The International Criminal Court is in the trenches right now.

Last week, its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was voted out of his position. In a first-of-its-kind vote, 82 member states decided that he engaged in misconduct and a serious breach of duty. The vote comes after he was accused of sexual misconduct by a female colleague at the ICC, which Khan has denied.

It’s a mess, and it’s hitting the ICC at an inopportune time. On top of this internal turmoil, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently launched an all-out attack on the court.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month, Rubio wrote that the Trump administration’s goal is to “dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary,” citing the possibility that the court could “target” American citizens, such as Border Patrol agents or US soldiers.

The US is not a member of the ICC, and has a history of wariness about the organization.

Beth Van Schaack previously served as the US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, a role that led her to work directly with the International Criminal Court. She spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about the decades-long tumultuous relationship between the US and the ICC. And they discuss whether, if the ICC is now weaker than ever, the Trump administration can actually break it for good.

Below is an excerpt of their 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.

If the International Criminal Court is charged with dealing with people who have allegedly done very bad things and then trying them, why is the United States not a member?

The United States signed the treaty in the waning days of the Clinton administration, but never submitted it for ratification to the Senate. And one of the concerns is that the final treaty allows for jurisdiction over individuals who may commit crimes on the territory of state parties. And the United States has always been concerned about that principle because we have troop commitments.

Supporters of the court have always said the United States and its personnel are vulnerable regardless of whether you join. If US personnel are committing crimes on the territory of state parties, which we saw in Afghanistan, the response is to do those cases domestically and there’ll be no occasion for the International Criminal Court to consider those matters.

There’ve been peaks and valleys in the relationship between the ICC and the United States. So we’re in a frankly pretty deep valley right now with this new campaign that Secretary Rubio announced.

But back in the Bush administration, there was also very acute concern and it stemmed from this Afghanistan investigation. The Bush administration and Congress both put in place measures that they thought would be protective of US servicemembers. So that was one valley.

Now what’s interesting is in the second term of the Bush administration, many of these measures were dismantled because the Bush administration realized that the court was doing important work in some areas where it also cared about justice — in particular, Darfur.

Then, the Obama administration announced a reset in its relationship with the court, and that’s where I entered the picture. The Obama administration directed various executive agencies to look for ways to support the court where the work that it was doing was consistent with US policy.

Then, we had the first Trump administration, which reversed course almost immediately and eventually imposed sanctions on senior figures, including the prosecutor herself and one of her key aides.

Then, we get to the Biden-Harris administration. They pulled down those sanctions and again launched a reset of the relationship. At that point, there were a number of situations where the court was working, including following the brutal war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine.

Here we saw a remarkable rise of bipartisan support for the work of the court. You had senior Republican figures in Congress supporting the court. The late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led a resolution that was supporting justice in Ukraine. Secretary Rubio, then Sen. Rubio, joined that resolution. There was new legislation passed that made it easier for the United States to support the work of the court.

Of course, with the second Trump administration, we have reversed course again, and in particular with Rubio’s announcement.

Well, let’s talk about the reversal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is at one point on board with the ICC, and then recently he vows to dismantle it. What happened here?

It’s not clear what the precipitating event is, to be honest. There is no existential threat at present. Obviously, there’s always the concern that this is some kind of a distraction because matters are not going well in Iran and with respect to the economy — that this is something to pull eyeballs away from those matters onto something that he can look tough in. Is this just kind of red meat for anti-multilateralism or is there something that is not made public that is happening?

Is there anything actually that Marco Rubio or anyone else in the United States at the highest level could do to the International Criminal Court to put an end to it?

The International Criminal Court is part of a larger system of the rules-based order that we’ve been trying to build since World War II. Almost all of our friends and allies are members of this court and they care deeply about its success. They are committed to seeing a system of international criminal justice. So, no is the answer. The United States alone cannot dismantle this court.

Now, it can injure the court and it has already done so. There are already eight ICC judges, including judges who hail from some of our closest allies — France, for example — who have been subjected to brutal sanctions. They can’t use credit cards that pass through New York. They can’t make reservations online because of financial sanctions. They can’t travel to the United States because of travel bans, et cetera. The chief prosecutor and two of his two deputies have been sanctioned. Non-governmental organizations that are involved in human rights in Palestine have been sanctioned and a UN figure has been sanctioned. Those measures are already in place.

What his most recent campaign seems to announce is some diplomatic move to try and convince states to leave the court or to cease their cooperation with the court. And we have seen in recent days a couple of states announcing that they were withdrawing. These are mostly states within Africa, but also Venezuela, subject to investigation by the prosecutor’s office. The United States can certainly injure the court, but there’s no way that we could dismantle the court.

Most Americans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the International Criminal Court, but they may know it because lately, it has gotten a lot of attention that the court has issued an arrest warrant for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he would like to see Netanyahu arrested if he comes to New York.

Mamdani has said he does not have that power. He cannot order the NYPD to do it, but he would like for it to happen. What are the chances that Benjamin Netanyahu comes to the United States and is arrested?

Pretty close to zero, if not actually zero. This is a matter of federal law and international law. And the Headquarters Agreement between the United States and the United Nations, which placed the headquarters of the UN in New York, basically gives certain privileges and immunities to individuals who are coming to New York to attend official functions.

New Yorkers are a feisty bunch. So when word is out that Benjamin Netanyahu is in New York, can you imagine the protests that would happen? Can you imagine the embarrassment that he might experience when he’s supposed to be giving his remarks at the General Assembly High-level Week where all the heads of states convene to deal with transnational issues and his motorcade is ensnarled in protests protected by the First Amendment, calling for his arrest for various international crimes? If I were his lawyer, I would say, “There’s no chance you’re going to get arrested.” But honestly, it could be a miserable visit, given all of the strong support for accountability in this matter in the United States.

This is a lot of drama for a body that for a long time seems to have avoided a ton of very public drama. So who gets hurt in all of this? Is it the court? Is it the US and its reputation? Where do you think this leads?

Unfortunately, I think everyone comes out not looking great here. The court needs to put in place measures to be able to receive those complaints by witnesses, whistleblowers, victims themselves, process them quickly, but also fairly to all parties involved. The United States looks terrible as well, launching a campaign like this against an international organization whose mandate it is to deliver justice for the worst crimes known to humankind.

One of the most powerful forces in American politics is about to face a major test of its influence — and it may well come up short.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has for decades spent heavily to ensure that US policy remains strongly supportive of the Israeli government. The group has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and elections to stock Congress with allies and keep them supportive of Israel’s policy priorities once they’re there. It also tries to defeat elected officials and candidates who, in its view, are too supportive of the Palestinian cause or too critical of Israel’s Gaza war.

Next week’s Democratic Senate primary in Michigan is AIPAC’s biggest-ever investment in a single election: The group has spent more than $30 million to defeat staunch Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed and to try to ensure Rep. Haley Stevens wins the Democratic nomination instead.

In the past, AIPAC has very often gotten its way. But this time may be different. El-Sayed has been explicitly running against AIPAC, arguing that the group’s heavy investment in the race discredits his opponent — and trying to capitalize on the Democratic base’s sharp turn against Israel due to the devastation of the Gaza war. And if polling is any indication, it seems to be working. Several recent surveys show El-Sayed with a double-digit lead. 

If he wins, it would arguably be AIPAC’s worst-ever defeat. It could also mean we’re in a new chapter of politics, where the group’s heavy spending is less and less effective — and even potentially toxic to voters in the Democratic base.

What has changed, and how could these changes reshape politics? 

To understand the influence of AIPAC — what it’s like to go up against the group, and also how its power may be ebbing — we spoke to a Michigan politician who ended up on their bad side, crossing the group on the Israel issue and then losing his seat. (In fact, he lost it to the very candidate AIPAC is boosting in next week’s Senate contest: Haley Stevens.)

Andy Levin was a two-term congressional incumbent and scion of a Michigan Jewish political dynasty — he succeeded his father, Sander Levin, who had served in the House for decades. Andy’s uncle, Carl Levin, had served in the Senate for decades as well; both held high-profile committee chairships.

But once in Congress, Andy Levin staked out positions on Israel that spurred furious pushback from AIPAC. A former president of the group declared he was “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the US-Israel relationship.”

And when, after redistricting, he and his colleague Rep. Stevens ended up running against each other in the same primary, AIPAC spent more than $4 million to boost her chances, successfully knocking Levin out of Congress.

Levin is an enthusiastic supporter of El-Sayed, and was in the car on his way to canvas for him when we spoke Thursday. Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, follows.

How Rep. Andy Levin ran afoul of AIPAC

Tell me about your history and how you’ve thought about the Israeli-Palestinian issue over the years.

I guess the thing to understand is, I’m Jewish, right? You know what a mezuzah is? I had mezuzot on all my doors in Congress. I was the president of my synagogue until I won my primary, and then I felt I had to resign and turn that over. 

I am a long, long, longtime human rights activist. My human rights grounding comes from my values as a Jew. Everyone’s created the image of God, you know, and all this. “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” Not a lot of words are repeated twice in the Torah.

So I was active on Tibetan human rights and Haitian human rights. I was in China during the Tiananmen massacre. I interviewed the Dalai Lama. In 1990, as a graduate student, I went to Israel and Palestine. We traveled all over Israel, and we could go in Gaza, there was no Hamas yet. We met the political leaders there and talked to everybody in the West Bank.

And I came home, and I wrote an article in the Detroit Jewish News that said, “Oh my God, 23 years of occupation, this is enough. It’s totally toxic. It’s bad for our soul as the Jewish people, and there’s no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without fully realizing the political and human rights of the Palestinians.” 

My positions never really changed. But after a quarter century of Bibi [Netanyahu] being the Israeli government — he’s always been against the two-state solution, no question, but he pussyfooted around; he played a lot of games about it. But his government’s gotten more and more right-wing. And in this century, no president of either party has done anything significant to force the Israelis and the Palestinians into each other’s arms, or just to, like, really negotiate.

So you get elected to Congress in 2018. How did you earn the enmity of AIPAC?

I get to Congress. I get on the Foreign Affairs Committee. And the Gaza war before this one happens [in 2021]. It was like a pimple compared to this, but it was terrible. 

In the House, there were eight more senior Democrats who worked on Israel and Palestine together. I was, like, the kid; they let me tag along. We were all J Street-aligned [J Street is a more progressive Israel advocacy group]. 

There were these meetings, and everyone was like, we have to do reconstruction of Gaza, we have to do aid. And I’m like, okay, I’m for all that. But this is just an endless cycle of violence. I want to focus on ending the cycle of violence and actually achieving peace. 

So I wrote the Two-State Solution Act. And, dude, it was quite a milquetoast piece of legislation, if I may say so. It was not adequate in any way. But the preamble said, “whereas” — you know, all the “whereas”-es [rhetorical throat-clearing at the beginning of legislation], which aren’t an effective part of it — it said, whereas Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, under international law and United Nations resolutions, these are occupied territory.

The Democratic Majority for Israel pollster, Mark Mellman, attacked me, saying, Andy Levin says we shouldn’t be able to pray on the Western Wall. Because of that preamble, which said East Jerusalem was occupied territory arguably — it’s ridiculous.

But with the Two-State Solution Act — this is the stranglehold that AIPAC had. Some people are sort of more intellectually serious in Congress, and some are less. Some are more like, they study things themselves, but some are more staff-driven.

Some of the more serious people came up to me and said they read the Two-State Solution Act, and they said really nice things about it. And then they said, “But of course I can’t co-sponsor it, you understand.” One colleague came and co-sponsored, but because AIPAC said “dude, no,” he withdrew.

How Levin lost to Haley Stevens — who was aided by AIPAC’s spending — in 2022

So then, in the 2022 cycle, there was redistricting, and you and your colleague Haley Stevens ended up running in the same district, and that’s when AIPAC tries to defeat you.

After the Census, Michigan went from 14 to 13 seats. Haley and I were mushed in together now. You could have argued that either of us should’ve run in the new, current, 10th district. Haley lived in the 10th district; she was more moderate, and that’s a more Republican or mixed district. I never represented any of that.

My case was, I lived in the center of the new 11th district; I still live there. My kids are the fifth generation of my family to live in the new 11th district. The whole Jewish community is almost all in the new 11th district, overwhelmingly.

But the former national president of AIPAC wrote this fundraising appeal for Haley and said, Andy Levin is the most corrosive member of Congress for the US-Israel relationship. 

So the level of threat they saw in me — if you get a Rashida [Tlaib] or even if you get an Abdul [El-Sayed], they’ll fight against them. But I’m the Jewish guy, right? I’m the son of Sander Levin, the nephew of Carl Levin.

They were these two Jewish kids from Detroit, grandsons of immigrants, who rose to be, at the same time, the chair of the [House] Ways and Means Committee — my dad — and the chair of the [Senate] Armed Services Committee. So this is super threatening to AIPAC, right? So they targeted me.

So I got trounced by Haley. And I wondered afterward; I told Celinda [pollster Celinda Lake], I should have run in the new 10th district because this intramural fight was so horrible, so unpleasant. She said, I admit it would’ve been better — but I don’t admit you would’ve won in the 10th. Because AIPAC would have backed [Republican nominee] John James, and they would have spent any amount of money to beat you.

Why the politics of Israel changed — and why he thinks Abdul El-Sayed has a better shot at winning, including in the fall

You lost your race, but it certainly seems like, four years on, your views are winning inside the Democratic Party. The party base increasingly seems to be siding with you and against AIPAC now. Take me through what changed since then. 

Horrifying things caused the change. Genocide caused the change. Seventy thousand-plus Palestinians killed in Gaza caused the change. Most houses of worship, university buildings, hospitals, residential buildings being destroyed, and the US either providing the weapons for or even paying for a lot of this. 

These huge bombs, which US military leadership said, we don’t use those in populated areas — we’re providing them to Israel, and not only was Israel using them like on apartment blocks, they were using them on places they told people to flee. Any parent seeing all these maimed and killed children — and, what’s happening on the West Bank is horrifying, right? That’s part of it.

But the other part is, it gets mixed in with the larger, horrifying phenomenon of dark money, and corporate money, and special interest money in our politics. 

I mean, the idea that AIPAC is using mostly dollars from Republican centimillionaires and billionaires to be the biggest spender in Democratic primaries — that’s so gross, and it’s a huge problem for the Democratic Party and also for our democracy. 

Most people don’t vote on Israel and Palestine at all; they vote on their pocketbook, on their kids, on their neighborhood, on inflation, on jobs. We’re at a really huge gathering crisis about income and wealth inequality in America.

So we need three things, really, in candidates this year: authenticity, boldness about policy proposals, and truth-telling. I think this year, people are so fed up with politics as usual. And can you imagine? Honestly, can you imagine Abdul could win when they’re spending $80 million to beat him?

Why do you think he’s able to pull that off — if he is? The election isn’t over, of course, but it’s on Tuesday, and the latest polling has shown him with a double-digit lead. 

Sometimes the amount of money, it does become a little bit of a story in itself. Of the money being spent on Haley Stevens’s behalf, what percentage is going to be money she raised outside of AIPAC, and what percent is going to be dark money of one kind or another? 

But one of my biggest things about this election is this notion about how to win in November, which drives me out of my mind. The idea is, the liberals are gonna vote for the Democrat. The MAGA people are going to vote for the Republicans. Therefore, it’s all about the independents. It’s all about the people in the middle. Therefore, we must run to the mushy middle to win. 

It’s a static idea of the electorate, right? They call Michigan a swing state. What is a swing? The whole beauty of the swing — when you’re a kid, you go so high, you go all the way to the back, and you feel like you’re weightless for a second, and you go all the way to the front. That’s swinging. 

That’s what Michigan does. [In presidential primaries], this state voted to nominate George Wallace in 1972. We voted to nominate Jesse Jackson in 1988. And Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Abdul can attract voters across the political spectrum who hate the system. He’s so different than Trump, but they look at him and are like, well, nobody’s going to fuck with him. I don’t think he’s going to kowtow to anybody or just do what anybody says. I think he’s gonna do his own thing, and it will be entertaining to watch this. 

I think that actually Abdul can expand the electorate, and he’s the better candidate. We must win this seat in November. Abdul’s the better choice.

It’s been quite a year for the Democratic Socialists of America.

They got one of their own, Zohran Mamdani, elected mayor of New York City. They’ve taken down congressional incumbents in New York and Colorado. Their membership has soared to 120,000 dues-paying members, the group said.

But with success has come more media interest — and scrutiny.

National coverage has focused on controversial elements in the DSA’s platform, which calls for, among other things, defunding the Pentagon, taking steps toward abolishing the “carceral forces of the capitalist state,” making Jerusalem the capital of a free Palestine, and making the president of the United States chosen by Congress rather than elected. 

Internal controversies and splits within the group — such as debates over whether, and when, it should endorse a 2028 presidential candidate (such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) — have also risen to national attention. Some in the movement have also argued that candidates embracing ideas like prison abolition could limit their political upside. 

As the midterm elections near, Republicans are eager to link Democrats to the DSA as part of a broader messaging strategy. President Donald Trump derided the group as communists — a term many in DSA would reject, but that some happily embrace as a self-descriptor.

So what is the DSA all about, anyway? And what do they really want?

To answer those questions, I spoke to Peter Sterne, an editor at City & State New York who has covered the ins and outs of DSA closely in such articles as “DSA for Dummies,” “Understanding DSA’s structure,” and “Get to know DSA’s internal caucuses.” 

Sterne knows the group’s inner workings well, in part, because he was a dues-paying member himself. He joined DSA in 2017 but quit it in 2023 after taking his current role covering New York politics, viewing his membership as a conflict of interest. But, he told me, he has many sources inside the group that still keep him in the loop.

Our interview, which has been condensed and edited, is below.

Why socialists aren’t just progressive Democrats

What are the core principles of DSA? What really unites the group and its members — and sets them apart from just progressive Democrats?

I would say that everyone who is in DSA identifies as a socialist, and many of them would also identify as Marxist. So they are very critical of capitalism and a society and economy that is built on capital accumulation. 

DSA members go farther than progressives like Senator [Elizabeth] Warren in that they are not just looking to rectify the excesses of capital, or create a nicer capitalism, or a mixed economy where you still have capitalism along with a generous social welfare state.

I think that, within DSA, people are critical of capitalism itself and believe in moving toward a society in which workers have more control over their workplaces and society. In terms of what that actually looks like in the short term, there are lots of different ideas. 

Now, certainly in terms of what democratic socialist candidates are running on, it is very similar to what non-socialist progressives are running on. It is largely an expansion of the social welfare state. 

But I do think there is an important philosophical difference. The Warrenites and progressive capitalists believe in the necessity of a free market economy. Whereas socialists — even if they don’t necessarily want to abolish it overnight — don’t believe that private ownership of corporations, private ownership of utilities is necessary. And that makes them much more willing to push for policies that others would see as being beyond the pale. 

The DSA’s ideological spectrum — from Bernie Sanders fans to full Communists

So then, walk me through some of the main things people within DSA disagree over — whether tactically or philosophically.

DSA identifies as a multi-tendency organization. In other words, it is a big tent of the left. 

So you have some people who are basically where Bernie is, in terms of identifying as democratic socialists — wanting to kind of bring back an FDR-style expansion of the social safety net but not necessarily wanting to go that much further. 

And then, on the other side, you would have people who identify as Communists and as Marxist-Leninists or Maoists who believe that, ultimately, the solution is a kind of Communist revolution — that, eventually, the workers are going to rise up and institute a new form of the state and society. 

They see their role as helping to radicalize the workers and prepare for that revolutionary moment, more so than trying to get elected and pass policies that will eventually move you into more of a social-welfare-type state.

So that’s the central tension. You have, on the one hand, people who would consider themselves socialists and often Marxists but believe in a democratic road to socialism, and those who identify as more revolutionary socialists, following the model of Lenin or Mao, who believe that it is impossible to reform the system.

How does that tension play out in debates inside DSA about electoral strategy?

There’s a lot of debate over red lines for elected officials and whether DSA elected officials should work within the Democratic Party or not. 

DSA generally does not just endorse people who are running for office in the way that a lot of organizations do. They believe in strategically choosing specific races to get involved in — and ideally having their own members, people who have been involved in the organization and are accountable to the organization and loyal to DSA running as candidates. 

DSA’s official strategy is that, for now, they will run candidates on the Democratic Party line. But they want to build up the infrastructure to be their own party in everything but name. So DSA wants to have its own donor networks, its own data on who is voting, its own electoral strategy — as opposed to relying on the Democratic Party for any of that.

Ideally, then, you can imagine DSA breaking from the Democratic Party. That would be the “dirty break” strategy, as opposed to the “clean break” strategy, which is, “we just stop running anyone as a Democrat right now.” The clean break strategy has been largely discredited within DSA, and they’re largely focused on the dirty break.

But as DSA wins more power running as Democrats, it becomes harder for people to imagine them ever breaking with the party. So people say they’re now doing a “dirty stay” strategy, where they’re just going to try and do realignment, which means basically taking over the Democratic Party.

The internal DSA tensions around electoral pragmatism 

There’s been some attention around how the national DSA leadership and the New York City DSA — which is seemingly the most successful of the DSA chapters around the country — have different views on these electoral strategy questions. Can you break that down?

NYC’s DSA’s political leadership is dominated by two caucuses in particular: Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork. Both of those are sometimes described as being on the “DSA right” —  although, they do not like that term. 

They would say that they are focused on “mass politics,” on trying to bring in the largest number of people into DSA, on trying to get DSA members elected into positions of power who can then support legislation that will materially improve the lives of the working class, can win people over to socialism and bring in more members, and build a large influential powerful socialist organization. That is essentially the Zohran theory.

Most of the people in DSA who were involved in the Mamdani campaign, and a number of them who are now involved in NYC government — such as the head of the Office of Mass Engagement, or the head of the mayor’s office to protect tenants — those are DSA members, and specifically, they are members of the Socialist Majority Caucus. SMC and Groundwork are very focused on that kind of electoral approach and, generally, are more pragmatic. They are very averse to disciplining electeds or trying to force electeds to publicly defend positions that are politically unpopular — like, say, police abolition.

Their counterparts would be the “DSA left.” Within New York City, the main left caucus is Emerge. You also have Marxist Unity Group, Red Star, and Springs of Revolution, which is primarily an anti-Zionist faction. They have less influence within New York City overall. But they have more influence within DSA nationally. A lot of chapters outside of New York City and California are more ideologically focused — and less focused on just having the most electoral success running as Democrats. 

Recently, there’s been some discussion about the national DSA platform. Francesca Hong, who’s running for governor of Wisconsin and is a democratic socialist, distanced herself from the platform this week. How should we understand the tensions around this question about appealing to voters versus being ideologically pure?

Generally speaking, I’d say most people in DSA agree on the overall ideology. The issue is more: Are you holding candidates to support that platform publicly? Do you allow your electeds to distance themselves from DSA’s positions when that seems to be the politically pragmatic choice to make? Or does that undermine the organization or even mislead the working class?

You see this a lot around anti-Zionism. There is a faction of DSA members who have been very critical of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, because they feel that she has been insufficiently public in terms of criticizing Israel. Initially, she voted “present” on the Iron Dome. She said she was not opposed to defensive military aid to Israel. She infamously said during the DNC in 2024 that she believed that Biden and Harris were tirelessly working for a ceasefire. 

And a lot of people within DSA have been critical of AOC for what they see as compromising with Democratic leadership when it comes to Israel and Palestine and not taking a very strong kind of unconditional stance against Israel. And there have also been a lot of people, particularly within NYC DSA, who have defended AOC. Their argument is that AOC needs to be pragmatic about these things. 

You see it with Zohran in terms of his relationship with the NYPD and with NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch. A lot of people in DSA are very critical of Tisch, who worked for [Eric] Adams. She is a billionaire and a Zionist — definitely not in keeping with DSA’s politics. And she is someone who helped to create the surveillance dragnet under the Adams administration and the De Blasio administration. 

So there have been people in NYC DSA who have called for Zohran to fire Jessica Tisch. And there are other people who say that they do not like Tisch, but they feel Zohran needs to make the pragmatic decision of working with her and not confront entrenched police power.

The DSA’s complicated relationship with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Can you talk to me about the complicated relationship, the ups and downs between DSA and AOC over the years?

That relates to the tension between national and NYC. NYC DSA is really, really pro-AOC. They have a close relationship with her and work closely with her, and she really likes a lot of the leaders in NYC DSA. National DSA is much more skeptical of her, seeing her as willing to compromise and be opportunistic in ways they don’t like. 

AOC was first elected in 2018. In 2024, she was easily reendorsed for election by the NYC DSA, which then applied for the national DSA to endorse her as well. 

The national leadership dragged their feet because they were divided, particularly around her rhetoric around Israel and Palestine. 

Ultimately, they issued a conditional endorsement, saying, “we will endorse AOC if she agrees to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and oppose all aid — defensive and offensive military aid — to Israel.”

NYC DSA was concerned that AOC would not agree to that and that requiring her to agree to those conditions would alienate her from the organization. So they told national DSA, it’s fine, if you’re only going to offer a conditional endorsement we don’t need it. 

Generally, I think it’s safe to say that NYC DSA believes DSA needs AOC more than AOC needs DSA. So they’re very wary of alienating her; they want to maintain a positive working relationship. 

And all this leads into the question of what will happen in the 2028 presidential race, right? If she runs, it doesn’t seem like there’s another plausible socialist candidate in the mix.

If you talk to people who are skeptical of AOC, they would say that they would love [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib to run, because she is obviously the most committed to Palestinian solidarity. All indications are that she is not interested in running for president, so that’s kind of a dead letter. You’ll also see people say they would like Shawn Fain to run, the head of the United Auto Workers, as a real left-labor candidate harkening back to the days when union leaders were major political figures. Again, he’s very unlikely to run.

And you have some people who say that they would support Ro Khanna, even though Ro Khanna is not a socialist and is probably worse on Palestine than AOC. 

So it really does seem like it’s going to be AOC or no one. And that’s why I think that even the people who are skeptical of AOC have largely resigned themselves to the idea that if she runs, DSA will endorse. 

I think the tension now is around how supportive DSA would be. DSA could spend 2028 being an AOC surrogate, deeply involved in the campaign, making their primary goal getting her elected president in 2028. 

I think there are also people in DSA who believe that, even if AOC is the best candidate and DSA should support her, they don’t want to fully kind of liquidate themselves into the AOC campaign. They want to maintain an independent organization where DSA could set up an independent expenditure and come out with messaging that says: we support AOC but we don’t agree with her on everything. 

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.

Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee is in trouble.

What’s happening? Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Trump nominated for the permanent job last month, was set to receive a committee vote on Thursday on his way to being confirmed. Instead, lawmakers are punting on the vote after multiple key Republican senators expressed concerns — and Trump is now threatening to pull Blanche’s nomination until next year.

Why are senators worried about Blanche? Nearly all of Trump’s nominees — even his most controversial picks, like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — have been confirmed by the Senate. 

But Blanche, who is also Trump’s former personal lawyer, has a track record as acting attorney general, where he’s primarily distinguished himself by his unflinching devotion to Trump’s personal priorities: things like indicting former FBI director James Comey, creating a vast $1.8 billion slush fund to reward Trump’s allies, and immunizing the president and his family from scrutiny by the IRS via an unusual settlement deal. 

Not all of those schemes have gone well; the slush fund, for example, went down in flames in June. 

The IRS shield, however, is still kicking, and Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) — both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee — are pushing Blanche to commit to changes to the settlement before they will support his nomination. So far, that hasn’t happened. 

What happens if Blanche’s nomination fails? It’s a black eye for Trump and a sign that the GOP, facing an increasingly dire midterms outlook, is growing less willing to go along with Trump’s increasingly conspicuous corruption. But a defeated vote or a pulled nomination won’t actually end Blanche’s tenure as acting attorney general — since he was previously confirmed by the Senate for the deputy attorney general job, he can likely stay in the acting role as long as Trump wants to keep him there.

And with that, it’s time to log off…

This story from the Atlantic, about a “tourism fixer” in Rome for whom just about any experience is in reach, was a great read (click here for a gift link). 

As always, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

The AI industry’s investors and critics don’t agree on much. But many in each camp share at least one basic conviction: America’s top labs are about to make a killing. 

Capital markets have signaled their faith in Anthropic and OpenAI’s impending hyper-profitability, valuing each at nearly $1 trillion. Many of Silicon Valley’s progressive adversaries also expect the labs to grow filthy rich but fear the implications, warning that AI-induced automation could transfer vast sums of money from ordinary workers to a handful of giant tech companies. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s call for nationalizing the top AI labs rests partly on that concern. 

But recent advances in Chinese AI call all of this into question.

Over the past two months, Chinese companies have released three AI models that are nearly as powerful as America’s frontier systems — and radically less expensive. 

In June, Beijing’s Z.ai debuted a model that performed nearly as well as Claude and ChatGPT’s second-tier systems on independent benchmarks. Weeks later, another Chinese firm, Moonshot, unveiled “Kimi K3,” a model that allegedly outperforms all of its American rivals except for the very latest versions of Claude and ChatGPT. Finally, just days ago, Alibaba launched a preview of Qwen3.8 Max, which purportedly outclasses even OpenAI’s most advanced systems, while trailing only Claude’s Fable in its capabilities. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent.)

These developments don’t merely threaten America’s AI giants with stiffer competition in the race for superintelligence. Rather, they raise a more harrowing prospect: that the AI race’s ultimate rewards will be far smaller than anticipated. In a world where new advances can regularly be leapfrogged by cheaper upstarts, hoarding the technology — and its profits — will be harder for any one company to do.

In other words, building a machine God might not be as lucrative as it’s cracked up to be. AI, it turns out, may “want to be free.”

How AI was supposed to pay off

To see how China’s new models threaten Anthropic’s profit expectations, we must first examine why those expectations have been so high.

This is not entirely self-evident. After all, AI labs aren’t much like the hyper-profitable tech giants of the 2010s. Facebook and Airbrb were relatively capital-light businesses with ultra-low marginal costs (adding a profile to Facebook or listing to Airbnb costs the companies virtually nothing). And once each gained a foothold in their respective markets, network effects enabled them to retain formidable positions without needing to constantly upgrade their products.

Building a state-of-the-art AI company is a much more involved — and astronomically more expensive — endeavor. To get to the frontier, Anthropic and OpenAI have sunk (at least) tens of billions into semiconductors, data centers, power plants, and other capital investments. Staying at the cutting-edge, meanwhile, compels them to perpetually churn out evermore costly models.

To put a new Claude model through its initial training — in which it spends months digesting the internet and sussing out statistical patterns within its text — can now cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And such foundational computation is only the beginning. A truly superlative model requires several additional months of fine-tuning. Armies of contracted experts — such as computer scientists, physicians, and mathematicians — tutor the models, grading their answers and guiding them towards better ones. Then the AI systems complete millions of rounds of practice, in which they learn through trial and error how to solve countless problems. This arduous process, known as “post-training,” compounds the costs of a single model’s development. 

All of which raises the question: Why would investors expect businesses with a cost-structure this challenging to be not merely profitable, but massively so?

There are (at least) two answers. The first (and most obvious) is that the market for superintelligent machines is liable to be vast. Frontier AI systems promise to reduce costs and improve performance in myriad white-collar sectors. And Anthropic’s soaring revenues indicate that firms do, in fact, find Claude useful. A company like AirBnB has earned billions by revolutionizing a single industry; imagine then what a technology that remade virtually all industries might be worth.

Of course, plenty of technologies are valuable but not massively profitable to produce. After all, in well-functioning markets, competition should eventually erode individual firms’ margins, even if the underlying technology continues generating huge value. 

But this is where the second answer comes in: Frontier labs’ immense costs are a burden, but they’re also a safeguard against competition — or, in industry parlance, a “moat.”

Startups may be able to afford to build or acquire more rudimentary models, many of which are “open source.” But, the thinking goes, they won’t be able to deliver Claude Fable-level performance without raising giant amounts of capital. And what investors will be willing to pour hundreds of billions into an AI pipsqueak that’s light-years behind Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI?

Alas, the Chinese AI labs’ rapid progress — and the way it was achieved — suggest that Anthropic’s moat may be shallower than previously thought.

How Moonshot swam Anthropic’s moat

The existence of powerful, Chinese AI systems is neither new nor surprising. Xi Jinping’s government has made vying for global AI dominance a key economic goal. And China’s DeepSeek, which also has stunned US companies with its lower-cost competitive models, surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free iPhone app more than a year ago.

The latest models, however, have dramatically narrowed the gap in capabilities between frontier American systems and their Chinese rivals. Just as critically, they’ve done so in a manner that other, relatively underfunded AI upstarts might be able to emulate.

Alibaba and Moonshot needed to invest massive resources to train their base models. But they allegedly found a low-cost way to refine those models into near-frontier systems: Just ask Claude.

Or, more specifically: Engage Claude in 16 million conversations, using 24,000 fake accounts. In each of those exchanges, ask the model to not only answer countless difficult questions but also, walk you through its reasoning, step by step. Then take all of this data and feed it into your own model as study material, training it to respond to the world’s most challenging queries as Claude would. 

Through this process — known as “distillation” — an AI lab can replicate virtually all of a frontier model’s capacities, without sinking vast sums into human experts and post-training computing runs. 

China’s AI labs have not admitted to using distillation. But OpenAI and Anthropic both reportedly uncovered Chinese distillation attempts earlier this year. And some of the new models appear to display tell-tale signs of distillation in conversations with ordinary users; Kimi K3 has routinely identified itself as “Claude.”

Chinese AI companies are hardly alone in using distillation to catch up with frontier labs. Earlier this year, Elon Musk admitted in court that xAI enhanced Grok’s capabilities by running distillation techniques on Claude and ChatGPT. Nonetheless, China’s latest models appear to demonstrate that distillation can help take a second-tier model to the frontier’s threshold.

America’s frontier labs have tried to defend themselves against such imitators. But this is technically difficult when distillers can assemble massive networks of bots, each asking an inconspicuous number of questions. And legally, it is difficult for America’s AI giants to argue that distillers are stealing their intellectual property. After all, in a sense, China’s copycats are merely doing to Anthropic and OpenAI what those companies did to journalists, coders, lawyers and other specialists: Feeding their public-facing outputs into a model, which then replicates their capabilities by discerning underlying patterns within the text.

Oh, and China’s giving these models away

The new Chinese models would have caused Silicon Valley enough headaches, if they merely provided stiffer competition, while demonstrating the power of distillation. 

What makes Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 Max especially threatening to the American AI giants’ profitmaking potential, however, is that they are officially open source — meaning that the models’ parameters can be downloaded for free. (Alibaba and Moonshot have not yet released these parameters, but they say they will shortly.)

In other words, any company or hobbyist with enough computing power will soon be able to run a near-frontier Chinese model on their own hardware, modify that model to better serve a specialized purpose, and then sell access to their new version — without paying Alibiba a single yuan.

As Kimi and Qwen grow more capable, their market-share is likely to grow, at American AI giants’ expense.

For many of Anthropic and OpenAI’s potential customers, that proposition may be hard to turn down. Most businesses don’t need the world’s smartest AI, just one competent at their enterprise’s core tasks — compiling legal research, answering IT queries, writing working code, etc. A model that produces outputs 90 percent as good as Claude’s — at roughly one-sixth of the cost — will sound pretty good to many corporations.

Further, open source models aren’t just cheaper than frontier systems, but potentially more secure. If you run an AI on your firm’s own servers, then you don’t need to entrust sensitive data to Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI.

All this had led much of corporate America to embrace open-source models, even before the latest versions narrowed the capabilities gap. In a Linux Foundation survey, 63 percent of organizations reported using open-source AI systems.

And increasingly, those models are Chinese. According to Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s premier venture capitalist firms, a majority of American AI startups now use open-source Chinese systems. As Kimi and Qwen grow more capable, their market-share is likely to grow, at American AI giants’ expense.

What’s bad for OpenAI is good (and/or catastrophic) for humanity

All this said, it is still entirely possible that OpenAI and Anthropic will justify their colossal valuations. In many highly competitive economic domains, having access to the world’s very best AI model will remain highly valuable. And America’s frontier labs still outperform all their peers. 

But it’s increasingly plausible that selling state-of-the-art AI systems will prove to be a low-margin undertaking. In a world of ubiquitous, near-frontier open source models, the AI sector’s big winners probably won’t be its top labs, but rather, its chipmakers and cloud computing providers. 

For ordinary people, a future where superintelligence is dirt cheap — and rival AI companies are constantly rising and falling, rather than consolidating into mega-corporations — would look somewhat different than the cyberpunk dystopia that the left’s been dreading. 

And not entirely in a good way. For one thing, in that reality, mitigating AI’s biggest risks would be immensely difficult. Having a handful of firms monopolize control over frontier AI systems is bad in many respects. But it does make those models easier to regulate, as the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily block Claude’s Fable in the name of cybersecurity demonstrated. 

By contrast, if recipes for ultra-powerful AI models are published all over the internet — and anyone with modest technical skills can modify them at will — then systems willing to help their users hack government bureaucracies or engineer bio-weapons are liable to proliferate.

From another angle, however, the “AI becomes almost free” scenario may look like capitalism at its finest: Retrospectively, such a development would mean that a small number of extremely rich people bankrolled the creation of an immensely useful technology, under the expectation of massive profits, only to see competition erode their returns — and disperse that tech’s benefits across a wider group of businesses and consumers. 

Granted, in the case of AI, this process might also generate a super-virus that kills us all. But hey, no system is perfect.

A court case involving President Donald Trump’s efforts to sabotage voting by mail reached the Supreme Court on Monday. The executive order at the heart of Trump v. California is one of many attempts by Trump and his Republican Party to make it harder for voters to mail their ballots and to potentially invalidate lawfully cast ballots that are submitted by mail. 

The executive order is particularly significant, because, with it, Trump is claiming the unilateral authority to change US election policy in ways that, at least according to the Constitution, can only be done by Congress or by state governments. Trump and many of his Republican allies have previously urged other institutions, such as Congress or the Supreme Court, to shift US election rules to benefit the GOP. But now, he’s claiming the power to rewrite those rules himself.

The March executive order at issue in California claims to be an effort to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. But several provisions of the order seem designed to intimidate state and local election officials by threatening them with illegal prosecutions. Another provision would forbid the US Postal Service (USPS) from delivering many mailed ballots, which would have political benefits for Trump. 

Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail than Republicans since at least the Covid-era 2020 election, and this trend has continued post pandemic. So, any election policy that suppresses mailed ballots will harm Democrats and help Republicans.

In late June, a federal district court determined that several provisions of Trump’s executive order exceed his authority and must be struck down. 

The issue before the Supreme Court in California, however, does not concern whether the executive order is legal or not. Instead, Trump’s lawyers claim that the district court acted prematurely by invalidating the executive order before it was fully implemented and before several federal agencies have an opportunity to flesh out how its provisions will actually work. Those lawyers, in other words, want to buy time for federal agencies to implement parts of the order before it can be challenged in court.

This is actually a plausible argument, as Trump’s brief to the justices makes several significant concessions that, if embraced by the justices, would significantly weaken Trump’s order at least for the time being. As Trump’s lawyers now characterize his order, it doesn’t do much of anything until several federal agencies take additional steps.

Still, the stakes in this case, which arises on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the justices often decide very quickly, are quite high. Even if the justices do hold Trump to the promises his lawyers made in their brief and issue an opinion explicitly stating that the order currently imposes no obligations on anyone, that will still set up a future reckoning on whether Trump’s efforts to suppress voting by mail are valid. Eventually, those agencies will act, and several of them are likely to do so before the midterms, and, then, the question of whether Trump can fundamentally alter how US elections are conducted will have to be decided by the courts.

Trump’s executive order, if fully implemented, could potentially change the results of federal elections and place Republicans who did not win in office. It also matters because Trump claims the power to decide how states conduct federal elections, despite no statute that authorizes his order — thus, potentially expanding his own powers and the power of all future presidents.

So, what does Trump’s executive order do?

Trump v. California primarily concerns two sections of Trump’s executive order.

Section 2 of the order includes a thinly veiled threat that state and local election officials will face prosecution if they allow voters who aren’t pre-approved by the Trump administration to vote by mail. 

On the surface, the first part of this section seems innocuous. It requires the Department of Homeland Security “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State.” During a lower court proceeding in California, Trump’s Justice Department conceded that any such list would “necessarily be incomplete.” But the federal government’s decision to compile a partial list of eligible voters does not actually prevent anyone from voting.

The problem with Section 2 is that Trump’s call for DHS to compile this list is coupled with a statement that “the Attorney General shall prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials or any others involved in the administration of Federal elections who issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election.” 

Thus, as Judge Indira Talwani determined in her order blocking this provision, Section 2 “implicitly threatens enforcement…against election officials who furnish ballots to voters excluded” from the Trump administration’s incomplete lists. While the order does not explicitly state that an election official who mails a ballot to a lawful voter whose name does not appear on the Trump administration’s list will be prosecuted, Trump’s decision to couple his demand that the list be created with a threat of prosecution sends a clear message to election officials that they allow voters who are not on the list to vote at their own risk.

Moreover, as Talwani wrote in her opinion, one major reason why the federal government cannot compile an accurate list of all eligible voters is because the federal government’s records “do not necessarily track name changes (such as when a woman changes her name at marriage).” Women are more likely to vote for Democrats than men.

Additionally, Section 3 orders USPS to come up with new rules that require states to provide the federal government with a list of all voters who will receive a mailed ballot “no fewer than 60 days before the election,” and it forbids the post office from delivering ballots from voters whose names do not appear on the list. This section also outlines requirements for a specific kind of envelope for mail voting with certain design features — which, at the very least, creates a problem for states that have already purchased envelopes that do not comply with these new design requirements.

The Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, the power to decide how federal elections are conducted

The Constitution provides that states, and not the federal government, get to decide who is eligible to vote in a federal election. Article I of the Constitution, for example, provides that voters who possess “the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature” may vote for members of the US House. And the 17th Amendment uses similar language to describe who may vote for US senators.

Thus, because each state gets to determine who may vote in its state legislative races, states also have the power to determine who can vote for members of Congress.

The Constitution’s language governing presidential elections, meanwhile, is even more explicit that states — and not Trump — get to decide who is an eligible voter. That language provides that “each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” its presidential electors.

Thus, as Talwani concluded, no federal official, including the president, has the power to determine that only “United States citizens who will be above the age of 18” may vote in a particular federal election; only states have the authority to decide who may vote for members of Congress or the president. And the federal government certainly does not have the power to compile a list of eligible voters and threaten prosecution of any state official who provides a ballot to someone not on that list.

A separate provision of the Constitution lets states determine the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,” while also permitting Congress to “make or alter such Regulations.” Thus, while the federal government cannot determine who is eligible to vote in federal elections (except through constitutional provisions such as the 15th or 19th Amendments), Congress could conceivably pass a law regulating voting by mail.

But Trump is not Congress. And, according to Judge Talwani, “no law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS.”

Trump’s lawyers defend his executive order by claiming that it doesn’t do anything…yet

In their brief to the justices, Trump’s Justice Department did not actually argue that the executive order is legal (although they will likely do so in a later stage of this lawsuit). Instead, they argued that Judge Talwani’s decision blocking the executive order was “premature.” 

The thrust of DOJ’s argument is that, while the executive order announces several new election-related policies, it does not actually implement any of those policies. The executive order tasks DHS with compiling the incomplete list of eligible voters, it tasks DOJ with prosecuting state officials, and it tasks the Postal Service with coming up with the specific rules governing mailed ballots.

The Constitution does not permit anyone to file a lawsuit challenging a federal policy unless they can show they were injured in some way by that policy. Trump’s lawyers argue that, until the new election policies are fully implemented, none of the California plaintiffs can know whether they will be harmed by these policies or not.

It’s a plausible argument, but largely because DOJ’s brief makes a number of concessions that strip the executive order of any real vitality, at least until it is fully implemented by federal agencies.

The brief insisted, for example, that Section 2 should not be read to authorize prosecutions against state officials who send a ballot to someone who is not on Trump’s approved list of voters. “The Order does not deem it a crime, or even evidence of a crime, for States not to use the Lists when determining voter eligibility, and it does not direct the Attorney General to bring charges on such a theory,” it read.

Similarly, it denied that any of the executive order’s new policies governing envelopes and pre-approved voters who may vote by mail must actually be implemented, at least before the postal service issues its own rules regarding Trump’s new policies. According to the brief, “the Order does not ‘direct various changes to the voting-by-mail process,’” it merely “directs the President’s Executive Branch subordinates at the Postal Service to begin a deliberative policymaking process that may ultimately include some changes.”

While at least some of these concessions take liberties with the language of the executive order, they do potentially give the justices a third option to consider before they decide the California case. The justices could leave Talwani’s decision in full effect, or they could allow Trump to implement his new restrictions on voting. But they could also block Talwani’s order while simultaneously pointing to DOJ’s concessions and indicating that they expect Trump to honor those concessions.

If the justices take this third option, that would mean that the order would impose no obligations on the states for the time being and would similarly impose no new restrictions on voters until the agencies act. Litigation over the executive order would pause, and it would resume once the order is implemented by further agency action.

The Justice Department’s concessions in this case are fairly extraordinary, and they suggest that even Trump’s own legal team recognizes that it will be easier to persuade the courts to delay a reckoning over the executive order than it will be to convince them that the order is lawful. It remains to be seen, however, whether this Supreme Court will actually enforce the Constitution in this case — and whether they will do so right away or at some future date.

The prototypical Democrat vulnerable to a primary this year has been old, in Washington a long time, and vulnerable from the left.

But in Massachusetts, there’s a race that’s scrambling that formula. Sen. Ed Markey is 80, and he’s been in Congress for 50 years. But he’s been a stalwart ally of progressives; he was, for instance, the main Senate champion of the “Green New Deal.” And the leaders of the Democrats’ left flank, like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are swinging into action to try and defend him. “It’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas. And in this race, I’m the youngest guy,” Markey has said.

His opponent, Seth Moulton, a 47-year-old Marine Corps veteran, also goes against type. While “moderate” and “establishment” often are treated as synonyms, Moulton has a history of pushing back against both progressive activists and older Democratic leaders. In his current run, he’s made generational change his main issue, including some blunt warnings about Markey’s age. 

“If Democrats win the Senate, it will almost certainly be by one vote, and we can’t afford to lose that vote due to a medical absence or emergency,” Moulton told me in an interview. “That’s not ageism, that’s just actuarial tables.”

But his Senate campaign isn’t the first time he’s taken on Democratic leaders. In 2018, he led a (failed) effort to stop Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker again, arguing again that the aging House leadership needed to clear a path for younger members. In 2024, he became one of the first prominent Democrats to bail on President Joe Biden after his disastrous debate, saying the president needed to “let new leaders rise up.”

The party establishment, Moulton told me, has “failed to be honest with the American people about the challenges we face.” He cited Democrats denying there was “an immigration problem at the southern border under Biden,” their insistence that Biden-era inflation was “transitory,” and their initial defense of Biden after the debate exposed his frailty.

Some of his criticisms of the party have rankled progressives. After President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, he publicly criticized Democrats’ stance on trans athletes in stark terms, telling the New York Times he didn’t want his “two little girls” getting “run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete” — a statement that earned him intense backlash in Massachusetts. 

Now facing a Democratic primary electorate in a very liberal state, Moulton has tried to avoid being pigeonholed as a centrist. For instance, he said he supports abolishing ICE and prosecuting many of its officials, and he said he supports legislation like the Transgender Bill of Rights. Asked about his comments on transgender youth, he told me his intention “was not to hurt or offend anybody, but to say that we need to be willing to have these tough conversations as Democrats — and not simply cede this territory to Republicans.”

Instead, his principal argument has been that Markey should pass the torch — and that frustrations with what congressional Democrats’ ineffectiveness should in part be aimed at Markey. 

“One of the first votes I’ll take in the Senate will be against Chuck Schumer for leader,” Moulton said.

Markey, for his part, has accused Moulton of throwing trans kids “under the bus” and argued his own long record and support for causes from climate to Medicare-for-all shows him to be a reliable progressive ally. 

“Congressman Moulton is trying to walk a political tightrope,” Markey campaign manager Cam Charbonnier told Vox. “He’s working to appeal to moderate voters, but that coalition alone isn’t enough to win a Massachusetts Democratic primary. So, he’s also trying to appeal to progressives, but he doesn’t have the track record to back that up. The result is a campaign that’s trying to be everything to everyone, leaving voters questioning what he actually stands for.”

Polling in the race has been sparse, but the last two public surveys both showed a surprisingly close race ; Markey led by just 5 points in one and 6 in the other. However, there were many undecided voters, and we’ll soon see whether ad campaigns — like Markey’s new one featuring Sanders, Warren, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley — shift the numbers.

If Moulton wins the September 1 primary, or even comes close, it would suggest that the Democratic base’s frustrations with gerontocracy and Washington are more than stand-ins for a debate over ideology and reflect broader concerns about older politicians losing touch, being ineffective, aging, and even dying in office.

But if Markey ends up sailing to victory, it would send a message that it can be perilous for upstart Democratic challengers like Moulton to break with the progressive base — and that validation from the Sanders wing of the party can be a very valuable thing.

Sen. Ed Markey beat back a previous primary challenge by mobilizing progressives

Though Markey entered the House of Representatives 50 years ago, his team argued that his record shows he was frequently on the right side of history — that, for instance, he started focusing on climate change as far back as the 1980s and that he supported same-sex marriage in the 1990s. (Moulton bristled at this a bit, telling me, “He was elected as a pro-life Democrat who was opposed to the racial integration of Boston schools.”)

In 2009, he and Rep. Henry Waxman co-authored Democrats’ sweeping “cap-and-trade” climate bill, which was one of President Barack Obama’s top priorities. The bill, which became colloquially known as Waxman-Markey, died in the Senate.

When Sen. John Kerry joined Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of state, Markey ran for his open Senate seat. He was the more progressive candidate in a primary against Rep. Stephen Lynch, which he won by 15 percentage points.

But toward the end of Markey’s first full Senate term, an ambitious Democrat with a famous name — then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III, grandson of RFK (and nephew of RFK Jr.) — launched a primary bid against him, also with a message of generational change.

Markey’s initial polling was quite weak, he still wasn’t very well-known in the state, and he appeared to be in serious danger. But, unexpectedly, he became an online phenomenon of sorts, as young progressives, impressed by his Senate push for the Green New Deal and early endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has not weighed in this time), rallied to his side. His campaign’s message that he was a movement champion proved successful, and he ended up winning the primary by 11 points.

When Democrats had a trifecta in Washington again under President Joe Biden, they passed their climate bill. The new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, established the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a “green bank” of sorts. The concept, in various iterations, had been one of Markey’s main causes over the years, and its enactment was a major achievement. Yet, that success was short-lived, as the Trump administration is now attempting to dismantle the program.

Rep. Seth Moulton has been a thorn in the Democratic establishment’s side

Moulton, for his part, believes he can take down Markey, because he took down a long-time Democratic incumbent once before; that’s how he got his start in politics.

Rep. John Tierney had represented his northeastern Massachusetts district for nearly two decades, when Moulton challenged him in a 2014 primary. A longtime ally of Nancy Pelosi, Tierney became vulnerable due to a gambling scandal involving his family. (His wife’s brother was accused of racketeering for operating an illegal offshore casino, and Tierney’s wife was accused of preparing false tax returns. Both were convicted and sent to prison.)

In contrast, the 35-year-old Moulton was a fresh face — a Harvard grad and a decorated combat veteran who had served four Marine Corps tours in Iraq. He proved an effective fundraiser and campaigner, upsetting Tierney by 10 percentage points.

Yet, Moulton quickly grew frustrated with Washington. After Democrats’ 2016 defeat, he became one of the party’s most outspoken critics of Pelosi. Already, by 2017, there was talk he might run for president — and ample anonymous quotes from other Democrats disparaging him as opportunistic, grasping, and disloyal.

Moulton insisted throughout that he was making a case that went beyond personal ambition. Before the 2018 midterms, he started the Serve America PAC to try and elect more members with military or national service backgrounds who were skeptical of Democratic leaders — more people like him — to Congress. But when Democrats retook the House majority, Moulton’s high-profile effort to supplant Pelosi flamed out. 

So did his subsequent presidential bid. He was in the race for four months in 2019 but dropped out when he failed to qualify for debates, warning Democrats on his way out against “veering too far left” in their choice of candidate. 

But the latest round of Democratic failures — Biden’s debate face-plant and Kamala Harris’ defeat — spurred Moulton to make another attempt at higher office. 

“Someone who has been in Congress for half a century and will be 86 years old at the end of his next term is, in fact, too old,” Moulton told the Washington Post after launching his campaign last October. “If we haven’t learned the lessons of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden…then where are we going as a party?”

Is this a race about who’s the best progressive, or about who wants to shake up the way things are done?

In addition to the close polling in recent months, Moulton’s fundraising has been impressive — aided, Markey’s allies argued, by donors associated with private equity and crypto. (A pro-Markey Super PAC has fundraised heavily from unions, as well as some investors and corporate executives.)

But when Markey and Moulton faced off on the debate stage earlier this month, nothing even close to the Joe Biden catastrophe ensued. Markey insisted he’d never been more energized, and both candidates hit their preferred messaging points. For Markey, that meant portraying himself as a dependable progressive and Moulton as an unreliable ally.

“After the 2024 election, Congressman Moulton decided that he was gonna throw trans kids under the bus — the political bus — and blame them for the loss of the 2024 election.” Markey said. “Those kids are vulnerable. Those kids need love. Those kids don’t need to be scapegoated and blamed for what was wrong with the Democratic Party.”

But in Moulton’s interview with me, he said that “it’s very hard to find any fundamental differences in the issues” between him and Markey. 

“I’m an ally for all the people and causes on all these issues that Senator Markey and I agree on, and I’m very proud of how much my voting record aligns with Senator Markey’s on the major issues,” Moulton said. “But I’m not gonna just sit back and do what the establishment tells me to do, especially when the establishment is failing.”

There was a backup plan for getting oil out of the Middle East. We may need another one.

 On July 20, the Iran-backed Yemeni rebel movement known as the Houthis declared a “blockade” against their long-time enemy Saudi Arabia, and a short time later attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. Shortly afterward, several ships carrying Saudi crude oil through the Red Sea made abrupt U-turns to avoid going near the Yemeni coast.  

With Iran now blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea was supposed to be an alternative way to get oil out of the Middle East and to the world market. Now, though, the importance of the route has merely created fresh leverage in the long-simmering conflict between the Houthis and their longtime enemies in Saudi Arabia. These attacks were a major factor in pushing oil back over $100 a barrel last week.  

The Houthis have their own agenda partly unrelated to the Iran conflict. But in launching the Iran conflict, the US has inadvertently given them outsized influence in the region: The sea lane they control is more important than ever. Now, in opening up a new front, they may have just made the war harder to end. 

The Red Sea has become increasingly important to Saudi Arabia and energy markets as shippers have avoided Hormuz in recent months. Saudi Arabia has diverted around 70 percent of its oil exports via a pipeline connecting the oil fields on the Persian Gulf to the port of Yanbu on its Red Sea coast. This means that tankers need to use the Red Sea to get oil to Asia. As a result, the Red Sea now accounts for around 7 percent of the world’s energy supplies. 

This release valve is one reason why the price of oil — and the price of gas for American drivers — has not risen as much as many experts expected when the Hormuz crisis began shortly after the US-Israel strikes on Iran. 

But now, that release valve is also under threat, putting the region and the world in what shipping experts call a “double chokehold.”

The Houthis have used their location to cause chaos before: In 2023 and 2024, they attacked over 100 ships they accused of links to Israel, and dramatically drove down shipping through the Red Sea. Those attacks stopped after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire last year, but shipping has still not fully recovered. 

President Donald Trump has threatened both the Houthis and Iran with “major military punishment” over the attacks in recent days. And the attacks also make it likelier that the conflict in Iran could make oil pricier than ever, increasing political pressure on Trump. 

What do the Houthis want? 

The Houthis are a member of Iran’s network of regional proxies, known as the “Axis of Resistance,” along with Hezbollah, Hamas, and a number of Iraqi militias. But most experts believe that while they rely on Iranian support, they operate independently and don’t take their marching orders from Tehran. 

Officially known as Ansar Allah, the Houthis are members of the minority Zaydi sect of Shia Islam. They’ve been fighting for control of Yemen since the 1990s and took over Yemen’s capital city, Sanaa, in 2014, though most countries do not recognize them as Yemen’s legitimate government. 

The Houthis fought a brutal decade-long war against Yemen’s internationally recognized government and an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which ended with a UN-mediated ceasefire in 2022. 

The Saudi-Houthi peace has largely held since then, even as the Houthis gained global notoriety during the Gaza war. When this year’s war began, many expected the Houthis to join the fight against Iran’s enemies, the United States and Israel, but for the first few weeks of the conflict, they were conspicuously quiet. Their impact was felt in a different way, though. 

Iran’s success in using cheap drones and missiles to effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz almost certainly drew on lessons gained from the Houthi campaign in the Red Sea in 2023 and 2024.

In March, the Houthis made their first move toward actively joining the Iran war when they launched a round of missiles at Israel. But things really escalated in mid-July when they began launching attacks on Saudi Arabia in response to an attack on the Sanaa airport, which they blamed on the Saudis. (The initial attack was claimed by Yemen’s internationally-backed government.)

In addition to the Red Sea attacks, the Houthis also claimed an attack on a Saudi oil refinery last Saturday, the group’s first attack on Saudi energy infrastructure since 2022, followed by attacks on oil depots along the Red Sea coast on Sunday. Several Iran-backed militias in Iraq also carried out their own attacks on Saudi Arabia over the past few days. 

The Houthis have now entered the conflict, but it would be a mistake to view them just as Iranian proxies. They have their own demands and agenda in this fight. 

“When the whole Iran war started, they were kind of observing and waiting for the right moment,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a US-based security analyst and Yemen expert. Basha suspects that the Houthis saw the leverage and concessions Iran had gained throughout the region and wanted to exert some leverage of their own. “Their aggressiveness went from zero to 60 last week,” he said. “They’re all in.”

All in for what, exactly? The Houthis’ demands from the Saudis include billions in reparations payments and full control of their coastline and airspace. In the long term, they aim to be Yemen’s internationally recognized government. 

The Saudis, then, who fought a brutal and unpopular war against the Houthis that ended in a stalemate, are faced with the unappealing choice between placating the group by agreeing to its demands or a return to war. 

What about the US? The US carried out more than 1,000 airstrikes over 52 days against the Houthis in 2025. While this campaign, known as Operation Rough Rider, caused significant damage to the group’s infrastructure, it did not succeed in fully restoring shipping in the Red Sea. 

Trump has threatened retaliation, but given concerns over munitions stockpiles, the US capacity to retaliate, much less expand this war to a new front, is probably limited.

How many chokeholds is too many?

For the moment, the Bab el-Mandeb is not completely closed — shipping is down around 22 percent since the blockade was declared, but 28 ships were able to transit the strait on Monday. The Houthis maintain that their blockade targets only Saudi Arabia, but Chinese supertankers have been allowed to leave the Red Sea carrying Saudi oil.  

But shippers recall that during the Houthis’ last Red Sea campaign in 2024, they were theoretically only targeting ships linked to Israel, but had a pretty broad definition of “linked to Israel.”  Under these circumstances, many shippers, and more importantly their insurers, might not want to take the risk. 

“We’ve seen what the Houthis can do,” said Noam Raydan, an expert on energy and maritime shipping at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We know that they can sink ships. We know that they can hit a ship with drones, missiles, and then even board the ship. We know that they can hijack a vessel. This is why a lot of operators, in my opinion, would really be hesitant right now to go through the Bab al-Mandab.” 

There’s also still the risk that this new front in the war could escalate. Iran’s government has asked the Houthis to shut the Bab el-Mandeb entirely if the US launches airstrikes against Iran’s power network, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to do.

This adds a new complicating factor to the larger conflict in the Middle East. The fact that the price of oil never rose as high as many experts had predicted during Operation Epic Fury, the initial strikes in the spring and early summer, is probably one reason why Trump has often seemed willing to continue the conflict, rather than cutting a quick deal on Iran’s terms. But Saudi Arabia’s access to the Red Sea is one important reason why oil has not reached $120 or even $200 a barrel. A full closure of the Bab el-Mandeb would test even the ever-adaptable global oil industry’s ability to adapt.

It’s possible the Saudis may still be able to cut a deal with the Houthis that ends the attacks. But it’s also clear that for the foreseeable future, two of the Middle East’s most important energy chokepoints are going to be under continual threat of closure by adversaries of the United States. 

For now, oil can still leave the Red Sea via the Suez Canal at its northern end, then head toward Asia around the southern tip of Africa. (Since the largest tankers aren’t able to transit the Suez while fully loaded, this is a complicated process that involves them pumping their oil into a pipeline, then meeting it at the other end in the Mediterranean.) 

“It just gets harder and harder,” said Robin Mills, CEO of the Dubai-based energy analysis firm Qamar Energy. “Can they get all of the oil from Yanbu out through the Suez? I think they probably can but it’s a little bit tight. If [the Houthi campaign] were to expand, it becomes more of a problem.” 

The Suez Canal itself is also a potential target for disruption or sabotage, retired US Adm. James Stavridis recently warned. 

The disruptions at sea will increase interest in workaround projects such as a proposed pipeline from Iraq to Turkey, bypassing sea routes entirely, but these are still a long way off. The Houthis and their allies in Iraq also demonstrated this week that they can attack oil infrastructure and pipelines in addition to ships. 

The oil and shipping industries are nothing if not adaptable. Previous disruptions, whether the tanker that ran aground in Suez in 2021, the container ship pileups caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, or the Houthis’ previous Red Sea campaign, have been temporary. Goods eventually find their way to market, even if that means another month sailing around Africa.

But as the number of armed conflicts grow, and actors like the Houthis and Iran learn how to effectively weaponize the global economy’s chokepoints to punish much larger and more powerful adversaries, the stresses on the system are growing, and the question becomes whether there’s a breaking point.   

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.

Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is further limiting due process for asylum-seekers in the US.

What’s happening? On Tuesday, the administration issued a rule changing how some asylum requests are handled. Under the new policy, immigrants in more than 444,000 asylum cases could be denied the chance to speak with an asylum officer and claim asylum, which requires them to have experienced persecution, or the threat of persecution, in their home country because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinions, or another characteristic. 

Instead, those immigrants would be redirected to immigration judges — who could order their deportation without any additional process. 

The change, according to the administration, is intended to help clear a substantial backlog in the US asylum system, which has 1.4 million cases currently pending. But it fits a pattern by the Trump administration of dramatically curtailing access to asylum in the US. 

What’s the context? Under the second Trump administration, many previous immigration judges have been forced out or fired from their roles. Their replacements, as Bloomberg reported earlier this year, are minimally trained and instructed to deny most asylum claims outright. 

What’s the big picture? The Trump administration also has a long record of sending immigrants back into dangerous situations in their home countries, or even to countries to which they have no connection. 

Last year, as my colleague Ian Millhiser reported, the Supreme Court effectively allowed the administration to nullify the Convention Against Torture and send immigrants to war-torn countries like South Sudan. 

And those deportations are poised to get worse: In June, the Court also cleared the way for Trump to end temporary protected status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, without consideration of procedural rules. Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reportedly preparing to target hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the US for deportation, even though the island nation is dealing with serious and widespread gang violence. 

With less than 100 days until the 2026 midterm elections, don’t miss my colleague Astead Herndon’s new newsletter, The Midterms, Actually. Every week, Astead breaks down the big ideas and key people behind the political shifts shaping the 2026 elections. You can subscribe here.

And with that, it’s time to log off…

Want to spend less time on social media? Here’s some excellent advice from my colleague Constance Grady, available here with a gift link. 

Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Last week, the Trump administration announced a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The deal would allow the kingdom to develop nuclear power using American technology and could eventually pave the way for uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. But the agreement must first undergo congressional review — and survive President Donald Trump’s social media feed.

When the Trump administration announced its agreement, it made no mention of the possibility of normalizing diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But that omission and the possibility that Saudi Arabia could eventually enrich uranium alarmed Israelis — and Trump quickly threw in both conditions in a Truth Social post.

The chaos around the agreement comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Washington, DC, this week to meet with Trump. The Saudi deal — as well as growing friction over differences on the goals and trajectory of the renewed US war with Iran and frustration in Washington over Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon — will undoubtedly be topics.

Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswame spoke with Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, about the relationship between the two countries and its leaders ahead of Netanyahu’s visit. 

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.

What are we expecting from the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump?

I suspect this will be among the most tense meetings that they have had because there are a number of issues on the table where President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are on different pages. The issue that they used to be on the same page about was Iran, and I don’t think that is the case anymore. 

As we’ve seen the Iran war unfold, the Israeli view is still the view that they had at the outset of the war, which is that this is necessary to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, with its ballistic missiles, with its proxies. And ultimately what the Israelis wanted to see, and what they still want to see, is a different regime in Iran. President Trump may still share those goals, but it’s pretty clear that, as the war has not gone the way he anticipated, he’s looking for an exit strategy and his main focus is the Strait of Hormuz, which is not something that the Israelis care about at all. 

I think at this point, when Prime Minister Netanyahu arrives at the White House, he’s probably going to try to convince the president that the original goal should be on the table, that the US and Israel should keep going, and President Trump seems to have a different view of things.

And now we have this new deal with Saudi Arabia. Was Israel taken by surprise by the deal? 

It absolutely took Israel by surprise. When the deal was announced on Wednesday, it was a deal to provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear power and nuclear infrastructure. There was no mention of Israel. There was no mention of normalization. There was no mention of anything outside of the bounds of a nuclear agreement. 

President Trump on Thursday put out his Truth Social where he said that the deal is absolutely contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. And what’s curious about that is that when the deal was announced, there was no mention of it, and the deal was actually signed. So either the president is intending to change the terms of the deal after it’s been signed, or he’s willing to back out of it if this new condition is not met. 

Or, and I suspect that this is the actual answer, he will secure some sort of commitment from the Saudis to examine joining the Abraham Accords at some point down the road when Israel has met a number of conditions and there’s been progress toward a Palestinian state. And if that is how it unfolds, it will leave the Israelis behind. And I think this comes as a pretty big shock to [Israel] given that President Trump’s previous policy was that a deal between the US and Saudi Arabia would involve normalization.

Was Netanyahu himself surprised by this deal? 

I think he must have been surprised by this deal. It is true that Trump and Netanyahu have seemed to have had a very cushy relationship, not only during this term, but during President Trump’s first term as well. But it’s not a relationship of equals.

We’ve seen President Trump — particularly over the past few months, I think in response to criticism here in the United States over the role that Israel and the role that the prime minister may have had in convincing President Trump to go to war — repeatedly talk about the fact that he is in charge, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to do what he says, that he is the decider and Prime Minister Netanyahu is not. 

I do think they have a good relationship, but President Trump, at least publicly, seems to be signaling that he is in charge and he wants everybody to know that. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu undoubtedly is feeling some stress in this relationship. And when he shows up here tomorrow, he’s going to do whatever he can to try and repair any rifts that there are.

Israel wanted this war, but hates this deal that the president may very likely complete with Saudi Arabia. Did they miscalculate somewhere in here? 

I think the Israelis have miscalculated in a number of ways. And the biggest is that consistently since 2017 or 2018, you hear Israeli officials, political officials, security officials, even ordinary Israelis, talk routinely about President Trump being the best friend that Israel has ever had and exhibiting a faith in President Trump that he will never do anything that will hang Israel out to dry. 

And a lot of what they’ve done has proceeded on that assumption. And even though everybody is aware of President Trump’s transactional nature, even though everybody is aware that he is relatively volatile, that he slips on policy issues all the time, the Israelis had this faith that they would always be an exception to that rule. And I think what we’re seeing is that they’re not necessarily an exception to that rule. 

And it’s important to stress that when it comes to this Saudi nuclear deal, the problem for the Israelis is not just that it was signed without any hint of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia being part of the deal itself. It may open the door for countries that have signed more restrictive agreements in the region, like the UAE, to do the same. And ultimately, all of this is a bet that the trajectory of Saudi Arabia is going to continue, that it’s going to continue modernizing, continue becoming more moderate and pragmatic, and continue improving relations with Israel. 

If that’s not the case, once you’ve handed the Saudis a nuclear program, that’s irreversible. People shouldn’t forget that Iran’s nuclear program started off as a civilian nuclear program that the United States provided for it under the days of the Shah. So for Israelis, the normalization part of this is absolutely worrisome, but the deal itself is problematic too. And I think that’s where the Israelis are feeling panicked.

Welcome to the first edition of The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one thing I’m thinking about — a big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries — and one thing I’m hearing, from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.

One big idea

There are two ways of looking at the current divides within the Democratic Party. The first — and more dominant — narrative is that the party’s left wing is on an upward march, one that began with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election in 2025 and has continued through this year’s Democratic primary season.

The second, and I believe more accurate, explanation is that the party is rudderless — an ideological fight to be settled in the next presidential election — and that the left’s success in New York City, Colorado, and even Maine (before Graham Platner’s campaign collapsed) grows out of a void left by a bigger, less-talked-about story: an establishment in free fall, on the wrong side of fundamental shifts across its own rank-and-file base.

The difference between those interpretations is fine, but important. I don’t think the Democratic base agrees with every position articulated by successful left-wing candidates — like “all deportations are wrong” (as NYC’s Darializa Avila Chevalier told me) — or have suddenly become committed democratic socialists. But I do think the left is on the right side of the gateway issues the base is currently prioritizing: a working-class-led affordability agenda, a skepticism of artificial intelligence, and a moral opposition to President Donald Trump’s war against Iran and to Israel’s campaigns of violence in Lebanon and Gaza. Those issues, more than any others, have defined the Democratic Party’s internal battles since 2024.

Progressives have also benefited from a moderate wing that, in many cases, has yet to lay out an affirmative vision. After the signature policies of the Biden administration flopped as political motivators, the center has seemed frozen in time, unable to offer its own blueprint for the electorate’s concerns (“abundance” aside). When I sat down with Third Way president Jon Cowan, he had no trouble assailing Hasan Piker, Abdul El-Sayed, or any number of the party’s most prominent progressive figures. But when I asked whether Third Way was actually responding to the clear shifts among the electorate — on Medicare-for-all, on abolishing ICE, on foreign aid to Israel — his answer was far less sure.

Cowan on America, Actually:

We’ve never said that there’s a problem with Hasan Piker because he advocates for Medicare-for-all. … I think Medicare-for-all is still very problematic as a political issue, and if someone were nominated for president on the Democratic ticket and they were for Medicare-for-all, I think it would be a major barrier to getting elected. But that’s not our beef with Hasan Piker at all.

It was the same evasion whenever the conversation turned from the messengers to the message. In a recent interview with US Rep. Jim Clyburn — the powerful South Carolina Democrat who has endorsed US Rep. Haley Stevens’s Senate run in Michigan — he bluntly defended insider politics, insisting party leadership was not at fault for the 2024 result. The blame, he told me, belonged to the Black voters who hadn’t turned out for Kamala Harris.

Clyburn on America, Actually:

When the white vote turned out 71 percent two years ago, and the Black vote turned out 59 percent, you tell me whose fault that is. … If that 59 percent had been 69 percent, she would’ve won.

When I asked him directly whether the argument was that Black voters had let Harris down, he didn’t hesitate: “In many instances, absolutely.” It is a remarkable thing to hear from a member of leadership — the base failed us, not the other way around — and it is exactly the instinct that has the establishment on its back foot.

This is why I think it matters to read the Democratic Party’s post-2024 convulsion as a story of establishment collapse rather than left-wing ascension. Stevens, Clyburn, and the party’s leadership would prefer to make this a referendum on the left — on the acceptability of its candidates and its media figures. But the base is communicating something else: a lack of confidence in the center, and in a version of establishment politics that prizes seniority and loyalty over voters’ values. Establishment collapse also explains the Democratic results that don’t fit neatly on the moderate vs. progressive binary: like Attorney General Phil Weiser’s victory in Colorado or whatever is happening in the Wisconsin governor’s race.

The center’s other problem is that its core general-election pitch — we may not thrill you, but we’re not Trump — is losing relevance the weaker that Trump looks politically. I spent a night at Trump’s UFC event on the White House lawn in June, an evening engineered to speak to the young men who broke his way in 2024, and found plenty of them cooling. “He was promising lower prices on everything,” one told me. “We didn’t know wars were gonna start.” Even the MAGA operative Jack Posobiec conceded that “the numbers are softer today, there’s no question about that.”

When the opposition’s own coalition is cracking, branding yourself as an inoffensive vessel who can gather up the most anti-Trump voters looks less compelling. The establishment needs an affirmative reason to be chosen — and it hasn’t found one.

So here’s my amendment to the narrative of the moment: The story isn’t a left-wing party discovering its confidence. It’s an establishment losing its own — and a base voting, in New York, in Colorado, and soon in Michigan and Wisconsin, on how much faith it still has that the center will name what it actually wants and fight for it. 

What I’m hearing: A Michigan reporter’s take on the Democratic Senate race

I reached out to Samuel Robinson, a reporter for the state’s oldest Black newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle; he also has a Substack, Detroit One Million. Robinson is based on Detroit’s east side, and he’s someone I’ve known for a while, as we’re both members of the National Association of Black Journalists. 

Both the Democrats’ moderate and progressive wings have invested so much in the state — it’s become the proxy war in the party’s fight over its future. What is it about Michigan that you think has made the stakes so high? 

Stakes are high because of the control of Congress. But also, Michigan is like a microcosm of America. It swings back and forth every four, eight years. But our US Senate seats have been held by Democrats since 1992. Republicans say they’re going to spend a ton of money to flip the seat being opened by Gary Peters retiring. Women moderates (Dana Nessel, Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson) won big in 2018, and eight years later, all three to some degree have disappointed their own voters. Dems had a legislative trifecta from 2022 to 2024, and many people feel like Dems let down Black residents who got them elected in the first place. 

That’s one thing that unites the Black progressives and the Black establishment: Members in both camps feel the Democratic Party hasn’t done enough. 

How would you describe the difference between a Haley Stevens supporter and an Abdul El-Sayed supporter? 

Haley supporter — usually older; the young people I’ve met who support her typically come from wealthier backgrounds. Haley supporters are usually not involved in politics or people who keep up with national discourse. Haley supporters are worried about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. They are worried about Trump nationalizing elections or not leaving the White House after ’28.

Abdul supporter — usually younger; the older people I’ve met who support him often acknowledge they are in the minority of their peers. The younger people who support him are all over the place in terms of their backgrounds — rich, poor, highly educated, no college. He has the support of most young people under 35. They are mostly worried about sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel, and the influence of AIPAC. I hear more about that than I do Medicare-for-all. 

Stevens has sought to capitalize on El-Sayed’s perceived weakness with the Black vote. How real do you think that vulnerability is? 

Abdul struggles with certain Black voters mostly because they don’t know who he is. I’ve heard from countless people who have said something to the degree of, “I don’t know enough about him.” He received media attention as the Detroit and Wayne County health director, but not enough for people to feel it. Most people know that he ran for governor in 2018 with no experience. People see Haley Stevens ads and mailers. Most Black voters aren’t on Twitter.

I saw this post on X where you were talking to a Stevens supporter who expressed some pretty bigoted claims about El-Sayed’s candidacy. How widespread is that sentiment? When I was reporting on Mamdani’s election in New York City, it was clear that there was anxiety among the Black political class that the rise of Asian, Latino, Muslim communities could displace them. Is that fear at play here? 

The race is definitely a tension point between Wayne County’s Black and Muslim population. Many who have shared with me similar sentiments will point to the anti-Black racism and exploitation of our community at the hands of Arab gas station and liquor store owners. That resentment builds up and then bubbles over in a race like this. We certainly live amongst each other, like off Seven Mile on the east side, where Bengali families and Black families live side by side as next-door neighbors. But there’s a resentment that goes both ways.

The Midterms, Actually is a new weekly newsletter from Astead Herndon. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday.

America’s right-wing elites have a theatrical new indictment of liberals that they warn will lead to catastrophe: They care too much.

 “Suicidal empathy,” the phrase coined by Canadian marketing professor and conservative influencer Gad Saad, is suddenly on the lips of everyone right-of-center — including billionaire Elon Musk, who has promoted Saad’s book by the same name. 

The catchy two-word indictment crystallizes a broader critique on the right — that progressive values aren’t just a misdirection of priorities, but an active threat to everything the West has achieved over thousands of years.  

The problem, in the view of Musk, Saad, and like-minded conservatives, is that the left is so obsessed with sticking up for those on the bottom — whether it’s aid recipients abroad, asylum-seekers at the border, or the homeless in cities — that they disregard everyone else, with deadly consequences for society.

“People have empathy for the criminals, but not empathy for the victims of the criminals,” Musk told Tucker Carlson in October 2024. 

It’s also a convenient new spin on an old idea. The billionaire tech right cohort Musk belongs to has long looked for a way to unshackle itself from the leviathan of basic social responsibility. With the concept of suicidal empathy, they have found an intellectual framework to argue that their policy preferences and bottom lines aren’t just about greed or self-interest, but a matter of cultural survival.

In their quest to make this argument, many on the right have pointed to a study that they see as a sort of intellectual checkmate. In 2019, a group of psychologists gathered participants across political ideologies and asked them to express their level of concern about different groups ranging from their close family to animals to all things in existence. In one section, you see a series of heatmaps that appear to show that liberals focus their moral concerns on groups further away from themselves, whereas conservatives value their close loved ones.

Take a minute to enlarge this image and study it.
Conservatives care most about their family, their neighborhood, their own people.
Liberals care most about "poor oppressed foreigners" they never met.
This explains so much about the cult of suicidal empathy sweeping the West. pic.twitter.com/YWSYXQgkvh

— Matt Bracken (@Matt_Bracken48) January 14, 2025

Conservatives seized on the heatmaps and turned them into a meme, arguing that liberals really do value the lives of distant foreigners and strangers over those of their own family and community. 

Venture capitalist and AI Super PAC megadonor Marc Andreessen, for instance, is a fan of the heatmap meme. Rob Henderson, a conservative author, claimed the heatmap proves that “conservatives devote the majority of their empathy and care to family and friends and liberals devote most of their concern to plants, trees, and inert entities such as rocks.” Even the Trump Department of Homeland Security has posted it to respond to a group of protesters opposing the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García.

But things may not be so simple as this now-infamous set of heatmaps portrays. New research published in the journal Political Psychology last month decided to study liberals’ and conservatives’ moral concerns in a more exhaustive way. It came to a very different conclusion.

What the research says about empathy and politics 

Kyle Fiore Law, an assistant psychology professor at the University of Utah and one of the authors of the study, decided to embark on the research in part after seeing the heatmap memes. 

“The assertion going around was that liberals had come to care more about strangers and distant causes than about their own families and communities, and that claim is testable,” he told me. “It also sat awkwardly against decades of evidence that favoring close others is a widespread default in human social cognition, so we wanted to check it directly rather than assume either side of the debate was right.”

The problem, in Law’s view, was that the 2019 study was not robust enough to really tell us who liberals and conservatives prioritize. 

“The 2019 studies measured how far moral concern extends, and they did that well,” Law wrote to me in an email. “They were not designed to detect whether concern for distant others competes with concern for close others, because both tasks built an outward-expanding structure (e.g., from close humans to distant humans to non-human life to eventually the natural world and non-sentient targets) into the measure itself.”

Instead, Law and his colleagues surveyed liberals and conservatives with what’s called the Moral Expansiveness Scale. This scale lets people rank every group independently, which lets us see how much they value them relative to each other (you can do a simple version of examining how much you care about different groups with the test here). 

What Law and his colleagues found was that it isn’t so much that progressives value foreigners and other distant groups more than their close family; they simply extend their moral concern outward further than conservatives do. 

“Close others came first everywhere,” Law said. “Across all three datasets and essentially the whole ideological spectrum, people gave their inner circle the highest moral concern, and we found no evidence of an inversion among liberals at any level.”

 The only thing ideology seemed to predict in their study was how far out someone’s moral circle of concern goes.

 “[Liberals reached] further toward targets like animals, plants, and future generations,” Law said.

They did ask respondents about tradeoffs, and liberals were willing to allocate more theoretical points to outsiders than conservatives did. But the differences were small. 

When people were asked to divide a fixed pool of 100 points, people close to them received “by far the largest share in every group, roughly 56 to 62 points out of 100,” Law told me.

Law’s more robust study suggests that the heatmap meme is essentially fake. 

“In our data, extending concern outward did not come with reduced concern for close others,” he said.

How far should empathy extend?

But disproving the heatmap meme only tells us how liberals and conservatives tend to think; it doesn’t tell us how they should think.

Tradeoffs are a fact of life. Whether we should be willing to modestly increase the national debt or taxes to increase foreign aid, for instance, is a question of values rather than something that can be empirically derived.

But the heatmap memes and pop psychology theories around “suicidal empathy” that have become so common on the right — from the world’s richest man to the folks who serve in the Trump administration — miss something deep and relevant about human beings. 

As a species, we succeeded not just because of our capacity to defend our in-groups — our family, friends, community, nations — but because of our ability to understand the interests and values of those far away. 

After World War II, for instance, multilateral organizations —  like the United Nations — were established to prevent another global conflict by having diplomatic channels that we can use to anticipate and ameliorate the concerns of other countries; even “Mutually Assured Destruction,” the doctrine that prevented a nuclear war, is based on the shared understanding that you cannot destroy someone else’s country without them deciding to do the same thing to you. 

It’s ironic that Saad’s suicidal empathy concept has taken off right as the Trump administration is actively disproving the idea that we can prosper by disregarding everyone else in the world. 

Trump’s trade wars and actual wars have been conducted under the concept that we can simply bully the rest of the planet and profit as a result. 

By trying to run roughshod over other countries’ economic interests, we’ve helped push them to find support in other major countries, like China. Repeated military attacks on Iran, powered by the idea that we should simply impose our terms on that country instead of coming to a mutually beneficial agreement as former President Barack Obama did, have cost us tens of billions of dollars in warfighting and threaten the global economy.

None of this has been popular with the people close to home that it’s purportedly meant to prioritize. Far from empathetic, the Trump doctrine seems to be suicidal cruelty — lashing out at foreigners even when cooperating with them is in our own best interest. 

The heatmap memes and quips about suicidal empathy may make for great social media fodder. But in the real world, seeing life as a constant zero-sum game where we win only if others lose is just as foolish as any progressive who suffers from an excess of empathy.

This story was originally published on June 29 in The Highlight. To get access to member-exclusive stories like this every month, become a Vox Member today.

America in the summer of 1976 was not in a good place. 

The president who presided over the country’s bicentennial, President Gerald Ford, only had the job because the previous president and vice president had resigned in disgrace, making him the sole US president who was never actually elected. The Vietnam War had ended in defeat and disgrace when Saigon fell the year before, after the deaths of nearly 60,000 American servicemembers. Inflation hit double digits in 1974 and stayed ugly, unemployment sat near 8 percent, and economists had to invent a word — stagflation — for an economy that seemed to encompass the worst of both worlds.

Given all that, you might assume the national mood leading up to the 200th anniversary was grim. And, yet, on July 4, 1976, something strange happened: Americans threw themselves a hell of a party. 

In New York Harbor, more than 200 tall ships sailed up the Hudson for Operation Sail, drawing an estimated six million spectators — the largest crowd in the city’s history. Ford reviewed the fleet from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. It was the same scene up and down the country that day: parades in small towns, fireworks over the National Mall, church bells ringing in unison at 2 o’clock. It was one cathartic day of celebration after a decade that had offered little reason for it.

And when pollsters asked people how they felt about the country’s future that year, the mood was, improbably, sunny. A Roper survey found more Americans were optimistic than pessimistic about the future by a nearly three to one ratio. More than three-quarters told Gallup the nation had already achieved at least a fair amount of its founding ideals. Somehow, a nation that was in the middle of a genuinely miserable decade looked in the mirror and liked what it saw.

Jump forward 50 years, to this year’s 250th anniversary, and you’ll find the vibes flipped. Roughly 60 percent of Americans tell pollsters the nation is on the wrong track. A majority say its best years are behind it. About three-quarters think today’s children will end up worse off than their parents. Asked a version of that same founding-ideals question from 1976, 77 percent now say the founders would be disappointed in what we’ve become.

But just as they were in 1976, the vibes don’t match reality. Set the mood aside and look only at the numbers, and the country that felt so good in 1976 was, by the most important measures, a worse place to be alive than the country that now feels so terrible on its 250th birthday.

Start with whether you’re alive

Let’s start with the most basic test of how a society is doing: how long its people live.

Life expectancy at birth in the US was 72.6 years in 1976. In 2024, it reached a record high of 79 years — an extra six and a half years of life. At the start of life, a baby born now is far more likely to survive its first year than one born during the Bicentennial, while cancer, once nearly a synonym for a death sentence, now kills a much smaller share of the people it strikes. 

The US made those gains by stopping some of its worst habits, things that were commonplace in 1976 . You might have seen the Bicentennial celebrations through a cloud of smoke, as cigarettes were woven into ordinary life — on airplanes, in offices, in hospital wards — and roughly 37 percent of adults smoked. Today, it is closer to one in 10, and it keeps falling. 

The heart disease and lung cancer that were connected to all that tobacco have receded with it. Add seatbelts and airbags, better trauma care, and cheap drugs that lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and the result is a country where the things that were most likely to kill an American in 1976 are less deadly now.

The America of 1976 sat at the leading edge of a brutal crime wave; the murder rate would peak in 1980 and stay high for more than a decade. By the early 2020s, however, violent crime had fallen back to roughly a 50-year low, and homicide rates this year may end up at a record low. And the single most dangerous thing most Americans do — get behind the wheel of a car — is far less likely to kill them, with the death rate per mile driven now a fraction of what it was at the Bicentennial.

The country got cleaner, and richer, and fairer

In 1976, the air in American cities carried lead, an honest-to-God neurotoxin that was pumped out of every tailpipe of the more than 90 percent of American vehicles that used leaded gasoline. 

Rivers literally caught fire: The Cuyahoga in Cleveland had burned so many times it became a national joke, and Lake Erie was widely written off as dead. And things were bad outside Ohio, too. In Los Angeles, the smog got thick enough to keep kids inside at recess and erase the nearby mountains from view.

Since 1970, however, the combined emissions of the six main air pollutants the EPA tracks have fallen 78 percent — even as the economy nearly quadrupled in real terms, the population grew by tens of millions, and Americans drove far more miles. That split, with growth going one way and pollution the other, is one of the least celebrated but most consequential triumphs of the past half-century, the product of legislative efforts and technological response. And lead? It’s essentially disappeared from the air. 

And it’s not just economic or environmental statistics that have improved; society advanced, as well. Women now earn the majority of college degrees. The Black poverty rate sits near a record low. Support for same-sex marriage is now the norm — maybe the single biggest social change from 1976, when homosexuality was criminalized in most states. Pick a metric more or less at random, and the line usually runs the right way.

This is not a matter of cherry-picking a few flattering numbers. It is the overwhelming direction of the evidence, across health, wealth, safety, rights, even the basic cleanliness of the physical world an American walks through every day. Measured against its own recent past, the US is in some of the best shape it has ever been.

So what’s with the bad vibes?

A more perfect union doesn’t mean perfect

Well, some things genuinely got worse, and they are not insignificant. 

Americans’ faith in their government has collapsed; fewer than one in five now trust Washington to do the right thing, down from solid majorities in the 1960s — and the country is more polarized than it was in 1976. Democratic decline and even collapse is a live threat. Those economic gains I highlighted above have flowed disproportionately upward. The top 1 percent’s share of income, near a historic low in 1976, has since roughly doubled.

Climate change barely registered in 1976. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has since climbed from around 330 parts per million to about 427, and warming will only get worse in the future. And buying a home increasingly feels out of reach for many. By 2024, a record share of households spent more than a third of their income on housing. (Notably, though, the percentage of Americans who own a home is slightly higher than it was in 1976, and those homes are much larger on average.) 

These are real problems, but they remain exceptions to a broader half-century trend of improvement. And a country that scrubbed the lead from its air and put out smoking can overcome new challenges, as well. 

Which brings us back to a tale of two birthdays. In 1976, Americans had less of nearly everything you can count, and, yet, they reported feeling good about the future anyway. In 2026, we have more, and we don’t. 

Just as it can be for a person, a country’s mood is a poor instrument; it measures the story we are telling ourselves more than the lives we are actually living. For all our pessimism about the state of the nation, more than three-quarters of Americans say they are satisfied with their own lives.

The Americans crowding New York Harbor in 1976 were cheering a country that was sicker, dirtier, more dangerous, and less free than the one we live in now. But they were right to cheer; the line was already bending the right way, and it kept bending. It turns out a nation can travel a long way, even while it is convinced it is going nowhere.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!

The American right has a new enemy.

In a new report on Cuba, the State Department argued that Havana has become “the beating heart of a new and distinct kind of Marxism” — which the State Department calls “Third Worldism.” Cuba is spreading this doctrine, per Secretary of State of Marco Rubio, with the explicit intent of fomenting revolution in America.

Here, the Trump administration is following conservative influencers — who in recent months have become increasingly preoccupied by the “third worldist” threat. 

“The Left is moving from ‘woke’ to Third-Worldism,” Chris Rufo, perhaps the right’s leading activist, recently wrote. “Third-Worldism is a more serious threat to life, liberty, and property.” 

Ben Shapiro, one of conservatism’s leading media voices, declared in April that “the future of the Democratic Party is radical third worldism.”

And Reihan Salam, the president of the influential Manhattan Institute (which employs Rufo), has warned that “Third Worldism, left unchecked, won’t remain on the radical fringe” — citing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as the chief example of a third worldist in power.

All of this may be news to Mamdani and other Democrats, who virtually never use the term to describe their own views. So what are Rubio, Rufo, and Shapiro talking about? And is there any truth in the various claims about rising third worldist influence?

The answer is more complicated than it might seem.

Conservatives are using “third worldist” a lot like the terms “woke” and “critical race theory” before it: as an ill-defined concept that serves as a clearinghouse for various right-wing grievances and can be used as a slur to discredit and demonize the left.

Yet at the same time, they’ve actually put their fingers on something real. Among a very specific and visible sub-section of the socialist left, a set of views that can be reasonably termed “third worldist” are rising in prominence. For progressives outside this camp, deciding what comes next will require engaging with the right-wing critique directly and not dismissing it as a smear. 

What “third worldism” means, on both the left and the right

The term “third world” itself originated in a 1952 article by the French thinker Alfred Sauvy. 

The capitalist West was the “first world,” and the Communist Eastern bloc “the second.” Most countries outside of North America and Europe were, at the time, aligned with neither bloc — making up the “third world.” 

For this reason, the earliest ideology that fits the term “third worldism” was not Marxist, but rather efforts like the Non-Aligned Movement to build global solidarity between post-colonial states who were trying to avoid being dominated by the two competing world powers.

But Communist regimes in the Global South — most notably, China and Cuba — became inspirations for a distinctively Marxist spin on third worldism that emerged in the 1960s and ’70s.

This theory held that the locus of revolutionary activity had shifted to 1) armed revolutionaries of the Global South and 2) militant movements within the capitalist world led by oppressed minorities. Out with the Communist Party USA and the Soviet Union; in with the Black Panthers and the Viet Cong.

This broad worldview had many ideological influences — ranging from Mao’s Little Red Book to the French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Some leftist writings, like the Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire or the well-known pamphlet The Mythology of the White Proletariat, are clear examples of what might be termed “third worldist” thought.

But on the whole, this kind of third worldism is frustratingly tricky to pin down. It has no authoritative spokesperson, no text or movement that clarified its core principles in any detail. It is a label attached to ideas from the outside, as often by those ideas’ enemies as by their allies.

“‘Third worldist’ is almost a pejorative [term] you would use on the left,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of The Nation magazine and author of Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World.

The Trump administration and its allies are basically arguing that people like Sunkara are trying to trick you. Whatever the modern left’s protestations, their actual views are still basically pretty similar to those of Cold War American radicals who apologized for the Khmer Rouge. Only in this case, the most admired Third World militants are now jihadists rather than Communists.

The most influential work in this vein comes from Zineb Riboua, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank. She sees third worldism as a joint product of anti-American governments, including Cuba, and leftist intellectuals in American universities. Its recent prominence, in her view, is a function of October 7 and the Gaza war — which allowed third worldist logic to fuse “seamlessly with the decolonial language” that became popular during the woke era.

“In this viewpoint, a terrorist organization like Hamas comes to be seen as the armed expression of a national liberation struggle,” Riboua writes. “The question ceases to be what Hamas actually did and becomes what Israel is presumed to represent. And because Israel is positioned as the forward post of American imperial power, defending Hamas becomes, almost automatically, a moral gesture directed against the United States itself.”

But Riboua does not stop with foreign policy. In her view, third worldism has become a kind of “universal ideology” that is “applied to everything from university hiring and border policy to museum curation.” When leftists talk about “decolonization,” she argues, they are really talking about the planned demolition of America from the inside.

“The ideology asks a country to accept that its power is a historical accident awaiting either correction with a sort of new Red Terror or annihilation,” she writes. 

This, for the right, represents the left’s emerging “post-woke” animating doctrine. While the 2020-era left was interested in policing conservative speech on social issues, it is now interested in acquiring political power and using it to tangibly transform America’s policy and political institutions along Marxist and third worldist lines. It is “a vicious, lowest-common-denominator leftism that imports anticolonial resentments to the metropole,” writes Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy.

The effect, ultimately, will be to transform the American governing model into something that more closely resembles that of a “third world” country: corrupt, lawless, violent, and chaotic. The language they use to warn of this can be unmistakably racialized.

“Mamdani wants to plunder New York like the Somalis plundered Minnesota,” Rufo writes. “Legal or illegal, it’s all piracy, looting, and expropriation. Pure third-worldism.”

What the right gets wrong about third worldism — and what it gets right

By the time we get to “Zohran Mamdani is a pirate,” it’s clear that the analytic train has gone off the rails. Third worldism is no longer being used to define a specific and recognizable approach to geopolitics, but rather a pure insult with ugly racial insinuations.

Indeed, while Mamdani is certainly a socialist with pro-Palestine politics — he announced this week he looked into arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but lacked legal authority — there is no evidence to suggest he is an anti-American Hamas admirer.

As mayor, his governance has focused primarily on quality of life and cost of living issues. And far from couching his arguments in the language of anti-American revolution, Mamdani’s recent address on July 4 was a classically patriotic text, whose praise for American soldiers and meditations on our “grand experiment in self-governance” sound far more like Lincoln than Fanon.

The attempt to lump Mamdani into a scary, foreign-sounding category recalls nothing more than the efforts to rebrand other left-wing ideas — like “critical race theory” — into millstones to hang around Democrats’ necks. Rufo was the intellectual force behind the CRT panic, back in 2021, and admitted at the time that his intent was political warfare rather than rigorous analysis. By coming up with a catch-all term for problematic left-wing politics, they could apply it not only to the real “critical race theory” — which were largely abstruse academic texts — but also ordinary Democratic policy or generic liberal ideas. 

“We have successfully frozen their brand — ‘critical race theory’ — into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category,” he wrote. “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

Read in this light, the right-wing allegation that third worldism is supplanting woke is more confession than anything else. From McCarthyism to the Reagan era and on through Newt Gingrich warning of Barack Obama’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, the right has deployed fearmongering about foreign subversion as a central tactic to delegitimize its opponents and rally the base. The sweeping allegations about the entire Democratic Party being overtaken by third worldism represent a fusion of this old Red Scare blueprint with the new Rufo tactics of mimetic-conceptual warfare.

“There’s really nothing new here,” said David Austin Walsh, a historian of the right at the University of Virginia. “Third worldism is a term that’s being utilized to describe the exact same thing as what was meant by ‘the international Communist conspiracy’ back in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Yet Walsh, who is himself a DSA member, also acknowledges that there’s a nugget of truth here. Much as the Communist Party USA actually was a Soviet cut-out, there are people and factions on the American left that actually fit the description of “third worldism” advanced by Riboua and her fellow travelers.

The most obvious example is Hasan Piker, the streamer and provocateur who has become a lightning rod in debates over the Democratic Party’s direction.

Piker has repeatedly expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party, despite its vicious authoritarian tendencies, and said he would vote for Hamas “1,000 times” over Israel. My colleague Eric Levitz described his worldview as “campist,” an old leftist term for someone who aligns themselves with any government that opposes the American-led bloc, and one that I think is a bit more precise than “third worldist.” But Piker’s fascination with anti-American militancy and terrorists — he once gave a fawning interview to a Houthi fighter on stream — suggests that third worldist is at least a reasonable descriptor.

Another example is Neville Roy Singham, a Chicago businessman who sold his consultancy for $785 million and has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to leftist causes around the world. Singham, who was known to monologue to his employees about the virtues of Che Guevara, is at the center of what the New York Times describes as “a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda.” Though he funds American leftist organizations like Code Pink — in fact, his wife, Jodie Evans, is its cofounder — he currently resides in Shanghai.

There is also a third worldist activist current. The International Caucus of the DSA, one of many sub-organizations within the leftist faction, has celebrated the “achievements” of Cuba’s authoritarian government and whitewashed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which, again, is more precisely campist than third worldist). Students for Justice in Palestine, the leading pro-Palestine campus activist group, praised the October 7 attacks as “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”

And this tendency could be gaining its first representative in Congress. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA candidate who recently unseated a multi-term House incumbent in a Democratic primary in New York, has accused Black and Latino men of “fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and retweeted a message praising Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. While her public statements are more limited than those of Piker or the DSA IC, there’s at least reasonable grounds for believing that she’s cut from the same cloth.

The left’s third worldist problem

So what to make of all this?

Right-wingers like Riboua are picking up on real trends in leftist ideology, ones that are reflected to some degree in its institutional infrastructure. And interestingly, the leftists I spoke with conceded that there were some things to worry about here. Arash Azizi, a socialist historian at Yale University, said that this “negative third worldism” was a “serious trend” on the broader left. Sunkara was more skeptical of the term “third worldist, but he did express concerns with the DSA IC’s tendency to forget “first principles” — by which he meant core commitments to democracy and anti-authoritarianism. He also critiqued pro-October 7 statements on the left as “antiquated, ineffective, and morally questionable.”

At the same time, it is concomitantly clear that people on the right are overstating the significance of the problem.

Views that might accurately be called “third worldist” are controversial inside the left and even within the DSA. And the left does not currently dominate the Democratic Party, despite a handful of primary victories this cycle. To say that third worldism has conquered the Democrats, or even that third worldism is the new “woke,” is to get miles ahead of the evidence.

Putting those two conclusions together yields a more precise diagnosis: that third worldist views are, by virtue of the DSA’s electoral success, becoming a more prominent part of the broader left coalition even as its reach remains limited overall.

While Mamdani cannot reasonably be described as a “third worldist,” he operates in coalition with people who are. He filmed chummy videos with Hasan Piker; his endorsement rocketed Darializa Avila Chevalier to her primary victory. Like any political faction, the socialist left depends on alliances between sub-groups who have real and meaningful differences in worldview and approach.

When talking about this, Sunkara tried to disassociate the broader left from the third worldist subcurrent by analogy.

“It would almost be like me saying ‘the Republican Party is programmatically committed to white nationalism’ as opposed to saying ‘the Republican Party sure does have some vocal white nationalists around,’” he said. “The difference is key.”

But of course, the Republican Party’s relationship with white nationalists has been a significant political problem — and a moral one. However Democrats ultimately decide to handle these ideas floating around progressive circles, the process starts with acknowledging that they’re real. 

The gerontocracy is real: The median senator is 64 years old, and 20 members of Congress are over 80. One legal scholar called it the “old-igarchy.” It seems the combination of President Donald Trump’s recent 80th birthday, the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, and the currently unknown health status of Sen. Mitch McConnell has called collective attention to the advanced age of our elected officials — and with good reason. 

So this week, I talked with Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina on his 86th birthday. And I wanted to (delicately) ask a question that’s been brewing in my head since the whole fiasco with then-President Joe Biden: Why don’t the oldheads want to retire? 

Over a long interview, I asked the House Democratic leader about generational change, shifts in the electorate on corporate PAC money and artificial intelligence, and whether he thinks there are any lessons to learn from the 2024 election.

On the question of age, Clyburn told me, “I know people who are 66 years old with much less energy than I have, and none of the experience that I have.” Clyburn said he would also be open to a recently proposed law calling for members of Congress to take cognitive tests, though he dismissed the idea of term limits or an age cap. 

Here’s what else I learned: 

1. They aren’t giving up power because they don’t want to

That’s the whole thing. The reason the boomers (and Clyburn’s Silent Generation) won’t step aside isn’t that no one has asked. It’s that they don’t want to. And for Clyburn, I think the armor doubles as the blind spot. When I asked about younger generations being distrustful that older politicians can deliver, he invoked his grandparents, saying, “Don’t worry about what people call you. It’s what you answer to that’s the issue.”

And while that is wisdom, hardened over the decades, I don’t know if it works as well as a leadership philosophy. Stay the course and ignore the criticism can also be read as ignoring electoral feedback. “I don’t react to that stuff,” Clyburn said, when asked about calls for generational change.

2. Clyburn says what the establishment thinks: It’s the voters’ fault

Clyburn articulates the core view of establishment politics as cleanly as anyone: There is nothing much to change. He doesn’t believe the party made significant errors in 2024, and he doesn’t take the primary results in New York City, Colorado, and elsewhere to be anything other than a flash in the pan. Pushed on what political lesson he took from an administration built to stop Trump that ended with Trump back in office, he went to turnout: “When the white vote turned out 71 percent two years ago, and the Black vote turned out 59 percent, you tell me whose fault that is.” Asked directly whether the argument was that Black people let Kamala Harris down, he didn’t hesitate: “In many instances, absolutely.” 

At its heart, this is a philosophy that blames the voters and insulates the party establishment from reflection. 

But this is also why the next round of primaries is so important. It’s easy to file New York, Colorado, or Graham Platner’s rise in Maine as one-offs — local flukes, not an overwhelming trend. But the Michigan and Wisconsin primaries are coming, and those are the ones that decide whether this gets treated as a pattern. The temperature of the freakout is still yet to be set.

3. He defends the establishment’s alliance with the Congressional Black Caucus

The moderate wing of the Democratic Party is held up, at the grassroots, by Black voters — particularly in the South. Clyburn knows that, and he defended both the alliance and the corporate policies that tie them together. 

Clyburn holds that taking corporate dollars is necessary for minority candidates who don’t come from family wealth — “I would challenge you to find me one single vote I have ever cast that pharma supported and my constituents didn’t.” He deferred to a pro-Israel colleague, Rep. Gregory Meeks, on questions of Israel: “I’m guided by Gregory Meeks.” He made no apology for backing Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani in this year’s New York mayor’s race — the same Cuomo he’d said should resign in 2021.

I asked him what Black communities have gotten in exchange for that loyalty. His answer was an agenda: “What did we get out of our support for Obama? What did we get out of our support for Biden?” And that’s a real answer. But I think there’s also another one underneath it.

I see Clyburn’s actions through the context of changing power within the Democratic Party, just as much as what’s going on outside of it. The Black political class, specifically, is invested in holding its own position against the party’s rising coalitions, immigrant communities in particular. That’s part of what’s at the heart of Clyburn’s endorsements of Cuomo and Haley Stevens in Michigan, and even the recent fight over which states should vote first in the Democratic presidential primary. 

Find the full episode — including a bonus segment where Clyburn defends the party’s approach to Israel — wherever you get your podcasts.

Could you accidentally gamble away your right to vote?

If you live in Wisconsin, and you bought contracts on a prediction market like Kalshi about who would win elections there, you’ve done just that, according to state election officials. And they think that if you vote anyway, you could be prosecuted.

“We want voters to understand that they cannot legally make a bet on an election and cast a ballot in that same election,” Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said in a statement Tuesday, ahead of the state’s August 11 primaries.

The reason wasn’t a new law about online markets but a very old statute dating back to the year 1849 — just after Wisconsin became a state. 

“No person shall be allowed to vote in any election in which the person has made or become interested, directly or indirectly, in any bet or wager depending upon the result of the election,” the statute reads.

The bipartisan commission also said those voters could be on the hook for felony exposure, if they know about the prohibition and vote anyway. Intentionally voting while not being qualified to do so is a felony, per state law. “It’s important for voters to understand the consequences if they bet on an election outcome,” Wolfe said.

Many other states have laws on the books against gambling on elections. Wisconsin is the first where officials are saying people are banned from voting if they do it through prediction markets.

And it may not be the last, since New York has a very similar provision in both its constitution and state law. 

“In New York State, voting in an election in which an individual has placed any bet or wager on the result is prohibited,” Kathleen McGrath, director of public information for the New York State Board of Elections, told me. 

The New York attorney general’s office has not yet issued a formal opinion on whether Kalshi and Polymarket election bettors are barred from voting in elections they’ve wagered on. But they’re currently locked in a court battle to try and get Kalshi regulated under state gambling laws.

All this makes for a potentially explosive situation in the upcoming midterms, given the rapid growth of the industry, which has rolled out massive advertising campaigns and sponsorship deals to attract customers this election cycle. 

Prediction market companies have responded with fury. Benjamin Freeman of Kalshi posted on X that this was “insane,” blatantly unconstitutional,” “illegal,” “dishonest,” and “dystopian.” In an emailed statement, Kalshi said this was “incredibly dangerous to democracy.” 

Bettors may be less perturbed. “The reaction I am party to is almost amused by how idiotic it is — how unenforceable, and backwards, and emblematic of government regulators,” said Alex Keeney, who founded Eventual, a prediction market podcast he co-hosts with traders.

But Wisconsin Elections Commission member Ann Jacobs, who flagged the issue earlier this year and helped create the new guidance, told me in an interview that the decision was not taken lightly.

“This has been the law for a long time,” she said. “And if you don’t like the law, go talk to your legislator.”

So, where did this old law come from? Could it actually be enforced? And would it hold up against court challenges?

America’s hidden history of degenerate election gambling

It may seem surprising that a state would have such an old law of this nature on the books.

But, it turns out, many early 19th century Americans were degenerate election gamblers — so many that this became a topic of national conversation and condemnation.

In a 2012 paper, economic historian Paul Rhode and economist Koleman Strumpf wrote that betting on elections was “commonplace” since the US’s earliest years as a nation, but that it became “especially intense during the partisan conflicts of the Jacksonian era.” Newspapers, which in those days were mainly partisan, championed the practice.

Concerns eventually rose that election betting encouraged election rigging, just as people complain today that prop bets are corrupting sports. After the 1844 election, Rhode and Strumpf wrote, Whig Party members complained that “gamblers favoring Polk had committed voting fraud using the winnings from election bets to defray their expenses.” 

Then, in 1845, the governor of New York, Silas Wright, urged his state legislature to make “the extensive and rapidly increasing practice of betting on elections” illegal, due to the “corrupting tendencies which it exerts upon the election itself.” And, Rhode and Strumpf continue, evangelicals “preached long and hard against election betting” as part of the second Great Awakening movement.

The craze eventually faded, but it was peaking just around the time Wisconsin became a state in 1848. So its new state constitution specifically addressed the issue, saying “laws may be passed” excluding election bettors “from the right of suffrage.” Hence the 1849 law.

Why attention returned to this law in 2026

In recent years, in the rare occasions when the law has been noticed at all, it’s been treated as an amusing, antiquated curiosity. 

But the rise of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket — and the corresponding surge in election betting — made it relevant again.

In March, after Jacobs of the Wisconsin Elections Commission heard a radio story about Polymarket, she posted on X: “WI friends – I know it’s all the rage to bet on everything, but you cannot bet on an election in Wisconsin!  If you do, your ballot can be challenged & thrown out.”

Kalshi has long taken the position that it doesn’t allow election “gambling,” but rather “financial products” called “event contracts.” But the commission’s legal staff studied the issue, and concluded earlier this month that it was “relatively clear” that a Wisconsinite “cannot, even indirectly” make a bet or wager on an election and then vote in that election. 

The press release warning voters — and the backlash from Kalshi and Polymarket — soon followed. 

How the law might (but probably wouldn’t) be enforced

So, what would happen, then, if an avid “event contract” trader decided to vote anyway?

Realistically, the answer is: probably nothing.

But if someone else had knowledge that this person was making election bets and voting, they could show up to try to get them disqualified.

“You would have to be there at the moment they showed up to vote — or when their absentee ballot is pulled out to be counted — and you’d say, ‘I’m challenging that voter,‘” Jeff Mandell, a Wisconsin election lawyer, told me. “But the chances that somebody is around with the right knowledge to block someone on one of these bases strikes me as pretty slender.”

The other theoretical risk is felony prosecution. Law enforcement officials could obtain information that people voted on elections they’d wagered on and, then, criminally charge them for  voting illegally. 

But Mandell pointed out that “that seems like a lot of work” for a prosecutor, adding, “I think that fears about enforcement, either civil or criminal, are probably overstated.”

Still, Jacobs argued, it’s possible. “This is the law,” Jacobs said. “It is a situation where, if people have placed a bet, they should consult with their own attorney and decide what to do.”

Would the law stand up to court challenge?

Since Wisconsin’s original state constitution specifically said the state could restrict election bettors from voting, the law would seem to be on firm ground.

There’s just one catch: That section of the constitution was repealed forty years ago. 

That repeal was made as part of a broader overhaul of the document and doesn’t appear to have been specifically targeted at the election betting issue. But it does mean that the statute doesn’t necessarily have the firm state constitutional footing it once did.

“The current constitutional language only authorizes the legislature to disenfranchise voters on two grounds — a felony conviction or incompetency — which does suggest that disenfranchisement on other grounds is impermissible,” Robert Yablon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, said in an email.

The law could also be challenged in federal court. As written, the law appears to prohibit even someone making a $1 bet with their friend on an election outcome from voting. Challengers could argue that law isn’t narrowly tailored enough to justify depriving qualified citizens of their voting rights.

For now, though, the law is on the books, and it says what it says. 

“As a policy, it makes sense,” Jacobs told Vox. “You want people to make their voting decisions based on who they think is best for the job — not who’s going to make them the most money.”

The New York question

Though the Wisconsin situation has made national headlines this week, it has largely escaped notice that New York has very similar provisions in both its constitution and in state law.

New York’s constitution says that no person who “shall make or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of any election, shall vote at such election.”

In fact, state law says that if a voter’s eligibility is challenged on these grounds, they must swear what is known as the “Bribery Oath,” swearing that they haven’t been paid to vote a certain way — and that they “have not made, or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of this election.”

When I inquired with New York state officials about whether these provisions about bets and wagers applied to Kalshi and Polymarket election event contracts, they declined to comment specifically on that.

But the New York attorney general’s office has repeatedly taken the position, both in their public rhetoric and in court, that prediction markets are “gambling platforms” that should be regulated by state gambling law. (Earlier this month, a judge gave the state a favorable ruling in a suit brought by Kalshi over this, though Kalshi is appealing.)

If New York reaches a similar interpretation as Wisconsin, Kalshi or Polymarket bettors on elections would not be legally permitted to vote in those elections. Of course, doing that comes with a risk of voter disenfranchisement, especially if this guidance isn’t well-publicized or is only belatedly clarified.

So, in both states, these very old laws have collided with a modern trend — and the result is a big mess. 

The Trump administration may have just signed an agreement so controversial that President Donald Trump himself is opposed to it. 

On Wednesday, the US and Saudi Arabia signed a 30-year, multibillion-dollar nuclear energy cooperation agreement. The terms of the deal signed by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart have not been released, but some of the details discussed by officials in reporting by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times earlier this week raised eyebrows, mainly the fact that in addition to helping the Saudis construct nuclear reactors, the US could potentially help the Saudis construct facilities to enrich their own uranium.

The timing is particularly awkward with the US currently at war with Saudi Arabia’s rival Iran, in large part due to concerns about that country’s nuclear enrichment program. 

It is also happening in the context of an emerging new nuclear world, where last century’s arms control agreements are falling by the wayside, regimes like Russia are increasingly employing nuclear threats, and longtime US allies are increasingly nuclear-curious due to both growing military threats and skepticism about the value of American security guarantees. It could raise the risk that other countries will seek the capability to raise the bomb, even if they don’t immediately build one. 

“It’s unprecedented in the history of US nuclear policy,” said Matthew Kroenig, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the book, Exporting the Bomb. “Never before have we helped another country build a uranium enrichment facility. All the way back to Eisenhower, the deal has been: If you want nuclear energy, terrific. We’re happy to help you, but you can’t make the fuel because once you make the fuel, it’s too dangerous.”

Whether the deal will even happen is getting less clear. The agreement was already going to face significant opposition in Congress, where it must be sent for review, but Trump added to the confusion on Thursday morning with a Truth Social post that contradicted much of what had been reported the day before. Trump wrote that there would be “no enrichment of material” under the deal and that the agreement is “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” referring to the series of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and a number of Muslim countries signed during Trump’s first term. This was not reported in any of the media accounts earlier in the week, which were based on statements from US officials. 

The Saudi government has not yet responded to Trump’s latest statement, but sources close to the talks have indicated that no such pledge was included in the negotiations. 

Saudi Arabia has long insisted that it will not normalize relations with Israel until the creation of a Palestinian state, and if they had caved on that position prior to the agreement, it seems unlikely that no one would have mentioned it before today. At a press briefing on Thursday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt affirmed that the deal would be “off” unless Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords. Asked for clarification on the discrepancy between Wednesday’s reporting and Trump’s announcement on Thursday, the White House press office referred Vox to Leavitt’s statement. 

At the moment, there’s more confusion than clarity around the deal, and what it means for the future of both the Middle East and global efforts to control nuclear weapons. 

What’s standing between Saudi Arabia and a nuke?

This idea behind the Saudi deal isn’t new: Both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration pursued a civilian nuclear deal with the kingdom. It’s been a controversial notion for just as long, given Saudi Arabia’s often aggressive foreign policy, human rights record — including the high-profile murder of US citizens — and the fact that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said in the past that his country would seek to build its own nuclear bomb if Iran ever acquired one. 

Saudi Arabia insists that its interest in nuclear energy is purely peaceful — part of a larger goal to diversify its economy away from oil and gas and to generate power for a nascent artificial intelligence industry. Proponents in the US argue that a deal would deepen ties between the US and an important security partner. It would also, they argue, head off the risk of Saudi Arabia cooperating instead with China or Russia to build a nuclear program and be a potential windfall for the US nuclear power industry. 

The US has previously entered into 29 nuclear cooperation agreements — commonly known as “123 deals” for Section 123, the legislation that governs them — involving 49 countries. The deals require countries to submit to a number of safeguards to prevent them from weaponizing these nuclear programs, including requiring US consent for any enrichment of uranium for the US-built nuclear plants. 

In more recent US deals, most countries have agreed to give the International Atomic Energy Agency even more stringent inspection authorities. Some have gone further: Under the deal signed with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 and Taiwan in 2013, the countries agreed to forswear any enrichment of uranium on their soil, including for projects in which the United States is not involved. This has been called the “gold standard” for nuclear sharing deals, and it’s what the US pushed for in previous nuclear sharing negotiations with Saudi Arabia. 

The Saudis have long balked at some of the stricter provisions in some more recent US deals, such as additional IAEA inspections and a pledge to enrich no uranium at all. The kingdom has argued these are intrusive infringements on its sovereignty, particularly given that Iran was allowed to continue enriching under previous agreements with the US. But, Kroenig said, there’s little plausible reason to oppose these restrictions if Saudi Arabia is only interested in civilian energy.

“They probably haven’t decided to build nuclear weapons yet, but it seems like they want the option,” Kroenig said.

Saudi Arabia is not going to build a bomb overnight. It’s not even going to start enriching uranium for some time. Under the deal — at least the version that was reported earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal — US companies would immediately begin work on building nuclear power plants when the deal goes into force, while US and Saudi officials would conduct a two-year study to determine “value of enrichment for Saudi Arabia.” (This, notably, would likely be concluded during Trump’s term.)

In this respect, the deal may in fact be tougher than the never-concluded Biden agreement, which reportedly would have allowed enrichment to begin immediately. 

If the study concludes Saudi Arabia needs to enrich, the enrichment facility would be constructed in a secretive “black box” to prevent the Saudis from acquiring sensitive technology. If the US objects to Saudi enrichment after the study, the Saudis couldn’t enrich for another 10 years. After that, it’s not clear what happens. 

The safeguards do not mollify many nonproliferation experts. 

“Skeptical is a mild way of putting it,” said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. “Even if you black-box the technology, Saudi Arabia could still nationalize the facility. This is a country that has overtly declared an interest in proliferation. Once it’s on Saudi soil, you have very limited options to stop it from misusing that technology if it decides to do so.”

The most difficult and expensive part of building a nuclear device is uranium enrichment, and the US will have helped Saudi Arabia a long way down that path. That doesn’t mean the kingdom is necessarily planning to build a bomb, but if it decides on that course of action down the road, it will have a significant head start.

“Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program does not pose a near-term proliferation risk,” said Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. Rather than trying to quickly build a bomb, she suggested that “the more likely scenario is that Saudi Arabia will continue to acquire the capabilities that would be necessary to weaponize and move to the threshold of nuclear weapons, which would enable a rapid move to build the deterrent if the decision were made.”

This, she added, would both complicate ongoing nuclear talks with Iran and “set a terrible precedent” for future nuclear agreements. 

What happens now? 

“Look, there are some benefits to the deal,”  said Robert Einhorn, a former State Department special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control. “It will give a boost to the US nuclear industry. It will help cement US-Saudi strategic relations. It will deny Russia and China a foothold in an important element of the Saudi economy. But the Trump administration will have to work hard to convince the Congress and the American public that the shortcomings of the deal are not disqualifying.”

That process starts this week. The agreement will now be submitted to Congress for a 90-day review period. This isn’t a formal treaty that requires approval. Congress has to pass a joint resolution opposing it.

The deal is likely to draw opposition on both sides of the aisle. In 2019, then-Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (FL), now secretary of state, sponsored legislation that would require any 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia to be affirmatively approved by Congress.  (“I miss Sen. Rubio,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a co-sponsor of the House version of the bill, said during a hearing on Wednesday.)

In addition to security concerns, the potential conflicts of interest around the bill may also draw scrutiny. Tom Barrack, a close Trump confidante who is now US ambassador to Turkey and an adviser on Middle East policy, was investigated by federal authorities and was the subject of a House probe during Trump’s first term for lobbying for nuclear deals with Saudi Arabia and the UAE while he had significant real estate investments in those countries and ties to the government.  

ProPublica also reported in 2019 that Barrack had sought a major financial stake in Westinghouse, the nuclear reactor builder. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Westinghouse Electric is likely to be one of the main beneficiaries of the deal to build nuclear reactors in the Kingdom.

It still seems unlikely that opponents of the deal in Congress will be able to cobble together a veto-proof majority to block it. The better question is whether Trump is effectively blocking it. If he is really going to insist on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, that could be a nonstarter for Mohammed bin Salman. 

A new nuclear world takes shape

Events in recent years have led Saudi leaders to doubt the extent to which the US would really come to their aid in a worst-case scenario. There have been mixed reports about whether Saudi Arabia backed or opposed Trump’s decision to launch this year’s war on Iran — the Saudi government denies supporting it — but either way, if this war ends with Iran’s regime still in place, in possession of its uranium stockpile, and in control of the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, the doubts in Riyadh about America’s reliability will only increase, along with their nuclear ambitions. 

In the coming weeks, the White House will make the case that this deal is safer and more comprehensive than the ones the US would not agree to in the Biden administration and Trump’s first term. But that argument will be harder to make against the notion that Saudi Arabia’s incentive to build a bomb has only grown since then. 

Abdul El-Sayed is among America’s most prominent proponents of Medicare-for-all. 

The frontrunner in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary literally wrote the book on that policy (or at least, a book on it). In El-Sayed’s view, Medicare should cover “all necessary healthcare” for every American — without co-pays, premiums, or deductibles — and be “accepted everywhere.”

Alas, despite his many years of advocacy, El-Sayed has seemingly failed to persuade his wife of that last point: According to a recent report from the Washington Free Beacon, El-Sayed’s partner, the psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, does not accept Medicare as a form of payment at her private practice.

This bit of gossip is of little importance, in and of itself. The Free Beacon’s story does nothing to refute the case for El-Sayed’s candidacy or his healthcare plan (his wife’s business is, well, her business). As hit pieces go, it’s weak tea.

Nevertheless, the tension between El-Sayed’s healthcare proposals and his wife’s business practices is real. And it is illustrative of a major challenge facing anyone who wishes to reform our nation’s misbegotten healthcare system: To meet the medical needs of all Americans, reformers will need to defy the interests of most doctors — and in many cases reduce their compensation. 

And that won’t be easy. Few people feel a deep fondness for insurance companies. But El-Sayed is far from the only American who loves a physician.

The biggest obstacle to Medicare-for-all

To understand why Medicare-for-all would be bad news for many doctors — and how the Free Beacon’s story illustrates that point — we must first dwell on one fundamental fact about America’s healthcare system: It’s a rip-off. 

The US spends about twice as much per person on medical goods and services as other wealthy countries. And yet, all that money does not actually buy us much more care. Compared to our peers abroad, Americans are less likely to see a doctor, secure a long hospital stay, or access a timely appointment for medical treatment. On the other hand, we do have the privilege of paying radically higher healthcare prices.

To take just one telling example: In the United States, a coronary bypass surgery will typically cost more than $89,000; in Australia, it costs just $17,741.

Such exorbitant prices are the chief obstacle to any version of universal healthcare. Even with one-third of working-age Americans uninsured or underinsured — and thus, consuming too little medical care — the bill for America’s health sector ran to $5.7 trillion in 2025. 

In El-Sayed’s vision, Americans would consume vastly more medical services than they do today: The uninsured would suddenly have access to every doctor in the country, while everyone else would see their co-pays and deductibles drop to zero, encouraging them to schedule far more doctors’ visits.

This would be a costly proposition in any country. At America’s current healthcare prices, it would be prohibitively expensive. There is simply no way to realize anything approaching the left’s healthcare ambitions without slashing the amount of money that Americans pay per medical service. 

Doctors will pay a price for universal healthcare

Medicare-for-all advocates are aware of this fact. And they’re typically eager to talk about one source of America’s high healthcare prices: The inefficiencies of our private health insurance model. 

In America’s byzantine system, each insurer needs its own teams of auditors, claims reviewers, and myriad other specialists, while every major healthcare provider needs a horde of administrators to navigate the idiosyncratic rules of all these different insurance companies. Americans pay dearly for this bureaucratic bloat. By one estimate, our system’s administrative costs are $500 billion higher than they would be if the insurance industry was consolidated into a single public insurer. 

And yet, as large as that figure may seem, it still represents a fraction of America’s excess healthcare costs. The primary cause of our nation’s exorbitant medical prices is simpler than administrative redundancies: our healthcare providers charge exceptionally high rates.

Hospitals are the biggest culprits on this front. But physicians are also part of the problem.

According to a 2026 study from economists at the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the US Census Bureau, American physicians earn about twice as much as Canadian ones — and four times as much as Swedish doctors. 

Critically, this does not merely reflect America’s greater wealth or wage inequality. It is true that educated professionals of all kinds — financial analysts, lawyers, software engineers, etc. — earn more in the US than they do in other rich countries. But American doctors don’t just earn unusually high absolute incomes — they also occupy an atypically rarified place within their own country’s class hierarchy. About 42 percent of American specialty physicians are in the top 1 percent of their nation’s income earners. Among Canadian specialists, that figure is just 27 percent; for Swedish ones, it is 7 percent.

The main driver of these disparities is straightforward: America imposes fewer price controls on its healthcare sector than other nations do. 

And this is where Jukaku’s practice reenters the picture. 

The public parts of America’s insurance system — Medicare and Medicaid — pay rates that are only modestly above international norms. It is when American doctors bill private insurers — or the rich consumers of boutique medicine — that they really make bank.

As a result, top clinicians like Jukaku often decline to take Medicare. If you’ve got affluent patients beating down your door, accepting Uncle Sam’s rates just doesn’t pay.

Unless the government forces doctors and hospitals to swallow steep pay cuts, however, Medicare-for-all won’t pencil out. According to a widely cited 2018 analysis by the economist Charles Blahous, if a single-payer system kept provider payments constant, national health spending would rise by $3.25 trillion over a decade, even with administrative savings taken into account. By contrast, if all providers were forced to accept Medicare’s rates, health spending would actually fall by $2.05 trillion over the same period.

Soaking physicians is tough politics

Thus, there is a clear conflict between progressives’ healthcare ambitions and medical providers’ material interests. 

Yet the left is often reluctant to acknowledge this reality. El-Sayed tends to portray insurers as the sole economic beneficiaries — and political defenders — of America’s inequitable healthcare system. The fact that hospitals and doctors also profit off the status quo’s dysfunctions does not feature prominently in his rhetoric. To the contrary, El-Sayed suggested in 2020 that doctors like his wife are actually underpaid, even though American psychiatrists earn far higher salaries than their counterparts abroad. 

To be fair, progressives aren’t alone in eliding providers’ culpability. Virtually all Democratic politicians do the same. And not without reason. Politically speaking, it is one thing to denounce the greed of private insurers — the faceless bureaucracies standing between Americans and their desired treatments. It’s quite another to call for reducing the wages of doctors, men and women who perform laudatory work and enjoy widespread admiration. 

Precisely for this reason, however, reformers must grapple with healthcare providers’ investment in the current system. The American Medical Association (AMA), the lobby representing our nation’s physicians, was instrumental in killing past attempts to move toward single-payer. And at least some segments of the medical profession would surely mobilize against any contemporary Medicare-for-all bill that imposed substantial cost controls on the healthcare sector. What’s more, in doing so, they would be able to draw on a resource the private insurance industry lacks — the public’s trust.

How to make healthcare less expensive right now

There is no easy answer to the problems all this presents. But part of the solution is to chip away at providers’ payment rates where progressives already have the power to do so. This would not only help drive down costs for existing healthcare in the short term, an urgent priority all its own, but also would smooth the path to universal coverage in the long run.

That project can take many forms. One would be state-level payment regulations. In Maryland, hospitals receive the same rates, no matter whether their patients pay with Medicare, private insurance, or cash. And their budgets are also fixed, so that they aren’t able to milk fees out of unnecessary care. Rhode Island, meanwhile, caps the growth of its hospital reimbursement rates at the pace of overall inflation. Other states could follow their lead. 

But policymakers should also address the supply constraints that undergird American doctors’ high salaries. US physicians’ ability to command high pay doesn’t just reflect America’s weak cost controls but also a persistent shortage of working doctors. The US has roughly 2.7 physicians for every 1,000 of its residents; the average among comparable countries is 3.9, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.

In this context, forcing down doctors’ pay might seem perilous. After all, doing so would reduce young people’s incentive to pursue a medical career, potentially deepening the shortage. 

In reality, however, there is no dearth of qualified people who want to practice medicine in the US. We just don’t let many of them do so.

This is partly because American policymakers consciously sought to restrict the number of doctors in the country, beginning in the 1980s. As Robert Orr of the Niskanen Center explains, the US government issued a report in 1981 warning of an imminent “physician surplus” and recommending “immediate action to curtail both the domestic training of physicians as well as the admittance of those trained outside of the country.”

The report’s argument rested on false premises; it failed to anticipate that Americans’ demand for healthcare would rise sharply as they grew wealthier. Nonetheless, its recommendations were largely implemented: Federal support for medical-school scholarships was pared back while funding for residencies has been capped since 1997. 

At the same time, policymakers maintained high barriers to the immigration of fully-trained foreign doctors: Even physicians with years of experience, and credentials in nations with high medical standards, are typically required to complete a multi-year residency before being able to practice in the US.

Ending the federal freeze on residency funding will require congressional action. But states can immediately make it easier for foreign doctors to practice within their borders. In fact, Tennessee established a pathway for such physicians to ply their trade in the state, without having to repeat a residency, in 2023. And many states subsequently enacted similar reforms.

Removing the bottlenecks on America’s doctor supply won’t eliminate the political hurdles to Medicare-for-all. But it would put downward pressure on doctors’ salaries, reduce the risks of capping physician pay, and make the left’s vision of healthcare abundance more feasible. After all, you can’t actually eliminate the care rationing that so many Americans resent by extending insurance coverage or enacting price controls alone. No matter how we pay for our medical services, we can only deliver as much care as our health sector’s resources allow. 

Don’t hate the doctor, love the sick

In saying all this, I don’t mean to convey disdain for the medical profession. Like El-Sayed, some of my best friends are doctors! In fact, my mother, father, brother, and sister-in-law are all physicians. And they all have contributed far more to American society than I ever will. My brother spends his workdays providing lifesaving treatments to cancer patients; I often spend mine sitting at a desk in my pajamas, arguing about politics on the internet. 

Physicians deserve to be well-paid for their strenuous labor. But if we want healthcare in America to be universally affordable and widely accessible, we will need to pay many of them a bit less.

Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump has seemingly called off a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia after his energy secretary already formally signed it.

What happened? On Wednesday, the Trump administration formally concluded what’s called a “123 Agreement” to work with Saudi Arabia on the development of its civilian nuclear power infrastructure. This kind of deal allows the United States to provide another country with nuclear fuel and equipment on the condition that they submit to safeguards against building a nuclear weapon.

But on Thursday morning, after the negotiations were quite literally concluded, Trump threw a monkey wrench into things — posting on Truth Social that the deal was “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements from Trump’s first term that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and some nearby Arab states. In effect, then, Trump is saying that Saudi Arabia will not get its 123 Agreement unless it formally recognizes the State of Israel. Which the Saudis are unwilling to do absent the creation of a Palestinian state.

Why is Trump doing this? As is often the case with his strange last-minute decisions, no one really knows. There are a few leading guesses, though.

The first is that the agreement with Saudi Arabia was a bad idea on the merits. Experts on nuclear weapons, the Middle East, and international relations more broadly all said that the deal gave Saudis exactly what they wanted with virtually nothing in return, effectively surrendering a key piece of leverage Washington has on Riyadh.

The second is that other American friends in the Middle East got angry. The Israelis are a leading candidate, as they have long opposed any agreement that might bring the Saudis closer to a nuke. The Emiratis, often in competition with Saudis for regional influence, are another; their nuclear deal with the US, inked in 2009, is a lot stricter.

The third is bipartisan opposition in Congress, which would need to approve any deal.

What’s the takeaway: Unless something changes radically, Trump has blown up a nuclear deal that’s already been signed — humiliating his negotiators and angering the Saudis.

And with that, it’s time to log off…

As of today, we are officially two weeks away from the NFL’s first preseason game. Our long national nightmare of calling soccer “football” is almost over.

Last week, House Democrats voted on an amendment that would have cut $3.3 billion in annual US military aid to Israel from a State Department funding bill. The amendment was brought to the floor by Rep. Thomas Massie, an outgoing Republican from Kentucky. It failed 314-104, but 103 Democrats — nearly half of the House Democratic caucus — supported it, signaling a significant shift in the party’s longstanding support for aid to Israel.

In 2024, a similar vote came up in the House to cut military aid to Israel. Then, just 37 House Democrats voted for the measure. Now, two years later, 103 House Democrats voted to cut funding. That shift in support was accelerated after the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, which has killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians. The debate is also playing out in Democratic primaries across the country. In New York and Colorado, Democratic socialist candidates who have sharply criticized Israel and opposed continued US military aid recently won House primaries.

Historically, Jewish Americans have overwhelmingly identified with and voted for the Democratic Party, while Democratic lawmakers have generally supported Israel and US military assistance to the country. In 2016, the Obama administration signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Israel, committing the US to seek $38 billion in military assistance for fiscal years 2019 through 2028. Congress must vote to approve this funding, so the shift in Democratic support of Israel could have real consequences.

There is still a very strong support for Israel among many House Democrats, but the shifting views are notable. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries opposed the Massie amendment, arguing that it was overly broad and could jeopardize humanitarian assistance. But in a letter addressed to his House colleagues he also called for a “major reset” in US policy toward what he described as Israel’s “far-right Netanyahu government.”

Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents Illinois’s 10th Congressional District, and remains a strong supporter of Israel.

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. 

Can you walk us through last week’s vote? You voted against the measure to cut aid to Israel, and a lot of your colleagues obviously did not. How did that play out for you?

Growing up in the ’60s, ’70s, and for the last 65 years, I fundamentally believe that the US-Israel relationship is important. I also believe that the aspiration for peace in the Middle East, not just between Israelis and Palestinians, but broadly throughout the region, is something that is in the United States’s interest and the interest of the people in the region. So this is not a new issue to me, and it’s something I thought long and hard about. 

Tom Massie doesn’t believe any of that. His intentions with this amendment were anything but pure. It was hastily crafted and poorly written. And one of the biggest issues with it is not only does it [not] address this 10-year memorandum of understanding, something negotiated by President Obama eight years ago, but there are also two years left on the MOU. 

It was a messaging bill and nothing more, and it was a negative message. I voted no because I think if we’re going to move toward peace, we need to do so in a constructive way. A lot of my colleagues were saying we need to send a message to the Netanyahu government.

“I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark.”

I’ve been extremely critical of this government, their failure to address the settler violence in the West Bank, the failure to plan for a day-after in Gaza following what was a horrific war. If we’re going to move towards peace, if we’re going to find a path where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side and the region can have the peace they deserve. Because we’re not just talking about Israelis and Palestinians; there’s progress being made between Lebanon and Israel in giving Lebanon, the people of Lebanon, the liberty and freedom they all deserve. 

Can I ask you if you still take money from AIPAC? And if so, how much?

I appreciate the support I get from people who care about the issues that I advocate for. So people who are pro-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship are likely to support me because I’m pro-US-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship. I’m also pro-addressing gun safety and reducing gun violence in this country. So I get the support of those groups. The support I get doesn’t determine my positions. I think my positions determine who supports me. 

Has your position on Israel shifted at all since October 7th, or at any point in your political career? And if so, can you tell us how?

So my position hasn’t changed because I’ve always been committed to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and finding a path where both can live together, which I believe ultimately is two states: a Jewish democratic state of Israel, and a Palestinian state living side by side. My frustration with the current Israeli government has grown and continues to grow. Every conversation I have with them, whether it’s the US ambassador to Israel, whom I’ve had the privilege of working with many times, or my meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’ve had an engagement with the prime minister going back now for almost 30 years. But in the last several years, every single conversation I have with them talks about the need to address settler violence, the need to get humanitarian aid.

One of the things that I am proud of and will say loudly and proudly is that immediately after October 7th, as the war began, my team and I worked hard to push for humanitarian aid into Gaza to do everything we could to make sure that the civilians who were always caught in the middle of any war wouldn’t suffer more than they did. And the suffering was horrific. And I did challenge Israel when they made what I’ll call ill-conceived, ill-advised, in some cases illegal decisions to deprive humanitarian relief from entering Gaza. We pushed hard, and we worked with the Egyptians to get the Rafah crossing open. We pushed the Israelis to open the Karam Shalom crossing. And to not just get aid to those crossings, but get aid into and across the territories within Gaza.

Why are you so optimistic about the situation? 

I am always going to be optimistic. I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark. And let’s separate the issue for folks living in the region and the folks living here. And for the Israelis and Palestinians, these are two peoples who are totally traumatized — traumatized not just over the last couple of years, but for decades. So I recognize the trauma that Israelis have and are experiencing, and I recognize the trauma that the Palestinians have and are experiencing. And that’s part of what I feel is my obligation: to hold onto that optimism and speak to a better future and work to try to find ways to bring the parties on both sides of the issue together to make the hard choices and take the risk to get to a path to peace.

So the reason I’m holding onto optimism — and it’s not 24/7; I have my moments when I am down and where I feel like the hill we’re climbing is just too steep — is you take a deep breath and you dig deep, and you say, I can’t give up on hoping and working towards peace because otherwise peace is never going to happen. And I want to find people who are like-minded.

And that is not just on the Israeli side of the equation. We have to find people on the Palestinian side, and for those on the Palestinian side, we have to find Israelis. And I meet, and I spend time with them on a regular basis. They come to my office. When I’m in the region, I talk to them. We have to strengthen and empower those voices who believe that peace will only come when the Israelis see the Palestinians as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and the Palestinians see the Israeli as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and recognize that until they get there, there’s no future for either side. We’ve got to have a path where both are pointing in the same direction.