ICE, Iran, SCOTUS, the Senate, and Zohran

June actually kind of sucked, but maybe the night really is darkest before the dawn.

So much bad shit happened this past month it’s hard to even list everything. I’d say let’s just start from the beginning, but then I’d probably have to start with the Trump/Elon Twitter beef. The days-long spat that took place at the start of June feels ancient at this point, and it’s legitimately silly when mentioned in the same breath as the rest of June’s atrocities. There is no good place to start because ultimately 99% of the month sucked pretty hard, so let’s just roll out some of the lowlights.

The reconciliation bill, Trump’s Big Bootyhole Bill, that just made its way through the Senate and into the House is probably going to pass. It cannot be overstated how awful this thing is: kicking millions of people off of Medicaid and SNAP, more tax cuts for the wealthy, and an unprecedented level of decimation to the healthcare industry nationwide. I mean, it is Republican as hell. It’s so abominable, in fact, there were even a handful of Republican senators who didn’t want to vote for it because it felt like electoral poison. But of course, they're Republicans at the end of the day, so they voted for it anyways.

Trump’s absolutely insane mismanagement of Israel/Iran only perpetuated geopolitical instability in the region. By bombing Iran (which Pentagon intelligence indicates was basically a complete failure), Trump risked setting off a chain reaction that could have genuinely placed the United States into yet another Iraq War-style quagmire. Israel continues to wield an impossible amount of influence over US foreign policy, and the continued handholding of this rogue state (who is still gunning down Palestinians attempting to receive food aid) as they wreak havoc in the region is becoming progressively harder for even the most staunch pro-Israel politicians to defend.

ICE has gotten completely out of control. It doesn’t take more than a 2-second Google search to find a video of a masked divorced dad shaped like a thumb walking up to a mother or father of a loving family and either harassing, beating, or arresting them. Sometimes all three. The argument that ICE is only going after criminals never held the slightest ounce of truth, but whatever quantum-sized bit of reality that was based in has phased into complete fiction. Upon Stephen Miller’s request to the DHS to increase ICE detentions by tripling daily arrests, ICE has begun arresting people who are walking out of courthouses and actually engaging in the LEGAL process of LEGALLY becoming a RESIDENT/CITIZEN. Much like Israel, even the neutrals are starting to embarrass themselves defending this shit.

The Supreme Court came to several decisions this past Friday that, unsurprisingly, have stark consequences for future generations of American politics. Among the rulings was one that made it so circuit-level courts cannot put forth injunctions that go into effect nationwide. That may or may not be a bad description of what’s happened, but the primary result here is that the executive branch now has an unprecedented amount of power. Where circuit judges used to act as a line of defense for insane policy, like the birthright citizenship executive order that this ruling revolved around in the first place, they now have no real functional bearing on policy put forth at the federal level. This is one of those cases we may look back on, along with the presidential immunity ruling, as one of historic consequence.

But…

While executive power grows, the only silver lining I can grasp onto is the fact that maybe, just maybe, there is a shift in the tides that could one day lead to that power actually falling into the right hands. Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral democratic primary is an indication of what politics may start to look like as the Trump II administration barrels on. While he won’t ever be able to run for President, what he represents still can.

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Right now, Democrats are the most unpopular they’ve ever been in modern times. The base of the party hates Democrats, they hate Chuck Schumer, they hate Hakeem Jeffries, and most importantly, they hate the fact that the so-called “opposition party” has no real intentions to put forth any kind of opposition at all. This reality was only made more clear by the absolute trouncing Momdani’s campaign put on Andrew Cuomo. Momdani won the first round of rank choiced voting tabulation by such a large margin that Cuomo was forced to concede anyways.

The momentum Momdani carries with him is not isolated to New York City. It is a product of a larger, national attitude towards the state of modern politics. I’ve talked about this here before, but Trump’s victory in November was marginal. He won the states he needed to, but he didn’t even manage a majority in the popular vote. He didn’t even pass 50% of the votes. Republicans won the election on the backs of a historically unpopular Biden administration that was a perfect display of the larger Democratic identity crisis happening across the country.

The last 3 presidential election cycles have seen Democrats go out of their way to stomp out any kind of progressive momentum for fear of scaring off moderates. And yet 2 of the last 3 presidential elections were lost to a Trump campaign that displayed no hesitation in cultivating the right's most extreme voting blocs. Momdani’s victory provides yet another piece of proof that progressive values are not a liability, but an asset that allows a Democratic politician to be their authentic self and put forth an honest campaign.

For too long now Democrats have been dishonest charlatans whose lack of authenticity is worn on their sleeves and turns independents away. Despite their best efforts to dampen any sort of progressive momentum across the country, the movement continues to rear its head. This time, it arrives in the most high-profile city in the country.

Now, when I talk about the growing power of the executive branch in relation to Momdani’s victory, I want to clarify that I fully expect the Democratic Party to fuck this up one way or another. There is a difference between realism and optimism, and unfortunately, realism is labeled as such for a reason. Realistically, even if Momdani does become mayor of NYC, and the progressive movement reaches Bernie 2016 levels of hype, establishment Dems will force their will in every election after and give us some lame-ass presidential nominee in 2028 like Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg.

But this was supposed to be the optimistic part of the write-up, so that’s what we’re going to get into. With the amount of power now placed into the hands of the president by the Supreme Court, there is a legitimate opportunity for a hypothetical progressive president to enact sweeping leftist policy right on day one with the absolute power that sits on the desk of the Oval Office. If Republicans are going to act with impunity, then so should Democrats. The inspiration for this article was a tweet by Lolo giving some examples of just what this could look like.

Listen, I’m not a policy expert. I don’t know every facet of what enacting progressive policy might look like, and I know that SCOTUS as a whole is pretty cooked, but I do know that with the current standing of executive powers, a president who is serious about turning America around has an unparalleled ability to do so should they take office.

In the midst of arguably the most politically tumultuous month since March of 2020, the only thing keeping me sane is that if we get there, then just maybe there’s an opportunity to actually make change. Not empty promises like Obama or half measures like Biden, but real change that makes a tangible difference in people’s lives for the better. In doing so, a 60+ Senate majority could become a reality, making it easier to codify anything enacted through executive order.

Momdani’s victory in New York may appear infinitesimal as it’s just a mayoral primary, but the way in which it came about is seismic. Despite being outspent, despite having far less name recognition, despite a completely dilapidated New York democratic apparatus, despie his own party working against him, and despite new levels of fealty and obedience to modern American fascism, Momdani won because of the movement behind him. We may be 3 years out from the presidential race, but midterms are only a little more than a year away, and the New York mayoral election is approaching fast. Momentum is a real thing, and it’s the only thing that’s going to get social democracy into Washington.

Shit’s bleak right now, though; let’s go back to being real for a second. I’m not a “no elections in 2028” kind of guy, but it’s not impossible. It’s not impossible that suppression of oppositional voices continues to escalate, it’s not impossible Trump decides to run again for a 3rd term (assuming he’s still alive), and it’s not impossible America gets roped into more international conflict. At the same time, it’s also not impossible that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. But the only way to get there is by capturing progressive momentum where it exists and maintaining it.

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It’s been awhile since I published something here, and I think the days of only publishing every so often are finally upon me, but I have been busy in the meantime! I co-wrote the first episode of the Austin DSA Batcast which you can find below, and I wrote episode 2 which is currently in production. So subscribe to that! You can also find the video versions on YouTube. Thanks for stickin around!