BILLIONAIRES ARE ALREADY BUYING THE 2026 ELECTIONS

SUMMARY: Billionaires are already spending record amounts of money on 2026 election campaigns. Most of this money flows through Political Action Committees (PACs) and goes to Republicans. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state Democratic committees should ban PAC money from their primary elections because it distorts election results, perverts governments’ policies, and drowns out the voices of working people.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

One of the problems with great economic inequality in a democracy is that the wealthy will find a way to buy policy decisions and enforcement that favor them. It can be through outright bribes. Or it can be more subtle. Our campaign finance system effectively lets the wealthy buy candidates. First, candidates without access to wealthy people’s money generally don’t even bother to run because they don’t have a chance. Second, during the campaign, wealthy donors fund and support candidates who will do their bidding once elected. Once in office, those elected want to get re-elected, so they curry favor with wealthy donors by supporting policies donors favor to ensure their funding for re-election campaigns.

Although U.S. campaign finance laws limit the amount an individual can give directly to a candidate or a political party, the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision allows unlimited spending by super Political Action Committees (PACs). PAC spending is supposed to be independent of the candidate being supported, but the rules on independence are ignored and unenforced.

Therefore, much of the billionaires’ money flows through PACs. Nine of the eleven richest PACs fund Republican campaigns. Trump’s MAGA Inc. PAC leads the way with $89 million from billionaires. Musk’s America PAC is second at $45 million. The Senate and House PACs for Republicans have received a combined $66 million while those for Democrats have received $37 million. The other five richest PACs all fund Republicans and have between $15 and $10 million.

Billionaires are willing to spend lots of money on campaigns (or bribes) because the return on their investment is huge. A few million dollars can buy them tax cuts worth billions as the Republicans 2017 tax cut bill and the 2025 so-called One Big Beautiful Bill did. The wealthy’s campaign spending also buys them deregulation or contracts for their businesses that are worth billions. In the 2024 federal elections, billionaires accounted for almost 20% of all campaign spending. [1]

Grassroots organizing that gets lots of people to vote and educates them to distrust the advertising they see and hear from wealth-backed candidates can beat billionaires’ money, but it takes lots of work. Public matching funds for small donations to campaigns coupled with links to limits on donation size also make a huge difference as Mayor Mamdani’s campaign in New York City demonstrated. (See this previous post for more information.) Democracy is NOT a spectator sport. It takes work, participation, and voters who are paying attention and not believing the lies of wealth-backed candidates like Trump.

American billionaires are already spending big on the 2026 elections. As of March 1, the 50 highest spending billionaire families had already spent over $400 million on 2026 election campaigns. At this rate they will exceed the record for a non-presidential election and spend over $1 billion by election day. Not surprisingly, 80% of this money is going to Republican candidates or groups because Republicans have been the ones at the forefront of pushing policies that favor the wealthy. This is obscene and undemocratic. This is why we have an oligarchy running our government. [2]

Twelve of the top thirteen billionaire families have given money exclusively to Republicans. The Musk family leads the way at $71 million followed by the Yass family at $55 million and the Brockman family at $25 million. The next ten families have given between $10 million and $16 million each with the one Democratic donor at $13 million.

This is why we must change our tax laws to reduce the wealth of billionaires. (See this previous post for specifics.) They are so rich that they can afford to spend essentially unlimited amounts of money to corrupt our democracy to serve their interests, i.e., to make it an oligarchy. High levels of wealth lead inexorably to concentrated political power. [3] As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote almost 100 years ago, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Please contact your U.S. Representative and Senators to ask them to support a fairer tax system that taxes wealth and transfers of it. [4]

In addition to the billionaires, special interest groups are also already spending big money on the 2026 elections. Some of these special interest PACs split their money between Republicans and Democrats because they want to buy influence with both parties. A current example is the crypto industry. Its primary PAC, called Fairshake, has already raised $133 million. The vast majority of this comes from two billionaire-backed companies, Ripple and Coinbase. The crypto industry also spent heavily in the 2024 elections and some of the corrupt influence its spending bought is readily apparent. The Trump administration dropped thirteen charges for security law violations against Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange and pardoned its billionaire founder. The crypto industry has been pushing Congress, successfully so far, to leave the crypto industry largely unregulated and the beneficiary of tax loopholes.

Billionaires and special interest PACs spend money in Democratic primaries, often to defeat candidates who strongly oppose their policy interests and sometimes to support candidates who support their interests. The crypto industry has done this frequently, as have the AI industry and pro-Israel interests.

This is why my previous post called for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state Democratic committees to ban super PAC and dark money (i.e., money where the true donor is unidentified) from their primary elections. A coalition of four Democratic Senators (Merkley [D-OR], Warren [D-MA], Welch [D-VT], and Van Hollen [D-MD]) and Independent Sanders (VT) are pushing Democrats and the DNC to ban money from billionaire- and corporate-backed PACs from Democratic primary elections. They noted in a letter to the DNC that unlimited PAC spending will “distort our elections and drown out the voices of working people.” [5]

For lots of good news, see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] Johnson, J., 3/25/26, “‘Modern-day royalty’: 50 billionaire families have already pumped over $430 million into midterms,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaire-spending-2026-midterms)

[2] Americans for Tax Fairness, 3/25/26, “No Kings – No billionaire kingmakers either,” (https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaire-kingmakers/)

[3] Bivens, J., 11/17/25, “Raising taxes on the ultrarich,” Economic Policy Institute (https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-taxes-on-the-ultrarich-a-necessary-first-step-to-restore-faith-in-american-democracy-and-the-public-sector/)

[4] You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

[5] Prager, S., 4/27/26, “Bernie Sanders lead Senators in demand to end super PACs in Democratic primaries,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/sanders-dnc-dark-money)

WHAT DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE DOING

Democrats should be taking steps now to lay the ground work for electoral successes and policy making in the future. Running against Trump is not enough; Democrats need to state what they are for. They should ban super PAC and dark money from their primaries and support progressive policies.

SUMMARY: Democrats should be taking steps now within the national party and at the state level to lay the ground work for electoral successes and for policy making in the future. Running against Trump is not enough; Democrats need to clearly state what they are for. Americans support progressive policy solutions. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state committees should ban super PAC and dark money from their primary elections.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

While Democrats have very limited influence on national policy right now, there’s a lot they should be doing now within the national party and at the state level to lay the ground work for electoral successes and for policy making in the future. My previous two series of blog posts on fair taxation and the affordability crisis identified policies that Democrats should be supporting at the national and state level, and enacting now at the state level.

Electorally, running against Trump is not enough; Democrats need to clearly state what they are for. Sure, Trump is a convicted criminal and unpopular, but nobody cares about that if they cannot afford basic needs and they think Trump and the Republicans will address the affordability crisis better than Democrats. That’s what happened in 2024 in a nutshell.

Voters will not believe Democrats are serious about addressing the affordability crisis if they don’t unequivocally embrace progressive remedies, as Senators Warren (D-MA) and Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), among others, have been doing. Opponents, including Democrats, call their policies “too progressive,” which is code for opposition to any policy that favors working Americans over the oligarchs.

The real split among Democrats is between (a) Democrats on the take from the oligarchs of the crypto industry, Big Tech and AI businesses, and Wall Street; and (b) Democrats who are standing up for working Americans and against the oligarchs and their monopolistic companies. It’s that split that deprives Democrats of unity and of a consistent message that resonates with the real frustrations of everyday Americans. Democrats need to acknowledge the failures of our rigged economic system and clearly advocate for structural changes to the status quo that would: [1]

Boost pay including by raising the minimum wage
Build more affordable homes and crack down on corporate landlords
Increase Social Security checks
Provide universal child care
Block price gouging
Strengthen unions
Establish universal health care
Tax the wealthy and giant corporations
Stop members of Congress from buying and selling stock and crypto assets (i.e., insider trading)

For years, polling data have repeatedly shown that Americans support progressive policy solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives. For example, over 70 percent of Americans support Medicare for All, which would make health insurance more affordable and health care more accessible and less fraught. Seventy percent believe our tax system is unfair, while 66% support universal free child care. More broadly, 66% of Democrats now view socialism favorably, while only 42% view capitalism favorably. [2]

To enact this policy agenda and to get Democrats to unequivocally support it, billionaires must be stopped from buying our elections and our policy making process. A Democratic Party that worries more about offending wealthy donors than enacting policies that support working Americans will not succeed. Democrats should refuse campaign money from organizations and individuals opposed to basic workers’ rights and a strong social safety net.

As a first step, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state committees should ban super PAC and dark money (i.e., money where the true donor is unidentified) from their primary elections. Unfortunately, the DNC recently voted for a resolution that simply condemned the influence of dark and corporate money in Democratic primaries. It needs to go further and ban such money, which it can do, given that it sets the rules for its own primary elections. Corporate and Republican-linked super PACs and dark money organizations spent over $200 million in 2024 Democratic primaries. Their goal, sometimes successful, was to defeat progressive Democrats, particularly ones opposing Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians. [3] The Israel, crypto, and AI interests have been, and will in 2026, skew Democratic primaries and candidates to ones supporting their interests, which are not the interests of mainstream Democrats and Americans.

A ban on super PACs and dark money would force Democrats to turn to smaller donations from regular people, as Senators Warren (D-MA) and Sanders (I-VT) and New York City Mayor Mamdani have successfully done. This is what democracy, as opposed to oligarchy, looks like.

I encourage you to contact your state and local elected officials, as well as your U.S. Representative and Senators, to ask them to support policies that support working Americans. If any of these officials are Democrats, I urge you to point out that just running against Trump isn’t enough, as we saw in 2024, and that they need to run on what they stand for. [4]

If you’re frustrated that the Democrats aren’t unequivocally supporting working Americans, you might want to look at and perhaps support the Working Families Party. They’ve put forth a platform, their Working Families Guarantee, which is reminiscent of FDR’s economic bill of rights. It includes:

A home you can afford
Healthcare you can rely on
A good job to support your family
Childcare when and where you need it
Paid family and medical leave
Taxing the rich, and
Getting big money out of politics.

For lots of good news, see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] Warren, E., 1/12/26, “The Democratic Party is at a crossroads,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/elizabeth-warren-democrats-2026-midterms/)

[2] Meyerson, H., 1/7/26, “The Democratic base is social democratic,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/01/07/democratic-base-socialist-democratic-zohran-mamdani-medicare-for-all/)

[3] Wilkins, B., 4/10/26, “DNC half-measures condemning dark money won’t cut it, says Sanders as he demands total ban,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-dark-money-ban)

BLUNTING THE IMPACT OF BIG MONEY IN ELECTIONS

Big money is corrupting our elections and elected officials. There are ways to blunt its impact that can be taken now by Democratic Party officials and by state and municipal governments. Contact them and encourage them to act now to blunt the impact of big money in our political system.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

The U.S. economy is not working well for regular, working Americans. It is, however, working quite well for wealthy Americans and extremely well for the very wealthy. But for regular people, the affordability of every day life is often challenging and economic inequality is unfair. This is the result of government policies, including those for labor, taxes, health care, financial services, antitrust, corporate regulation, social services (e.g., child care and elder care), and the safety net.

The major reason that policies are so skewed to benefit the wealthy is the way we allow election campaigns to be financed. We now allow unlimited spending, unlimited contributions, and a lack of disclosure of who is contributing large sums of money. Citizens United and related Supreme Court decisions have greatly exacerbated the problem and made it difficult to tackle without a constitutional amendment – which is nowhere on the near-term horizon.

Here are three campaign finance reforms that can be done now and would dramatically reduce the influence of wealthy individuals and corporations in our elections:

Democrats should ban super Political Action Committee (super PAC) money and dark money (where the true donor is hidden) from their primaries. The Democratic Party sets its own rules for its primaries, so it could do this without legislation or any outside action. Eight Democratic Senators have called for such a ban. The Arizona Democratic Party has passed a resolution banning super PAC money in primaries. [1] Please see the case study of AIPAC’s spending in Democratic primaries below for an example of why this is important.
States and municipalities should enact campaign finance systems that use public funds to match small (e.g., less than $250) campaign contributions from residents of the election district. This previous post describes New York City’s public campaign financing system and its impact. And this post describes the role such campaign finance systems can play in supporting democracy.
States should remove corporations’ power to contribute to political campaigns and PACs. States, and only states, not the federal government, charter corporations. Corporations have no powers until a state grants them some and they only have those powers granted to them by their state charters. Delaware, where more corporations are chartered than any other state, does not, for example, grant private foundations the power to spend money on elections. Although the lack of power to spend money on elections has not been a feature of most corporate charters, there appears to be no reason that it couldn’t be. In Montana, an amendment to the state constitution will be presented to voters this November that would eliminate the power to spend money on elections from the powers of corporations chartered or operating in Montana. [2] It would apply to local, state, and federal elections, as well as to spending on ballot questions. [3]

The influence of PAC money in our elections is tremendous. In the sixteen years since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, PAC spending has grown from roughly $150 million to over $4 billion. In addition, dark money spending has grown to hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. (There’s no exact figure because much of this money is unreported and intentionally hidden.) However, most of the dark money spending is done by non-profit corporations organized under Section 501(c)(4) of federal tax law, which could have their power to spend on elections eliminated. [4] (For an overview of how money is corrupting our elections and elected officials, see this previous post.)

The campaign spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a case study of the impact of PAC money in Democratic primaries. AIPAC unequivocally supports Israel and demands that the politicians it gives money to do so as well. In the 2023-24 election cycle, more than 80% of the members of Congress received money from AIPAC. It spent roughly $100 million (mostly raised from big Republican donors) targeting Democrats it deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. It spent $15 million to successfully beat incumbent U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in his Democratic primary. Bowman’s offense was that he cosponsored a resolution banning the use of U.S. funding for Israel from being used to harm Palestinian children. AIPAC also targeted Cori Bush (D-IA) for criticizing Israel’s crimes against humanity. She lost in her Democratic primary. The bottom line is that AIPAC, a single-issue lobbying and campaign donation group, using money primarily from Republican donors, has succeeded in muting, if not silencing, Democratic criticism of Israel, despite the atrocities and horrors of Israel’s war against the Palestinians. On the other hand, AIPAC has supported politicians with white supremacist views as well as ones who deny that Biden won the 2020 presidential election because of their unequivocal support for Israel. [5]

Big money has far too much influence in our elections to have a true democracy. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials and to ask them to ban PAC and dark money in Democratic primaries. I also urge you to contact your state legislators and statewide office holders, as well as municipal officials, and ask them to create a campaign finance system that matches small in-district contributions with public funds, as New York State and City have done. While you’re talking with them, ask your state officials to remove corporations’ power to contribute to election campaigns, including ballot question campaigns if you have those in your state.

[1] Corbett, J., 6/17/25, “8 Senators demand Super PAC, dark money ban in Democratic primaries,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/super-pac)

[2] Reich, R., 1/24/25, “How to get rid of ‘Citizens United’,” (https://substack.com/@robertreich/p-177418904)

[3] Moore, T., 9/15/25, “The Corporate Power Reset That Makes Citizens United Irrelevant,” (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power-reset-that-makes-citizens-united-irrelevant/)

[4] Moore, T., 9/15/25, see above

[5] Conwright, A., Nov. 2025, “The Congressional Black Caucus’s silent partnership with AIPAC,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/congressional-black-caucus-aipac-gaza/)

DEMOCRATS AND ELECTIONS

Two key questions for 2026: Will we have fair and honest elections? What do the Democrats need to do to win – and win big? I encourage you to contact your state election officials, as well as national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials. Answers and messages are provided below.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

The elections in 2026 are going to be very important for the future of our country and our democracy. In this post, I’ll focus on two key questions:

Will we have fair and honest elections in 2026? Not completely, but if state officials and the courts stand up for the Constitution, which gives the states the power to run elections, the elections should be OK. I encourage you to contact your state election officials and ask them to refuse to give the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) your state’s voter database. (See more below.) [1] [2]
What do the Democrats need to do to win – and hopefully to win big, i.e., take control of both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as expand their control or power in state governments? Unequivocally embrace support for working Americans, i.e., a progressive, populist economic agenda. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials with this message. (See more below.) [3] [4]

Question 1: There are serious threats to the integrity of our elections because Trump and the Republicans know they won’t win if voting is fair and participation is high. The threat is NOT from voter fraud (as Trump and the Republicans like to claim), which is incredibly rare. The threat is voter suppression: keeping people from being able to register, wrongfully purging them from voting rolls, or keeping them from voting through obstacles to casting their vote, intimidation, or negative campaigning that makes them feel that their vote doesn’t matter.

Most notably, the DOJ has demanded access to at least 40 states’ voter databases. Although the Constitution clearly gives states control over election administration, the DOJ appears to be trying to claim that state voter databases are inaccurate and then to demand that states purge significant numbers of voters. If state officials refuse to purge voters as requested, the DOJ apparently plans to prosecute state officials and/or get court orders to force them to purge voters. The Trump administration has also attempted to usurp states’ constitutional power to administer elections by imposing voter ID requirements and taking control of the choice and certification of voting equipment, among other things.

The bottom line is that the DOJ will continue to make (largely unconstitutional) demands on state (and municipal) election officials. Many of them will resist and the DOJ will take them to court. Hopefully, the courts will uphold the Constitution and the states’ control of elections. Some of these cases may make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a track record of supporting the Trump administration and undermining voting rights. The good news is that the Supreme Court would not have time before the 2026 elections to review all the cases that would occur in the lower courts. Nonetheless, it has done significant damage to voting rights and could do more.

There’s also gerrymandering, which selectively amplifies the influence of some voters and dilutes the influence of others. Through sophisticated analyses of detailed demographic data using powerful computers, Republicans have taken gerrymandering for partisan purposes to a whole new level over the last 15 years. Although past gerrymandering will favor Republicans in the U.S. House races in 2026, the recent, very blatant gerrymandering efforts by Trump and the Republicans have mostly fizzled due to some Republican resistance (e.g., in Indiana) and Democrats responding in-kind to neutralize Republican efforts.

Question 2: There’s an on-going debate among the upper echelons of the Democratic Party about what it needs to do to win elections: should it unequivocally stand up for working Americans and unions, and against wealthy individuals and businesses that support oligarchy? Or continue to hedge its support for working Americans and unions in order to garner big-dollar campaign contributions and support from wealthy special interests?

Recent election results and the reception that economic populism gets in polls (over many years) and in politicians’ speeches make it clear that the affordability of living and the economic inequality in the U.S. are powerful issues that motivate voters, especially working Americans. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez, on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that loudly calls for economic populism, have gotten enthusiastic responses from large crowds – even in very Republican parts of the country. Most recently, New York City Mayor Mamdani is getting powerful, enthusiastic responses to his message of economic populism, i.e., making life affordable for everyday New Yorkers.

If the New York City and other election results aren’t enough to convince the leaders of the Democratic Party that they need to return to the Party’s roots in economic populism, perhaps polling results will convince them. An Economist/YouGov poll released on December 30, 2025, showed that 80% of Americans believe that “political institutions have been captured by the rich and powerful,” 82% believe that “elites are out of touch with the realities of everyday life,” and 74% believe that “leaders who come from ordinary backgrounds better represent people like me.” [5] Furthermore, 65% of Americans are worried about the cost of food and 61% about housing costs. Well over 50% of Americans want Medicare for All and 70% believe corporations pay too little in taxes. [6]

Mamdani, in his inauguration speech, underscored a new politics that the Democratic Party should embrace to generate enthusiasm and support and that led to his victory. It focuses on “freedom to” rather than “freedom from.” For most Americans, government regulation and investment in education, infrastructure, and a safety net provide freedom to live and enjoy life that is not limited by economic insecurity and other obstacles imposed by policies that favor wealthy individuals and their companies (the Democrat’s so-called donor class). However, Republicans (and some Democrats) have for 45 years been calling for shrinking the government’s role, for reducing regulations and taxes, in order to increase Americans’ freedom from constraints. [7] This primarily benefits the wealthy and their businesses.

If Democrats want to win elections, they have to be unequivocal about addressing the affordability crisis, which requires embracing economic populism and progressive remedies including increasing the minimum wage; ensuring affordable food, health care, housing, and child care; stopping monopolistic companies from ripping off consumers and employees; and requiring wealthy individuals and companies to pay their fair share in taxes. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials to give them this message.

[1] Kuttner, R., 12/23/25, “Will we have free and fair elections in 2026?” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/will-we-have-free-fair-elections-2026/)

[2] Atkins Stohr, K., 12/25/25, “Why Trump’s Justice Department is coming for your voter data – and your vote,” The Boston Globe

[3] Sunkara, B., Sept. 2025, “Democrats keep misreading the working class,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/working-class-democrats-mamdani-jeffries-schumer/)

[4] The Nation, Nov. 2025, “People are furious with Democrats. Bernie Sanders knows why.” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-mamdani/)

[5] Cox Richardson, H., 1/2/26, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-2-2026)

[6] Caiazzo,J., 11/13/25, “How Democrats can build a party worth believing in,” The Hill (https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5602181-rebuilding-democratic-party/)

[7] Cox Richardson, H., 1/2/26, see above

WHAT DEMOCRATS NEED TO DO Part 2

Democrats need to be more dramatic, effective, and consistent in opposing Trump, his nominees, and the congressional Republicans’ agenda. They need to step up their resistance while promoting and committing to enact policies that would support everyday Americans.

(Note: If you find this post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Correction. In my previous post asking you to contact your U.S. Representative and ask them to oppose elements of the proposed Republican budget, I wrote that the proposed cuts to Medicaid were “$700 – $800 million.” As many of you know, that should have been $700 – $800 BILLION.)

This previous post made the case that Democrats need to be more dramatic, effective, and consistent in opposing Trump, his nominees, and the congressional Republicans’ agenda. It identified policies that Democrats should be promoting for our economy and the economic well-being of all Americans. This current post focuses on policies in the social services arena, including health care reforms, drug price reductions, enhancements to Medicare, and ensuring long-term funding for Social Security.

Here are some specific policies Democrats ought to be promoting and committing to enact in the social services arena when they are back in power:

Ending wasteful and dangerous privatization of health care. Here are two examples;
- Private equity firms should be banned from the health care industry. The example of Steward Health alone should be enough to seal this case, but there are plenty of other examples as well. (See this previous post for more information.)
- End the Medicare Advantage program, which privatizes Medicare and results in huge, often fraudulent, wasteful costs to the Medicare program. For example, in 2024, illegal overbilling by Medicare Advantage providers (i.e., big insurance corporations) was estimated to be $83 billion. Medicare Advantage is estimated to cost Medicare $140 billion more per year than if all individuals were on traditional Medicare. [1] (See this previous post for more details.)
Strong regulation of drug prices. President Biden took some initial steps to regulate and reduce drug prices, but President Trump is undoing them. In 2022, U.S. drug prices were two and three-quarters times (178% more than) prices in 33 other industrialized countries. This means that our federal, state, and local governments (i.e., taxpayers) and all of us pay over $200 billion a year extra, which fuels exceptionally high profits for drug makers (when compared to other sectors of our economy). [2] (See this previous post for more details.)
Enhance Medicare. If the Medicare Advantage program was eliminated and Medicare was allowed to negotiate prices for all drugs (see the above two bullet points), the savings would be sufficient to pay for the addition of dental, hearing, and vision benefits to Medicare, as well as to cap out-of-pocket spending by Medicare enrollees.
Ensure Social Security funding for the rest of this century. Currently, workers pay taxes into Social Security only on the first $176,100 they earn in a year. This means that someone making a million dollars stops paying into Social Security after February 15 and someone making ten million dollars stops paying into Social Security after the first week of January. Simply eliminating this cap would increase Social Security’s revenue by roughly $100 billion per year. This would provide about 75% of the funding needed to allow Social Security to pay out its full planned benefits for the rest of the century. The rest could be raised by taxing investment income, estates, and gifts or a variety of other strategies. [3]
- NOTE: The Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act in Congress would require taxpayers with over $400,000 in income in a year to pay a bit more into Medicare and Social Security. This would fully fund planned Medicare and Social Security benefits for at least the next 75 years. [4]

There are plenty of other policies that Democrats should be advancing to demonstrate that they would better serve and support workers and everyday Americans than Trump and the Republicans. Examples include housing; early education and child care; supporting workers and their unions; effective regulation of businesses for worker, consumer, and public safety; and strong enforcement of antitrust laws including the breaking up of monopolistic companies.

If any of your members of Congress are Democrats, I urge you to contact them and ask them to step up their resistance while promoting and committing to enact policies that would support everyday Americans. You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

[1] Dayen, D., 1/27/25, “We found the $2 trillion,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trillion-elon-musk-doge/)

[2] Dayen, D., 1/27/25, see above.

[3] Dayen, D., 1/27/25, see above.

[4] Conley, J., 5/9/25, “Democrats’ bill would extend Social Security and Medicare solvency ‘as far as the eye can see’,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-medicare-2671925476)

DEMOCRATS ARE MOBILIZING!

Democrats in Congress are finally stepping up to resist the unprecedented challenges the Trump administration and complicit Republicans are presenting to our democracy and its foundational institutions. They are using outside-the-box tactics to slow progress on Trump nominees and Republican legislation. They are more aggressively and effectively communicating with constituents and the public. Contact your members of Congress to thank them for what they’re doing to resist and ask them to do more.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

The Hands Off! protest rallies across the country on Saturday, 4/5, showed the depth and breadth of the opposition to the Trump administration. Somewhere between 3 and 5 million people participated including in every state and in communities large and small, Republican and Democratic. To those of you who participated or supported the protests, THANK YOU! Many smaller, local protest rallies that hopefully will involve even more people are being planned, possibly for Sat., 4/19. More information will be forthcoming, but please plan to participate and bring a friend so the next protests are even bigger than April 5.

Democrats in Congress are finally stepping up to the unprecedented challenges the Trump administration and complicit Republicans are presenting to our democracy and its foundational institutions. The Democrats are beginning to use outside-the-box tactics, including delaying and obstructing progress on Trump nominees and Republican legislation. Some Democrats are more aggressively and effectively communicating with constituents and the public, including about the incompetence and failures of the Trump administration, as well as its illegal actions.

Thank your members of Congress when they do good things and push them to do more.

Democrats in both the Senate and the House have introduced bills (The Trade Review Act, S.1272 in the Senate) to take back control over tariffs from Trump. Eight Senate Republicans have now joined this fight. Ask your Senators and Representative to co-sponsor and support this bill. Thank them if they already have.

More Senators are putting holds on Trump nominees. (See this previous post for the initial holds.) Senator Schatz (D-HI) is placing holds on over 300 nominees and Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) has announced plans to place holds on all Trump nominees. Holds force the Senate to take votes to override each hold and this slows done the process of approving Trump nominees.

House Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) (the second highest Democratic leader) is working with her colleagues to produce one-minute videos critiquing Trump administration actions on a variety of topics. They’re putting out roughly one per day. As far as I know, they’re only available on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/housedemocrats.bsky.social. (Note: Rep. Clark is awesome! In the interests of full disclosure, she was my State Senator before she was elected to the U.S. House. Unfortunately, I’m one town away from being in her congressional district.)

There are 19 one-minute videos available by various Representatives on topics including the Republican budget (and its health care cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy), the SAVE Act (voter suppression), tariffs, Social Security, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Signalgate, the Department of Education, and protecting the privacy of our personal information.

(Note: I hope you have a Bluesky account and if not, I encourage you to sign up for one at: https://bsky.app/. It’s a partial alternative to Facebook and X. I encourage you to leave both of those platforms if possible or minimize your use of them because of the objectionable policies and politics of them and their owners. Unfortunately, Bluesky doesn’t have a group feature like Facebook and many of my online friends are still only on Facebook, so I still use it, but I minimize my time on it. I’m on Bluesky: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Follow me there if you’re so motivated.)

Individual Democrats in Congress are, of course, also creating videos on important issues. Senator Schiff recently did a 2 ½ minute video calling for an investigation of the likelihood of insider trading in the stock market by Trump cronies in advance of Trump’s announcements on tariffs.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is coordinating Town Hall meetings by members of Congress all over the country, including in Republican districts where the Republican refuses to hold a Town Hall meeting. The list of them is here: https://democrats.org/peoples-town-halls/. Please participate if there’s one in your area.

The DNC recently announced the formation of a “People’s Cabinet.” It will feature subject matter policy experts who will provide facts and better alternatives to the Trump administration’s lies and reckless agenda. [1] However, I don’t see anything on the DNC website about this yet.

Democrats in Congress are holding hearings even when Republicans refuse to cooperate. For example, Representatives Jeffries and Barragan recently held a hearing on the cuts targeting veterans. (The hearing starts two minutes into the YouTube recording and lasts an hour and 14 minutes.) Senator Shaheen (D-NH) convened a hearing on the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). (See this previous post for more detail.)

Democrats and a few Republicans are standing up and pushing back more frequently and vigorously, but they need to do more to resist the Trump administration and most Republicans’ support of it. The resisters need to feel free to use outside-the-box tactics; they need to fight fire with fire.

I encourage you to contact your US Representative and Senators to thank them when they pushback against the inhumane and illegal actions of the Trump administration. Ask them to stand up and resist when the Trump administration is not acting in the best interests of all Americans, is violating the rule of law, and usurping the role of Congress.

You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

[1] Martin, K., 4/4/25, “DNC Chair Ken Martin launches ‘People’s Cabinet’ to fiercely counter Trump administration chaos and lies,” Democratic National Committee (https://democrats.org/news/dnc-chair-ken-martin-launches-peoples-cabinet-to-fiercely-counter-trump-administration-chaos-and-lies/)