Socialism Having a Moment (in Both Parties)
Self-avowed socialists are winning Democrat primaries while Republicans behave like central planners. Strange times.
A number of high-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists, such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI), New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) (technically an independent who caucuses with the Democrats). Plus, a number of socialists upset incumbents in this year’s Democrat primaries.
Generally, democratic socialists want universal healthcare, more public housing, free college, and a massive expansion of renewable energy, paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy. I wrote about the “purist vs. pragmatist dilemma” for a previous newsletter. This dilemma also helps us understand the divide among democratic socialists today. The pragmatists, like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, argue for working within the system, while the purists accuse them of selling out due to their willingness to compromise.
Some right-wing critics call them communists, but as a slur. Most socialists reject the authoritarianism of communist nations, like the former Soviet Union, and point to nations like Norway or Sweden as their model. There is, however, a communist caucus within the Democratic Socialists of America that holds more extreme views.
While a majority of Americans reject socialism and support capitalism, polling shows capitalism decreasing in popularity. Socialism shows a sharp increase in popularity among Gen Z and Millennials.
One of the great ironies of American politics is that the socialist label is unpopular while socialist policies are extremely popular. Free K-12 education, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, progressive income tax — this is socialism. How often do you hear a politician of either party call for getting rid of any of these? The ones that do rarely win.
Added to that, we have a president who condemns socialism while behaving like a socialist. His trademark legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, includes “Trump Accounts,” a $1,000 taxpayer-funded contribution to those born between 2025 and 2028. Before Trump, this same idea was championed by Cory Booker (D-NJ) and co-sponsored by Sanders.
President Trump also uses state power to control private companies. Under his presidency, taxpayer money has bought equity in private and publicly held companies. He has blocked mergers and acquisitions. He has redirected industrial planning through tariffs. And he has bullied private companies with threats of regulatory action. This is not free enterprise.
One takeaway here is to be careful with how we use and understand labels. Labels are often essential as a quick shorthand in general conversation, but for a deeper understanding of what people believe, we need to look beyond the labels.
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What We’re Reading
Vox: “ICE arrested a nun on her way to church. Does MAGA care?”
On June 28, Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a Catholic nun from Nigeria, stepped out of her home to take the short, one-block stroll to her church in McAllen, Texas. It should have been uneventful: dressed in her white habit and bearing a rosary, Sister Letty was walking to Sunday morning mass at Our Lady of Sorrows.
She didn’t make it — US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped, arrested, and handcuffed the 56-year-old. They took her to a detention facility an hour away, reportedly confiscated her rosary, and declined to bring her the medication she takes. She called her diocese for help — and as news spread, both Republican and Democratic members of Congress appealed directly to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin for details. Hours later, she was released — without explanation.
Plenty of questions surrounding this incident remain. According to her diocese, Sister Letty had worked as a registered nurse in the area for about a decade and entered the country legally.
Phil Williams: “Another Disturbing Peek Into the Minds of Young Republicans”
Now, Hate Comes to Main Street can link a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic, Christian nationalist X account to another group of Young Republicans—in this case, far-right men associated with a Knox County chapter in East Tennessee.
That X account—calling itself the Tennessee Heritage Association—routinely pushes themes that once would have been more commonplace at cross-burning Ku Klux Klan rallies than in mainstream GOP politics.
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Yet, rather than being relegated to the extreme, the Tennessee Heritage Association has co-sponsored an event with MAGA Congressman Andy Ogles and produced videos with Christian nationalist candidate for governor Monty Fritts.
The mysterious group has also signed on as one of the backers of the so-called Mass Deportation Coalition, which includes the influential Heritage Foundation, as well as the politically connected Center for Baptist Leadership.
The Dispatch: “Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?”
There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome, but it’s not what you think. The term gets thrown around to describe people on the left who can’t hear the name Donald Trump without losing their minds. Fine. Some people like that exist.
But the actual syndrome, the one that does real damage, applies to those who look upon the words and actions of Donald Trump and cannot see them for what they are. On any given day, his conduct exhibits the very antithesis of what Scripture—or anyone with the most basic sense of decency—calls virtue.
How can people I know—some of whom I genuinely love and respect—look upon those words and actions and call them good? That’s the question I keep coming back to. And I honestly don’t know the answer.
Hoover Institution: “AI, Politically Motivated Violence, And “Conflict Entrepreneurship” In Congress”
The key point is that the tool I built doesn’t require a PhD to produce. I’m a political scientist, and I was able to do it. I have to assume that trained coders in the Russian FSB or in Chinese intelligence can not only do what I’ve done but do it far better and at scale. That means, in effect, that almost anyone can interfere in almost any election—regardless of language or context—if they have enough awareness, motivation, and resources.
The ultimate question is whether this is actually happening. It’s a frustrating question to ask, because these tools are designed to be undetectable. If we can’t detect them, that could mean they don’t exist—or it could mean they’re simply good enough to evade the traps we’ve built. So, I can’t say with confidence that it’s happening.
What I can say is this: American elections are decided by very thin margins, and districts have been gerrymandered so heavily, that even a small number of synthetic poll respondents could matter—in presidential and House elections alike. Are all surveys dominated by these tools? No, absolutely not. Could a poor-quality survey contain a small number of these agents? Yes. And could that be enough to flip the top-line result? Yes.
NPR: “Supreme Court justices give chilling accounts of threats to their safety”
The justices spoke at length Tuesday about how rising threats impacted their lives. Justice Barrett came prepared with two harrowing stories. First was the day she brought home a bulletproof vest.
“My 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, and he wanted to know what it was,” she testified. “And I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.”
She also described how just six weeks ago, her house was swatted, with local police responding to a fake emergency call. Local police could have stormed her home, but for the fact that her own security detail was there to prevent it.
AVC and US Values Alliance
I had a wide ranging conversation with the folks from US Values Alliance this week. You can watch the full session here:
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