Good morning and Happy Wednesday! Thanks for being here today.
Yesterday, I awoke to a firestorm on Bluesky, all thanks to a piece The Atlantic had published, clickbaitily titled, “The DSA Is a Parasite,” by James Kirchick. No, I don’t know who he is, either.
I’ll bet you can guess what the piece is about from the title alone. After a string of progressives ousted incumbent Democrats from their seats in several primaries, the “centrist” arm of the Democratic Party has been wailing about crazy leftists coming to torpedo any chance of taking back the House and the Senate in November. Kirchick is on the same bus as Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and other Democratic leaders who have kept their distance from popular progressive candidates, like NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner, whose campaign fell apart for reasons that were entirely self-inflicted and had nothing to do with his progressive platform.
After a long intro harkening back to early 1980s England (for some reason), Kirchick takes aim at Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA).
Today, Democratic leaders find themselves in a quandary much like Kinnock’s. The DSA’s agenda is alien to mainstream Democrats—or at least it should be. The organization’s draft platform calls for “fully abolishing the police and prison system,” drafting a “new constitution,” extending voting rights to noncitizens, and creating a “democratic socialist republic.” The group holds the U.S. and NATO responsible for Russia’s war against Ukraine, defends the Communist dictatorship in Cuba, and pledges to shut down the Department of Defense and all overseas American military bases.
To gain leverage within the Democratic Party, the DSA is employing a tactic that Trotsky dubbed “entryism”—the willful effort by a small, disciplined cadre of radicals to infiltrate a more moderate organization and subvert it from within. It’s the same tactic that, throughout history, far-left organizations such as the Militant Tendency have routinely used to amass power. Unless the Democrats respond forcefully to the DSA’s entryism, they risk being overrun by extremists who will poison the party’s national brand and sap its capacity to compete with an already radicalized GOP.
All of that is extremely dumb, but it’s not really different from the post-primary posts we recently got from DNC Chair Jamie Harrison after the NY primary:
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m extremely confused by how people are defining “the left,” “Democrats,” “liberals,” and “progressives” these days. I see people say they are “DSA” but not “a Democrat,” and I often see people sneeringly calling each other “liberals” and “progressives” as insults on social media. For most of the last 20 years, I’ve used most of those terms interchangeably, and lately I’ve begun using “lefty” as a catch-all term so that people don’t light up my mentions.
I guess in today’s political landscape, I’d best be described as a democratic socialist. I haven’t formally joined the DSA, but I support many of their stances. Having lived in Europe for a time in both college and law school, I’ve looked at the benefits Europeans get from their governments — things like universal health care, government assistance finding work, government-subsidized childcare, and fantastic maternity and paternity policies — and asked myself “why can’t we have that?” The candidates who appeal to me these days are the Mamdanis, AOCs, and Maxwell Frosts of the world.
As someone who worked in the criminal justice system, I think private prisons should be illegal, but I don’t believe in abolishing prisons altogether, largely because I can think of about 10 people I represented in my time as a public defender who should never be allowed to roam the streets — they’re simply too dangerous. No one has ever explained to me what we are supposed to do with those people. That said, I do believe that we need to reform the entire criminal justice system, from top to bottom, keeping non-violent offenders out of prisons, making mental health care widely available, and completely rethinking the role police (and who we hire to be police) play in our society. And that’s just one of the systems I’d like to see dismantled in the US.
Does that make me a left-wing zealot? I’ve never thought so, though my views have shifted farther to the left as I’ve gotten older. I consider myself a democratic socialist, and I also consider myself a Democrat who wants to drag the party to the left. And by “the left” I mean away from billionaire donors and towards policies that lift up the working class. After all, aren’t we supposed to be a “big tent” party? Does the DNC really have room for conservative democrats but not progressive ones?
For example, student loan forgiveness wasn’t a thought in my mind until relatively recently. I’m part of the generation that had to factor cost in where we chose to go to school, knowing we’d either choose a school we could afford or we’d wind up paying for it until the day we died. I will never forget how crushing the burden of law school debt was for my husband and myself in our younger days, and I don’t want other generations to have the same burden. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Government, it would cost about $1.6 trillion to cancel student debt for every American student.
Just yesterday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Congress that the War with Iran, which I think we all agree was completely unnecessary, has cost American taxpayers $37.5 billion so far, a number that is almost certainly wildly low. Hegseth is also asking Congress for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget going forward. For that amount of money, we could have left the Iranian people in peace (and alive) and discharged everyone’s student loans, freeing up a lot more cash to prop up the economy.
Does wanting our government to use our tax dollars to make the lives of Americans better, rather than for endless wars, make me a zealot? It’s not like we don’t have the money; we just don’t have the political will. How does the party get the political will? Well, it’s not by writing off an entire side of the political spectrum, that’s for sure.
I watched the US make a dramatic lurch to the right after 9/11, one we still haven’t recovered from. I keep waiting for us to return to conversations about issues like universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, and student loan relief, but we never get there. Instead, what I’ve seen in the last 10 years is a Democratic Party that doesn’t seem to know what to do to counter the looming shadow of fascism, and who believes their only play is to move further to the center — right into the territory that used to belong to conservatives. This is the source of our frustration with Democratic leaders.
I believe the tactic Schumer and Jeffries want to force on the party — courting “independent” voters by moving to the middle — is the wrong one. So let me tell you what I see, as a Midwestern voter who is far from the “coastal elites” in DC and New York City:
I see a party that had both houses and the Presidency, twice in recent memory, and failed to deliver for Americans;
I see a Democratic leadership that gets the party to hang together far less than they should (Joe Manchin voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, for crying out loud);
I see a party that wrongly believes voters will respond better to what it doesn’t stand for (trans rights, DEI, student loan forgiveness, taxing billionaires) than what it does;
I see a party that has failed to do everything in its power to stand up to Donald Trump, leaving it to look like a bunch of impotent wimps instead of a strong party of opposition; and
I see a party that is more concerned about keeping the donor class happy than making the lives of working Americans better.
That all probably sounds pretty harsh, and I always get pushback when I criticize Schumer and Jeffries, but I will die on the hill that “regular” Americans have done more to stand up to Donald Trump than much of the Democratic Party. And miss me with the “Democrats need to consider running anti-trans and anti-choice candidates to appeal to voters in red states” garbage. What good is a party platform if you water it down constantly in hopes of making your candidates more “electable?” What do you stand for if what you “stand for” is subject to the changing whims of the populace?
And whither the conversations about big changes and dismantling systems of oppression? When was the last time we heard the Democratic establishment talking about life-altering ideas? Extraordinary times call for big swings. Yet all I hear Democrats whining about is the left wing of the party and what Donald Trump is doing that they can’t stop. Boo hoo.
Wanting to house the poor, feed the hungry, take care of the sick, and help the vulnerable are reasons I became a Democrat. The party may have changed over the last 20 years, but many of its members haven’t. We want candidates who stand up to racism, sexism, and homo- and transphobia. We want universal healthcare. We want the US to be a good ally to other NATO countries. We want the government to help pay for childcare and college. We want reproductive freedom for all. We want the lives of working Americans to be easier. We want to conserve the planet.
We do not want candidates who care about “winning” at the cost of abandoning our principles. We could just vote Republican for that. Is it any wonder that progressive candidates, who are talking about things like taxing billionaires and using the federal treasury to improve the lives of its citizens, are doing a better job of connecting with voters?
Instead of constantly complaining that the establishment-approved candidates are getting their asses kicked by progressives, perhaps Democratic leadership should take a step back and examine why their chosen candidates are losing. Hell, Graham Platner had a GD Nazi tattoo, and he still kicked Janet Mills’ ass.
If caring about the same things now that I cared about in college in the 90s now makes me a DSA fanatic, so be it. It’s not us who have changed; it’s the Democratic Party.
In other news: Uh, the Pentagon is running out of money; Jeannine Pirro’s office screws up another case; Bill Gates spent a ton of time with Jeffrey Epstein; and The High Note.
Let’s go.
Yeah… about the defense budget
I know this is hard to believe, but it turns out that starting a war over “nuclear weapons” with a country that doesn’t have nuclear weapons but does have the ability to shut down a major shipping channel isn’t great for the country’s bottom line. It seems the Pentagon is running low on …(checks notes) money and weapons.
Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon isn’t just running out of weapons as the war on Iran intensifies—it’s also running out of money.
The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is facing an upcoming budget deficit caused directly by President Trump’s war on Iran, forcing it to cut training, maintenance, and military preparations. Hegseth has also not been transparent or timely about the ultimate costs of the war, leading to more confusion and disarray.
The House is set to vote on a $73 billion defense package this week, more than the $67 billion the administration requested to help it out of the hole it’s dug. That request has not been well received, as most Democrats oppose any new funding for the Iran war.
“Most Democrats oppose any new funding.” How about ALL the Democrats oppose any new funding? This is what I’m talking about when I say the party doesn’t hang together on important votes.
That aside, it’s almost like putting a rapey cable news host obsessed with “manly” men in charge of the US military was a bad idea.
How is Jeannine Pirro so bad at this?
There was a time when Jeannine Pirro actually was a pretty good prosecutor. What’s happened between then and now is anyone’s guess, but she sure does suck at charging cases these days.
A federal judge told Pirro’s office on Monday that, by not preserving evidence of “vandalism” of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, they risk having the case against 67-year-old David Hearn thrown out.
Repair work at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool done after a former Olympic canoeist was accused of damaging it could jeopardize the government’s case against him, a D.C. Superior Court judge warned Monday.
The government is “operating at its own peril,” said Judge Todd E. Edelman, if the Reflecting Pool is altered or not preserved before the defense’s expert has a chance to sample it.
***
On Thursday, defense attorneys for Hearn filed a motion to dismiss the indictment against him, alleging the government failed to preserve the section of Reflecting Pool liner that Hearn is charged with damaging, according to court documents.
“Despite the importance of the pool liner to the case, in the brief period since June 19, 2026, the same government that presented and returned the indictment against Mr. Hearn has fenced off the scene, begun draining the pool yet again, and publicly announced its intention to repair the very liner whose condition is at issue,” attorneys said in the court document.
They sent an attorney to the Reflecting Pool for an inspection and “confirmed that spoliation of evidence has taken place,” according to the motion.
Not preserving evidence of a crime is perhaps the second-biggest no-no in criminal law, right after not knowingly charging an innocent person with a crime.
This entire case, which is set for trial in September, is a farce. Anyone and everyone who followed the “renovation” of the Reflecting Pool knows that the lining was peeling all on its own, without the help of any “vandalism.” Yet Trump demands a sacrifice, so Pirro brings him one.
This is going to be another case, like that of the infamous DC Sandwich Thrower, where Pirro’s office gets laughed out of court.
Bill Gates gets skewered by external report
An independent report commissioned by the Gates Foundation says that Bill Gates met with Jeffrey Epstein about 30 times, despite warnings from his staff at the Gates Foundation. YOU DON’T SAY.
The Microsoft co-founder said that he was introduced to Epstein in 2011 “through people I trusted in my professional and philanthropic work” and that Epstein had “claimed he could raise billions of dollars for global health from people for whom he provided tax and estate services”.
“I recall being aware that Epstein had faced prior legal issues, but I did not fully understand the extent of the crimes he committed,” Gates said, referring to Epstein having pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor. “I accepted the introduction without applying the scrutiny I should have.”
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The report also concluded that Gates “was aware of reputational concerns related to Epstein’s prior conviction and sentencing for a sex-related offense when he began conversations with him in 2011” and that foundation staff had “raised on multiple occasions the risks of associating with Epstein because of his prior conviction, and those concerns were raised to senior leadership, including Mr. Gates”.
Translation: “I heard that he had some legal trouble with underage girls, but I didn’t care enough to look into it.”
Let’s not tiptoe around it, Bill.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Please enjoy Jon Ossoff (D-GA) dismantling Pete Hegseth yesterday:
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
