David Sirota is editor-at-large at Jacobin. He edits the Lever and previously served as a senior adviser and speechwriter on Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign.
With Justice Breyer’s announced retirement, the moment begs for a jurist with a commitment to prioritizing workers and the environment — and breaking with America’s most powerful lobbying group, the US Chamber of Commerce.
Expanding voting rights without expanding economic rights, as the Democrats are now attempting to do, won’t save American democracy and won’t save the party from collapse.
The filibuster is not about democratic checks or minority rights. The filibuster is about giving corporations veto power over the economy — which is why Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema defend it.
The January 6 Capitol riot was the product of a decades-long attempt to destroy democracy in America — one that Democrats have never made an effort to stop by creating a government that is serious about the public interest.
Democrats are going beyond refusing to give Americans an affirmative reason to vote for them: in sabotaging their own purported agenda around Biden’s Build Back Better bill, they seem to be trying to lose to the authoritarians in the GOP they claim to oppose.
Lawmakers and corporate lobbyists stymied recent proposed legislation to protect employees’ jobs when they flee an unsafe workplace — exactly the kind of protection that could have saved the Amazon workers who died at work during tornadoes over the weekend.
The current conversation about inflation serves corporate interests.
The Democrats are poised to pass a giant, regressive tax giveaway to the wealthy by raising the SALT cap deduction. Bernie Sanders is trying to stop them.
By demanding new tax breaks for the rich, Democrats are helping Republicans portray them as hypocritical elitists just before a midterm election.
The Republican-led Congressional Budget Office is using gimmicks and fuzzy math to “prove” that the richest country on Earth can’t afford a decent welfare state.
America’s real democracy crisis is this: corporations use a system of legalized bribery to buy public policy, which prevents popular progressive policies from passing and erodes Americans’ faith in their government.
Many disasters followed the 2008 financial crisis. But possibly the worst was the mass popular disillusionment that resulted from Barack Obama’s failure to help the victims and punish the wrongdoers — a failure that led to Donald Trump.
The almost complete destruction of Democrats’ agenda in the reconciliation bill suggests that, despite some rhetoric to the contrary, the party is still intent on fulfilling Joe Biden’s promise to donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.”
Companies are using Washington’s tip sheet industry as a key weapon in their corporate media crusade against climate, health care, and anti-poverty legislation.
For the poor and working class, Joe Manchin demands work requirements for child tax credits. Yet for the rich, he’s happy to support — and personally benefit from — work-free income.
It’s time for Democratic leaders to make Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and every other senator vote — and not on some gutted half measure, but on a real $3.5 trillion bill.
Corporate Democrats are trying to prevent the government from securing lower prices for drugs — drugs that were already funded by the US government itself.
Legislation to hold the Purdue Pharma Sackler family accountable is stalled as the Chamber of Commerce begins lobbying on the bill. Congress can’t let the criminals that fueled the opioid crisis get away with murder.
Joe Manchin is threatening to kill the reconciliation bill for promoting an “entitlement mentality,” almost exactly 13 years after he pushed for a Wall Street bailout. It would be nice if bankers ever had to show a little “personal responsibility.”
Democratic representative Josh Gottheimer is the House’s top recipient of private equity cash — and lo and behold, he’s helping Wall Street undermine the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.