Articles ~ Petitions ~ Events for Friday, Aug. 21 – Tuesday, Aug. 25

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By Adrienne Fong

Not back posting on a regular basis.

RESOURCES:

 UPDATES WITH BAY RESISTANCE and get plugged to actions you can support, text “Resist” to 888-850-0928

GI HOTLINE (877) 477-4497

Center On Conscience and War: 800-379-2679 (toll free) In Washington DC

Home

  – Share these numbers to people who know active duty service members

There are events listed on Indybay that might be of interest to you(many listings in the South, North & East Bays and beyond the bay area)

Please post your actions on Indybay: https://www.indybay.org/calendar/?page_id=12

Bay Area Progressive Action Calendar: ATW Bay Area / NorCal — Action Together West

ARTICLES

A. Day 1049 | “Board of Peace” talks while Israel kills – August 20, 2026

Day 1049 | “Board of Peace” talks while Israel kills – YouTube

  Electronic Intifada

B. News Wrap: USS Abraham Lincoln heading home after 9-month deployment – August 20, 2026

C. The unborn are dying in the siege of Gaza – August 20, 2026

The unborn are dying in the siege of Gaza — RT World News

Miscarriages and stillbirths surge as Israel’s siege, malnutrition, toxic exposure and displacement ravage mothers

  By Eva Bartlett   

D. IDF Begins Marking Palestinians With Numbers – August 20, 2026

E. ‘Bloodthirsty Psychopath’ Ben-Gvir Touts Viewing Booths at Gallows for Palestinians – August 20, 2026

‘Bloodthirsty Psychopath’ Ben-Gvir Touts Viewing Booths at Gallows for Palestinians | Common Dreams

F. Nobody Is Prepared for Superintelligent AI – August 20, 2026

Nobody Is Prepared for Superintelligent AI

G. Shock gloves pulled from Omaha Public Schools – August 19, 2026

H. Nebraska community speaking out over use of shock gloves in school

I. Why Gov. Newsom should commute every death sentence in California before he leaves office – August 16, 2026

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/death-row-penalty-prison-california-22385501.php

J. ICE arrests of Asian Americans in California increased by more than 1,000% – August 14, 2026

AAPI ICE arrests in California surge in 2025 | Sacramento Bee

K. S.F.’s top-paid employee made $900K. Here’s what every city worker gets paid – August 13, 2026

Here’s what every San Francisco city worker gets paid

4 PETITIONS

1. Tell State Leaders to Ban ICE’s Electric Shock Gloves and Investigate Excessive Force

  SIGN” Tell State Leaders to Ban ICE’s Electric Shock Gloves and Investigate Excessive Force

2. Submit a public comment: Stop the Trump administration from dismantling Head Start

  SIGN: Take Action!

3. Stop the Lawless Strikes in Latin America

  SIGN: Stop the Lawless Strikes in Latin America | Win Without War 

4.Tell Target We’re Shopping Local for Back to School

   SIGN: Public School Strong

EVENTS / ACTIONS

Friday, August 21 – Tuesday, August 25

Friday, August 21 

1. Friday, 12:45 & 4:00pm, Golden Gate Bridge 7 (26) Sentence Hearing

Hall of Justice
850 Bryant St. (Steps)
SF

12:45pm – Rally outside  **

4:00pm – Press Conference

PACK THE COURT for the Sentencing Hearing of 7 defendants of the GG26 at 12:45PM on Friday, on the steps of the 850 Bryant Street

The hearing will address the 43 misdemeanor convictions out of 1144 charges initially levied against the GG26 defendants.

The jury hung on felony conspiracy and misdemeanor trespass, but Jenkins has refused to drop these charges, pushing this case toward a second costly trial funded by San Francisco’s tax payer dollars.

**Seating in the courtroom is limited so please only enter if invited by one of the seven defendants. We’ll send our comrades into the courtroom and continue our rally outside where we’ll hear from members of our community. We’ll also share updates live from inside the courtroom. We’ll have snacks and beverages to share.

4:00pm We’ll end the day’s court affairs with a press conference on the steps of 850 Bryant Street at 4PM, where we’ll hear from the defendants and their legal team.

Brief  history:

Last month, in the felony trial of the GG26, a SF jury found 7 defendants guilty on false imprisonment, unlawful assembly, obstruction of a thoroughfare, and failure to disperse, for protesting the US taxpayer-funded genocide in Gaza. While the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaigns continue with the unwavering support of the US government, SF DA Jenkins brings Trump’s assault on dissent to San Francisco.

The jury hung on felony conspiracy and misdemeanor trespass, but Jenkins has refused to drop these charges, pushing this case toward a second costly trial funded by San Francisco’s tax payer dollars.

We’d also like to invite you to support a fundraiser for the seven felony defendants of the GG26 who continue to incur expenses while being away from work due to the demands of this ongoing prosecution. Please consider sharing and donating at chuffed.org/project/gg26fundraiser .

Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/DcOkLmLlF75/?hl=en&img_index=1   

~    ~    ~    ~    ~

Sketch by Laurie Moorehead of officer https://www.instagram.com/p/DZjQlnTlPhC/?hl=en&img_index=1

 She states: “Every officer on the scene testified that the protesters were peaceful, non threatening, and polite.

The only violence on the bridge was when a motorist twice attacked protesters, nearly throwing one into a metal railing. He was moved back to his car by protesters using nonviolent, de-escalation techniques. The officer on the scene ordered him to stay in his car and away from the protesters. He was the only motorist ordered to stay in his car, the others were all moving around, going to the bathroom, talking to each other, accepting snacks and water from the protesters, and making calls. No one called 911 saying they were being falsely imprisoned.

One motorist helped 180 cars turn around and go backwards off the bridge, before handing the job off to another motorist and driving away himself. CHP stood around and watched but didn’t help

There are more sketches by Laurie Moorhead and testimonies of all 7 defendants at the instagram site below

For more info about the Golden Gate 26 –check out the Instagram page at: https://www.instagram.com/gg26solidarity/?hl=en  

2. Friday, 6:00pm – 7:00pm, Monthly Gathering at Alex Nieto’s Altar

Bernal Hill
Site near where Alex was murdered
SF

MUNI # 67

All are welcomed to join Alex’s parents Refugio and Elvira Nieto on the 21st of each month as they remember Alex. It’s been 12 years since Alex was killed.

On March 21, 2014, Alex was murdered by SFPD officers Jason Sawyer, Richard Schiff, Nathan Chew, and Roger Morse, with 59 bullets.DA Gacon (at the time) declined to file criminal charges against the officers. .

When Chesa Boudin was SF DA (short term) He had is staff to do an investigation in Alex’s and other victims of police brutality cases. When Brooke Jenkins became the DA she dropped the investigations and either re-assigned or let the staff working on cases go.

There is still no justice for SFPD’s execution of Alex nor of any other victims of SFPD’s executions.

3. Friday, 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Haight Ashbury Peace Vigil

Masonic & Fell St. Corner(Panhandle)
SF

This is held outdoors, please dress for the weather.
We will have signs, candles, music, and snacks. We invite you to join us for 5 minutes, or for the whole two hours.
This vigil is held on the the third Friday of the month.
Pictures from our previous vigils can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haightpeacevigil/ 

Info: Haight Ashbury Peace Vigil : Indybay 

4. Friday, 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Urgent Oakland Town Hall Meeting! Taxpayer funded genocide in Cuba!

Black Panther Party Museum
1427 Broadway
Oakland

Tickets: Urgent Oakland Town Hall Meeting! Taxpayer funded genocide in Cuba! Tickets, Friday, August 21  •  6 PM – 8 PM | Eventbrite

Join the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper for a community discussion on the U.S.-backed blockade against Cuba and its impact on everyday people.

Cuba has been under a complete 8-month oil blockade, and a 67-year general blockade because the U.S. government does not want Cubans in Cuba to determine the island’s fate without their interference.

Info: Urgent Oakland Town Hall Meeting! Taxpayer funded genocide in Cuba! Tickets, Friday, August 21  •  6 PM – 8 PM | Eventbrite    

Sunday, August 23

5. Sunday, 12:30pm – 2:30pm, Film Screening and Discussion: Children No More: Were and are Gone

The New Parkway
474 24th St
Oakland

SF Bay Area Friends of Standing Together and Chochmaters for Collective Liberation present:

A special screening of Oscar nominated short documentary-
CHILDREN NO MORE: “WERE AND ARE GONE”.

The screening will be followed by a Zoom discussion with the director Hilla Medalia about strategies of protest and hear from local organizers other ways we can show up and support the struggle for peace, justice and equality in Israel/Palestine.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE75N-uTN58

CHILDREN NO MORE: “WERE AND ARE GONE” is an observational documentary short about a vigil that began in March 2025, when a handful of women stood silently in a public square in Tel Aviv, each holding a photograph of a child killed in Gaza. On every image: the child’s name, age, date of death, and the words “WAS AND IS NO MORE.” Their stillness is heavy, pressing against the rhythm of ordinary life. Some passersby look away; others respond with denial, sorrow, or rage. Yet week after week, new names are added, new photographs are printed and lifted high. And each week, more people step forward to join this quiet act of protest.

For more information: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/sfbaya…

Info Film Screening and Discussion: Children No More: Were and are Gone : Indybay

Monday, August 24

6. Monday, 8:30pm, “American Doctors”: Gaza Genocide Frontline Hospitals Film & Panel w/ Filmmaker & Doctors

Roxie Movie Theater SF
3125 16th Street
San Francisco

GAZA GENOCIDE – THE MEDICAL FRONTLINES

“AMERICAN DOCTORS”: Roxie Film Screening & Speaker Panel w/ the American Humanitarian Frontline Doctors & Filmmaker, Poh Si Teng

TWO SPECIAL EVENT DATES: Aug 24 @ 8:30 PM and Aug 25 @ 6 PM

Info: https://arabfilminstitute.org/events/american-doctor-sf/

Roxie tickets: https://roxie.com/film/american-doctor/

Official film website: https://americandoctorfilm.com/

TRAILER: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2019019545

From Oscar®-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker Poh Si Teng, American Doctor follows three American physicians— Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—united by a single oath to save lives: Dr. Thaer Ahmad (Chicago, IL), Dr. Mark Perlmutter (Rocky Mount, North Carolina) and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa (trauma surgeon,California https://www.ferozesidhwa.org/).

After volunteering in besieged hospitals in Gaza, they return home determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind, taking their battle from the front lines of war to the halls of Congress.
FROM FIRSTSHOWING.net (by Alex Billington, July 15, 2026):

QUOTE: “American Doctor follows three American physicians – Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian – united by a single oath to save lives. After volunteering in besieged hospitals in Gaza, they return home determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind. Dr. Thaer Ahmad is measured and strategic, Dr. Mark Perlmutter is blunt and wears his heart on his sleeve, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is media-savvy and prolific. Filmed in unfolding, on-the-ground scenes, the story follows the three of them from a Gazan hospital under siege, to the halls of Congress to continue the struggle where it matters most: the United States. American Doctor is directed by doc producer / filmmaker Poh Si Teng, directing her first feature film after producing many other docs including St. Louis Superman previously. Produced by Poh Si Teng, Kirstine Barfod, and Reem Haddad. This initially premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and it also played at True/False, SXSW, and CPH:DOX. Watermelon Pictures debuts American Doctor doc in select US + Canadian theaters starting August 14th, 2026 coming up this summer.”

For the full page & complete article, go to https://www.firstshowing.net/2026/official-trailer-for-powerful-doc-american-doctor-about-saving-lives/

Info: “American Doctors”: Gaza Genocide Frontline Hospitals Film & Panel w/ Filmmaker & Doctors : Indybay

Tuesday, August 25

7. Tuesday, 9:00am, Tell the Airport Commission to rein in ICE at SFO 

SF City Hall – Room 400
1 Dr. Carleton B. Goodlett Pl  (4th Floor)
SF

Come out the SF Airport Commission meeting to tell SFO to stand up to ICE:

ven for domestic flights, airlines send reservation data to the TSA, which passes it on to ICE. Travelers are being targeted and abducted by ICE at check-in counters, gates, jetbridges, and baggage claim areas.

The City and County of San Francisco owns and operates SFO. But the Airport Commission has ignored our “sanctuary city” ordinance and capitulated prematurely to untested DHS claims of unlimited power.

Or email “AirportCommissionSecretary@flysfo.com”.

This Mobilize listing will help you write your email. https://www.mobilize.us/indivisiblesf/event/1012221/

More info & talking points. https://papersplease.org/…/07/31/can-sfo-rein-in-the-feds/  

Info: Facebook

Doris “Dorie” Miller

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OSF Editor: Will a future aircraft carrier be named after Doris Miller or Trump?

Google AI: No final decision has been made, but the U.S. Navy is actively conducting internal discussions about renaming the future aircraft carrier (CVN-81) to honor President Donald Trump. [1, 2, 3]

The vessel was originally named the USS Doris Miller in 2020 during Trump’s first term. Recent internal documents have shifted to referring to the ship strictly by its hull number, CVN-81. [1, 2]

Key Details of the Potential Change

  • Unprecedented Move: Naming a supercarrier after a sitting president would be entirely unprecedented in modern U.S. Navy history.
  • Alternative Plans for Miller: Officials are considering moving Doris Miller’s name to a different warship (such as a destroyer). Concurrently, there is a push to posthumously award Miller the Medal of Honor, upgrading his current Navy Cross.
  • Decision Makers: The authority to finalize the ship’s name lies with Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

The proposed change has already generated significant public debate and backlash from veterans’ advocates and lawmakers. They emphasize that CVN-81 was intended to be the very first U.S. aircraft carrier named after an enlisted sailor and a Black American. [1, 2, 3]

Miller wearing his Navy Cross in May 1942

Doris “Dorie” Miller was a U.S. Navy sailor who was the first black recipient of the Navy Cross and a nominee for the Medal of Honor. As a mess attendant second class aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, Miller helped carry wounded sailors to safety during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He then operated an anti-aircraft gun[3] and, despite no prior training in gunnery, officially shot down one plane (according to Navy Department records), but Miller and other eyewitnesses claimed a range of four to six.[4] Wikipedia

Born October 12, 1919, Waco, TX

Died November 24, 1943 (age 24 years), Kiribati, Kiribati

US airman arrested at Capitol after calling for Trump’s impeachment is detained again

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By Kaanita Iyer,Francesca Giuliani Hoffman

Updated 17 hr ago (CNN.com)

In an act of civil disobedience, active duty U.S. Air Force Major Jason Watson is arrested by police on the Capitol steps after calling for the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on July 1, 2026. He was arrested in an area that is open to the public, but protesting is prohibited. (Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP)

US airman detained again after calling for Trump’s impeachment, his attorney speaks out

Video: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/politics/us-airman-arrested-at-capitol-trump-impeachment-detained

Jason Watson, the US service member who was arrested on the steps of the US Capitol last month after calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, has been detained once again — just days after he criticized the president in an exclusive CNN interview.

The US Air Force major was “ordered into pretrial confinement” Tuesday, a US Air Force spokesperson told CNN. As of Wednesday evening, he has not been formally charged, but the spokesperson said the case is still under investigation. Watson is currently being detained at a county facility in Maryland and is on a military hold, according to the public information officer for that detention center.

It is unclear what charges Watson might be facing.

Watson’s attorney Chris Mutimer said the airman was arrested while on duty the day after his interview on CNN earlier in the week. Mutimer said Watson was refusing to wear his uniform.

“While he was at work he, through counsel, informed his chain of command that he would no longer be wearing his uniform,” Mutimer said. “Shortly after that, he was told he needed to put his uniform on. Within about 20 minutes, and my understanding is around 330, he was then arrested and he was brought to a county jail.”

Mutimer said on CNN Wednesday evening they are “expecting charges related to Article 88, which is contempt towards an officer or Article 92, which is failure to obey, which would be related potentially to him not putting his uniform back on.”

“He expected this,” the attorney said. “He expected to be arrested.”

The Air Force spokesperson said in a statement, “Military members are required to comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and all applicable regulations.” The spokesperson added, “Based on probable cause to support allegations of continued misconduct, Maj. Watson was ordered into pretrial confinement on Aug. 18, 2026. Maj. Watson is presumed innocent and will be afforded all rights under Rule for Courts-Martial 305 as his pretrial confinement is reviewed.”

CNN has asked the Air Force for further details.

On Monday, Watson spoke with CNN’s Erin Burnett and criticized Trump, whose impeachment and removal he continues to call for.

“What is happening with President Trump is not normal. He has failed us,” Watson said. “And not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”

watson iso.jpg

Airman arrested after protesting Trump in uniform speaks out: Trump ‘has failed us’

Public dissent within active-duty military ranks is rare as service members are required to follow orders in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which criminalizes contemptuous words against the president, vice president, Congress and other top officials under Article 88.

“Maj. Watson’s personal statements do not reflect the views or policies of the Department of the Air Force,” the agency spokesperson said in the statement Wednesday.

Watson was previously arrested on July 1 on the US Capitol steps after he gave a speech calling for the impeachment and removal of Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

US Capitol Police told CNN at the time that members of the public are not allowed to demonstrate on the steps of the House unless they are accompanied by a member of Congress. Watson was “escorted” to the steps by a member, who then “left the area,” according to police.

Watson was wearing his uniform during the demonstration. Military regulation bans wearing a uniform while participating in political activities, though to date Watson had not been charged with an infraction tied to the demonstration.

Watson told CNN earlier this week that he is willing to pay the price of speaking out against the administration.

“We just have to be willing to accept that we can change what is happening in our country if we’re just willing to pay a price for it,” Watson said. “So all that I could do was ask myself what’s the highest price that I’m willing to pay. And this is what I ultimately came up with.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

Davis Winkie and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this story.

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.

“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

Fake polls in Wisconsin and California were part of a ‘social experiment’

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  • Ruth Igielnik and Caroline Soler | © 2025 The New York Times Company
  • Aug 18, 2026 (SFExaminer.com)
Francesca Hong Wikimedia
One of the surveys released by the group, Median Strategies, claimed that Francesca Hong was leading the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor by more than 20 percentage points. Photo: LaShawnda Jones, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

An organization that released public election polling in recent weeks withdrew the results of two surveys, revealing that it had fabricated the polls as part of a “short-term social experiment” meant to expose how quickly false information could spread.

One of the surveys released by the group, Median Strategies, claimed that Francesca Hong was leading the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor by more than 20 percentage points. (She went on to lose by less than 1 percentage point.) Another, shared by Mayor Karen Bass on the social platform X in a since-deleted post, showed Bass leading Nithya Raman by nearly 12 percentage points in the Los Angeles mayoral runoff.

On Monday, Median Strategies withdrew those results, saying they “should not be treated as genuine polling data.”

In a statement posted to the organization’s website, Median Strategies said the fabricated results were intended to examine “how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.”

Median Strategies did not respond to a request for further comment on the incident.

The false polls, particularly the one from the California race, spread widely after being picked up by The California Post and various social media polling aggregators. The results, however, were not published by multiple major polling aggregators, and were not included in The New York Times’ poll trackers because the group did not respond to questions about its methodology.

The experiment came as the number of public pollsters has skyrocketed, with about 30 new pollsters cropping up so far this year. The large number of surveys coming from new, previously untested pollsters has made it increasingly difficult to judge survey quality. But while these new pollsters may be unproven, the vast majority appear to be real.

In Wisconsin, the Median Strategies results were largely in line with the other public polls, all of which greatly underestimated Hong’s opponent, David Crowley, igniting a wave of criticism of the value of primary polling.

What Median Strategies hoped to accomplish by adding false polls into a saturated marketplace was unclear, even to experts in the field.

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“It doesn’t make sense as a social experiment; what are you measuring?” said Mia Costa, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “How do you know who was exposed and who wasn’t? This is just wreaking havoc in an election with real stakes and no real interest in understanding the effects of what you are doing.”

The revelation of such an experiment, and how easily the false results spread, exposed a challenge in a polling world where incentives are high to produce polls that attract attention, and the cost of a low-quality poll is relatively modest.

“The bar to doing a poll has gotten so low that it’s easy to get through without adhering to typical industry standards,” said Josh Pasek, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. “As a result, these bad actors can quickly manipulate our understanding of a race.”

The fake polls, which were first reported on by the Los Angeles Times, also drew attention to the increasing reliance on low-quality polls and betting markets to inform the public’s understanding in races where little information is otherwise available. Additionally, it calls into question how information of varying quality might move the needle in betting markets like Kalshi and Polymarket.

“The ability to manipulate even a marginal amount of information can have a disproportionate impact on the markets,” Pasek said.

Bass’ election odds showed slight improvement in the betting markets after the Median Strategies poll was reported, while no changes were seen in Wisconsin. In its statement, Median Strategies claimed that no one involved received any compensation or financial benefit from the project, and that none of those involved held or traded any position in the various prediction or betting mechanisms.

Without further explanation, the statement about the experiment ended with a message that stood in contrast to the confused reaction that followed from people throughout the polling world: “Thank you for your understanding.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Watchdog Report: “The 2026 Midterms Are the Most Open to Foreign Interference in American History”

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Invited, undefended, unpunished, and rewarded: what independent researchers can still measure has doubled in a year, and the instruments that would measure the rest no longer exist.

Christopher Armitage Aug 19, Christopher Armitage from The Existentialist Republic

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Publisher’s note on sources and standards

This report covers February 2025 through August 2026. Every factual claim is cited where it appears. Sources consist of federal indictments, court filings, agency memoranda, Congressional Research Service publications, Senate correspondence, published threat intelligence from named firms and university research groups, and news reporting. Filings from advocacy organizations are flagged and checked against the underlying documents.

Foreign interference in the 2026 midterms is positioned to be the most extensive in American history, and its full extent will likely never be known, because the Trump regime has made it clear that interference in their favor is invited, our resources largely undefended, violations to help the GOP will go unpunished, and will likely be rewarded through favorable trade and diplomatic treatment.

Further, the portion independent researchers have been able to identify has doubled in a year while the instruments that would have measured greater scale of interference have been thoroughly shuttered and defunded, while those who previously identified election interference that benefitted the GOP now find themselves facing weaponization of the criminal justice system and being treated as enemies of the Trump regime’s purged federal law enforcement apparatus.

This report documents the operations still visible to independent researchers and uses the remaining indicators to estimate the total.

In the first quarter of 2026, narratives from Storm-1516, a Russian operation run through a former Florida deputy sheriff granted asylum in Russia, more than doubled compared with the same period the year before, reaching near-daily output by spring. The count comes from Bloomberg, which identified the operation’s output using signature characteristics published by Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub and the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.

Finding 1: Documented foreign influence operations increased substantially through the 2026 election cycle

The Vice President of the United States has repeated a fabrication manufactured by Russian military intelligence. In November 2023, Storm-1516 published a false report that Zelensky’s associates had bought two yachts worth $75 million with money stolen from Western military aid; the brokers involved denied it. Then-Senator JD Vance repeated the claim publicly when explaining his opposition to continued U.S. support for Ukraine. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared it as well.

The documented operations running against American audiences right now:

Storm-1516, also tracked as CopyCop. Recorded Future reported that since March 2025 the network created “at least 200 new fictional media websites targeting the United States, France, and Canada,” on top of earlier waves, using uncensored variants of open-source language models and more than 1,000 fake journalist personas.

Spamouflage, a Chinese state-linked operation. The Clemson Media Forensics Hub documented the campaign’s targeting of then-Senator Marco Rubio, and Graphika reported in July that the network distributed manipulated event flyers to disrupt gatherings critical of the Chinese government in the United States and Europe.

A domestic artificial intelligence bot network. Clemson researchers identified at least 686 X accounts that posted more than 130,000 times, posing as conservative voters and working four Senate races and two primaries, and assessed the network as “an American political operation, rather than one run by a foreign government.”

Party-produced deepfakes. The National Republican Senatorial Committee published a deepfake of James Talarico, a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, on March 11: an artificial version of the candidate speaking to camera for over a minute, the first of its kind per CNN, with a disclosure label rendered in small, fading text. CNN reported the ad was the latest in a series of AI-generated products from the committee.

These operations demonstrate that the techniques are normalized, the tools are cheap, and disclosure requirements are minimal where they exist at all.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin measured what targeting like this does to turnout. Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January 2026, they tracked every digital ad seen by 10,441 people representative of the voting-age population for the six weeks before the 2016 election and matched each person’s exposure to their verified turnout record.

The researchers estimated that roughly 4.7 million people who would otherwise have voted were successfully influenced not to. Nonwhite voters in minority-majority counties in battleground states received the messages at four times the rate of their white neighbors, and the operators used “Martin Luther King Jr.” as a targeting keyword to identify nonwhite voters for suppression.

Lead author Young Mie Kim said the Russian operation was not about mobilizing people but about demobilizing certain groups of people, and that 17 percent of the campaigns studied were tied to Russian operations. Trump won the presidency that year on battleground margins under one percent, including Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes.

The prohibition those advertisers violated is one the Federal Election Commission has lacked the votes to enforce since May 2025.

Finding 2: The Trump administration has dismantled seven federal safeguards against foreign election interference.

The federal defenses against foreign election interference took nearly ninety years to build. Dismantling them began in February 2025 and has not stopped. The defenses had different architects across different decades. Congress wrote the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 1938 and created the Federal Election Commission in 1974. After Russia’s 2016 operation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation created its Foreign Influence Task Force in 2017, Congress established the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2018, the intelligence community established its Foreign Malign Influence Center in 2022 to track election interference by Russia and other adversaries, and the State Department ran a counter-disinformation office. The current administration has disabled every one of them since February 2025:

February 5, 2025. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force on her first day, writing that the move would “free resources to address more pressing priorities.”

The same memo limited criminal prosecution under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to “instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.” Enforcement was narrowed, not ended; the act remains law.

December 2024 through April 2025. The State Department’s Global Engagement Center closed in December 2024, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shut its successor office on April 16, and by September the department had halted “all frameworks” for countering foreign disinformation.

February through March 2025. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency froze its election security work and ended funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, telling states in an internal email that the work “no longer supports Department priorities.” Support ended fully on September 30, 2025.

May 1, 2025. The Federal Election Commission lost its quorum and with the quorum lost the legal ability to open investigations, issue penalties, or make rules. Chair Shana Broussard told NOTUS the agency is “hobbled.”

Through 2025. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence terminated 500 staff, a 30 percent reduction, with cuts announced to reach 40 percent of personnel by the end of 2025, and folded core functions of the Foreign Malign Influence Center into other offices. The Brennan Center for Justice noted that the Director of National Intelligence omitted foreign election threats from her worldwide threats testimony, unlike prior cycles.

July 9, 2026. Trump fired the three remaining commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission, the bipartisan agency that certifies voting equipment and administers federal election funding, leaving it without a quorum months before the midterms. With CISA’s election work halted, the commission was one of the few remaining federal entities providing election security support to states.

Those offices produced indictments, sanctions, domain seizures, and critical warnings to states and campaigns.

The center found that federal support for election security is “notably absent this cycle,” the first such absence since election infrastructure was designated critical infrastructure in 2017. Election officials told MS NOW they have received no intelligence briefings on possible foreign threats and have no access to regional cybersecurity advisers, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond when asked about it. Sens. Alex Padilla and Mark Warner have demanded intelligence briefings on foreign election threats ahead of the midterms and report that the intelligence office failed to respond to their previous request.

The 2026 midterms will be the first federal election since Russia’s 2016 attack in which none of the defenses built in response are still functioning, and enforcement under the older laws has stopped as well.

Finding 3: Republicans have opened a working channel to the Kremlin and plan to continue using it through the election

In the same period, House Republicans hosted the first Kremlin parliamentary delegation on American soil in twelve years, over written Senate warnings that the visitors came to collect intelligence, with a reciprocal Moscow trip planned for the weeks around the election.

On March 26, 2026, a delegation of Russian State Duma lawmakers arrived in Washington, D.C., the first such visit since relations collapsed over the invasion of Ukraine, led by Vyacheslav Nikonov of the United Russia party and hosted on Capitol Hill by four House Republicans and one Democrat, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL). Every member of the delegation was under United States sanctions. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats wrote to the administration on April 3: “The delegation came onto U.S. soil for one purpose: to advance the Kremlin’s strategic aims—including gathering additional useful intelligence.”

Rep. Luna told the Russian state news agency TASS in July that members of Congress plan to visit Moscow this fall or winter, that administration officials will travel as well, and that an announcement involving Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Marco Rubio may be coming.

The most senior travel already scheduled is FBI Director Kash Patel’s, who is planning a trip to Russia in October, reported by Politico, with the FSB, Russia’s security service, likely hosting. The agenda is undisclosed, and the Kremlin has declined to confirm the trip. The bureau that stopped investigating Russian influence operations is sending its director to meet the Russian security service one month before the election.

Finding 4: There is no longer an agency able to investigate and penalize illegal foreign campaign contributions

Federal law bars foreign nationals from contributing to American elections, and the Federal Election Commission is the agency that enforces it. It entered 2026 with roughly 195 enforcement matters pending and no authority to act on any of them. Nothing moves until the Senate confirms the commissioners nominated in February.

What that means in practice is visible in a complaint the commission received in February. Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy organization, asked the commission to investigate Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini. The complaint alleges he used his daughter Isabela Herrera, whose only prior federal political gift was $20, to move “prohibited foreign contributions in the name of another totaling $3.5 million” into MAGA Inc., the leading pro-Trump super PAC, while he sought clemency in a federal bribery case. President Donald Trump pardoned him in that case on January 16, 2026, a month before the complaint was filed. The center’s Saurav Ghosh said the sequence suggests Herrera Velutini “flouted the law to corruptly seek presidential clemency.”

When we look at the totality of the circumstances as we approach the midterm elections, we can see that the Trump administration and its allies in Congress have invited foreign interference in their favor, removed the guardrails built to stop it, and rewarded those who provide it. What that means for November is that the operations documented here will be at full operational scale from America’s enemies, and hyper-targeted to convince people to vote MAGA or not show up.

Suppressing turnout remains among the most effective tools these operations have, which is why researchers estimate 4.7 million Americans stayed home in 2016 because of ads aimed at them, and it is the tool that fails when people show up anyway.

Beyond November, the work is electing representatives at the city and state level who are prepared to fight back from a serious oppositional posture. The states retain authority over their own elections, and they can ban what the federal government now permits, fund what it has defunded, and prosecute what it declines to. That is achievable and within reach, so long as we arm ourselves with the knowledge and organize well enough to use it.

Let’s get after it.

Your state can stand up its own single payer healthcare system, arrest ICE agents who break the law, and even create New Deal style jobs programs. There are tremendous options available to us at the state level that are largely untapped.

Want to make that all reality and start winning some ground? Well it’s our job at the Existentialist Republic to address exactly the issue this article outlines and then hand people tools to make change because when the federal government and a large fraction of states have abandoned fairness, freedom, and democracy, we need to have a plan.

But just so you know, it’s 10 people like yourself, 10 activists per article who subscribe by clicking the button below, that fund all of this. All 3 free books, all 12 booklets, the 4 pieces of model legislation, and the 20-40 articles per month.

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Lurie attacks affordable housing plan—and undermines his own proposal

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By saying housing money hurts the cops, he may be undermining support for his own Housing Trust Fund.

By Tim Redmond

August 17, 2026 (48hills.org)

Mayor Daniel Lurie may well be undermining his own affordable housing bill by attacking another affordable housing measure—one that doesn’t conflict with his proposal.

The mayor has teamed up with Sup. Myrna Melgar to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that will ultimately set aside as much as $125 million a year for non-market units.

That measure, Prop. C, has widespread support at City Hall.

Lurie’s attack on Prop. I may backfire on his own housing measure

But the mayor is attacking another measure, Prop. I, which would mandate that the existing tax on high-end property sales go where the voters intended—for social housing.

Since that measure, also called Prop. I, passed in 2020, the city has collected hundreds of millions of dollars in transfer taxes on the sale of properties worth more than $10 million. But former Mayor London Breed, who opposed the measure in part because she disliked its sponsor, Sup. Dean Preston, who defeated her hand-picked candidate for supe in D5, refused to allocate the money the way the voters intended.  Lurie has continued that pattern.

The 2026 Prop. I would simply say: The voters wanted that tax money to go for social housing, so that’s what the mayor and the supes have to do.

Lurie’s message, released last week: If we set aside money for affordable housing, we won’t have as much money to pay the cops. The SF Standard headline says it all: “Affordable housing measure would deprive cops of funding, Lurie says.”

In his statement, Lurie said Prop. I would

carve a massive, permanent hole in the city’s general fund — the same fund that pays the firefighters, paramedics, and police officers who respond when San Franciscans call 911.

(He also called Prop. I, the social housing measure, a “slush fund” with no accountability. As Joe Eskenazi points out in Mission Local, that’s really odd—since the Mayor’s Office would control and allocate the money. Is Lurie saying his own office lacks accountability?)

The problem here is that two affordable housing measures are on the ballot. They don’t conflict; if both pass, the mayor will have his trust fund, and he will also have to allocate the high-end transfer tax money to housing, as the voters intended.

That would add up to about $250 million a year for non-market housing, enough over ten years to make a huge dent in the city’s affordability gap. After Trump is gone, if a Democrat who cares about housing is in the White House to add federal matching funds, we could be talking about as many as 20,000 or more social housing units by 2036, enough to bring down prices across the city.

But the voters aren’t going to be paying that close attention to the differences between Prop. C (the trust fund) and Prop. I (the transfer tax for affordable housing). They’re just going to see “affordable housing.” And if the mayor is out there saying affordable housing money takes resources from the cops, he may be killing his own measure.

There’s a more important point here: The $125 million in revenue that comes into the city from Prop. I would not exist if the voters hadn’t believed it would fund affordable housing. A proposal for a “cop tax” went down in flames.

So this isn’t normal General Fund money. It’s money that was, according to the Ballot Handbook, all of the political arguments, and even a Board of Supes resolution, earmarked for affordable housing.

Lurie is now trying to prevent the voters from confirming that this is affordable housing money—so he can keep funding the cops at astonishing levels, even as some of them earn more than $500,000 a year.

That’s the priority of the current mayor—at a time when rents have never been higher and the need for non-market housing has never been greater. And it may backfire on him.

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Tim Redmond

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.

The DSA Strategy to Build Power

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The democratic socialist organization is building something much bigger than an email list.

by David Duhalde August 19, 2026 (Prospect.org)

A group of people rally around a woman in a red DSA shirt.
Credit: Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP

Harold Meyerson’s piece “Why Have Less Than One Percent of American Socialists Joined DSA?” tackles a question that those from supporters to opponents of socialism have pondered. If socialism now has millions of stated adherents, why have very few of them opted to join the most prominent socialist organization? Alternatively, how can groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) mobilize and activate the millions sympathetic to their broad views?

One barrier, for Meyerson, is a “cocoon culture” where activists—DSA or not—begin to believe ideas in their immediate world are more popular than they truly are. Specifically, he fears the advocacy of policies such as defunding the police is alienating potential voters for DSA candidates. He notes, accurately, that many of the most successful democratic socialist politicians, such as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, support police reform but have publicly distanced themselves from the defund movement. While Meyerson doesn’t explicitly say it, one can conclude such a “cocoon culture” may be an explanation for why nearly all socialists have not joined DSA.

For Meyerson, should DSA and leftists aligned with it shed this cocoon culture, they could make bigger inroads in places outside the heavily blue districts where they’re winning. His argument gained some support with Francesca Hong’s defeat in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary. The DSAer and state assemblymember, despite being ahead in the polls for some time, eventually lost as the Democratic establishment coalesced around one candidate, much like how Joe Biden defeated Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary. Sure enough, Hong’s past comments rejecting Thanksgiving got more attention than her popular stance against AI data centers.

In my view, Meyerson is putting too much explanatory weight onto one candidate and her past tweets. At the very least, there is an overemphasis on democratic socialists’ unique takes explaining electoral defeats and seemingly low membership numbers.

It is more plausible that DSA’s membership numbers reflect the death of civic society in the United States much more than the group’s limitations. Perhaps Hong might have eked out a win if she had not been burdened by a history of inflammatory positions, but even if every DSA candidate were moderate-coded with a squeaky-clean social media history, it is highly unlikely that would cause a flood of sign-ups. If that were possible, more moderate social democratic membership organizations that reject DSA’s radicalism would be growing explosively, and they aren’t. On the contrary, the fact that DSA is full of outspoken radicals might be the reason it is as large as it is.

As Meyerson notes, DSA just hit 120,000 members. That makes it the largest socialist group in U.S. history, though without adjusting for population. Indeed, that figure is more impressive than it sounds, because DSA—almost uniquely among the current crop of nonprofit membership organizations, as well as the Democratic Party—requires members to pay dues, unless you apply for a waiver.

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Many other peer activist organizations allow people merely to sign up with an email and get a de facto lifetime membership. Unlike the member-funded DSA, many of those groups rely on big donors and foundations to sustain the financial health of the group. DSA, for obvious reasons, can have no truck with such funding tactics targeting the wealthy.

DSA almost certainly could have a million or more “members” even without rich backers if it just asked people to sign up with emails and never worry about renewal. But that’s not what DSA is building. It is attempting something much more difficult and ambitious: It is building a democratic model of political self-organization, for good and ill.

Danish sociologist Fabian Holt chronicled this energy rebuilding civic society in his new book, Organize or Burn (which I discussed on a recent Left Anchor podcast), which covers New York City DSA’s successful effort to pass environmental legislation at the state level in 2023. Holt studied the New York political scene and observed that young DSA activists were simply reviving the social function that party machines and other political actors have abandoned. This is a tremendous challenge in the age of smartphones and social media, but conversely, precisely because of our rotted civic society, organizations that can really build punch far above their weight. DSA is making the old new again—with policy and election wins to show for it.

While Holt is sympathetic to DSA, CNN commentator and erstwhile leftist Van Jones is not. But he agreed with Holt inasmuch as DSA’s strength is its social culture that builds community. Last June, he posted:

The DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) can beat moderates in a growing number of blue strongholds. Why? Because the DSA has patiently built an army of on-the-ground organizers—who go to meetings, help each other, study together and THEN work to turn out voters on Election Day. That army grows every day—election or no election. Their investment in real people grows (and compounds) with each election cycle. The DSA has a bigger army, every time, win or lose.

This culture change, Jones notes, cannot happen overnight.

We even have an example of moderation failing to attract a mass membership in DSA’s own history. As Meyerson notes: “DSA, which had just 6,000 or so members when [Sanders’s first presidential] campaign began, didn’t yet exist as a political force; it was his campaign that effectively rebirthed the organization.” That old DSA was much closer to the politics of Sanders today. But now a more radical version is 20 times larger.

One might respond that conditions are more favorable for socialism today. That’s true. But we have not seen groups like Our Revolution, founded in Sanders’s image along traditional nonprofit lines, outorganize DSA, not by a long shot. It isn’t getting as much press, or achieving mass membership either—certainly not by the dues-only standards.

People are joining DSA and voting for its candidates because they see it winning, an honest force for change, and standing up to a Democratic establishment that has failed to defeat Donald Trump twice. Electing radicals like Hong with a history of saying what they really think, even if that might be unpopular or unworkable, is a key part of its credibility, for good and ill. A movement whose leaders are perfectly airbrushed and poll-tested will sound phony to a cynical voting public and struggle to attract attention in a cacophonous media environment.

And on balance, it’s working. Hong’s loss aside, DSA looks to be sending nearly half a dozen comrades to Congress next year—many more than the Socialist Party or older versions of DSA ever did. That demonstrates mass support, dues-paying or not, from the millions of voters in this country who identify with democratic socialism.

Why the Prospect Deserves To Exist 

We do things differently at the Prospect. We haven’t put up a paywall—we’re free for all readers regardless of their ability to pay—and we don’t run programmatic advertising. 

Why? We believe that quality journalism should be available to everyone, even if they cannot afford a monthly subscription. 

We believe that we shouldn’t compromise our readers’ privacy and security by running programmatic ads to make a quick buck. 

Everything we’re doing now and in the future at the Prospect centers around you, our readers. From the stories we write to the business model we use, we place you at the center of all our decision making. 

To stay true to our values, we need you to support us. If you believe in our journalism and our independence, make a donation today. 

David Dayen

David Dayen
Executive Editor

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David Duhalde

David Duhalde is a democratic socialist organizer who has held positions in both the Democratic Socialists of America and its sister nonprofit, the DSA Fund. More by David Duhalde

Fake Poll Scandal Has All the Earmarks of a Pump-and-Dump Scheme

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If you wanted to rig political prediction markets, this is exactly how you would do it.

David Dayenby David Dayen August 19, 2026 (Prospect.org)

Nithya Raman speaks at an election night party
Nithya Raman speaks at an election night party in June 2022. Credit: John McCoy/AP Photo

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spent last week touting a poll released on Thursday from an unknown company called Median Strategies showing her leading challenger Nithya Raman in her re-election campaign by double digits and winning 85 percent of third-place finisher Spencer Pratt’s voters. The poll was a rare bit of good news for Bass after a tough summer that featured a statistical rise in homelessness and an adviser going to work for a reviled logistics firm responsible for a disastrous warehouse fire in Boyle Heights.

The only problem with the poll is that it was fake.

More from David Dayen

Persistent Los Angeles Times reporter Noah Goldberg got Median Strategies to admit that the Bass-Raman poll was bogus and “should not be treated as genuine polling data.” Indeed, all three Median Strategies polls, including one showing Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong up in her primary by 23 points (she lost) and another showing Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo up in his general-election campaign by five, were not backed up by any numbers.

On its website, Median Strategies would only say that it was engaged in a “short-term social experiment” to see how polling data could “spread through the political information ecosystem.” But the financial disclosure that Median added was much more interesting. It insisted that nobody involved with the project received any “financial benefit” from the scheme, and it explicitly cited prediction markets.

“No individual involved held or traded any position in an election prediction market, betting market, or other financial instrument tied to the races covered by Median Strategies. The project was not undertaken for financial gain or to influence the value of any financial or prediction-market position,” the note reads. Median Strategies could not be reached for comment.

Read: The CFTC’s word games legalizing gambling

Of course, there’s no reason to believe an entity whose only public action involves lying. Because there is literally no other motivation to introduce fake polling into the political bloodstream other than to game a prediction market. And while this one may not have made any money, the point may simply have been to offer a road map to any political actor using invented information to make money from elections.

In fact, the strategy was not even particularly innovative. It has been used for decades, primarily in thinly traded “penny stock” markets, where information of any kind is highly sought. The term of art is a “pump-and-dump” scheme.

Here’s the short version: A promoter touts some inside information about the stock, either by directly cold-calling prospective investors, sending voluminous email spam, dropping it into internet forums or social media, or publishing a fake press release or misleading “investment research.” The information isn’t true, but if it works it generates enough interest to get movement on the stock, which the promoter has already purchased. Having bought low, the promoter sells high and makes off with the profits, and as the scheme collapses when the truth is revealed, all the investors who piled in lose their shirts.

An election prediction market has the same character as a stock. The markets are too new and too numerous to be heavily traded, and in head-to-head matchups, new developments can cause the market to tilt in favor of one candidate. The poll takes the place of the inside information, though you could imagine other things, like fake news about fundraising data or outside spending, erroneous reports about a misstep on the campaign trail, or whatever, can move numbers.

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The Bass poll worked perfectly for this purpose. The California Post, Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to penetrate the Golden State with right-leaning news, enthusiastically ran with the poll because of the inference that Pratt voters were kingmakers. (That web URL is still live on the California Post website, but it’s been gutted and replaced with a story about Bass demanding legal action.)

In a classic pump-and-dump, one story like that is all it takes for a market to move. The perpetrators already have their investment and can sit back, watch it rise, and sell when they want. There are resemblances between that and what happened in L.A. mayoral markets around the time of the poll release.

The Post story was published on August 13 at 10:53 p.m. Eastern time. On prediction market Kalshi, a contract on Bass to win the mayor’s race was trading at 64.3 cents on the dollar before the poll drop and 65.9 cents shortly thereafter, peaking at 67.2 cents before falling once the polling fiasco was revealed. The equivalent contract on Polymarket, a Kalshi competitor, was even more pronounced. The market was hovering at 61 cents the day before the poll release. You can see some action around that time, including one $6,000 bet on Bass. The market for Bass peaked on August 17 at 5:30 a.m., before the L.A. Times exposure, at 70 cents.

The Associated Press cited 20 separate Bass trades on Polymarket within 15 minutes of Median Strategies releasing their fake poll. These can be viewed at the market site.

A smoking gun of a whale trade on Bass followed by a sell-off is hard to discern, but on prediction markets, where everything is anonymous and unlimited new traders can be conjured up, that can be hard to uncover. If nothing else, Median Strategies proved the concept that a pump-and-dump scheme is easily transferrable to election prediction markets, which have the same mix of thin trading, high emotion, and easily led traders as penny stocks. That’s valuable information for would-be scam artists.

“I think this falls into the category of hard to prove but very hard to think it’s anything else,” said Corey Frayer, a former financial regulatory staffer in Congress now with the Consumer Federation of America.

Pump-and-dump schemes, incidentally, are securities fraud, and those caught setting them up can get prison time. Jordan Belfort, the famed Wolf of Wall Street, was convicted for running pump-and-dump schemes. But those cases, rooted in investor protection, are typically enforced out of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Prediction markets have been adopted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has a market integrity mandate.

Certainly, manipulating markets represents a threat to market integrity. But that slight change in focus, the generally outgunned nature of the CFTC, and its current role as an evangelist and indeed the rescuer of prediction markets from state regulation put it in a bad position to uncover and refer fraud of this nature for prosecution. Nearly all the prediction market manipulation we have heard about is a result of self-regulation from the companies, which could be selective.

What the Median Strategies saga reveals is the ease with which pump-and-dump schemes can be carried out in election markets. That is supposed to be an acceptable price to pay for learning the future. But it’s becoming very clear that, as applied to elections, prediction markets don’t know a damn thing and are of no utility. Last night’s Florida Senate race is a good example; Democrat Angie Nixon never rose above 11 cents on Kalshi until she won and paid out $1. One reason? There weren’t any polls.

Why the Prospect Deserves To Exist 

We do things differently at the Prospect. We haven’t put up a paywall—we’re free for all readers regardless of their ability to pay—and we don’t run programmatic advertising. 

Why? We believe that quality journalism should be available to everyone, even if they cannot afford a monthly subscription. 

We believe that we shouldn’t compromise our readers’ privacy and security by running programmatic ads to make a quick buck. 

Everything we’re doing now and in the future at the Prospect centers around you, our readers. From the stories we write to the business model we use, we place you at the center of all our decision making. 

To stay true to our values, we need you to support us. If you believe in our journalism and our independence, make a donation today. 

David Dayen

David Dayen
Executive Editor

Donate Now

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July 10, 2026

This Is the Worst Argument for Prediction Markets

April 27, 2026

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April 14, 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

Democratic Socialism: Myth Vs. Fact

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Published: August 19, 2026 (TheOnion.com)

Candidates from the left’s Democratic Socialists of America party have been gaining momentum around the country in primaries leading up to the midterms. The Onion examines the common myths and facts surrounding the DSA.

MYTH: Socialist ideas have never worked in the real world.

FACT: No political theory has ever worked in real life.

MYTH: The Soviet Union had democratic socialism.

FACT: The Soviet Union had a dog who went to space.

MYTH: The government will take away your money and give it to the poor.

FACT: You are the poor.

MYTH: The workers of the world must unite and seize the means of production from the ruling class by force if necessary.

FACT: The workers of the world should politely ask if they can have Labor Day off this year.

MYTH: DSA policies like universal healthcare would help millions of Americans.

FACT: Israel has the right to defend itself.