Last week, while speaking at the General Motors Milford Proving Ground, Donald Trump called out UAW President Shawn Fain, who has been embroiled in a series of high-profile scandals regarding retaliation against union dissidents.

​"Michigan finally has a president who stands up for Michigan auto workers and puts America first.You had a leader, I don't know if he’s still with you, Shawn Fain or something,” joked Trump. “This guy was bad news.”

​As a federal grand jury has been impaneled in Detroit to look into corruption charges against UAW President Shawn Fain, the union has been buried in an avalanche of bad press. Already, some top UAW officers have called on UAW President Shawn Fain to resign as they believe that the scandals around Fain have led to the UAW’s organizing stalling in the South.

​“Shawn Fain is hurting organizing,” says UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock. Mock was demoted from many of her key responsibilities after dissenting from Fain. A year and a half later, in 2022, after an investigation by UAW Federal Monitor Neil Barofsky, she was reappointed to her position.

​Mock claims that Fain has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees on purging allies rather than implementing the democratic reforms that he promised when he ran with Mock on their election slate in 2022.

​Now, with Fain in a close reelection campaign against five challengers, Mock says that Fain has created a “smokescreen” in the left press by alleging Barofsky sought political retribution against Fain for his public stances related to Israel, Palestine, and Gaza. The allegation stems from feedback that Barofsky made about language in the UAW’s Gaza ceasefire appeal.

Barofsky, who gained fame as a progressive watchdog against Obama's bailout, was asked by the UAW’s Executive Board members, including Chuck Browning and Margaret Mock, to give some feedback on how to be sensitive to speaking about the ceasefire among Jewish audiences. The UAW's Executive Board also asked Barofsky to come up with an antisemitic expert to speak during a union teach-in on Palestine.

Neil Barofsky on The Bill Moyers Show discussing his book Bailout

​“Neil Barofsky has a political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza,” Fain told the Detroit Free Press.

​Many influential left-wing publications have repeated this story, without noting that Barofsky was on record supporting the UAW’s call for a ceasefire. In these stories, Barofsky's mild critique of the UAW’s statement is amplified into evidence of a Zionist lawfare campaign against the UAW, while Mock’s complaints are dismissed as unreasonable without even interviewing her.

​However, none of the publications have interviewed Mock, the first Black woman ever elected as a national officer of the UAW.

​“If you're going to report a story, then how about reaching out to the subject of the story?” said Mock. “Because this is not about the monitor hurting Shawn’s feelings. It's about what Shawn did. The monitor had no choice but to investigate. Shawn stripped me of my duties, and the Compliance Director sat there and told a whole lie.”

​Three of the publications that failed to reach out to Mock- Jacobin, Labor Notes, and Drop Site News- all have direct financial ties to the Fain Administration, and two of them have ties to UAW officials who conspired to remove Mock from office. (See Payday’s long form exploring the deep financial connections of all three publications)

​Drop Site News did not reveal that its editor, Nausicaa Renner, was married to former UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman. Furman was suspended and demoted from his position as a top UAW officer after it was revealed that he had trumped up charges against Mock in a failed attempt to gain more control.                                                                                                                                                       ​Despite numerous attacks on the monitor that excluded Mock’s perspective, Jacobin never disclosed that its lead labor columnist, Chris Brooks, was forced to resign as UAW’s Chief of Staff after it was discovered that he had lied in smearing Mock.

​In addition to Brooks resigning and Furman being demoted, UAW Compliance Director Marni Schrader also was forced to resign last year when it was found that she had worked with Brooks and Furman to fabricate charges against Mock.

​None of this was disclosed, despite all of this information being readily available in court documents and UAW executive board meeting transcripts (which Fain has attempted to suppress against Mock’s wishes). While publications like the Detroit Free Press and Reuters and even the hometown newspaper of Chris Brooks, Chattanooga Times-Free Press, have covered the scandal accurately, Fain’s allies in the left press have largely suppressed Mock’s claims of retaliation for questioning Fain’s top lieutenants, Jonah Furman and Chris Brooks.

​“Here's the thing with Jonah and Brooks,” says Mock. “They'll say anything to control the narrative, and anything that they think will take you down a peg. They'll make up whatever they have to say  in order to have their narratives out there.”

​Around the same time that Jacobin began attacking Barofsky, Labor Notes’ Jane Slaughter joined in the fray. In her piece published on June 25th, Slaughter quotes Nick Licktick, a member of the UAW Member Action network, telling her, “The monitor told Fain to support Israel. Fain told him to kick rocks. It’s clear this has all been personal since then.”

​As one of four directors of the Social Justice and Solidarity Fund, Slaughter is responsible for giving out nearly a million dollars in grants a year to labor organizing, including the UAW Member Action Network, which is backing the Fain campaign. Nowhere does Slaughter disclose this in her reporting.

​Mock laughs as I recount to her the Nation’s attack on her in the piece written by Brooklyn-based writer Ella Fanger, a Yale graduate, titled “The War on the UAW”. The piece echoes the allegation that Barofsky investigated Fain in retribution for the UAW’s position on Gaza. (Nowhere in Fanger’s piece does she mention that Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of the Nation Magazine, also serves as the editorial director of Jacobin, where Brooks is employed).

​“Mock angered Fain’s staff by delaying approvals for organizing-related expenses, and denying reimbursements for petty charges like a $151 pizza bill,” wrote Fanger. “Mock told Fain she was running a tight ship to avoid even the appearance of corruption. But comments she has made suggest that her hostility also stemmed from resistance to the new leadership of the union, many of whom were hired from outside of the union’s membership”,.​

“Seems like some shady reporting to me. Once again, creating a narrative, a false narrative, but it just seems shady,” says Mock.

​**$38,000 in Moving Expenses & No Bid Contracts to DC Media Firm**

UAW Sec-Treas Mock (left) and UAW President Shawn Fain (right) (CBC)

Mock says that top UAW staffers like Brooks and Furman were using UAW funds as their own personal slush fund. Brooks, who was making $ 200,000 a year as the UAW’s Chief of Staff, requested a whopping $38,000 in relocation expenses so he could buy a house in the trendy suburban Detroit community of Ferndale.

​Court documents show Brooks expressed his frustration to Furman about Mock’s attempt to restrict him from having an enhanced credit card that would have allowed him to charge $12,000 to the union’s tab without pre-approval. Mock says that she was concerned that he was using the cards to curry political favor outside of the normal procurement process and using them to purchase expensive dinners and drinks to win over political allies.

​Neither Brooks nor Furman had worked in an auto plant, and both enjoyed a lifestyle that was far more lavish than those lived by rank-and-file UAW members. Mock, who joined UAW as an auto shop floor worker, clashed regularly with them about spending union dues on personal expenses.

​“I'm disgusted by it,” says Mock. “I think it's terrible. It's atrocious. Because I come from the shop floor, and to just give away money like that, it's almost like stealing.”

​Things came to a head in December of 2023, when Brooks and Furman tried to push Mock to approve a no-bid contract to a DC media firm with no experience in union organizing. According to text messages and emails obtained by the UAW Federal Monitor, Fain, Brooks, and Furman said that Mock needed to go after she blocked their attempts.

​UAW debated whether spending $500,000 was an effective use of resources, especially given that the no-bid contract was awarded to a media firm, Conexión, with no experience in union organizing. The firm was founded by Adrian Saenz, who served as the White House’s Director of Public Engagement under President Biden, and was staffed primarily by DC-based Democratic Party officials.

​Indeed, the firm had only ever had one client before the UAW. Mock thought the contract was excessive, raised questions about the firm’s inexperience, and suggested that Brooks and Furman look at other firms that were more connected to Chattanooga and likely less expensive.

​Mock also raised concerns that an expenditure this large would have to be publicly filed before a union election happened. She was worried that the union busters could use the $500,000 expenditure to a DC media firm as “proof” that the union drives in Chattanooga were being used to line the pockets of former top Biden aides.

Former UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks (left) with Senator Bernie Sanders (right) (UAW)

​For weeks, Mock continuously pushed Furman and Brooks to seek out more local firms down South, but Brooks and Furman insisted on the DC firm. They wanted Mock’s sign-off to get an exemption from the UAW consent decree; a risky legal move for Mock.

​“You pass all these other companies that are ad-related companies that can do the same work. So why are we going with this brand new company when there are companies that are established with the experience?” asks Mock. “Then there were companies that we've used that were right down there. Why didn't we go and use them? I mean, it was ridiculous to say that they were the only companies qualified, and I knew that that was not true.”

​Mock also denied a no-bid contract to Feldman Strategies, another politically connected DC firm.

​She felt that too many decisions in the union were being made by high-priced outside consultants from big East Coast cities and that not enough debate was given to what the members themselves would want to do. She believed that her role as an independently elected union official was to provide a “check and balance.”

​“My job was making sure that the members' sacred dues dollars were properly spent, invested in terms of organizing, in terms of whatever we were doing," says Mock. “My job was just to make sure that the members were adhered to and heard. You know, making sure that the money from their blood, sweat, and tears was properly utilized.”

​Routinely, Brooks and Furman, who had never worked in a UAW shop, would lecture Mock, who was a shop floor leader in the UAW, on how she didn’t understand organizing.

​“I think it's a little disheartening,” says Mock. “It doesn't include the voices of the members, It includes a lot of outsiders.”

Fighting the UAW and Chrysler at the Same Time

Unlike Fain, who had been a member of the incumbent Administration Caucus and a top staffer for years, Mock had always been an outsider within UAW’s bureaucracy.

In 1947. Walter Reuther founded the Administration Caucus to create a state that selected the UAW’s leadership by delegate vote selections for decades. The Administration Caucus controlled the delegation selection process.

Not until the UAW Consent Decree in 2021 did the UAW agree to allow national union officers to be elected by popular vote, enabling outsiders like Mock to win high-level positions.

Rather than join the Administration Caucus, Mock had worked her way up from the shop floor, in turns battling both the company and the International to keep her job and secure the health and safety of her coworkers.

Her first auto plant job was at Detroit Axle in 1994. She says that she got the job because her son’s grandmother wanted to see her with a secure union job. Prior to that, Mock had worked as a bank teller.

“At that point, the heaviest thing I had to lift was a box of quarters,” says Mock. “I wore high heels and pantyhose and dresses to work. I changed all that for heavy-duty axles, picking them up and grinding the top of them as a machine operator wearing steel-toe boots with leggings and cut-off T-shirts, so it was a big change for me.”

In 1998, Mock got elected to local union office and began working as a health and safety representative at Detroit Axle.  The role released her from regular responsibilities to work one day a week focusing on safety issues around the plant.

​In the mid-2010s, Mock began working at Chrysler’s plant in Marysville, Michigan, which was managed by the German company ZF. Immediately, Mock says that the company began writing her up as she raised concerns about health and safety.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “They were the ones that constantly violated all kinds of OSHA rules and regulations. They didn't care, they always put us in harm's way,” says Mock.

​ZF attempted to “disqualify” her from working at their Marysville plant. She began to file grievances, but the company kept blocking them from being heard. At one point, they even dismissed her (a technical term short of full termination), despite not taking her grievances to arbitration.                                  ​

“They disqualified me because I was doing my job. None of the grievances were valid because they were all lies,” says Mock.

To make ends meet, Mock got a temporary position with the UAW National Training Center as a health and safety representative.

Eventually, an international UAW representative contacted her to tell her that they wouldn’t take her case against “dismissal” to arbitration, saying that they had both “good news” and “bad news.”

“They said, ‘We got you your job back at the Marysville plant,’” recalls Mock. “So I said ‘okay.’ He says, ‘but when you go back, you won't have a health and safety job.’ So the first word out my mouth was, ‘Why?’”

Mock told the union that she was outraged that the UAW was backing down and kicking her out of the leadership role as a health and safety representative at the Maryville plant. When she asked the UAW representative to explain why, she was told that the company no longer wanted her in that union position.

“He says, ‘Well, you know, we got reports that you were a bad health and safety rep.’ I said, ‘A report from who? Where is it?’ He says, ‘Well, you know, I just heard about it.’ I said, ‘Well, wait a minute. You're telling me I won't have my job as health and safety, the little one-day-a-week job, but then you tell me that there's a report, but you haven't seen it and you won't get it, so that I can see it?’”

Mock decided to fight the UAW because she had taken pride in her work as a representative.

“I was so distraught that I didn't know how sad I was. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat, but I was mad and sad at the same time. No, you can't do this to me.” So in 2011, Mock decided to run for the top committee person at her plant in Marysville.

“I ran for that job, beat out five people without a runoff the first time, and then I ran again, and nobody ran against me,” says Mock. Mock would be elected twice more as a committee person and eventually get elected as her shop chair, never receiving Administration Caucus support in any of these elections.

As some Fain supporters try to paint Mock as part of the old guard, she says those charges are “laughable,” especially given that Fain, a long-time UAW staffer, had been a member of the Administration Caucus, while she had never joined it.

​“It's just laughable that they would say that I was part of the old guard,” says Mock. “If you look at some of my old literature when I ran for [Secertary-Treasurer], I said that if I was the only one on the board, I did what I was supposed to do. I mean, I was elected to protect the members' money in the best interests of the members.”

​She says that her experience taking on the UAW International prepared her for standing up to Fain’s demands as the UAW Secretary-Treasurer.

​“I went through all of these trials and tribulations, and fighting with (the) International or fighting the appeals that International applied to me or put on me, and that prepared me for modern day as the UAW’s Secretary Treasury,” jokes Mock.

Fain’s Unlikely Alliance with the Reformers

UAW President Shawn Fain (Brittany Greeson/New York Times)

In 2022, Mock and some veteran UAW reformers, some of them veterans of the New Directions Movement, decided to form a reform UAW Members United slate to run against the incumbents for international office.

Neither Boyers nor Mock had ever been members of the Administration Caucus. Instead, they operated as outsiders, allied with other reformers. Mock would later pick Bill Parker as her Chief of Staff, one of the founders of the New Direction Movement, who helped to organize the slate with many long-term union reformers.

While they had several candidates for other offices, they had trouble finding one for President, given the popularity of previous incumbent Ray Curry, a genial Black Army veteran from North Carolina.

After their slate was formed, Fain approached them about picking him for President. Both were surprised, as Fain had previously been a member of the Administration Caucus and had not been publicly supportive of taking on the union’s incumbent leadership.

Indeed, in 2015, when UAW Vice President General Holiefield died, Fain gave a eulogy at Holiefield’s funeral. After his death, both Holiefield and his wife were implicated in a scheme to embezzle more than $2 million from the UAW. His wife was later sentenced to 18 months in prison for her role, with Holiefield no longer alive to take the burden of punishment.

Still, Fain persuaded Boyers and Mock to let him join their slate in 2022 in order to bring together many different parts of the union.

“He said all the right things when we were interviewing because it was never Shawn’s slate. Let's be clear,” says Mock.

Both won the election, with Mock winning in the first round with over 62,000 votes, garnering 62% of total UAW member voters. Fain, though, struggled in his campaign for President, being pushed to a second-round runoff, which Fain won by only a 625-vote margin.

Fain Threatens to “Slit The Throats” of Union Dissidents

UAW President Shawn Fain testifies infront of Congress (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg)

Now, Mock says that Fain is replicating many of the UAW’s Administration Caucus' worst practices in creating a cult of personality while casting out nearly anyone who might question his plans.

In late 2023, meeting with over 300 UAW staffers, Fain asked his half-dozen top brass, including UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman, to stand in front of the room. He then pointed to them and declared, “If anyone ever messes with them, I will slit their fucking throats.”

Mock witnessed the scene firsthand; she was standing next to Fain on the podium, and says that this threat was indicative of a culture of uncollaborative domination based on the edicts of Fain and his outside consultants.

“If you didn't fall in line, you would fall underneath the sword,” said Mock.

In one incident, described in a federal monitor report, the UAW’s print shop was printing a flyer describing the details of a tentative agreement between Stellantis and the union, when Fain burst into the room, seething mad. He berated a staffer because they had included a photo of the UAW’s elected Secretary-Treasurer Mock alongside Fain.

“Who told you to put [Mock’s] motherfucking photo on there? This is my motherfucking membership,” Fain yelled.

Fain later admitted that he did this, telling the UAW’s monitor that he felt bad about “getting shitty” with the staffer.

UAW Compliance Director Resigns Over Fain Smears of Mock

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Mock (left) and UAW President Shawn March during "The Stand Up Strike" (Jim West/Alamy Live News)

Tensions between Mock and Fain boiled over in February of 2024, when Fain led an effort to remove Mock from her duties overseeing 11 different departments within the UAW. To justify Mock’s demotion, then-UAW Compliance Director Maria Schroeder prepared a report accusing Mock of politicizing the expenditure approval process.

The report from Schroeder persuaded the UAW International Executive Board to demote Mock. However, the federal monitor found that the report contained multiple fabrications.

Mock was not informed of the charges against her before being called before the Executive Board. The report completely blindsided her.

“It was just shocking, I had no idea what the charges against me even were,” says Mock.

Schroeder claimed that her report, which was used to justify Mock’s demotion, was entirely independent with no input from Fain or his top staff. However, an investigation by the federal monitor Neil Barofsky found that hundreds of text messages between top UAW staffers had been deleted and that then-UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks lied to the federal monitor, a serious and illegal offense.

The monitor accused Fain and Brooks of deleting at least 123 text messages from their phones during the period when they were orchestrating the demotion of Mock, in an attempt to hide their conspiracy from the union’s membership.

Even more shocking, every text message on UAW Compliance Director Schroeder's phone was deleted from the period between November 25, 2023, and March 23, 2024, when the plan to remove Mock was hatched.

According to the monitor’s report, neither Schroeder nor Fain could explain why so many of their text messages had been deleted. At one point, Fain told the federal monitor that someone might have broken into his office and deleted the messages.

Emails, text messages, and sworn statements obtained by the federal monitor show that Furman and Brooks took a lead role in drafting the Special Compliance Report to oust Mock. However, Fain got Region 1A Director Laura Dickerson to present the report at the International Executive Board meeting as if it was an investigation that she personally undertook.

Dickerson admitted to federal investigators that she had no idea what was contained in the charges against Mock. She stated that she had followed the orders of Furman and Brooks.

Her motion was seconded by LaShawn English, who later admitted to federal investigators that she also did not know what was contained in the charges.

Mock believes that Fain, Brooks, and Furman, who are all white men, wanted to avoid controversial racial optics, so they put two Black administrators up to the task of presenting their sneak attack against Mock, who is also Black.

“I was disgusted by it,” says Mock. “How dare you do that? And how dare those two Black women jump at the opportunity to do that to another Black woman?”

“He needed the Black women to do it because he didn't want the blowback from him being a white man doing that to a Black woman,” says Mock.

​The UAW’s federal monitor, Neil Barofsky, found that Fain intentionally misled the UAW’s rank-and-file about who authored the report.

“As further evidence of retaliatory intent, Fain made statements to the Monitor that confirmed his intent to deliberately conceal his commanding role in the effort to remove Mock’s departmental responsibilities,” wrote UAW’s federal monitor Neil Barofsky in court documents filed in federal court in Michigan.

Brooks Brags About “Slam Dunking” on Mock

Former UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks (Matt Hamilton/Chattanooga Times-Free Press)

However, not all UAW staffers deleted their messages. Brooks and Furman continued congratulating one another, in texts, for secretly orchestrating the illegal demotion of Mock.

According to a federal monitor report released last December, “text messages between Brooks and Communications Director Jonah Furman showing that they (a) had editorial control over the Special Compliance Report, (b) used that control to insert false and inflammatory allegations against Mock that Fain later used to justify the retaliation against her.”

After their plan to demote Mock was successfully executed in February, Brooks texted Furman to brag about it.

“Can I just take a moment and say: my strategy was flawless this week. Like everything went perfectly to plan,” texted Brooks. “It feels really good. Like how [I] imagine it feels to epically dunk on another player in basketball.”

Brooks may have celebrated too early, but he continues to use his influence as Jacobin’s lead labor columnist and their large social network to shape the left media narrative, which has ignored the story of Margaret Mock. Brooks was aided by several publications, Labor Notes, Drop Site News, and the Nation, which have refused to disclose their financial conflicts of interest in their reporting.

Fain Blocks Mock’s Appeal on UAW Constitution Committee

Mock at UAW's headquarters Solidarity House in Detroit (Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)

Mock says that she is going to continue to fight Fain and has several charges against Fain pending with UAW’s Convention Appeals Committee (CAC). However, for more than two years, Fain has blocked Mock’s charges from being heard.

“I've put in regular appeals, and guess where my appeals are at? In abeyance, they won't hear them,” says Mock. “They've been in abeyance for a couple of years now for some of the things that he's done.”

“The (UAW) Constitution guarantees the fact that we'll have a fair process put in place for any of our grievances, and we're just going to ignore that due process,” says Mock.

​Despite being shut out by the left press from interviews, Mock says that she is going to make her case directly to rank-and-file autoworkers like herself.

“Shawn, you cannot attack somebody viciously with lies and think that I'm just supposed to sit back and take it because it'll hurt organizing. Shawn, you're hurting organizing,” says Mock, who says she is determined to fight on against Fain no matter the cost.

​“The members, they didn't elect me to take this easy path,” says Mock. “They elected me, the members did, to protect what they have earned. So everything, every decision that I've made over these last few years, three and a half years, almost four, has been guided by that responsibility, and every decision that I will make in the future will be guided by that same thing. I have to protect what they earn.”

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From Payday Report via This RSS Feed.

After months of President Donald Trump threatening a US takeover of Cuba and ramping up a decadeslong economic assault of the island, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency created a related task force, "setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political, and leadership changes."

"In 1960, the CIA established an earlier Cuba task force, whose members oversaw the failed, agency-backed invasion of Cuba the next year known as the Bay of Pigs," the newspaper noted. "The people briefed on the new task force said its mandate is more limited: to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable to Mr. Trump's demands."

Despite the anonymous sources' claims about the differences from over a half-century ago, Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who wrote multiple books about former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, simply responded, "Bay of Pigs reloaded."

The Times article—on which the CIA declined to comment—came a day after Politico reported that "the US has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months as it pushes the country's communist regime to reform or fall from power, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans for the island."

The agency also declined to comment on Politico's piece, which pointed out that "US military operations are often preceded by increased American intelligence activity. CIA efforts to track the whereabouts of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro reportedly played a critical role this January in the successful US operation to capture him."

Sharing Politico's coverage on social media, Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that it is "hard to say at this point to what degree this is theater aimed at rattling the cage in Havana or performing strength to Miami, on the one hand, or some kind of prelude to an actual escalation, on the other, given recent months of warnings of escalation that went nowhere."

Enrique "Ric" Prado, a Cuban exile who served in various posts at the CIA, "is convinced that Washington is preparing a definitive blow against the island regime," El País reported early Wednesday. He predicted, "Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree."

This week's reporting followed the July release of a "McCarthyite" US Department of State document that was widely decried as an "attack on Americans' constitutional rights to free speech and assembly," as well as an attempt to justify an invasion of Cuba.

"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the department's report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."

Promoting the publication on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—claimed his department was "exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country."

During a Sunday interview with Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, Rubio repeated claims from the report and called the island nation, about 90 miles south of Florida and home to roughly 10 million people, "an influence and espionage superpower." His comments drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, the Cuban foreign minister, and other experts.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

A tiger once put its head beside a passenger in Vinod Rishi’s jeep. Its face, he wrote years later, wore a “quizzical expression.” Then it moved away, leaving the men unharmed. Rishi called it “a King with a big heart.” Decades after the encounter, he could still recall the position of the tiger’s head and the look on its face. Rishi, who died in Dehradun on July 29, held some of the highest positions in Indian wildlife administration. He was the first director of Project Elephant, additional director general of forests for wildlife, and director of the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy. During 38 years in the Indian Forest Service, he worked in the Sundarbans and Buxa tiger reserves, Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, and the national parks of Singalila and Neora Valley. Born in Jalandhar, Punjab, he trained as an engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and graduated in 1968. He joined the forest service the following year. His engineering background clearly influenced the way he approached conservation. He paid close attention to methods, evidence, and whether a plan would work in the field.  His early career in West Bengal brought him into contact with tigers, rhinos, elephants, and the administrative problems surrounding each of them. At Darjeeling Zoo, he studied animal biology at close range. The experience later contributed to work on captive breeding for snow leopards and the conservation of red pandas in Singalila. In the Sundarbans, he worked on conflict between people and tigers. When newspapers…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

On Tuesday night, police destroyed an encampment and memorial in honor Corey Ruiz, in a violent escalation. Candles, flowers, artwork, and photos were all trampled over and destroyed. Community members took to the streets to protest. Ruiz was killed by police in Madison, WI on July 22, and protests have continued for weeks since.

From BreakThrough News via This RSS Feed.

More than 150 delegates from 25 countries will gather in Havana, Cuba, from August 6 to 9 for the IV Continental Assembly of ALBA Movements, held under the motto “For socialism, one hundred years walking with Fidel.”

The articulation of popular forces, born in 2007 after an encounter with Commander Hugo Chávez during the Fifth Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP), currently groups around 400 peasant, native people, urban, student and feminist organizations aligned with the principles of sovereignty and regional integration of José Martí and Simón Bolívar.

RELATED: President Petro Proposes a “Dialogue Between Civilizations” to the US With Cuba

The work agenda for the meeting is structured around three fundamental axes: the analysis of the global situation in the face of the capitalism crisis, the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 and international conflicts; the discussion on socialism as a horizon through the updating of the popular political program; and the structuring of a Continental Work Plan that translates ideological debate into a unified struggle agenda.

With this gathering, organizers seek to reaffirm popular unity as the key tool to confront neoliberal offensives. The election of the Cuban capital as the venue for this edition constitutes an act of militant solidarity in the face of the intensification of the blockade imposed by the United States against the largest of the Antilles.

Text reads: “Heading to the Fourth Continental Assembly of ALBA Movements: “For socialism, a hundred years walking with Fidel”. We are only two days away from starting the most important space for debate and organization in our continental articulation. From August 6 to 9 in Havana, Cuba more than 150 delegates and thinners of the continent will meet to discuss how to face the offensive of imperialism on its most aggressive side, guarded and guarded by the legacy of Fidel.”

The assembly takes place within the framework of the centenary of the birth of Cuban Commander Fidel Castro, a figure whose revolutionary legacy constitutes the symbolic and political backbone of the meeting. The choice of Havana as the seat, organizers explained, deliberately links the continental agenda with the defense of the Cuban Revolution as an emancipatory reference for the region.

Solidarity Amid U.S. Blockade

The holding of the assembly in Cuba carries a special political meaning at a time when the U.S. blockade tightens its pressure on the island. The organizers described the decision as a militant gesture that transforms the continental gathering into a platform of concrete support for the Cuban people and their right to self-determination.

The context of the meeting also reflects the tensions that mark the current regional scenario, where governments aligned with the neoliberal agenda advance policies of deregulation and privatization that, according to the network, threaten the social conquests achieved in previous decades. For ALBA Movements, popular organization and continental coordination constitute the most effective response to these offensives.

Prior to the central event, the network’s Political Coordination held working sessions on August 3 and 4 at the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, located in Havana, joining a previous preparation that included national assemblies and virtual plenaries. This preparatory stage allowed the organizations to harmonize positions and define the common framework that will guide the debates of the coming days.

From the ALBA Movements Facebook page, the organizers cited the famous phrase of Commander Ernesto Che Guevara: “Because this great humanity has said ‘Enough!’ and has begun to march. And its march of giants will not stop until it conquers true independence…”

The assembly opens its sessions Thursday in the Cuban capital, with the presence of delegates from 25 countries and the participation of around 400 organizations that make up the continental network. The debates will address the restructuring of the international order, the responses to the crisis of capitalism and the concrete mechanisms to advance toward a unified popular agenda for the continent.

From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.

Only two complete dodo skulls are known to exist anywhere in the world: one at the Natural History Museum Denmark and one at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The specimen housed in Copenhagen has been preserved in the museum's collections for centuries and has now contributed to an international study led by researchers at the University of Lethbridge in Canada investigating a question that has puzzled researchers for generations: How did the dodo experience the world around it?

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

The Trump administration's controversial plan to build a new "Golden Fleet" of guided-missile battleships is drawing mounting criticism from budget watchdogs, defense analysts, and Democratic lawmakers, who warn the proposal would put taxpayers on the hook for what could be the costliest naval procurement in US history.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday said the cost to build 15 Trump-class nuclear-powered battleships is approximately $275 billion in current dollars through 2056—roughly 50% more than a previous estimate.

"Under the 2027 shipbuilding plan, compared with the 2025 plan, the Navy would purchase substantially more large surface combatants," the CBO said. "The average annual amount of funding needed to buy surface combatants would rise by slightly more than two-thirds, from about $11 billion to $19 billion."

"By 2035, the Navy's 2027 plan would more than double the tonnage of large surface combatants that shipbuilders would need to produce," the office added. "Overall, the tonnage of large surface combatants to be constructed would need to increase by 60%, while the tonnage of small surface combatants would decrease by about 40%. Accommodating such a sizable increase in the production of large surface combatants could be a challenge for the shipbuilding industry."

One journalist noted that the Trump-class battleships' cost would make them "the most expensive US warships ever produced."

President Donald Trump claimed in December that his proposed Golden Fleet would "help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world."

The president explicitly linked his desire to revive battleships—which were last built in the US in 1944 and were all decommissioned by the early 1990s—to his affinity for the 1950s television documentary series "Victory at Sea."

Critics say the program will inflate already historically high military budgets while diverting hundreds of billions of dollars that would be better spent on underfunded social programs.

"At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, healthcare, and childcare, Congress cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’ including plastering his name across a new battleship," Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said Wednesday in response to the CBO analysis.

"Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex."

"Just like Trump’s ‘Golden Dome,’ the ‘Golden Fleet’ is expected to cost much more than previously estimated," he continued, referring to the president's proposed missile defense system that Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) derided as a "dangerous $1.2 trillion boondoggle."

“While we continue to see too many Pentagon programs burdened by cost overruns, delays, and unrealistic promises that fail to meet reality, Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex," Merkley added. "I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to reject moving forward with this wasteful project, and instead invest in programs that help families thrive."

In addition to cost, military experts and others noted the obsolescence of battleships—which are now all scrapped or museum pieces—and the fact that they make great big targets.

Among the most outspoken critics of the Golden Fleet is Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who has argued that the ships represent a throwback to outdated naval warfare doctrine.

Rather than concentrating enormous combat power in a handful of exceptionally expensive vessels, Cancian has said the Navy's own operational concepts increasingly emphasize "distributed maritime operations," the spreading of offensive capabilities across larger numbers of smaller, networked ships that are harder for adversaries to target.

Bernard Loo, a senior fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, was even more blunt in a December CBNC interview, calling the proposed Trump-class ships "bomb magnets."

“The size and the prestige value of it all make it an even more tempting target," Loo added.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Over the course of Donald Trump’s second term, Democratic voters have expressed dissatisfaction with their party over what many view as an inability to stand up to the president and his broader movement. That dissatisfaction with the establishment has manifested in primaries in coastal cities across the country, where the progressive movement appears to be ascendant. On Tuesday, that test played out in Midwestern states, Michigan and Missouri.

Within roughly two hours of polls closing, The Associated Press called the closely watched rematch between Cori Bush and Rep. Wesley Bell for the incumbent. In 2024, AIPAC and other outside groups spent more than $18 million to oust Bush from her Missouri district, and her defeat, along with New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s, has served as a warning sign for Democrats not to be too progressive or too pro-Palestine.

[

Related

Abdul El-Sayed Beats the Democratic Establishment and AIPAC in Michigan](https://theintercept.com/2026/08/05/michigan-primary-results-el-sayed-stevens-aipac/)

But by Wednesday morning, Abdul El-Sayed, who ran on Medicare for All and ending military aid to Israel for its continued genocide in Gaza, narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens by less than 20,000 votes. According to AdImpact, the Michigan Democratic Senate primary saw $98 million in ad spending and reservations. At least $60 million was spent boosting Stevens or attacking El-Sayed, with more than $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, United Democracy Project — its largest spend in a single race ever, nearly double the then-record-breaking amount spent on Bowman’s 2024 primary race.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington and colleagues Akela Lacy and Jonah Valdez discuss what results from Tuesday’s primaries signal for progressives and the broader left in the Democratic Party, especially in swing states and outside of coastal cities.

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter.

Jonah Valdez: And I’m Jonah Valdez. I cover politics and U.S. foreign policy.

JW: We’re in your feed a bit early this week to talk about two major primaries we’ve been reporting on at The Intercept.

Over the nearly two years on this podcast, we’ve been covering voters’ dissatisfaction with Democrats over what many view as an inability to stand up to President Donald Trump and his broader movement. That dissatisfaction has manifested in primaries in cities across the country, from New York to Colorado and California, where the progressive movement appears to be ascendant.

That test came to the Midwest on Tuesday in Michigan and Missouri. In Missouri, former squad member Cori Bush lost her rematch against Representative Wesley Bell, who received the bulk of outside spending, primarily from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In 2024, AIPAC and other groups poured a collective $18 million into the race to defeat her.

In Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Representative Haley Stevens in a win for progressives after AIPAC-aligned super PACs and others poured close to $100 million into the race, according to Ad Impact. This week on the Intercept Briefing, you’ll hear what the results from Tuesday’s primaries signal for progressives and the broader left in the Democratic Party, especially in swing states and outside of coastal cities.

Jonah, Akela, I really want to get your reactions to El-Sayed winning the Democratic Michigan Senate primary.

JV: Well, it was a long night, and AP called it pretty early, at least here where I am on the West Coast. And I think my initial reaction is a win’s a win. I think results were a lot closer than what the polls had showed leading up to it.

I think it’s worth noting that Abdul El-Sayed was massively outspent in this race. Overall nearly $100 million in the Senate primary. It’s the most expensive Democratic primary ever, but the majority of which was spent in outside spending to either attack El-Sayed or boost the campaign of Stevens.

Yet, El-Sayed pulls off this, very close win with a vote-toll, I think it’s worth noting, that’s greater than the more moderate Elissa Slotkin got in her primary in 2024. More similar to closer margins we saw in the presidential primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

JW: For our listeners at home, Elissa Slotkin is the senator who beat Mike Rogers in 2024. Mike Rogers is the presumptive Republican nominee who El-Sayed will be facing in the November election.

JV: And you’re already seeing online, all this talk from moderates as far as where El-Sayed may have failed as if to show progressive policies still don’t do well, or, all this talk of how can El-Sayed moderate more in the general. But I think if Dems are serious about getting a Senate majority, I think it’s more so on moderates to appeal to what the majority of voters in Michigan decided today, and that’s that it’s the politics of the El-Sayed campaign.

AL: My reaction, obviously NBC projected overnight that El-Sayed would win, and so his campaign claimed victory overnight, and everyone was waiting well into the morning for the final results.

But in that interim period, you basically saw the shift in conversation go from everyone having that election night anticipation to everyone, churning out takes about why the polling that showed El-Sayed up by double digits in the final weeks of the race had been so far off. Making conjectures about counties where Stevens outperformed him and extrapolating that to the November general election, making claims that El-Sayed is going to have to make up a lot of ground with, Black or working-class voters in counties that Stevens performed better in.

But I think that immediate pivot is really telling in a lot of ways because this was the most expensive Senate primary in history, and we saw the most spending ever from not just the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but all of these other corporate PACs to boost Haley Stevens.

She came into this race in the first spot with backing from the Democratic Party and lost, and I think to ignore the massive failure on the part of the party in that vein and to instead put those failures on El-Sayed is a really backwards reading of what happened last night.

JW: Akela, to your point about the money, and Jonah, I want to bring you into this, did the money make a difference? It was the most expensive Democratic [Senate] primary in history, and did the spending here change the outcome? Obviously, El-Sayed won anyway, but, did this have an impact?

AL: I think it would be folly to argue that it didn’t have an impact. It’s still very early. We don’t have all of the information, but there’s anecdotal reports of voters saying that they thought that Obama endorsed Haley Stevens. I actually haven’t seen anyone talking about individual responses to the AIPAC attacks, but that narrative out there that Abdul El-Sayed is the biggest threat to the U.S.-Israel relationship or to American Jews or Jewish voters in Michigan, that’s been out there this entire race.

And so I think that certainly had an effect. But I’ve also seen some people saying, “Oh you can’t just make the argument that voters who voted for Haley Stevens or who were swayed by these ads are stupid.” I don’t think anyone’s saying they’re stupid. But it’s unrealistic to try to make an argument that this money had no effect in this race.

JV: Yeah, it absolutely made a difference. Speaking with people in Michigan throughout the summer and really starting, early July, just like a flood of attack ads against El-Sayed. They were pretty much omnipresent if you were watching TV. Mind you, this was around the World Cup, so people were seeing this on primetime television immediately after a game ended.

Someone I spoke to said the second ad right after is an attack ad calling Abdul El-Sayed, I think hateful toward women, and other ones painted him as a terrorist sympathizer trying to tie him to Hasan Piker and comments he made. And so painting this whole vision that he is, too radical for Michigan. It is the outside spending propping that up, but on top of that, like trying to make this ideological argument.

JW: And just for anyone who doesn’t know Hasan Piker is the popular Twitch streamer who’s been campaigning with progressives and who Republicans and Democrats have been weaponizing against progressives implying with, I would argue, pretty Islamophobic attacks that these candidates are anti-American and that they believe everything that Piker believes.

JV: I think it’s worth remembering that there was a point in this race when it was essentially a three-way tie between El-Sayed, Stevens, and Mallory McMorrow, who would eventually drop out. The conventional thinking at the time was that the more that voters see of Stevens the more it would consolidate around McMorrow and El-Sayed, that Stevens would back off and would drop off in the polls because of AIPAC being such a big issue in the race.

Around the same time as polls were reflecting that, that’s when AIPAC’s super PAC United Democracy Project dropped in tens and tens of millions of dollars. This is the correlated result that you get.

Stevens also has this history with AIPAC as far as the why they spent for her. AIPAC and corporate groups saw Stevens as a candidate that aligns with their policy positions. Stevens of course in 2019 took that freshman trip sponsored by AIPAC to Israel. And worth mentioning in 2022 she received millions in support in her race against former Congressman Andy Levin, who was attacked over his support for a Palestinian state.

On the other side of that coin, of course, is AIPAC saw a candidate in El-Sayed who opposes their positions on Israel.

JW: Akela, I want to turn to you for a second. I know that the United Democracy Project, a super PAC backed by AIPAC as you both have mentioned, spent a ton of money in this race. I know that came up in your conversation with El-Sayed last week. Now that you’ve had some time to reflect on that conversation, were there any takeaways for you about how he was thinking about money and politics, and specifically the massive amount of money that was spent on his election?

AL: The core of El-Sayed’s argument this entire race was that he was the antithesis to big money in politics. Not just spending on a race, but talking about money in politics being the reason that we don’t have policies like Medicare for All, that we can’t change sort of the status quo on U.S. military support for Israel, that being a driving factor for why many voters ended up supporting somebody like Donald Trump.

Looking back on the way that El-Sayed messaged on these things he was right. The question was, like, how much do voters actually care about that thing? And I think the breakdown came between voters who support a candidate like Stevens and don’t necessarily care about the money coming in to support her.

People talk a lot about the enthusiasm gap. That supporters of El-Sayed were much more enthusiastically supportive of him in a positive way than supporters of Stevens who might have been supporting her, because they were familiar with her, they felt like she was more of a predictable candidate or because they didn’t want to vote for somebody like El-Sayed. That enthusiasm gap is why you see that kind of money coming into the race. He made the point over and over again “If your candidate is so electable, why do you have to spend $60 million to put them in office?” Part of that is his campaign strategy, but I think it’s a pretty unimpeachable argument, right? If they didn’t need that kind of boost to put their candidate in office, and obviously it didn’t work, why would you make that kind of investment?

Coming out of this, there’s all kinds of people trying to spin this to say, “Oh the money advantage has changed this cycle,” right? We’ve seen other candidates who had the money advantage lose, but I don’t think that discounts exactly how much money went into this race. I think there was almost $100 million spent in total on the Michigan Senate race. Which is crazy. Just on its face. If you’re on the opposite side of that spending the obvious question is, “OK if your candidate is so good, then why do you have to do all of this to help them win?”

The takeaway that a lot of people have from this, whether they’re supportive of El-Sayed or whether they’re upset about Haley Stevens, is that, I don’t think the era of big money in politics is over, but obviously the ground is shifting.

JW: Jonah, I want to come back to the Islamophobia in the race that you reported on. Obviously, we saw these attacks both from Democrats and Republicans, and as we head into November, we can only imagine that these attacks are going to intensify and I would argue become more Islamophobic as Republicans pick up some of these attacks that Democrats had dropped in the primary.

What do you think is going to happen in the general election, and how are you anticipating Islamophobia to show up in this race?

JV: We’re already seeing it this morning. The Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, they released their first ads this morning, and of course, they refer to Abdul El-Sayed by his full name, they are tying him again to Hassan Piker, using phrasing that El-Sayed is too radical. These are all out of the playbook from the primary that the Michigan GOP had rolled out that Mike Rogers had rolled out.

And on top of that, I’m glad you noted that it’s not just the Republicans who have been weaponizing Islamophobia, it’s also the Democratic establishment and AIPAC through its, again, super PAC, [United Democracy Project], just pouring and pouring all these ads that are again painting Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim and Arab, as a sympathizer to terrorism. That on top of, these unfounded claims of his hatred toward women. Speaking to several leading experts in Islamophobia, they were identifying these as pretty troubling anti-Muslim and anti-Arab tropes that have been around in American politics for years now.

I think one person mentioned that it reminded them of the early attacks on Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, and that leaked photo that Hillary Clinton’s campaign at the time put out showing him in traditional Somalian elder attire. And so, I think we could expect these kinds of attacks to only accelerate, especially at a time when, Islamophobia is pretty common in GOP rhetoric right now.

We saw it leading up to the campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York for his mayoral seat. We see it very regularly from representatives in the House like Randy Fine, who folks like him in his part of the world essentially believe that no Muslims should serve in Congress at all.

They’re drawing these hard, very bigoted lines. They’re successful politically in a lot of spaces. Republicans are still betting that these old tactics can still work before a broader electorate. Today’s victory, though, in spite of all of the attack ads in the primary, shows that those older tactics may not be as effective as they were, say, a decade ago or 20 years ago.

What we’re seeing this morning with these new ads, is a preview of what’s to come. It’s only going to get worse as the GOP plays to its MAGA base. But El-Sayed has shown that he has the capacity to overcome this, and I think that boils down to just how far the electorate has evolved on this and just aren’t as susceptible to such blatant racism.

JW: One thing I’ve been wondering is whether or not as we head into November, the establishment Democrats are going to protect El-Sayed and actually stand up against these Islamophobic attacks.

We’ve seen Democrats dance around these attacks on Ilhan Omar, sometimes defending against them, but often adding fuel to the fire. So I think come November or before November even, it’ll be interesting to see if Democrats actually intervene and do something about these kinds of racist, Islamophobic attacks.

AL: It’s a good question, Jessie, and already this morning we’ve seen Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who run the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorse El-Sayed. We saw the Senate Majority PAC come in and endorse him. Even Haley Stevens endorsed him. But lest we forget, four days ago, Haley Stevens was saying that El-Sayed blamed all of his problems on Jewish voters with the backing of many of these people in the party.

So yeah, I think the question of whether they will specifically address the Islamophobic attacks is a totally different question from whether they are going to consolidate around him, which they are, because they obviously need the seat.

[Break]

JW: Obviously this was a really interesting race, and we’ve all been watching it, but I want to talk about some other races that happened last night as well.

So Akela, I know you’ve been watching House District 7 in Michigan, where William Lawrence, founder of the Sunrise Movement, won the Democratic primary. Akela, can you tell us a little bit about him and the dynamics of that race?

AL: Will Lawrence many people may remember him because of the late breaking oppo story about him saying that the left had been defanged by Black members of Congress. But prior to that, Will Lawrence had run a pretty textbook progressive campaign from the left, but he really was one of the first candidates this cycle who we saw center their campaign around the issue of data centers.

And I think in some of the analysis that we’ve seen coming out of his win, which was one of the early calls last night is that that is a winning argument particularly for progressive campaigns, but also in states where communities are fighting data centers.

We’ve seen this, I don’t want to say people are treating the data center issue as like a panacea, but we have seen that come up in a lot of campaigns and a lot of analysis, suggesting that’s potentially a through line where progressives can overcome some of the obstacles that they might have faced, around other “controversial policies,” and that data centers is like this reasonable policy that progressives are adopting that’s helping to boost their campaigns.

I think that’s a narrative that’s really coming out of Will Lawrence’s race. I will also mention that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee backed Lawrence shortly after he won, which is a pretty big deal.

JV: And just to add with Lawrence, he is in the 7th Michigan district, which is considered a purple district, and it’s currently held by a Republican incumbent. So I think moving ahead to the general, I think similar to El-Sayed’s race against Mike Rogers, is that, a lot of people will be looking at this as a test of how these anti-corporate, anti-data center, and unabashedly pro-Palestinian politics play in a general election in a district that is very much considered a swing district

JW: Yeah. No, I can definitely see that.

I want to turn to another state, Missouri. Within roughly two hours of polls closing, the Associated Press called the closely watched, for me at least, probably a little bit less for the rest of the news ecosystem, but the closely watched rematch between Cori Bush and Representative Wesley Bell in Bell’s favor.

So in 2024, AIPAC and other groups had spent more than $18 million to oust her from her Missouri district. Akela, we’ve both spoken to members of Congress who, have seen her defeat as a warning sign to not be so progressive, to not be so pro-Palestine. We’ve been chatting in the newsroom in our politics meetings about whether or not this race says anything about progressives and the progressive movement right now, or does it just say something about Bush and her campaign?

AL: I don’t think that this race says anything about the viability of pro-Palestine candidates. To make that argument, you would have to close your eyes to all of the last three months, basically. I think this was a race about Cori Bush and Wesley Bell. And for all the criticisms of Wesley Bell, people like him in this district.

Turnout in St. Louis the city of St. Louis, Cori Bush’s base was pretty high. It was 30 percent. That was around the levels that we saw when she won re-election in 2022, and that was not enough to counteract the support that Wesley Bell got from St. Louis County, where more older Black voters who support him tend to live.

What I heard from supporters of Bush was that some people thought she was going to lose, but they didn’t think it would be by this much. A lot of people thought she was going to win and they were obviously wrong. I don’t think you can make the argument that the AIPAC money in this race is the only reason that she lost.

There was a pretty effective campaign to saddle her with baggage from these stories about what happened to the tornado relief money that she raised and her husband being probed over a pandemic loan fraud, and all of these things we talked about and she chalked up to political attacks.

But I think people in the district were not necessarily swayed by those issues — but it left a bad taste in their mouth, and it’s the kind of thing where — I’m not sure that Wesley Bell would’ve won if a different candidate was was challenging him, just given the frustration both with incumbents and with AIPAC money.

Bush’s campaign also suffered because she didn’t have the marquee progressive support that we’ve seen boost candidates in other races, like rallies with Bernie Sanders and AOC. Bernie Sanders endorsed her, but nobody came to campaign with her. Justice Democrats endorsed her, but they didn’t spend money on the race.

The money that was spent in favor of Bush was just around $200,000, that means that progressive groups didn’t take this race seriously. And for one reason or another, it’s kind of a chicken or the egg thing. Had they taken it seriously, could she have won, or did they not take it seriously because they didn’t think she was going to win?

At the end of the day, this was more of a race about Cori Bush and Wesley Bell than it was a bigger test of all these other issues. And Wesley Bell is the kind of person who has, aside from taking AIPAC money, you can’t really say a lot else about him because he doesn’t really do a lot, and I think that works in his favor for better or for worse.

JW: Yeah, and Jonah, I wanted to get your thoughts as well. If you’ve spoken to Cori Bush, she is unlike any other politician. She very much speaks and feels like an organizer. Just watching her navigate the political system and struggle to navigate the political system has been really interesting. But Jonah, I wanted to see if you had any thoughts about this race as well?

JV: I think it’s worth noting that she was very much ahead of the curve on a lot of the politics that we’re seeing succeed in this midterm primary elections. And, I think to Akela’s point, seeing the success, like the massive success across the U.S. on, the same platform that she’s running on and something that she’s ran on since she was first elected and was among the early politicians to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide.

As yours and Akela’s reporting had noted in 2024, was very early with the ceasefire resolution, as we know there’s still no ceasefire in Gaza. These are things that she was very much ahead in the curve on and is still very much a leader in that space. Her losing in this election doesn’t necessarily mean that those values don’t do well before the electorate.

JW: Akela, to your point, I’ve seen some analysis suggesting that a lot of progressive attention was spent on Michigan. Do you think that played a role in why there wasn’t as much spending or attention or any on-the-ground mobilization from progressive groups? Was all of their focus on Michigan?

AL: I wouldn’t say there was no on-the-ground mobilization. DSA, the St. Louis DSA endorsed her, and the St. Louis chapter was canvassing for her, and they had a pretty well-run canvassing operation to what I understand. But that’s not enough. I think they potentially miscalculated because of the boost that DSA gave to other candidates in New York and Colorado, I think they assumed that would be enough to put her over the edge.

But yeah, in conversations with progressive strategists who work on these races, the reason that they didn’t put as many resources into this race is absolutely because they put all of them into Michigan. The caveat here is that even while groups like Justice Democrats or the new pro-Palestine PAC, American Priorities, are spending more than they ever have on these races, in part because of how much money corporate PACs and the pro-Israel lobby have spent against their candidates in previous cycles, is that there’s still only a handful of these groups.

They simply do not have the capacity to triage every race in a cycle or even every race in a week. People were like, “I wish another group, bucked up and came in and put more money in this race for her.” But it wasn’t going to be JD [Justice Democrats] because they had Donavan McKinney.

It wasn’t going to be American Priorities, probably because they didn’t want to sully their positive track record so far by making a massive investment in a race where the candidate already had a lot of problems. All of these calculations went into the fact that the focus on Michigan probably affected this race, but again, I don’t think you can say one way or the other if all these groups came in and spent a bunch of money for her that it would’ve changed the outcome. We just don’t have enough information right now to say that.

JW: I want to talk about Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong, who is currently having clips about her takes on Thanksgiving and raising a biracial child, taken, I would argue, a little bit out of context.

But I do want to talk about that race because she’s a Democratic socialist who is currently leading in the polls for governor in Wisconsin against the more moderate candidate, David Crowley, and that race is coming up next week. Akela, can you just briefly talk about the dynamics at play here?

AL: Francesca Hong, a Democratic socialist state lawmaker in Wisconsin who has been leading the polls in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary.

This is a situation where, I mean, why is CNN asking this woman about a tweet about canceling Thanksgiving? That’s my question. I don’t care what she thinks about Thanksgiving. That’s not a policy that the governor of Wisconsin has power over. The fact that this is what this race has come down to at this point, is a reflection of how much these outlets and mainstream forces are working to tear down and poke holes in what is clearly a substantive movement against the Democratic establishment. I’m not saying Francesca Hong is perfect, but I think these interviews and these clips of her, making these comments are less about her than they are about how much fear she strikes in the heart of the establishment apparatus.

I’ve talked to a lot of people in Wisconsin, people who are supporting Hong’s campaign and see this race as a real opportunity again to put this question of can progressive politics win in the Midwest? This is what Perry Bacon Jr. wrote about the New Republic earlier this week. I thought this was a really great piece, and we’ve talked about this, Jessie. Pointing to people like Tammy Duckworth and Barack Obama and Sherrod Brown who were progressives, prior to their races in the Midwest and then won those races, whether or not they fashioned themselves as a progressive or not.

The polling that has shown her ahead a lot of people have questions about that now given how blown out of proportion the polling was for El-Sayed. But I think, pairing that question with the criticisms of “Oh, she’s talking about her proximity to whiteness and marrying a white guy and having a biracial child and talking about canceling Thanksgiving.” There’s a reason they’re not talking about her actual policy platform. It’s frustrating because like what happens when you have real “working class” candidates or candidates who are running on policies to help the working class elevated to this level of national attention you don’t get the polished, you know, Abdul El-Sayed soundbite answers that we were seeing in the Michigan race. People take that and run with it in a way that is pretty hollow in a lot of cases, and that’s what we’re seeing with Francesca Hong.

JW: Yeah. No, I’d have to agree. What I think about, and I am a former debate kid, so this is no shade to debate people, but there is an extent to which our politics just feels like how good are you at giving a speech and essentially being a good debate kid, and has nothing to do with your policies.

I also don’t understand why we’re focusing on her attitudes about her child and how she’s planning on raising them or how she thinks about Thanksgiving and whether or not it should exist. It’s not like she said anything completely out of left field.

But as we begin to pivot from primaries to midterm elections, what do you make of progressive’s chances in places outside of the coast in November? I know that we already talked about Perry Bacon’s piece, which, by the way, people should read. It’s called “Can Progressive Candidates Win in Swing States? They already have.” But what are you thinking about progressives’ chances? Jonah, I want to actually take this question to you and see what you’re thinking.

JV: Yeah, as Michigan has shown us and as possibly looking ahead to Wisconsin next week, the margins are still very close and these races are very embattled and bitter.

But I think the success that we’re seeing with Abdul El-Sayed, with Will Lawrence, who we talked about, and as well as Donavan McKinney, who we haven’t talked about yet. These are folks who are running on very progressive, unabashedly pro-Palestine campaigns. And I think it’s worth mentioning Donavan McKinney was also endorsed by the Detroit Metro DSA chapter as well, and, mobilizing for him.

DSA also mobilized very heavily for El-Sayed, even though he himself is not a member of DSA and has called himself a capitalist and someone who wants to regulate capitalism and not necessarily stands for socialist policies. But I think that’s proving the theory right that it’s not just confined to the coasts, and this is less of an ideological battle when it comes to voters.

A lot of experts and analysts will say that people don’t vote based on ideological lines. They vote on their pocketbooks. Of course, the adage of it’s the economy. And, these progressive platforms are playing directly to that on top of people’s dissatisfaction with the establishment.

I think to Akela’s point, right-wing media, [and] corporate liberal media like CNN can play up all of these culture war questions constantly of Thanksgiving, holidays. For the case of El-Sayed, it was a question of why he felt the need to have sympathy for some of his Muslim constituents in Dearborn or would-be constituents in Dearborn. It’s questions like this that have nothing to do with actual legitimate policy questions. In that case, it’s like there was zero questioning, we’re talking about Iran and the killing of Iran’s leader. There were zero questions about should we be in this war with Iran? Should we have killed how many civilians we’ve killed in that war? Or backing Israel’s war in Lebanon and continued war in Gaza. These are the kind of policy questions that a lot of Americans are fed up with. Polling also shows total dissatisfaction with military spending and as opposed to spending it on healthcare and education.

Progressives, regardless of the coasts or in the Midwest are continuing to hammer that in of your taxpayer dollars can be spent and should be spent in way more effective ways that meet your needs and not the needs of, the greater American empire if you will.

JW: Yeah, and just for everyone listening you referred to State Rep Donavan McKinney, who defeated U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, the incumbent candidate in Michigan’s 13 district on Tuesday night.

And that’s honestly all of the time that we have here. But thank you all so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing, staying up late, waking up early, putting in the real work.

AL: Thank you, Jessie.

JV: Thank you.

JW: We want to hear from you. Tell us what you’re following or want to see more coverage of. Email us at podcast@theintercept.com or leave us a voicemail at 530-POD-CAST that’s 530-763-2278

That does it for this episode. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Legal review by David Bralow.

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The post The Most Expensive Democratic Senate Primary Has a Winner appeared first on The Intercept.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday hit back at House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over a fearmongering social media post in which the Republican warned of "radical Marxist Democrats" determined "to destroy the very foundations that make us the envy of the entire world."

During a press conference, the democratic socialist mayor was asked to comment on the post, in which Johnson said the US was in danger of "being overrun by mini-Mamdanis" if Republicans lost control of Congress this fall.

Mamdani responded by speculating that Johnson's post was in reaction to the victory of Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan on Tuesday.

Noting that El-Sayed campaigned on a slogan of, "Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All," the mayor questioned why Johnson found such promises so threatening.

Reporter: Mike Johnson said in an X post: “There is an urgent question facing America. Are we going to maintain our status as the world’s greatest superpower and beacon of liberty, opportunity, and security, or allow radical Marxist Democrats to destroy the very foundations that… pic.twitter.com/EuZVUtTJP6
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"If those simple commitments and beliefs are what drive Rep. Johnson to these kinds of conclusions," Mamdani said, "I think it shows you how deeply out of touch the Republican Party is with the concerns of working-class Americans."

The mayor then alluded to the hurdles that El-Sayed had to overcome to win the election, including organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which alone spent $30 million to defeat him.

"Despite him facing more than $60 million in outside spending," Mamdani said, "he was able to prevail with a focus on the cost-of-living crisis, and the way in which healthcare is exceedingly out of reach for those who have helped make this country what it is."

The Associated Press declared El-Sayed the winner of the often contentious primary on Wednesday morning, and many establishment Democrats—including his top rival, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)—rallied behind him as the party's nominee.

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