Democracy defenders responded with alarm on Wednesday to a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority allowing Virginia to resume its purge of state voter registration rolls while early voting is underway for next Tuesday’s election.
Stand Up America managing director of policy and political affairs Brett Edkins framed the court’s decision as a gift to former Republican President Donald Trump, who appointed half of the conservative justices and is facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 contest for the White House.
With the recent deployment of the US’s most advanced anti-missile system to Israel, manned by American troops, it looks ever more likely that the US is preparing for war with Iran. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu may be planning an ‘October surprise’ in order to sway the upcoming presidential election in favour of Donald Trump. In such circumstances it seems sensible to hold off speculating on the future of America and the world until after the November election.
But this is also a special moment of high anxiety. We face what may be a definitive turning point in modern history. Personally, I feel my entire political life is on the block. It’s a strange sensation; one that combines a feeling of vindication that I’ve been right all along even as I sense the axe blade of modern fascism above my neck about to sever any hope for a progressive future.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign proposals “would dramatically worsen Social Security’s finances.”
Republican nominee Donald Trump’s claim that he wants to “fight for and protect Social Security” was called into further question Monday after a conservative think tank released an analysis projecting that the former president’s economic proposals and mass deportation plan would significantly damage the New Deal program’s finances.
The new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) specifically focuses on Trump’s proposals to end taxes on tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime pay; implement sweeping tariffs on imports; and launch what he’s described as the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
The think tank projected that, if enacted, Trump’s agenda would “increase Social Security’s 10-year cash shortfall by $2.3 trillion through FY 2035” and “lead to a 33% across-the-board benefit cut in 2035, up from the 23% [the Congressional Budget Office] projects under current law.”
Trump’s plans would also “increase Social Security’s annual shortfall by roughly 50% in FY 2035” and “advance insolvency by three years, from FY 2034 to FY 2031.”
“Trump has said he would close Social Security’s long-term shortfall by increasing drilling for oil and natural gas and by growing the economy,” the analysis notes. “However, we’ve shown that increased energy exploration is unlikely to have a meaningful effect on Social Security—even if the gains were deposited into the trust fund. We’ve also shown that it would require unrealistically fast economic growth to close Social Security’s existing long-term funding gap.”
Social Security Works (SSW), a progressive advocacy group that supports expanding the New Deal program, highlighted CRFB’s analysis in a social media post on Monday, writing, “Donald Trump plans to slash $2.3 TRILLION from Social Security while giving massive tax handouts to Wall Street billionaires.” (The Social Security Works Political Action Committee has endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for the presidency.)
SHAMEFUL: Donald Trump's plans to slash Social Security by $2.3 TRILLION!
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare—which endorsed Harris in July—said it is “not surprising that Donald Trump’s ill-conceived plans would devastate the financial health of Social Security and lead to huge benefit cuts.”
“Trump’s plans are of a piece with his overall recklessness with Social Security. He suspended the payroll tax that funds the program during Covid—and hoped it would be eliminated,” said Richtman. “His White House budgets would have slashed Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) by billions of dollars. He said earlier this year that he was ‘open’ to ‘cutting entitlements,’ then tried to walk it back. He once called Social Security a ‘Ponzi Scheme.’ Time and again, Trump has chosen political expediency without considering—or caring about—the consequences. Despite his posturing, Donald Trump is no friend to Social Security or American seniors.”
In a footnote of its analysis, CRFB states that Harris’ proposals thus far “would not have large effects on Social Security trust fund solvency.”
The Harris campaign quickly seized on CRFB’s findings. Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in a statement Monday that “Donald Trump’s agenda poses an imminent threat to Social Security, and seniors could have their benefits cut by a third.”
“This is yet another reason that Americans simply cannot afford the risk of another Trump term, where he would pursue unchecked power to use his Project 2025 agenda to hurt the American people,” said Costello. “Vice President Harris is committed to protecting Social Security benefits and is the only candidate who will actually fight for seniors, not just pay them lip service on the campaign trail.”
According to the latest report from Social Security’s Board of Trustees, the program is currently positioned to fully pay all benefits and administrative costs until 2035. Thereafter, even if Congress does nothing to shore up the program, it would be able to pay 83% of scheduled benefits.
To bring in more revenue and ensure Social Security’s solvency through the end of the century, progressives in Congress have called for raising or scrapping the payroll tax cap, which allows the rich to stop contributing to the program just weeks into each year while ordinary Americans pay in year-round.
The Harris campaign has broadly signaled support for that approach, saying in its economic policy platform that the Democratic nominee would “shore up Social Security and Medicare so that these essential programs will stay solvent in the long run by making corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes.”
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“This ruling strengthens our democracy by safeguarding access to the ballot for all eligible voters including naturalized citizens who were unfairly targeted and removed from the rolls,” said one case litigant.
Sign directing voters to the unlocked door of a voting precinct in Madison County, Alabama. Photo: domesticat/flickr/CC
Citing a U.S. law prohibiting states from removing people from their registered voter lists within 90 days of an election, a U.S. federal judge on Wednesday ordered Alabama officials to pause a controversial voter roll purge until after next month’s contest.
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco—an appointee of former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee—wrote in her preliminary injunction that GOP Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by launching a campaign purportedly targeting “noncitizens registered to vote.”
“This most recent poll shows that voters want to vote more than ever despite, or perhaps because, our democracy is threatened with the dark cloud of election denial and violence.”
A man wearing a “Proud Boys” shirt waves a flag at a pro-Trump rally outside the Minnesota Governor’s mansion on November 14th, 2020.. Photo: Chad Davis/flickr/CC
Polling released Monday, less than a month away from the November 5 election, shows that nearly three-quarters of U.S. voters are worried about political violence and believe it is likely because some people will not accept the results.
The latest Civil Rights Monitor Poll, commissioned by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, is based on responses from 1,000 likely voters across the country, who were surveyed September 3-8.
Protest against the selection of Michel Barnier as prime minister on September 7, 2024 in Nantes, France.. Photo: Lee/X
In cities and towns across France on Saturday, more than 100,000 people answered the call from the left-wing political party La France Insoumise for mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s selection of a right-wing prime minister.
The demonstrations came two months after the left coalition won more seats than Macron’s centrist coalition or the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in the National Assembly and two days after the president announced that Michel Barnier, the right-wing former Brexit negotiator for the European Union, would lead the government.
“Now is the time to refuse to cover politics with soundbites that place profit over people’s understanding of the stakes. Media must be a watchdog for the people right now.”
Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at The People’s Convention at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan June 2024. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC
Pushing back against calls for the media to “refrain from covering mounting authoritarianism” in the United States since the Republican nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt, a coalition on Thursday urged news outlets “to wholeheartedly reject such a dereliction of journalistic duty, and to rigorously report threats to our democracy.”
“Media coverage shapes both public discourse and people’s understanding of events of the day,” states the coalition’s open letter. “This is particularly critical during contentious and extreme times such as these. Media coverage can invite public engagement and robust participation in the democratic process. It can also be manipulated to promote falsehoods for political gain, to silence dissent, and stoke racism.”
“When politicians use ‘great replacement’ conspiracies and xenophobia to stoke fear and divide us, real people pay the price in blood,” said Democratic Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro.
The remnants in January 2020 of the makeshift memorial erected after the August 3, 2019 mass shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart. Photo: TomStar81/Wikimedia Commons/CC
Saturday marked five years since a self-described white nationalist killed 23 people and injured 22 others with an AK-47-style semiautomatic rifle at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and the anniversary sparked fresh calls for efforts to combat gun violence and racism.
“Five years after a man armed with hate and a gun drove into our community and stole the lives of 23 of our friends and neighbors, we still feel the pain of their absence,” said Myndi Luevanos, a volunteer with the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action in El Paso, in a statement. “Since the shooting, our leaders have refused to meet the moment, failing to enact common-sense gun safety measures that could save lives and address the disproportionate rate of gun violence faced by the Latinx community in Texas.”
One Teamsters official warned the union leader’s scheduled appearance “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”
Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien testified at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) in 2023. Photo: Teamsters
Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien is facing mounting internal pressure to cancel his planned speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, with the union’s vice president at large accusing the labor leader of kowtowing to a viciously anti-worker party and a GOP presidential hopeful whose first four years in the White House were marked by open attacks on the labor movement.
John Palmer, the Teamsters’ vice president at large, wrote in an op-ed in New Politics earlier this week that O’Brien’s scheduled appearance at Donald Trump’s invitation “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”
France’s left-of-center parties held off a far-right advance in the country’s parliamentary elections by building a progressive platform and forming strategic alliances, their supporters say.
Supporters of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) part of The Nouveau Front Populaire coalition, celebrate the election results. Screenshot: CNN
Political figures from across the world congratulated France’s left-of-center coalition following parliamentary elections on Sunday in which it gained the most seats of any group, outperforming the far-right party that many feared would take control of the National Assembly, in what The Washington Post called “one of the greatest political upsets in recent French history.”
In the second and final round of voting, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) won roughly 180 out of the 577 seats in the assembly, far from a majority but more than President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, which won about 160, or Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which won about 140 or 145.
