William Lawrence is a Democrat running to represent Michigan’s Lansing-area Seventh Congressional District with a campaign that largely focuses on data centers and affordability. It’s not an unusual story in 2026 — but not long ago, Lawrence was cutting his teeth in progressive politics as a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, primarily focused on organizing around the climate crisis.

His arc, from progressive activist to politician, is emblematic of a bigger trend, as a wave of millennial progressives in midterm races across the country try to lean into issues that have broader, more immediate appeal with voters.

But that arc also raises big questions about the left’s changing priorities. In a recent interview for Vox’s podcast and video series America, Actually, host Astead Herndon spoke with Lawrence about his past activism and how he has pivoted. “It can sometimes feel like…folks hop from issue to issue, whether it’s climate, even anti-AI right now, without those things being solved,” Herndon told Lawrence. 

According to Lawrence, “that’s the reality of the time. It seems like everything is unraveling, and it is because the whole social, economic, political compact is being renegotiated, not just in this country, but on a global stage.” Still, Lawrence said, that earlier organizing shapes how he sees different challenges today.

The two also discussed whether opposition to data centers and AI has wide, regular-voter appeal in places like Michigan and how Lawrence went from hopeless and disengaged to regaining a sense of agency through organizing.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

You started in Sunrise and were at the forefront of a young progressive movement that was aligned at that time — in 2018, 2019, and I think still — with progressive members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I remember reporting about Sunrise at the time. The goal was to elect a Bernie Sanders, but the other goal was to have the party largely embrace things like a Green New Deal. How would you grade the efforts of the climate movement of that time, looking back?

I think we did some things very well.

We put climate jobs and justice at the top of the agenda for the incoming Biden administration. I think the Bernie-Biden task force is an often overlooked but very important chapter of that whole story, where Bernie and Biden both understood they had to bring their people to the table.

And that’s how Build Back Better got negotiated. We fought hard for Build Back Better, and ultimately came up two votes shy in the United States Senate.

Do you see that as a success or a failure of the climate movement?

I think Build Back Better was a success in coming to the table and negotiating, from the Green New Deal to Build Back Better, and then what we ended up with was the Inflation Reduction Act after it passed the final filter, which was Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. At the time, now, how I felt about it was, this is historic. This is the largest investment in green jobs and infrastructure in United States history. I know how hard it was to get here. I’m tremendously proud of the work that I did and so many others did.

Just in my district alone, we’ve delivered $26 billion in investment for manufacturing and sustainability because of the Inflation Reduction Act. But at the time, we knew that this is maybe 5 percent or 10 percent of what we need in scope. And now we’re experiencing the consequences of that.

Obviously, we still have a very volatile economy. We still lack energy security because we now have closed the Strait of Hormuz. We’re still too dependent on a global oil market, and we could use many more investments in solar and other kinds of renewable energy than we have now.

And ultimately, it wasn’t enough for the Biden-Harris administration to be able to win reelection, because people didn’t feel it enough in their pocketbooks.

Why do you think Democrats are talking less about climate?

I think it’s the intensity of the crises that we face. It feels like we’re falling through midair, after the end of all of the constitutional protections, the rule of law, and the economic security that people had previously enjoyed. 

There are a lot of very acute and urgent crises, and I think that that has bumped climate, which is a super massive but also somewhat slow-moving crisis, a little bit lower on the priority list just in terms of what comes up for people on the Hill.

You went back to Michigan to focus on housing and advocacy. Did that make you think a little differently about the national work you were doing?

I think it’s fair to say that when I was younger, I got very focused on this climate issue, and I was very focused on it because it is this existential crisis we all face.

But it was after the pandemic that I wanted to bring my work closer to home. I wanted to do the work of putting down roots in the place that had raised me and make my life there. And in seeking to organize there, it was clear that we needed an in to organize that was more immediate.

More immediate than the Green New Deal.

Than the Green New Deal or than the looming climate crisis. People know that that’s an issue, but they’re like, “I’ve gotta pay rent at the end of the month.” And as an organizer, I believe that you have to listen to people, you have to hear what’s going on for them, and then work on issues that have the potential to bring people together.

Housing is one of those issues. Whether you’re in the city of Lansing, whether you’re in small towns, urban, rural, suburban, young or old, everybody can agree that the rent is too damn high and it’s too hard to buy a home anymore.

Were you surprised Trump won the state in 2024? 

No.

Why not? 

Because I saw it all unfold. We hoped to deliver more through the Biden-Harris administration than we ultimately did through Build Back Better. We didn’t deliver as much to relieve the economic anxiety that people were feeling. And then I do believe that the war and the genocide in Gaza and our blank check to allow that to happen with our money and our tax dollars destroyed the Democratic coalition that had been assembled from 2017 through 2020 for the purpose of beating Trump.

I just saw that unfolding over the course of the whole year, just like a slow-motion train wreck.

I want to ask locally, what do you think is most important in this race: housing, data centers, or pushing back against Donald Trump?

If I had to choose, I’d say data centers because that’s where people in the district are finding some common ground across the spectrum — in fighting back against the concentrated power in Silicon Valley, which has been fully enabled by [incumbent Rep.] Tom Barrett and Donald Trump.

So you’re saying that’s the issue that allows you to create cross-ideological coalitions?

Yeah.

Our last question is, just thinking through the scope of your career and the kind of progressive work: It can sometimes feel like folks hop from issue to issue, whether it’s climate, even anti-AI right now, without those things being solved, right?

Like, we still have a climate crisis. The rent is still too high. All of these things are still happening. How am I to trust that AI is the crisis of our time when I’ve heard so many crises of our time?

Some have called it a polycrisis — overlapping crises.

That’s the reality of the time. It seems like everything is unraveling, and it is because the whole social, economic, political compact is being renegotiated, not just in this country, but on a global stage. I don’t think it serves us to lie about that. I mean, here’s the reality, folks.

Everything is up in the air. Does it feel like you’re falling through midair? It’s because we are. All the old protections, all the old agreements have been chopped up. So we have got to come together. This is what I believe in more than anything, if there is a through line…I believe in the agency of regular people taking charge of our own lives and working together to build a better future. 

That’s what I learned as an organizer, and that’s what gave me hope actually, at a time when I was doomer-ing in my younger years. And I told you, I wanted to just drop out of society and all that. It was seeing that regular people have come together before, and they’ve won a better future for their kids and grandkids, that gave me a path to follow in.

It does feel like a powerless time, I have to tell you. And a lot of this AI revolution, to your point about control or about agency. We’ve talked to so many people who just think that these things are happening to them, rather than feeling that they are participating in the changes afoot.

But you’re telling a kinda hopeful story. 

I’m a hopeful guy. I was angry too, even when I got into this race. I was angry especially about the wars. But then in campaigning, I’ve met so many people across the district, old friends, new friends, and they give me a lot of hope because you just see the way that people are already performing miracles on a daily basis.

The GOP wanted to redraw a district in Kansas City that had elected a Black Democrat. Six of the state's eight congressional districts favor Republicans.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

We’re officially inside 40 days until the 2026 midterms — and Republicans are feeling the pressure. 

Nearly every poll seems to bring more bad news for GOP candidates, even in what would normally be comfortably red seats. And one of the clearest signs of how the party is feeling is how they’re talking — or not talking — about President Donald Trump and his record. 

As my colleague Andrew Prokop reported, some Republicans are slowly, tentatively starting to edge away from Trump and his least popular policies, including the Iran war and mass deportations. 

In Florida, Rep. María Elvira Salazar — who won with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2024 — released an ad addressing Trump directly and criticizing his immigration enforcement efforts for having “gone too far.” Two Republican incumbents in Iowa, which has been hard-hit by soaring diesel prices, voted in favor of a resolution to end the Iran war. 

Whether any of those gestures toward moderation will matter is another question, especially after almost a decade of unquestioning Republican fealty toward Trump. But they’re reflective of an environment that, even by usual midterm standards (when the president’s party almost always loses ground), is looking increasingly dire for the GOP.

The battle for the Senate

As things look worse for the GOP, Democrats are starting to eye an expanded Senate map and a very real chance of reclaiming the upper chamber, which once looked like an uphill battle. 

Over the last two months, according to election forecasters like the Cook Political Report, more Senate races have slid into the tossup column or otherwise moved left. 

Among them are the open Senate seats in Iowa and Texas — currently Republican-held — which Cook now considers tossups. Kansas, where incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is on the ballot, has shifted from likely to lean Republican. And even South Carolina has drifted out of the solid Republican column, though it’s still an extremely long shot for Democrats. (The New Hampshire Senate race, where Democrats are defending an open seat currently held by retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, has also shifted into the tossup column, from leaning Democratic.)

Texas, in particular, would be a prize for Democrats; polls have consistently shown Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leading against Republican Ken Paxton, Texas’s scandal-plagued attorney general who defeated incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in a primary. 

And Kansas has emerged as a surprise pickup possibility, with Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, giving Marshall a tough race. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Marshall, a doctor, sued hundreds of patients for medical debts, sometimes resulting in their arrest; one of those patients has since appeared in a Hamilton campaign ad.

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Maddie Kowalski is a student at the University of Florida. Last November, someone found nonconsensual intimate images and videos of her, stitched them together, and uploaded them to X, where they were viewed millions of times.

“Can you imagine?” asked Ej Dickson, a senior culture writer at Wired who reported on Kowalski’s story earlier this month. “You’re 19 years old and a video that you don’t even remember shooting, let alone consenting to, goes viral nationally along with your name and your sorority, and your parents, your grandparents, everybody in your life sees it. It’s a humiliation and a privacy violation that is kind of incomprehensible.”

The video was followed by a campaign of intimidation and harassment. Kowalski and her parents received threatening phone calls and texts. People on the internet posted old photos of her, her father’s LinkedIn, and even his golf handicap. Kowalski sought help from the police, from the university, and from X. But the video was being shared faster than the posts could be removed, and her name became a trending topic on X.

What made the video go viral, Dickson explains, is something called the “burnerverse”: a loosely connected network of anonymous “burner” accounts on X. The community mainly exists to discuss college sports, but sometimes it disseminates videos and rumors aimed at shaming young women and ruining their lives. The burnerverse has harassed Kowalski and her family for nearly a year, sometimes encouraging her to kill herself.

Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Dickson about the online network that targeted Kowalski, and why it’s been so difficult to do anything to stop it. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Your story describes how Maddie has, without even realizing it, entered into something called the burnerverse. This is something I think a lot of us, prior to your piece, had not heard of. What is the burnerverse?

I hadn’t heard of it either. The burnerverse is an online community of anonymous accounts, and ostensibly these are college sports fan accounts. They talk about the coaches, the players, new recruits, they share memes after their team loses, but there’s a corner of the community that has emerged that is pretty violently racist and misogynistic and antisemitic. And one of the things that they’ve started doing in recent years is doxxing young college-age women like Maddie.

Why is it called the burnerverse?

Because it consists of burner accounts, anonymous accounts.

Okay. So the reason that whoever is spreading these videos of Maddie and others feels comfortable doing that is because they’re anonymous. Nobody knows who’s behind them?

Yes, exactly. And I also want to be clear: This is a small segment of the college sports burner community. 

There are a lot of these accounts that are pretty innocuous and would never dream of doing something like this to a young woman. I would say probably the vast majority of these accounts are not like that, but it is a sizable enough segment that they’re able to make these types of narratives go viral.

What do we know about who is part of the burnerverse? Who is likely to be a part of this?

That was one of the most shocking things that I learned from my reporting, actually. I had assumed that these were largely frat kids. I assumed that they were largely SEC frat kids because a lot of these young girls who have been doxed were students at SEC schools. But when I actually started looking into these accounts and who was behind them and who was sharing these images and making these jokes about Maddie, I learned it was way more wide-ranging than that. 

There are a lot of college students who are involved in the burnerverse, but it’s also men who are 10, 20, 30 years out of college. Sometimes they have wives. Sometimes they have children. Sometimes they have grandchildren. They’re from all over the country. It’s not limited to one race or economic demographic. It’s really very wide-ranging, which is kind of what makes it so terrifying.

And it is not just Maddie Kowalski. What did you learn about other young women who are targeted by this?

No, it’s not. So perhaps the most well-known case is this girl named Mary Kate Cornett, who was a student at Ole Miss in February 2025 when this salacious campus rumor about her sex life started going viral. And the rumor was false and it was clearly defamatory, but it went so viral that it kind of escaped containment from Ole Miss and went viral among SEC schools and then went viral nationally, to the point where her name was trending nationally on X. 

This very famous ESPN personality, Pat McAfee, talked about her without using her name, but talked about her and the details of this rumor on his podcast. And a lot of these athletes and college sports personalities tweeted about it as well. What started as an unverifiable and false rumor about a college girl’s sex life was just blown up and amplified to the degree that it was a national news story within a couple of hours. 

The speed with which this happens — [Cornett]she was telling me that basically a few hours after she learned that she was going viral, her parents’ house was swatted. The speed with which this community works toward making these women’s lives a living hell is really, really rapid.

Did you come away with an understanding of how an online community that is meant to be talking about college sports descends into this?

Part of it is just a consequence of how internet subcultures work. Even fairly innocuous, large internet subcultures and communities, there’s always going to be a small part of any online subculture that splinters off and forms its own community that is going to skew a little bit more extremist. 

That’s not surprising in itself, but I do think that there is something about the discourse surrounding college sports, particularly the media ecosystem that’s represented by Barstool, that does create a space for this type of rampant misogyny to foment. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the accounts that I have seen posting really horrible defamatory content about Maddie are smaller Barstool accounts that are associated with individual colleges. I do think that has definitely played a role.

Why did Maddie become the target of these people in the burnerverse?

Because she’s young and she’s attractive. Basically, the criteria is these women are young, attractive, they’re usually white for some reason, and they are perceived to have departed from a sexual norm in some way. 

They’re either subject to some sort of rumor about their sex life or their sexual behavior or maybe a text message leaks about them or a photo. Then these guys take it and they blow it up and it goes viral nationally. 

They’re very purposeful about it too. I can’t tell you how many tweets I’ve seen that are just tweets of a girl’s name and they’re like, “Make her famous, make her go viral.”

In an ideal world, this kind of thing would be stopped before it even happened. So, knowing that there is not much that victims can do, what are the methods of preventing this?

That’s a very complicated question. I know that there are platforms developing various AI tools in order to prevent nonconsensual intimate images from spreading. But I imagine that would be pretty difficult to regulate, especially with the rise of deepfakes and with the rise of-AI manipulated nonconsensual images, so I don’t have a lot of faith in that. 

Honestly, I think that the biggest path toward prevention is — can I say this? Parents raising their sons to not be pieces of shit.

You can say that. You can absolutely say that.

I think that the biggest course of prevention is parents raising their sons to not be pieces of shit, honestly. To just set a clear line and say, “It’s not okay to view women as commodities. It’s not okay to talk about women like this. It’s not okay to view social media engagement as the ultimate goal without thinking about the lives that you’re impacting by spreading this content.” I think that parents need to have conversations with their kids about that. 

I think that there needs to be education within fraternities and sororities and universities because it’s not like what happened to Maddie Kowalski is an isolated incident. I was able to identify almost a dozen other young women who have been targeted by the burnerverse in this way. 

I think that there needs to be more discussion of this in general because it’s not just the burnerverse. It’s this larger ecosystem that is socially ordained at this point of men saying horrible things and doing horrible things to women with impunity. That’s the real problem.