David Dayen

@ddayen.bsky.social

83339 Followers 602 Following

Executive editor, The American Prospect. Author, Chain of Title and Monopolized. Tips at ddayen-at-prospect-dot-org or Signal at ddayen.90

A mixed-member model could be adapted to the U.S. House and to individual state legislatures. At the federal level, we could retain the existing 435 single-member districts and expand the House by one-third, adding 145 seats, apportioned among the states in conformity with constitutional requirements. A recent proposal by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for an expansion of about this size. There is ample historical precedent for House expansion, though it hasn’t been done in a lasting way since 1911, when the population was less than one-third of what it is today. The additional 145 seats would make up multimember districts in the states (except for states with fewer than three representatives, which would continue to have single-member districts exclusively). Retaining the existing single-member districts—the “personalized” part of the mixed-member model—would maintain a valuable feature of the current system: a local representative who is expected to attend to local interests and constituent services. Keeping the individual districts would also maintain continuity in voters’ understanding of Congress and avoid directly threatening the personal careers of incumbent representatives. As in Germany and New Zealand, voters would cast a second vote for at-large representation in multimember districts. The vote could be for either a “party list” of candidates or for an individual candidate on a list. The party’s pooled votes (that is, for its list or a candidate on its list) would determine its proportional share of seats in a state’s delegation.
Here, Plaintiffs present compelling evidence that the combined firm resulting from the transaction will possess substantial market share in the wide-release theatrical distribution market. See Lee Decl ¶ ¶ 83, 88, 89 (anticipating 27% market share for wide-release theatrical distribution market). On this combined firm market share alone, the Court is persuaded that it can presume the proposed merger is likely to violate antitrust laws. See Boardman v. Pacific Seafood Grp., 822 F.3d 1011, 1021 (9th Cir. 2016) (a “prima facie case can be established simply by showing” that such “a high market share would result from the proposed merger”); see also United States v. H&R Block, Inc., 833 F. Supp. 2d 36, 72 (D.D.C. 2011) (concluding plaintiffs established a presumption of anticompetitive effects where the combined firm would hold a 28.4 percent market
The gang loses the World Cup
A sample of receipts of donations to Shri Thanedar's campaign
famous xkcd comic on online voting
BROWARD COUNTY, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2026 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — Democratic U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida’s 25th Congressional district has removed the Endorsements page of her campaign site after facing scrutiny for lying about the groups that endorsed her. Among groups that Wasserman Schultz claimed had endorsed her was the Broward County Democratic Black Caucus. Wasserman Schultz is the only white candidate running in the plurality Black district following state Republicans’ Congressional redistricting, a decision for which she has faced backlash from Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried. The caucus issued a statement on Saturday: “Contrary to information currently appearing on Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s campaign website, the Broward County Democratic Black Caucus has not endorsed Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz for any office … We assert that this type of behavior is unbecoming of someone who is seeking the trust of the people. Debbie Wasserman Schultz needs to explain herself to the voters of District 20, immediately correct this egregious political ploy, and publicly apologize to the Broward County Democratic Black Caucus.” Wasserman Schultz’s website also listed the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, as endorsing her. The endorsements page of the Sierra Club Florida does not list her or any other candidates for U.S. Congress.
PARAMOUNT HAS BEEN AMASSING DEFENDERS and defenses in advance of the lawsuit. First, it made some high-profile hires, including Jeffrey Kessler, an ace antitrust lawyer who worked for the states and won the Ticketmaster monopolization case. The New York Times reported Sunday that Paramount also hired Paul Clement, who has argued many cases before the Supreme Court. That suggests how far the studio would be willing to go to win. In fact, it is threatening to destroy antitrust precedent in the process. Makan Delrahim, the former Justice Department Antitrust Division chief in Trump’s first term, made an oblique threat on LinkedIn that the Supreme Court decision in Philadelphia National Bank “isn’t in the statutory text and I would bet at least 7 votes … at the Supreme Court who would overturn it today.” Philadelphia National Bank is an important case that set a 30 percent market share, which is at issue in this case, as presumptively anti-competitive and unlawful. Indeed, this merger complaint cites Philadelphia National Bank. That’s not the only threat from Paramount. It has reportedly threatened to force the states to pay the “ticking fee” if they win the case, which could come out to over a billion dollars. This kind of financial intimidation has been tried in other cases and failed. Slightly more seriously, Semafor reported that Paramount would consider leaving California if the state filed the merger challenge. Paramount vowed to keep both existing studio lots in place in a consent decree, and the relationships on the executive and talent side of Hollywood are such that this would put Paramount at a competitive disadvantage, but it definitely shows how much market power it has and how it is ready to abuse it.
The films they have produced are among the all-time greats. Paramount and Warner Bros. have produced critically acclaimed and award-winning films, like Titanic, Grease, Forrest Gump, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sunset Boulevard, The Godfather (from Paramount), and The Departed, Before Sunset, The Matrix, Goodfellas, Casablanca, and The Shining (from Warner Bros.).
Key points: Delegate Nominating Meetings will be held July 18-19 in all 16 counties, either in person or virtually, as determined by each county chair. The date, time, and location of each meeting will be announced by the Maine Democratic Party by Wednesday, July 15. All Democrats registered in the county as of June 9, 2026, and listed as verified in the MDP Voter File, are eligible to participate and vote in their county’s Delegate Nominating Meeting.
Recent polling shows that Jewish voters don’t want to see an Arab party in the government, but basic arithmetic suggests that no opposition leader will be able to form a stable government without Arab participation or support. Eisenkot seems to have understood that, belatedly, and he probably could bring the public with him if he prepares the ground properly. That is why Netanyahu is taking every opportunity to warn the public about the grave danger inherent in supporting Eisenkot. Polling also shows that most Israelis are ready for a change in the political atmosphere and truly do value the democracy that may not survive another round of Bibi as prime minister. What isn’t clear is whether they are capable of seeing that living in a democracy means accepting that all citizens, even those who are part of a minority, are deserving of equal rights and opportunities, and that Israel’s Arabs have long since proved their loyalty to the state and its laws. This isn’t just a question relating to who can form the next government. It is essential to determining whether Israel has a chance to survive as a liberal democracy.
A $3.2 Trillion Deal-Making Frenzy Is Spurred by the A.I. Economy This year’s boom includes the most spent on global deal-making in a six-month period in a decade. But questions persist about whether it can continue. -NYT
CNN’S JOHN BERMAN: With us now is Adam, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political action committee that initially backed Platner, but has since pulled its support. Nice to see you this morning, Adam. How do you feel about this convention of some 600 people that's going to select a new Senate candidate in the next 18 days? PCCC’s ADAM GREEN: Well, the stakes are high. And if we want to have a candidate who can defeat Susan Collins by making clear that she was the deciding vote for Brett Kavanaugh and has been a lockstep soldier for Donald Trump, we need the best person possible as the candidate. And we need a really pumped up Democratic Party that is unified. And that's why these questions around how will the candidate get selected are so critical. And there's really two things I would put on your radar. The first is just as your reporter said, will there be ranked choice voting in the convention itself? As was said, Nirav Shah got the most votes on the first round in the recent primary, but he didn't have the most support across the Democratic Party. That was progressive Hannah Pingree, and now she's the nominee. Similarly, we could have a 600-person convention with six candidates, where five of them support taxing billionaires, five of them support Medicare For All and shaking up the system, one of them is backed by AI and crypto and AIPAC and other corporate interests. And that person skirts by with 130 votes if we don't have ranked choice voting. So that is a must. We would not be on a course to defeat Susan Collins if that were true. And the second is how are local counties going to nominate their people, and it needs to be a really wide open process where people feel like not just party hacks, but regular people have gone to the convention itself.
Uber and Lyft argue that, in order to provide their workers with the flexibility they want, they must classify those workers as independent contractors. Absent independent contractor status, their business models would not be possible and the companies would be forced to adopt rigid schedules like a more traditional employer. This is the flexibility myth, and it has been propagated whenever the companies have faced legislation, referenda, or enforcement under existing labor laws. But look under the hood at the business model and it’s clear: Setting millions of prices for its drivers and riders is to these companies what the use of point-of-sale data and advanced logistics is to modern retailers like Walmart and Amazon—the very key to profitability. Why would these companies sacrifice their sophisticated uses of data on revenues, costs, and capacity needs if they had to pay minimum wages, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation—the key provisions that really are at stake in the employee/independent contractor distinction. They would adjust algorithms to take these costs into account if required to do so. In fact, they have done just that in New York City, where they pay 25 percent above the minimum wage for all drivers’ time and expenses, and where drivers are covered by workers’ comp and Uber drivers by unemployment insurance. They have also kept the same business model in other parts of the world where the companies have been required to accept employment status. The flexibility myth is a bluff.
Augusta, Maine – Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released the following statement: “While the Platner campaign remains focused on distracting from the job of defeating Susan Collins in November with false accusations against us, the Maine Democratic Party remains hyper focused on developing a representative, transparent and inclusive process to select a new nominee when he chooses to withdraw from the race. “While we may be frustrated with Graham Platner’s continued efforts to manipulate this process, we are so thankful for his supporters and all of their efforts to defeat Susan Collins – they are a vital part of our Party and deserve to participate in an open process to select Platner’s replacement.”
If enacted, the measure would invalidate scores of state and local standards regulating the production and sale of meat and dairy throughout the country. The obvious intent is to invalidate laws regulating animal confinement that have been passed in heavily Democratic states, which are loathed by the meatpacking industry. But an analysis of the SOB Act by a clinic at Harvard Law School estimated that more than 600 public-health and animal welfare laws would become void under the new regime. Those laws impose a vast range of consumer safety requirements and meat importation rules, and have remained in force alongside federal standards. The federal Swine Health Protection Act, for instance, prohibits pork farmers from feeding raw meat scraps and other food waste to their pigs but creates an exception if the garbage has been treated with antibiotics. Half of the states fully outlaw the practice, known as “garbage feeding,” and prevent pork importers in other states from selling swine that have been fed trash in their borders. Another example: The federal government heavily polices the use of pseudorabies vaccines in swine, which it usually distributes to farmers in response to emergency outbreaks of the disease; if left to spread, it can decimate pig herds. But 13 states have gone a step further, prohibiting the importation of livestock treated with the vaccine at all. Those restrictions and many more like them are on the chopping block.
Some rider advocates and transportation system experts said all of that data is information the state may reasonably want so it can manage transportation services. But they said it’s possible to collect planning data without putting individuals’ movements and personal information at risk. As 404 Media demonstrated in 2023, the website for New York City’s OMNY system allowed anyone to track a rider’s travel history by entering in their credit card information, obtainable from criminals online, which especially endangered stalking and domestic violence victims. That problem has since been fixed, a spokesperson for the MTA told the publication. But spokespeople would not answer detailed questions from the Prospect about other aspects of the system, including what technology enables the handheld scanners to check credit cards or what policy or law requires riders to produce a personal credit card for inspection. Instead, they provided links to public hearings that did not include answers to those questions, said that fare evasion has been down for three consecutive quarters since the implementation of the scanning devices, and when pressed, wrote that “we have nothing further to add.” Cubic did not respond to questions, including what data their tap-and-go fare payment kiosks and handheld verification scanners capture, how far back in time the handheld scanners look for proof of payment, what other information the company collects, and how that data is stored. The company did not respond to a question asking what happens if a rider paid by phone and the phone battery dies before it gets scanned, nor did they say what information the company aggregates and gives to its clients in New York state.
Great wall of Los Angeles sign
The theme of virtually all the big cases this year could be summarized as “zero sum.” Kavanaugh’s opinion for the Court asserts a supposedly natural hierarchy of men over women, and builds upon that a social and educational hierarchy of cisgender over transgender young people. This sits alongside the Court’s invitation to states to recreate the political conditions that made the Voting Rights Act of 1965 necessary, in the case Louisiana v. Callais: Here, the Court greenlit the reimposition of racial hierarchy throughout the political system by redefining claims of racial discrimination in electoral maps as attempts at political advantage, and saying that seeking political advantage through gerrymandering is fine. Politics will either favor white people and Republicans or nonwhite people and Democrats; SCOTUS chooses white Republicans. The transgender sports cases sit alongside Mullin v. Doe, in which the six-member majority allowed the president to withdraw Temporary Protected Status from Haitian immigrants while avoiding the overtly racist assertions of the president and the racial, nativist, and eugenic hierarchies his administration seems hell-bent on affirming. Citizenship, too, is a zero-sum game: Either the white South Africans fleeing Black-majority rule get it, or the Haitians fleeing natural and economic disaster get it. SCOTUS is fine with the administration choosing those it considers its people. Kavanaugh’s opinion also arrived on the same day as the one about money in politics, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission. In that case, the Court burned up the last meaningful safeguard against millionaire and billionaire influence in elections, by ruling the bar on coordination between special political committees and candidates to be unlawful. It’s a zero-sum game, you know: The billionaires who built their fortunes on public goods like the internet and on lucrative public contracts have won that game. They get the spoils, …
Kiros now up 4.5 points and the margin grew from the last drop. DeGette will be the latest incumbent to lose her primary.
Manny Rutinel defeats Shannon Bird in CO-08, a swing seat
Hickenlooper up in Colorado's Democratic primary for Senate
Weiser leading big in CO-Gov race.
Melat Kiros leads incumbent Dem Diana DeGette in Colorado's 1st Congressional district
Trump" The big Oil companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil.
NEW YORK – Today, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) Interim President & CEO Jeanny Pak announced the next step toward launching a first-of-its-kind City-backed housing insurance program, with NYCEDC releasing a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) to help design the initiative. Developed in partnership with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC), the RFEI seeks proposals to design, structure and operate an insurance program capable of reducing premiums by at least 20% for a meaningful share of the City's affordable and rent-stabilized housing stock. As insurance costs continue to soar, affordable housing providers are being forced to divert resources away from maintenance, repairs and tenant services. Every $100 increase in insurance costs requires $1,200 in additional City capital for new affordable housing transactions. By lowering those costs, the City can stretch public dollars further, finance more affordable homes and improve housing quality for tenants. The City-backed insurance program is a key commitment in Block by Block, the Mamdani administration’s comprehensive housing plan. The administration is investing $100 million over the next three years to launch the program as part of a broader effort to preserve affordability, improve housing conditions and reduce the cost of operating housing across New York City.
David Trone spent $25 million of his own money and has 13,888 votes thus far. This is $1,800/vote at the moment.
You have the sudden DEFCON 1 imperative to fix the pool, demanded by a president focused on the wrong priorities. You have the Trumpian boasts that nobody had remedied this national disgrace in 100 years, but he alone could do so. You have the no-bid contracts for a total cost of over $16 million and counting, with more than twice the usual profit margin, for cleaning, filtration, and a layer of “American flag blue” paint on the bottom meant to ensure a consistent color. You have part of that, a $1.7 million no-bid contract, given to John J. Cafaro, a Trump donor, Mar-a-Lago neighbor, and understudy in a high school musical theater production of The Sopranos. You have the paint inevitably peeling off and the algae returning to its traditional perch, with Trump literally unable to drain the swamp. You have the president, manic about being defeated by microscopic aquatic organisms, claiming that dastardly Democratic vandals unloaded fertilizer into the pool and sliced up the paint, insisting that there’s visual evidence of this without releasing it, sending out law enforcement to arrest the perfidious saboteurs (one of them a three-time Olympian who was just an onlooker), and threatening lawsuits against the media for not reporting these facts.
“It’s a time when the center and center-left is threatened by a resurgent populist right in many countries,” they said. “[Starmer] is well aware, I think, that this is potentially an era-defining challenge.” Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin, who is plugged into the new Labour government’s top tier, wrote in the Observer that Morgan McSweeney, the mastermind behind Labour’s election win, is handing out a paper titled “The Death of Deliverism” to party officials as they already look toward the 2029 election.
Kalibrate Fuel Pricing is Designed and Marketed to Eliminate Fuel Price Competition Between Gas Stations
First page of price fixing lawsuit on CA gas
The associations between pro-Israel PACs and PACs in line with the Democratic establishment and certain congressional coalitions suggest that the battle is not simply about Israel-Palestine policy, but a factional fight determined to keep progressive candidates out of Congress, and boost centrists from the conservative wing of the party. During the Powell race, Lenny Young, an adviser to Pro-Choice Majority Action, told the Prospect that there was no story in PACs sharing money and bundling support. “There is a lot of symmetry between EDW AF and PCM26, and other Democratic funders, since over half of the Red to Blue and Frontline candidates are women,” he wrote. “We support all of them, and other major Democratic funders will be supporting all of the candidates we support in some configuration or another.”
Add to that a curious $100,000 transfer to Save Democracy PAC, which did minimal spending in 2024 and no independent expenditures yet this year (it ran some ads in 2025 for Stella Pekarsky, who finished third in the race to replace the late Gerry Connolly in VA-11, and has given dozens of PAC donations to federal candidates and campaign groups). In all, pro-Israel groups transferred $2.375 million to outside PACs in May. Adding in prior transfers, the total from the groups comes to roughly $7.95 million. “Voters should not have to look under every rock to find out whether a Democratic group that pretends to be focused entirely on one issue is actually just a vehicle for AIPAC to hide its spending in our elections,” Andrabi, of Justice Democrats, said.
United for Progress received $200k from DMFI
A Star Is Born: America250 Introduces “George the Star,” Official Mascot of America’s 250th Anniversary
June 18, 2026 Dear Governor Newsom, Let’s avoid at least two years of needless patient deaths. A massive healthcare crisis and collapse is coming for California. You agree with us on the numbers and how devastating the $100 billion in Trump cuts to the California healthcare system will be — and have said as much. The current budget plans being discussed in Sacramento ask working Californians to bear the burden. Taxes on consumers. Cuts to healthcare programs. Increased costs for patients who can least afford them. And yet, as those proposals take shape, one group remains entirely untouched: the wealthiest billionaires on earth, many of whom call California home. That is not a balanced solution. It’s a choice, and we believe it’s the wrong one. A Moment for Unity Now that our initiative is qualified, and in a spirit of unity to fix the problems created by the Trump cuts to the California healthcare system, we would like to join you in enacting a 2% version of our initiative instead of the original 5% version, provided you are prepared to stand with California families for this solution – and to lead on this policy issue for the good of the whole state. Doing so will avoid 150,000 California caregivers losing their jobs; countless ER and hospital closures across our state; 3.2 million Californians losing their coverage; and over 20 million California consumers paying higher premiums, deductibles and co-pays as the insurance companies shift the burden of the funding cuts onto California residents. For the good of the state, we are prepared to join you in advancing a 2-year solution in the face of this crisis rather than a 5-year solution. We hope you will join us in doing what’s right for everyone. A Targeted Solution A 2% wealth tax on the state’s richest 200 billionaires will provide a critically important two-year bridge.
It would be nice for this perspective to get widely heard, but it’s very hard to get a word in edgewise with the political landscape echoing to the sounds of deafening foghorn blasts paid for by the wealthy. Even the successes in this primary season come from having to beat the oligarchs at their own game by spending super PAC dollars. The campaign finance system defines the boundaries of the debate, and even if you can break it, you must jump in a vat of money. The movement to overturn Citizens United via constitutional amendment and legislate public financing of elections may seem out of reach, but it just might be the only way back from a poisoned system.
DESPITE BLAMING THE LEFT AND RIGHT for their “hobbling” of government, the pair seem more forgiving of the right. Unlike in the book Abundance, which does not discuss corporate power (something co-author Ezra Klein has stated retrospectively should have been included), Chellam and Rosen do invoke it, insisting that corporate power has not been exercised robustly enough in our political and civic institutions. “For the right, and corporate power, [the attack on Government] was a dereliction,” as business leaders withdrew from civic leadership. “Elite responsibility,” the document adds later, “is a key element of abundance. Those who modernized our economic institutions for the 21st century must be key contributors to modernizing our public institutions.” The historical analysis is centered on the claim that industrialists were in fact truly responsible for progressive victories of the mid-20th century. “The progressive movement scaled power only when industrialists brought their financial and social capital to bear on the institutional problems blocking progress.” It cites the Progressive Era as a model, but makes no mention of the labor movement. It lauds Nathan Straus, the founder of Macy’s, for improving food safety by pushing through laws requiring milk pasteurization, but there is no mention of the more expansive Pure Food and Drug Act or the muckraking journalism (like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair) that created a popular political base for reform. It contains no mention of monopolies except a single passing reference to “trustbusters” as one element of the progressive movement. In short, their view of the Progressive Era, which was in large part a reaction against the concentrated power of wealthy industrialists, cuts out most of the progressive parts and nearly all of the work done by ordinary people organizing grassroots movements.
Republicans then did another end run, with a reconciliation bill that added $70 billion in base ICE and CBP funding for three years. This comes to a total of $240 billion—almost a quarter-trillion dollars—for these two relatively minor agencies. Unbelievably, it turns out that House Republicans are working on a DHS appropriations bill for the next fiscal year that would increase ICE/CBP funding even more, by another $28.4 billion. This represents a bulked-up appropriation for these agencies, even though that was just passed in the second reconciliation package. They are apparently pretending the whole double pre-funding thing didn’t happen. The number, when it comes to mass deportation at least, can only go up. And yet few Democrats are making a stink about this endless ratcheting up of funding for Trump’s mass deportation machine. The ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security is once again Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), back after Trump pardoned him out of his Biden-era corruption indictment. Little can be expected from that quarter. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the ranking member of the overall Appropriations Committee, at least put out a statement condemning the reconciliation bill. “I am leading the way to implement major reforms that will transform these agencies which currently operate like an unaccountable paramilitary force,” it said. But it’s fair to say there has not been a coordinated Democratic effort to point out that this tripling down for deportation funding is happening.
Head-to-Head Democratic Primary Matchups The survey also tested one-on-one Democratic primary contests between Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and several potential challengers. Elijah Manley: 63% Debbie Wasserman Schultz: 37%
Jamie: they, they, they have given bonuses to their executives specifically, not just on insurance reform and tort reform, but specifically to get SB 371, this bill that passed the [00:16:20] legislation on... Reduce Our Uninsured Motorists passed. Tony West got... Well, was authorized to get a bonus on this. Another woman at the company who was very high up, uh, got a big bonus on it. Uh, there's a lot of, of, of incentivizing executives on specific policy goals, and you don't see that in the corporate suites very often. [00:16:40] I mean, I've, I've watched corporations. I've watched their roles. I have, I have never seen this specificity in terms of tying financial performance for an executive to getting a policy change that's specific done. David: Uh, e- especially a specific bill. Like, if this bill passes, you get a million dollars. Like, that's a cra- I, I've never heard of anything like that. Jamie: [00:17:00] I haven't either. Uh, and we looked around, and there were some energy companies that tied it to specific policy changes, but not specific legislation. Right. This shows you how ingrained this is in their corporate strategy. Uh, their corporate strategy is to save money that they've claimed they're taking from drivers and riders to, to protect against, you know, people who, who have collisions, and [00:17:20] then putting it somewhere so they can use it, we think, for robotaxis, because they are gonna be challenged, uh, by a lot of other robotaxi companies, including Waymo, and they see the future as getting into robotaxis as quick as possible.
These changes will hit workers saving for retirement the hardest. Nearly half of the assets in index funds come from retirement plans like 401(k)s and IRAs. Pretty much every Main Street investor saving for retirement has money in an index mutual fund or ETF. Index funds have also become indispensable for people saving for other parts of life, like education or emergencies. “This is a tool that many middle-class Americans use to build wealth for their retirement because there is less risk,” Rep. Becca Balint, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s End Corporate Greed Task Force, told the Prospect. “Having SpaceX, Anthropic, and other AI Big Tech companies calling the shots on rule changes for their IPOs makes it nearly impossible for Americans to avoid having these volatile companies in their index funds. These rules were put in place for a reason—to not expose Americans to additional risk.”
Randy Villegas Overcomes Millions in Super PAC Spending, Advances to General Election BAKERSFIELD, CA—In response to Randy Villegas’s projected top two finish in California’s 22nd Congressional District, Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, has released the following statement: “The DC establishment spent millions to defeat Randy, because he’s not in the pocket of their corporate donors. Now, he’s headed to a general election against Trump yes-man David Valadao, who voted to slash Medicaid and WIC benefits. We know that Valadao and his corporate backers will spend outrageous amounts of money to stop Randy, but you can only screw over working people so many times before it comes back to bite you.”
County Measure ER takes the lead.
LA Mayor's race totals as of 6.8.26
The day before her successful election, Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) conducted an oversight visit and met with some of the people inside, including one man whom a guard hit in the face as part of a beatdown to break the strike, which sent multiple detainees to the hospital. Instead of bringing the man back to Unit 2, where most of the strikers are imprisoned, guards put him in solitary confinement for four days, Mejia said. She also said guards are threatening strikers with transfers to Louisiana and slashing visitations from one hour, three to four times a week, to half an hour just once a week. She also said that GEO staff are denying detainees access to their mail unless they have a certain amount of money in their commissary account. GEO staff have targeted Martin Soto in particular, the prisoner whom ICE suspects of leading the hunger and labor strike and whose wife, Gabriela, has organized protests outside Delaney Hall. Guards threw him in solitary confinement, then violently transferred him to a different ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Mejia witnessed deep bruising on his wrist, arm, bicep, and ankles. He told her that a guard said he was moved because his wife was a “troublemaker.” Mejia has created a spreadsheet to document medical neglect in New Jersey’s detention sites. Both the Associated Press and KFF Health News have recently reported that such neglect is rife in ICE concentration camps across the country. Mejia met one detainee whose dentures were either lost or broken and who now has no way to chew solid food. “He’s been there for four months with no teeth, and all they feed him is Ensure and soft foods,” she said, referring to a type of meal replacement drink. “They won’t take him to a dentist to get dentures.”
A successful ruling for GEO would have far-reaching consequences, because it would establish that government officials may hire contractors to commit abuses for which they want to avoid liability, attorneys told the Prospect. While the doctrine protects individual officials, it does not protect the government from public censure or criminal charges. “Particularly given everything that we’re seeing right now about the types of things that the government is doing to Americans and other people living in this country, it is deeply disturbing, the prospect that all of that could be shielded from any kind of accountability,” said Juno Turner, litigation director of Towards Justice, co-council in Menocal v. GEO. Plaintiff’s attorneys note that GEO’s claim is the second time it has argued that it is immune from legal action. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the corporation when it first tried that four years ago.
What’s more, the law firm representing AES Indiana in the rate case, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, contributed $25,000 through its political action committee to one of Braun’s post-election fundraising committees in September 2025. Braun also benefited from $6,000 in AES Indiana donations during his gubernatorial campaign. Three months after the Taft Stettinius & Hollister contribution, Braun appointed Andy Zay, a former state senator and member of the Indiana Senate Utilities Committee, as IURC chair. Zay has been presiding over the rate case; he received $40,000 in donations from several utility industry PACs, including AES Indiana, during his state Senate career. Zay, whose tenure became effective on January 12, 2026, has faced questions over his ability to remain an independent arbiter in his capacity as chair. Zay declined to comment through an IURC spokesperson, citing the ongoing case.
What the triumphal announcement leaves out: No less than $2.45 million of Carbonara’s war chest was wired directly from Carbonara himself, with another $12,500 pitched in by his wife, $8,500 from employees of Carbonara’s companies, and $7,000 from lawyers who represent said companies. All of ten donors listed in Carbonara’s FEC filings are not immediately recognizable as family members, employees, or attorneys of Carbonara. Of course, plenty of candidates jump-start their campaigns with substantial personal loans. (A separate Republican candidate in the 22nd, an 87-year-old billionaire eyeglass company magnate named Herbert Wertheim who registered his candidacy nine weeks ago, has loaned himself $2.5 million and otherwise raised $0.) But then there’s the matter of what Carbonara’s campaign has been doing with its war chest: plowing more than $1.1 million of it into crypto, via his payment facilitation firm Ibanera, which has also collected nearly $10,000 in investment banking services fees from his campaign on the transactions. The campaign has spent another quarter-million dollars paying the recently incorporated Delaware LLC Provident Strategies, which has no apparent online footprint or track record, for “media management services.”
WE HEAD OVER TO STABROEK MARKET in Georgetown, the city’s largest and oldest market. It’s difficult for me to find my way around. I’m sidestepping buses and motorbikes that are dangerously close to my feet. The clock tower, a Georgetown landmark, overlooks the hustle and bustle. A woman named Samantha is selling cleaning supplies. She repeats a complaint I’ve heard several times today: Guyana is too expensive. “Every day people are just raising things, because the cost of living is really high. People are really underpaid. I think everybody needs more money,” she says. Through the Natural Resource Fund, the Guyanese government has begun to issue cash grants to citizens over the age of 18. After registering online, showing identification, and if necessary, opening a bank account, people are eligible to receive 100,000 Guyanese dollars. That shakes out to just shy of $500. To many, that doesn’t help much. Inflation, largely due to the booming oil and gas industry, has created an environment of uncertainty. Although inflation overall has remained stable, the costs of food and housing have risen, leaving many of the Guyanese people I spoke with both angry and worried. “We don’t notice the sense of frustration and humiliation people feel when you encounter these kinds of things in the market, where the money you come with won’t go as far as it went a couple of weeks ago,” says Mike McCormack, who sits on the Guyana Human Rights Association’s board of trustees. “When there’s something you can’t buy, you feel frustrated, but you don’t know what to do about it, because it’s inflation, it’s oil and gas and issues which are way above what you can cause and calculate. It builds up and it renders people more disposed to react.”
That brings me to the crises that now loom in multiple sectors. The most obvious one is in oil itself. As storages dwindle and run out, the only way to match demand to supply will be for the price to rise high enough to destroy something like 10 to 20 percent of global oil consumption. And because a great deal of oil demand is obligatory and therefore not very price-sensitive, that price will likely be north of $150 per barrel. That means gas and diesel at the pump in the $8-to-$10 range, and a corresponding price hike for anything that needs to be transported, or involved in plastic in some way, which is to say basically everything—not to mention untold other problems. Another developing disaster is in the aluminum market. Something like 10 percent of aluminum production used to come from countries around the Gulf. Global aluminum prices have risen, but until recently not by all that much, because as The Wall Street Journal points out, smelters around the world had a lot of raw material stockpiled. China was also making up some of the slack by removing its aluminum production caps, which had been in place to prevent swamping the market. Those stockpiles are now mostly gone, and worse, China is reportedly considering putting the caps back in place. Last month, the price of aluminum finally surpassed the peak seen in 2022 caused by the war in Ukraine, and at time of writing had increased by another $200 per ton, to about $3,800.
A chart showing that in the South, Black voters need near-majority status to have their preferences heard.
CA-Gov at 11:25am