The USS Abraham Lincoln

Disturbing anonymous text messages revealed the alleged lack of food aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as lawmakers demanded answers about conditions on the ship, which has reportedly seen sailors trying to jump overboard during a more than eight-month-long deployment.

Bleak conditions aboard the aircraft carrier have reportedly prompted desperate sailors to try to leap into the sea, and text messages from those aboard have shed new light on how gross things have become, according to a report by Meidas Touch’s Aaron Parnas.

More than 5,000 sailors and Marines set sail from San Diego on the Lincoln on Nov. 21, but the deployment — originally set to end in May — has been extended as the Iran war continues.

“This deployment is the worst one and I pray no other boat goes through the same,” one sailor wrote to a relative in a message shared with the outlet.

“Even people that have been deployed a hundred times claim this one to be the worst and believe it can get worse than this. The Navy does not care. The mission will always come first.”

“Haven’t had milk in 3 months,” the sailor said in another text.

“It takes so long for supplies to arrive, nothing fresh is included,” the sailor explained in another message.

“So, we haven’t had anything fresh except meat caused its freezed [sic],” they wrote. “Sometimes it gets here rotten.”

The messages come as lawmakers have begun demanding answers about reports of clogged toilets, mold or mildew in the showers, a lack of supplies and problems with the food supply.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao Wednesday, asking for details on the deployment and how reported problems including lack of “hygiene products, mold, broken toilets or laundry facilities, inadequate water supplies, or other deteriorating living conditions” are being addressed:

"There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months. These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force, particularly as this Administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations."

About 200 relatives turned out for a meeting with Navy officials last week, begging for help for their loved ones, MS NOW reported. One parent said that during that meeting, their sailor had told them they thought they would die on the ship, according to the outlet. Multiple families have reported similar instances, according to Navy Times.

The Navy has denied that any of the sailors are suicidal. “The health and well-being of every Sailor aboard Abraham Lincoln is a priority,” it said in a statement. “Based on information available to the command, we have not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship. We take every service member’s well-being seriously and have religious, medical and mental health professionals available to assess and address concerns as they arise,” the Navy said.

“Lincoln is providing a comprehensive support network, including onboard deployment-resilience counselors, chaplains, Fleet and Family Support Center services, Military OneSource, and medical professionals.”

The post Desperate Texts From USS Abraham Lincoln Sailors Reveal They’re Served Rotten Food: ‘Navy Does Not Care’ first appeared on Mediaite.

 

Iran Has Changed the Question by Vijay Prashad

For more than three decades, the United States has treated Middle Eastern diplomacy as an exercise in writing the terms for others. Iran’s emerging regional strategy is challenging that privilege. The immediate evidence is emerging in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and Oman are negotiating an arrangement under which Tehran could oversee vessels entering the Gulf while Muscat manages outbound traffic. The proposal remains unsettled, but it represents something larger than a maritime agreement: Iran is attempting to move the diplomatic agenda away from the narrow question of its nuclear compliance and towards the wider architecture of Gulf security.

Since the end of the Cold War, US diplomacy in the Middle East has often begun with a conclusion: Washington defines the crisis, identifies the acceptable parties, and sets the boundaries of the eventual settlement. Negotiation then becomes less a discussion over the political order than a process through which weaker states are asked to accept it. The agreements produced under this system were not literally surrender documents. Yet they frequently carried the political logic of surrender: one side retained the power to decide what counted as compliance, while the other was required to prove its fitness for economic relief, political recognition or limited self-rule.

Iraq and Palestine

Iraq was the starkest example. After the 1991 Gulf War, comprehensive sanctions devastated an already battered society. The United Nations’ Oil-for-Food Programme, established by Security Council Resolution 986 in 1995, permitted Iraq to sell limited quantities of oil while the proceeds passed through a UN-controlled escrow system to pay for humanitarian goods. It was presented as relief, but its deeper message was unmistakable: Iraq could access its own principal resource only within a structure designed and supervised from outside. Sovereignty had become conditional and punishment – including punctual bombardment by the United States – became commonplace.

The Oslo process operated differently, but it reflected a similar imbalance. The 1993 Declaration of Principles was negotiated directly by Israelis and Palestinians through a Norwegian channel and signed in Washington. It brought mutual recognition and created Palestinian interim institutions, but the arrangement postponed the decisive questions (statehood, borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements) while leaving the occupying party in control of territory and facts on the ground. Washington sponsored a ‘peace process’ without correcting the asymmetry that made a just peace so elusive. Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank became structurally permanent.

In both cases, the United States and the institutions it dominated, exercised a powerful privilege: they determined the question everyone else was required to answer.

Iran

With Iran, that question has for more than two decades been the nuclear weapons file. Concern did not begin in 2005 (the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chronology traces intensive engagement to 2002 and 2003) but the confrontation hardened after 2005, as Iran resumed nuclear energy related uranium-conversion activity and the dispute moved toward the UN Security Council. Iran’s leadership said that it was uninterested in nuclear weapons but was ignored.

From then on, almost every discussion of Iran was organised around enrichment levels, centrifuges, inspections, breakout time, and sanctions relief. The framing of Iran’s nuclear energy programme as a nuclear proliferation issue was politically convenient for Washington. It reduced a broad struggle over Israel’s nuclear weapons programme, US military bases, sanctions, and maritime control to a test of Iranian compliance. The United States could maintain an enormous military footprint across the Gulf while presenting Iran’s capabilities as the singular source of instability.

Iran is now attempting to invert that debate. Through diplomacy involving Oman, Pakistan, and other regional states, Tehran’s position is that the nuclear issue cannot be separated from the architecture of regional security. The question is no longer simply what limits Iran will accept, but it is also what limits should apply to the military presence and coercive power of the United States and its allies.

This is why the issue of US bases in the Gulf matters. 

For Washington, those installations are infrastructure that protects allies, energy supplies, and navigation. From Tehran’s perspective, they are the forward positions of a power capable of attacking Iran while remaining insulated from retaliation at home. Iran’s argument is that no durable settlement can demand permanent restraint from Tehran while treating the military posture of the United States in West Asia as beyond negotiation.

The emerging discussion over the Strait of Hormuz makes this reversal concrete. Iran and Oman have reported progress on a new arrangement for maritime traffic through the waterway. According to accounts of the proposal, Iran would oversee inbound traffic to the Gulf and Oman the outbound lane, with some form of payment for security or environmental services still under dispute. The plan is not final, and Washington opposes any arrangement that compromises free passage or gives Tehran control over its own territorial waters. Even so, the political significance of this arrangement that is being discussed is considerable.

For decades, the United States has long cast itself as the ultimate guarantor of Gulf navigation. The Iran-Oman talks suggest an alternative principle: the states that border a strategic waterway can construct its operating order themselves. That possibility also exposes a contradiction in sanctions policy. If commercial vessels must enter the Gulf through a lane administered by Iran, shipowners, insurers, and banks will need to know whether required Iranian services, data systems or fees trigger US restrictions. Merely sailing through Iranian territorial waters would not automatically violate every US sanction.

The legal problem would arise not from passage alone, but from payments to Iranian entities, the use of sanctioned service providers, insurance exposure, and the processing of vessel data through an Iranian-administered mechanism. 

But a functioning Iranian-administered system could force Washington to issue licenses, tolerate narrowly defined transactions or risk obstructing the commerce it says it is protecting. Sanctions would no longer be an instrument applied in a political vacuum; they would collide with the practical requirements of maritime passage. What this means for the broader US sanctions policy will become clearer only afterwards for insurers and shipping companies.

The wider regional picture reinforces Iran’s argument. 

The 2023 reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China after earlier talks hosted by Iraq and Oman, restored diplomatic relations between the Gulf’s two main rivals. It did not settle their competition or erase their conflicts. But it demonstrated that de-escalation could be produced by regional bargaining and non-Western mediation (in this case, substantially, by China) rather than a US bombing campaign.

Pakistan’s mediation and the growing security dialogue among Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan point in the same direction, although they should not be mistaken for an Iranian-led bloc. These states have their own interests and, at times, deep suspicions of Tehran. Their significance lies elsewhere: regional governments are experimenting with overlapping arrangements in which Washington is no longer the sole convenor, guarantor, or author. 

US military action has repeatedly promised deterrence while producing escalation, displacement, and new grievances. Bombardment can destroy facilities and commanders, but it cannot create a legitimate regional order. Nor can a system be stable when one state (Israel) has undeclared nuclear weapons, continues to occupy a people and conduct a genocide against them (the Palestinians), and feels emboldened to attack its neighbours (Lebanon, Iran, Syria) whenever it wishes.

The real questions

The real challenge Iran has placed before Washington is therefore conceptual. Who defines the agenda? Who decides which weapons, bases, and alliances are destabilizing? Who controls the waterways through which the region’s wealth passes? And must every settlement be guaranteed from outside, or can regional powers (with all their rivalries) build enforceable arrangements among themselves?

The next Middle Eastern settlement will not be durable if it resembles a surrender document. It will have to address nuclear restraint, foreign military deployments, maritime access, sanctions, missiles, and mutual non-aggression as parts of one security problem. Iran’s achievement is not that it has solved that problem. It is that, after decades of being forced to answer Washington’s question, it has compelled the region to consider a different one. The issue is no longer only what Iran must surrender. It is what every power (including the United States) must be prepared to negotiate.

-Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His most recent book (with Grieve Chelwa) is How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa (from Inkani Books).

Iran Has Changed the Question

 Vijay Prashad

Teachers

Stepping out of our normal lane for a minute, but we're on the eve of (or already into) the first week of school, so this feels worth saying. Public schools, and the people who make them run, are both a security blanket and a safety net for our communities. They're just there, every day, waiting to catch our kids when they need them. For most kids, most days, it's pretty simple. They go to school. They learn. They eat lunch. They see their friends. They come home. But when it's not simple, there's an entire network of people waiting.

When a child is hungry, somebody feeds them.

When they can't see the board, somebody notices.

When they show up without a coat, somebody starts looking for one.

When home isn't safe, somebody has to figure out what happens next.

When a child has a disability, people build supports around them.

When they're grieving, scared, homeless, angry, sick, struggling...or simply need an adult to notice that something isn't right...somebody at school usually does.

And then tomorrow morning, the bus comes back again.

We spend an enormous amount of time arguing
about public schools: test scores, curriculum, discipline, funding, politics, phones, books and a hundred other things.

Those conversations matter. Public schools aren't perfect. Nobody who actually works in one would tell you they are.

But sometimes all that noise obscures something pretty remarkable:

Every weekday morning, communities across America open their doors and essentially say, "Send us your children. We'll take care of them today."

And millions of families build their lives around the assumption that those doors will open.

Before daylight, a bus driver starts a route. A cafeteria worker prepares breakfast. A custodian opens a building. A teacher prepares a lesson. An assistant gets ready to help a child who needs them. A nurse prepares for whatever walks through the door. A counselor gets ready to listen.

And a principal is about to discover a problem at 7:42 that nobody on Earth knew existed at 7:41.

Most of it isn't glamorous. Most of it never makes the news.

Bring us the kids.

The ones who read three grade levels ahead and the ones who can't read yet.

The ones who have everything and the ones who show up with almost nothing.

The easy ones and the ones who will test every ounce of patience we've got.

Bring them all.

We'll teach them. We'll feed them. We'll keep them safe.

We'll make mistakes.

We'll try again tomorrow.

And we'll keep the doors open.

So as another school year begins, maybe this isn't the week for arguing about public schools. There will be plenty of time for that. Maybe this is just the week to notice them.

Notice the yellow buses rolling before sunrise. Notice the lights coming on in buildings all over your community. Notice the people standing at the doors waiting for children who aren't even their own.

Tomorrow morning, millions of families will send the people they love most through those doors...and thousands upon thousands of people will be there waiting for them. That's a pretty extraordinary promise for a community to make.

-Public School Apologist

What do we do best as teachers? by Glen Brown

We inspire others. We influence and move people to action. We take a person’s potentiality and make it an actuality. We offer our help to others because of our compassion and our empathy, because of our humility and our dignity. We communicate truths because of our integrity. We never give up because of our moral responsibility towards one another and the importance of trust among individuals. We fight against all injustices. We understand; we discuss; we mediate, and we act. We do what is right and model our behavior for others. We hold ourselves accountable for what we do and what we believe is true. We set the example.

What are we as teachers? We are leaders, consultants, diagnosticians and evaluators; we are life-long learners; we are architects for the experiences of others. We are what we want to see in others: our idealism, our indomitable spirit, our commitment to human rights and to the creation of a better society. We are responsible, intrepid and just. We are one of last bastions of hope for a society driven by amoral envy, indifferent greed and partisan politics.

We are appalled by hypocrisy and lies, by incompetence, irresponsibility and cronyism. We are appalled by intentional faulty logic and the unethical scapegoating of others, by arrogance and self-interest, by prejudice and the injustices done to others. We are appalled by irrationality, indifference, and authoritarianism; therefore, we must stay united and fight not only for the rights of others but for our teaching profession. 

-Glen Brown

I taught full time for 46 years and loved it: 35 years in public schools (29 in high school and 6 in junior high), plus 11 years in a Catholic University and part time at night in a junior college for many years while working full time as a teacher.

 

"One of the biggest blind spots in Public Health is the widespread recommendation for mosquito spraying (adulticiding)" -Jean-Marie Kauth

 

Part of the explanation lies, I believe, in the siloing of Infectious Disease apart from Environmental Health. Already, Environmental Health is given short shrift. But I find astonishing the simplistic, almost magical thinking that goes into decisions to spray dangerous pesticides for mosquitos across whole cities to reduce levels of infectious disease, while ignoring the obvious significant risks of impacts like cancer, autism, ADHD, lower IQs, birth defects, and other effects, particularly in children.

This is a lesson I have learned in the worst way possible – from personal experience.

We have every reason to believe that mosquito spraying in Warrenville killed our daughter Katherine, who died in 2002 at age eight after battling leukemia for four years. The chemicals used are extremely toxic – linked not only to cancer but to autism, ADHD, lower IQs, and other neurocognitive problems.

This has not really been up for debate since 2012, when the American Academy of Pediatrics put out their Statement on Pesticides. We know we are causing harm when we spray, particularly to young children and babies in utero – all to maybe prevent a few cases of West Nile Virus, most of which will not be fatal. We are counting cases of West Nile. We are not counting the deaths and disabilities that abundant evidence shows these ubiquitous chemicals have been causing for decades.

Be sure to call your City and find out if they spray for mosquitoes or treat lawns with toxic chemicals. I am always happy to come help those in the Chicago region with my credentials and PowerPoint if you can get a dozen or so like-minded residents to register their concern. 

I am on my City’s Environmental Advisory Commission (WEAC), and even I don’t always hear about initiatives to spray. Unelected mosquito abatement districts can wield a great deal of power, and they, as well as county health departments, are often influenced by those selling the pesticides. For now, my City’s policy is to not spray or treat lawns, ever since I went before them in tears when I realized to my horror that my children, one with cancer, had been exposed.

We have known at least since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out in 1962 how dangerous exposures like this are. But I suppose it feels easier to just wish away the invisible, often delayed harms, mostly in order to quiet complaints about nuisance mosquitoes.

There is no doubt there will be increases in mosquitoes – as well as ticks – with climate change. But I have read at least four articles about this in just the last week, and they all mentioned increasing the use of pesticides, even though this is a vicious cycle. I can’t help but wonder about the influence of the pesticide industry, just like so many of the corporations destroying human health and polluting public discourse for profits in the US and globally.

Given the injunction in Medicine and Public Health to first, do no harm, such exposures should never occur involuntarily, particularly at the high levels we experienced first in an apartment, and then in our City.

What can you do to protect your family? The first and best thing to do is focus on mosquito and tick prevention. If you need to use some other remedy, make it the least impactful. Here are some suggestions, listed from least to most risky.

-Empty bird baths and other receptacles that collect water – mosquitoes only need a few tablespoons and a few days to make babies.

-Consider promoting bird, bat, and toad populations – a healthy ecology can naturally reduce mosquito populations.

-Cover up to avoid mosquitoes and ticks, and avoid the outdoors at dawn and dusk, when mosquitoes are most active.

-Use larvicides like Bacillus thuringiensis for standing bodies of water like detention ponds.

-Try repellents with natural plant extracts like citronella and lemon eucalyptus.

-Some populations, like older people who are particularly susceptible to West Nile, may want to consider use of DEET.

Pesticides like organophosphates (chlorpyrifos, MosquitoMaster, other names) and pyrethroids (pyrethroids, Sumithrin, Prallethrin, other names) should almost never be used except in cases of real Public Health emergency. Just because applicators say they are using “ultra-low volumes” does not mean you will not experience harm – our whole family was made sick. And keep in mind that chemicals like piperonyl butoxide, which are not labeled as active ingredients, are still toxic.

Never have private spraying done, and if your neighbor hires pesticide applicators, you have the right in many states to register for advance notice from the applicators.

For more help in protecting your family from environmental hazards, see the Toolkit for my forthcoming Poisoning Our Children as well as the highly recommended Midwest Grows Green (https://midwestgrowsgreen.org/what-you-can-do/all-resources/) and the EPA’s Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit toolkit (https://wspehsu.ucsf.edu/curriculum-tools/pediatric-environmental-health-toolkit/). I also highly recommend Pesticide Action Network at https://www.panna.org/resources/ and the Children’s Environmental Health Network at https://cehn.org/

The book I have worked towards for more than 20 years, Poisoning Our Children, is now available for pre-order at https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/54124/poisoning-our-children?srsltid=AfmBOoom9b8VL_44YjXIzfJkCpIVzRaVnN1lcpFkbURbYYGufR4-avTi#book__reviews

Pre-orders are hugely important, as they affect whether bookstores stock the book, how algorithms surface it, and how seriously publishers take it. Your support matters more than you know. All author proceeds will be donated to Environmental Health non-profits.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Jean-Marie Kauth

 

Iran Keeps Hormuz Shut Pending U.S. Concessions/Trump Orders Cuts to Childhood Vaccine Schedule

 

Iran Keeps Hormuz Shut Pending U.S. Concessions

Iranian officials said Monday Tehran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until Washington agrees to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, end economic sanctions, release Iran’s frozen assets, and pay compensation for damage caused by the war. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei claimed that Iran’s talks with Oman were focused on finding a safe shipping route, but that this was separate from reopening the strait. Only six vessels transited the strait on Monday, down from a 10-day average of about 11 and far below the 130 to 140 ships that passed through daily before the war, according to Kpler data.

President Donald Trump responded to Iran’s new demands for reparations by saying he wants compensation for the Americans Iran has killed and wounded, as well as for “the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.” In the post, Trump claimed he wants compensation from Iran for the October 2000 bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole at a Yemeni port. The FBI attributes the attack, which killed 17 sailors, to al-Qaeda, though a federal judge ruled in 2015 that Iran was liable for helping build the network behind the attack. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s crude oil stockpile fell below 300 million barrels last week, the lowest level since 1983.

Trump Orders Cuts to Childhood Vaccine Schedule

Trump signed an executive order Monday that would—if found legal—cut the number of diseases American children are recommended to be vaccinated against from 18 to 11 and call for the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be split into three separate shots. No single-disease measles, mumps, or rubella vaccines are licensed in the U.S. The 11 universally recommended immunizations cover measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Hib, pneumococcal disease, HPV, and chickenpox, while vaccines for hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, the flu, and COVID-19 shift to case-by-case “shared clinical decision-making” between doctors and parents. Other immunizations, including RSV antibodies and the dengue vaccine, are now recommended only for high-risk groups. The order gives a Department of Health and Human Services task force 90 days to present plans for making single-disease measles, mumps, and rubella shots available. A White House official said the downgraded shots remain recommendations that the administration assumes insurers will continue to cover.

The order revives a reduction in the vaccine schedule that HHS attempted to put in place in January but a federal judge blocked in March, and its legal force is unclear: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues vaccine recommendations on the advice of its expert panel, and states set school-entry requirements. The CDC says no published evidence shows any benefit to splitting the combined vaccine, in use since 1971, and that doing so would mean six injections instead of two. Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump tied vaccines to rising autism diagnoses and said—without evidence—that the combined MMR shot could be “quite lethal.” The CDC largely attributes the rise in autism diagnoses to broader diagnostic criteria and screening, and dozens of studies have failed to find a link between vaccines and autism.   -The Morning Dispatch

 

"Their success will determine the fate of our democracy"

Democrats should not wait until Labor Day, the traditional kickoff of the midterm campaign, to pivot and begin sprinting toward November. No one who genuinely cares about the fate of democracy should be kvetching about primary polling (which partisans trolling for donor dollars, but not real voters, obsessively focus upon) or relitigating the relative electability of primary opponents after primaries are decided. 

(Kudos to Rep. Haley Stevens for fully embracing Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in recognition of the stakes.) Fortunately, a batch of insightful Democrats have stepped forward to offer a pathway to win decisively on a populist economic message with broad-based appeal. Leading the way, Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico delivered a speech last week that adeptly framed the argument for Democrats:

"For fifty years, billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians have been stealing from the American people. Stealing the wealth we created. With their bribes, their bailouts, and their billionaire tax breaks. This 'affordability crisis' isn’t something that happened in the last five years. This affordability crisis has been fifty years in the making. Since the late 1970s, mega donors and corporate special interests have been buying politicians in both political parties, and then those politicians turned around and rigged this economy to benefit their wealthy donors at our expense. We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis."

Pushing back on the notion that Democrats despise capitalism, Talarico makes the case that the far right has destroyed free markets. Corruption, tariffs, and dark money have influenced regulatory favors and tax giveaways, and massive corporate consolidation are the antithesis of a competitive free market that would create wealth for a wide cross-section of Americans.

“[T]he idea behind capitalism was simple and revolutionary: people should get fairly compensated for their labor. We should get paid for our work. But that’s not what we have right now,” he argued. “You can’t tell me the market is working as it should when billionaires are becoming trillionaires — while the people who do all the work can’t afford the basics.” He added, “Adam Smith is rolling over in his grave. This is not capitalism; this is crony capitalism.”

Talarico’s proposed agenda, dubbed the New American Dream, includes raising the minimum wage, expanding overtime, repealing tax cuts for the super-rich, protecting labor organizing, and investing in college and vocational education. He also includes items that genuine fiscal conservatives used to favor — such as reducing the national debt (“closing tax loopholes, cracking down on tax cheats, and ending forever wars that send billions of our tax dollars overseas”) and removing red tape that impedes housing construction.

Talarico’s pro-worker proposals include universal childcare and paid family leave, an expanded child tax credit, and “cracking down on the data centers jacking up our utility bills and using up our water — and preventing new ones from being built unless they meet our demands.” Positions such as these, which legacy media would characterize as “progressive,” and MAGA operatives would denounce as “socialism,” are embraced by super-majorities of Americans. Here is where Talarico adeptly turns MAGA hacks’ rhetoric against them:

"They’re going to claim this new dream is radical. They’re going to claim it’s extreme. They’re going to claim we’re socialists, or communists, or whatever sounds scariest in a headline. And we’ll say: Is that the best you can do? These are the same old scare tactics. The same old politics of the past. The names they’ll call us only reveal how small their dreams are. The people at the top want this to be a contest of names because they know they’ll lose a contest of ideas."

Pete Buttigieg, speaking at a unity rally in Michigan on Friday, made a similar argument in the context of the Michigan Senate race: "[W]e have Abdul El-Sayed, who insists that money in politics has gone too far. And we have him running against Mike Rogers, who insists on being part of the problem. We have one candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, who wants to expand affordable health care and keep more money in your pocket. And we have another candidate, Mike Rogers, who literally voted against the Affordable Care Act. And you better believe he will cut health care one more time if you give him a chance in the United States Senate."

Cranky Democratic establishment-types will find it hard to find substantive differences between bogeyman El-Sayed and their favorites such as Talarico and Buttigieg. In truth, their real objection is hearing their corporate donors fingered for rigging the economy.

In a parallel vein, Democratic Senators Chris Murphy (CT), Adam Schiff (CA), Tina Smith (MN), and Elizabeth Warren (MA) put out a memo in January arguing Democrats should not only advance populist economic measures but should sound serious about “tak[ing] on corporate power and the billionaires who are making it impossible for the American people to provide for themselves and their families.” When Democrats don’t mince words and instead underscore realities such as “big corporations get massive tax breaks and then turn around and lay off American workers,” voters take them seriously.

Citing a raft of polling, the Democratic senators urged their colleagues to sharpen the message and point directly at the culprits. Ordinary voters “do not want insurance companies denying treatments prescribed by doctors, or giant corporations driving small neighborhood shops out of business,” they explain. Regardless of party, voters deeply resent it when “wealthy people and big corporations get away with breaking the law — all while Trump is giving special treatment to his friends, enriching his own family, and pardoning corporate wrongdoing all the time.”

As the senators put it, the “backlash” to this outrageously corrupt presidency is “laying the foundation for a large popular majority to wrestle government back from the billionaires and corporations and give the power back to working people.” Democrats can reap the benefits if they embrace “a platform rooted in true economic populism.”

That’s exactly what El-Sayed and other Democrats in Michigan did at their unity rally. Skewering Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), El-Sayed framed the election as a choice between an advocate for ordinary voters and an oligarch-serving MAGA foot soldier, wisecracking that Rogers’s last name is “very fitting for him… [‘c]ause that’s his answer every time a corporation or Donald Trump tells him to do something”:

“Mike, we need you to put a data center in the backyard.” — “Roger!” “Mike, we need you to hike their prescription drug prices.” — “Roger!” “Mike, we need you to rubber-stamp this war we shouldn’t be fighting.” — “Roger!”

Democrats should follow the unity message from Michigan and flatly repudiate self-absorbed voices in their ranks still waging internecine battles. Launching a war now against Democratic Socialists [!] shows a jaw-dropping lack of perspective, suggests they care more about soothing their corporate donors’ bruised feelings than saving democracy, and inevitably amplifies Trump’s hysterical “socialist” smear against Democrats.

In sum, to win decisively, Democrats must avoid distractions and challenge the billionaire class’s pet policies and oligarchs who have rigged the system against the interests of ordinary workers. Their success will determine the fate of our democracy.

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The Week Ahead -Joyce Vance

 

The Week Ahead: We began the week at a key moment on the critical issue of our ability to exercise our right to vote, which once again comes to the Supreme Court’s shadow docket. Trump is trying to use an executive order to limit who can vote and exert federal control, which the Constitution doesn’t give him, over our elections. Red states are acting like willing lambs heading to the slaughter, and have joined the lawsuit supporting Trump, while blue states oppose him. The Court could rule at any time, and this is an important one; we may see action in it this coming week.

Coffee with the Contrarians: Norm Eisen and I discussed the legal issues that absolutely piled up over the weekend.

Live with Norm Eisen: With so much going on, Norm and I decided to get together for a second time on Monday, so we could discuss DOJ’s decision to dismiss the Reflecting Pool prosecution of former Olympic canoeist Davey Hearn. When he took the case, it didn’t occur to Norm that the case would strike a chord with Americans across the country. We discussed why the Reflecting Pool case has become such a touch point and also discussed three principles for saving a backsliding democracy and what we can all be doing right now.

The $1.776b Slush Fund Isn’t As Dead As Senators Cornyn And Tillis Seem To Be Willing To Believe: Cornyn and Tillis may have folded and voted for Todd Blanche in Committee, but its ridiculous that they believed his Twitter post was enough to put an end to Trump’s slush fund and immunity deal. Make sure you know the facts!

More Blanche BS with Joyce Vance and Katie Phang: This is the deep dive of deep dives. Katie and I go all the way back to the origin of Trump’s slush fund, the lawsuit he filed in Florida, Trump v. IRS, to explain how we got from there to here. We trace the slush fund, the Trump immunity deal, and the arguments against confirming Blanche, although the Senate unfortunately confirmed Blanche in the early morning hours on Saturday, 50-49.

Trump’s Executive Order on Voting: Blue State Attorneys General, and Some Retired Judges, Weigh In: As a follow on to our review of the effort by the Trump administration to justify implementing an executive order that would give the federal government greater control over who can—and can’t—vote on Sunday, we analyzed the legal arguments made by blue states’ attorneys general who are challenging Donald Trump in this piece.

Live with Mary Trump: Mary’s Substack is called The Good in Us.” That really is how she views the world, and I needed a dose of that by midweek.

Erasing January 6: We went in depth to understand a ruling by Judge Amit Mehta in the District of Columbia, where the government moved to dismiss the indictments against insurrectionist January 6 defendants who had already had their sentences commuted. Judge Mehta's opinion is one of the clearest judicial descriptions we've seen of how prosecutorial discretion can be abused, exercised not to pursue justice, but to erase it. That's the Justice Department we'll be watching from here forward. If you missed this one earlier in the week, make time to read it now.

Live with Cait Conley: On Cyber, Elections & Why a Former Special Ops Soldier is Running for Congress: Cait Conley is running for Congress in NY-17, and although the incumbent is Republican (he votes with Trump 100% of the time), she is widely viewed as being in contention. Cait has deep expertise in critical areas involving 21st-century national security concerns. Rather than trying to summarize what she shared with us, take a minute to watch this phenomenal public servant explain issues on the basis of her experience in six tours of duty and time in the White House.

89 Days Until the Midterm Elections: Thursday was 89 days out from the election, a time that is legally significant for every registered voter. Read on to learn why and what you need to make sure you do right now to protect your right to vote.

Five Questions with Adam Gelb, President of the Council on Criminal Justice: Late last month, the bipartisan Council on Criminal Justice released a report on mid-year 2026 crime trends. It contained some interesting results. The organization’s president and CEO, Adam Gelb, joined us to talk about crime, statistics, and what they mean—going beyond politics into what we really need to know.

What Trump’s New Birthright Citizenship Orders Actually Do: The Supreme Court has spoken; birthright citizenship is part of the Constitution. Babies born here, with rare exceptions like one for children born to foreign diplomats, are American citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from issuing a pair of new executive orders on the topic. Read on for an explainer of what they mean and what they do.

Deserving of Chickens: By request, a couple of pictures of the Vance family chickens, and one of me closing out summer.

-Joyce Vance