Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave Nation today.

This week marked 106 years since the 19th Amendment was ratified. It took seventy-two years of organizing to get there, and the women who did it never got to vote under it. They knocked doors, they marched, they went to jail, and they handed it off to the next generation unfinished. I think about that a lot right now, because we are seventy-four days out and there are people in power working very hard to make the vote harder to cast and easier to throw away.

So here’s the week.

$850,000 beat $16 million.

State Representative Angie Nixon won the Florida Democratic Senate primary. The press wants to turn this into another round of the left versus center argument, but that is not the interesting part.

The interesting part is the money. Nixon had somewhere in the neighborhood of $850,000. Her opponent had roughly $16 million and the institutional support that comes with it. She could not afford television. So she did what a former union organizer knows how to do. She knocked doors, she made calls, she worked social media and alternative media hard, and she met voters where they actually are.

In the old days, and honestly most days now, sixteen to one in money buys you something close to sixteen to one in votes. Not this time. Remember Wisconsin, when Elon opened the fire hose in the Supreme Court race and our candidate won in a landslide. There is a point at which money stops mattering and the ground game is the whole thing. That is our people power and nobody can buy it from us.

If you have been out on doors this summer wondering whether it moves anything, that’s your answer.

Everybody feels it at the register.

Cost of living is the number one issue in this election. Not just for Democrats but for everyone. Ninety-five percent of the country says we are in an affordability crisis, and nearly eight in ten Americans say Trump is not focused enough on lowering prices. That includes a majority of his own voters.

The average household is spending more than $3,500 extra since Trump took office. Call that what it is. It’s a tax. He ran on lowering prices and instead he raised them, and building costs have gotten worse, which makes the housing shortage worse, which makes rent worse.

Then there are the jobs numbers. The economy lost 23,000 jobs in July. Here’s the part that usually gets left out. Just to stay flat, just to keep up with population growth and not lose ground, this economy has to add about 130,000 jobs a month. So a loss of 23,000 isn’t a small miss, it’s roughly 150,000 jobs short of standing still. And these are the numbers coming out of a White House that fires the people who deliver bad news.

Democrats hold a nine point advantage on the economy and a twenty point advantage among the most motivated voters. So when you’re talking to your neighbors, this is the conversation. You will get a lot of nodding heads, because they are already living it.

The grift is the whole point.

If you have ever tried to figure out what actually motivates Trump, stop looking for a strategy. It’s the money. It’s the grift.

Wednesday he met with crypto CEOs and executives from prediction markets. Last week the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, got preliminary conditional approval to launch a bank. Read that again. The family that profits from crypto transactions is getting the government’s blessing to run the bank the transactions move through.

You don’t have to dig for this. It’s happening in the open, and the country sees it. A majority of Americans now believe Trump and his family have inappropriately profited from crypto, and half of Republicans believe he lets his business interests drive his decisions.

He is not working for you. He has never worked for you. It’s the problem with handing the biggest job in the world to the smallest man in the world.

Zero for twenty-two.

Here’s the thing they really don’t want you to know. Since a Nevada court rejected his demand for that state’s private voter roll data, Trump has now lost twenty-two straight cases.

We have to keep saying this out loud, because the myth of inevitability is the product they’re selling. Despair is their goal. Action is our antidote. He is not winning. He is losing in court at a historic rate, and he’s losing at the ballot box too.

What We Can Do This Week

Indivisible just launched Hands Off Our Vote, a voter protection campaign to make sure every eligible voter can cast a ballot and every ballot gets counted. They held their first organizing call this week and the recording will be up. Given what we are watching the republicans try to pull, this is about as concrete as it gets. Go to indivisible.org and sign up.

Reasons for Hope

Nate Silver has Troy Jackson at a 69 percent chance of taking the Senate seat in Maine, with Susan Collins at 31. Now, I have to say the thing I always say. Don’t believe him, and don’t believe the polls. Take a deep breath, enjoy it for a second, then go right back to work, because the only things that actually move a race are the voters you register, the doors you knock, the calls you make, and the texts you send. Take that momentum and turn it into something real. You can support our work to win the Senate seat in Maine right here.

And my bigger reason for hope is what I saw in a living room in Pasadena.

A Pasadena Living Room and the GOAT

On Sunday we held a Blue Wave fundraiser at Bradley Whitford and Amy Landecker’s beautiful home in Pasadena. Representative George Whitesides was there. Representative Derek Tran was there. And Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was there, in stiletto heels, still the most formidable person in any room she walks into.

What got me was the energy in that room, donors and grassroots volunteers standing shoulder to shoulder, everybody in it for the same reason. I walk out of those rooms every time feeling like we have the wind at our backs.

Nancy said two things I have not stopped thinking about. The first: we don’t agonize, we organize. The second: we need three seats, and I want thirty.

Thirty. Not a tenuous one seat majority we spend two years defending, but a real one, the kind that lets us actually govern and that carries us into 2028. That is the right way to think about this. We can’t squeak by. We have to win by a lot.

Seventy-four days. Every single one of them counts.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave Nation today.

I’m writing this one from Washington, D.C., from my old childhood bedroom that became my dad’s office and is now, this week, my podcast studio. His pictures from his Johnson days are still on the wall. Wednesday would have been his 95th birthday. Happy birthday, Dad. I miss you, and I’m glad you’re not here to see what D.C. has become right now.

Short one this week. Here’s what matters.

Polls don’t vote.

Tuesday was a good night. Peggy Flanagan won the Democratic (called DFL in Minnesota) Senate primary by about 20 points! If she wins in November, she’d be the first Native American woman in the Senate. How beautiful is that?

But the story I want you to sit with is Wisconsin. The final Marquette poll had Francesca Hong up by 22 points in the Democratic primary for governor. David Crowley won it by about half a point. That’s a swing of more than twenty points between what the polling said and what actually happened.

And honestly? I kind of like that people saw that. Because we are going to spend the next eighty-some days looking at polls showing us up fifteen points in races all over this country, and I don’t want anybody getting comfortable. We have a lot of work to do. And we can’t squeak by by half a point. It can’t be 50 plus one. The Republicans are doing everything they can to question the legitimacy of these elections, and a close margin gives them opportunities to scream more false claims of fraud. This has to be a blowout, folks.

I’m not a big fan of most polls in general. There are good ones and there are good pollsters, but our job right now is to drown out that noise and get to work!

The turnout is real, and it’s ours.

Whether you were for Peggy Flanagan or not, look at this: Minnesota broke its all-time primary turnout record on Tuesday. More than 1.1 million ballots cast making it the first time the state has ever cleared a million in a primary. The old record was about 925,000, set in 2018.

2018 was (obviously) a very similar year to this one. And the excitement we’re building is already surpassing it. We’re seeing it primary after primary. Democratic turnout is breaking records. Thank you. Keep it up. It is working.

A world historic coward.

By now you’ve read the reporting: leaving the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump was snuck off Air Force One in a catering truck and put on a different military plane, while the old 747 took off as a decoy with his staff and the traveling press corps still on board. They were told to close their window shades. They did not know.

Presidents have made covert exits from dangerous places before. Nobody has ever put other people in the seat they were afraid to sit in. He didn’t have to do that. And contrast it with Biden taking a train into Kyiv while Ukraine was under attack. Contrast it with Zelenskyy being offered a way out when Russia was sending death squads for him, and saying no thank you, I’m staying with my country.

If you work for Trump, you already know he throws people under the bus. But think about what he did leaving you on that plane, and ask yourself whether this is the path you want to keep going down. It ends badly for everyone in his orbit.

“Stranger things have happened.”

Here’s the thing that got swallowed up in that news cycle, and I don’t want it to go missed.

On Monday, Real America’s Voice host Wayne Allyn Root suggested to Trump that he declare a national security emergency to federalize the elections and get the SAVE Act’s voting restrictions without needing Congress. Trump’s answer: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.”

That’s what he said. Take him at his word that he will do anything he can to stay in power. He is also, right now, a few miles from where I’m sitting, building a six-story bunker under the White House.

Some of these threats are vague and may never become real. When he has tried, courts and states and massive peaceful protests have knocked it down. But we have to be ready, and as I said before, we need to make the midterms an undeniable blowout.

What We Can Do This Week

Go to Mobilize.us. Engage with the campaigns near you. Register every voter you can reach, every Democrat and independent, and get them out to vote. Find the actions and the protests near you. Pick one thing and sign up before you close this email.

And take care of yourself. I know it’s August, kids are heading back to school, everyone’s stretched. Do what you can. We always say this is a marathon but with just over 80 days to go, we’re getting to the sprint portion now, where you run strong through the tape.

Reasons for Hope

Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House at the end of the month.

Look, I’m not going to pretend this is a reason for hope exactly. Whoever replaces her is going to be awful. They’re going to be combative, they’re going to spew lies, they’re going to make us want to pull our hair out. There has never been a press secretary out of the Trump regime I haven’t hated. So this is less a reason for hope than a reason for celebration, and I’m going to enjoy it anyway.

It did get me reminiscing about Sean Spicer, though. A job where the entire assignment is how unflappable can you be, and he was so crazy flappable. One question in and his voice would climb into that high register. “Biggest crowd in the history of inaugurations, ever!” And then he hid in a shrub. That Halloween people dressed up as Sean Spicer hiding in a bush.

If Trump has given us anything, it’s some spectacularly bad press secretaries.

Just over eighty days. Every single day matters.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave Nation today.

Tuesday night gave us a lot to chew on, and it gave the pundits even more. They are going to be punditing all over the Democratic Party this week about what Michigan means, who the party belongs to, and whether any of us are electable. I want to give you a different read, because I think the actual story is simpler and better than the one you’re going to hear on cable.

Michigan said yes to a fighter

Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan by about a point. It was a squeaker, and it came after a money fire hose was opened up on that race. Roughly $60 million in outside spending flooded the primary, including more than $30 million from AIPAC’s super PAC alone. That’s the most that group has ever put into a single race. He won anyway.

To be clear, El-Sayed doesn’t call himself a democratic socialist. He’s a Democrat who was endorsed early by Bernie Sanders and who ran on Medicare for All. That is a position most Americans hold and most wealthy countries already have. And the Republican response has already arrived: they’re throwing around “communist,” because they have nothing else.

The polls, by the way, had him up nine, up thirteen, running away with it. He won by about a point. Don’t trust polls. Some pollsters are good and some numbers are useful, but it isn’t a substitute for showing up. Do the work.

The electability trap

Every cycle we have the electability conversation, and it’s worth noticing who it lands on. It’s almost never a straight white man whose electability we’re worried about. It’s women, people of color, LGBTQ+ candidates, Jewish candidates. I remember everyone saying about Senator Warren, I’d love for her to be president, but I’m not sure she can get elected. She can get elected if you vote for her. That’s what electability is.

I’m not trying to flatten a real strategic question. Independents matter, crossover voters matter. But the bigger opportunity isn’t the one or two Republicans who were never going to flip anyway. It’s the rising, diverse electorate that will rebuild this country out of the wreckage Trump and the Republicans are leaving behind. Young people. People of color. The people who sat out the presidential election because they didn’t feel our party was speaking to them.

Michigan now has two senators worth studying. Elissa Slotkin is more centrist than I am, and she is out there fighting, refusing to wait for things to cool down, refusing to bank political capital for later. El-Sayed is more progressive and is the same kind of fighter. The through line is the fight, not the ideological box.

No new leaders without new voters

One of the images that stuck with me this year was the New York City voter registration curve heading into the Mamdani election. It went straight up.

We say no new leaders without new voters, and it runs the other way too. No new voters without new leaders. When someone like El-Sayed or Mamdani or Wes Moore or James Talarico or Jon Ossoff is out there saying plainly what they stand for, participation follows. Michigan proved it on Tuesday: about 1.5 million Democrats voted in the gubernatorial primary against roughly 930,000 Republicans, a gap of more than half a million votes, and the highest primary turnout the state has seen in a non-presidential year.

The same night, Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence won the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 7th, the Lansing seat, with 43% in a three-way race against a former ambassador and a former Navy SEAL. Cook rates that district a pure toss-up. When young people see their own generation running and winning, that does something no amount of messaging can do.

California put its name on the billionaire tax

I was in San Diego last weekend for our executive board meeting, and the biggest fight of the weekend was Prop 40, the one-time 5% tax on California’s roughly 200 billionaires, with the revenue going overwhelmingly to health care that this regime has ripped away, plus a share to backfill food assistance.

The debate was fierce and the room was split close to down the middle. The measure isn’t perfect. The mechanism needs work, and it will almost certainly get challenged in court. But imagine being the party that has been talking about making billionaires pay their share for a decade and then declining to endorse the billionaire tax because the drafting wasn’t tidy enough. The California Democratic Party endorsed it. That’s what fighting looks like, and I’m grateful to everyone who pushed it over the line.

Income inequality is now one of the most motivating issues in American politics, and for good reason. We have reached the kind of wealth concentration that historically shows up right before things break. We have the world’s first trillionaire whose wealth alone could cover health care and child care but instead he’s sending millions to the Trump regime’s candidates all over the country, and he spent last week losing his shit because Helen of Troy was Black in The Odyssey…

Trump is underwater and sinking

Reuters/Ipsos polled more than 4,500 Americans July 29 through August 3. On cost of living, 23% approve of how Trump is handling it and 70% disapprove. Overall, 51% of the country disapproves of him strongly, and his total approval sits at 35%. Quinnipiac put him at 32% last week, the worst number of either of his terms. Voters name cost of living as the top factor in their midterm vote, well ahead of immigration, which was supposed to be the Republicans’ signature issue.

He keeps setting records, just not the good ones. He keeps winning at losing. He stinks, literally and figuratively, and he is crapping his pants right into the midterms.

What We Can Do This Week

Volunteer. Almost every campaign and organization posts through Mobilize.us. Pick a race, pick a shift, and get on the calendar for the fall.

Call your senators about Todd Blanche. His nomination got out of the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote after some weak-ass concessions from the usual sycophants, but it isn’t over. The full Senate still has to vote. Call and tell your senators to block him.

While you have them on the phone, tell them to keep blocking the SAVE Act. Every version, every vehicle, every time. If it comes up alone, oppose it. If they staple it to an insider trading bill, oppose it. Wherever they try to stick it, vote it down.

Reasons for Hope

Here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough about the Republican redistricting war: Republicans nominally won the seat count, but most of those red states had already gerrymandered themselves so aggressively that the new maps barely moved anything. Some of the Texas seats they redrew are still winnable for us. Our states were mostly working from independent or commission-drawn maps, which means our responses actually changed the math. We are not simply handing them the country.

Mostly, though, my reason for hope this week is the people winning. Candidates who say plainly what they’re for and who take on organized money and beat it. That gives me hope about November, and it gives me more hope about what we get to build afterward.

We have the conditions to win. Trump is historically underwater, the Republican brand is in the toilet, and the cost of living is crushing people. We had those conditions in 2018 too. What we need alongside them is something to aspire to, and Tuesday showed we’re building it.

The pundits will want to make this Democrats in disarray. Tell your friends and neighbors the truth instead: we’re coming together, the DSCC and the DCCC are already behind Tuesday’s winners, and we are single-minded about taking back the majority. The power of the many is greater than the power of the money.

And treat a stranger with reverence, because any stranger could be a god in disguise. That one’s from Zeus.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave Nation today.

We are 94 days out. Thirteen weekends. The field is getting clearer as primaries enter the final stretch around the country, and the wind is at our backs, but we are also being met with Trump’s massive voter disenfranchisement campaign, so we can’t get comfy for a second.

This week: where’s Mitch, some real trouble at the DNC, what the SAVE Act would actually do to your registration, and how you can help us win the House and the Senate.

Where’s Mitch?

Mitch McConnell was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, the people of Kentucky have gotten a couple of hospital photos and a statement from his office saying he isn’t yet medically cleared to leave a rehab facility. No votes. No official activity. As of Governor Beshear’s letter this week, that’s 43 days of nothing.

You know how easy it is to take a video in 2026? Say some words, Mitch. Three or four sentences, minimum. Because a sitting U.S. senator ought to be able to say three or four sentences.

Beshear has now told him publicly to either explain his absence or resign, which is a start. Our friend Jess Craven has said the governor should just call an election and let them sue him. If they sue, they have to present evidence that he’s alive. There’s a real legal fight underneath this about a 2024 Kentucky law that strips the governor’s appointment power, and there’s an August 3 deadline hanging over the whole thing. There are only 100 people in this country who get to be a senator. We need one in that spot.

The DNC is broke, and the grassroots are going to have to carry more

The reporting is real: the DNC is carrying roughly $18 million in debt against about $16 million cash on hand, it took out a $15 million loan using its own headquarters as collateral, and the RNC is sitting on around $129 million with no debt at all. There’s been a steady drip of leaks about management and morale, and Ken Martin is under real fire.

The party’s answer is that they spent the money early on organizing in the states year-round instead of the last six weeks. That’s not nothing. Early organizing is exactly what wins, and it’s what the best state parties have been preaching for years. I don’t think it explains all of it.

Here’s the part that matters most for us. Because of a recent SCOTUS ruling, national committees can now get the same ad rates as candidates, and candidates get ad rates roughly ten times better than a super PAC pays for the same spot. That’s a structural advantage, and right now we don’t have it. The DNC is also saying it doesn’t have money to send to the DCCC or the DSCC. So the job falls to us: fund the candidates directly, and fund the grassroots organizations doing the work on the ground 365 days a year.

What the SAVE Act would actually do

This week on the Practivist Pod I sat down with Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of Fair Elections Center, a national nonpartisan voting rights organization that defends and expands voting rights on college campuses, in courtrooms, and in the halls of power.

Start here: the SAVE Act is not a voter ID law. As Rebekah put it, if it were simply a voter ID law, the states that already have voter ID wouldn’t need a federal SAVE Act. In fact, by her read, the only state in the union that would currently comply with what’s written in the bill is Ohio and there are a lot more states than Ohio with voter ID on the books.

The bill does two things people don’t understand. First, it puts local election officials on the hook for criminal and civil penalties if they don’t collect every single document the bill enumerates, even when the person in front of them is eligible and is being properly registered. Miss a few questions, go to prison. Second, and this is where the disenfranchisement really kicks in, it requires documentary proof of citizenship, which is a completely different requirement than showing an ID.

Rebekah told me a family story that lands this better than any statistic. Her family name is Carruthers, two R’s. When her paternal grandfather moved north from Oklahoma to Nebraska and registered with the Civil Service, the government dropped one of the R’s. So his birth certificate says C-A-R-R and his government paperwork says C-A-R. Under the SAVE Act, a mismatch like that is disqualifying until you can fight your way through proving it. But there was never any confusion over that extra R when it came time to collect his taxes.

Tens of millions of Americans can’t put their hands on their birth certificate. About half of us don’t have a passport, and a passport is expensive - that’s a straight-up poll tax. And millions of married women’s current name doesn’t match the one on their birth certificate.

People are used to showing ID to buy alcohol or to drive. As Rebekah said: we like alcohol and we like driving, but neither one is a constitutional right.

The polling on this is strong for us. When people learn what’s actually in the bill, support collapses. Which is why the voter education piece is so crucial, and why Republicans are trying every sneaky move they can. The House has now jammed the SAVE Act into a national security appropriations bill and into a congressional stock trading ban, so that voting down the poison means voting down the popular thing wrapped around it. Trump is demanding the Senate cancel its August recess until it passes, and has re-upped his attack on mail-in voting, which was perfectly fine back when it favored Republicans.

Meanwhile Trump gutted the Election Assistance Commission. He fired the commissioners in July and left the agency without a quorum, unable to act, right before a federal election. Then Tom Homan started musing about DHS stepping in to make sure states are doing it right. Get rid of the referees, send in your own guys. Federal law enforcement at polling places is illegal, but this is a regime willing to do things outside the law, and the answer is not to wait and see. Start planning now.

Here are your instructions:

Double-check your voter registration right now, and know your state’s registration deadline, because in a lot of states you cannot cure a registration problem after it passes. Then vote as soon as your jurisdiction lets you - early in person, or by mail, the first day it’s available. Don’t wait, don’t delay. If you hit a problem with your ballot, time is the only thing that lets you fix it.

Go to fairelectionscenter.org. They have guides on how to exercise your right to vote for all 50 states plus D.C.

Trump is weak and he is losing

We say it every week, and it keeps getting truer. He looks increasingly pathetic and desperate, and you can see it in everything he does. His on-again, off-again war of choice with Iran. Affordability, which is terrible, and which is a big part of why every organization on our side is struggling to raise money right now. Everyone’s broke and they are rightfully blaming Trump and the Republicans. And the big, ugly, bullshit bill, whose health care provisions have already started affecting premiums and closing rural hospitals with the worst of it set to go in effect after the midterms. And now he wants to make prescription drugs more expensive for our seniors. All of it is asinine, and everyone hates it.

A new Emerson College survey of likely 2026 voters has Democrats up 11 on the generic ballot, 53 to 42. The advantage that produced the 2018 blue wave was around eight. That’s a big number and we still have three months of Trump left to work with.

Go into this with optimism and enthusiasm and hope. Also don’t take a single thing for granted, because polls only come true when we show up. These races are within the margin of effort.

What We Can Do This Week

Check your registration, then make your plan to vote. Not in October. Today. Confirm your registration, find your state’s deadline, and vote the first day your jurisdiction allows. Send fairelectionscenter.org to five people who will actually open it.

Donate, and make it recurring if you can. This isn’t the annoying “the sky is falling” text. Donations are down across our entire ecosystem and we are at a real structural disadvantage. You can give to Blue Wave Nation, which is funding our California congressional races and now Arizona’s first and sixth districts, plus Senate races in North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, and Alaska.

Sign up to volunteer. Thirteen weekends. Your time, your talent, and your treasure. This is your time to shine!

Reasons for Hope

Troy Jackson is officially our nominee in Maine. We knew it was coming, but it gives me hope that it got resolved this fast, with a strong progressive candidate, against Susan Collins. The math doesn’t add up to taking back the Senate without that seat, which is exactly why Blue Wave is adding it to our work. I’m grateful to the Maine Democratic Party, their chair, and all the delegates for a smooth process and real consensus, because we don’t have a lot of time.

Democracy is a use-it-or-lose-it situation. We have to expand the electorate. The way we inoculate ourselves against every lie about voter fraud is to make the win overwhelming. Organizing, volunteering, donating. That’s the formula, and winning elections is the only way we push forward.

Rebekah put it better than I could: your right to vote determines whether you’re a full citizen in this country. So exercise your full citizenship. Vote for the present and the future you deserve, because the status quo isn’t working for any of us.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Sunday marks 100 days until the midterms. A hundred chances to do something. A hundred (metaphorical) blows to strike against the fascists. Let’s get into it.

Trump is a big, whiny loser, and even Spain’s soccer team knows it

Trump could not let the World Cup end without embarrassing himself. Spain beat Argentina, and he bumbled around the stage gripping that trophy with both hands, refusing to let go, hanging out at the corner of the shot like a creepy uncle nobody invited. Spain and FIFA both had to crop him out of their own celebration photos. The White House’s response was to Photoshop him back in. He’s a bottomless black hole of a need for attention. Someone set that whole clip to Radiohead’s “Creep,” and it is perfect. It might sound flippant to lead with this, but it matters: fascists hate being laughed at. Authoritarians hate it when you call out the stupid shit they do. So keep calling it out. It gets under his skin.

His big election security speech was nothing

Last week, Trump gave a 26-minute primetime address on “election security.” It was just another episode of the president’s lie parade with a bunch of claims incoherently strung together. He said China stole our (publicly available) voter data... He blamed China and Iran and, strangely, never mentioned Russia. He then released declassified documents meant to make his case, and those documents actually confirm Russia worked to help him and hurt Biden. Terrifyingly inept. The entire 26 minutes boiled down to one line at the end: so vote for the SAVE Act. That’s it. Nobody needs to think about that speech again.

But don’t sleep on the reason he gave it. The SAVE Act isn’t just a voter ID bill, it’s a voter disenfranchisement bill with a poll tax attached. If you got married and changed your name, good luck finding your original birth certificate before they kick you off the rolls. It passed the House. In the Senate it needs 60 votes, and as of now, it doesn’t have the votes. Keep calling your senators anyway and telling them to vote no, because the regime keeps trying to sneak pieces of it into other bills. Case in point:

The “Stop Insider Trading Act” is another MAGA con

This week the House passed something called the Stop Insider Trading Act. It does basically nothing to stop insider trading. It leaves a carve-out for members of Congress to keep trading and for Trump to keep making money off his office, and it sneaks in some of the worst parts of the SAVE Act. If this is their best move, rename voter suppression and hope nobody notices, that’s pathetic. They’re a confederacy of dunces. It needs 60 votes in the Senate. It doesn’t have them. We see what they’re doing, and we’re not going to shut up about it.

We’ve got to block Blanche

Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal lawyer turned Attorney General nominee, sat for his Senate confirmation hearing after burying the Epstein files, and Epstein survivors gave real, powerful testimony against him. This one is shaky. It is not a done deal. Call your senators and tell them not to confirm him.

Where the Senate actually stands

Republicans are down to 51 senators. Lindsey Graham died, and his sister was sworn in to serve out his term while Mitch McConnell remains... in purgatory? Point is: the margins in that chamber are thinner than they look, which is exactly why the SAVE Act and Blanche’s confirmation are not guaranteed wins for them. Every call matters right now.

Maine: Meet Troy Jackson

Troy Jackson becomes our official Senate candidate in Maine this Saturday, and he is a great one. He’s a fifth-generation logger and was president of the Maine Senate for years. He locked up basically every labor endorsement in the state almost overnight. He’s in the mold of Bernie Sanders, ideologically close to Graham Platner in the ways that matter, and he’s already said he would not vote for Chuck Schumer to lead Senate Democrats. He’s reading the room. He knows we need a fighter right now more than anything else. And he can hit the ground running on day one.

Susan Collins is the only Senate Republican running for reelection this year in a state Trump lost. A new poll already has Jackson ahead of her by three. We cannot win back the Senate without this seat. The math just isn’t there otherwise. The path is Maine with Troy Jackson, North Carolina with Roy Cooper, Ohio with Sherrod Brown, and Alaska with Mary Peltola. A year ago that felt like a stretch. Now it’s real. That’s why Blue Wave is stepping up to get involved in these races.

100 days, and the enthusiasm is on our side

Democrats have expanded our advantage among enthusiastic voters heading into November, and for the first time in a while, likely voters are actually leaning more Democratic than Republican. That matters because Republicans have historically been better at showing up to vote than we are. It’s not a great part of our brand, honestly. We’re a big, messy family. We complain, we argue with each other, we run purity tests on each other. But it’s our crazy family, and right now the numbers say we’re doing something right.

This Saturday: Justice for Lorenzo and Johan

Saturday, July 25 is a National Day of Action, with vigils happening around the country for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Guerrero, both killed by ICE. Here’s a link to find one near you or start your own.

Reasons for hope

Citizens Bank just cut ties with CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two biggest private ICE detention contractors, after months of pressure from grassroots organizers who started this fight in Maine and built toolkits that spread nationwide. They’re motivated by one thing: money. When we hit that, they reverse course. Pushback works. It keeps working.

What we can do this week

Call your senators and tell them to vote no on Todd Blanche for Attorney General. Call again and tell them to reject SAVE Act provisions wherever they show up, including inside the Stop Insider Trading Act. And now is the time to help support these crucial campaigns! You can help us expand our map and win back the senate by contributing here.

We’ve got the wind at our back. Trump knows it, which is why he’s acting like a desperate, pathetic loser. We’ve got 100 days and 100 chances to do something. We need to use every day we have left to win this by a landslide!

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

A new wave of ICE atrocities on our streets. Todd Blanche sitting in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee trying to become Attorney General while also trying not to get disbarred in New York.. The passing of Lindsey Graham and whatever is going on with Mitch McConnell, and what that does to the Senate map. And explosive diarrhea…

Say His Name

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. Twenty-six years old, a Colombian dad, work authorization, a Social Security number, two jobs, a three-year-old daughter. He was driving through his own Biddeford neighborhood a little after seven in the morning on Monday when ICE shot him dead. He wasn’t even the guy they were going after.

It boggles the soul, what they’re doing. They’re not coming out in the big massive droves anymore, trying to lay siege to cities the way they did at first. They’re doing it a little bit less loudly now. But the arrests have ramped up, and ICE continues to act with impunity. None of the agents in Biddeford had body cameras on. Of course.

I know they want us to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scope of it. That’s the point. When they’re nameless, when it’s just a number of people who died, when the general public doesn’t get to see their stories and their faces, we become numb to it. So we hold up Johan’s story and his family, because that’s what cuts through the noise. A young father with a little girl at home is going to cut through.

And it’s important to note that Susan Collins cast the deciding vote for that funding, with no restrictions on ICE agents. $70 billion over three years, no body camera mandate, no warrant requirement, none of it. She got $20 million to buy cameras that nobody is required to wear, and then when a man got killed in her own state by agents who weren’t wearing them, she blamed Democrats for the delay. Asked this week if she regretted it, she wouldn’t say. Craven political person that she is, I’m sure she was more upset that his death shines a light on her egregious and failed policies than about the actual tragedy of it.

Mainers answered her. Within hours the protesters marched to her office chanting “Vote Her Out!” On July 25, Maine delegates meet in Bangor to pick the Democrat who takes her on, two days ahead of the state deadline. Our job is to love that person with all our heart, whoever it is. I already do! The ire I have for Susan Collins can overcome (just about) anything.

How’s Your Tummy?

I ask sincerely. We’ve got a big outbreak with nearly 7,000 cases of explosive diarrhea nationwide in more than 30 states. Last year the CDC had to scale back the system it uses to monitor foodborne illness because of the DOGE cuts. So in another completely unrelated and unforeseeable event… we now have explosive diarrhea overtaking the country.

Trump doesn’t care, because he wears a diaper. He’s ready for it no matter what. He’s just trying to make Depends great again for everybody. I’m guessing before he made the cuts to the CDC he bought a lot of stock in Depends. So thanks for giving the entire country diarrhea, if we didn’t already have it from reading the news.

The Big Lie, Primetime Edition

Last night Trump took 25 minutes of network airtime to lie to the country that its elections are rigged and can be stolen. He waved around declassified documents. He did not produce a single fraudulent vote. Same six-year-old grievance. And when his own press secretary was asked whether he’d accept the results in November, she wouldn’t answer.

This isn’t about 2020. It’s an excuse he’s pre-loading for a midterm he expects to lose, and it comes attached to a legislative demand that is plain and simple voter suppression. He’s already said out loud that if Republicans lose the House, the investigations start.

So what does this all mean for us? We’ll go register more people. We will out-organize republicans now and every day until election day. We can’t win by a little, it has to be a blow out! The answer to “the election is fake” is a margin nobody can argue with.

A Senate Map In Flux

Lindsey Graham died on July 11 and Mitch McConnell is… undead? (Is this a Weekend at Bernie’s situation?) Whatever the case may be you’d be hard pressed to find two people more responsible for Trump’s rise to power than Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. This has sent Republicans scrambling and shifted the Senate outlook (a bit). So I want to talk about strategy in investment.

In South Carolina, Annie Andrews is a strong candidate, and she just came in near the top of Senate fundraising, because people hated Lindsey Graham that much… This reminds me of Amy McGrath and Jamie Harrison — huge hauls, everybody gets excited, all that money spent to unseat a villain who deserved unseating, and the seat doesn’t move. Andrews has already raised what she needs to be competitive. If you’ve got deep, deep pockets and you want to put more there, go right ahead.

If like me you don’t have deep pockets, focus on the priority spots: Maine, Ohio, Alaska, North Carolina. Flip those. Hold Georgia and Michigan. Sherrod Brown has a tough but winnable seat in Ohio and his fundraising hasn’t been at the top. Mary Peltola in Alaska matters. Texas is within reach, and our polls have Talarico in a dead heat or up a couple of points, though he’s had such a huge haul that he isn’t the first place I’d send a check.

Do your own research. Be careful and strategic about where you invest your time, treasure, and talents. That’s what Blue Wave is built to do!

What We Can Do This Week

1. Good Trouble Lives On. The weekend of action is happening right now, the 17th through the 19th. Go to GoodTroubleLivesOn.org to find an event near you or to start one up. It’s a solemn and sad time in the wake of these new ICE deaths. Get out in the street anyway and hold a light on it.

2. We’re Expanding the Map! Blue Wave will release our revised campaign plan soon but they will include expanded House seats and Senate seats like Maine and Ohio! Donate Now to help us expand our impact!

Reasons for Hope

ICE has been ordered to stop non-urgent vehicle stops. However temporary that turns out to be, however they actually do it, here’s why it’s my reason for hope: it happened because of us.

I don’t want to sound cynical, but it’s not because these people were killed and ICE looked at that and said, oh geez, our tactics are proving deadly, we’d better reevaluate. If we weren’t shedding light on it they’d keep doing it. They’d only ramp it up. They don’t give a shit about these people. They don’t care about this father, or about his wife screaming in primal pain in the street. What they care about is that people showed up. People filmed. People intervened in every single altercation. People went to the trainings. They already had to back down from the big theatrical invasions of our cities. Now they’ve had to back down from chasing people in cars. It’s a mixture of anger and deep sadness and also hope, because we are standing up and we are making a difference. Pushback works. It’s the only thing we’ve seen work consistently.

And Trump keeps getting knocked down. This week a federal judge shut down his whole attempt to take $1.8 billion of our money and turn it into a slush fund for his allies, along with the piece that would have shielded him and his family from ever being audited again. In voiding it she sanctioned his lawyer, referred him to the bar, and flagged the order to the bar where Blanche is already facing discipline. Under oath at his own confirmation hearing, Blanche had to call the fund dead.

We’re Expanding the Map

Blue Wave is expanding our map of races!

We’re in uncharted waters. We don’t know how far this blue wave can take us, and we may be able to win in places we couldn’t have imagined a year ago. It would be a failure of vision not to try. So we’re widening our aim, and we’ll have the details of the new slate for you shortly!

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

We are living through the 250th birthday of the United States, and I won’t pretend the feeling is simple. It’s bittersweet. We’re in the middle of a fight for the soul of this country, and a lot of us don’t know quite how to hold the flag this year, whether to fly it, fly it upside down, or take it back and wave it harder than ever. However you’re feeling this weekend, hold onto this: we are still here, the country is still ours to fight for, and the people trying to break it are a lot weaker than they want you to believe.

A Birthday Party They Couldn’t Fill

Look at the National Mall. The Trump regime’s “Great American State Fair” is a sixteen-day, World’s-Fair-scale spectacle meant to crown Trump’s version of America, and it has been playing to embarrassingly thin crowds. Musical acts booked for the lineup pulled out en masse once they understood the event was a political production. On the first full operating day, the food hall lost power and the entire ice cream supply melted into soup. Trump reportedly saw an aerial photo of the sparse turnout and was, by every account, livid, deleting and demanding others delete the posts that showed the empty lawn.

There was one image of a band mid-performance on that stage, and in the reflection of the guitarist’s sunglasses, all twelve people. As a musician, I feel for those performers; I’ve played to empty rooms and had to rally through it. But crowd size has been Trump’s obsession since day one, and for years he got away with lying about it. Not anymore. The gaslighting is failing, and you can measure the failure in his approval numbers, which keep sliding week after week. Americans are not fooled, and frankly they’re too busy trying to pay for their Fourth of July groceries to give a shit about the crowds at Trump’s algae infested National Mall.

I’ll be spending the weekend walking in our neighborhood parade, celebrating an America we have never fully realized but still believe in. That promise is worth defending precisely because it isn’t finished.

The Court’s Term Ended And Twice Held the Line

The Supreme Court closed out its term this week, and the news was genuinely good in two places that mattered enormously.

First, birthright citizenship stands. In Trump v. Barbara, the Court struck down Trump’s executive order attempting to end it, affirming what the Fourteenth Amendment has guaranteed since it was written to make citizens of people who had been enslaved: if you’re born here, you’re a citizen. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion and called it a promise kept to the Constitution’s framers. Real relief for hundreds of thousands of families.

But... It was 6–3. A case that should have been 9–0 came within two votes of gutting a bedrock guarantee, with the constitutional question splitting the Court even more narrowly. Roberts and Justice Barrett crossed over to join the three liberal justices. Justice Kavanaugh agreed the order was invalid but wouldn’t say it violated the Constitution, only a federal statute, leaving the door cracked for Congress to try again. And three justices were prepared to light the fuse. We won. We also learned exactly how fragile the win was.

Second, the Court protected mail-in voting. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, a 5–4 majority, again written by Justice Barrett and joined by Roberts and the liberal wing, rejected the GOP’s attempt to throw out ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive shortly after. This was a direct, coordinated assault on mail voting, and it lost. Grace periods in more than a dozen states, red and blue, survive intact heading into November.

Here’s the thing worth saying plainly: mail-in voter fraud is not a real problem. It is vanishingly rare, and what few documented cases exist cut in every direction. Republicans used to vote by mail more than we did and rural voters across states like Ohio still rely on it. The attack on mail voting isn’t about integrity. It’s about the fact that Democrats have made voting easier, and easier voting scares them. That’s not strength. That’s fear.

The Ruling That Should Keep Us Awake

Now the one you may not have heard about, because it’s the one that matters most for the next four months.

In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Court voted 6–3 — Justice Kavanaugh writing — to strike down decades-old limits on how much political parties can spend in direct coordination with their own candidates. Call it Citizens United 2.0. In practice, the national party committees can now pour effectively unlimited money into individual races, coordinated hand-in-glove with the campaigns. It builds on the same twenty-year deregulatory arc that gave us Citizens United, and it lands hardest on our side, because the money advantage it unleashes belongs to the party with the billionaire donors and the mega-checks. That’s not us. We win the grassroots. We win small-dollar donors, every single cycle. What we don’t have is the oligarch class writing eight-figure checks.

And Trump didn’t even pretend otherwise. When the decision came down, he posted that it was a big win for Republicans. He always says the quiet part out loud.

There were other terrible decisions handed down as well, handing Trump more power, ending protective status for asylum seekers, and ruling against our Trans communities. So let me be clear: we need to rebalance this Court. After we take back the House and the Senate this November, court expansion has to move from a fringe conversation to a central one. I want to hear it from every Democrat with national ambitions. A nation founded to limit concentrated power cannot survive a Court that keeps handing it out.

One more note before we move on. The Court also declined to take up Trump’s appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case, which means the jury’s finding that he sexually abused and defamed her stands, along with the $5 million judgment. He has run out of ways to contest it. Let’s just hope he doesn’t try to pay it with our tax money…

What We Can Do This Week

Rest first. It’s a long holiday weekend, you have been working hard, and we are still in the thick of primary season. Spend the time with the people you love. You’ve earned it, and the work will be there Monday.

Then answer this Court ruling where it hurts them — with direct giving. The floodgates on party and outside spending are open, and the single most effective counter available to us is money in candidates’ own hands, because candidates get the lowest ad rates by law. A dollar to a campaign stretches further on the airwaves than a dollar anywhere else. Give to the competitive candidate nearest you. For our Blue Wave California family, that means our Final Four: Randy Villegas in CA-22, Adam Gray in CA-13, Marni von Wilpert in CA-48, and Derek Tran in CA-45. Whatever you can spare, now is the moment.

And give to the grassroots. Campaigns come and go; grassroots organizations are what hold the ground in between, building the conditions that let Democrats win up and down the ballot. They are also having the hardest fundraising stretch many of us have seen in a long time. Every dollar counts, and there’s no better birthday present to give this country.

Reasons for Hope

The map is opening up. The Cook Political Report just moved the Alaska Senate race into pure toss-up territory. Part of the reason is almost too good to invent: a second candidate named Dan Sullivan will appear on the August primary ballot after the state Supreme Court refused to remove him. In a top-four, ranked-choice race this tight, every point matters. And our candidate there is Mary Peltola, a proven overperformer who has already won statewide in one of the reddest states in the country. Alaska. Ohio. Maine. North Carolina. Let’s run the table.

Finally, a reflection I read this week from the writer Michele Hornish, who publishes on Substack. She pointed out something I haven’t stopped thinking about: the Fourth of July doesn’t mark the day we won our independence. That came seven years later, in 1783, after Brandywine and Trenton and the long cold winter at Valley Forge. What we celebrate on July 4th is the day a ragtag collection of colonies looked at the most powerful empire on earth and decided to try. They knew the odds were long and declared they deserved better anyway. We don’t celebrate the victory. We celebrate the audacity of the attempt.

That’s the whole story of this country, told across 250 years: an uneven, nonlinear, backsliding, stubborn expansion of who gets to be free. Rich white landowners, then more, then more, then more. Progress, then backlash, then progress again. What we’re living through now is a backlash. It’s the loud, frightened last stand of people who care about power and not about democracy. It will pass. It passes faster when we push.

So this weekend, celebrate the audacity. Then get back to work.

See you in the field.

— Steve

P.S. — If you give one thing this week, make it to your closest grassroots organization. They are fighting the hardest battle to raise the least money, and they are the reason the ground is ready when the candidates arrive. Consider it a birthday present to America.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

This week gave us a split screen, and I want you to hold both halves in your mind at once. On one side, a president so afraid of losing in November that he took a bipartisan housing bill hostage rather than let Americans watch Washington actually work. On the other side, a Democratic Party that keeps winning — in New York, in the Central Valley, and in one courtroom after another. The contrast tells you everything about where the momentum is right now. One side is governing and growing. The other is flailing and threatening. So let’s get into it, and then let’s talk about what we do with it.

Trump Took Housing Hostage — Because He’d Rather Cheat

Here’s something that almost never happens anymore: Congress did something good, together. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed both the House and the Senate this week with overwhelming, veto-proof bipartisan majorities. It would curb Wall Street investors from gobbling up single-family homes and loosen some of the rules choking off new supply. In a country where the housing shortage has become an existential crisis and where the fastest-growing group of newly homeless Americans is senior citizens, followed closely by single mothers, this was a genuine, tangible win that members of both parties were ready to campaign on.

And then, hours before the signing ceremony, with the stage already set in the Capitol, Trump canceled it. He announced on social media that he won’t sign the housing bill until Congress passes his so-called SAVE America Act — the voter-suppression package he’s been demanding for months. He even dismissed the housing bill as “of minor importance” on his way out the door.

Sit with that. This do-nothing Congress controlled by Republicans handed themselves a rare accomplishment on the single issue voters care most about: the cost of living. Trump blew it up because it wasn’t a bill to make it harder to vote. Confronted with a choice between making people’s lives better and taking away people’s access to the ballot to cling to power, he chose the SAVE Trump’s Ass Act.

That’s not strength. That’s a man who has looked at the map, seen what’s coming in November, and decided cheating is his only path. His approval has been cratering across the board — on the economy, on the cost of living, and especially on his war of choice in Iran, which Americans broadly understand has left us in a worse place than before he started it, with higher gas and fertilizer prices that farmers and families are feeling right now. Polling shows almost no one believes that war achieved what he promised. A confident president signs the housing bill and takes a victory lap. A desperate one cancels the ceremony and reaches for the levers of a wanna be authoritarian.

What the SAVE America Act Would Actually Do

It’s worth being clear-eyed about why this bill matters, because the threat is real even if it’s currently stalled. The SAVE America Act would eliminate online voter registration nationwide. It would force anyone registering, or re-registering after a move, to produce a passport or birth certificate in person, documents that a huge share of Americans simply don’t have on hand and that cost money to obtain. That’s simply a poll tax. It would be catastrophic for working people, for students, for seniors, and especially for the millions of women whose maiden name is different from their married name.

Republicans (currently) don’t have the votes to pass it. The House has passed it three times. But in the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune has said flatly that Republicans can’t get to 60, and they won’t blow up the filibuster to force it through because they know they’ll need that filibuster the moment they’re back in the minority. So Trump is left raging at his own party, demanding they break the Senate to pass a law he can’t win with otherwise. That standoff is a sign of his weakness, not his power. The weaker he gets, the less leverage he has, and the more boldly even this Republican caucus of sycophants can step away from him.

The Map Keeps Expanding

While Trump was sabotaging his own party, ours was busy winning.

In New York this week, every one of the three candidates Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed won their primary: Claire Valdez in the 7th, Brad Lander in the 10th, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in the 13th. Lander ousted incumbent Dan Goldman with nearly two-thirds of the vote, and Avila Chevalier unseated longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat. At the very same time, in Maryland and Utah, more establishment Democrats won their primaries handily. I think that’s exactly as it should be. Different places choose different fighters. I personally always want the most progressive candidate who can actually win in a given district — and what we’re watching is a party that’s big enough, and confident enough, to run democratic socialists in deep-blue New York and pragmatic problem-solvers in tougher terrain, all under the same tent. That’s not a party in crisis. That’s a party building a bench.

And the energy isn’t confined to safe blue seats. Look right here at home, at California’s 22nd. Randy Villegas — a school board trustee, a community college professor, an auto-shop owner, a Medicare-for-all progressive who refused corporate PAC money — advanced out of the top-two primary to face Republican David Valadao in November. He did it after outside groups spent more than two million dollars trying to bury him. In an era when elections are swinging an average of 14 to 15 points to the left, a grassroots campaign that overcomes that kind of money against a Trump rubber-stamp who voted to gut the Medicaid two-thirds of his district relies on is worth everything we’ve got. Valadao is beatable. Now our job is to beat him.

Be Strategic: Start at Home

So here’s my tough-love TED Talk for the week, and I mean it with love.

The map has genuinely expanded. Races we couldn’t have dreamed of winning a few cycles ago are now within reach. That’s thrilling and it’s also a trap, because none of us have unlimited time, talent, or treasure. When the map gets big and shiny, the temptation is to chase the most satisfying target instead of the most strategic one. I see donors and volunteers in our own blue state pouring energy into races two thousand miles away because, sure, we’d all love to retire a senator we can’t stand. And if you’ve already taken care of business at home and have resources to spare, go for it. But too many people are starting with the shiny object and assuming California is handled.

It is not handled. Let me say that as plainly as I can.

I lived through 2022 here. Nationally we performed all over the place and staved off the red wave everyone predicted. But in California, we fell short. We left seats on the table we could have flipped, we even lost one we needed, and if we’d simply taken care of business here, we would have held the House. We lost CA-27 that year by 333 votes. Adam Gray got to Congress in his race by 187. These margins are not abstractions. They are a few hundred conversations on a few hundred doorsteps.

And Prop 50, which we passed last November, does not let us off the hook — it sets us up, but it doesn’t win anything by itself. We sold it to voters as the response to Republican gerrymandering in Texas, and it drew the lines that give us a fighting chance at the offset. But we still have to actually win these seats, and we can’t win them by a hair. We have to win by margins big enough to absorb everything Trump is throwing at us: the Justice Department poking at our voting systems, the threats to put immigration agents and military near polling places, the constant manufactured doubt about our elections. Small wins won’t survive that. We need blowouts.

That’s why our targeting is what it is. Our California “Final Four” is the whole ballgame: flip the 22nd with Randy Villegas and the 48th with Marni von Wilpert, and defend the 13th with Adam Gray and the 45th with Derek Tran, both of whom Republicans are coming after hard. Defending our most vulnerable incumbents is just as much a part of taking back the House as flipping red seats. So before you send your next donation or your next free Saturday somewhere far away, start where the races are tightest and the help is needed most. Start at home.

What We Can Do This Week

Call your senators and tell them to kill the SAVE America Act. It’s stalled because the votes aren’t there — let’s keep it that way. Make sure your senators hear, in your own words, that gutting online registration and imposing a passport requirement to vote is a poll tax you won’t stand for.

Call your House rep and your senators and tell them to demand Trump sign the housing bill. Congress did its job with veto-proof majorities. The only thing standing between American families and real relief is one man’s tantrum. The pressure to get that bill signed should be loud and constant.

Audit your own time, talent, and treasure — and commit it at home first. Take an honest look at your bandwidth between now and November, then point it at the tightest California races: flipping CA-22 and CA-48, and defending CA-13 and CA-45. Whether your capacity is something every day or something every week, aim it where a few hundred votes will decide everything.

Stay loud. Keep the housing hostage-taking, the Iran giveaway, and the Epstein files in the conversation. The pushback is working precisely because we keep raising the corruption into the light. Don’t let any of it fade into background noise.

Reasons for Hope

The courts had an extraordinary week, and they had it on our side. A federal judge in Boston blocked Trump’s executive order that tried to create a federal voter list and choke off mail-in ballots, ruling that the Constitution gives the president no power over how states run elections. Another judge permanently struck down most of his earlier election order, including the attempt to throw out ballots that arrive after Election Day even when they’re postmarked on time. And in Minnesota, a federal judge quashed the Justice Department’s subpoenas against Governor Tim Walz and other officials, calling them what they plainly were, an effort to harass and retaliate against political opponents. Trump has been trying to weaponize the courts and the post office against the vote, and the courts keep handing him losses. His record in these election fights has been one defeat after another.

The second reason for hope is the one Trump keeps handing us himself. He cannot get out of his own way. Faced with a rare bipartisan win, he torched it. Faced with a war he wanted to wind down, he made threats that sent negotiators walking from the table. Every impulsive, undisciplined move shrinks his leverage and his standing.

And the third reason is Randy Villegas, and candidates like him, winning after millions were spent to stop them. When working people beat that kind of money with shoe leather and conviction, it tells you the expanded map isn’t a fantasy. It’s real. We just have to go claim it.

The pushback is working. The courts are holding. The candidates are winning. Now we close the gap between what’s possible and we get it done!

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Here’s the picture this week. Trump just signed an Iran “peace” memo that, by just about every bipartisan account, is worse than the deal Obama brokered without firing a shot, while families back home are still watching costs climb and watching this regime enrich itself in broad daylight. But the wind is at our backs heading into the midterms, and it’s getting stronger, not weaker. I say it most weeks now, and it remains true. So let’s talk about what moved, and what it asks of us with four and a half months to go.

Georgia on Our Mind, Once Again

The field in Georgia is set. Republican Rep. Mike Collins won the GOP Senate runoff this week, defeating former football coach Derek Dooley, and will face Sen. Jon Ossoff in November in one of the most consequential races in the country. Collins, a trucking company owner and the son of a congressman, campaigns as a self-described “MAGA warrior.”

Here’s a detail worth noting. Collins did not run well in the suburbs across Georgia, the exact places he’ll have to win to beat Ossoff. It was Dooley, the candidate who lost, who ran stronger in those suburban areas where Ossoff is already strong. That’s a real reason for optimism. It is never a reason for complacency. Georgia is a deeply purple, voter-suppression state, and this is a fight, but it’s a fight within our grasp. And the early contrast is stark: through the spring, Ossoff had raised more than $60 million and held over $32 million in cash, while Collins entered the general with roughly $4.9 million raised and under $1.2 million on hand. On top of that, Collins begins under a House Ethics Committee investigation into the alleged misuse of taxpayer funds in his office.

None of that wins the seat for us. Organizers and voters do. There is no winning the Senate without holding Georgia, which means registering new voters, getting them out, and raising awareness to every man, woman, and child the way we did in 2018 and 2020.

The Cracks in the Coalition

Step back from any single race and the trend line is unmistakable. The cost of goods and services, gas, groceries, health care, has climbed by more than $3,000 for the average American family under Trump’s economy. Asked about inflation at its highest level in years, the president said he loves it. People see it, even his own base. U.S. employers cut roughly 97,000 jobs last month, the worst May since the pandemic. Seven in ten Americans oppose his handling of the cost of living. Two-thirds blame his policies for higher prices. Nearly 65% say the economy is on the wrong track. And the generic congressional ballot has now opened up to double digits. Voters prefer a generic Democrat by about ten points, right about where the country sat before the 2018 blue wave.

We’re watching young, non-college-educated men peel away from the Republican Party, and we’re watching the cult faithful shrink by the day, loud as ever, but smaller. Pain wakes people up. They notice the gas prices first, and then they look around and see the rest.

And remember: this is the version they wanted you to see before the election. Many of the harshest health care provisions in the “Big Bullshit Bill” were deliberately delayed until after the midterms, because Republicans know exactly how bad it’s going to feel — rising costs, rural hospitals closing, senior centers shutting their doors — and they’re trying to push the worst of it past the moment you get to vote. The timing isn’t an accident.

Self-Dealing in Plain Sight

While families can’t afford groceries, the regime keeps spending on itself. The White House ballroom, sold to the public as privately funded and taxpayer-free, now turns out to leave taxpayers on the hook for half of a $600 million project. The president’s sons bought shares in a mining company just days after the president of Kazakhstan told Trump he’d granted that company mineral rights — the kind of move that has a name, and the name is insider trading. The reflecting pool on the National Mall turned bright green with algae, and a Fox News reporter stood in front of it and told viewers not to believe what they could plainly see behind him. We are being asked to live in a post-fact world. The good news is that most people aren’t buying it.

Juneteenth

Today, June 19th, is Juneteenth. It marks the end of slavery in the United States and stands as a day to celebrate Black history, culture, and resilience, and the ongoing pursuit of freedom and justice — every one of which this regime is working to roll back. Honor it, and carry what it means into the work.

Reasons for Hope

For me it starts with an image. This week, workers removed Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center. A federal judge had ruled that the board’s renaming was illegal. Congress gave the Center its name, and only Congress can change it. Crews put up scaffolding and draped it in tarp to hide the letters coming down, but the name came off all the same. I love that building. I grew up going there and even performed on its youth stages as a kid. Watching the name come down felt like a snapshot of the future: the grotesque self-aggrandizement cleared away, the damage undone, the country brought back to the work of lifting people up. That day is coming, and we’re going to be the ones who bring it.

Then there’s the bar-so-low-it’s-inspiring data point: when Americans were polled on whether a for-profit UFC fight on the White House lawn was appropriate, only 16% said yes — a smaller share than the number of people who believe in telepathy. To reach even 16%, you need independents and Republicans, which means when Trump plays to his base with stunts like that, he’s alienating his own people. Every spectacle costs him more than it gains.

And finally, the thing you can feel and not just measure: collective effervescence. That lift in the body when a whole crowd rises at once at a concert, a rally, a basketball victory (congrats Knicks!). Joy beats fear. It’s an ancient truth, and it’s ours to keep alive until it carries us through November.

D.C. is occupied right now, and we are working every day to end that occupation. We’ll do it in four and a half short months. We will take back the House, win the Senate, and cut this Trump regime’s term in half. That’s real accountability, and real relief, and it’s within reach. So keep up the activism, all of it. It’s what moves the needle. It’s working.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

The field is set. The June primary is behind us, and California’s path to flipping the U.S. House has come into sharp focus. Four congressional seats in our state are going to help decide which party controls the House next year, and we now know exactly who carries our banner in each one. I call them our Final Four. Two are seats we flipped in 2024 and have to defend. Two are seats we’re going to flip. Every one of them is winnable!

The Ground We’re Standing On

One piece of context frames all four races. Last November, California voters passed Proposition 50 by a 65–35 margin, temporarily replacing the state’s congressional map with one drawn to make five districts more favorable to Democrats. That wasn’t handed to us, it was put to the voters, and they said yes by thirty points. When anyone tells you the public is checked out or resigned, point them to that number. Two-thirds of California turned out to redraw the battlefield in our favor in response to the republican gerrymandering in Texas. The Final Four sit on ground we helped shape, and every door we knock from here builds on it.

CA-22: Randy Villegas and the Power of the Grassroots

Start in the Bakersfield-based 22nd District, a must-win to take back the House. Randy Villegas is our nominee, and in November he takes on vulnerable but tough Republican incumbent David Valadao, one of the most endangered Republicans in the country.

Randy is a 30-year-old political science professor and school board trustee. The son of Mexican immigrants, Villegas was born and raised in Bakersfield and is a product of the same public schools and community colleges he now fights to protect. A first-generation college graduate, he earned his PhD in Politics from UC Santa Cruz, with a focus on Latin American and Latino Studies, and has taught political science at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia while serving as a trustee on the Visalia Unified School District Board of Education.

CA-22 spans parts of Kern, Kings, and Tulare counties, is approximately 75% Latino, and has the highest rate of Medicaid enrollment of any Republican-held congressional district in the country — making Valadao’s votes to gut healthcare deeply personal for the people he represents. Villegas is campaigning on universal healthcare, affordable childcare, banning insider trading, and using federal legislation to lower gas prices, bringing an economic populist message that speaks directly to working families in the Central Valley.

Villegas is the kind of candidate this movement is built to power. He has built his campaign entirely on the grassroots with no corporate PAC money at all, more than 4,000 individual donations adding up to over a quarter of a million dollars, and the backing of the Working Families Party. His campaign, funded by thousands of small donors, is a campaign with thousands of people already invested in the outcome — people who knock, who call, who bring a neighbor.

CA-48: An Open Seat in San Diego, Ours to Win

Down in San Diego, the 48th District is open for the first time in years. Marni von Wilpert is a San Diego City Councilmember, and former civil prosecutor. Born and raised in North San Diego County in a proud military family, von Wilpert went on to serve as a prosecutor in the San Diego City Attorney’s Office, where she cracked down on price gouging during the pandemic, held polluters accountable, and took on the opioid industry. She has a proven track record of winning tough races — flipping a Republican-held seat from red to blue on the San Diego City Council, then running unopposed for reelection in 2024.

On the Council, von Wilpert authored the state’s first ban on untraceable ghost guns, secured affordable housing grants for teachers, improved emergency response times, and ensured full funding for public safety and first responders. Now she’s bringing that same record to Congress, campaigning on housing affordability, reproductive rights, and environmental protection — and making CA-48 a cornerstone of the Democratic fight to flip the House in 2026.

Since Darrell Issa went running for the hills, her opponent is Republican County Supervisor Jim Desmond. This is precisely the kind of seat that decides majorities — long held by a Republican on the strength of incumbency, now wide open with no incumbent to hide behind and a strong, experienced Democrat ready to take it. We start this race on offense, and we intend to finish it that way.

CA-13 and CA-45: We Flipped Them. Now We Hold Them.

The other half of the Final Four are seats we already won and Republicans are desperate to claw back. That desperation tells you everything. You don’t pour national resources into reclaiming a seat unless you’re afraid of the people holding it.

In the Central Valley’s 13th District, Congressman Adam Gray is up for his first reelection. In 2024, Gray flipped this seat by fewer than 200 votes — the very last House race in the entire country to be called. He’ll face Republican Kevin Lincoln, the former mayor of Stockton, in November. He does it on better terrain than before, because the redrawn 13th now reaches into Stockton and is a bit more favorable to Democrats than the old map.

In Orange County’s 45th District, Congressman Derek Tran is defending the seat where he made history as the first Vietnamese American to represent Little Saigon, unseating his Republican opponent by just two-tenths of a percentage point — another one of the closest races of the entire 2024 cycle. He’ll face Republican Chuong Vo this November. An Army veteran and consumer-rights attorney, Tran has spent his first term co-chairing a Lowering Costs Caucus and pushing back on the administration’s claim that the affordability crisis is a hoax.

Gray won by 187 votes. Tran won by less than 1000. Read those numbers again and you understand why nothing about November is guaranteed, and why a few hundred conversations in each district can make all the difference.

What You Can Do This Week

The slate is set, which means if you can give, make a contribution to our Blue Wave California Victory Fund, which splits support across exactly these four races so you’re not guessing which one needs it most.

We have our team in place to win back the House. Now we finish the job!

See you in the field.

— Steve

P.S. Four seats, and in two of them, the last election came down to fewer than 200 votes and two-tenths of a point. The next time someone asks whether a single volunteer shift really matters, send them this and circle those two numbers.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Happy Pride Month! This week we had a lot to cover — California primary results, a significant rating shift in Iowa, a crack in Trump’s MAGA coalition, and a major win against corruption

California Primary Takeaways

Two congressional seats are must-wins for Democrats this cycle, and we now have more clarity on both.

In CA-48 (the former Darrell Issa district), Marnie Von Wilpert advanced to the general. She’s a council member, and a strong candidate in a district that leans Democratic after redistricting. This is a flippable seat, but it won’t flip itself.

In CA-22, the race between Randy Villegas and Dr. Jasmit Baines is still too close to call as ballots continue to come in. Villegas is a progressive school board member with Dolores Huerta’s endorsement; Baines is a community doctor backed by the DCCC. Either way, flipping this seat from David Valadeo will be a fight. Blue Wave will support whoever advances.

A quick note on the numbers: early vote totals in CA-22 showed Democrats outpacing Republicans by several thousand votes — an encouraging sign, with the caveat that many Democratic ballots are still being counted.

In the gubernatorial race, Javier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton have the advantage to advance to the general, but with a lot of mail in ballots still coming in, Tom Steyer still has a chance of overtaking Hilton. In either scenario a Democrat will be California’s next governor. The feared (and in my mind overhyped) scenario of Democrats canceling each other out has been avoided.

Iowa: A Race Worth Watching

Cook Political Report just shifted the Iowa Senate race from Likely Republican to Lean Republican — and the reason is Josh Torek, the newly minted Democratic nominee. A former U.S. Paralympian and wheelchair basketball competitor, Torek won a statehouse seat in a Trump-won district in 2022. His campaign video showing him pulling himself out of his wheelchair to climb stairs and knock on doors speaks for itself. Iowa hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since Obama. But with electoral swings averaging 14 points to the left nationwide Iowa is on the table.

Meanwhile, Rob Sand is surging in the Iowa Governor’s race and is widely seen as a candidate who could lift Democrats up and down the ticket, potentially putting Iowa House Districts 1, 2, and 3 all in play.

Speaking of Iowa: Trump endorsed Randy Feenstra in the GOP gubernatorial primary, and Feenstra lost to a MAHA candidate who ran against Trump’s embrace of pesticides. In a state heavily dependent on farming, that’s a meaningful crack in the MAGA coalition.

A Win Worth Celebrating

Our work is paying off. A federal judge froze Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund — essentially a taxpayer-funded payoff to the January 6th mob. A second judge reopened scrutiny of the IRS deal that created it. And then Taco Trump folded entirely, saying he’d drop the fund rather than fight for it. Even Republicans didn’t have the stomach for that one.

This is what pushing back looks like. Keep calling your reps. Keep showing up. The noise we make is not going into a void.

On the Radar: Bill Pulte

Trump has named Bill Pulte, the current director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a loyalist with no qualifications except for his willingness to persecute Trump’s enemies, as acting Director of National Intelligence. He’s keeping both jobs. The person who will weaponize the intelligence community against Trump’s political enemies is the same person overseeing the federal mortgage system, and he’s treating the DNI role as a side hustle. This is what the consolidation of power looks like in real time, and it’s exactly why norms need to be codified into law.

To-Do This Week

Mark your calendars: June 14th, Flag Day and Trump’s 80th birthday, the Committee for the First Amendment is hosting a No Kings concert in New York, headlined by Rufus Wainwright, with partners including Indivisible and 5051. Can’t make it to New York? Host or join a livestream watch party. Head to nokings.org for details.

And if that sounds familiar, we wrapped our California Rising concert just a few weeks ago with Rufus Wainwright as our headliner. Check out this great recap video edited by my talented daughter with great photos from Mike Carano.

See you in the field!

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Senator Andy Kim Tear-Gassed by ICE

Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey went to Delaney Hall detention center this past weekend to stand with detainees who were on a hunger and labor strike protesting inhumane conditions. ICE agents tear-gassed him. A sitting U.S. Senator was pepper-sprayed by immigration agents for trying to access a facility and bear witness to the treatment of detainees.

And it barely made the news.

This is by design. Trump and Stephen Miller have architected a system of cruelty so overwhelming that when some tactics fade from public view and smaller, targeted raids replace the large-scale roundups we saw in Minnesota, we tend to look away. The horror becomes normalized. The atrocities become invisible.

But the work of ICE continues. They’re operating detention centers designed to hold 10,000 to 15,000 people, bigger than any existing prison in America, as concentration camps for immigrants. They’re spending $126 million on facilities valued at $20 million. They’re funneling untold tens of millions to who knows where. This is kleptocracy. This is corruption as a key feature of fascist regimes.

But pushback is working. In Hagerstown, Maryland, Social Circle, Georgia, and across the country, people are protesting and winning. ICE hasn’t been able to successfully open a single one of these massive detention centers. They’re even trying to sell some of the properties they’ve bought. The massive peaceful protests are working.

Keep sharing these stories. Keep highlighting them. Don’t let this get buried in Trump’s manufactured chaos cycle. Keep shining a light on ICE’s cruelty and corruption.

Ken Paxton Wins Texas GOP Primary, And That’s Actually Good News…

Ken Paxton just won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Texas. This is simultaneously the worst and best news we could get.

The worst: Paxton is a walking crime spree. He’s been described by the Republican Party as “disgusting and repulsive.” He was impeached by his own party for corruption. He settled felony fraud charges for $300,000. He’s under FBI investigation. He’s under investigation for mortgage fraud. He paid off whistleblowers he fired. He had multiple extramarital affairs and his wife filed for divorce citing “biblical reasons.” And yes, he stole a $1,000 pen from another lawyer.

The best: Republicans didn’t want him as their nominee. They knew he was deeply vulnerable. John Cornyn’s campaign and the Republican establishment ran intense attack ads against him. This was one of the most expensive Senate primary races in history, and the Republicans were tearing each other apart. Now Republicans have to figure out how to support a candidate they’ve been actively trying to destroy.

And here’s the math: James Tallarico, the Democratic nominee, has about $10 million cash on hand through grassroots fundraising. He’s a brilliant candidate. When asked about his views on trans people, he pivoted with: “You’re focusing on the wrong 1%. The billionaires are the 1% that are taking our jobs and not paying their fair share.” He has the full package: skilled, passionate, compelling, and someone who would actually be an effective Senator.

Cook Political Report just moved the Texas Senate race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican”, still favoring the GOP, but much tighter. And that’s with Ken Paxton as the nominee.

The path to victory: Independents and Republicans unhappy with the economy, the Iran war, and the unreleased Epstein files need to vote for a Democrat or stay home. Texas organizers, some of the best in the country, have been building infrastructure for years. They’ve turned Texas purple despite Republicans’ best efforts to rig the game.

This is a race we can win. If you haven’t donated to James Tallarico, now’s the time. And if you’re in Texas, volunteer with Powered by People, Beto O’Rourke’s voter registration organization, who know every rule and regulation around voting in Texas inside and out.

Democrats Outvoted Republicans by 100,000 in Texas Primary

In the Texas primary, Democrats outvoted Republicans by 100,000 votes. That’s huge. Historically, Republicans are supposed to win primary turnout because they show up. This time, Democrats showed up bigger.

The formula is simple: When Democrats vote, Democrats win. It’s not complicated. We just have to keep building on this momentum.

California Primary: Less Than a Week Away

We’re five days away from the California primary, and it has major implications for control of the House. Everyone’s been focused on the governor race, but the real action is in CA-22 and CA-48, two districts we must flip to take back the House.

CA-22 (Central Valley): Currently represented by David Valadao, a slippery moderate who votes carefully to thread the needle but supports the party of fascism and Trump. He lost his seat in 2018 because he voted to repeal the ACA and take away people’s healthcare. He’s done it again, voting for bills that slash Medicaid budgets in a district with one of the highest Medicaid recipient populations in the country. He lost on healthcare before. He’ll lose on healthcare again.

CA-48 (Palm Springs area): A crowded, very tight race. Daryl Issa was so scared of losing that he decided not to run. He didn’t want to get his ass handed to him. The field is crowded, but whoever comes out on top on June 2nd will have our full support.

The bottom line: Don’t look at Prop 50 and think California is taken care of. Adam Gray’s seat, the top target for Republicans in the state, was won by only 187 votes. We’re on the front lines of taking back the House. We need investment. We need engagement. We need people to show up.

South Carolina: Pushing Back Against Gerrymandering

South Carolina Republicans tried to eliminate Jim Clyburn’s congressional seat through redistricting. Twelve GOP senators voted against cloture, blocking the attempt. Clyburn’s seat is safe for now.

Action: Do This This Week

1) Vote in Your Primary If you haven’t voted yet, get to the polls (in CA before June 2nd). Vote for candidates you’re excited about. Engage in your local races and swing districts. Post pictures of yourself voting on social media. People want to join the party!

2) Engage in CA-22 and CA-48 California primary is June 2nd. These districts determine control of the House. David Valadao lost on healthcare once. He’ll lose on it again. Help flip these seats. Donate to our Blue Wave California Victory Fund

3) Share Stories About ICE Keep highlighting what’s happening at detention facilities. Keep talking about the corruption, the spending, the concentration camps. Don’t let this get buried.

Reasons for Hope

Democratic turnout in Texas. Democrats outvoted Republicans by 100,000 votes in the primary. Historically, Republicans are supposed to win primary turnout. This time, we showed up bigger. The formula is simple: when Democrats vote, Democrats win. We just have to keep building on this momentum.

And also, South Carolina redistricting victory. Twelve Republican senators voted to protect Jim Clyburn’s seat. The fact that Republicans failed to eliminate the only Democratic congressional seat in their state shows that pushback works. People are paying attention. People are fighting back.

A U.S. Senator was tear-gassed by ICE. Ken “Disgusting and Repulsive “Paxton won the GOP nomination for Texas Senate. Democrats outvoted Republicans by 100,000 in Texas. South Carolina Republicans failed to eliminate Jim Clyburn’s seat. And we’re one week away from a California primary that determines control of the House.

The fundamentals are with us. The turnout is there. We just have to do the work.

Vote. Donate. Volunteer. Organize. Share stories. Post pictures. Text your neighbors.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Trump’s $1.776 Billion Slush Fund: Corruption on Steroids

Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Trump just created a $1.776 billion slush fund with no congressional authorization and no legal basis. He’s taking power he doesn’t have and doing it anyway because he knows Republicans in Congress won’t stop him.

Here’s what the slush fund does:

• Pays off January 6 rioters who assaulted Capitol Police with American flags

• Enriches Trump’s family and loyalists

• Makes all payments confidential - no transparency, no accountability

• Bans the IRS from auditing or investigating Trump or his family members

That last part is the kicker. Trump and his family are now officially immune from investigation into tax fraud. They can funnel money however they want, and the IRS can’t touch them.

This violates the emoluments clause. It has no legal standing. It will not hold up under legal scrutiny. But Trump is doing it anyway, and Harry Dunn and other Capitol Police officers are suing to block it.

And here’s the timing: Trump is doing this while Americans are struggling to afford gas, groceries, and healthcare. People are defaulting on ACA premiums because they’re too high (which is by design, because Republicans want the ACA to fail). Gas prices are through the roof because of Trump’s war of choice in Iran. And Trump is fixated on building a billion-dollar ballroom, a helipad at the White House, and a $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off his cronies.

He co-opted taxpayer dollars to build an arc to Trump. And on the eve of our country’s 250th anniversary, he chose 1.776 billion as the amount, because he’s a heartless and craven troll.

The only way to stop this is to win in November. Democrats need the House and Senate to get subpoena power, hold hearings, and bring real accountability. Right now, there’s nothing stopping Trump from doing whatever he wants. In November, we will change that.

Thomas Massie Ousted for Calling Out Epstein

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie lost his primary this week. He was one of the only Republicans consistently speaking out about the Epstein files and pushing for their full release. He helped spearhead the discharge petition that led to the law requiring the Justice Department to release all the files, a law the DOJ still hasn’t fully adhered to.

They released half the files. The half they did release was haunting and horrific, documenting terrible criminal acts with zero accountability. And now the only Republican pushing for the other half to be released will be out of congress soon.

To be in the current Republican Party, you must defend pedophiles. That’s where they are. That’s the litmus test. Protect Trump. Protect Epstein’s co-conspirators. Suppress any mention of Trump’s name in those files. And if you don’t, you’re out.

Dan Pfeiffer wrote a great Substack about how this kind of control Trump has asserted over the Republican Party won’t end well for them. MAGA voters want to see the Epstein files. They’re unhappy with the war. They’re unhappy with the cost of living. Trump made himself feel good by purging anyone who won’t fall in line, but it’s not a sustainable political strategy.

The good news: A few lame duck Republicans, the Massies of the world, have nothing to lose now. They’re not coming back after November. So hopefully (maybe?) they’ll keep calling for accountability and standing up to Trump in whatever small ways they can before they leave office.

Four Republicans Joined Democrats to Stop the Iran War

Four Republicans voted with Democrats on another version of the War Powers Act, legislation that would stop Trump from prosecuting his illegal war of choice in Iran.

It won’t become law. Trump would have to sign it, and he won’t. But it shows that some Republicans, especially lame duck members who know they’re not coming back, are free to act like human beings once they’re no longer under Trump’s power.

We need to get rid of him. The only way to stop the war, the corruption, the self-dealing, the gutting of healthcare, and the billion-dollar slush funds is to win in November and take back power.

Primary Turnout: Democrats Strong, Republicans Purging Dissenters

Primary season is in full swing, and the results are interesting. Record Democratic turnout continues across the country. That’s the trend we need. When Democrats turn out, we win.

Pennsylvania third district: Chris Rabb won the Democratic nomination. He’s backed by AOC, running in a heavily Democratic district, and looks likely to go to Congress in November as the next member of the squad. Progressive, grassroots-backed, and part of the bench we’re building.

Working Families Party candidates had a strong night in Pennsylvania and other states. This is how we push the Democratic Party in the direction we want it to go, by getting involved in primaries in blue-blue districts and electing progressives who will fight for transformative policy.

The conundrum for activists: Most of us are hair-on-fire liberals pouring blood, sweat, and tears into electing middle-of-the-road Democrats in swing districts. That’s strategic. That’s necessary. Those are the pressure points where a few new registered voters can swing an election. But we can do both at the same time - push blue areas bluer and push purple areas just over the edge so they become blue.

Democratic unity is the unicorn that pushes everything forward. It’s harder for us than Republicans because we’re the side of free thinkers. We have different perspectives, races, sexual orientations, philosophies. Republicans are a monoculture united around fear, white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. But when we unite, we beat fascism. And that’s exactly what we need to do right now.

Gerrymandering Update: 7-9 Seat Republican Advantage

The gerrymandering landscape has shifted again. Republicans now have a 7-9 seat advantage going into November, procured through explicitly racist gerrymandering.

That’s terrible. But it’s also completely surmountable. We won 41 seats in 2018. We’ve been overperforming by around 17 points in congressional races since Trump retook office. The wind is at our backs. Trump’s approval is in the 30s. Two-thirds of Americans say the country is going in the wrong direction. His disapproval on the economy is at 70%.

We can overcome a 7-9 seat deficit. We just have to do the work. And that work starts now - not in October.

Action: Do This This Week

1) Get Involved in Swing Districts No matter where you live, there’s a swing district close to you. Find your closest race. Volunteer. Phone bank. Canvass. Donate. Do it now, not in October.

2) Get Involved in Primaries If you’re in a blue-blue area, push for progressive candidates in your primaries. This is how we build the bench. This is how we push the party left. Pennsylvania showed us it’s possible. Chris Rabb and Working Families Party candidates had a strong night.

3) Donate Early Campaigns need money now to build field operations. Every dollar you give today has exponentially more impact than a dollar given in October. You can donate to our strategic Blue Wave California Victory Fund here.

4) Keep Talking About Affordability Trump’s disapproval rating on the economy is at 70% because people feel the pain every day. Gas prices are up. Healthcare premiums are so high people are defaulting and getting kicked off the ACA. Share your stories. Counter disinformation. Connect Republican policies to the struggles people are facing.

Reasons for Hope

Democratic primary turnout continues to be really strong. That’s what we need. When Democrats turn out in numbers, we win. Full stop. We’re overperforming by around 17 points in congressional races. We have the wind at our backs despite the redistricting bullshit. There are a lot of seats out there to win. We can repudiate everything happening with the Trump regime with a massive victory in November. Republicans know it. Trump knows it. That’s why he’s building a ballroom bunker to hide out in after we kick him out of office (one theory). That’s why they’re hell-bent on cheating as hard as they can, because they know they can’t win on their policies. They can’t win on the big shit sandwich they’re offering the American people. So when turnout continues to be strong, that gives me hope.

Primary season is here. Swing district organizing is ramping up. The midterms are five months away. Get involved now. Volunteer. Donate. Register voters. Turn them out.

Accountability starts when we take back power in November.

See you in the field.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

The Virginia Supreme Court Overturned the Will of the People

Last month, Virginia voters passed a ballot measure to create an independent redistricting commission and draw fairer maps. We celebrated it as a major victory with four congressional seats in play, offsetting Republican gerrymandering and putting us in position to flip the House.

Then the Virginia Supreme Court stepped in and said the will of the voters is invalid. The four seats are now harder to reach. We may still be able to flip two of them, but the playing field just got steeper.

This is what Republicans do when they can’t win on ideas. They rig the game. They gerrymander. They suppress votes. They overturn the will of the people through partisan courts. They gut the Voting Rights Act, the jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, the legislation people bled and died for, so they can cheat with impunity.

And now Florida is trying to grab four more seats through racist gerrymandering that violates their own state constitution. Ron DeSantis knows it’s unconstitutional. He’s doing it anyway. Because if they can’t win, they’ll cheat.

The silver lining: Maybe this makes people appropriately uncomfortable. Maybe it shakes people out of complacency. Maybe it drives home the urgency of donating, volunteering, phone banking, and canvassing right now, not in October, so we win by such a decisive margin that their cheating doesn’t matter.

Nationally, Republicans Could Gerrymander Up to 19 More Seats

In the wake of the Callais decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, Republicans are going all-in on gerrymandering. If they push it as far as it can go, and they will, they could gerrymander up to 19 more seats nationwide.

Democratic states will fight back. New York, Illinois, and other blue states may join in to lessen the Republican advantage. But this is the gerrymandering arms race Republicans started, and it never should have happened.

Here’s what it means: We need a blowout. We need to win decisively enough that we have a buffer going into 2028 when Republicans pile up more stolen seats and try to take back the House.

And here’s the good news: We can do it. We’re overperforming in nearly every election since November 2024. Trump’s approval on the economy is at 70% disapproval. People are feeling the pain of his policies every single day. The fundamentals are with us. We just have to do the work.

Trump: “I Don’t Think About Americans’ Financial Situation. I Don’t Think About Anybody.”

Trump went to China this week for a summit with some of the richest men in America. And he said, out loud, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

Thank you for saying out loud what we already knew.

Two-thirds of Americans say the country is going in the wrong direction. Trump’s disapproval rating on the economy just hit 70%, the lowest of either term of his presidency, 20 points higher than his first term.

Why? Because people feel it. Gas prices are up because of the Iran war. Groceries are up. Healthcare costs are through the roof. Rent is unaffordable. And Trump admitted he doesn’t think about any of it because he only thinks about his own financial situation.

Our job: keep talking about this. The midterms are about the economy. About affordability. About gas prices and healthcare and the cost of living. These are the issues everyone is feeling right now. And Trump’s policies, his war of choice in Iran, his tax cuts for the rich, his gutting of healthcare, are making everything worse.

Share your stories. Talk about what you’re paying for gas and groceries. Counter the disinformation you see at Chevron stations blaming “bureaucrats in Sacramento” when it’s Trump’s war driving up prices. Keep connecting Republican policies to the struggles people are facing every day. Keep making sure voters know that Republicans created this crisis and Democrats will fix it.

California Rising: Joy and Community in the Middle of the Fight

Tuesday night at the El Rey Theater was amazing and just what we needed. We came together to celebrate artists, raise funds for congressional races, and remind ourselves that joy is a revolutionary act in the face of oppression.

The performances were incredible:

Laurence Juber played Pete Townsend’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with such technical mastery that people were alternating between tears and laughter. He was hitting the guitar in ways most had never seen. It was a showstopper. Maybe the biggest moment of the night.

Rufus Wainwright sang “Across the Universe” and it was transcendent. His voice was so moving, so gorgeous, that it felt like a reminder: the world is good. The life force of this world is beautiful. It’s the most powerful thing there is. And we’re acting in alignment with it, at the service of it. That’s why we will prevail.

Iman Jordan, when the backing track played twice by accident, didn’t miss a beat. He joked about it, made up a new song on the spot, and kept the energy going. That’s confidence. That’s talent. That’s an artist who approaches his work as a vehicle for creating positive change and unity.

Lisa Loeb, Richard T Bear, Jean Smart, Andy Richter, John Fugelsang, Allison Gill, Dana Goldberg, everyone brought their full selves. It was a night of joy, community, and the reminder that art is the reason for everything. Art is what makes life meaningful and joyful and wonderful.

And it worked. People signed up to volunteer. People who didn’t come as activists left wanting to learn more. The coalition partners: Field Team 6, Women’s March Los Angeles, Grassroots Dem HQ, Swing Left, People For The American Way, 5051 SoCal and more, reflected the diversity and strength of our big tent. When we work together, we win.

We raised critical funds for Blue Wave California’s work flipping red-to-blue districts and protecting frontliners. And we filled our hearts while doing this sometimes heartbreaking work.

We Have to Protect Our Light

This is Mental Health Awareness Month, and that matters. We have to protect our flames. We have to protect our light. Art does that. Community does that. Joy does that.

What’s happening in our politics is designed to exhaust us. If we’re exhausted, we have no power. So protecting our well-being, finding moments of joy, connecting with community, and engaging with art isn’t a luxury. It’s a strategic necessity.

Iman Jordan said it last week: We’re going through super dark times, but just like in our personal lives, when you go through hard times, it’s not just a trial. It’s also the opportunity to transform and grow beyond that. That’s what this is for us as a country. We have to take that opportunity to grow.

This is spiritual work. It’s a practice. It’s about being of service while keeping that quiet joy at the center of everything. That’s what fuels us. That’s why weeds grow through concrete. That’s why we will win this fight.

Action: Do This This Week

1) Find Your Closest House Races and Volunteer. We need you right now. Phone banking, canvassing, donating. Find a swing district and plug in.

2) Donate Early Campaigns need money now to build field operations and hire staff. Every dollar you give today has exponentially more impact than a dollar given in October.

3) Keep Talking About the Economy Trump’s disapproval rating on the economy is at 70% because people feel the pain every day. Share your affordability struggles. Counter disinformation. Connect Republican policies to rising costs.

4) Protect Your Light This is Mental Health Awareness Month. Take time for joy. Engage with art. Connect with your community. Rest when you need to. You can’t fight if you’re exhausted. Protecting your well-being is a strategic necessity, not a luxury.

5) Keep Talking About the Epstein Files Survivors came forward this week with emotional and heartbreaking testimony about being outed in the files while abusers’ identities were concealed. Keep talking about this. Keep demanding accountability. The files we’ve seen are only half. Imagine what’s in the other half.

Reasons for Hope

Artists continue to be truth tellers in the face of real threats. They cut through the noise. They speak to our hearts. They unify us. They remind us what we’re fighting for. Tuesday night was a night of joy and community that we needed and deserved. And seeing coalition partners from across the movement working together reminded me that when we work together, we fucking win. That’s my hope. That’s what keeps me going.

We’re going to win the midterms. We just have to make it a blowout. We need a buffer for 2028. We need a governing majority, not a tenuous one-seat margin.

So find your closest House race. Volunteer now. Donate early. Keep talking about the economy. Protect your light. Do the work.

See you in the field.

— Steve

P.S. Iman Jordan, when the backing track played twice by accident, didn’t panic or stress. He made up a new song on the spot and kept the energy going. That’s the posture we need right now. When things go wrong, we adapt. We stay relaxed and confident. We keep the energy going. We make something new. That’s how we win.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Tuesday night, May 12th, at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, we’re hosting California Rising, a concert that brings together incredible artists to raise funds for the congressional races that will determine whether we win back the House in November.

This week on The Practivist Pod I talked with Iman Jordan, a singer-songwriter-producer who just won the Harry Belafonte Best Song for Social Change Grammy Award. He’ll be performing Tuesday alongside Rufus Wainwright, Lisa Loeb, Laurence Juber, and Richard T Bear, with special guests Jean Smart, Andy Richter, John Fugelsang, and hosted by Allison Gill and Dana Goldberg!

Iman’s message hit hard: artists are the emotional first responders of the world. They’re the truth tellers who cut through information bubbles and speak to people’s hearts. They’re what bring us together when we’re separated.

The arts are the most important tool we have to fight fascism. And Tuesday night, we’re coming together as a community to celebrate that power, raise critical funds for winnable races, and remind ourselves that joy is revolutionary in the face of oppression.

Artists Are the Emotional First Responders

Iman Jordan didn’t set out to make political music. The music industry doesn’t incentivize it. Labels don’t reward it. But he wrote “Deliver” for a holiday party at his house, reflecting on what was happening in the world, the division, the violence in the Middle East, the conversations he was having with his mom and friends about feeling so disconnected from fellow citizens.

He loved the song. He posted it on Instagram. It resonated. So he finished it, brought in local LA artists to collaborate, and released it. A few months later, he’d won the Harry Belafonte Best Song for Social Change Award at the Grammys!

His dad who’s been making music his whole life and plays the guitar solo at the end of “Deliver” won the Grammy too. They sat together in the front row at the ceremony. What an awesome moment that must have been for them!

But here’s what Iman said about that moment: “It was a God wink. A confirmation that when you really lean into the thing you care about, the thing that keeps you up at night, when you follow that, it usually leads to something pretty great and profound.”

Why Artists Matter Right Now

Nina Simone said it best: true artists reflect the world. They’re the ones who process what’s happening and give it back to us in a form we can understand, feel, and act on. They’re emotional first responders.

And right now, we need them more than ever.

We’re living through an era of exhaustion by design. Oppressive regimes don’t just control your body or your vote, they control your mind, your sense of well-being, your internal sovereignty. They flood you with chaos and outrage until you’re too tired to fight back. And if you’re exhausted, you have no power at all.

That’s why joy and mental health are key components of any revolution. You can’t envision a new world if you’re burned out. You can’t organize if you’re disconnected. You can’t fight if you’ve lost hope.

Artists help us find that hope again. They remind us what we’re fighting for. They cut through the noise and speak directly to our hearts. They bring us together in community when we’re isolated in our information bubbles.

Tuesday Night: California Rising at the El Rey

All of this is why California Rising matters. Yes, we’re raising critical funds for the frontline congressional races that will determine whether we flip the House in November. But we’re also doing something deeper: we’re coming together as a community. We’re celebrating artists who are using their platforms to tell the truth. We’re reminding ourselves that we’re not alone in this fight.

The full lineup: Rufus Wainwright, Lisa Loeb, Iman Jordan (Grammy-winning artist for social change), Laurence Juber (Grammy-winning guitarist), Richard T Bear with Special Guests: Jean Smart (Emmy and SAG Award winner), Andy Richter (one of the funniest people on the planet, tireless supporter of Democratic causes), John Fugelsang (comedian, political commentator, truth teller) and hosted by, Allison Gill (Mueller, She Wrote, Clean Up on Aisle 45) and Dana Goldberg (comedian, activist)

This is going to be an incredible night. Music, comedy, community, and a shared commitment to winning back the House and protecting democracy.

Get your tickets now: bluewavecalifornia.org/concert

All proceeds go directly to flipping red-to-blue districts and protecting our frontliners in California - the races that will determine control of the House.

Reason for Hope

Iman’s reason: Getting involved and seeing other people who care. Coming together in community instead of just scrolling online. Realizing that hard times prompt us to ask bigger questions and find bigger answers. Using this moment not just to cope or adapt, but to transform and to build a democracy that actually works for everyone. The conversations he’s having with people like us give him hope that transformation is possible.

Steve’s reason: Artists like Iman are stepping up. They’re using their platforms to tell the truth, build community, and help us envision a new future. Tuesday night at the El Rey, we’re going to come together and celebrate that power. We’re going to raise money for winnable races. We’re going to find joy in the midst of the fight. And we’re going to remind ourselves that we’re not alone and that there are millions of us working toward the same vision of a better world.

See you at the El Rey.

— Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

Virginia: Four Seats in Play

Tuesday’s ballot measure victory in Virginia creates an independent redistricting commission and draws fairer maps. The result: four congressional districts are now very likely to flip Democratic.

This is huge. Republicans started this gerrymandering war by redrawing maps mid-decade in Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina. California fought back with Prop 15. Now Virginia has evened the playing field further. We’re winning this fight.

And the margin wasn’t comfortable. It was close enough that every phone call mattered, every voter contact made a difference. So thank you to everyone who volunteered. Thank you to every Virginian who showed up and voted. You didn’t just pass a ballot measure, you positioned us to flip the House.

But passing the ballot measure doesn’t automatically flip those seats. We still have to do the work. We have to register voters, knock doors, make calls, and turn people out in November. The infrastructure is there. The opportunity is there. Now we execute.

Trump at 35%: Underwater on Everything

Trump’s approval hit 35% this week. One reputable poll had it at 33%. He’s flirting with the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a sitting president, lower than W, lower than Carter. And it should go even lower, because this is who we’re dealing with.

Why is he so unpopular? Cost of living. Affordability. The sense that prosperity is out of reach for working people. Healthcare prices through the roof. And a war in Iran that nobody wanted, making everything more expensive while serving no strategic purpose beyond Trump’s ego and Saudi kickbacks to Jared Kushner.

People feel it every time they fill up their tanks, buy groceries, or pay rent. And no amount of blaming Democrats or the media can change the fact that Trump and MAGA Republicans put us here.

Our job: keep telling that story. Share your affordability struggles. Share your healthcare stories. Make sure voters understand that Republicans created this crisis and Democrats will fix it. Most people only think about politics about four minutes a week. Assume no prior knowledge. Humbly and without judgment, continue to educate. Keep spreading the word and countering disinformation.

Trump was reportedly freaking out over Iran because he knew how devastating it was to Carter’s presidency. He’s desperate to distract from the Epstein files (thanks again, Melania, for bringing those back up). And he’s watching his coalition crumble in real time.

We don’t get comfortable. We don’t assume this means we slide into the midterms. We do the work. We register voters. We turn them out. And in November, we win so big it’s undeniable.

Leader Jeffries: “Maximum Warfare, Everywhere, All the Time”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded to the Virginia victory with a warning to Florida Republicans about what happens if they try to gerrymander: “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

That’s the attitude we need! That’s what we’ve been asking for. Fight for every seat. Contest every election. Push back against every attempt to rig the game. Don’t be deferential. Don’t play defense. Be on your toes, not your heels.

And of course, because this needs to be said explicitly, we’re not talking about actual violence. We’re talking about organizing. Voter registration. Door knocking. Phone banking. Donating. Showing up. Fighting tooth and nail so that we all have better healthcare, so our parents and grandparents can retire with dignity, so our kids have great childcare and education.

We fight from a place of joy and love. Love as an organizing principle. We organize because we care about people, we want to make their lives better, and we love this country and our democracy enough to fight for it.

Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time. With love at the center.

Texas: James Tallarico Raises $27 Million in Q1

Democratic Senate candidate James Tallarico just raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026, the largest amount ever raised by a Texas Senate candidate in Q1 of an election year.

That’s not everything. Money alone doesn’t win races. But it’s a strong indication of momentum. And it shows that Texas is moving closer to purple with every cycle.

Texas is still tough. It’s one of the hardest states to register voters in. But despite those obstacles, Texas organizers have been building infrastructure for years. The demographics are moving fast. And Tallarico is a compelling candidate with real grassroots support.

If you’re in Texas or visiting Texas: Connect with Powered by People, Beto O’Rourke’s voter registration organization. They’ve built creative, completely legal ways to hook you into voter drives without requiring deputization. They’re doing incredible work.

Texas will flip eventually. The question is when. And this year, with Tallarico’s fundraising and organizing, it might actually be now.

April 28: National Pre-Registration Day

Next Tuesday, April 28th, is National Pre-Registration Day. This is aimed at registering young voters who aren’t quite eligible to vote yet and getting them registered before they turn 18 so that the moment they’re eligible, they’re ready to go.

Why this matters: When voters register and vote the very first chance they have at 18, they become habitual voters for life. It becomes part of their identity. When they don’t vote that first time, it becomes difficult to engage them until they’re 30. There’s a statistical drop-off in the 18-29 age range for people who didn’t vote early.

Four million new potential voters turn 18 every year. If we get as many of them pre-registered as possible, we don’t have to chase them down later.

May 1: May Day National Strike

Thursday, May 1st, is May Day and our first widespread national strike. No shopping, no work, no school.

The goal: Show solidarity. Flex our collective power. Hit corporations in their books so they see what happens when people refuse to participate in an economy that serves oligarchs instead of working families. Show the Trump regime that we have people power and we’re willing to use it.

Can’t do all three? Do what you can. If you have to go to work, don’t shop. If you have to shop, go to a mom-and-pop store instead of a big chain. If your kid has a test, maybe they go to school but you don’t shop that day. Any bit you can do helps.

There will be rallies across the country including our traditional Labor Day march in downtown LA. Join one if you can.

Why a general strike matters: Elections are crucial, but they take too long. Fascism ends at the ballot box when we end it, but we can’t wait until November to exercise power. The power of where we spend our dollars is something we have every day. Boycotts work. General strikes work.

May 12: California Rising Live

If you’re in the LA area, Blue Wave California is hosting California Rising Live on May 12th at the El Rey Theater. All ticket sales go directly to flipping red-to-blue districts and protecting frontliners in California, the races that will win us back the House.

It’s going to be an amazing night featuring: Rufus Wainwright, Lisa Loeb, Grammy Winner Laurence Juber, special guests Jean Smart, Andy Richter and more! (Can’t announce yet, but you do not want to miss this!)

Get your tickets at HERE. This is going to be an incredible night with great music, great energy, and of course a great cause. See you there!

Action: Do This This Week

1) May Day Strike—Thursday, May 1st No shopping, no work, no school. Do what you can. Join a rally. Show solidarity. Flex our collective power.

2) California Rising Concert—May 12th Get your tickets at bluewavecalifornia.org/concert. Great music, great cause, great night.

Reasons for Hope

Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” in response to Virginia and as a warning to Florida. That’s the fighter mentality we’ve been asking for. Democrats on their toes, not their heels. Contesting every seat, pushing back against every attempt to rig the game, organizing with love at the center. That’s how we win.

We won Virginia. Trump is at 35%. Texas is raising record money. Democrats are fighting back everywhere. The midterms are six months away, and we have five months to register every voter we can and build the infrastructure to win decisively.

Register voters. Make calls. Donate. Show up. Do the work.

See you in the field!

— Steve

P.S. Happy Earth Day. Yes, the Trump regime is wiping away fossil fuel regulations and acting like an alien eating the sun. But we’re still here. We’re still fighting. And in November, we’re going to win back the power to actually protect this planet for future generations. Until then, we organize.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

The Mad King and the 25th Amendment

Trump posted an AI image of himself as Jesus laying hands on the sick. He also posted Trump Tower on the moon and a meme mocking Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Biden for looking old while he looks “youthful and vital.” Then he attacked Pope Leo for being “soft on crime” - which is rich coming from a guy who’s committed multiple felonies and started an unconstitutional war.

The blowback from his Christian MAGA base was swift. He took down the Jesus post. His excuse? “I thought it was me as a doctor.” Sure, buddy. Most people can tell the difference between Jesus and a doctor at 50 yards.

This is not normal. Tom Nichols from The Atlantic wrote: “This is not the behavior of a stable, healthy leader. The American people must not look away. They must pay attention to the president’s deterioration and insist that the House and Senate start acting like functioning branches of the government.”

Representative Jamie Raskin just introduced legislation to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office. It won’t pass as it requires the vice president to initiate, and J.D. Vance is too busy being humiliated on the world stage. First Trump sent him to campaign for Viktor Orban (who just lost). Then Trump attacked the Pope right as Vance’s book about being a happy new Catholic is about to drop. Then Trump sent Vance to negotiate the end of the Iran war in Islamabad, a war Vance opposed and a negotiation that failed.

Rachel Maddow’s theory: Trump is trying to humiliate Vance into quitting so he can get a new VP. I think he’s just sullying Vance’s 2028 presidential ambitions so Trump can hand power to Don Jr. Either way, everyone who makes a deal with Trump comes out worse.

Viktor Orban Lost. Authoritarianism Is Losing Worldwide.

Viktor Orban, Trump’s favorite authoritarian buddy, just lost in Hungary by almost 2-to-1. It was a true landslide. And he conceded. That’s the part that shocked everyone. The numbers were so overwhelming he had no choice.

The celebrations in Budapest were beautiful. People dancing in the streets, cheering, crying with relief. This is what happens when people organize for years and refuse to give up. It’s exactly what we’ve been doing here since 2016, and it works.

And it’s not just Hungary. Liberals now hold the governing majority in Canada after about a year of minority government. Prime Minister Mark Carney has his majority. We’re seeing liberalism defeat conservatism around the world in response to the rising fascism of 2024.

This matters because it destroys the illusion that Trump has the power to end our democratic experiment here in America. We can stop it. We will stop it. The same organizing, the same refusal to quit, the same people power that toppled Orban will work here.

Pushback Is Working at All Levels

When we push back, we win. Here’s the proof:

ICE concentration camps: Trump’s regime bought warehouses across the country for millions more than they’re worth, planning to turn them into detention facilities holding 5,000 to 10,000 people, bigger than the largest prisons in America. Not a single one has opened. Organizers are showing up weekly to protest. Plans are falling apart in Hagerstown, Maryland, and everywhere else they’ve tried. They have no expertise, no oversight, and no ability to withstand sustained resistance.

Pride flag at Stonewall: The regime tried to ban it. Organizers pushed back. The ban was reversed. Stonewall continues to be synonymous with victory through organizing.

Trump’s lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal: He sued them over his Epstein birthday drawing. A judge dismissed it.

Pushback works. Keep doing it.

The California Governor Race: Take a Deep Breath

A lot of people have been understandably panicking about two Republicans making it through California’s jungle primary. With Swalwell out and Trump endorsing Steve Hilton, here’s the reality: it is unlikely that two Republicans make it to the top of the ticket.

Trump’s endorsement killed any chance of a Republican split vote working in their favor. If he’d just stayed out of it, Sheriff Chad Bianco and Hilton might have had a shot at sneaking through. But Trump endorsed Hilton, so Republicans will consolidate behind him. And with Swalwell’s votes now going to the top polling Democrats, it is likely one of those Democrats will be the next governor of California.

The real conversation now is which Democrat you want. The last reputable poll showed 20% of voters still undecided. That’s 500,000 to 800,000 people who heard the pollsters’ pitch for each candidate and still said “I have no idea.” With an election that will be decided by about 1.5 to 1.7 million votes, those undecideds matter.

Why Democrats Must Invest in Latino Voters

Christian Esperias joined The Practivist Pod this week and he has been sounding the alarm on this for years: Democrats are committing malpractice by not investing heavily in turning out and persuading Latino voters.

The numbers are stark. Latinos shifted heavily toward Trump in 2024, not just in South Texas (which got all the headlines) but in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Look at concentrated Latino communities in LA like Southgate, Huntington Park, Bell, Downey. The Republican vote skyrocketed.

But here’s the opportunity: Latinos haven’t abandoned Democrats ideologically. They still align with us on women’s rights, immigration, climate, and workers’ rights. What happened is Democrats stopped showing up and stopped giving them a reason to vote for us beyond “stop Trump.”

That doesn’t work. It didn’t work in 2020. It didn’t work in 2024. And it won’t work in 2026 unless we change course.

Here’s what Christian said: “So many people who are millennials, so many Latinos, we don’t dream about affordability. We dream about prosperity. And until Democrats give people something aspirational other than ‘hey, stop Trump,’ we’re not going to bring them back.”

Latinos care about social mobility. First-generation immigrants came here believing in the American dream. They want to build wealth, own homes, send their kids to college, and climb the economic ladder. When Trump talks about being rich and promises prosperity, they hear aspiration. When Democrats talk about lowering your electricity bill by 10%, they hear small-bore policy tweaks that don’t really change their lives.

We need to meet people where they’re at. Latinos have been the most online demographic in America, heads and shoulders above everyone else. The rest of the world has caught up now, but Democrats still haven’t invested in podcasts, influencers, independent journalists, and social media the way we need to. We’re still running ads on live sports TV during Lakers games when nobody watching is in the mood to hear about politics.

The message has to be prosperity, not just affordability. Talk about homeownership. Talk about small business loans. Talk about pathways to wealth. Talk about how we’re going to level the playing field so working people can actually build something. That’s what Sherrod Brown does. That’s why he will (hopefully) win in Ohio. And that’s what every Democrat needs to do in 2026.

The Senate Is Suddenly Winnable

Cook Political Report just moved four Senate seats closer to Democrats:

• North Carolina (open Republican seat): Moved from toss-up to lean Democratic. This would be a net pickup.

• Georgia (Senator Ossoff): Moved from toss-up to lean Democratic. Holding this seat is crucial.

• Ohio: Moved from lean Republican to toss-up. Sherrod Brown is now statistically tied with appointed GOP Senator John Husted.

• Nebraska: Moved from solid Republican to likely Republican. Still on the periphery but trending our way.

The path to a Democratic Senate majority: Win North Carolina, hold Georgia, flip Ohio, and flip one of Maine or Alaska. Mary Peltola declared her run for Senate in Alaska with the campaign slogan “Fish, Family, Freedom.” She’s won statewide before. She can do it again.

This is within reach. A year ago, it wasn’t. Now it is. But it only happens if we do the work.

Action: Do This This Week

1) Virginia Redistricting Vote—This Tuesday, April 21st Final push. Call voters. This ballot measure creates an independent redistricting commission and draws fairer maps. We need this to pass to balance out Republican gerrymandering.

2) California Rising Concert—May 12th, El Rey Theater Rufus Wainwright, Lisa Loeb, Jean Smart, Andy Richter, Laurence Juber. All ticket sales go to flipping red-to-blue districts and protecting California frontliners. Get your tickets.

Reasons for Hope

The Senate is suddenly winnable. Ohio is a toss-up. North Carolina leans Democratic. We have pathways in Maine and Alaska. A year ago, this felt impossible. Now it’s within reach. That’s what sustained organizing does, it shifts the fundamentals.

Christian’s reason: Ohio moved to toss-up because Trump is terrible at his job and Sherrod Brown is the embodiment of workers’ rights and affordability politics. This election will be the affordability election. If you can make a compelling case that you understand the struggles of everyday people—healthcare, housing, childcare—you win. If you can’t, you lose. Sherrod Brown is the avatar for that message. And if we can win in Ohio, we can win everywhere.

The 2026 midterms will be the affordability election. Democrats who talk about prosperity, social mobility, and leveling the playing field will win. Democrats who assume people will vote for us just because Republican policies hurt them will lose.

Meet people where they’re at. Give them a vision. Do the work.

See you in the field.

— Steve

P.S. Christian’s advice on the California primary: “Take a deep breath. Vote your conscience. Two Republicans won’t make it to the top. Do your homework and vote for the candidate whose vision for California you believe in.” That’s good advice for democracy in general.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

The Week Trump Threatened Genocide

Let’s call it what it is: Trump threatened genocide. On Easter Sunday, Trump stood next to the Easter Bunny and made more threats to wipe out Iranian civilization while mocking Allah and alienating 1 billion Muslims worldwide.

It’s truly insane and reckless. And it radicalizes a generation of young Iranians who otherwise could have been our partners in building democracy in the region. Remember the Arab Spring? Remember the student uprisings in Iran? There’s a population there that wants freedom, that wants partnership with the West. And Trump just threatened to erase them.

The New York Times reported that Trump’s decision to go to war was “mostly his gut” with no one in the room to push back. Hegseth wanted war (and apparently wanted to profit from it). And J.D. Vance, the empty suit who will say anything to stay in power, told Trump: “You know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I’ll support you.”

That’s not leadership. That’s prostration. And it’s why we can’t rely on anyone in this administration to do the right thing. They’re all capitulating to a maniac who needs to be removed.

The good news: Trump backed down. He always does when the pressure gets too intense. TACO Tuesday became (a tenuous) ceasefire Wednesday. And now Iran is in a stronger financial position than before this started with control over the Strait of Hormuz and billions in revenue. Great job, stable genius.

Our job hasn’t changed: keep the pressure on. Call your electeds. Demand they vote YES on the War Powers Resolution and NO on every war supplemental. Keep talking about the cost - gas prices up, groceries up, billions spent on bombs while Americans struggle. Healthcare not warfare!

We Keep Winning Elections

While Trump cosplays a strongman and threatens war crimes, we keep organizing and we keep winning.

Georgia’s 14th District: Democrat Sean Harris didn’t win Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old seat in one of the reddest districts in Georgia, but he outperformed Kamala Harris by 25 points. In deep red Georgia!

Wisconsin Supreme Court: Judge Chris Taylor won her race, locking in a 5-2 liberal majority through 2030. This is the same court Elon Musk spent $20 million trying to buy last year and failed. This time Republicans didn’t even bother trying. That majority protects reproductive rights, keeps fair district maps, and blocks Republican power grabs for the rest of the decade.

The bigger picture: Democrats have now won or overperformed in 261 of 292 key elections since Trump retook office. That’s organizing. We know how to do this. We’ve been doing it for a decade. And it’s working.

Republicans see it too. That’s why they’re scrambling to cheat every way they can including gerrymandering, voter suppression, and intimidation at the polls. They can’t win on ideas, so they’re trying to rig the game. Our job is to out-organize their cheating, just like we’ve been doing since 2016.

April 21: Virginia Redistricting Vote Is Crucial

Here’s the situation: Republicans started a gerrymandering arms race. They redrew maps in Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina to lock in unfair advantages. California fought back and passed Prop 50, undoing the five seats Texas stole. But we’re still behind overall.

Virginia’s ballot measure on April 21st, if it passes, balances out the Republican gerrymanders and potentially flips 3-4 seats. That’s huge for winning back the House.

And it’s tighter than people think. A recent Washington Post poll showed 52% in favor, 47% opposed. That’s within the margin of error. We can’t take this for granted.

What you need to do: Call voters in Virginia. Volunteer with organizations working on the ground. This isn’t about Democrats wanting to gerrymander, it’s about fighting fire with fire until we can pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and ban partisan gerrymandering nationwide. Once we restore a Democratic trifecta in 2028, that’s the holy grail. But for now, we need to win in Virginia to level the playing field.

Jen Levin and the Art of Sustainable Activism

On the Practivist Pod, I had a great conversation with my friend Jen Levin, who founded Hang Out Do Good (HODG) in 2017. Nine years later, HODG has served over 1 million lunches to unhoused neighbors, organized countless voter drives and protests, and built chapters across California. Jen’s secret? She rotates between three buckets: lefty politics, do-goodery (lunches, clothing drives, hygiene kits), and education (learning about housing, juvenile justice, whatever interests people).

She calls it crop rotation. “If it’s just Democratic politics, we get drained. But if you feed it with do-good work and reaching out to other communities and doing art and all sorts of stuff, then the soil stays fertile. That’s one of the reasons I’m not burnt out.”

Her philosophy:

• Underthink it. Just say yes. Just do it. Don’t worry about perfection.

• It’s not about you. Ego kills movements. If you’re stressing about whether people will show up or whether your event looks good, you’re focused on the wrong thing. Show up. Be together. That’s what matters.

And it works. HODG has been going strong for nearly a decade. The core group is still together. People bring their friends. Chapters spin off. It’s organic, sustainable, and joyful. That’s the model we all need right now.

If you want to start a group like HODG, or join one, check out hangoutdogood.org. Or just start your own. Get people together. Make phone calls. Make lunches. Learn about issues that matter. Rotate what you do so you don’t burn out. It’s not complicated. It’s just people showing up for each other.

May 1: May Day Strike

Friday, May 1st is a day of no shopping, no work, no school for everyone who can participate. You don’t have to do all three. If you can only do no shopping - great, do that. No purity tests. Just do what you can. Mark your calendar. Tell your friends. Make a plan.

May 12: California Rising Concert at the El Rey

Blue Wave California is hosting a fundraising concert on May 12th at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. All ticket sales go directly to flipping red-to-blue districts and protecting our frontliners in California, the races that will win us back the House.

Performers include:

• Rufus Wainwright

• Lisa Loeb

• Grammy-winning guitarist Laurence Juber

• Special Guests Jean Smart and Andy Richter

More amazing artists will be announced soon! This is going to be a cultural moment with great performances, great energy, and opportunities to sign up and volunteer with coalitions working to win in November. If you’re in the LA area, get your tickets now!

Trump threatened genocide and backed down. We swung a deep red Georgia district 17 points. We locked in a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court majority through 2030. We’re organizing sustainably, joyfully, and effectively.

The work hasn’t changed: register voters, call electeds, show up to events, bring new people in, donate to campaigns. Underthink it. Just show up. Remember it’s not about you.

And in November, we blow them out.

See you in the field.

— Steve

P.S. Jen’s advice: “Great things can be accomplished when people aren’t worried about taking credit.” That’s the spirit we need. Do the work. Stay humble. Focus on people, not ego. We’ve got this.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

No Kings III: 8 Million Strong

Let’s start with what we built together this weekend. Over 8 million people. More than 3,000 events. Cities, suburbs, small towns. Red states, blue states, purple states. People who’ve been organizing their whole lives and people who came to their first protest ever. They showed the country, and the world, that we’re not backing down, we’re not getting tired, and we’re not going away.

We’re building toward the number that makes resistance inevitable: 3.5% of the population, which in America means 12 million people. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s research shows that when a movement hits that threshold, its success becomes a mathematical certainty. We’re at 8 million. We’re two-thirds of the way there.

Public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish almost anything. Without it, you can accomplish nothing. Trump knows this. That’s why he keeps trying to crush dissent, ban protests, and pretend his rallies are bigger than our marches. But he can’t fake 8 million people. And he can’t stop us from doing it again.

Keep organizing in your communities. Keep showing up to local events. Keep bringing new people into the movement. The outside game (protests, public actions, visible resistance) and the inside game (voter registration, campaign work, calling electeds) fuel each other. We need both, and we need to keep building both.

Trump’s Executive Disorder

While 8 million of us were in the streets demanding accountability, Trump spent the weekend signing more illegal executive orders. It’s what he does when he feels threatened: he cosplays strength. He grabs for more power. He violates the Constitution and dares anyone to stop him.

Here’s the pattern we’ve seen for weeks now: Trump signs unconstitutional orders. Courts block them. He ignores the courts or signs new orders that violate different parts of the Constitution. Democrats in Congress push back. He calls it “lawfare” and does it again anyway.

It’s exhausting by design. The chaos is the point. Flood the zone. Make everything feel so overwhelming that people tune out or give up. Make resistance feel futile so people stop resisting.

But here’s what he didn’t count on: 8 million people showing up anyway. He didn’t count on his approval rating hitting historic lows. He didn’t count on gas prices and grocery costs making his economic promises look like the lies they always were. And he didn’t count on us having the stamina to keep fighting month after month, executive order after executive order, outrage after outrage.

Our job hasn’t changed. No matter how many illegal orders he signs, no matter how much he tries to grab power, our work is the same: keep our heads down, do what we can every single day, and make sure we blow out the midterms in November. That’s it. Everything else is noise.

Prices Up, Approval Down

Here’s the economic reality Trump can’t spin away: gas prices are rising. Grocery costs are up. Inflation is climbing. 50% of Americans can’t handle a $1,000 unexpected expense. And Trump’s approval rating keeps dropping.

The Iran war spiked oil prices. His tariff threats spooked markets and raised prices on everyday goods. His mass deportation plans disrupted industries that depend on immigrant labor. His cuts to Medicaid and SNAP left millions of families scrambling. Every decision he makes prioritizes oligarchs and authoritarianism over the material wellbeing of everyday Americans.

And people feel it. They feel it every time they fill up their gas tank. They feel it every time they buy groceries. They feel it every time they get a medical bill or pay rent or try to save for an emergency that will inevitably come.

Trump promised to fix the economy on day one. Instead, he drove it into a ditch. This is the economic message we hammer from now until November: Trump made your life more expensive. Democrats will make it more affordable. It’s that simple. And the data backs it up.

What Comes Next: The Midterms Are Everything

We’re seven months out from the midterms. Registration deadlines start hitting in early October, which means we have about six months to register every voter we can, build out field operations, and prepare for the biggest electoral victory of our generation.

Here’s what we know:

• We’ve flipped 29 state legislative seats since Trump took office. Republicans have flipped zero.

• We’ve won or overperformed in the overwhelming majority of elections, with average swings of 16-17 points to the left.

• Trump’s approval is at historic lows.

• We just mobilized 8 million people in one day for No Kings III.

• Democrats are holding the line on DHS funding, refusing to cave on ICE accountability.

• A record number of Republicans in Congress are retiring rather than face defeat.

The fundamentals are with us. The momentum is with us. The organizing infrastructure is scaling up. The question isn’t whether we can win - it’s how big we make the victory.

Action: Do This This Week

1) Get involved with an organization. Blue Wave California for congressional races. Field Team 6 for voter registration. Local Indivisible chapters. Swing Left. Your local Dem Club. Pick one and commit time every week between now and November.

2) Donate early. Campaigns need money now to build field operations, hire staff, and scale up. Don’t wait until October. Every dollar you give today has exponentially more impact than a dollar given in the final weeks.

4) Bring people into the movement. Everyone who came to No Kings III for the first time - stay connected with them. Get them to the next event. Sign them up to volunteer. Help them find their role in this fight.

5) Take care of yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint. We have seven months of sustained organizing ahead. Find joy. Rest when you need to. Stay in community. We fight from a place of love and belonging, not exhaustion and despair.

Eight million people showed up this weekend. That’s power. That’s momentum. That’s proof that when we organize, we’re unstoppable.

Trump can sign all the illegal executive orders he wants. He can cosplay a king. He can tank the economy and start unconstitutional wars and watch his approval ratings crater. None of it changes our job.

We register voters. We call our electeds. We show up to protests. We bring new people into the movement. We donate to campaigns. We build community. We fight from a place of joy and love and belonging.

And in November, we win so big it’s undeniable.

See you in the field.

— Steve

P.S. Happy Passover and Happy Easter to everyone celebrating. The story of Passover is about liberation from authoritarianism. It’s about ordinary people standing up to Pharaoh and saying “let my people go.” And both Easter and Passover are about faith, renewal, and hope. It’s a story we’re living right now. And just like then, we’re going to win.

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today.

No Kings III: Saturday, March 28 - This Is It!

We’ve been talking about this for months. Now it’s finally here. Over 3,000 events are planned across the country. The first No Kings protests brought 3 million people. No Kings II brought 7 million and became the biggest protest in world history. This Saturday, we’re going for 9 million.

Why does it matter? Political scientist Erica Chenoweth studied hundreds of popular movements over two centuries and found that when 3.5% of a population joins a movement, its success becomes inevitable. In America, with 340 million people, that’s 12 million. We’re building toward that number, and Saturday is the next massive step.

What you need to do right now:

Text five friends. Not “you should come.” Make an actual plan. Time, place, who’s going with whom. Lower the barriers to entry. You don’t need a sign. You don’t need to stay for hours. Just bring yourself for even one hour. Protests are joyful, peaceful, and deeply satisfying. You’ll be around thousands of peace-loving people who believe in sanity, science, democracy, and love as an organizing principle.

I will be in downtown LA. If you’re in Los Angeles, come say hello (if you can find me in the crowd). If you’re anywhere else, find your event at nokings.org and show up.

Emily Gregory Flipped Mar-a-Lago

Florida House District 87 is Trump’s home district. It’s the home of Mar-a-Lago. Trump won it by 11 points in 2024. The Republican incumbent won it by 19 points in the last election. This week, Democrat Emily Gregory won it by 2 points. That’s a 21-point swing.

Trump voted by mail in this election even after calling it “cheating by mail.” He tried to cheat by mail. It didn’t work. He’s now represented by a Democrat.

This is state legislative seat flip number 29 for Dems. Republicans have flipped zero. We’ve won or overperformed in the overwhelming majority of elections nationwide, with an average swing of 14-15 points to the left. The trend line is unmistakable. They see it. That’s why they’re so desperate to pass the SAVE Act and suppress voters. They know November is coming.

Trump’s Approval Hits All-Time Low: 36%

A new Reuters poll shows Trump at an all-time low approval rating of 36%. He’s underwater on every single issue, including the economy and immigration, the two areas where Republicans traditionally poll well no matter what’s actually happening.

50% of Americans can’t handle a $1,000 unexpected expense. The war in Iran has made everything more expensive, and we haven’t even felt the real consequences yet because strategic reserves are cushioning the blow. Gas prices are up. Groceries are up. People are living hand-to-mouth. And Trump keeps saying the economy is great while sending 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne and 2,500 Marines to fight a war he claims is already won.

Meanwhile, Trump sent ICE agents to airports to “help” with TSA during the DHS shutdown. They’re not trained TSA workers. They can’t actually do anything except stand around with huge weapons staring at their phones. All they’re doing is reminding travelers that Trump owns this chaos.

Democrats, meanwhile, are holding the line. They proposed bipartisan legislation to fund TSA while negotiating the rest of DHS. Trump said no. Democrats are refusing to fund ICE without accountability measures, and they’re standing strong. That spine exists because activists across the country have been calling, protesting, and showing them we’ve got their backs.

Ballot Measures: Direct Democracy Under Attack

This week on The Practivist Pod, I spoke with Chris Melody Fields Figueredo who runs the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, and her work is crucial right now because authoritarians are trying to kill one of the most powerful tools people have to fight back: ballot measures.

Here’s why ballot measures matter: for over a decade, progressives have been winning on issues like abortion rights, minimum wage increases, Medicaid expansion, redistricting reform, and paid leave, in deep red states. States like Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Florida. Places where Democrats struggle to win elections but progressive policy wins at the ballot box.

In Missouri in 2024, voters passed a minimum wage increase at 58%, the same percentage Trump won the state. The policy and the candidate were in direct conflict, but the policy won because it was good and people wanted it. That’s the power of ballot measures. They let people challenge entrenched power directly. And now authoritarians are scared, so they’re trying to dismantle the tool itself.

How they’re attacking ballot measures:

• Raising the threshold to pass: Florida now requires a supermajority (60%) to pass a ballot measure.

• Raising signature requirements: Making it harder to even get an issue on the ballot.

• Requiring passage in every congressional district: Missouri conservatives are trying to amend the state constitution so a ballot measure would have to pass above 50% in every single congressional district. That means even if 58% of the state votes yes, if one gerrymandered district falls below 50%, the measure fails. It’s a veto power for the minority.

This is authoritarianism in action. When the people keep winning, authoritarians don’t change their policies, they take away the people’s power to vote on them.

What’s on the ballot in 2026:

• Redistricting: Virginia has a special election in April to change gerrymandered maps. Missouri will vote in the fall to counter gerrymandered districts.

• Reproductive rights: Nevada will vote again (they have to pass it twice). Idaho is moving one forward. Missouri will have to defend the abortion rights win they had in 2024 - and Republicans are bundling it with attacks on trans kids and bans on gender-affirming care for minors.

• Defending the tool itself: Several states will vote on whether to protect ballot measures from legislative attacks.

What you can do: Go to ballot.org. Check out what’s happening in your state. Find the organizations on the ground doing this work and get involved. Ballot measures outperform candidates in many states because people see them as having a direct impact on their lives. Use that power.

Action: Do This This Week

1) Saturday: No Kings III Find your event at nokings.org. Text five friends. Make a plan.

2) Check Out Ballot Measures in Your State Go to ballot.org. See what’s happening. Get involved with local organizations. This is direct democracy in action.

Saturday is No Kings III. Over 3,000 events. 9 million people. The biggest protest in world history. This is the outside game. This is how we build public sentiment. This is how we steel Democrats’ spines and show the country we refuse to bow.

Trump is at 36% approval. We flipped his home district. We’re winning elections everywhere. The trend line is ours. But we have to do the work. Protests fuel organizing. Organizing wins elections. Elections change policy. It all works together.

Find your event. Make your plan. Text your friends. Show up Saturday.

See you in the field.

P.S. Cherry blossoms are blooming in D.C. despite everything. They bloomed through the Civil War. They bloomed through World War II. They bloomed through every crisis this country has faced. They’ll bloom next year too. We’re still here. We’re still fighting. And we’re going to win.

- Steve

Donate to Blue Wave California

Want to hear more? Subscribe to The Practivist Pod.