“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
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The SF Immigrant Forum is a coalition and inter-agency partnership between the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, Department of Public Health, Human Services Agency and the Mayor’s Office on Housing and Community Development to share immigrant services and resources in San Francisco.
Learn more about resources for immigrants in San Francisco, including the Rapid Response Hotline, community legal assistance and support services, and more from OCEIA Director, Jorge Rivas.Watch now
San Francisco Immigrant Resources and Services website is part of the SF Immigrant Forum: an inter-agency partnership between the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, Department of Public Health, Human Services Agency and the Mayor’s Office on Housing and Community Development.
How a group of rank-and-file retirees in Connecticut successfully organized to restore their right to traditional public Medicare
Connecticut public employees have just won a major victory over Medicare Advantage, the brand name for private-insurer HMO products for seniors. In 2017, in order to save money, Connecticut shifted all state retirees, some 65,000 of them, to Medicare Advantage and denied them the freedom to stay on traditional public Medicare. But now, thanks to rank-and-file protest and organizing, that policy has just been reversed.
A number of insurance companies sponsor Medicare Advantage plans. They have been criticized for using a variety of strategies to maximize profits by stinting on care, including heavy-handed case management, limiting choice of providers, and target-marketing to relatively healthy seniors with gimmicks such as health clubs, thus fragmenting the risk pool.
Worse, lobbying by insurers has led to a formula in which traditional Medicare payers subsidize these private Medicare Advantage plans to the tune of $82 billion over ten years, giving them an artificial price advantage. The plans appear to be great deals—until you get seriously ill.
One Connecticut retiree who was switched to a Medicare Advantage plan, James Russell, a former professor of sociology at Eastern Connecticut State University, did become seriously ill. In 2021, he was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer. His preferred hospital, MD Anderson in Texas, was in the network of United Healthcare, the operator of Russell’s Medicare Advantage plan.
After the successful surgery, MD Anderson referred him to a hospital in Portland, Oregon, where Russell now lives, for follow-up chemotherapy. But the Portland hospital was not in the United network, so Russell had pay out of pocket to commute to Texas for his chemo.
Russell was fortunate compared to Gary Bent, another Connecticut state retiree, who in 2022 was denied coverage by his Medicare Advantage plan for intensive rehabilitation recommended by his doctors after a brain surgery left him with severe mobility and cognitive impairments. Bent subsequently died.
Russell got in touch with Bent’s widow, Gloria, and the two founded Connecticut State Employees for Medicare Choice. As Russell told me, the group was unusual because it was entirely rank-and-file. “We were just agitationists, trying to get the unions and the state to do the right thing,” he said. The state’s public employee union leaders had initially supported the shift to Medicare Advantage. They tend to be political allies of Gov. Ned Lamont, a progressive, who faced budget crunches. The shift to Medicare Advantage, effective in 2018, saved the state nearly $1.7 billion over the last five fiscal years, according to estimates from State Comptroller Sean Scanlon. That presumably relieved stress on other outlays dear to public employees.
Gradually, faced with a rebellion of rank-and-file retirees, some union leaders came around. The deal that the retirees made with the state will involve some cost-sharing. “Our strategy was to meet the state halfway,” Russell said.
Final numbers are still being worked out. But the deal will allow any Connecticut retiree who wants traditional Medicare to get it.
In the context of steady market share gains by Medicare Advantage, which now has over half of all people eligible for Medicare, this rare rollback is a major victory. Russell, Gloria Bent, and their group are now in touch with others around the country who want to resist and reverse the insurance industry takeover of America’s most important island of single-payer public health insurance. Robert Kuttner Co-Editor, Co-Founder
Pollution and steam rise from the Miami Fort Power Station situated along the Ohio River near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 7, 2026. Credit: Jason Whitman/NurPhoto via AP
In the second Trump administration, Democrats have been backing away from climate change messaging. Joe Biden apparently got no credit for the Inflation Reduction Act, his marquee climate policy bill, and Trump has since unceremoniously disposed of it.
The Searchlight Institute, a centrist think tank, presented polling last September indicating that while most Americans think climate change is a problem, they don’t think it’s a major one. Therefore, the first step to solving climate change is “don’t say climate change.” Luckily, as Matt Huber points out at The New York Times, tremendous progress in renewable energy means one can accomplish a lot, emissions-wise, without mentioning climate change at all. The “heart of any affordability agenda—housing, energy, transportation—overlaps with the sectors we must decarbonize,” he writes. “When it comes to climate change, for now, it might be better to say nothing at all.”
When it comes to actual politicians running for office this year, perhaps that is a sensible strategy. But in terms of the rest of the broad Democratic coalition, it is not.
It’s not hard to see why climate policy polls poorly: People have been comprehensively misled about it. On one hand, climate activism emerged from the environmental movement, which tends to present measures to protect the environment as posing an inherent trade-off with jobs and growth. If we create some new national park, for instance, then that land won’t be available for aluminum smelters or data centers. (In reality, it is usually not this simple, but that’s the stereotype.)
For the median voter, climate change is seen as a problem but one that will be burdensome to solve.
On the other hand, and much more importantly, right-wing media—heavily funded by fossil fuel interests—has been lying about climate change for decades. They lied for years that it wasn’t happening, then they lied for years that it was “paused,” and now that the problem is undeniably happening all around us, they lie that we can’t do anything about it.
The result is that for the median voter, climate change is seen as a problem but one that will be burdensome to solve. It will mean higher gas and electricity prices, having to buy an expensive electric car, spending tax dollars on infrastructure upgrades, and so on. When times are tough, climate slips down the priority list.
This way of thinking, of course, is not remotely true. Climate change is going to wreck the environment and the economy—indeed, it is already happening. The home insurance markets in Florida and California are in death spirals. Increasingly severe heat waves are killing people and straining the electric grid all across the country. Flooding strikes in more places, and more severely. The same is true of drought. The Colorado River Basin just suffered its driest winter in hundreds of years. The water level on the Colorado’s Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the country, might sink below its power inlet tubesthis summer, and it will almost certainly have to be decommissioned within the next decade.
Conversely, it is now beyond any question that the 21st-century economy will be driven by renewable energy. It is the cheapest form of energy in history, and whoever can figure out how to power their whole economy with it will reap a tremendous harvest of prosperity and health, as the pollution from filth-spewing fossil energy gradually clears.
In a weird stroke of good fortune, Trump’s lunatic misrule provides a perfect context to press the correct argument about climate change: that doing so will help every part of America, from the environment to the economy writ large to Jeffrey Q. Consumer, struggling to pay his bills. Thanks to Trump’s war on Iran having closed the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices are shooting through the roof, followed quickly by food and electricity prices. And thanks to his repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, China has cemented a massive lead in the technology and industry of the future. They almost can’t believe their luck; a Chinese university recently published a stock-take of his policies in 2025 entitled “Thank Trump.”
It is true that you don’t have to talk about climate change specifically to justify a major climate package. Renewable energy is being deployed at scale, even in the U.S., and EVs are less expensive to run over time because of cheaper fueling and few maintenance requirements. Indeed, in a rapidly growing fraction of the world, EVs are cheaper to purchase up front, too. China is showing how to decarbonize trucking.
But decarbonizing electricity production and transport is not enough. We also need to decarbonize industry and agriculture, and strategies for doing so are not all ready for deployment, particularly in the latter category. As I wrote back during the 2024 campaign, Joe Biden got us maybe halfway where we needed to be with the IRA. Now we don’t even have that foundation to build on.
In short, an immense package of investment and research will be needed to reach the (literally) sunlit uplands where fossil fuels are not needed for anything, aside from maybe chemical production. Given the macroeconomic conditions likely to prevail in 2029—which might be a severe case of stagflation at the rate we’re going, if not a debt crisis—it will most probably be quite painful and disruptive. The American people must be convinced the price is worth it.
That brings me to my most fundamental disagreement with this style of politics: Muzzling yourself because certain topics momentarily don’t poll well is strategically shortsighted and against basic small-d democratic values. As Steve Randy Waldman argues, any democratic system is premised on the idea that politicians and political parties will make honest arguments about what they think should happen. That’s how voters can trust that their choice in an election will be a meaningful one and thereby come to understand the effect of what voting for particular parties will do, which doesn’t happen when parties yank their policies back and forth based on what (invariably biased) polls happen to come in with. “When political parties reshape themselves on the basis of polling, it renders the whole process nonsensical, a kind of infinite regress,” he writes. “It deprives the public of meaningful choice in the name of giving it what it wants.”
More concretely, consider the Gallup poll of approval of interracial marriage. Back in 1954, it came in at just 4 percent. By 2021, that had risen to 94 percent. Why the change? Because generations of ordinary people, activists, and even some politicians—knowing full well they were charging headlong into a storm of public condemnation—argued that in a free country, people ought to be allowed to marry whoever they damn well want.
If civil rights activists had thought like today’s poll-sniffing political consultants, they would have carefully avoided any such hideously unpopular ideas. They would have yelled at Richard and Mildred Loving to avoid raising the dreaded salience of the issue by appealing their conviction for violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law to the Supreme Court, no matter how eerily apropos their surname might be. “What are you trying to do, elect more Dixiecrats?” consultants would have bellowed. And interracial marriage might still be illegal to this day.
In the low-profile race for California insurance commissioner, Jane Kim wants to borrow from other countries to solve a crisis in the homeowner’s insurance market.
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Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs. More by Ryan Cooper
Donnita Hathaway, 45, prepares to participate in the Black Voters Matter’s 57th Selma to Montgomery march at the Wright Chapel AME Church on March 09, 2022 in Selma, Alabama. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
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Alabama US Senate candidate Dakarai Larriett joins Mansa Musa on Rattling the Bars to expose the rising tide of voter suppression and the battle for the Democratic ticket. Ahead of the May 19, 2026, primary, Larriett takes aim at opponent Kyle Sweetser—a former three-time Trump voter—calling his sudden party shift disingenuous while vowing to ‘fight like hell’ against racist redistricting in the South.
Editor’s Note: This interview was recorded on May 11, 2026. Following the recording, a US Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for Alabama to implement a new congressional map that effectively dismantles one of the state’s two majority-Black districts.Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Since the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana versus Cowan, significantly weakening protection under the Voting Rights Act. Several Southern states have redrawn district lines leading to concerns over the delusion of Black political representation. From the Supreme Court decision in Virginia, striking down Democrat drawing maps to Texas Governor Greg Abbott redistricting plans, receiving formal approval, the national landscape is shifting. Today we are following up with the Dakarai Larriett, a candidate for the United States Senate of Alabama to discuss these nationwide shifts and their impact on the midterm and the balance of power in Congress. Dakarai, welcome to Rattling the Bar.
Dakarai Larriett:
Oh, good to be back, man, sir.
Mansa Musa:
So let’s dive into how you see this latest decision coming out of the Supreme Court and how you assessing it in terms of the trend.
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, I think the story’s going to be different state by state. And here in Alabama, we’ve had our own issues with voting rights that go back 60 plus years. So here in our state, we’ve already been under direction due to Shelby versus Holder that we have to use the same map until 2030. So we think that we are going to survive this particular challenge when it gets to the Supreme Court, but we got to keep fighting. We got to keep fighting because just this week the Alabama governor, Kay Ivy brought back the legislator in an emergency session, wasted millions of dollars and essentially they brought up the old racist maps just in case the court decides to be lawless again and open this up for discussion before 2030.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So how has the current legal climate impacted Alabama’s court order two black districts? Because it seems like it’s systemic. They trying to roll back voting rights, but they also, if they are successful in doing what they’re doing, a lot of the electoral gangs that have been accomplished by minorities is going to be reversed. So how is these things impacting the two black districts and more importantly, what’s y’all’s strategy in terms of dealing with it?
Dakarai Larriett:
We have really two pathways. One is fighting like hell in the streets and then of course we are suing left and right. And so I just met with one of the Black Lives Matter activists this morning. We’re all going to be in Montgomery again in protest over the weekend. But the bottom line is this. The Milligan case established the Second Congressional District here in Alabama as a second minority opportunity district. And Shamari Figures won that seat and we are so happy to have him there representing us.
Mansa Musa:
Alabama
Dakarai Larriett:
Population is about 26, 27% Black out of a overall population of 5.25 million people. So when you do the math, we should have at least two Black opportunity districts in the state. And again, with the decision from the Milligan case, we believe that we should be able to survive this particular assault on our voting rights and we should not be looking at any new maps until the 2030 census.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So let’s shift to your campaign as I open up you running for the United States Senate. So talk about, because the primary is fastly approaching May the 19th, that’s like what, this weekend? Today. Yeah. So how’s your ground game building momentum and what are your core policies you believe will unite voters across the different backgrounds and economic classes? Because we are in Alabama and you just say 23% of the population is minorities. So how is your coalition coming along? Because I know in order to get elected on a statewide level, you have to have a course. So what’s your coalition looking like?
Dakarai Larriett:
So you’re right. So you can’t just make it about race and it shouldn’t be. It’s about how you impact people in their daily lives. So who do we have in our coalition? When I look at my endorsement board, it is doctors, it is lawyers, educators, armors, divine nine, you name it, preachers. My pastor endorsed me here in Birmingham, Alabama. So we are meeting people where they are. I’ve been traveling the state for a year and building diverse coalitions across the state from urban to rural. And we’re really excited. We’re using every piece of technology we can to reach people as well as reaching them face-to-face. So if that’s texting, voicemail, social media, you name it, we are meeting people where they are even in their churches or in their nightclubs.
Mansa Musa:
All right. Nan, let’s talk about the campaign in different candidates. All right, Kyle Schwester is a Republican
Dakarai Larriett:
Running as a Democrat.
Mansa Musa:
And running as a Democrat while this might not be a widespread tactic of the GOP in general, but they throw the rock and hide their hands. They famous for throwing the rock and hide their hand, pointing the finger to somebody else. We see this party switching occur in several states and local elections. Some of these candidates claim anti-Trump. You’ve pointed out in your press release that Switzerland is publicly admitting to voting for Trump three times. Talk about this strategy and what it means for the primary.
Dakarai Larriett:
So we had some very deep discussions within my team strategically about how we approach this. And what we landed on Mantle is that we are trying to win a Democratic primary first
Mansa Musa:
And
Dakarai Larriett:
Democrats wake up on Tuesday, May 19th, they want to vote for a Democrat. So we realize we’re going to upset a few Republicans or maybe Republicans that have seen the light with our campaign. But the bottom line is this, Kyle is not a Democrat
Mansa Musa:
From
Dakarai Larriett:
His voting history, not from his donation history. I think it’s really important to note that yes, he did campaign for Harris in 2024, but he is a Republican. He was on the stage telling us to vote for Harris and he continued donating to Republicans. And he likes to talk about how he spent $40 million on an ad campaign billboards around the state saying vote for Harris, but he didn’t flip a single county. So his whole premise of his campaign that he’s going to flip 200,000 Republicans in the state of Alabama is a farce.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Yeah. So basically he really selling snake oil and telling people it’s a medical cure, huh? Sure. Okay. So in a recent article, an Alabama political reporter Switzer responded to your criticism saying, “Car is alleging that a Republican is choosing to run as a Democrat instead as a Republican in Alabama. For what possible reason would someone choose to take the hardest path possible to win the election? All while the Republicans are in special session trying to read electoral map so no Democrats can win in Alabama ever. Dakari clearly has a very low opinion of the intelligence of Alabama Democrat voters. What’s your response?
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, I think Kyle’s response is a non-response, man. I mean, my goodness, I can’t pretend to understand what his ulterior motives are, but we have some really good intelligence that Kyle actually tried to run this 2026 cycle as a Republican and the Republican Party in the state of Alabama said, absolutely not, because of his anti-Trump alleged stance. So here he is now running as a Democrat. And I want to be clear, I’m running as a Democrat because I’m a lifelong Democrat, not because it’s a backup party. So we don’t know what this guy is trying to do. Is he planning to be a fetterman? Is he planning to get in and switch parties on us as soon as he takes the oath of office? But the bottom line is he doesn’t represent our values and Alabama Democrats can do better this May 19th.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So as we wrap up, let’s talk about some of the issues that are important to you that you can currently work, that you are currently working on, have been working on and why you believe you are the best choice for a senator in the state of Alabama.
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes. Well, when I started my campaign, I said, “We need leaders who listen.” And that’s what I did. I spent all of last summer traveling the state, polling Alabamians and figuring out what mattered to them. And that’s how we built our policy and it really is around kitchen table issues. So it’s education, it’s healthcare, it’s economic opportunity and investing in these areas so that we can all excel here in state. So ensuring that our teachers are paid fairly, that we have a real Department of Education that’s run by a professional teacher, healthcare. I actually went to Washington and protested the big beautiful bill right shoulder to shoulder with Representative Maxine Waters. I knew that this was going to devastate our healthcare in our state and it has. It’s only getting worse. More hospitals are closing. And then finally, economic opportunity, Americans, Alabamians need a pay raise.
We’ve got to do something about the minimum wage. We’ve got to create training programs and pathways for everyone to excel in this state. So this is what Alabamians tell me they care about and that’s what I’m committed to fighting for every single day in Washington.
Mansa Musa:
You had the last word, you just articulated your views, but talk about what you see the future of Alabama looking like.
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, before we can get to investing in our people, we’ve got to get control. And this is what I tell people all the time is protesting activism has its place. I’ve done it for 20 years, but when I look at the optics of last week in Montgomery with D Reed being dragged from the State House, right from the Capitol, what I saw was that we didn’t have enough people officially in power on the floor voting. So we’ve got to show up like never before on May 19th. We have the votes. We just don’t show up enough. Our turnout is so poor in the state Alabama is a purple state if enough people turn out. And we saw that in 2017 when Doug Jones won this very same Senate seat. So we got to show up like never before take control of our government and then we can finally do the work of the people.
Mansa Musa:
We want to ask our audience to look at this interview and understand that we’re not endorsing no candid. We’re bringing people on this space to talk about issues and concerns of their constituents and more importantly, the latest Supreme Court decision that has a serious impact on voting rights amendment that people lost their lives for in order to have a right to vote. And we recognizing that as a result of them losing their lives and the sacrifice they made, we have gained some political gains in the form of congressional seats, municipalities. It’s all come from the Voting Rights Act now that it’s being decimated. We asking that you look at this and see, do you have an interest in understanding what that means to you as a citizen of the United States, but more importantly, have a voice in what you think should be done about the electoral process in this country.
We ask that you continue to look at the real news, because guess what? We’re actually the real news.
Mansa Musa, also known as Charles Hopkins, is a 70-year-old social activist and former Black Panther. He was released from prison on December 5, 2019, after serving 48 years, nine months, 5 days, 16 hours, 10 minutes. He co-hosts the TRNN original show Rattling the Bars.More by Mansa Musa
Supervisor Connie Chan has always been labor’s kind of candidate.
She has walked picket lines as a San Francisco supervisor, and fought against cutting union jobs at City Hall as budget chair. She’s pushed to increase minimum wagesseveral times, and has become known among unions as valuing labor unity instead of exploiting its division for political gain.
Her run for Congress has earned her a broad coalition of support from city unions, as well as umbrella groups like the San Francisco Labor Council, the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council and the California Federation of Labor Unions. She touts 35 union seals on her campaign endorsement page.
But labor unions may be a dollar short and a day late in spending for their avowed champion, and Chan finds herself losing the money race.
Unlike her rival Saikat Chakrabarti, who has pledged to spend as much of his own money as needed, Chan is not worth more than $100 million. And unlike her opponent Scott Wiener, she does not have a wide donor base or third-party support from tech executives, who have spent heavily on a pro-Wiener political action committee.
Chan has pledged to reject corporate money, and to tax the billionaires who might otherwise fund her. Labor is the only realistic source of big money for her campaign.
But unions have yet to shell out large sums, and have only started to spend recently. Chan is backed by at least $1.1 million, according to campaign filings and labor consultant David Ho, who said on May 11 about $650,000 of that was raised for a pro-Chan PAC, almost all from unions. The other $459,000 comes from largely individual donors directly to Chan’s campaign, and is likely an undercount — filings were current as of March 31.
It’s a lot of money, but less than others. Chakrabarti has self-funded his campaign to the tune of at least $4.8 million as of March 31, and had fundraised another $360,000 then. Both numbers are likely up since.
Sen. Scott Wiener is benefitting from $3.5 million in direct fundraising as of March 31, and twoPACs have collectively spent at least $600,000 on advertising for the state senator. Wiener is also bolstered by another half-million in an anti-Chakrabarti PAC funded by his allies.
Labor’s contributions were slow to come. Unions had contributed just a bit over $200,000 as of the end of March, when Chan’s rivals had millions each and Chakrabarti, whom Chan must contend with to secure a No. 2 spot in June and advance to November, was advertising widely.
Perhaps as a result of the lackluster spending, Chan tankedin the polls for the month before voters started to receive ballots in early May, though according to recent polling she’s currently tiedfor second place with Chakrabarti. For a while, city politicos even began to whisper that Chan’s campaign was “inactive.”
Labor consultants defended Chan’s fundraising. “You can’t compare unions to corporations and AI. We represent cooks, dishwashers and room cleaners,” said Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, who is also working on the pro-Chan independent expenditure committee.
Chan also began preparing for and officially entered the race later than her major competitors — both Wiener and Chakrabarti had put in years of effort. It takes time for labor money to come in. “Contributing to congressional campaigns involves a significantly more complex legal and compliance process than local or state races,” said former supervisor Gordon Mar, who has a long history of working with labor unions.
Chan, it seems, has been hampered by a confluence of factors: campaign finance rules that prohibit local unions from easily donating to federal candidates, a loaded ballot stretching labor’s political budget thin and, perhaps most significantly, the fact that local unions benefit by having Chan in local government.
District 1 supervisor Connie Chan takes a group photo with her supporters from labor unions on Nov. 12, 2024. Photo by Junyao Yang.
Losing Chan to Congress means losing pro-labor vote at City Hall
Chan’s longtime labor funders may be worse off with her leaving local government, even if she gains a national perch, and may be donating accordingly, according to political insiders.
“I don’t know to what extent labor in San Francisco sees Connie as more useful for them — in the Board of Supervisors or the U.S. Congress,” said political consultant James Stearns. It could be “just out of loyalty,” he said, that the unions contribute, “but you know, these are tough times for everybody, money-wise.”
A four-year chair of San Francisco’s budget committee, Chan has been a reliable ally to labor. Her departure from the board would have a tangible and direct impact on city unions and their members’ jobs: City unions feel they need Chan at City Hall more than ever.
Mayor Daniel Lurie recently proposed to eliminate 500 City Hall jobs and is pursuing a ballot measure to quadruple the number of signatures required for ballot measures, which would make union ballot-box policymaking harder and more expensive.
“Are you going to have somebody on the Board of Supervisors who is going to embrace the Lurie anti-worker agenda, which results in 500 layoffs and nonunion contracting?” asked a longtime Chan ally. “I think [unions] also see more draconian anti-labor moves coming from Lurie that they are saving their resources for.”
If Chan were elected to Congress, Mayor Lurie would also fill her seat, likely with a moderate appointee. That would reduce the number of progressive, pro-labor votes on the board.
“Daniel Lurie should endorse her,” quipped Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council, who is assisting with Chan’s campaign. “He gets to appoint a replacement!”
Labor’s contributions to Chan’s congressional race are even lower, at least so far, than their backing of her for a city position: In 2024, labor spent more than $1 million to help Chan win re-election to the Board of Supervisors and retain her position as budget chair.
Congressional candidate and Supervisor Connie Chan arrested at anti-ICE protest at SFO on May 1, 2026. Photo by Marina Newman.
Unions stretched thin across country, state, and city
Local labor leaders told Mission Local they see in Chan someone they want to follow for the next two decades. Many hold out hope that Chan will grow into their next Nancy Pelosi, who has been a strong ally of organized labor in D.C.
But national unions do not know Chan well, and their local chapters cannot easily contribute directly to congressional candidates — most must rely on their parent unions’ federal PACs for federal races.
“Most local unions don’t have that,” said Anand Singh, former president of UNITE HERE Local 2, the hotel workers’ union and treasurer for the pro-Chan independent expenditure.
In order to put money toward Chan, local chapters must convince their parent unions to spend considerable sums on a candidate who is not well known to their national counterparts.
Local 2’s New York-based international, for example, donated $200,000 to the pro-Chan independent expenditure only after the local made the case that Chan is “a generational leader that would be critical to have not just in San Francisco, but really to lead for working people in Washington D.C,” Singh said.
But other local unions seem to have had a harder time succeeding with that pitch: Unfortunately for Chan, her victory over Wiener or Chakrabarti does not appear to be a high priority for labor nationally.
Longtime city political observers note that, from a Washington, D.C. perspective, any San Francisco Democrat is perceived as acceptably pro-labor.
National unions are also stretched thin by a number of competing campaigns this year that may ultimately help Democrats regain control of Congress. “I mean, look at what’s going on in this country right now and the campaigns and the struggles that we’re up against,” said Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council.
Even within California, there’s competition for labor money among congressional candidates. “More PACs are solely focused on flipping red to blue in California,” said Gonzalez. Chan’s congressional district will remain blue no matter what.
And in San Francisco, unions have to prepare for two elections in six months. They must spread resources across several supervisor races, and address a top priority: June’s Proposition D, the “Overpaid CEO” tax, which they argue would “provide a lifeline for San Francisco” by asking “the largest corporations to pay their fair share” — and potentially reduce layoffs during budget cuts.
District 1 supervisor Connie Chan greets her supporters in front of City Hall at her re-election victory rally on Nov. 12, 2024. Photo by Junyao Yang.
Chan must ‘work twice as hard’ to convince federal unions
It is a common challenge local officials face when running for state office: They must win support from those with a state-level agenda, rather than continue to rely on city-focused allies. Chan, who is attempting a huge leap from city supervisor to Congress, needs allies who are focused on the federal level.
Chan is better positioned than most to tackle the challenge, as she has built a broad coalition across different factions of the labor world, including those often at odds, said Casey from the Labor Council.
Still, Gonzalez said, “I can see how Connie has to work twice as hard because even some of her most trusted allies and strongest, ardent supporters have not been geared toward congressional races for some time.”
The pro-Chan PAC, Working Families for San Francisco, is seeking help elsewhere. Rather than relying solely on the public sector unions, it is turning to other labor sources.
“You’re going to see more of the private sector unions … weighing in substantially,” said Gonzalez. That would be a coalition of hotel workers, nurses, electrical workers, teachers and pipefitters, according to Ho, the PAC’s strategist. Notably missing from that list is SEIU California, which solely endorses Chan after un-endorsing Wiener in April.
Still, the labor allies who have opened up their wallets for Chan have a practical pitch to encourage others: Whoever replaces Pelosi may keep the seat for decades, and an early investment will pay off in spades.
Some are using their general funds (which are not reflected in filings) to communicate their preferences with their members. Unions have established trust with tens of thousands of workers and their families, and are known for effectively mobilizing volunteers and getting out the vote in the weeks before Election Day.
“The Building Trades were for Nancy in the very beginning … She never forgot it,” said Gonzalez. “She was always loyal to the Building Trades unions and to all of our unions. That’s the kind of commitment, loyalty that our members really value in a candidate.”
This May we have a $50K match!
Mission Local has been growing its local coverage: We’re designating reporters to five neighborhoods — the Tenderloin, Richmond, Sunset, Bayview, and the Mission to provide free, first-rate neighborhood reporting.
Having reporters on-the-ground, asking questions is what makes Mission Local stand out — it’s our biggest strength, and we intend to bring that to every neighborhood we cover.
Our goal this May is to raise $125,000 — the price of adding a reporter to one neighborhood for one year. If you donate to our fundraiser today, your gift is doubled thanks to the match.about:blank
Yujie is a staff reporter covering city hall with a focus on the Asian community. She came on as an intern after graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and became a full-time staff reporter as a Report for America corps member and has stayed on. Before falling in love with San Francisco, Yujie covered New York City, studied politics through the “street clashes” in Hong Kong, and earned a wine-tasting certificate in two days. She’s proud to be a bilingual journalist. Find her on Signal @Yujie_ZZ.01More by Yujie Zhou
How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us?
In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before. Drawing insightful lessons from across history – from Pinochet’s murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan’s quiet dismantling in Turkey – Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.
(An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.
Steven Levitsky is an American political scientist and Professor of Government at Harvard University. A comparative political scientist, his research interests focus on Latin America and include political parties and party systems, authoritarianism and democratization, and weak and informal institutions.
March for Billionaires participants and counterprotesters gather in front of San Francisco City Hall on Feb. 7.Craig Lee/The Examiner
There is a conceivable future in which San Francisco could be represented by a congressperson and led by a mayor and a governor who each tapped into his own immense wealth to propel himself into office.
Congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti and gubernatorial hopeful Tom Steyer are investing millions in their own political successes, hoping to duplicate what Mayor Daniel Lurie achieved here in 2024.
Tech millionaire Chakrabarti is a leading candidate to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, while hedge-fund billionaire Steyer is among the front-runners in the splintered field running to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in California.
As candidates, the three have been able to saturate social-media feeds, air television ads and canvass communities in ways other candidates — even those with backing from wealthy donors — have been unable to match.
And all three share a similar message: The political system needs upending.
Voters are attracted to wealthy candidates in part because they’re perceived as too well-off to be bought by outside interests, according to Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Chakrabarti, for example, touts in campaign ads that he doesn’t accept political contributions from corporate PACs.
“The dominant trend of American public opinion now is massive cynicism,” West said. “People don’t trust leaders — they figure they’re out for themselves. And the advantage that wealthy individuals have is they’re so rich that people think they’re not subject to normal political calculations, they can rule in the public interest more often, and they will be less swayed by political wheeling and dealing.”
Steyer, who became a billionaire running San Francisco-based hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, is dramatically outspending rival Democrats in the governor’s race. He spent $132 million on his candidacy for governor through mid-April, including more than $100 million of his own money since Jan. 1, according to CalMatters. His will likely end up being the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in California history.
Chakrabarti has thus far put $4.8 million of his own money into his congressional bid, easily outpacing his opponents, state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan.
Lurie, whose former Inner Sunset campaign headquarters Chakrabarti now occupies, is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who dropped $9.5 million of his own money on his 2024 mayoral bid.
California is not the only place to draw political candidates from the affluent, nor is such interest confined to a single political party, according to Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of “The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy.” But he noted that it’s a relatively new phenomenon in American politics, beginning with billionaire Ross Perot’s independent candidacy for president in 1992.
What money buys
Billionaires are spending money to shape American politics and policy as much as ever. In 2024, billionaires and their direct family members accounted for 19% of all federal campaign contributions, according to a New York Times analysis. In San Francisco, Lurie, his mother Mimi Haas and billionaires Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, Chris Larsen and Michael Bloomberg accounted for six of the eight largest donors in local political contests that year, according to city campaign finance data.
Historically, the wealthy have tended to exercise their power by supporting other candidates. Steyer and Bloomberg, for example, were already both major political donors prior to jumping into the 2020 Democratic primary for U.S. president as candidates.
“It used to be, people with large amounts of money wanted to influence things behind the scenes,” West said. “But now they prefer to run for office and make decisions themselves.”
Winters argued that the wealthy have been emboldened by victories like reducing the top federal marginal income tax rate from 94% in 1944 to 37% today, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that enshrined political spending as a form of free speech.
“Oligarchs have been winning so big for so long that they see no reason not to just directly run the country as the politicians themselves,” Winters said.
The typical self-financing candidate exists outside the traditional political establishment and promises to disrupt the existing one. They enjoy numerous advantages in their quest to do so.
An independently wealthy candidate is an inherently viable one. Unlike their opponents, they won’t be forced to line-up early support from well-heeled donors before the primary campaign begins.
Lurie, for example, not only tapped his vast personal resources, his mother, Haas, launched an independent PAC boosting his campaign with an early $1 million donation.
“It’s very hard to crowdsource that, because very often, no one knows you yet,” Winters said of early campaign cash. “so, if you have an oligarch or a mom who can jump in at a key moment and make you viable, then the chance that you are going to attract other resources becomes very high, and the chance that you’re going to actually be able to win becomes very high.”
The network-security company is letting go 21% of its workforce, with company officials saying they want to restructure its operations around agentic artificial intelligence
Assemblymember Matt Haney and Supervisor Matt Dorsey both have bills to expand sober housing, but with different specifics and levels of support
The classic way to build a political career has been to start at the local level, then ascend to the state level, and then take a run at federal office, West said.
“When you’re ultra wealthy, you can skip those earlier steps and just run for governor or senator,” he said.
Once on the campaign trail, while other campaigns might have to scramble to raise cash, self-financed candidates can focus solely on the campaign.
What money can’t buy
Immense wealth has not always translated to success at the ballot box. Money can buy an endless stream of campaign mailers, but it can’t force the public to like an unlikable candidate. Only two of the top 10 biggest self-funding spenders in the 2022 federal election cycle won their races, for example, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog group.
Money certainly gets a candidate’s foot in the door and allows them to put their name in front of people but, in the end, “people still have to take a liking to you,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at Open Secrets.
“That’s the final hurdle that it’s hard for the money to overcome,” Glavin said.
By pouring so much money into a race, often at the very start, candidates also raise the threshold for the entire field, and “it creates an arms-race situation.
“You don’t have to beat them, but you have to be able to compete at a certain threshold — if you’re just not out there at all, then people are gonna forget about you,” Glavin said.
There are advantages to the painstaking work of grassroots campaigning. Small donors are supporters who have a vested interest in a candidate’s success, can often be counted on for future donations, and are “more likely to actually go out and vote,” Glavin said.
Chakrabarti’s campaign has asked supporters to contribute $1 to prove he has grassroots support. At the same time, his resources have allowed him to dispatch paid canvassers, who Mission Local reported are compensated by up to $45 an hour, to help spread his campaign message in corners of San Francisco where he has little name recognition.
But even paid canvassers can come with downsides, Gleason noted.
“There’s a difference between someone who volunteers to go talk to other people about why they should support you, and when you pay someone to do that, and the energy you’re going to get and the passion you’re going to get,” Gleason said.
Will voters buy what the wealthy are selling?
One important outstanding question is how receptive the ostensibly progressive voters of San Francisco and California are to the argument that it takes a millionaire or billionaire to fix a system many voters believe has been rigged by them.
In an ad displayed prominently on Steyer’s campaign website, he laments that “the richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves.”
“Bulls—,” he adds.
Chakrabarti, who supports a proposed tax hike on California billionaires, has made a federal wealth tax a central component of his platform.
“We’ve transferred tens of trillions of dollars from working people to the wealthy, so, yes, it’s time we tax the billionaires a lot more,” he wrote on Instagram.
Being a billionaire doesn’t necessarily mean that, once elected, you’ll pursue policies that exacerbate wealth inequality, Winters noted.
“It’s just incredibly likely that you will do that,” he said, “but it doesn’t actually guarantee that you’ll do that.”
Voters will have their say June 2 in the congressional and gubernatorial primary elections.
President Donald J. Trump speaks to the press before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, April 25, 2025. Photo credit: The White House / Flickr (PD)
Whether it was unwittingly or not, the way the media covered the April jobs report was a massive journalistic fail and made a non-accomplishment sound like a big win.
There is a long list of media failures when it comes to the coverage of Donald Trump and his administration. Too many reporters regurgitate obvious lies and propaganda without conducting simple fact checks or providing necessary context. Few of them dare to point out the president’s precarious mental state or that he seems to live in a fantasy world of his own creation.
When journalists do uncover important information that the public deserves to know, they frequently hold on to it for future “tell all” books. And, of course, it’s not great that some news organizations are settling bogus lawsuits to appease the president.
And then there is what we call the “low expectations game.”
That’s when Trump does something that is wholly unremarkable, yet the media treats it like a real accomplishment.
Like Friday’s jobs report.
Before we get to that, it’s important to note that attributing employment gains and losses to presidents is a bit of a fool’s errand. Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden are great examples of this.
Six years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that the economy had lost 20.5 million jobs in April of 2020 and that the unemployment rate had shot up to 14.7 percent. This happened on Trump’s watch, but it was obviously not his fault. Rather, it was the result of the full effects of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the US economy.
Conversely, people started hiring again when the worst of the pandemic was over, and this greatly benefitted Biden, who oversaw a hiring boom (while being hurt by pandemic-related supply chain issues and other problems that led to massive inflation in the first couple of years of his presidency).
The point is that, sometimes, the fate of the economy hinges on events outside the control of presidents and even they are just along for the ride. Some of them get lucky and take the helm at a time of great prosperity, and others experience the opposite.
Still, long after the pandemic was over, companies kept increasing their payrolls while Biden was in office (although hiring slowed significantly in his last year). In fact, even taking into account the substantial downward revisions made after the BLS announced its initial estimates, we now know that the economy added jobs in every full month of his presidency.
That has not been the case for Trump in his second term.
In the 15 full months since he took over, employers shed jobs five times. His best month came this March, when payrolls increased by 185,000 (a mark his predecessor eclipsed three times in 2024).
If you compare Biden’s last 15 months in office to Trump’s first 15 months (not counting the one they shared), then you’ll see that the former averaged 126,000 jobs added compared to the latter’s 31,000.
And that brings us to Friday’s BLS report (by the way, the above is what we mean by “providing context”).
It showed that payrolls were up 115,000.
Based on everything you just learned, that’s pretty good… but only if measured by Trump’s low standards.
April was his 3rd best month but would only have been Biden’s 41st best.
Keeping that in mind, you’d think that the response would have been somewhere between “muted optimism” and the kind of encouragement you give a child when he brings you a drawing of a horse that actually looks like a dog.
After all, an increase of 115,000 new payrolls is pretty pathetic… and that’s not according to our standards, but rather Trump’s.
President Trump and Republicans are creating new jobs, getting people back to work and protecting benefits for AMERICANS who truly need them! pic.twitter.com/BaofFJaCUn
“Strong April jobs report. Added 115,000 new jobs — nearly double expectations,” stated loyal MAGA disciple Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). “President Trump’s economy is working.”
No argument there. The president’s personal economy is working. After all, he has nearly tripled his own wealth since taking office.
As for everybody else… Well, that’s another story.
Another thing Jordan mentioned, however, merits a closer look.
The lawmaker, as well as other Republicans and the president himself, made reference to a survey of “experts,” which had predicted that job growth in April would only be about 60,000.
And this is where the first media failure comes into play.
Who gives a hoot what these experts think? Their prediction is completely irrelevant. It’s like asking someone to weigh in on what the Powerball numbers might be before the drawing.
Sure, economists can guess if they want, and even have their own office pool for all we care, but that doesn’t change the fact that their forecast is meaningless.
Objectively, 115,000 isn’t an impressive number, and with apologies to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), it is certainly not “HUGE.” To be clear, it’s not terrible either, just nothing to write home about nor evidence that the “Trump economy is working.”
However, because “experts” felt things would be much worse, all of a sudden, the employment report went from pedestrian to “strong,” with most news outlets making reference to the figures being “surprising” or “beating expectations,” which isn’t exactly difficult when they are so low.
Essentially, just about every reporter covering this story made the jobs numbers sound a lot better than they were — both objectively and, as we have demonstrated, historically.
However, that wasn’t the media’s biggest failure.
Here, for example, is how The Washington Post started its article:
Employers added 115,000 jobs in April, notching a strong gain for the economy as it faces headwinds from soaring fuel prices, tariffs and immigration restrictions.
Other outlets also pointed out that the US economy is facing the challenges mentioned above.
What most of them did not do — and certainly didn’t do emphatically — is to note that they are all of Trump’s own making.
As we pointed out before, it is often unfair to blame presidents for some of the things that happen on their watch, like a pandemic or a resulting supply-chain crisis.
However, in this case, the problems are entirely self-inflicted.
The “soaring fuel prices” are the direct result of Trump’s war with Iran. Without the attack, and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, they would be more than $1/gallon less.
Then there are the tariffs. Even after the Supreme Court declared them to be illegal, and it has been shown that American companies and consumers are forced to shoulder their cost, the president just keeps on trying to impose them — and even an adverse ruling in another case last week won’t stop him.
Finally, even his own administration has admitted that Trump’s aggressive deportation policies are a threat to an affordable food supply.
The fact that most stories failed to explicitly mention these things is not only a dereliction of duty but, unfortunately, also not much of a surprise and on par with the incredibly poor handling of the day-to-day coverage of this administration.
Klaus Marre Klaus Marre, a former congressional reporter, is a senior editor for US politics at WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.
When you volunteer for Saikat, it’s on us to give you a great experience and a genuine chance to make a difference. We don’t want to waste a second of your time. That’s why we’re always optimizing. And I’m excited to report that this Saturday we talked with 300% more... Continue reading →
Trump Regime Takedown: Every Saturday Saturday, March 7, 2026 12:00 PM 2:00 PM Tesla San Francisco999 Van Ness AvenueSan Francisco, CA, 94109United States (map) Google Calendar ICS Keep democracy alive every Saturday by showing up, taking a stand, and sticking together for the long haul. Standing together is better than standing alone. Let’s get together... Continue reading →
This Sunday’s Town Hall: Announcing This Week’s Progressive Town Hall: Every Sunday at 4pm ET/1pm PT RSVP HERE Join PDA activists online from across the country to discuss the importance of progressives reclaiming the American story from the MAGA right, an issue of heightened importance as we’re now within one... Continue reading →
We protest Heritage Foundation EVERY MONDAY (Join us!!!!) By admin | September 2, 2025 | Uncategorized Cliff Cash Comedy Premiered Jul 26, 2025 Every Monday at The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Ave. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza Every Friday at Fox News D.C. 400 N. Capitol St. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza We are... Continue reading →
Join the San Francisco Public Press and KALW for a panel discussion about San Francisco’s propositions C and D, the competing business tax measures described in the articles linked above in this newsletter. Where: KALW, 220 Montgomery St., San Francisco When: Tuesday, May 19, at 6 p.m. RSVP via Eventbrite. What questions... Continue reading →
Milk Club May General Membership Meeting Date: Tuesday, May 19 Time: 7-9 PM Location: SF LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco Zoom Link: Click here
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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