Can Prime Minister Burnham succeed?

By | |
Leave a comment

KUTTNER ON TAP

July 17, 2026 (Prospect.org)

There is a great deal riding on his success, and not just for Britain.On Monday, Andy Burnham becomes prime minister of Britain almost by acclamation. The former mayor of Greater Manchester won a by-election to the House of Commons on June 18 in a swing seat by an impressive margin of 54.8 percent to 34.5 percent. This was in a district where the right-wing Reform UK party had won a majority of votes for local council seats only a month before. At that point, Burnham became inevitable.

Last week, 349 of 403 Labour MPs lined up to nominate Burnham as party leader to succeed the feckless Keir Starmer. Nobody else even ran against him.

In his three terms as mayor since 2017, Burnham succeeded in making Manchester a rare success story amid Britain’s stagnant economy. The GDP growth rate for the city has been running at 3.1 percent a year, far better than any other city in England’s depressed north and more than double that of the U.K. as a whole. Manchester was on an upswing before Burnham, but he built on the success.

In a Labour Party long beset by disabling schisms and plain bad luck, Burnham has been a force for rare unity—a likable man of the practical left. When he takes office, Burnham will literally be the world’s only national leader who is a competent progressive with a governing majority in the national parliament. One has to wish him success.

Yet the press coverage of Burnham’s rise has been depressingly cynical, even by British standards. Some of the commentary suggests that Burnham is a simple opportunist, trying to be all things to all people. This joke has been widely repeated: “A Blairite, a Brownite, and a Corbynite walk into a bar. The barman says, ‘Hello, Mr. Burnham.’”

But that’s too cynical. Burnham was never an ally of the far-left former party leader Jeremy Corbyn—whom Burnham ran against for party leader in 2016. And he has long been a critic of the neoliberalism of Tony Blair. Ideologically, he’s closest to former center-left prime minister Gordon Brown, but Burnham is more progressive and more effective politically.

That said, Burnham’s challenges are real. Many commentators conclude from the appalling history of seven failed prime ministers in ten years that Britain is simply ungovernable. Tom Clark, in a thoughtful piece in The Guardian, wrote that “the simple class divide of postwar society has been replaced by a variety of deep, overlaying cleavages: cultural divides like Brexit, values divides such as Gaza, and generational divides between older homeowners and younger tenants.”

Fragmented public opinion has translated into a fragmented party system. The U.K’.s once-stable two-party system has given way to five parties and potentially even more. In addition to Labour and the Tories, there are the Liberal Democrats, Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK, and the Greens.

Thanks to Britain’s first-past-the-post system of elections, the top two parties get far more seats in the House of Commons than their popular voting support, and smaller parties get almost nothing. In the 2024 general election, Labour won just 33.7 percent of the national vote yet ended up with 411 out of 650 seats. Conversely, Tory Margaret Thatcher never won a majority of the popular vote but ruled for nearly 12 years with ample majorities in the Commons.

But the obvious reform—proportional representation—would lead to an even more fragmented Parliament and weak coalition governments. If Burnham can have a successful three years as prime minister between now and August 2029, the deadline for the next general election, Labour will keep its governing majority.
The massive challenge is the British economy. Here, Burnham will have to thread several needles. He has proposed to take his Manchester model of business-friendly socialism national. His signature policy of deprivatizing the bus system, adding more trams and buses and reducing fares, is immensely popular.

The national counterpart is to bring several failed privatized enterprises back under more efficient public control. He will need to invest more money in the National Health Service, in social housing, and in economic development.

Burnham has sought to neutralize a potentially hostile bond market by indicating that he will retain the Starmer fiscal policy of very low deficits. But that means that he will have to increase taxes on income from capital or there will be no new money for his new investment projects.

Even if Burnham’s policies are smart and successful, they will take many years to affect the economic circumstances of ordinary people. And export-dependent Britain will face the undertow of a deteriorating global economy. An accommodation with Europe that probably stops short of a full reversal of Brexit will help.

One possible early blunder: Leaks last week from Burnham allies indicated that he would pass over progressive Ed Miliband, the leading candidate for finance minister, in favor of the more centrist Shabana Mahmood, the current home secretary. This was initially greeted by relief from London’s bankers, but then expressions of incredulity since Mahmood has zero experience in finance. Burnham has since backpedaled, saying that no decisions have been made.

Like any national leader, Burnham will make mistakes, but he is better equipped by temperament and political skill than any of Britain’s recent failed leaders of either party. It would be welcome to see a practical progressive actually succeed.
Robert Kuttner
Co-Editor, Co-Founder

We Are Demanding Maine’s Attorney General Commit: If the Investigation Shows Probable Cause, the ICE Agent Who Killed Johan Durán Guerrero, Faces A York County Grand Jury.

By | | ,
Leave a comment

His findings are due no later than January 9. The Legislature that elects him votes December 2. Two questions he can answer today, yes or no.

Christopher Armitage Jul 16, 2026

One office investigates each use of deadly force by law enforcement in Maine, and the same office decides homicide charges: the Attorney General’s. Its findings on the July 13 killing in Biddeford are due by January 9, 2027. A civilian who fired the same shots could expect handcuffs the same morning, not a six month deadline for a report.

WGME reported that since the office began these investigations in 1990, it has not determined that an officer’s use of deadly force was unjustified. Not once.

Maine’s Legislature elects the Attorney General. The Legislature chosen this November votes on that office on December 2, five weeks before those findings are due.

A federal immigration agent fired multiple rounds into a sedan at a Biddeford intersection on the morning of July 13, killing Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26 year old delivery driver who, per Senator Angus King and Representative Chellie Pingree, was not the target of the warrant the agents were executing. A photograph of the car shows four bullet defects in the windshield. The agents wore no body cameras, and the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that no body or dash camera footage depicts the use of force. ICE stated that the agent fired “fearing for public safety” as the vehicle attempted to flee, and a witness with a direct view reported hearing the driver say “I tried to stop.”

I sent the letter below to Attorney General Aaron Frey. It asks for two commitments rather than a conclusion, with a written answer requested by September 1, and I will publish whatever the office says, in full. The classification rule is stated now, in advance: yes counts as yes. “We follow the facts,” “we cannot comment on a pending investigation,” and “we take this seriously” count as no answer, and I will report them as no answer.

Instructions for putting the same question to your own attorney general, before your state needs them, are at the end.

The letter, in full:

July 16, 2026

Hon. Aaron M. Frey Attorney General, State of Maine 6 State House Station Augusta, ME 04333

Re: The July 13, 2026 use of deadly force in Biddeford resulting in the death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero; request for two public commitments

Dear Attorney General Frey,

I write as a journalist and publisher. I am the founder of The Existentialist Republic, a civic affairs publication. I am writing about the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on July 13, 2026, at the intersection of Pool Street and Hill Street in Biddeford. I am aware that your office opened its investigation that day under 5 M.R.S. section 200-A, that the FBI is assisting, and that findings are due within 180 days under 5 M.R.S. section 200-K, with any extension capped at 270 days. I do not ask the office to prejudge the evidence, and I do not ask about the agent’s identity, which the office can establish through its own process.

I ask the office to state two things publicly.

First, that the office will apply the same deadly force standard to this federal agent that it applies to a Biddeford police officer or a Maine State Police trooper: the justification provisions of 17-A M.R.S. sections 107 and 108, the constitutional requirements of Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor, and the totality of the circumstances analysis required by Barnes v. Felix.

Second, that if the completed investigation establishes probable cause under Maine law, the office will present the case to the York County grand jury.

I make the second request because the public record already raises a serious question under 17-A M.R.S. section 203(1)(A), which applies when a person recklessly, or with criminal negligence, causes the death of another human being. Published reporting describes four bullet defects in the sedan’s windshield, an absence of body or dash camera footage of the use of force, conflicting accounts of whether the shots preceded or followed the ramming of the vehicle, a Department of Homeland Security use of force policy that generally prohibits firing at moving vehicles, and statements by members of Maine’s congressional delegation that the driver was not the target of the operation. Whether the completed record establishes probable cause is for the office to determine. Whether established probable cause will be presented to a grand jury is a question of the office’s intentions, and it can be answered now.

I am aware that a charged federal agent may transfer a state prosecution to federal court and assert immunity there. Under Mesa v. California, that transfer changes the forum; the office remains the prosecutor and Maine law continues to govern. I raise this only to make clear that the answer to my second request is not controlled by federal officials.

I also ask the office to confirm that third party video from residential and commercial cameras near the intersection has been collected or preserved, since consumer camera systems overwrite stored footage on short cycles.

I request a written response by September 1, 2026. I am publishing this letter, and I am inviting readers, including Maine residents, to put the same questions to the office and to their own legislators in their own words. I will publish the office’s response in full.

Respectfully,

Christopher Armitage

Founder and Publisher, The Existentialist Republic

If you found this article worthwhile, and want to see this type of content along with our model legislation, free educational booklets, and free training, all continue, please consider being one of the 10 subscribers that keeps it alive for everyone. Don’t let this be the reason you skip a meal or miss rent. Thank you to everyone for showing up to arm yourself and others in our fight for the future of humanity.

Upgrade to paid

Buy Some Coffee For The ER

If you live in Maine, call the Attorney General’s Office at 207-626-8800, or write to 6 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333. Then tell your state representative and state senator to ask the same question. They elect the Attorney General on December 2. Find them at legislature.maine.gov.

To replicate this in your own state: find who charges homicide where you live, which in most states is the elected county or district prosecutor, and in a few states, Maine among them, a statewide office. Send the question in writing to that office and to your state attorney general, whom you can find at naag.org: if a federal agent uses deadly force here and the completed investigation establishes probable cause of a state crime, will your office charge the agent the way it would charge anyone else? State the classification rule in the same message, so a non answer counts as an answer. If any official tells you federal agents are immune from state charges, that claim has been false since 1932, when the Supreme Court wrote in Colorado v. Symes that federal officers and employees are “not, merely because they are such, granted immunity from prosecution in state courts.” In May, Hennepin County filed state criminal charges against an ICE agent in Minnesota. In January, ten locally elected prosecutors formed the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach to support exactly these prosecutions. The Department of Homeland Security’s own policy generally prohibits firing at moving vehicles in your state the same as in Maine. And a president cannot pardon a state conviction.

Wherever you live, reply to this email or leave a comment with the answer you receive, the date, and the words the office used. I will report back on what offices say and on what they refuse to say.

The call takes thirty seconds: “My name is [name], I live in [town]. I am calling about the July 13 shooting in Biddeford. I am not asking the office to prejudge anything. I have a question that takes a yes or a no. If the completed investigation establishes probable cause under Maine law, will the office present the case to the York County grand jury? Please record my call and the answer.”

After Killings, Homan Says There Will Be ‘More Bloodshed’ Unless Dems ‘Shut Their Mouth’ About ICE

By | |
Leave a comment
Border Czar Tom Homan Speaks To Press At The White House

White House border czar Tom Homan speaks to members of the media outside the West Wing of the White House on June 22, 2026 in Washington, DC

 (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

“They are blaming the opposition for people being killed by their police.”

Stephen Prager

Jul 16, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

As Democrats demand investigations and accountability after a pair of fatal shootings by immigration agents, the White House border czar, Tom Homan, issued an ominous warning on Wednesday: Shut your mouth or the “bloodshed” will continue.

Since July 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have shot and killed two men—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine.

RECOMMENDED…

A woman holding a "How Many More?" sign visits a memorial in Maine

‘There Must Be Independent Investigations,’ House Democrats Argue After ICE Killings in Maine and Texas

Trump Demands ICE Restart Traffic Stops That Were Paused After Latest Two Killings

Trump Demands ICE Restart Traffic Stops That Were Paused After Latest Two Killings

The killings, which are part of a broader rash of violent behavior by immigration agencies, briefly led DHS to suspend the use of traffic stops by agents, before President Donald Trump ordered them to continue.

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have promised to launch investigations and congressional hearings. Some have threatened to withhold funding for the agency unless reforms, like body camera requirements, are enacted, while others have called for the agency to be defunded or abolished.

Homan, a senior adviser to Trump tasked with coordinating immigration enforcement across agencies, took to Fox News on Wednesday night to address this heightened scrutiny.

Just one day before, Homan had defended the decision to temporarily halt vehicle stops, saying there should be a “short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.”

But following Trump’s orders, he reversed course entirely the next day and rejected the idea that anything about the agency’s tactics needed reevaluation.

He told host Laura Ingraham, “President Trump was clear, this policy is not going away.”

Instead of trigger-happy agents, he said that anti-ICE “rhetoric” from Democrats was to blame for the recent killings.

“It all goes back to the Dems who want to continually attack ICE and tell people to evade them and tell people don’t comply, tell people to resist, and tell people ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency,” Homan said.

“You and I talked about this a year-and-a-half ago, Laura,” he continued. “I said, if the hateful rhetoric didn’t stop, there would be bloodshed.”

“I’m saying it right now,” Homan said. “There’s still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted.”

DHS has acknowledged that neither of the men who have been shot in recent weeks was the target of the ICE operations that led to their deaths.

A witness reported that Guerrero shouted, “I tried to stop” after being shot by an agent while his vehicle moved forward slowly.

ICE’s use-of-force rules state that agents should only use deadly force if they believe an individual poses an imminent threat to an agent or someone else, not simply because they are fleeing arrest.

DHS claimed that Salgado attempted to “weaponize” his vehicle, but that claim has been undercut by video evidence and eyewitness accounts.

The agency said in a statement that Guerrero “attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” a justification that has not been used for previous shootings.

Many Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), have provided information about individuals’ rights when dealing with immigration agents—including the right not to answer the door without a judicial warrant, the right to decline a search or to sign documents, or the right to record law enforcement.

But Homan did not reference any particular case in which they encouraged those facing detention to “resist” by fleeing or attacking agents.

Several Democratic members of Congress, including Reps. Jimmy Gomez (Calif.), Jason Crow (Colo.), and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), among others, have published “Know Your Rights” documents explicitly warning people not to run away or resist arrest.

Agents have frequently faced criticism that they are not, in fact, “enforcing the law” as Homan claimed, but defying it by conducting indiscriminate arrests without warrants, using excessive violence, detaining legal residents and US citizens, and engaging in racial profiling.

Homan’s remarks were widely seen as a deflection of blame from immigration agents and as a way to intimidate critics into silence.

“They are blaming the opposition for people being killed by their police,” said Alex Nowrasteh, the senior vice president of policy at the libertarian Cato Institute.

USA Today columnist Chris Brennan said Homan was “threaten[ing] more governmental violence… unless Americans stop engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called it “extremely irresponsible and dangerous language from the Trump administration’s top immigration official.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Stephen Prager

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

US Gov Report Details ‘Robust’ Ties Between Climate Crisis and Big Oil

By | |
Leave a comment
Philadelphia Swelters Amid East Coast Heatwave

Eduardo Velev cools off in the spray of a fire hydrant during a heatwave on July 1, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

(Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

“The next time your community is hit by a heatwave or flash flood, lay some blame with Big Oil. This report is yet another sign that we need to break away from this dangerous, polluting industry,” one scientist said.

Olivia Rosane

Jul 16, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

A landmark report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Thursday concludes that the science of linking individual extreme weather events to fossil fuel-driven climate change has advanced considerably in the past decade, findings that bolster the efforts of communities to hold oil and gas companies accountable for climate damages.

The report follows on the heels of deadly heatwaves in Europe and the US that were both deemed to be “virtually impossible” without the climate emergency.

RECOMMENDED…

A person shelters from the heat with a US flag.

As High Heat Cancels July 4 Plans, US Must ‘Declare Our Independence From Fossil Fuels’

CHINA-US-DIPLOMACY

‘Unconscionable and Impeachable’: Experts Appalled at Report of Marco Rubio Acting as Venezuela ‘Viceroy’

“The new report makes clear that the science linking ever-worsening extreme weather events to climate change is rigorous and sound,” John Fleming, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a statement. “The next time your community is hit by a heatwave or flash flood, lay some blame with Big Oil. This report is yet another sign that we need to break away from this dangerous, polluting industry.”

The report from the National Academies, or NASEM builds on a 2016 report on the same subject and tracks the progress made since then in linking specific extreme weather events such as hurricanes or heatwaves to human-caused global warming—a field known as extreme event attribution (EEA). It found that a combination of improvements in tools, datasets, and methods had made such attributions increasingly reliable, especially for events clearly related to rising average temperatures such as heatwaves, cold spells, and heavy rainfall.

“The science is clear: The extreme heat killing thousands of people in the Northern Hemisphere this summer is neither an unpredictable event nor an accident—it is the result of corporate crime.”

“Significant progress has been made over the last decade, with major advancements in methods and modeling that allow for more robust assessments of extreme events,” James Hurrell, who chaired the report committee and serves as the Scott presidential chair of Environmental Science and Engineering at Colorado State University, said in a statement.

EEA could still improve when it comes to analyzing the climate footprint on smaller-scale weather events like thunderstorms and tornadoes, as well as attributing events in parts of the Global South where climate data is less available.

Hurrell continued: “The field still faces challenges, and addressing them is necessary to fully realize the value of attribution science. We hope our recommendations will guide those efforts.”

Unaffiliated climate scientists and environmental advocates welcomed the report’s findings.

“The robust conclusions that have been reached by the mainstream climate research community betray the dismissive claims that continue to be made by fossil fuel industry groups, right-wing think tanks, and Republican operatives who feel threatened by the scientific progress in this particular area,” wrote climate scientist and University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann. “They have long understood… that Americans will increasingly demand meaningful policy action on climate as they come to understand the profound role that fossil fuel burning is playing in the worsening climate crisis.”

Mann continued: “Nothing connects the dots better that the increasingly dangerous, damaging, and deadly climate change-fueled extreme weather events. As an aside, I could see and smell the hazardous wildfire smoke that blanketed the northeastern US while on vacation with my family in New Hampshire this week. Increasingly, Americans are connecting the dots between our reliance on fossil fuels and the hazards we face, whether its costly and dangerous wars of choice in far-flung lands like Iran, or the threat of increasingly extreme weather events.”

Carly Phillips, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) who has co-authored attribution studies, said in a statement: “Attribution science confirms what billions of people around the world have experienced firsthand—deadly events like extreme heatwaves are occurring more often and tropical cyclones are more intense due to climate change. Despite efforts by the fossil fuel industry and its cronies to intimidate panelists and misrepresent the research, the academies’ report affirms the scientific consensus: Attribution science is based on rigorous peer-reviewed methods and provides critical information about how climate change is driving increases in the frequency or severity of extreme events.”

The report is notable not only for its findings but for their context. It’s publication comes amid the Trump administration’s aggressive climate denial, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s repealing of the so-called “endangerment finding” connecting carbon dioxide emissions to climate and public health harms.

At the same time, the fossil fuel industry and its right-wing political allies are scrambling to find a way out of the increasing number of lawsuits attempting to hold them accountable for the harms caused by the climate crisis. This has included pushing bills in the House of Representatives and Senate that would grant the industry immunity from any lawsuits over damages caused by the use of their products.

Both the fossil fuel industry and climate justice advocates see the NASEM report as a potential weapon in the fight over climate liability. Argus Insight, an opposition research firm co-founded by former Trump staffers that has a history of working to undermine climate lawsuits, sent at least nine records requests to public universities where NASEM report authors work, as Politico reported ahead of its release.

Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, advised that journalists covering the NASEM report “not frame any story as ‘Can we believe extreme event attribution research?’ The actual story is: Fossil fuel interests are wetting their pants about this and will do anything to try to stop it.”

Yet climate justice advocates argue that the report gives the advantage to communities over the industry.

“For decades, Big Oil knowingly poisoned our atmosphere and deceived the public about the impacts of burning fossil fuels—all the while lining executives’ pockets as communities continue to suffer from extreme heat, floods, and fires,” Stephanie Brancaforte, climate accountability campaign director with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, said in a statement.

Brancaforte added: “The science is clear: The extreme heat killing thousands of people in the Northern Hemisphere this summer is neither an unpredictable event nor an accident—it is the result of corporate crime. With the backing of the National Academies, survivors of climate catastrophes now have strong evidence to pursue justice against fossil fuel polluters to pay for the devastation they have unleashed.”

Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, said: “The National Academies just gave courts, cities, and communities something they’ve long needed: the full weight of the country’s most authoritative scientific body behind attribution science. It affirms what researchers and international bodies like the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] have long recognized—that we can say, with real confidence, which extreme weather events were made worse by fossil fuel pollution, and how much damage that pollution caused.”

DiPaola continued: “The fossil fuel industry understands exactly what this means. That’s why they’ve spent years trying to discredit attribution science as a field, and why they and their allies in Congress and state legislatures are racing right now to pass liability shield laws. They can’t out-argue hundreds of peer-reviewed studies backed by the country’s most respected scientific institution, so instead they’re trying to make the law immune to the science. They know this research doesn’t just describe a hotter world, but draws a line from their products to specific floods, heatwaves, and deaths, and from there to who should pay for the damage.”

“Attribution science now underpins how cities plan for disaster, how insurers price risk, how public health officials prepare for heat deaths, and how courts weigh accountability,” she concluded. “The only people with an interest in pretending otherwise are the ones being asked to pay for the damage they caused.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Olivia Rosane

Olivia Rosane is the opinion editor and a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

John Maynard Keynes on money

By | |
Leave a comment

(Image from Goodreads.com)

Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren by John Maynard Keynes

“When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”
― John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, was an English economist whose writings are considered the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. Wikipedia

Born June 5, 1883, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Died April 21, 1946 (age 62 years)

Keynes in 1929

Biden’s ‘Soul Of The Nation’ Address

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

NBC News Sep 1, 2022 Biden calls out threats to democracy in ‘soul of the nation’ address During his prime-time address on the “soul of the nation”, President Joe Biden called out former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans”, saying that they “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”, adding that “MAGA Republicans” are “destroying American democracy”.

Rising Momentum for Another Progressive Champion

By | |
Leave a comment

A sleeper race in Arizona could see community organizer Kai Newkirk upset Rep. Greg Stanton in a House race in the Phoenix area.

David Dayenby David Dayen July 15, 2026 (Prospect.org)

Kai Newkirk at an anti-ICE protest
Kai Newkirk, now a candidate for Congress in Arizona’s Fourth Congressional District, is a longtime activist and organizer. Credit: Courtesy Kai Newkirk for Congress

Two weeks ago, Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ) put out a poll showing him leading the July 21 Democratic primary in Arizona’s Fourth Congressional District, located in and around Phoenix, by 33 points, while carrying a massive 70 percent favorability rating. Normally, incumbents with that kind of lead wouldn’t bother putting a poll like that out; we have to surmise it was meant to either calm supporters or scare off opponents from investing money in his opponent’s campaign.

Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ).
Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ). Credit: U.S. Congress

Stanton’s supporters were apparently not calmed. A week after the poll release, an affiliate of Leading the Future, one of the main electoral PACs funded by the artificial intelligence industry, sunk $227,000 into television and streaming advertising and text messaging on Stanton’s behalf. The outside expenditure isn’t enormous, but it is curious: Why are AI oligarchs defending an incumbent who is blowing out his opponent?

Maybe it’s because Stanton’s lead isn’t so secure. A more recent survey taken last week by A Fight Worth Having, a backer of his opponent, democratic socialist Kai Newkirk, shows the race narrowing to single digits. Stanton leads Newkirk 46-38, but among those who have yet to vote, about half the electorate, Newkirk leads 41-30 with 17 percent undecided. If the undecideds break for Newkirk, another Democratic incumbent could fall in what has already been a historic primary season.

More from David Dayen

Newkirk, a longtime activist and organizer, only got into the race four months ago, inspired by a deepening sense of outrage at the inadequacy of Stanton’s responses to Donald Trump’s extremism and the genocide in Gaza. As co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party’s Progressive Council, Newkirk said they had tried to push Stanton on Gaza, including by sending a delegation to his office. But Stanton, despite making a conditional call for a cease-fire, continued to vote for military aid to Israel without conditions, voted to sanction the International Criminal Court for its charges against Israeli leaders, and criticized Joe Biden for briefly stopping the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs.

“And then, when Trump returns to office, he voted for the Laken Riley Act,” Newkirk said, referring to the immigration legislation that has helped to facilitate mass detention and deportation. “He just wasn’t showing up to push back against Trump in this seizure of authoritarian power … it was a cascade of things where I felt, as a sense of emergency and injustice and moral travesty is intensifying, that there was too much cost to having a corporate Democrat not fighting but enabling and facilitating it.”

That decision led someone who has spent a career running campaign finance reform groups like Democracy Spring, which engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience to call attention to the need to get money out of politics, to have to raise money himself for an election campaign. He has only raised $151,000 over the cycle as of June 30, but when we talked last week, he said the campaign had just had its best fundraising day. “Our job is to bring to people’s attention the big gap between the decisions Stanton has made and where Democrats stand,” he said. That includes social media and digital organization, with volunteer door-knocking that Newkirk believes is working. “My experience on the doors and what our people have seen, it tells me that it’s right there to be seized.”

The Prospect in your inbox

Analysis that goes beyond the noise, from Dayen, Kuttner, Meyerson, and more.Sign up

No paywall, no programmatic ads — just the reporting. Unsubscribe anytime. Submitting your email signs you up for The Daily Prospect, Today on TAP, Aftermath, and Weekend Reads.

Stanton has raised over $2 million this cycle, with less than 5 percent coming from small donors under $200, according to Open Secrets. Over $600,000 of his campaign haul comes from corporate PACs like UnitedHealth, Cigna, Humana, SpaceX, Walmart, Amazon, Google, Fox Corporation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Clear Channel, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, McKesson, UPS, body camera makers Axon, Waste Management, Boeing, State Farm Insurance, Medtronic, Visa, Home Depot, Tenet and Elevance Healthcare, Delta, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines, the Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, and BNSF railways, weapons manufacturers RTX, L3Harris, General Dynamics, and Honeywell, as well as several banking trade groups, the American Hospital Association, and a bunch more. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee also contributed $6,000 directly. Newkirk, adding in AIPAC donors who have also contributed to Stanton, calls AIPAC Stanton’s top contributor.

That relates to an exceedingly unusual circumstance that Newkirk personally experienced. “Several weeks ago, I and others started getting these texts saying, ‘Do you have a minute to talk about U.S.-Israel relationship?’” Newkirk told me. “It seemed like an AI chatbot.” The texts, which provided pro-Israel messaging on behalf of “Friends for Peace” and cast doubt on atrocities in Gaza, were associated with an organization called Clock Tower X run by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, whose political firm has $9 million in direct contracts with the state of Israel. They’ve been circulating since last year, but Newkirk said they appear to show up more in primaries where Israel is a major issue.

“You’d think it’s a fable but it’s true,” he said. “It’s a foreign government—not AIPAC but Israel—intervening in our politics to mold public opinion.”

Newkirk filed a formal complaint with the Arizona attorney general’s office over Israel’s election interference. He hadn’t heard back as of last week. The office did not respond to the Prospect’s request for a status update.

Despite an odd incident where the Arizona Young Democrats canceled their endorsement of Newkirk over “concerning patterns of behavior,” apparently based on a ten-year-old article that was retracted two years ago by the author and rejected by other youth organizations, the latest poll shows that Newkirk has some momentum, with attention in independent media. Meanwhile, Stanton hasn’t really made his presence felt, hoping that his name recognition and superior fundraising will carry him to victory.

Stanton has skipped debate appearances in the district and has done no town halls. Newkirk says Stanton’s events are very controlled. His campaign office is listed as a UPS mailbox. Newkirk did track Stanton down recently at a lightly publicized event around health care. “I asked him about health care in Gaza and asked if he would commit to renounce AIPAC funding, end military support for Israel, and denounce election interference,” Newkirk said. “He didn’t answer and was hustled out of the room.”

Yet when it came time for an outside super PAC to boost Stanton, it was not AIPAC’s that did the job, but an artificial intelligence–funded PAC. Newkirk has rallied opposition to an AI data center project in Ahwatukee, a city in the district. And his general platform involves progressive taxation and public provision of goods (including an innovative proposal around price caps on a basket of essential goods that was used to great effect in Mexico) to rebalance the relationship between the wealthy and everybody else.

“Political and economic power are becoming more concentrated and leading to deepening inequality,” Newkirk said. “We’ve got to break the grip of oligarchs on our democracy and move toward a shared prosperity … If we break from corporate power and make government a tool to deliver for working-class people, there’s no limit to what’s possible.”

Stanton’s campaign did not respond to multiple questions for this article.

A victory for Newkirk would show that Stanton’s sleepwalking on threats from Trump carried over into sleepwalking in his own race. Newkirk believes that the fight against Trump should be seen as existential. “We have to prove, like when FDR was fighting fascism, that democracy can change people’s lives for the better.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated to better reflect the timing of a retracted hit piece about Kai Newkirk.

Before you go.

I hope that you found this article interesting and thought-provoking. The reason we’re able to publish stories like this — free of programmatic ads and never behind a paywall — is because readers like you step up to support our work. 

The Prospect doesn’t answer to advertisers or billionaire owners. We answer to you and to our commitment to pursuing the truth, wherever that leads us. 

Independent, reader-supported journalism is critical at a time when the free press is under assault. 

If you believe this kind of reporting should exist and remain free to read, we hope you’ll consider chipping in. Every contribution, however modest, makes a real difference.

Donate Now

David Dayen

David Dayen
Executive Editor

Related

Special-Interest Super PACs Underperform in Illinois

March 18, 2026

Organized Money: How AIPAC Tries to Dominate the Business of Politics

April 15, 2026

First AIPAC, Now AI PACs

February 20, 2026

David Dayen

ddayen@prospect.org

David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90. More by David Dayen

Israeli Settlers Attack Convoy of Journalists & Father of Palestinian American

By | |
Leave a comment

Democracy Now! Jul 15, 2026 Latest Shows Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-de… Independent journalist and Palestine solidarity activist Adele Shoko, who was in one of the cars, says the attack is part of an “unprecedented” escalation of settler activity in the occupied West Bank, taking place in so-called Area A, which is nominally under the full control of the Palestinian Authority. “Area C is almost entirely ethnically cleansed by the settlers backed by the Israeli state, and they moved to Area B, attacking big villages. But Area A is another level.” Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

Big Money and the Maine Election: Round 2

By | |
Leave a comment

By Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen, and Jie Chen

Jul 15, 2026 | Government & Politics (ineteconomics.org)

The upheaval in Maine’s Senate race has focused attention on candidates and party leaders. Less noticed is what the campaign finance data reveal about the state’s Democratic Party and its structural dependence on national organizations and large out-of-state donors.

Barely a fortnight ago, Maine’s Senate election showed all the hallmarks of a classic match-up between David and Goliath. In the giant’s role stood incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, backed by a tidal wave of outside money mostly from very big donors, including almost a 100 billionaires or their spouses. The David challenging her was Democrat Graham Platner, who had already forced the withdrawal of Maine Governor Janet Mills, who had also sought the nomination. Platner’s campaign financing profile was the polar opposite of both Collins’ and establishment leaders in both parties: Essentially no large donations, quite like the distinctive profile of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders we have analyzed before. See Figures 1 and 2 and for Sanders, Figure 4.

Figure 1: Big Money in Maine Senate Elections Round 1

Source: Ferguson, Jorgensen, Lalisse, and Chen, 2026

But that was then; this is now. As a blockbuster movie about a legendary Greek hero starts swallowing midsummer America’s cultural space, Maine suddenly one-upped Hollywood. The state borrowed from another celebrated Greek sage, Heraclitus: A scandal broke, and suddenly everyone discovered that you could not step twice into the same Senate election.

The bitter debates occasioned by Platner’s 11th hour withdrawal have dominated media coverage ever since. Meanwhile the New York Times and other media report that Maine Democrats are firmly resolved to reject efforts by out of state leaders of the national Democratic establishment, such as Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer to influence the choice of a new nominee. But we were interested to see that, rather like another famous 2024 case, party leaders decided against a quick “firehouse” primary to let the voters decide. Instead, the leaders chose to select a new candidate at a convention of 601 people, that would include 101 members of the Maine State Democratic Committee.

We have no special insight into the mindsets of Maine Democratic leaders. But after seeing the Times article about how unwelcome Senator Schumer is said to be, we thought the financing of the Maine Democratic Party might merit closer inspection. As ever, we make the move that other political money analyses don’t: we sum contributions from the same people and organizations to show the true shape of donor profiles. At a glance, one can see the extent to which big or small money dominates.[1]

State parties are somewhat different animals from election campaigns of individual candidates. The former, for example, are likely to show at least some small donations. But virtually every case we have scrutinized also shows inflows of really large sums of money, from donors both in and out of state. The size of those donations vary by circumstance and urgent need, with money from national party organizations often critically important, especially in peripheral states like Maine, that does not have Wall Streets or casinos or much high tech of its own to tap.

We are not exactly astonished, accordingly, to discover that the two largest inflows of money into the Maine party come from organizations affiliated with the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: Contributions by Donor Size – Maine Democratic Party 2025-2026 Election Cycle

Source: Authors’ calculations from Federal receipts of the Maine Democratic Party (FEC committee C00179408), 2026 cycle, covering January 1, 2025, through May 31, 2026. Bars show net giving per donor; refunds are subtracted from the donor’s total. Eight donors whose giving nets to $0 or less are excluded. The entire $100,000+ bin consists of two national party committees: the DNC ($272,687) and the DSCC ($211,758). Total: $1,847,198.72.

These are, of course, essentially out of state contributions, like most of the rest of the big money taken in by the party, as Figure 3 shows.

Figure 3: Contributions by Donor Size and Origin – Maine Democratic Party 2025-2026

Source: Authors’ calculations from Federal receipts of the Maine Democratic Party (FEC committee C00179408), 2026 cycle, covering January 1, 2025, through May 31, 2026. Bars show net giving per donor, split by the donor’s state; party committees are included. A donor is coded Maine if ANY of their records carry a Maine address. The $0–200 bin is excluded because it is dominated by $522,582.52 in unitemized money, which carries no geography, so a state split of that bin would describe only its small, itemized sliver and mislead. Among the $1,306,772.21 given by donors above $200, Maine accounts for $441,305.75 (33.8%) and out-of-state donors $865,466.46 (66.2%). The share flips with size: the $201–999 bins run roughly two-to-one Maine, while the entire $100,000+ bin is out-of-state — the DNC ($272,687) and the DSCC ($211,758).

It is obvious that the party leans far more heavily on big donors than Platner did, even if the degree of dependence pales by comparison with parties in other, richer states. The dependence on out-of-state funds is equally evident.

But a real cluster of small donor contributions also shows. We are not dealing with a Northeastern cognate of, for example, Senator Mitch McConnell or Senator Schumer himself. See Figure 4, from our earlier analysis of leaders of both parties in 2016. Like Donald Trump in 2016, the Maine Democratic Party’s campaign finance profile displays a “barbell” construction, with a mix of small and large donations piling up at both ends of the money scales.

Figure 4: Dominance of Big Money

Size of Contributions of American Political Leaders 2016

Adapted from Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 2022

The conclusion has to be that talk of the party distancing itself from the national Democratic establishment needs to be taken with buckets, not grains, of salt. The state party’s dependence on outside big money is structural, in the absence of a candidate who can capture the imagination of ordinary Maine citizens. Rather like the Odyssey, public discussion mixes poetry and truth, with the difference that Homer was blind, while American journalists and voters need not be.

Thomas Ferguson

  • Research Director
  • Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Paul Jorgensen

  • Associate Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Program and Community Engagement, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Jie Chen