SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
austerity
Trump's GOP Is Ripping This Nation Apart. The Question Is: Why?
The morality of today’s Republican Party has been laid bare. But it boggles the mind the depth of this destruction and cruelty.
Jul 14, 2026
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — which gave the top 1% fully $118 billion this year in tax cuts — turns a year old this week and Republicans in Congress actually celebrated the largest cuts to food assistance and Medicaid in American history.
They told us it was about fraud, about lazy people gaming the system, about restoring the dignity of work. Exactly a year later we can now see what it was really about in a line of cars outside a food bank in Phoenix.
That’s where ProPublica found Ana Alvarez on a recent morning, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant and lost her family’s SNAP benefits last September. She reapplied in December and the government still hasn’t processed her application.
She calls the agency every week and gets told to keep waiting, so she clips coupons, her kids don’t go to the zoo anymore, and as the summer heat bears down she’s doing grim arithmetic on rent, the car payment, and the electric bill that keeps the air conditioning running. She’s one reason Arizona has lost more than half of its SNAP recipients in a single year.
In Michigan, a widow named Sarah works two food service jobs to raise her 9-year-old daughter on $219 a month in food assistance, help she’s needed since her husband died suddenly six years ago. Last Christmas one of her employers wrote a single number wrong on her renewal paperwork, one missing zero, and the state cut her off.
And in Atlanta, Human Rights Watch documented a 36-year-old supermarket cashier who was working and meeting every requirement until she gave birth in late 2025, at which point Georgia shut off both her Medicaid and her food stamps, claiming she’d failed to report the job she was standing at every day. She’s spent the months since trying to get her coverage back while the medical bills pile up. In the party of family values, apparently, having a baby is now a firing offense.
None of these women are cheats or freeloaders. They’re workers, mothers, widows: exactly the people these cynical Republicans swear they’re protecting. But the numbers tell the story: more than 4 million Americans have been pushed off SNAP since the bill passed, the steepest drop since Clinton’s 1996 welfare cuts, and in just the 13 states that publish the data, roughly 808,000 children have lost food assistance.
The Congressional Budget Office projects millions more will lose Medicaid as the work requirement paperwork machine grinds through the states, even though more than nine in ten of the people targeted are already working, in school, caring for family, or disabled.
The cruelty built into the bill isn’t a side effect: it’s the whole reason for the “enhanced” paperwork requirements. Every mother who gives up in frustration, every widow tripped up by a typo, every application left to rot in a backlog is a line item of savings that can translate into a larger tax cut for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg while the poorest households actually see their taxes go up.
That’s the morality of today’s GOP laid bare. They looked at Ana Alvarez’s five kids and Sarah’s daughter and that new mother in Atlanta, and they decided the billionaires needed the money more.
Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.
The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”
— Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that Trump’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?
— Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?
— Could it be that American-values-hating foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?
— Is it possible it’s all just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires?
— Or are his, Vance’s, and Musk’s white supremacist, Christian nationalist, libertarian, and/or neo-Nazi ideologies so intense that they’re willing to essentially burn the country down just to expel immigrants, deny benefits to people of color, elevate the rich, crush unions, and re-subordinate women?
These are serious questions for which I can’t find credible answers that explain the entire spectrum of their behavior. Why would Trump and the GOP:
— Condemn 12 million Americans to sickness and early death by gutting Medicaid (and the biggest cuts don’t even kick in until right after this fall’s election)?
— Destroy American soft power by killing USAID, thus condemning millions to death?
— Fire so many workers at the Social Security Administration that just getting through to sign up or get help has turned into a multi-day slog?
— Gut the State Department at a time diplomacy is most needed for world peace?
— End food assistance (SNAP) for millions when one-in-five American children experience hunger?
— Refuse to enforce laws and rules that allow workers to form unions in their workplaces?
— Propose forcing all new Medicare recipients onto Medicare “Advantage” corporate scam plans?
— Refuse military aid to Ukraine for over a year to give Russia time to finish off their genocidal job?
— Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from going after fraudsters and banks when they rip people off?
— Eliminate a major NOAA program designed to warn communities about the dangers of flooding and other extreme weather crises?
— Politicize the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Election Commission?
— End net neutrality so none of us are safe online?
— Shut down anti-cyber-warfare operations in the federal government?
— Defund university research that leads to innovation and saves lives?
— Cut unemployment insurance benefits across Red states?
— Terminate support for people with student loans and gut scholarship programs?
— Slash Affordable Care Act outreach budgets and allow junk insurance plans?
— Reverse over 100 environmental rules, including those on clean air, clean water, and chemical safety?
— Weaken Dodd-Frank, including gutting oversight of “too big to fail” banks and stress tests for mid-size financial institutions?
— Dial back OSHA workplace safety standards and inspections?
— Cut taxes to rich people while raising them via tariffs on working class folks?
— Change the Federal Trade Commission to allow more monopolistic, rip-off corporate behavior?
— Make it harder to vote and harass Blue states by demanding their voter information?
— Work to prosecute women who have miscarriages or abortions?
— Make it harder to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?
— End auto emission standards and increase our reliance on fossil fuels?
— Pack the courts with judges the American Bar Association says are “unqualified”?
— Destroy our faith in our elections and set up election workers for harassment?
— Fire the Inspectors General (who find waste, fraud, and abuse) across multiple federal agencies?
— Weaken whistleblower protections?
— Put the military on the streets of our cities in violation of Posse Comitatus?
— Use state power to punish political opponents and those who’ve investigated Trump’s crimes, alleged Russian collusion, and corruption?
— Create a network of concentration camps across America?
— Allow a shadow cabinet of billionaires and theocrats via Project 2025?
— Attack judges and prosecutors, leading to violence and threats of violence?
— Foment violence (like on January 6th) as a political strategy?
— Destroy our asylum and refugee systems?
— Pardon insurrectionists, rapists, cybercriminals, and other wealthy criminals?
— Defund the IRS so they can no longer audit the morbidly rich, leading to the loss of hundreds of billions in federal revenues?
— Ban books and censor libraries?
— Criminalize trans and queer people?
— Roll back gun safety measures?
— Defund the arts, humanities, and public media?
— Gut vaccine and other programs that keep Americans healthy?
— Nakedly politicize the military?
— Expand federal surveillance powers while kneecapping oversight?
— Criminalize free speech, particularly on college campuses?
— Attempt to revoke birthright citizenship?
— Attack press freedom and bar the Associated Press from the White House?
— Sabotage the US Postal Service?
— Undermine the census?
— Scale back civil and women’s rights enforcement?
— Normalize autocratic language like “vermin,” “scum,” and calling immigrants “animals”?
— Expel millions of brown-skinned immigrants who’ve already gone through the legal process to get work permits and are on a path toward citizenship?
— Create international fiscal chaos with an on-again, off-again TACO tariff policy?
— Cancel the suicide hotline for queer kids?
— Gut our national parks and sell off our federal lands to wealthy friends of the administration?
— Create a vast, secret, unaccountable police force with masked officers whose identity is concealed?
— Allow the president to accept hundreds of millions in obvious bribes from foreign powers in violation of the Constitution?
— Work so hard to conceal the crimes of a notorious sexual predator?
And this, of course, is just a partial list of the ways Trump and the GOP have weakened our nation, reduced our standing and prestige in the world, corrupted our government, and immiserated working class families.
Many of the theories about why Trump and the GOP would enthusiastically do so much damage to our people, our military, and our democracy contradict others.
For example, why would billionaires want tax cuts at the expense of damaging the economy that made them rich? Why would we promote a muscular military policy like bombing Iran while simultaneously destroying morale within the ranks of our military and kneecapping our intelligence agencies?
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” sang Bob Dylan back in the 1960s.
Today, we’re there.
Why do you think Trump and the GOP are working so hard to ruin our country?
Keep ReadingShow Less
Starmer Expected to Resign as PM, But UK Left Warns of 'More of the Same' From His Replacement
Jeremy Corbyn said Andy Burnham would be "accepting too much of the austerity that we've had imposed upon us" and "doesn't appear to be doing anything different internationally."
Jun 20, 2026
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce as soon as Monday that he will resign, according to new reports, as Labour supporters abandon the party.
But many on the left remain skeptical that his likely replacement, Andy Burnham, will truly bring the "change" he promises.
Britain's Observer newspaper reported on Saturday that the prime minister appeared "resigned" to stepping down, well aware that "support isn't there" for his continued leadership amid the party's dismal unpopularity.
Though Starmer swept away nearly a decade and a half of Conservative rule in 2024, his honeymoon has been short-lived. His embrace of austerity in the face of a cost-of-living crisis and his government's ferocious crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech have left progressive supporters seeking alternatives like the ascendant Green Party.
Meanwhile, his hard-right pivot on immigration has done little to siphon votes from Brexiteer Nigel Farage's far-right Reform UK party, which currently leads in national polls.
The immediate trigger for Starmer's reported resignation was Burnham's victory in Thursday's Makerfield by-election, which marked the former mayor of Greater Manchester's return to Westminster. Burnham comfortably defeated a Reform UK candidate, and The Guardian reported that he was expected to have support from about 200 Labour MPs in a leadership challenge against Starmer.
Burnham emphasized during a victory rally that it was "a last chance to change" Labour as it heads for electoral oblivion.
Responding to what he said were requests from constituents to "do something to make life more affordable," Burnham called for an end to "trickle down economics," with government interventions to bring down utility bills and rail fares, public procurement of businesses, pushes for reindustrialization, and job guarantees for people ages 16 to 18.
But some leaders on the British left have warned that Burnham will do little to deviate from Starmer's failures.
While he has pledged to reverse Starmer's welfare cuts and privatizations of public services, Burnham has also committed to maintaining the party's spending limits, which may make significant changes impossible.
Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015-20, said that while he personally likes Burnham, "his basic economic strategy and views... seem to me to be accepting too much of the austerity that we've had imposed upon us."
The ex-leader also said Burnham "doesn't appear to be doing anything different internationally," noting that he has not given a straight answer on whether Britain should conduct an inquiry into the UK government's policy on Gaza and its supply of weapons to Israel.
Burnham has also drawn criticism for saying he would maintain Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has spearheaded hard-line changes to UK asylum policies and has enforced the repressive ban on Palestine Action, which has led to the arrest of thousands of nonviolent protesters, many of whom have been charged with terrorism.
"The architect of Labour’s cruel plans on settled status and persecution of free speech and protest stays in place," said Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who said it was a sign of "more of the same."
Remarking on Burnham's team of economic advisers, who include former chief economists for the Bank of England and Goldman Sachs, Polanski said it "isn’t a team of advisers which looks like challenging wealth and power."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Virginia Republican Appears to Fake Phone Call to Dodge Question About GOP's Social Security Cuts Plan
"Wittman is just an embarrassment to Virginians everywhere," said one Democratic campaigner. "This phone call was about as serious as he takes the needs of his constituents."
Jun 10, 2026
A vulnerable House Republican went to comedic lengths on Tuesday to avoid answering questions about Speaker Mike Johnson's plans for possible Social Security cuts.
The Republican Speaker was recorded earlier this week saying that under a GOP plan to be released next year, popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security needed to be “adjusted and fixed"—comments that were widely interpreted as a signal that cuts to crucial benefits were in the works.
On Tuesday, as a reporter from Meidas Touch approached him to ask about Johnson's "secret plan to cut Social Security," Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) suddenly whipped out his cell phone and began speaking into it, apparently to avoid the difficult question.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) faked a phone call for roughly 90 seconds after being asked about Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments regarding potential Social Security cuts.
The phone's screen remained visible, with his cheek inadvertently tapping different parts of the display. pic.twitter.com/y3ST5AX651
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 10, 2026
A video posted by the outlet shows Wittman walking and speaking into the phone while the screen was still visible, seeming to indicate that no phone call was actually taking place.
As Meidas described: “The phone’s screen remained visible, with his cheek inadvertently tapping" the phone and changing parts of the display, which does not occur when an actual phone call is happening.
Wittman's conversation, which went on for about 70 seconds, was vague and nonsensical: "Hey, how you doing? I’m good. I’m good with that. I’ll be there in just a few minutes," he said. "I've got some more efforts that I want to talk to you about. There are actually more things that we have to be working on."
Just before Wittman put his phone away, the reporter, who’d continued walking next to him, asked again: “Congressman, what is Mike Johnson’s secret plan to cut Social Security?” Wittman continued to walk, refusing to acknowledge the reporter, before speeding away.
According to Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone, it’s not the first time Wittman has pulled such a stunt. He posted video of Wittman taking another conveniently-timed phone call last week, right as the journalist approached to ask about a proposal in the next military spending bill to integrate the US and Israeli militaries.
Oh hey! He did this to me & @DropSiteNews last week! https://t.co/lR40fjKNw1 pic.twitter.com/kGs69cL9Ec
— Julian Andreone (@JulianAndreone) June 10, 2026
This interaction came a day after Johnson complained on a radio show on Monday about the large amount of spending on “entitlement programs,” as Republican lawmakers have long called earned benefits, and suggested unspecified changes.
“The reason we’re in trouble is because over 74% of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending. That’s your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and things like Social Security,” Johnson said. “They have to be adjusted and fixed. We have a plan to do that next year.”
The next day, a report from the Social Security Board of Trustees showed that the popular retirement program would be unable to pay out full benefits by 2032, a quarter earlier than projected last year.
Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, said that the shortfall has been exacerbated by Trump policies that have slashed revenue going toward the program, including a tax bill that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, tariffs that have slowed economic growth, the war with Iran, and policies targeting immigrants.
It is perhaps understandable why Wittman might want to avoid giving more details on Johnson's plan. Voters overwhelmingly oppose efforts to raise the retirement age, cut benefits, or raise workers' payroll taxes, all of which have roughly three-quarters disapproval or more, according to a late-May survey by the Ronald Reagan Institute.
Amid high inflation and soaring gas prices, a YouGov/Economist poll on Tuesday showed that approval of Trump's handling of the economy has hit a new low point of just 29%, compared to 63% disapproval. That disgruntlement has filtered down ballot to the point where Republicans' longstanding advantage over Democrats on the economy has evaporated, which puts candidates in competitive districts like Wittman in jeopardy this November.
Democrats are already incorporating Johnson's comments into their midterm messaging. A release on Tuesday from the Democratic National Committee War Room noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans and signed by Trump last year is projected to add potentially as much as $5 trillion to the national debt over ten years, largely to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while cutting safety net programs like Medicaid.
It also highlighted comments by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last year describing the "Trump accounts" enacted as part of the megabill as a "backdoor for privatizing Social Security."
"Donald Trump and his loyal foot soldiers in Congress aren’t even trying to hide their plans to gut programs that hardworking Americans rely on," said DNC Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer. "Trump and Republicans already made the largest cut to Medicaid in history, and now they are taking every opportunity to sell out working families and rip away retirement benefits, healthcare, and food assistance.”
Attorney Salaam Bhatti, one of several Democrats running in a crowded primary to challenge Wittman, used the embarrassing clip of him as a springboard.
"I'm running for Congress against him," he said of Wittman. "My platform: Don't ignore people, Medicare for All, tax billionaires, campaign finance reform."
Matt Royer, a digital strategist for Democrats in Virginia, said: “Wittman is just an embarrassment to Virginians everywhere. This phone call was about as serious as he takes the needs of his constituents in VA-1. Is it any wonder this race is now a tossup?”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Hands Off Our Pensions': Belgian Workers Take to the Streets in General Strike Against Austerity Measures
It's the latest of several national strikes over the past year and a half against policies that one union leader said will heighten "inequality" and "poverty."
May 13, 2026
Much of Belgium ground to a halt on Tuesday as tens of thousands of workers flooded the streets of Brussels as part of a general strike against government austerity measures.
Schools closed, public transit operated with reduced service, and flights out of major airports were grounded as workers walked off the job. Instead, they marched through the capital clad in red and green, the colors of Belgium's major labor unions, with some carrying signs that read, "Hands off our pensions" and "We will not pay the price of their wars."
According to Morning Star, as many as 100,000 people took part in the strike, which was called by the nation's three biggest trade unions in protest of measures by Prime Minister Bart De Wever's government that the unions say slash pensions, reduce wages, and attack collective bargaining.
The marchers called on the government to roll back plans to raise Belgium's retirement age to 67 and have called for an end to what the unions have dubbed a “pension penalty” that would cut benefits for those who retire early.
Amid rising costs caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran, the unions are also outraged by a proposed temporary cap on wage indexation, which requires wages to rise in tandem with inflation.
It's part of a broader trend of the government loosening labor rules for employers, which unions say has led to longer, more irregular hours and diminished employees' work-life balance.
"People will have less money left over and will still have to work more flexibly and longer," said Ann Vermorgen, the chair of the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. "Even the Planning Bureau says that the reform will promote inequality and that poverty will emerge.”
Tuesday's general strike was just the latest over the past year and a half, as the unions have refused to let up on their push to reverse De Wever's agenda.
Gert Truyens, the chair of the General Confederation of Liberal Trade Unions of Belgium (ACLVB), said that with the pension penalty and the other labor proposals, the government was displaying “total disregard” for social dialogue by “unilaterally imposing things without discussing them with the trade unions and employers.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Doesn't Have to Eliminate FEMA to Screw Disaster Victims
Just look at all of the ways the Trump administration has been slowly killing the federal relief agency in practice.
Dec 12, 2025
President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council was scheduled to vote Thursday on a report containing several recommended changes to FEMA. This was supposed to happen during a meeting from 1:00 to 3:00 pm ET. However, I and many others who registered to attend virtually never received links for a meeting that was eventually canceled with no notice or explanation.
CNN reported Wednesday that the review council was planning “to recommend dramatic downsizing and overhaul—but not elimination—of the agency.” Too much is being made of the council’s decision to back away from the earlier demands of Trump and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem for the outright abolition of FEMA. Abolition would require an act of Congress, an institution that (contra Trump and, often, John Roberts) actually does still exist. And besides, the Trump administration doesn’t need to formally eradicate FEMA to destroy it; just look at all of the ways they’ve been slowly killing the agency in practice.
Here’s a fresh stunning example: Starting on December 15, FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery is set to be led by Gregg Phillips, an election-denying conspiracy theorist with no relevant experience. That’s how you effectively demolish an agency without congressional approval. The QAnon-supporting Phillips is one of many examples of profoundly unqualified personnel now calling the shots at FEMA after experienced leaders, along with thousands of rank-and-file staff, were pushed out.
How else? Require every grant over $100,000 to be personally approved by Noem. That’s most grants, to be clear, as the Central Texas flooding disaster revealed in tragic fashion. Much of the Trump administration’s deadly assault on FEMA reflects ideas found in Project 2025, whose main architect is Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. That right-wing policy road map calls for foisting ever more responsibility for emergency preparedness and response onto states and localities despite the fact that only the federal government has the personnel and financial wherewithal to manage major disasters.
That Trump and his allies, many of whom are openly authoritarian, don’t seem worried about a negative political fallout is ominous.
Making matters worse, Trump is telling governors to step up while Noem and Vought are restricting relevant funding. The Trump administration continues to deprive communities of funding for hazard mitigation and infrastructural resilience even though every $1 invested in risk reduction saves an estimated $6 to $13, not to mention countless lives. As usual, Vought’s obsession with “fiscal responsibility” is a rhetorical ploy to justify slashing programs he doesn’t like.
We won’t know for sure until the final report is voted on, but according to CNN, the FEMA Review Council is expected to promote more of the same old austerity. A draft viewed by the outlet reportedly calls for cutting FEMA’s workforce “in half” and making it harder for states to qualify for federal disaster assistance. A longer draft was produced collectively by the council, but Noem, in her capacity as council co-chair, reportedly took a hacksaw to it, altering it in regressive ways. The forthcoming Noem-authored report should be interpreted as a continuation of the Trump administration’s lethal dismantling of FEMA. So too should the move to put Phillips in charge of the agency’s lifesaving disaster response and recovery work.
Phillips’ appointment comes at a time when the Trump administration is already delaying and denying disaster aid. There’s an apparent pattern of political retribution that warrants congressional investigation. Trump seems to relish opportunities to publicly praise “loyal” states when (partially) approving disaster assistance while punishing perceived enemies (e.g., rejecting requests from Illinois despite record-breaking damage).
That said, Trump’s abuse of the disaster declaration process—one component of Vought’s broader war on the federal government’s pro-social capacities—is harming working people everywhere. Republican-led states (e.g., Arkansas), swing states (e.g. Michigan and North Carolina), and pro-Trump counties in Democratic-led states (e.g., western Maryland) are not immune from the White House’s attacks on FEMA.
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will make Trump and his fellow Republicans pay a political price for abdicating the federal government’s responsibility to care for disaster victims. Ultimately, ignoring people in their moment of greatest need is bad politics. That Trump and his allies, many of whom are openly authoritarian, don’t seem worried about a negative political fallout is ominous; it suggests they don’t think they’ll have to face a fair news environment (hence the fixation on Trump-friendly oligarchs running elite media companies) or a fair election ever again.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mamdani's Win Is Proof That an Organized Public Can Defeat Organized Money
The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: Nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Nov 06, 2025
Zohran Mamdani’s election in New York City is not simply a local upset. It is a breach in the ideological dam that has kept American politics safely contained for generations.
This victory is historic not because one office suddenly overturns entrenched power, but because it demonstrates that such power can be overturned at all.
For decades, political life in the United States has functioned as a managed marketplace in which both parties advertise different brands, yet deliver the same fundamental product: deference to private wealth, hostility to social investment, and a belief that the public should expect very little from its government beyond punishment and surveillance.
On Tuesday, that spell cracked.
Zohran's win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
Mamdani won not by courting the wealthy, not by flattering real-estate interests, not by running a campaign tailored to the comfort of cable-news pundits.
He won by naming the obvious: that the city belongs to its people, not to absentee landlords; that housing, transit, childcare, food, and dignity are fundamental rights, not privileges; that a budget is a statement of who matters in society—and it’s long past time a city as wealthy as New York put working people first instead of billionaires and real-estate developers.
The bipartisan establishment will attempt to minimize this moment. They will continue to fund hysterical hit pieces designed to make people afraid of those challenging their rule. But their real fear is that this victory might prove contagious.
If New Yorkers can elect someone who openly challenges concentrated power, asks the wealthy to pay their share, and speaks in plain moral terms about economic justice, then perhaps Los Angeles can. Perhaps Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Kansas City.
The danger, from the perspective of those who currently command the political economy, is that people elsewhere may decide to stop begging for crumbs and begin organizing for a real seat at the table.
Power relies on a population convinced of its own helplessness. The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: Nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Across the country, millions watching the election results saw something rare in American politics: Proof that a campaign rooted in solidarity can beat one rooted in capital. They saw a future in which the public is not a spectator to its own dispossession. They saw permission to believe in their own power.
They saw that politics need not be reduced to a stage-managed rivalry between corporations wearing different campaign colors.
As someone who saw this possibility in the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, who saw our movement defeated by this same bipartisan establishment, this moment gives me a renewed faith in America's capacity to fight back against oligarchy. Zohran's win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
And that is why this victory matters. Not because one candidate triumphed, but because a barrier was crossed. The belief that the public must endure austerity while wealth accumulates above it has lost its inevitability. The idea that the mass media can manufacture consent for a Wall Street-approved candidate every time has shattered.
The attacks on Mamdani were relentless these past few months. But their hollow and desperate efforts failed. The majority didn't buy it, and they went to the polls to send Andrew Cuomo packing.
For the first time in a long time, the message is simple and electrifying:
The people can win. And if they can win here, they can win anywhere.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Dismissing Concerns of US Farmers, Trump Claims Argentina 'Dying' to Justify $40 Billion Bailout
"If you're the President of Argentina, Trump gives you a $20 billion bailout. If you're an American whose health care premiums are about to double? Tough luck."
Oct 20, 2025
President Donald Trump's allegiance to Argentina's right-wing government is appearing to undermine his signature claim—for those who ever believed it—that he always puts "America first" in his policymaking, as critics continue to bash the Republican leader for his outsized support for Argentina's failing economy compared to the suffering of US consumers, farmers, and workers.
Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday whether he was concerned about US farmers who feel a $40 billion bailout he has helped orchestrate for the beleaguered South American nation "is benefiting Argentina more than it is them," Trump was dismissive of the reporter and the question.
"Look, Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady," Trump mansplained to the female reporter. "You don't know anything about it—they're fighting for their life. Nothing's benefiting Argentina. They are fighting for their life. You understand what that means? They have no money. They have no anything. They're fighting so hard to survive."
After slashing billions in foreign aid around the world this year, cuts that experts say are costing real lives in some of the poorest nations on earth, Trump went on to claim that it was his duty to help struggling Argentina, currently governed by his far-right friend and ally, President Javier Milei, who has driven the economy into a tailspin with his chainsaw-inspired austerity.
Q: What do you have to say to farmers who feel that the deal is benefitting Argentina more than it is them?
TRUMP: Look, Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady. You don't know anything about it. You understand what that means? They are dying pic.twitter.com/1DMyaHtcTR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 20, 2025
"If I can help them survive in a free world," Trump suggested he would do just that for Argentina. "I happen to like the president of Argentina. I think he's trying to do the best he can. But don't make it sound like they are doing great. They are dying, alright? They're dying."
Trump admitted last week during a cabinet meeting that the $40 bailout is aimed at helping what he described as a "good financial philosophy" of Milei, the far-right libertarian who has slashed pension payments for retired workers, trashed regulations, and eviscerated public spending in deference to corporate and capitalist profits.
Writing for Jacobin, Branko Marcetic argued earlier this month that what it boils down to is that Trump will find funds to salvage the failed policies of Milei, but not healthcare or other needs for American workers or their families.
"In other words," wrote Marcetic, "Trump is sending billions of Americans’ dollars to a foreign country to prop up a failing president who has run his country into the ground by following Trump’s own policy preferences. If Milei fails, Trump’s own, very similar austerity program will take a major blow too.
Soybean farmers across the US have been outspoken about how much Trump's tariff policies have harmed them this year, with China—historically the largest importer of US soybeans—shutting them out, even as they scooped up Argentinian soybeans at bargain prices earlier this year after Milei cut his nation's export tax.
Trump has promised soybean farmers a bailout of their own, but that process has stalled amid the ongoing government shutdown, which Republicans in control of Congress have maintained despite furious calls that doing so puts the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans at risk of soaring premium hikes or lost coverage.
Leading the charge for Trump's policy on Argentina—including $20 billion in US taxpayer funds to stabilize the nation's currency as well as creating a separate $20 billion fund of private investments—is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has said supporting Argentina is vital to US interests and will continue.
However, underneath the administration's support for Argentina lurks the presence of high-profile US investors, some of them closely connected to members of the administration, including Bessent allies and Wall Street players who have backed Trump.
Popular Information's Judd Legum has reported extensively on the financial interests benefiting most from the bailout scheme— and it's not US farmers or consumers. As Legum noted last week:
While farmers struggle to survive and the federal government is shut down, Milei is riding high thanks to the cash infusion from the Trump administration. “There will be an avalanche of dollars,” Milei said in a radio interview shortly before traveling to the White House. “We’ll have dollars pouring out of our ears.”
Speaking with The New Yorker's John Cassidy, former IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld explained that one "worrisome" dynamic when it comes to the Argentina bailout is that Bessent is repeatedly saying we will be there for the long term and we will do whatever it takes. He is effectively saying to foreign investors, ‘You will be able to get out whole.’”
As $20 billion has quickly morphed into $40 billion in financial backing of the flailing economy led by the slash-and-burn ideology of Milei, Trump said the US government is also considering buying up beef exports in an effort to control the price for US producers.
“We would buy some beef from Argentina,” he told reporters aboard the Sunday flight on Air Force. “If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down.”
However, with the government shutdown ongoing and Republicans refusing to budge on Democratic demands that healthcare costs be contained, there's no end in sight for relief when it comes to American families facing massive spikes in monthly premiums or loss of health coverage completely.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted last week: "If you're the President of Argentina, Trump gives you a $20 billion bailout. If you're an American whose health care premiums are about to double? Tough luck."
Keep ReadingShow Less
American Soybean Farmers Sold Out by Trump While Argentina Gets Bailed Out
"The farm economy is suffering," says the head of the American Soybean Association, "while our competitors supplant the United States in the biggest soybean import market in the world.”
Oct 14, 2025
Trade policy isn’t sexy, but it is weighty, economically speaking. Jobs and wage-income are at-stake. Take President Trump’s trade policy, notably his fondness for tariffs, a tax on US imports that businesses and workers pay.
We begin with the Trump administration’s decision to provide a $20 billion “swap line” (currency exchanges between central banks) with the government of Argentina. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the point man for the White House on this financial and political issue. Behind Bessent is a Wall Street hedge fund manager, Rob Citrone, a major foreign investor in Argentina, CNN reported.
The Latin American country is in financial distress over its issuance of foreign bonds since President Javier Milei slashed public spending to spur economic growth. Such economic policy goes by the name of austerity.
However, Milei’s so-called pro-growth approach has had the opposite effect. Hunger and poverty among the Argentine working class are up. Workers’ household income is down.
“Argentina’s poverty rate has soared to almost 53% in the first six months of Javier Milei’s presidency,” reports The Guardian, “offering the first hard evidence of how the far-right libertarian’s tough austerity measures are hitting the population.”
What in part preceded such measures slamming the Argentine people was inflation, a general rise in prices.
In the meantime, the Milei government cut the export tax on soybeans. Chinese buyers jumped at this opportunity, reportedly purchasing some 20 shiploads of soybeans from Argentina.
That tax holiday cut revenue to the Argentine government, and created the trade conditions for lower export prices for foreign buyers. That arrangement didn’t fix the tax revenue problem for the Argentine government, however.
Meanwhile, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland shared this statement on some impacts of Trump’s trade policy of tit-for-tat tariffs between the world’s two biggest economies:
US soybean farmers have been clear for months: the administration needs to secure a trade deal with China. China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market. The US has made zero sales to China in this new crop marketing year due to 20% retaliatory tariffs imposed by China in response to US tariffs. This has allowed other exporters, Brazil and now Argentina, to capture our market at the direct expense of US farmers.
According to Politico, the use of tariffs in China-US trade is having far-reaching effects on American agriculture generally. “The 20 percent retaliatory tariff that Beijing has imposed on US imports hasn’t just pounded soybean producers. All agriculture exports to China were down 53 percent in the first seven months of 2025, compared with the same period last year, according to USDA data.”
Ragland, head of the ASA, continues his criticism of Trump’s trade policy on American soybean farmers. “The frustration is overwhelming. US soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the US government is extending $20 billion in economic support to Argentina while that country drops its soybean export taxes to sell 20 shiploads of Argentine soybeans to China in just two days.
“ASA is calling on President Trump and his negotiating team to prioritize securing an immediate deal on soybeans with China. The farm economy is suffering while our competitors supplant the United States in the biggest soybean import market in the world.”
What will the White House do to relieve the pain from the decline of demand from China for American agricultural products? Well, the president is considering a $10-$15 billion bailout for agriculture commodity producers.
Wait. There is a federal government shutdown. In other words, the allocation and distribution of a federal bailout for farmers experiencing a shortage of buyers from China will have to wait for the government shutdown to end. Your guess is as good as mine when that happens.
Such contradictions of economics and politics drive history, according to Marx. The federal government shutdown over health care spending while US Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops deploy on the streets of American cities for reason of so-called public safety are two cases in point. Trade policy that harms domestic agriculture generally and soybean growers particularly is another.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Admin Responds to Milei’s Failed Libertarian Policies With a US Taxpayer Bailout for Argentina
"Milei was already gifted a $42 billion lifeline from the US-controlled IMF and the World Bank," said one economics writer, "but even that was not enough to stabilize Milei's crazy Austrian School experiment."
Sep 23, 2025
In his first meeting with a foreign head of state after being reelected president last year, Donald Trump welcomed Argentina's far-right libertarian President Javier Milei to Mar-a-Lago.
At a lavish gala, Argentina's president slathered his host with compliments, describing Trump's return to office as the "greatest political comeback in history."
Before a crowd of onlookers, Trump would return the favor, telling Milei, "The job you’ve done is incredible. Make Argentina Great Again, you know, MAGA. He’s a MAGA person.”
On Monday, less than a year later, Milei arrived in New York for this week's meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, begging for help as Argentina's economy continues its freefall and reels from nearly two years of his radical economic austerity program.
Milei's fealty to Trump bore fruit. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised that the nation's financial department "stands ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina."
In what he described as an effort to tame Argentina's runaway inflation, Milei, who has described himself as an "anarcho capitalist," has spent the time since he was elected president in 2023 instituting a brutal regime of what has been referred to as economic "shock therapy."
His agenda has centered on taking a "chainsaw" to government institutions and worker protections: slashing energy and transportation subsidies, halting public infrastructure projects, declaring war on labor unions, freezing wage and pension increases, and firing tens of thousands of government employees.
The result was predictable: By February 2025, the country had begun to rapidly deindustrialize, unemployment was soaring, and more than half of Argentinians lived in poverty.
However, this did not stop Trump from modeling his economic agenda, often explicitly, after Milei's—most notably through the exploits of the chainsaw-brandishing billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he used to lay waste to the administrative state. Trump, meanwhile, has signed legislation gutting social services like Medicaid and food assistance, busted public unions, and canceled numerous green energy and infrastructure contracts.
The result has likewise been a slump in economic activity, culminating in unemployment numbers critics say the administration has been desperate to bury.
The US president has already intervened once to help soften Argentina's landing. As El País notes:
Thanks to Trump’s political support, the government agreed to a $20 billion bailout with the International Monetary Fund last April—to which the country still owes another $40 billion—and achieved a measure of calm, but it lasted barely three months.
Now, with Milei facing mass street protests against his budget cut proposals, a hostile legislature that routinely vetoes his agenda, and a weakening peso in the face of continued uncertainty, he has turned to the US for another bailout, which the US hopes will help ease the country's economic woes enough to stave off a thrashing for his party in the country's general legislative elections on October 26.
Referring to Argentina as a "systemically important US ally in Latin America," Bessent said that "all options for stabilization are on the table." This, he said, "may include, but [is] not limited to, swap lines, direct currency purchases, and purchases of US dollar-denominated government debt from Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund."
Notably, Bessent continued to praise Milei's "support for fiscal discipline and pro-growth reforms." Despite its catastrophic effects, he described Milei's chainsaw agenda as "necessary to break Argentina’s long history of decline."
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) denounced the bailout as another favor from Trump to one of his political allies.
"First, Trump made us pay higher coffee and beef prices to support a convicted coup-plotter in Brazil," she said, referring to Trump's attempt to use harsh tariffs to pressure the Brazilian government into dropping charges against Jair Bolsonaro, who was ultimately convicted last week of attempting to overthrow the government. "Now, he wants American taxpayers to bail out his friend Milei in Argentina."
(Video: The Geopolitical Economy Report)
But as Benjamin Norton of the Geopolitical Economy Report argues, the motivation goes deeper than simply helping out a friend. It is an effort to save the reputation of "actually existing libertarianism" and the fortunes of US investors who've cast their lot with him.
"Milei was already gifted a $42 billion lifeline from the US-controlled IMF and the World Bank (after Argentina already owed more debt to the IMF than any other country), but even that was not enough to stabilize Milei's crazy Austrian School experiment," Norton said. "The US government is doing this not only to prop up one of its most loyal puppets in Latin America, but also in order to benefit wealthy US investors who hold Argentine stocks and bonds, and US corporations that want Argentina's lithium."
With Trump having modeled his oligarch-friendly economic agenda on Milei's, journalist Jacob Silverman—author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley—argued that allowing the libertarian radical to twist in the wind is not an option for Trump.
"Javier Milei can't be allowed to fail," Silverman said, "because MAGA leaders and the tech right have propped him up as a true libertarian fighting the globalists and 'doing what needs to be done': Immiserating his people on behalf of private capital."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Macron Get Out!' Unions Lead Massive Anti-Austerity Protests Across France
"We're in a situation of injustice," one protester said. "Workers can no longer feed themselves, students no longer have future prospects."
Sep 18, 2025
Echoing demonstrations against French President Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms two years ago, hundreds of thousands of people joined protests across France on Thursday, outraged by the government's proposed austerity measures.
While the CGT trade union—one of several labor groups that pushed for the mass mobilization—put the count at over 1 million, French authorities, whose figures are usually much lower than unions, said more than 500,000 demonstrated nationwide, including 55,000 in Paris.
Thursday's demonstrations followed last week's "Block Everything" protests, which coincided with French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's first full day in office. Macron picked Lecornu, his ally and a former defense minister, for the post after François Bayrou lost a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly over the budget plan.
Although "Lecornu quickly scrapped one of the most unpopular proposals—eliminating two public holidays—he has not ruled out the rest," Euronews noted Thursday. "These include an overhaul of unemployment benefits, delinking pensions from inflation, and raising out-of-pocket medical costs."
A protester named Alexandre told Euronews that "right now, we have a government that doesn't listen to us and is even the opposite of what the population needs. A government that robs fellow citizens, and it's important for everyone to mobilise, for the people of France who want to be dignified and who also want to give others their dignity throughout the world."
"We're in a situation of injustice," he added. "Workers can no longer feed themselves, students no longer have future prospects."
Hospital staff, railway workers, students, and teachers were among those who poured into the streets across France—including major actions in cities such as Lyon, Marseille, and Paris—rallying behind the message: "Strikes, Blockades, Macron Get Out!"
The Public Service Ministry said that nearly 11% of France's 2.5 million state employees were on strike. According to Le Monde, "Around 1 in 6 teachers walked out of primary and secondary schools, 9 out of 10 pharmacies were shuttered, and severe disruption occurred on the Paris metro network, where only the three driverless automated lines are working normally."
Protesters want the government to not only kill the proposed austerity measures but also spend more on public services and impose higher taxes on the wealthy. Sophie Binet, the head of the CGT union, said that "the anger is huge, and so is the determination. My message to Mr. Lecornu today is this: It's the streets that must decide the budget."
Multiple elected officials with La France Insoumise (LFI), a party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon that is now part of the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, shared social media posts about them joining the protests.
"The mobilization of youth continues," said Claire Lejeune, an LFI member of the National Assembly, after speaking with secondary school students in Essonne who "no longer want this policy that is wrecking their future."
Citing "the dismantling of public education," "war policy," and "ecological inaction," Lejeune said: "They are absolutely right; in the country, no one wants Lecornu or Macron anymore. I was in support of this peaceful mobilization, alongside the unions and teachers, and faced with a completely disproportionate police setup."
Approximately 80,000 police and gendarmes were deployed for the protests. Early Thursday, LFI's Clémence Guetté, a vice president in the National Assembly, shared footage of officers kicking and shoving a woman.
"Everywhere this morning, the repression strikes and hits without distinction or restraint," she wrote. "The images reaching us are shameful. Here in Marseille. To everyone, be careful. France no longer has a government: Macron is the only one responsible."
After the 1 million estimate began circulating, Guetté called the mass action "immense, everywhere, impressive," and declared: "The people are in the streets! We are going to win."
As Al Jazeera reported: "Across the country, Palestinian flags were visible as some protesters also stood in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel's war on the strip. Protesters blocked the Eurolinks arms factory in Marseille, which is believed to supply equipment to Israel, while holding a large banner that read: 'Shut down the genocidal factory.'"
Noting the solidarity with the Palestinian people on Thursday, LFI's Sarah Legrain called for sanctions, an arms embargo, and lifting Israel's blockade of Gaza, where civilians are starving to death.
Later Thursday, Legrain celebrated the massive turnout and pledged that "we will keep the pressure up until Macron leaves!"
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy