echoed [former Trump chief strategist] Steve Bannon’s view that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should be on the street during the election,” adding, “I think we’ll almost certainly see that.”
Hasan pointed out that the administration has routinely ignored court orders, especially with regard to its immigration enforcement. Cobb predicted that “the level of noncompliance” so far “is nothing compared to what we’re about to see.”
He said that if Democrats take the US House of Representatives and begin pursuing investigations, he suspects there will be “a number of contemptuous acts” by the administration. “We can count on the Justice Department to pursue zero of those referrals.”
“That’s assuming that the midterms actually produce a Democratic Congress,” he continued, noting that even if one were elected legitimately, “whether they get seated or not by [Republican House Speaker] Little Mikey Johnson and his service to the president, that remains to be seen.”
Cobb said that’s in addition to other “dangers” around the election, including the presence of ICE agents. “Blanche has suggested that people should be happy to see ICE at the polls.”
Where Barr refused Trump’s requests to do so in 2020, Cobb said, “There’s no circumstance under which we shouldn’t expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election.”
“I think that the president has made it very clear that he doesn’t want immigrants or people of color to have the ability to go to the polls,” Cobb said. “He’s going to do everything he can in blue states and elsewhere to try to prevent this election from going smoothly.”
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By one of San Francisco’s foremost chroniclers, the story of the city’s meteoric transformation into a global capital of technology, and how the same creative and political forces that gave rise to its boom nearly engineered its collapse.
At the dawn of the 1990s, San Francisco was a beautiful if troubled mid-sized metropolis. The mythic, fog-shrouded city at the edge of the continent was still reeling from the AIDS epidemic and the Loma Prieta earthquake, its economy stuck in a post-industrial slump. Once the undisputed capital of the American West, and later the beating heart of the global counterculture, San Francisco faced an uncertain future.
But in that very moment, a band of free-thinking technology enthusiasts was meeting the unique creative zeitgeist of the city, and inventing the contemporary internet. The companies they spawned would change the way we work, play, socialize and engage in politics. San Francisco would undergo a transformation unlike any in modern American history, becoming an economic and cultural juggernaut that could fairly claim the title of tech capital of the world. Local politicians like Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris advanced to the national stage, even as a union of underground culture and technological optimism gave rise to the annual reverie known as Burning Man.
This should have been a happy story for San Francisco. But while the city’s tech economy roared, a host of urban ills lurked in the homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, and a crippling lack of new housing. The city’s famously liberal political establishment struggled to get its arms around the mounting problems in the streets, becoming a punching bag for President Trump and the new right. When the pandemic arrived in 2020, it didn’t just create new crises but laid old ones bare, and shattered a “City Family” that had ruled for thirty years.
Reporter and newsroom leader Jonathan Weber was an eyewitness to these events. He offers a sweeping history of a city that rose to dizzying heights, only to be all but undone by the greed of a tech industry it did so much to spawn, and politicians who had lost the plot. Drawing on nearly two hundred interviews with mayors, CEOs, activists, investors, artists, and beyond, City on the Edge is more than a than a simple chronicle of a city. It’s the story of a war waged for the heart of San Francisco—one that both anticipated and reflected the culture wars raging around the world. Its outcome would have an impact far beyond the city’s famed Golden Gates.
Jonathan has been covering technology and politics for more than thirty years as a reporter, editor, newsroom leader and journalism entrepreneur.
After a stint in the technology trade press that included a posting in Paris, in 1990 he was named the first Silicon Valley correspondent for the Los Angeles. He subsequently served as co-founder and editor in chief of The Industry Standard, a weekly news magazine that became a symbol of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. In 2005, as independent online media was beginning to take shape, he launched a local and regional online magazine called New West, serving the Rocky Mountain West. He then returned to San Francisco as the founding editor of The Bay Citizen, a non-profit news organization devoted to Bay Area news.
Later he served as West Coast Bureau chief and Global Technology editor for Reuters News, and then was the founding editor of another local news organization, the San Francisco Standard. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Wesleyan University.
“Mike Zonta, a citizen from District 11, invited all candidates and Nancy Pelosi to participate. 2 candidates accepted this bold and courageous invitation: Shahid Buttar and Bianca Krieg.”
Timothy Regan hosts and facilitates the second congressional candidate empathy circle ever, for our US House of Representatives, CA District 11, San Francisco, currently represented by Nancy Pelosi.
Mike Zonta, a citizen from District 11, invited all candidates and Nancy Pelosi to participate. 2 candidates accepted this bold and courageous invitation: Shahid Buttar and Bianca Krieg.
Shahid and Bianca sit down together and talk and listen to eachother with respect, civility, honesty, and depth, in a simple process of speaking and listening directly to eachother called an empathy circle.
These candidates met on May 22 , 2022 by Zoom for this unique dialogue, to answer one question: “Why should people vote for you?” and to speak to what is on their minds and hearts.
Check out this conversation – it’s inspiring! This is what is possible in politics these days! If you are caught by the dangerous illusion that people can’t talk anymore with respect and collaboration – listen up! This is what’s possible: listening, and being heard, and honest and civil dialogue between competing election candidates! This is a kind of leadership that is inclusive, collaborative, and actually interesting – because respectful dialogue brings the best out of all of us – and we need our best these days.
“The Democratic Party is now Blockbuster,” Van Jones, the Democratic commentator and former Obama administration official, said on CNN on Tuesday. “These kids are Netflix.” Photo: U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The embattled establishment of the Democratic Party searched furiously for a political reset after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s progressive victory in Michigan handed the party’s long-dominant moderate wing its most painful defeat of the year.
Some strategists urgently pressed to adopt a sharper edge to tap into the fury among Democratic voters that was felling its centrist candidates. Others wanted to attack democratic socialism, undercutting a budding movement now set to have far more than a toehold in the next Congress. Yet another young democratic socialist ousted an incumbent member of Congress in Detroit on Tuesday.
“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” said Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, a leading centrist Democratic group, revealing to The New York Times a new $15 million effort between now and 2028 to discredit democratic socialism.
El-Sayed’s win was not the blowout that some preelection polls had predicted. But his narrow nomination in one of the country’s signature swing states still represented a critical moment for the party’s middle, which had previously sought to cast the far left’s successes as contained within the country’s most urban and liberal corridors.
Their fear: El-Sayed was paving a path for a progressive to seize the party’s presidential nomination in 2028 — and then go on to lose the general election.
“It is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states,” Cowan added.
Most party leaders — from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York to former Vice President Kamala Harris — quickly embraced El-Sayed’s Senate candidacy, given the stakes of the Michigan seat at the play. But some moderates see the emerging left as a danger.
The fact that Democrats recently put Michigan in the early lineup of presidential nominating states — a race just 18 months away — only heightened the significance of El-Sayed’s victory.
For now, the next big test is only a week away. In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist and state Assembly member representing the progressive hotbed of Madison, has emerged as the party’s front-runner for governor in another key battleground race.
Cowan said the $15 million his group would spend through 2028 was not directed at individual candidates. Instead, the group plans to target the Democratic Socialists of America movement, which he believes poses a “mortal danger” for Democrats.
He said the effort would include opposition research into DSA, polling, social media programs and educating Democratic activists and leaders. It would target both proud democratic socialists and those such as El-Sayed, whom he derided as performing the “DSA dodge” — flirting with democratic socialists enough to get their organizing power and support while remaining distant enough to avoid the explicit label.
How this discrediting campaign will affect the current midterm cycle — potentially undercutting Democratic nominees in swing-state races and undermining the party’s chances of retaking Congress — remains unclear.
Centrist Democrats say their purpose is to make progressives understand the risks of some of the more radical planks of the official DSA platform: defunding the “Department of War,” taking “steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system,” enacting “reparations” and establishing a 32-hour workweek.
“The upside of being associated with more extreme movements is you get attention and real and perceived energy and outsider status,” said Liam Kerr, the co-founder of another centrist group called Welcome PAC.
Kerr said that the far left was currently receiving all of those benefits without “the baggage” of particular positions — a dynamic he hoped would shift with added attention.
On Wednesday, one progressive Democrat who won his party’s House nomination distanced himself from the DSA. Will Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement who defeated two more moderate Democratic rivals in Michigan on Tuesday, said he allowed his DSA membership to lapse in the last month. Lawrence, 35, now faces a Republican incumbent, Rep. Tom Barrett, in one of the country’s premier battleground districts.
Whatever comes next, El-Sayed’s triumph was a watershed moment for the progressive movement, a statewide success in Middle America that could not easily be dismissed. This was not Zohran Mamdani’s win over Andrew Cuomo in New York City, or a congressional primary win in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Philadelphia or Denver.
After all, the party establishment had the one-on-one race it had wanted against El-Sayed. The state’s Democratic governor delivered a late endorsement of Rep. Haley Stevens, the moderate alternative. And Stevens enjoyed a gargantuan advertising advantage that swelled into the tens of millions of dollars.
More than $32 million of that money came from a super political action committee linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which signaled that it would continue opposing El-Sayed through the fall.
El-Sayed has made running against AIPAC a centerpiece of his candidacy. On MS NOW on Wednesday, he said the links between Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were “inextricable.”
“Netanyahu is a big reason why they’ve gotten so aggressive and, frankly, so bloodthirsty under his reign,” El-Sayed said.
This year marks the 11th year that the organization has gathered supplies and clothes for elementary-school to high-school-aged children of low-income families
Supervisor Connie Chan’s camp says the AI-driven website delivered ugly answers; frontrunner in congressional race accuses her side of flooding it with ‘malicious questions’
They worry about how cuts to the social safety net and changes to enrollment for undocumented immigrants will affect the most vulnerable patients
Progressives have not won every race this year. On Tuesday, Cori Bush, a left-wing former member of Congress, lost badly in her bid to win back her old seat.
But they have won convincingly in enough places — including Graham Platner’s Senate nomination in Maine before his withdrawal — to put the party’s establishment on its heels.
“The Democratic Party is now Blockbuster,” Van Jones, the Democratic commentator and former Obama administration official, said on CNN on Tuesday. “These kids are Netflix.”
Colin Mortimer, the director of the centrist Center for New Liberalism, said that moderates needed to stop tempering their tone to appeal to voters sick of the status quo.
“It seems to me a lot of energy is on the left, but the big energy we are seeing from the base of the Democratic Party is just a rejection of the establishment and a rejection of incumbents,” Mortimer said.
He pointed to some upcoming races as key tests where it was younger center-left candidates doing the challenging of older incumbents, including the bid of Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate, to unseat Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts, as well as Luke Bronin’s challenge to Rep. John Larson of Connecticut.
Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the progressive Working Families Party, sharply disagreed.
“They’re missing the plot,” Mitchell, who spent the last week campaigning in Michigan, said in an interview. “There is a populist insurgency taking place in this country.”
Moderates, he said, were misreading the room if they did not believe voters were animated by specific ideas as much as tenor. “I can tell you what they’re missing,” he said. “They’re missing a point of view.”
Or as Hasan Piker, the lightning rod live-streamer who campaigned in Michigan with El-Sayed, said in a text message Wednesday, “70 million dollars worth of smears couldn’t make up for a lack vision demonstrated by the establishment dems.”
With a signature fitted V-neck black T-shirt, El-Sayed built his successful campaign with a call-and-response set of catchphrases that captured the scope of his ambitions: “Money out of … politics. Money in your … pocket. Medicare for … all.”
Some Democratic strategists hoped he would focus, in particular, on the second of the three in the coming months, as polls show that voters are ready to punish President Donald Trump and his party for failing to bring down costs.
Republicans appeared most eager to frame the race around crime, linking El-Sayed to past movements and comments about defunding the police or prisons. Chris Gustafson, a spokesperson for the top Senate Republican super PAC, previewed that line of attack, calling El-Sayed “a dangerous threat to the safety and freedoms of every American.”
The contours and coalitions of the Stevens-El-Sayed primary are likely to provide a road map for progressives who decide to run for president. El-Sayed campaigned with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and featured them both prominently in his closing ad.
The Senate primary was not the first time that Michigan opted for a left-wing candidate in a marquee contest. In 2016, the state delivered an upset win for Sanders in his presidential primary against Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose Michigan that November to Trump.
The Michigan Senate race of 2026 was already a must-win for Democrats if they hope to wrest control of the Senate from Republicans this fall. At the same time, for Schumer, El-Sayed would add to the ranks of Democrats opposed to him as a leader.
It is also a must-win for progressives aspiring to prove they can succeed not just in primaries but also in crucial and competitive general elections.
For now, the party’s moderate wing was hoping to learn lessons after a painful defeat.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Kerr said. “It’s a tough but necessary time.”
San Francisco finally made some steps last month toward embracing the area’s cannabis culture by passing a law to allow Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes to open up in the city.
“Today, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave final approval to legislation authored by Board President Rafael Mandelman that enables San Francisco’s licensed cannabis retailers to prepare and serve food and non-alcoholic beverages for consumption alongside cannabis on their premises, and creates a new cannabis cafe permit to support innovative hospitality-focused cannabis businesses,” states the press release after the mayor signed off on the bill.
SF-based cannabis journalist and author David Downs hailed the decision. “Tourism is a key part of San Francisco’s economy, and that includes counter-culture tourism,” he said. “San Francisco has the most advanced legal cannabis offerings and experiences in the world.”
According to Downs, the bill’s passage will kick off a year-long tourism push to attract more people from around the world. That push includes tourism maps featuring consumption lounges and dispensaries, an events calendar, museum events, and cannabis festivals.
“San Francisco has consistently pioneered groundbreaking cannabis tourism, offering safe consumption lounges alongside world-class, legal California products,” said Bram Goodwin of the SF Brownie Mary Democratic Club. “With this new legislation, we look forward to welcoming global visitors to our latest immersive experience—Cannabis Cafes that bring together cannabis, dining, and entertainment under one roof.
“Much like our iconic cable cars, San Francisco’s cannabis tourism is now officially on track.”
As a longtime cannabnis journalist and advocate myself, my first response like many of us was, “It is about damn time.” I reached out to some of the cannabis companies for a reaction.
“Having served on San Francisco’s Cannabis Oversight Committee and now operating a cannabis brand serving retailers across California, I’ve seen how much thoughtful collaboration improves policy,” said Ali Jamalian, owner of Sunset Connect. “My hope is that implementation includes meaningful dialogue with the operators, advocates, and community members who’ve spent years building this industry, while ensuring cannabis cafés complement—not cannibalize—the existing lounges that invested so much to open.”
I couldn’t agree more. Now that this law has passed, let’s do a better job of figuring it out than we did when we accepted a lot of junk along with Prop 64 legalizing recreational cannabis. Back then, the argument was “Let’s get this passed, and then we can change it along the way.”
Well what happened was a whole lot of fees and taxes that looked and were more punitive than helpful. Not a lot changed; the city never really embraced the cannabis industry and treated us somewhat similar to how the Wicked Stepmother treated Cinderella in the fairytale.
The Green Wave some hoped for never really happened. Maybe a green tidal pool at best.
Now there is hope again that some of those wrongs are about to be righted, and the city will embrace a potential multi-million industry.
Interestingly, everyone else I reached out to was not as full of hope and joy as the press releases sounded.
“I don’t think this measure is as easy as it sounds. If the single serve component is in play, I’m not sure how well that would work,” said one dispensary manager. I pressed on that, and he said it was his understanding that the new cafes will be only selling single items that must be consumed during that visit. So you wouldn’t be able to walk out with any items or buy multi-packs.
Interesting thought. So these cafes will have to serve single joints of varying size depending on how long you’ve got, single serving sodas and edibles, no eighths or quarters unless you plan on really blazing out. (Of course, a nice dab bar could be the star of the show!) There’s obviously still a lot to work out and cannabis culture will have to change to adapt.
Other people I talked to said it was good the bill passed, but they will wait and see what happens before commenting. That makes sense too, coming from a community that has been let down by the government many times.
Just to show you how much they don’t trust Johnny Law, according to the California Department of Cannabis Control, of the 3.8 million pounds of cannabis consumed in 2024, 62% was sold outside of the dispensary system from unlicensed sources.
I started producing entertainment in the cannabis community 10 years ago this year. I have seen it become legalized with great companies closing and fantastic new ones popping up. I have seen unfair taxation and ridiculous rules keeping these companies from being able to grow. So, I welcome this new bill hopefully representing real change. We have finally made that next step we talked about all those years ago.
It makes me think of cannabis activist Terrance Alan, sitting with me back in 2018 at Cafe Flore as he talked to me about turning Flore into a restaurant with cannabis options. “If you want cannabis salad dressing, you can order it, and the waiter will just walk across the street to the dispensary and get it for you,” I remember him saying. “We will have the best cannabis and CBD mocktails in town!”
He got me so enthused about working there to create this new cannabis nightlife and food culture that I was sure it would happen within months. He tried very hard, but sadly, it did not and Terrance passed on last year before it became a reality.
So let’s pick up that baton and continue the race. We carry with us all those who have strived before us like Terrance, Dennis Peron, Brownie Mary, Wayne Justmann, Eddie Lepp, Jack Herrer, and so many more. The finish line is still ahead of us, and we just got a few steps closer.
Personally, I am excited that there is a provision for cannabis entertainment since that is what I have been doing since PUFF at the Stud in 2016 all the way through to BONG-O BINGO at Mission Cannabis Club for the past three years. I can’t wait to create new programming for these cafes and am open for meetings!
Dan Karkoska is an independent producer, promoter, film critic, and DJ on the San Francisco scene. He also works with Maria Konner at Under the Golden Gate and is currently producing and hosting PUFF, the first queer marijuana rock-and-roll drag party every first Thursday at The Stud. He is a big stoner. Photo by Sari Staver.
This article appears in the August 2026 issue of The American Prospect magazine.If you’d like to receive our next issue in your mailbox, please subscribe here.
The last time I saw Judy Heumann alive was on February 5, 2020, at the Museum of Modern Art’s premiere of the documentary Crip Camp. The movie tells the story of Camp Jened, a summer camp in upstate New York that created a beautiful alternative world for disabled children at a time when disability had virtually no accommodations in wider society. The story of Camp Jened is, however, not simply a heartwarming tale about children. It is the story of how in particular times and places the right community—the right “safe space,” if you will—can birth activism that changes the world.
I’ve known about Camp Jened and the organization Heumann was co-founding president of, Disabled in Action, all my life. This is because the co-founding vice president and childhood best friend of Heumann was my aunt Frieda Tankus. Disabled in Action seemed to be all around me. The apartment building I moved into when I was four years old is in the Penn South limited-equity co-op complex. As my parents settled in, they noticed a wheelchair user named Carr Massi. It quickly came up that she was, at the time, the current president of Disabled in Action. Carr is still my neighbor and still going strong with her manual wheelchair at the extraordinary age of 95.
In 1970, Heumann successfully sued her way into becoming the first wheelchair user to teach in New York City’s public schools. My aunt had previously successfully fought to become the first wheelchair user to live in New York University’s dorms in 1968. In this way, their individual efforts mirrored each other and reflected how much they shared: first and foremost, their drive to fight. Unfortunately, my aunt tragically died at age 22 from complications related to spinal surgery that attempted to correct curvature caused by muscular dystrophy.
With her characteristic forceful personality, Heumann paved the way for herself as a disability rights activist to enter the halls of power.
Disabled in Action went on to do a series of famous actions not long after my aunt died. They famously shut down Manhattan rush-hour traffic in November 1972 in response to President Nixon’s first veto of the Rehabilitation Act, focused on improving funding for disability services and tying them to disability rights. Nixon would veto the bill a second time in March before ultimately signing a weaker version in the fall of 1973. They also organized infamous protests where they used their wheelchairs to stop city buses to demand the installation of wheelchair lifts. Heumann’s experience as a disability rights leader and spokesperson in the early 1970s led her to play a significant role in basically all disability rights legislation in the United States.
Heumann carried forward the labor and efforts of far too many underrecognized people, including those like my aunt who died well before they were able to fully realize their potential. A particularly cruel thing about the fight for disability rights is that disablement leads to early death so often. There is a reason that disability rights are suffused with statements like “the world wasn’t built for us.”
You can’t get credit for the things you didn’t do, even if you were capable of doing them if you had lived. We hold no celebrations for the accomplishments not done in an extraordinary 50-year career that never happened. To be a veteran disability rights activist like Heumann, then, means living with a lot of death. So few of Heumann’s closest colleagues lived to see their sixties, let alone age 75, the age at which she died in March 2023. Her label as the “mother” of the disability rights movement is thus as much about creating some kind of representation for all those unrepresented, tireless ordinary people who fought the good fight as it is about Heumann herself.
IN THIS SENSE, HEUMANN HAS BECOME a symbol in disability rights, analogous to Martin Luther King Jr.’s status in the civil rights movement. Yet, at the same time, this analogy breaks down because Heumann has not gotten the sustained focus and attention that a comparison to King implies. Indeed, Heumann’s “moment” was disrupted by the pandemic in multiple senses. In the most basic sense, it was disrupted because of the lack of in-person gathering that typifies the honoring of people and movements. In the wider sense, it disrupted her moment by creating a societal-wide conflict over infection and disease that illustrated how little disability is taken seriously in the United States.
Heumann in 1982. Credit: John Duricka/AP Photo
The attacks on “DEI” from the right have inevitably involved dismantling the already-meager protections disabled people have, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insertion as secretary of health and human services is a direct rebuke to her legacy. Heumann contracted polio in 1949 when she was one and a half years old. The intentional spread of mass disablement and death by discouraging vaccination and medical research would have absolutely horrified her. Her brother, Rick Heumann, told me in an interview that Judy is “rolling in her grave” at these Trump administration attacks on the disability movement (and beyond).
The attack on protections against racial discrimination is also an enormous symbolic blow to disability rights. In the 1970s, after all, disability activists were inspired by the civil rights movement and modeled their activism around its example. It’s hard to imagine a world where the Voting Rights Act can get repealed but the gains of the disability rights movement remain unscathed. In turn, nothing has become more legendary in the history of the disability rights movement than the Black Panthers’ unflinching and fully devoted support to the 1977 occupation of a U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco.
The occupation was motivated by the department’s refusal to engage in “regulatory rulemaking” to meaningfully implement the anti-discrimination section of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act Heumann had fought so hard to see passed. That section was known as “Section 504” and has subsequently become the name of the protests and occupation. When Congress passes laws, it typically leaves the details of implementation to agencies and their “expertise.” This process can often favor industries that could be adversely affected by regulation, since they can afford to devote resources for technocratic lobbying and don’t have to worry as much about public scrutiny.
Thirty-five years later, I would engage in similar, though less dramatic, fights as part of the Occupy Wall Street working groups Alternative Banking and Occupy the SEC to push for the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform, among other things. The 504 occupation successfully compelled President Carter’s health secretary Joseph Califano to sign new regulations, the first real advance for disability rights in the United States. The signature legislative accomplishment of the movement would have to wait for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.
These encampments, led by Heumann and lasting for 28 days, remain the longest nonviolent occupation of a federal building in American history.
Heumann’s story is, however, not simply one of activism. It is also the story of the long march through the institutions, for better or worse. She was already a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate in 1974, where she helped develop what became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). She was recruited by fellow activist Ed Roberts to Berkeley, California, in 1975 to become deputy director of the Center for Independent Living (CIL), an institution dedicated to facilitating disabled people to live in their own homes if they so chose. After the 504 occupation, CIL built a law center focused on compelling implementation of Section 504. In fact, it was a CETA grant (a 1970s direct job creation program) that funded the creation of that legal center. Taking government money to fight the government was a tactic made famous a decade earlier by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward.
She would later become the assistant secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the Clinton administration, the first adviser on “disability and development” to the World Bank, and special adviser on international disability rights for the State Department under President Barack Obama. Like many 1970s activists, Heumann sought to become an advocate in the institutions to build upon the victories that activism brought. She spent many exhausting years trying to get disability rights legislation passed, culminating in the ADA. The attraction of playing a role in enforcing that legislation, and expanding upon it, is obvious. Her increasing international focus in many ways culminated in the effort for the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to establish disability rights on a global scale.
These kinds of roles are always fraught. While Heumann fought for disability rights at home and abroad, President Obama ordered drone strikes and other military horrors that caused mass disablement and death. As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about in a recent Vanity Fair piece about Palestinian genocide and Kamala Harris’s run for president, there is an inherent contradiction between the activism of Black women like Fannie Lou Hamer and the “purveyor of mass violence” role that being president of the United States so often entails. This is no less true for someone like Heumann who, with her characteristic forceful personality, paved the way for herself as a disability rights activist to enter the halls of power. She chose to accept certain things as the way things were to fight hard for change in what she saw as her domain.
I never got a chance to talk to Heumann about these contradictions. Yet I never doubted that what motivated her above all else was the condition of “her” people.
Heumann’s activism made the first real gains for people with disabilities; it was modeled on the example of the civil rights movement. Credit: HolLynn D’Lil/Courtesy Judith Heumann LLCCredit: National Museum of American History/Judith E. Heumann Papers
EIGHT YEARS AGO WHEN I was visiting D.C., I asked if it was possible to see her. Being the busy person she was, all she had was an 8 a.m. time slot. This was a struggle for a night owl like me, but I wasn’t about to miss my chance to see THE Judy Heumann. So I got myself out of bed and was so nervous about being late, I was ten minutes early.
We caught up, and I ended up talking to her about a policy I’m still an advocate of: a legally enforceable right to a job. Known as a Job Guarantee, it is (among other things) meant to set a minimum standard in the labor market, including on disability rights protections. Heumann listened to me intently, despite my young brashness and the fact that I was, realistically speaking, a “nobody” at that point. On paper, at least. Knowing about her involvement with CETA, I drew on it as an example when making my broader case for a Job Guarantee.
Whether because of the warmth she still had for my aunt Frieda, or whether she was genuinely intrigued by what I was saying, I’ll never know. But she was Judy Heumann, so she did what Judy Heumann does—she called a higher-up at the National Disability Institute and told that person that NDI was going to meet with me later that week. I could practically hear the resigned tone on the other end of the line saying, “Yes, Judy.” You don’t say no to Judy Heumann.
So a couple of days later, I again got myself up early and had an hour-long meeting with three higher-ups at NDI. They had some skepticism, as they should have because people outside of the disability rights movement regularly proffer schemes to help disabled people without the benefit of their expertise or concerns. Nevertheless, they also took me seriously. After all, Judy had sent me.
Heumann knew what power was and wielded it at all stages of her life. And no matter how high she got, she never deviated from the fight for disabled people. I’m from a generation that has seen the march through the institutions end in scorched earth and tears, so I have an instinctive suspicion of this approach. But I am also fascinated by history—in fact, I am writing a book that is (among other things) a work of history—so I know the attraction of the compromises she made. Few who have made those kinds of compromises have kept the tenacity and fire she showed to her very last moments on this Earth. According to her brother Rick, many of those closest to her believe she “worked herself to death.” Whenever any disabled person reached out to her with their problems, she instantly got on the phone to find the person to resolve it. No matter the different choices our generation makes, there are few predecessors we can learn more from than Heumann.
It was thrilling to see Camp Jened be put center stage at the Museum of Modern Art. It represented something new for the standing of the disability rights movement. At the same time, the laborious and ridiculous way Heumann and the other wheelchair users got onstage also represented the precariousness of this rise in status. There was no built-in ramp for them, or even a temporary ramp. They literally used a hand-cranked lift to bring them onstage, and the pace was excruciatingly slow. My father and I were relieved when someone in the audience spoke up to complain during the Q&A on our guests’ behalf. But it was still disturbing. That precariousness feels to me now like a premonition of the full impact of COVID and the setbacks we’ve had in the five years since.
But this is a profile of Judy Heumann. Which means the setbacks aren’t the point. The point is to relentlessly and ruthlessly demand your rights and the rights of others. It was her relentlessness that made her name a name to be remembered, with all that goes along with it. But through her, countless others are remembered as well. For me, of course, my aunt Frieda Tankus is the “forgotten” name Heumann represents. But there are so many others, and our job is to fight to the very last so we get the chance to finish the audacious project they all launched.
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Democratic US Senate candidate Troy Jackson on Friday accused rival Sen. Susan Collins of trying to pull the wool over Maine voters’ eyes with her decision to vote against confirming Todd Blanche as the next US attorney general.
In a social mediapost, Jackson pointed to a statement from right-wing radio host John Fredericks praising Collins’ (R-Maine) “very savvy team” for having her vote against Blanche while already knowing the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump would have enough support in the US Senate to be confirmed.
“They know that even without her, Blanche has the votes to get confirmed,” Fredericks said. “So this was a vote to help her get elected, to help her with Maine voters, but it does nothing to hurt Todd Blanche because he’s already got the votes.”
Jackson accused his Republican opponent of participating in a shell game where she arranged to be shielded from what would have been a very damaging vote.
“Weak sauce,” wrote Jackson. “Susan has voted with Trump 96% of the time. The other 4%? She waits until her vote won’t change the outcome.”
Jackson, the former president of the Maine state Senate, predicted that voters would see right through Collins’ ploy.
“Mainers aren’t stupid,” wrote Jackson. “We deserve a fighter who will actually stand up to Trump.”
Collins earlier this week announced her intention to vote against Blanche, who as assistant attorney general orchestrated Trump’s widely criticized $1.8 billion slush fund for political allies.
On Friday morning, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) announced he would be the final vote needed to drag Blanche’s confirmation over the finish line, which led some critics to speculate that Collins knew all along that her vote would not be needed.
Collins in 2018 was a decisive vote in favor of confirming US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. During her speech announcing her vote for Kavanaugh, she insisted that he would uphold the precedent set by Roe v. Wade establishing the constitutional right to an abortion.
Four years later, however, Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court majority in overturning Roe, and Jackson has been hammering Collins’ decisive confirmation vote as a major reason why she must be unseated this fall.
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One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism Virtual Event · Hosted by No Kings Time Wednesdays 8 – 9:30pm EDT Location Virtual event Join from anywhere About this event Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations,... Continue reading →
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