How Iran Brought Israel Closer to Middle East Nations
Israel-Lebanon negotiations, a possible Syrian security arrangement, renewed Bahrain-Israel engagement and US pressure on Saudi Arabia point to diplomatic movement—but analysts disagree sharply over whether it can produce durable agreement
A series of diplomatic moves across the Middle East is raising the prospect of new regional arrangements even as the continuing confrontation between Washington and Tehran places governments under mounting military, economic and political pressure.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington on Tuesday, July 28, for their first face-to-face talks since the United States and Israel began their current war with Iran. Details of the specific topics under discussion were not released.
The meeting came days before Israeli and Lebanese representatives were scheduled to return to Rome. An Israeli official confirmed that the next round would begin on August 4, following previous US-mediated discussions over border arrangements, Israeli withdrawals and proposed “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon.
The diplomatic activity extends beyond Lebanon. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview broadcast on July 26 that Damascus was working with several countries to reach a security agreement with Israel. According to al-Sharaa, a successful arrangement could create a path toward comprehensive peace without requiring Syria to relinquish its claim to the Golan Heights.
On the same day, Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke by telephone with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The two discussed bilateral relations, the Abraham Accords and recent regional developments. The call, initiated and publicized by Bahrain according to an Israeli report, was characterized by experts interviewed for this article as apparently the leaders’ first publicly disclosed call since the October 7 attacks.
These moves have coincided with new uncertainty surrounding Saudi Arabia. Washington and Riyadh signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement on July 22, but Trump subsequently said he would not allow it to proceed unless Saudi Arabia normalized relations with Israel and joined the Abraham Accords. Saudi Arabia has maintained that formal normalization requires a credible path toward Palestinian statehood.
Taken together, the developments suggest that diplomacy is continuing alongside—not subsequent to—the region’s widening confrontation. Yet four regional specialists offered markedly different assessments of whether the current movement represents a genuine opening, a limited security adjustment or a temporary diplomatic response to an unresolved war.
Syria’s Security Overture
Dr. Nir Boms, a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, argued that Israel and Syria have overlapping long-term interests—including security arrangements and the approach to Hezbollah—despite the continuing territorial dispute and uncertainty surrounding al-Sharaa’s political trajectory. “I think there is pragmatism involved in the Syrian policy. And I think al-Sharaa understands that at this point, there is a real challenge coming from Israel in the south,” he told The Media Line.
Boms said the two sides share an interest in limiting radical armed actors in southern Syria and restricting weapons-smuggling networks connected to Hezbollah. “In the context of the long-term strategic interests, I think Israel and Syria share the aspiration that we’re going to limit the presence of radical forces in the Syrian south and in Syria overall,” he said. “He needs to help stop smuggling lines that also influence the dynamics with Hezbollah. And some of that is happening in the Triangle area and in Israel-Lebanon-Syria proximity.”
A security arrangement, Boms argued, could help al-Sharaa consolidate authority over Syrian territory. “… That’s one thing that can potentially help him get to that agenda,” he said.
Joshua Landis, professor in Middle East Studies and co-director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, offered a more skeptical assessment.
“Al-Sharaa has got a big problem on his hands because Israel has occupied this additional land beyond the Golan Heights. And he needs to get Israel out of that land if he is going to have a peace agreement,” Landis told The Media Line.
While al-Sharaa could conceivably accept continued Israeli control over the Golan Heights as part of an agreement, Landis argued, he could not domestically accept the loss of additional territory occupied following the collapse of Bashar Assad’s government. “He can sign a deal which gives the Golan Heights to Israel,” Landis said. “But not a deal that gives the extra territory that’s been taken recently in southern Syria.”
Landis said the fundamental imbalance between Israel and the new Syrian administration limits Damascus’ negotiating leverage. “Syria is too weak. Israel is too strong, and Israel’s made its position very clear, which is we’re staying in this situation, and I can’t see Israel backing off of that,” he said.
Syria is too weak. Israel is too strong, and Israel’s made its position very clear, which is ‘we’re staying in this situation,’ and I can’t see Israel backing off of that
“And I don’t think the international community is going to rally behind Syria and put a lot of capital into this,” he added.
A former Bahraini diplomat, who requested anonymity, interpreted the Syrian overture as a product of military weakness, the search for sanctions relief, and the need to restore international legitimacy. “Faced with incomplete territorial control near the Golan, an urgent need for international reintegration, and sanctions relief from Washington, I believe Damascus is pragmatically forced to treat Israel as an unavoidable reality,” the former diplomat told The Media Line.
“The Syrian approach aims for a functional security arrangement—ideally restoring the pre-1974 disengagement lines and pushing back Israeli incursions from Al-Sheikh Mount [widely known as Mount Hermon]—while explicitly reaffirming sovereignty over the Golan Heights to preserve domestic and Arab legitimacy,” he explained.
The diplomat added that Syria was unlikely to restore its former strategic relationship with Tehran. “Crucially, Syria has no incentive to realign with Tehran; the country’s state image suffered heavily from direct Iranian intervention during the Assad era, making a return to the ‘Axis of Resistance’ politically untenable,” he said.
Instead, he noted, Turkey now plays a central role in Syria, effectively replacing Iranian influence. In his view, while this shift sidelines Tehran, it creates a separate strategic concern for Israel.
Chama Mechtaly, a policy adviser pioneering the bottom-up movement of the Abraham Accords and founder and executive director of the Emma Lazarus Institute for Liberty and Tolerance, described the Syrian development more optimistically, although she warned that regional integration could provoke armed opposition. “The diplomatic movement is real,” Mechtaly told The Media Line. “The Lebanese framework is a step in the right direction. Syria appears to be moving closer to a security arrangement, potentially in the near term,” she said, adding that normalization can also trigger hostility from proxy groups, which see greater regional integration as a threat to their influence.
Lebanon’s Talks Face the Hezbollah Question
The same disagreement extends to Lebanon, where negotiations are continuing despite fundamental disputes over Hezbollah’s weapons, the Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon, and the sequencing of any withdrawal.
Boms argued that the Lebanese state ultimately faces a choice between restoring its authority and continuing to accommodate Hezbollah as a separate military structure. “I think Lebanon understands that there is a choice that needs to be made and that it’s either Lebanon, or Hezbollah. And in some ways, you can’t have them both,” he said.
I think Lebanon understands that there is a choice that needs to be made and that it’s either Lebanon, or Hezbollah. And in some ways, you can’t have them both.
However, he cautioned that weakening Hezbollah would also require an alternative political structure capable of preserving representation for Lebanon’s Shia population. “You need to create a Shia power framework that is divorced from Hezbollah. And I don’t think that’s impossible.”
Landis rejected the likelihood that the Lebanese state could carry out such a process under current conditions. “Hezbollah is not going to be defeated. The Lebanese army is in no position to take them on,” he said. “The politicians in Lebanon are not interested in pushing a military confrontation internally.”
Landis therefore viewed the negotiations primarily as a mechanism for containing immediate escalation rather than resolving the underlying conflict. “So, I think this is a lot of talk in order to try to deescalate things, but that’s it,” he argued.
He was similarly doubtful that the existing roadmap would produce a complete Israeli withdrawal.
“There is a roadmap for Israeli withdrawal, but the chances of that roadmap ever being carried out seem very slim because it requires defeating Hezbollah,” Landis said. “And who’s going to do that? It seems like an impossibility.”
The former Bahraini diplomat also questioned whether the negotiations could survive without a broader regional understanding. “Given the hardline rhetoric from Israeli ministers opposing the talks themselves and advocating a permanent military presence, I think that these negotiations risk becoming short-lived diplomatic bubbles,” he said.
He said that Hezbollah, which seems to retain significant popular support and military infrastructure, remains prepared for a prolonged war of attrition in coordination with Tehran. “The Lebanese government currently lacks both consensus in the south and the military capacity to enforce disarmament, rendering any diplomatic agreement fragile without a broader regional settlement.”
He said that, in his view, it is simply a matter of time before the next escalation erupts.
Mechtaly, by contrast, described the Lebanese framework as a potentially meaningful step while emphasizing that Hezbollah and other Iranian-aligned groups were likely to interpret regional agreements as a direct challenge. “We therefore have to watch Hezbollah and the Houthis closely,” she said.
From her perspective, the success of diplomacy will depend not only on agreements between governments but also on whether states are prepared to confront the networks that can obstruct their implementation.
Bahrain and the Durability of the Original Accords
Herzog’s conversation with Bahrain’s king has added another dimension to the diplomatic picture. Bahrain joined the Abraham Accords in 2020 and has maintained formal relations with Israel despite the regional fallout from October 7 and the subsequent wars.
The former Bahraini diplomat described the call as an indication that Manama continued to view its relationship with Washington and Israel as central to its security. “Despite enduring sustained missile and drone pressure from Iran and its regional allies, Bahrain appears to remain firmly anchored within the US-Israel defense umbrella,” he said.
“Implicitly, this signal reflects Manama’s firm belief that the US-Israel coalition maintains the capacity—but lacks the strategic appetite—to fully deter Iran,” he added.
Implicitly, this signal reflects Manama’s firm belief that the US-Israel coalition maintains the capacity—but lacks the strategic appetite—to fully deter Iran
The diplomat nevertheless warned that continued reliance on external deterrence could become politically and strategically unsustainable if the campaign against Iran failed to produce a clear result. “Should US deterrence fail to produce a decisive strategic outcome, even frontline states may eventually, and unfortunately, be forced to complement this posture with pragmatic regional adaptation.”
Mechtaly interpreted the call as evidence of the institutional relationships that had developed among the original Abraham Accords countries.
“The original Abraham Accords countries have already accumulated something that cannot be manufactured overnight: trust, relational capital, institutional cooperation, and a record of standing by the relationship during moments of enormous pressure,” she said.
She distinguished between governments that treat normalization as a long-term strategic commitment and those that use its symbols for tactical advantage.
“For some states, normalization is the product of a genuine strategic investment in regional security, economic integration, and the recovery of state sovereignty from militias and transnational ideological movements,” Mechtaly said. “For others, the language and imagery of normalization are being used tactically, as public relations, as narrative warfare, and as insulation from scrutiny in Washington.”
Boms also pointed to signs that regional exchanges had continued despite Israel’s diplomatic difficulties after October 7. “We’ve seen more developments on trade with Israel and the Gulf. We’ve seen the dynamics coming back,” he said, adding that Israel does not appear to be completely isolated.
But he warned against interpreting those contacts as an automatic restoration of Israel’s regional position. “I’m not arguing that Israel is gaining its legitimacy right now … irrespective of other things,” Boms said. “But there is a window of opportunity. Israel will be asked to also do its part.”
Saudi Arabia Remains the Central Test
Saudi Arabia would represent a far larger diplomatic breakthrough than any previous expansion of the Abraham Accords, but all four perspectives point to serious obstacles despite Trump’s pressure.
Boms argued that Riyadh was unlikely to enter the existing framework without attaching normalization to the Palestinian question. “Saudi Arabia is not going to join the Abraham Accords,” he said. “The Saudis, I think, would like to maybe show that at some point they’re able to move forward and create a breakthrough when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That will be their path to a potential rapprochement.”
Landis was equally doubtful that the current regional environment could support Saudi normalization. He argued that the ongoing war in Iran and the unresolved Gaza conflict made the timing particularly unfavorable. “Saudi Arabia has made it very clear that they’re not going to move ahead on Abraham Accords unless there’s a pathway for Palestinian statehood,” he said. “And I don’t see that happening.”
Saudi Arabia has made it very clear that they’re not going to move ahead on Abraham Accords unless there’s a pathway for Palestinian statehood
The former Bahraini diplomat emphasized that Saudi Arabia’s status as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites makes the reputational consequences of normalization different from those faced by smaller Gulf states.
“Saudi Arabia’s stature as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Islam represents its ultimate soft power and geopolitical weight across the Islamic world,” he said.
“I believe that surrendering this leverage easily through formal normalization without an explicit, irreversible path to Palestinian statehood carries a reputational cost that far outweighs the incremental security benefits of the Accords,” he asserted.
In his opinion, Riyadh recognizes that intelligence, economic, and technological cooperation with Israel can be deepened pragmatically behind the scenes without the political exposure of formal embassies.
A Region Without Fixed Blocs
The competing interpretations converge on one conclusion: The emerging regional order is no longer adequately explained by a single division between an Iranian axis and a US-aligned camp.
Mechtaly described the process as “a race toward normalization,” but one driven by different interests and levels of commitment.
“The most important development, however, is that the region can no longer be understood as one or two fixed blocs,” she said. “We are witnessing the death of the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], and the death of the Arab world as ideologically bound units. Every state has its own interests, vulnerabilities, and theory of survival.”
The former Bahraini diplomat similarly described increasingly divergent Gulf strategies. Oman and Qatar continue to favor engagement and mediation, Saudi Arabia is attempting to preserve both US security ties and diplomatic channels with Tehran, while the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait have leaned more heavily on Western-backed defense structures.
We are witnessing the death of the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], and the death of the Arab world as ideologically bound units
“The current confrontation demonstrates the structural limits of relying solely on military deterrence or containment to secure vital maritime corridors and regional stability,” the diplomat said. “If Washington’s campaign fails to achieve a decisive outcome against Iranian asymmetric capabilities, the Gulf states—including those currently leaning on Western/Israeli security guarantees—will inevitably be compelled to pursue a new, pragmatic security framework that accommodates Iran as a permanent regional stakeholder.”
Landis offered the most pessimistic view of the conflict’s trajectory, predicting that neither the United States nor Iran was positioned to make the concessions required for a comprehensive settlement. “I see it as a forever war that’s going to stumble forward,” he said. “And the Lebanon situation is a forever war which is going to stumble forward, and it’s going to suck Israel in. Israel will stay there, and it’ll sort of be a low simmer.”
Boms saw greater room for regional actors to shape the outcome but agreed that the United States was increasingly unwilling to police and resolve every conflict itself. “America is not going to be able to, does not have the will to … lead the policing or the solutions for the region overall, and the region needs to do this itself,” he said, adding that this could lead to some “real opportunities.”
Whether those opportunities produce formal agreements—or merely limited arrangements intended to manage an ongoing war—may depend on unresolved questions about the future of Iran’s military capabilities, Hezbollah’s weapons, Syria’s territorial integrity, Palestinian statehood and the willingness of Arab governments to absorb the domestic costs of closer relations with Israel.
Google plans to exempt sanctioned nations from Android developer verification
We are a month away from the initial rollout of Google’s Android developer verification system, and the company contends this policy does not impinge on the platform’s open nature. Still, the restrictions will be a big change, and there are still some unanswered questions. An issue that has come up repeatedly in the run-up to verification is what will happen to devs who can’t verify because of where they live. It turns out that Google has a cryptic answer for that buried in an FAQ.
Developer verification will soon block the installation of apps from unverified developers on any Android device running Google services, which is functionally all Android phones outside Russia and China. Developers who want to keep releasing software, even if it’s not in the Play Store, have to provide Google with their ID and pay a small fee.
But what if you’re an Android developer living in a sanctioned nation? Currently, the US sanction list includes Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and occupied areas of Ukraine. Given the current uncertain state of US foreign policy, that list could change in the future. Google doing any business with developers in those places is a thorny issue, and it seems like the company has decided to just leave them hanging.
A rather lengthy FAQ a few levels deep on the Google developer site addresses various issues around dev verification. Smack in the middle is this:
How does this program impact developers in sanctioned countries? Devices in sanctioned countries will be excluded from Android developer verification checks. This allows any developer to continue distributing apps in these regions without verification, though users there won’t benefit from the enhanced security benefits of the program.
The wording is bizarre because the answer doesn’t directly address the most important question—it dodges it. The vague FAQ appears to suggest that these developers won’t be able to verify, but that’s OK because phones in their countries won’t require that. But this comes with a real downside for those people.
A spokesperson has expanded on the FAQ and confirmed to Ars that people living in sanctioned nations will not be allowed to go through the verification process. That means they will not be able to effectively distribute software through any channel internationally.
Today, someone making an app in, say, Cuba can distribute it freely around the world, as well as at home. Anyone can install it and see their work in action after tapping through a few sideloading alerts. In the coming months, that will no longer be the case. These unverified apps will only be easily installable in the sanctioned countries where verification doesn’t exist.
Advanced flow or no flow
Earlier this year, Google clarified its plans for the “advanced flow” to bypass developer verification. It requires a bunch of steps, scary warnings, and a 24-hour wait. That gives tech-savvy folks a way to get around the new restrictions, but most people won’t know such an option even exists. Verification will necessarily create a two-tiered system of apps: verified ones that anyone can install and unverified apps that almost no one can install. Google says this change is necessary to combat scam apps.
Paradoxically, the situation in sanctioned nations will actually provide more app freedom. And these are Google-certified phones at issue here. In places like Cuba and Iran, most phones are Android devices with full Google certification because they’re imported from other places where Google officially operates. So Google is essentially acknowledging in this FAQ that its mobile services are being used and nominally supported in these places.
Google probably sees this as a legal tightrope. It can’t engage with developers in these places to verify them, but it seems determined to move forward with developer verification. The solution, apparently, is to leave devs in these regions behind—no verification, but no enforcement, either. The rest of us will have a more restricted app experience as users, but most developers around the world will be able to distribute their software anywhere as long as they verify. Sanctioned developers, meanwhile, will be in a second-tier bubble. Google has therefore tied the ability to distribute Android apps to the whims of the US Treasury Department, which maintains and enforces economic sanctions.
Currently, Google plans to activate the verification restrictions on September 30 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. The program is expected to expand globally in 2027.
A brief history of how countries sleepwalk into war
A nominal ceasefire reached in April 2026 has done little to halt the escalation in the Persian Gulf. After Iran’s “attempted surprise attack” against US forces on July 28, the US retaliated by launching a “heavy wave” of airstrikes on July 30, according to NPR, targeting Iran’s “military command centers and missile facilities,” and intensifying the fighting in the Middle East.
Since the war began in February, Iran has suffered extensive destruction to military and civilian infrastructure, resulting in thousands of casualties. Washington’s Gulf allies and Israel have likewise faced sustained pressure from Iranian attacks. Yet, despite nearly $40 billion in US spending on the war with Iran and damage to American military assets in the region, the conflict has not sparked widespread public debate among its citizens.
Protected by two vast oceans and overwhelming military power, the US has long been able to separate everyday life from the consequences of war and shield policymakers from public scrutiny. The casualties in the current conflict remain relatively low, with the latest Iranian strike bringing the official number of US deaths to 18. Life at home has continued largely uninterrupted, with the US even cohosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup during the conflict.
America’s detachment from the war marks a departure from its early history, when conflicts were felt more directly and romanticized through glory and duty. The Civil War shattered those beliefs by exposing Americans to the realities of industrial warfare, while Europe’s descent into World War I revealed how easily countries could underestimate the costs of conflict while overestimating their ability to adapt to them. Those lessons are worth revisiting as the modern US approach to conflict continues to evolve.
The end of glorious war
The last time war fundamentally transformed everyday life in the US was arguably during the Civil War. Before that, conflict was still imagined through the lens of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the frontier wars. Armed clashes were subjects of songs, novels, paintings, and patriotic myths, which portrayed them as decisive battles won through heroic charges, often accompanied by the fanfare of flags and drums.
As sectional tensions intensified in the lead-up to the Civil War, many Southern figures confidently insisted the commercial-minded North would never risk a costly conflict. In his infamous “Cotton is King” speech from 1858, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond declared, “No power on earth dares to make war upon” the South’s lucrative cotton economy.
Even if war came, political leaders assured it would be swift and with minimal loss of life. Judge Samuel F. Rice boasted that “we can whip the Yankees with popguns,” while South Carolina Senator James Chesnut Jr. claimed he would “drink all the blood shed” over secession.
The first Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Pope Walker, similarly told a crowd in April 1861, at the start of the war, that any blood spilled as a result of secession “could be wiped up with a handkerchief,” predicting that “before the first of May the flag of the Southern Confederacy will wave from the dome of the old Capitol in Washington,” according to Reason magazine.
Mark Twain would later blame the novels of Sir Walter Scott in particular for fostering romantic notions of chivalry among Southern elites and the idea that war would be noble and victorious.
Northern leaders were generally more restrained but no less susceptible to overconfidence. “Forward to Richmond!” was the cry of the New York Tribune. “The place must be held by the National Army!”
Historian David B. Blight argues that “Lincoln, under the pressure of public opinion,” pushed General Irvin McDowell to advance before his army was ready in the hope of delivering a knockout blow that would end the rebellion.
The First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 became the defining symbol of the North’s misplaced optimism. Politicians, journalists, and curious civilians – some arriving with picnic baskets – gathered to watch what they believed would be the war’s decisive battle. Instead, they fled alongside retreating Union troops as Confederate forces prevailed, and the illusion of a short war vanished.
What followed was one of the earliest industrial wars in history. Railways moved large armies, factories produced weapons on an unprecedented scale, and entire regional economies were reorganized for the war. Much of the South was devastated as the North countered, while the North also experienced localized destruction.
The war preserved the Union and ended slavery, one of the most consequential achievements in American history, but it bore little resemblance to the swift and bloodless campaign envisioned before it started.
Lincoln’s assassination also derailed hopes for a smoother Reconstruction and led to the political and racial divisions continuing for generations. The conflict demonstrated that even fights for essential causes rarely unfold as predictably as their supporters expect, producing lasting trauma and resentment alongside historic victories.
The road to World War I
The Civil War left Americans wary of entering another conflict on the same scale, even as the country became an assertive world power. As Europe drifted toward World War I in 1914, Washington initially watched from afar, observing a continent that had avoided a great power conflict for decades, and seemed to have convinced itself that a new war would be short and even desirable.
European military leaders believed they could secure victory before calamity set in. German army officers Wilhelm von Blume and General von Liebert assured that the war would be quick, while German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II reportedly told troops in August 1914: “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees” in autumn.
Some other political leaders were less optimistic, like Britain’s former Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, who feared a continental war would be disastrous, but conceded to the idea that such a conflict was inevitable.
Historian William Mulligan argues that “political elites understood that war would bring in its wake revolution, chaos, and impoverishment,” but “lacked the emotional frameworks to grasp the scale of destruction.”
In The State, published posthumously in 1919, Randolph Bourne argued that democratic societies cultivated a “democratic desire for war,” encouraging citizens to identify the interests of the state with those of the nation. French writers Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde, under the pseudonym Agathon, described how younger French citizens, with no experience of war, embraced militarism and patriotism with striking enthusiasm.
As mobilization began, crowds packed railway stations across Europe to cheer departing soldiers. Schoolboys lied about their ages to enlist, with many believing they’d be “home by Christmas,” and feared missing the adventure if they stayed behind.
Within months, the optimism of the prewar period had given way to the carnage of trench warfare. Millions were killed or wounded as the conflict settled into a brutal stalemate.
By the time the US entered the war in 1917, Europe had exhausted itself through attrition, revolution and economic collapse. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare, including the sinking of the Lusitania, along with the Zimmerman Telegram proposing a German alliance with Mexico, helped push Washington toward intervention.
But unlike in Europe in 1914, Wilson understood the US public still needed convincing. Soon after declaring war on Germany in April 1917, his administration created the Committee on Public Information, mobilizing tens of thousands of volunteers to deliver patriotic speeches in cinemas, churches, and other public gatherings.
Newspapers, advertisements, films, and pamphlets, meanwhile, portrayed intervention as both the quickest path to ending the war and a moral crusade to make the world “safe for democracy.”
When the war ended in 1918, America’s late entry limited the loss of lives to 116,000 soldiers, ensuring that the homeland escaped the devastation that engulfed Europe. Yet many Americans emerged questioning the nation’s involvement, helping propel Warren G. Harding’s isolationist campaign to the presidency in 1920.
Even so, the war permanently expanded Washington’s role in European affairs and established the promotion of democracy as a recurring justification for military intervention for the 20th century.
The long retreat from mass war
The US again entered World War II after years of fighting by combatants from other countries in Europe. It suffered far fewer casualties and far less destruction, and emerged as the world’s dominant military power. Afterward, the US assumed responsibility for containing Soviet influence, framing military intervention as the defense of democracy.
But US wars in Korea, and especially Vietnam, demonstrated that prolonged conflicts with tens of thousands of US casualties were becoming politically unsustainable.
From the 1980s onward, the US increasingly engaged in a lighter war model. Brief interventions in Grenada and Panama, followed by the Gulf War and Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, demonstrated that overwhelming technological superiority could deliver victory with limited American losses.
Even though the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq temporarily revived large-scale expeditionary warfare in the 2000s, historian Andrew J. Bacevich argued that Americans had grown accustomed to near-permanent military engagement because its costs were borne by a relatively small volunteer force rather than society as a whole. Without conscription, rationing, or heavy casualties, wars could expand with little effect on daily life beyond the headlines.
The prolonged insurgencies and failed nation-building efforts of the 2000s occupations soon pushed Washington back toward a lighter model, seen in Libya in 2011, that was built around airpower, special forces, private contractors and local partners. The immediate American costs were limited, even if the wider consequences – state collapse, refugee flows and regional instability – were more severe for others.
The ongoing war in Iran represents the latest test of that approach. The promises of spreading democracy and the patriotic enthusiasm that accompanied previous interventions have all but disappeared. In their place is a general apathy, with most Americans opposed to the Iran conflict without feeling or even seeing it directly.
The potential consequences, however, remain significant. What if Iran accelerates its pursuit of nuclear weapons, the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea face permanent disruption, resource prices surge, retaliation reaches the US homeland, or the conflict expands beyond the region significantly?
From the Civil War and World War I to the modern US invasion of Iraq and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, governments and societies have repeatedly underestimated how wars unfold.
The current lack of public interest in the Iran conflict may seem like progress compared with the nationalist euphoria that accompanied earlier conflicts, but a society insulated from war is less likely to question why it is fought, how long it may last, and what success looks like.
Distance from conflict can delay its costs, but the consequences of war can still reverberate long after the final shot has been fired.
Would you get tattooed just to interview at a 7-days-a-week AI startup?
Everyone knows that great gimmicks are the key to hiring top developers for your startup.
That’s why small AI startup LemonLime—which “optimizes your existing data to work with AI”—has so many of them. Want a job interview? Score a perfect 7/7 on the company’s own “Is it a Lemon or a Lime?” game. Or—hear me out—get something permanently tattooed on your flesh.
LemonLime has tried both tactics in the past few weeks. The tattoo stunt generated the most publicity, of course, much of it negative. According to a writeup in Inc., seven people took the deal and got tattooed with the LemonLime logo during a party.
Backlash was immediate, and CEO Jordan Zietz has now copped to “poor judgement,” saying he “messed up” and got a little “carried away.”
7 days a week
LemonLime is a small company with a grindset mentality. If you think you’re going to work there and, say, “have free weekends,” you are fooling yourself. The “entire team shows up to the office 7 days a week,” Zietz wrote in a LinkedIn post two weeks ago.
“Over a dozen applicants thus far have withdrawn after stating that they do not work past 5 pm or on weekends,” he added. “Lol.”
What you will be doing instead is pushing “critical product features to production while watching Pitch Perfect Sing-Along Edition at 1 a.m. on a Saturday.”
The company does not care about your grades; Zietz notes that his “freshman year GPA was a 2.3.” But LemonLime does require that you be a good hang. Zietz said that the company hires “people we want to be friends with,” since “changing the world is easier with friends. It should be fun.”
Zietz concluded his post by promising an “instant interview” to anyone who dropped their email address into the comments and who also scored perfectly on the lemon-or-lime game. (I tried it and scored 0/7, suggesting that I am completely unsuitable for shipping code at 1 am on a Saturday while watching Pitch Perfect Sing-Along Edition. This is true.)
Zietz soon moved on to tattoos. LemonLime hosted a San Francisco afterparty on July 25 following Y Combinator’s Startup School event. Named the “Calling All Crazy Builders Afterparty,” the event targeted the “most unhinged builders looking to change the world.”
At the party, Zietz brought in a tattoo artist and promised instant job interviews to anyone willing to get inked. The goal was to find “unhinged” people willing to take risks. Seven people got a tattoo of the LemonLime corporate logo. (Zietz says that the logo was not required; other people chose different images.)
The predictable social media explosion eventually reached traditional news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal. Zietz apologized for the tattoo stunt on July 30, writing:
We offered free tattoos and said we’d be happy to interview anyone who got one. What I thought would be a fun, memorable way to meet people was, in reality, reckless, and instead came across as tying a permanent tattoo to job opportunity, which showed poor judgement.
Even though participants chose their own tattoos and no one was asked to get our logo, I should have understood the pressure and power dynamic created by connecting tattoos to hiring.
Regardless of said intent, turning a celebration of personalized art into a company stunt was poorly exercised judgement.
He added that the company will “cover associated removal costs with anyone facing any delayed regret” about their tattoos—though that regret might be even stronger after Zietz said that “interviews were available to everyone regardless.”
Spain and Italy in diplomatic dispute on Schengen rules
Italy and Spain have become embroiled in a diplomatic dispute after thousands of migrants reportedly entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. The incident prompted Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to warn that Italy is prepared to take “extraordinary measures” to protect its borders, describing the scenes as proof that irregular migration poses a serious threat to Europe’s security.
Meloni, together with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen free-travel area or for the agreement to be temporarily halted. Tajani also criticised Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s migration policy, arguing that plans to regularise hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants encourage human trafficking.
Spain strongly rejected the accusations, with Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares summoning the Italian ambassador in protest. Albares described Tajani’s remarks as inappropriate and said Spain expected European solidarity rather than political attacks from a partner country.
The dispute has also reached the European Parliament. Manfred Weber, president of the Parliament’s largest political group, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), called for the EU’s Migration Pact and return rules to be enforced without delay, saying the Ceuta crisis highlighted the need for tougher action on migration.
Meanwhile, the European Commission said it is supporting Spain in safeguarding its borders and welcomed the close cooperation between Spain and Morocco to manage migration flows and facilitate the return of those who entered Ceuta illegally. The Commission also reaffirmed Morocco’s role as a key strategic partner in border management and efforts to combat migrant smuggling.
Here’s what supercharged the monster wildfires in Spain and France
Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of people in France and Spain fled their homes, many in the dead of night, carrying only what they could. In the coming days and weeks, as evacuation orders lift, some will come home to partially destroyed towns. Others will only find ash.
The fourth heat wave of a broiling summer is underway this week, and Europe has already seen one of its most destructive wildfire seasons on record, leading to one of the largest evacuation of people on the continent since World War II. It’s also the latest consequence of climate change, according to a study released on Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a scientific nonprofit that analyzes the role of global warming in extreme weather events. Human-induced climate change made the likelihood of fire-prone conditions in France at least twice as likely, and at least 20 times as likely in central Spain.
“This is not an isolated event, it is part of a pattern,” said Maria Alcazar Castilla, the deputy regional director of the International Federation of Red Cross in Europe. The Red Cross is helping coordinate the disaster response effort in both countries and providing supplies and temporary shelter for thousands.
For months leading up to the recent wildfires, Western Europe had been scorched by back-to-back heat waves and an extended drought that dried out trees, shrubs, and farmland, turning the landscape into a tinderbox. Climate change makes the confluence of these extremes more likely, scientists say.
Last year, similar conditions created Europe’s worst wildfire season in history, with more than 2 million hectares burned by September. This year could be on track to surpass that: Some 430,000 hectares have burned so far — roughly 100,000 more than this time last year with two months left to go. In Spain alone, the burned area is roughly equivalent to the size of London.
With heat waves projected to continue in the coming weeks, the risk of more fire looms over the continent. Other research on Southern Europe, also released on Thursday, found that summer days with conditions making them prone to extreme fires have more than doubled in recent decades.
At the height of the disaster this week, more than 300,000 people had been displaced across France and Spain. Rural areas that rely on farming and tourism have been the worst hit, Alcazar said. “The impact to the livelihoods of people will be huge.”
hottest ever recorded in Western Europe. In addition to causing nuclear reactors and train lines to shut down, the oppressive heat killed thousands of people across the continent in the span of a few weeks.
This summer has shown that climate change is a “national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life,” said officials from the United Kingdom and Spain in a joint statement on Thursday.
Scientific research that links climate change to weather events is a relatively young field known as attribution science. Groups like World Weather Attribution skip the typical publishing process in science and use rapid analysis methods to get answers faster. The goal is to give the public an understanding of the role climate change plays in an extreme event before the news cycle has moved on.
Clair Barnes, a research associate at World Weather Attribution who led the analysis, said this particular study was completed more quickly than the organization’s usual studies. It drew from the group’s earlier research on heat and drought, which, along with wind speed, are key components in so-called fire weather. The group also analyzed historical weather data to compare this year’s fire conditions with those from past summers, as well as with simulations of a world without climate change.
“As long as we continue to emit fossil fuels into the atmosphere, those greenhouse gases are going to continue to warm the planet more,” Barnes said. “This is just the beginning of how bad it’s going to be.”
One significant factor, the group found, was a rainier than usual winter in January and February, which prompted a burst of vegetation growth in the spring. Then, as the monthslong drought set in, those plants dried up, becoming the tinder that fueled these fires.
This phenomenon, sometimes called “weather whiplash,” is a direct result of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it gets spongier and thirstier, sucking up more moisture from the land and holding onto it for longer periods of time. That, in turn, leads to more intense rainfall that happens less frequently.
twice as flammable as natural forests.
“I don’t think it’s an issue of firefighting capacity or investment,” Field said. “It’s fundamentally an issue of landscape management in the face of global warming.”
Since Tuesday, firefighters have managed to partially contain many of the fires and authorities have more than 100,000 evacuees to return home in southwest France. A weak cold front is also on its way to Europe, potentially providing a small window of relief, according to Jason Nicholls, a meteorologist and international forecasting lead at AccuWeather.
But another surge of heat could come as soon as this weekend, with more heat expected by mid-August, forecasts show. “I don’t see any drought relief in the near term, which would mean the wildfire risk will stay very elevated,” Nicholls said. The drought and heat will continue to smother France, Spain, and other parts of Central and Western Europe, like Germany and Hungary.
“I’ve been doing international forecasting for 20 years,” Nicholls said. “These wildfires have been some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Diplomacy after death at Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu sat on the same row in Washington National Cathedral this week to bid farewell to Republican US senator Lindsey Graham. But, for the two leaders, Graham’s funeral was also an opportunity for private talks at the White House with Donald Trump.
Graham was a passionate supporter of both Ukraine and Israel. A notable foreign policy hawk when it came to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Graham was instrumental in pushing through the latest round of sanctions, which the Senate passed in his honour on the day of the funeral.
If he was hawkish on Russia he was positively militant in his support for Israel. “I’ll stand with Israel until the day I die. It is our greatest ally,” Graham told the Jerusalem Post in an interview just a few months before his death. Video footage released this week showed him reacting rapturously to the bombardment of Iran on February 28. “Look what we’ve done here,” he said. “I almost cried. I mean, how long have we been pushing this?”
As David Dunn and Stefan Wolff, international affairs experts at the University of Birmingham, put it: “Summit meetings on the fringes of funerals … have a long and useful tradition.” It was a meeting on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in April 2025 that enabled Zelensky to reset his relationship with Donald Trump, just two months after their notorious Oval Office confrontation.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the two leaders’ meetings with the US president were “positive and productive”. But, as Dunn and Wolff observe, the atmosphere in the Oval Office was likely to be far chillier for Netanyahu than for Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president’s stock has risen considerably in America in recent months, while Trump has been openly disparaging about Netanyahu lately. As we’ve observed before, the US president and Israeli prime minister have sharply divergent war aims.
Trump is looking for an off-ramp that will enable him to end the conflict, which is deeply unpopular in the US. Netanyahu, meanwhile, sees the war with Iran as unfinished business.
There was no post-meeting press conference, but Netanyahu emerged with the message: “This was one of the best conversations I have had with our friend, US President Donald Trump.” He would say that, though wouldn’t he, notes Christian Emery, an expert in international affairs at UCL. If Netanyahu is increasingly unpopular in the US, Trump is still very much in favour in Israel.
Emery believes Netanyahu would have needed to be particularly persuasive to get Trump to see his point of view over the Iran conflict. But it may be that Iran’s increasingly assertive conduct of the war, most recently hitting a US-owned tanker in Egypt as well as attacking a US base in Jordan, look as if they might be doing that job for him.
Israel’s conduct in Palestinian territories might be earning Netanyahu widespread opprobrium globally, but it reportedly plays well with an increasingly right-leaning Israeli electorate. And, with elections looming in October and the prime minister trailing in the polls, his government is escalating the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank while taking control of an ever larger portion of the Gaza Strip.
Irit Katz of the University of Cambridge, who has spent years studying conflict and displacement in Palestine, sees two motives behind this escalation. One is the aforementioned appeal to right-wing Zionist voters. The other, particularly for the more extreme elements in Netanyahu’s government, is to establish the facts on the ground before October’s election.
With international momentum growing for the designation of Israel’s conduct in Palestinian territories as genocide, Katz believes this land grab is yet another reason to support this argument. The 1948 UN convention, she argues, “defines genocide not only as killing members of a protected group but also as deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction, in whole or in part, when accompanied by the requisite intent”.
Nicaragua’s former revolutionary-turned-autocratic leader, Daniel Ortega, announced recently that he was planning to scrap elections. Ortega, who has spent 30 years in two stints in the presidential palace, said on July 21 there would be no more elections in Nicaragua to prevent the opposition from seizing power (the logic of which statement is hard to fault).
Job for life? Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega with his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, in 2024.Nicaragua Government/Handout via Xinhua
Ortega has since rowed back on this, saying on July 29 he wanted to extend terms limits to from six to seven years while barring members of the opposition seen by his government as “traitors” or “coup plotters” from running for office.
Felix Wiebrecht, an expert in authoritarian politics at the University of Liverpool notes, that while autocrats have a range of things they tend to do to ensure they stay in power – many, such as Vladimir Putin in Russia – consider elections to be useful in establishing legitimacy. Even if they are as clearly rigged as Russia’s last few have been.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has hit the campaign trail ahead of the US elections with a new warning to voters that America is threatened by an “enemy within”: communists. As historian David Bryden from King’s College London notes, it’s an old favourite of the political right.
Not just in the US, either. Bryden points to the rise of fascism in the early decades of the 20th century, which was largely fuelled by a widespread fear of communism. While clearly justified, as any historian of the Soviet Union will tell you, European fascist leaders used the tactic to target any section of society they hated or feared: in Germany’s case, the Jewish people, for example.
Bryden believes the US president is using the tactic to target immigrants and warns that anti-communist rhetoric is “powerful, persuasive and dangerous, and we need to take it seriously”.
If you want to know why Fifa boss Gianni Infantino’s plan, revealed this week, to turn the World Cup into an investment vehicle is so unpopular, Josh Bland, who researches football culture at the University of Cambridge, is here to explain.
Trump says US will hit Iran ‘very hard,’ wants to ‘win’ war
US President Donald Trump on Friday said that Washington will continue striking Iran “very hard,” adding that the US wants to “win” the war, Anadolu reports.
Speaking to reporters during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Maryland, Trump said: “We just want to win. We’re doing very well. We’re trying to be as nice as you can be in a situation like that. But they’re being decimated.”
“It’s very simple,” he said, adding: “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
“We’ll be hitting Iran very hard, and at some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore’,” Trump added.
READ: Axios: Reported rift between Vance and Netanyahu deepened over Iran diplomacy and war
The US president also rejected reports suggesting Iran remains in a strong position.
“Iran is doing very poorly,” he said. “They’ve been very dishonest. They’ve been very dishonorable to deal with.”
Trump compared the war on Iran with previous US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, saying the US has been involved for only five months and it has “obliterated” Iran’s military capacity.
On negotiations with Iran, Trump said: “I’m losing faith in them because they do lie.”
“We were in the midst of a negotiation. I’m waiting for Steve (Witkoff) to call me, I was in negotiation, and instead I got a call from Pete (Hegseth) that they just shot five missiles at one of our bases in Jordan, and we have bases in Jordan,” he added.
READ: Iran claims ballistic missile strike destroyed 3 US F-35 jets at Jordan air base
Can the Left Win in the Midwest? Abdul El-Sayed Says Yes.
On Tuesday, Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., will face off in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. The race is the next biggest test of whether progressives can win statewide, particularly in purple territory.
The Michigan race is one of the most expensive primaries of the cycle. Outside groups have spent upward of $50 million in support of Stevens or against El-Sayed. Most of that money is coming from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliated groups — close to $30 million, which their largest investment ever in a single race, according to The AP.
“It’s just anti-democratic on its own terms,” El-Sayed, the former public health official, tells The Intercept Briefing. “I always ask people, “OK, you’re covering this as a very close race, but would it be close if they didn’t have $60 million to spend? Would it even be a close race at all?’”
This week on The Intercept Briefing podcast, host Akela Lacy asks, can progressives win outside of blue cities? El-Sayed argues, if you focus on the issues people care about and act on them, you can: “Look, you have an option that’s not bought off by all the same corporations. And that option is desperately clear about wanting you to have healthcare, and also wanting your kid to have a good school, and also making sure that there’s not a data center that gets planted in your backyard to automate your job away.”
Lacy explores that question further with Ryan Clancy, a Wisconsin state representative and founding member of the state legislature’s current Socialist Caucus, and Thom Hartmann, a progressive political commentator.
Clancy says voters he speaks to in Milwaukee “want a fighter. People want people in office who are going to fight for the middle class, fight for actual transformative change.” He adds, “The idea that in order to win in a purple district that is roughly split between Democrats and Republicans, that you need when you’re a Democrat, to look as much like a Republican as possible is just not helpful.”
Polling suggests that El-Sayed has a commanding lead over Stevens in the Democratic primary. But polls for the November general election narrow sharply when El-Sayed is up against Trump-backed Republican candidate Mike Rogers; one shows Rogers beating him by 10 percentage points, which the Stevens’s campaign has leaned into.
“We’ve been in this change moment. We’re sick and tired of neoliberalism. We’re sick and tired of Reaganism. We’re sick and tired of the status quo. We’re sick and tired of a dying middle class. We have been living in this moment, in my opinion, since 2000, and I think in a big way since 2008. Obama promised hope and change, and really just brought us a bunch of health insurance companies,” says Hartmann. “I’m not sure if we’re there yet to the point where a good message like El-Sayed’s message can overcome millions of dollars from Israel and from big corporations. That’s going to be the big challenge.”
The Intercept invited Stevens on the program for an interview but as of publishing have not heard back yet.
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
What do Democratic voters really want? It’s the question that’s animated primaries so far this cycle in the ongoing battle over the future of the Democratic Party.
Progressives and democratic socialists say their recent wins from New York to Maine to Colorado, including a slew of races where insurgent candidates beat incumbents or others backed by the Democratic Party, have pushed their skeptics to move the goalposts.
The main criticism facing the left is no longer that its candidates can’t win — it’s that they can’t win in “normal” places outside of city enclaves full of young, educated, left-leaning voters.
AL: That argument has reared its head again ahead of key primaries in the Midwest set to test the power of progressives to win in statewide races pitting them against the Democratic establishment in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
This week on The Intercept Briefing, we’re talking about the question we just can’t seem to get away from: Can the left win in the Midwest?
We put that question to one of the candidates at the center of that debate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is running in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday. We also asked his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, to discuss the issues, but she has not gotten back to us.
But first, I’m joined by Ryan Clancy, a Wisconsin state Rep. and founding member of the state legislature’s current Socialist Caucus and the first democratic socialist lawmaker elected in Milwaukee in more than half a century.
Ryan Clancy, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Ryan Clancy: Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to this.
AL: We’re also joined by Thom Hartmann of the “Thom Hartmann Program” on radio stations across the country, and the author of “Who Killed the American Dream?”, about an 1886 Supreme Court decision that gave corporations constitutional rights. Thom, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Thom Hartmann: Thanks, Akela.
AL: So we’re talking about the question of whether the left can win in the Midwest, but I want to start with the premise of that question. Why is there this idea that the left can’t win in the Midwest? Where does that come from? Ryan, let’s start with you, and then Thom.
RC: I think it’s coming from two different places. One is just fear. In Wisconsin here, we’ve lived now for 16 years under Republican control. We haven’t had the abilities to even get bills hearings, much less pass things into law and do what Wisconsin needs us to. So I think there is some valid concern that people just don’t want another Republican.
But there really is no basis for not wanting somebody from the left unless you’re a Democrat who’s just a conservative or moderate and one of the folks who is, I think, on the way out both in Wisconsin and across the country.
AL: Thom, what’s your take?
TH: I think it’s astonishing that we’re calling this “the left.” I’m assuming that Ryan is not calling for all of the big companies in America to be owned by the government.
RC: Not until next week. [Laughter]
TH: Exactly. Right now where progressive Democrats are at is where Dwight Eisenhower was at. He ran for reelection in 1956 on the fact that he had almost doubled the number of people on Social Security. He’d expanded the benefits. He’d almost tripled the number of people eligible for union jobs and increased union membership by almost 100 percent.
My mom, in the 1950s, went to college, and she paid her way through Michigan State University and graduated — with a summer job as a lifeguard in Charlevoix, Michigan. That was the world.
Today, if anybody proposed that you should be able to go to college and work a part-time job for three months to pay for an entire year of a major Big Ten school!
Healthcare was inexpensive in Michigan where I grew up. Blue Cross Blue Shield was required by law to be a nonprofit. In fact, all of the insurance here, all of the hospitals in the state were required by law to be nonprofits. If anybody were to propose this stuff now, they’d be screaming “communism!” This is just common sense.
To the extent that America has been radicalized, I would say it’s the radical middle, not the left. The real left largely doesn’t exist in America.
RC: Yeah, you’re totally right. I think the reason for the resurgence of the left, really, is the economic conditions. It’s people having really been let down by capitalism, by so many years of moderate and Republican control.
We’ve seen the average age for somebody buying their first home go from the 20s years ago: It’s 41 now. The idea of the American Dream really is out of grasp for many people, even people who are working really hard to get there.
TH: Again, in the 1950s, my dad bought the house that I grew up in 1957. He was able to do that because he finally got a union job at a tool and die shop. With that one union paycheck, he was able to buy a house. He bought a new car every three years. He took a vacation every year. He retired and traveled the world. He put four boys through college — on a single paycheck!
If you use that as the definition of the middle class, 65 percent of Americans were there because a third of us had union jobs when Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981. Today, it’s 41 percent of us who can make that claim, who can satisfy all those tick marks for the middle class — and it requires two paychecks to do that.
This is 45 years of Reaganomics that’s just essentially ripped America apart, torn apart the middle class. So you’ve got people reacting and saying, no, we want to either go back or go forward — however you want to define it or frame it — to a world where work is honored, regardless of educational attainment. If somebody works a 40-hour week, they should be able to have housing and transportation and food and a decent life.
The reactionaries, the Reaganites, the crazies on the right start screaming “leftism” and “communism.” I’ll call myself the left, but the Overton window has just been — it hasn’t moved, it’s been blown off the side of the map.
“If somebody works a 40-hour week, they should be able to have housing and transportation and food and a decent life.”
RC: Absolutely.
AL: We were talking about this today in a meeting with some of my colleagues about criticism when reporters use the word “centrist Democrat” or “moderate Democrat.”
I think that’s the perfect counterpoint to the point that you both are making, which is that not only have policies that were considered common sense or mainstream half a century ago [are now] portrayed more and more as radical. But policies that are overtly conservative among the Democratic Party are portrayed as the common sense or the centrist position, when in reality, they are increasingly reflective of a right wing — a strong right wing — within the Democratic Party. How has that happened?
That subtext feels like it’s missing from all of the conversations that we’re having around this midterm cycle. Part of this is the messaging battle, right? That Republicans are very good at fearmongering — and Democrats are good at fearmongering around the left. But what has made that shift possible and that sort of flipping of these definitions?
RC: I think it’s a lack of political bravery. In Wisconsin 16 years ago, we had a trifecta, and Democrats totally missed the moment. We didn’t codify abortion rights. We didn’t raise the minimum wage from $7.25, where it has languished for many years now. The sub-minimum wage in Wisconsin is $2.33 for service industry workers that are customarily tipped.
When Democrats have the ability to make real substantial change, and they don’t, we’re in trouble. I think we see that window moving, slipping slowly to the right and have for the last 15 years.
TH: I think it’s important to put this in a historical context. When Franklin Roosevelt became president in ’33, only about 20 percent of America was in the middle class. He set out to create, and succeeded in creating, the world’s first middle class that was more than half of the nation’s population. And the principal thing that drove that was unionization.
He legalized unions in 1935 with the Wagner Act. So from the mid-’30s all the way up until really 1992, what you saw was that the Democratic Party was largely funded by unions, and the Republican Party was largely funded by corporations and fat cats. But in 1981, Reagan went after the unions. A third of us were in unions at that time when he was elected, and he starts with PATCO [the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization], and he just deconstructed the unions.
He puts an anti-union lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, et cetera. So by ’92, right when Clinton wants to run for president, the unions are down to like 10 percent of the American workforce, maybe 9 percent of the American workforce. They got no money.
So Clinton’s looking around going, “I can’t get enough money to run for president. What do I do?” And the solution that these guys came up with — and it was a reasonable one at the time in 1992 — was to say, “Well, I guess we’re going to have to take corporate money, but let’s take it from the good corporations. Let’s take it from health insurance companies and banks and pharmaceutical companies, not those awful oil companies or the chemical companies or the mining operations.”
So we got all this speechification from Clinton about the new jobs and everything else. But the bottom line was that was the point at which the Democratic Party essentially sold out to neoliberalism and this “moderate position.” In fact, Clinton called it the Third Way, The Third Way Democrats, and the new Democrats. The same thing was going on in the U.K. It wasn’t really until the Obama campaign in 2008 that we discovered that the internet was capable of raising money for a presidential campaign, enough to get somebody into the White House. But the Democrats had not, or at least about half of the Democrats right now, have still not sworn off that money that Clinton lurched at.
So you’ve got about half the Democratic Party that is beholden to their donors. That’s why you’re not seeing them take advantage of these opportunities like Ryan was talking about. Then you got another half of the Democratic Party, the Progressive Caucus in the House, about 100 members, who are not taking corporate money and are explicitly saying, “No, let’s work toward what people want.”
That schism — that split — in the Democratic Party, it’s way behind the American people. The Democratic base is 80, 90 percent with the progressives. The American public is 60, 70 percent with the progressives. But the institutional Democratic Party and the old line, or these on-the-take Democrats, I call them the Jared Goldens and Josh Gottheimers of the world — they’re going to fight like hell to hang on to that money and all those perks that go with it. That’s the real tragedy of this moment because it just cripples our ability to challenge the genuine fascists who are running our government right now and trying to take our country apart.
AL: Ryan, we’re two weeks out from a very big primary in Wisconsin. What are you hearing from your constituents on the issues that resonate with them from a democratic socialist perspective? Do voters in Midwestern states actually prefer more conservative Democrats?
RC: They absolutely do not want conservative Democrats. The playbook that I think a lot of Democrats are working from is old. I don’t think that it was really the case even 10 or 20 years ago. But the idea that in order to win in a purple district that is roughly split between Democrats and Republicans, that you need, when you’re a Democrat, to look as much like a Republican as possible is just not helpful.
It’s not what people want on the doors. People want a fighter. People want people in office who are going to fight for the middle class, fight for actual, transformative change. That’s the reason that we saw some voters move from a Bernie Sanders to a Donald Trump. It wasn’t necessarily the specific policies; it was the idea that they wanted somebody who would mess with the system.
“People want a fighter.”
I knock on Republican and Independent and socialist, libertarian doors all over the place. And there’s a critical mass of folks right now who still want that change, but they realize that it’s not going to come. The sort of change they want is not going to come in the form of a Donald Trump or in a Tom Tiffany, who is the likely Republican nominee for governor.
But they do want Democrats who are going to fight for them in ways that we’ve really missed the moment on in over the last decade and a half.
AL: The next biggest test on these questions, particularly whether progressive wins that we saw earlier this cycle will carry over into statewide races, is the upcoming Michigan Democratic Senate primary.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens are facing off on Tuesday. El-Sayed, a former public health official, has the backing of some of the most well-known progressives in Congress, from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Stevens, on the other hand, is backed by members of the Democratic establishment, like Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jim Clyburn, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Sen. Chuck Schumer said she had the best shot of winning, though he didn’t officially endorse her.
This is one of the most expensive primaries of the cycle. Outside groups have spent upwards of $50 million in support of Stevens or against El-Sayed — most of that money coming from one single group, the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has spent a record amount, more than $25 million, on the race.
Stevens and El-Sayed debated on Monday. Let’s hear from both their opening statements.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: My friend is going to frame this race about me and her. It’s not about that. It’s about you. It’s about what you deserve. It’s about you deserving a politics that’s not bought off by the same corporations picking your pocket at every single turn.
I’m looking forward to the conversation about how we get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for All.
Rep. Haley Stevens: Look, Michigan deserves a senator who can win and who can deliver. I’m the only one on this stage who has flipped a Republican seat, and I was named Michigan’s most effective Democratic lawmaker in Congress because my only focus is you. Abdul is running for celebrity. Republicans are propping up his campaign.
RC: You could not have candidates that are more starkly contrasted with each other.
You have somebody who’s backed by AIPAC. In that same interview, actually, she was asked point-blank if she took money from their power company [two major Michigan utility companies]. And she said no, that she had not, and absolutely did.
RC: She is backed by all of the institutions that average people across that state, and across the U.S., absolutely revile. AIPAC is wildly unpopular now — so are power companies, for that matter.
You have a candidate who is very clearly beholden to his community, somebody who came up as a doctor in public health; and then you have somebody who claims to be successful. Her version of success is collaborating with Republicans to pass bad policy. That is not the definition of “effective” that most voters in the United States right now want. They want people who will be fighting for something better, not rolling over and collaborating with the people that have made it worse.
“Her version of success is collaborating with Republicans to pass bad policy. That is not the definition of ‘effective’ that most voters in the United States right now want.”
AL: Thom, what are the biggest takeaways from this race so far, and who do you think is going to win?
TH: It’s a classic example of the kind of Hillary–Bernie divide brought into this era. In that 2016 election, I was living on a boat in Washington, D.C., in the marina there. We were doing our show from D.C.
Maybe a third of the people who lived in that marina were either active-duty or retired Coast Guard or Navy, living in boats. Men mostly, and almost all every single one of them that I can recall called himself Republican. During that primary, most of them were actually planning on voting for Bernie, these Republicans, because they thought that he was going to bring genuine change.
But when the day finally came, and afterwards, I talked to many of them, a lot of them ended up voting for Trump because they thought that he would actually bring change.
“Obama promised hope and change, and really just brought us a bunch of health insurance companies.”
We’ve been in this change moment. We’re sick and tired of neoliberalism. We’re sick and tired of Reaganism. We’re sick and tired of the status quo. We’re sick and tired of a dying middle class. We have been living in this moment, in my opinion, since 2000, and I think in a big way since 2008. Obama promised hope and change, and really just brought us a bunch of health insurance companies.
I’m not sure if we’re there yet to the point where a good message like El-Sayed’s message can overcome millions of dollars from Israel and from big corporations. That’s going to be the big challenge. We’re seeing this now. In the 2024 election, 20 percent of all the spending in that election came from a handful of billionaire families, all for Republicans.
So it’s going to be really interesting, and it’s going to be really instructive, I think, next Tuesday to see how this shakes out. But it’s really a challenge of big money.
“It’s really a challenge of big money.”
AL: The irony being that Haley Stevens, in the last couple of debates in the final weeks of the race, has tried to make that argument against Abdul El-Sayed, saying he’s got all this personal wealth: “I’m the only non-millionaire in this race.” Meanwhile, she has the vast majority of outside spending on her side; it’s not even a comparison.
El-Sayed has been leading Stevens in primary polls, but her campaign has been touting other polling that shows her leading Republican Trump-backed candidate Mike Rogers in November, and El-Sayed losing to him.
This is another classic case of voters potentially having a different preference for the direction of the Democratic Party and the party pushing back against that with the electability argument. But if the less popular Democrat actually wins — either in the primary or in the general — where does that leave the party in the long term? Does that not aggravate voter frustration even more and set up a situation where the GOP gets the upper hand anyway?
TH: It does, and it always does. I would argue that when you look at these match-ups, with the general population voting and El-Sayed starts dropping — what you’re seeing there is racism and anti-Muslim bigotry probably more than anything else. And apparently it’s a bigger force, at least in this election, than misogyny. In addition to all the money that’s been spent.
AL: I will say my colleague Jonah Valdez did a great piece on Islamophobia in this race that I encourage all of you to read at The Intercept. This is for our listeners.
Ryan, did you want to add anything on that?
RC: I do think that the polls, both in Michigan and in here and other places, they are not measuring the enthusiasm gap as they should. I think they are underrepresenting these dynamic leftist candidates. Because when somebody is asked, they can only say yes so forcefully, right? A yes is a yes. But voters and people who are really engaged with these campaigns, when you knock on their doorstep and you ask them about somebody and they light up — these are the folks who are going to drag their friends to the polls, both for primaries and again in November, in a way that somebody grudgingly backing a centrist candidate just isn’t.
So I think he’s going to do fine.
AL: The counterpoint to the argument that progressives or a leftist archetype doesn’t work outside of blue cities is that there is an archetype that works. And it’s dictated largely by the Democratic Party and its campaign committees. But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other groups aligned with the conservative wing of the Democratic Party have had a very rough cycle.
They’ve lost races in Arizona, California, and Colorado, while other incumbents lost in New York and Texas. The DCCC recently added a candidate that they endorsed against in Arizona to their coveted Red to Blue list, which typically helps boost candidates with fundraising. That addition to the list comes along with another candidate, Sam Forstag, who’s running for a competitive congressional seat in Montana against Republican Aaron Flint.
Forstag is a firefighter and a union organizer who won the endorsement of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last month, and she spoke at a rally for him in Montana in May. This is a rare case of overlap between the DSA and the establishment wing. Is that surprising to you? Is this a model that we could potentially see in other races?
RC: It has to be, otherwise it is the death of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party as a brand is not polling well at all. If I was the Democratic machine, if my goal was to make sure that the Democratic Party was strong and vibrant and thriving, I would be encouraging these awesome candidates on the left into my party.
But increasingly we are hearing Democrats talk about a big tent, but they only mean big to the right. For some reason, the tent flap is just not big enough to cover those on the left in a lot of cases. But ultimately that unity and saying, “Oh, the candidates on the left within our own party are not a threat to us, they are the future, they are how we get through this,” really is inevitable. And they have to do this or fall out of power even more than they have.
TH: Yeah, they’re 20 years behind the electorate right now.
AL: I want to turn now to the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary on August 11. Francesca Hong, democratic socialist candidate, has been leading in recent polling, while other Democratic candidates in the race like Mandela Barnes and David Crowley, who dropped out of the race and quickly reentered after the establishment pick Sara Rodriguez dropped out over a campaign finance scandal, have been polling below Hong.
What do you think it would take for a more progressive candidate to win in Wisconsin or throughout the Midwest? We’ll start with Ryan, and then I’ll come to you, Thom.
RC: Folks on doors are really concerned about everyday things. They’re concerned about affordability. They’re concerned that they cannot afford healthcare. They’re concerned that they can’t afford rent and that they’ll never be able to afford a home because everything’s getting more expensive.
“I’ve never seen people more concerned for themselves and their families.”
But they also have these existential concerns. I’ve never seen people more concerned for themselves and their families. I talked to a woman on doors a couple weeks ago who broke down crying at the door because rather than me showing up and saying, “Here’s who I am and, will you vote for me?” My question was, “How are you? What are you concerned about?” And she started crying and talked about how she was concerned about a family member being abducted by ICE and the ever-present threat of that. So we need people who are going to meet the moment, who are going to address those very real concerns from affordability to concern for community in a way that we haven’t yet but that we need to.
TH: I think that it’s really important that people who are concerned about this political future and where things are going and whatnot get inside the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, it’s a billion-dollar corporation. It’s just sitting there, saying, anybody can come in and volunteer and participate.
I’ve had a bunch of people call into my program over the years since I’ve been ranting about this for a decade, who have gotten inside their local Democratic parties. And once you become a precinct committee person, you’re the person or the people who write the platform for the party. You’re the ones who determine who the primary candidates are going to be. You’re the first ones that when your congressperson or your senator comes into your state to talk to the people, you’re the first one they talk to. You have incredible power and influence. A lot of people are just sitting around complaining rather than doing something like this.
Progressives, social democrats, right across the board, I think that we need to be taking over the Democratic Party. We need to learn from the way that the GOP got flipped by the right a decade and a half ago.
AL: Ryan and Thom, thank you so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.
I will just mention for our listeners: Thom’s new book gets at one of the root causes of many of the issues that we’re talking about, giving corporations the same rights as people. Thank you both again for the time. This was a great conversation.
TH: Thank you.
RC: Thank you so much for having us.
[Break]
AL: The race on everyone’s minds is happening on Tuesday in Michigan, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running against Rep. Haley Stevens in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.
El-Sayed joins me now. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Abdul El-Sayed: Akela, it’s a privilege to be with you. You gotta call me Abdul.
AL: I will. Thank you. We also reached out to Stevens’s campaign to join us on the podcast and did not hear back.
Abdul, let’s just jump in. I’ve been listening to a lot of your interviews, and one thing that has stood out to me is that you’re walking this delicate line between providing what you say is an alternative for voters who’ve been disenchanted with both parties, while also trying to demonstrate your capacity to beat a Republican in November.
How do you square those two objectives between attracting support in a state that Trump won — including potentially from people who might have supported him — and also making this case that you can and will beat Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate Trump endorsed in the race and was campaigning with earlier this week.
AES: I don’t think about it as much as walking a line as I do about building something that is magnetic for everyone. I think walking a line implies a frame of this, like, left–right divide. “You don’t want to go too far left, otherwise you might lose the people who are on your right!” And I just don’t think that’s the reality for most people.
Most people don’t walk around asking, “Where do I sit on the left–right spectrum?” Most people are walking around asking, “What the hell’s going to happen if I get sick? What’s going to happen if I lose my home or I lose my job? Or AI, literally, they automate out the possibility of my being able to earn the money I need to provide for my family? Also, why does my kids’ school look like it did 50 years ago?”
I think those are the things that unite most Michiganders. You can go anywhere in the state, and you hear the same concerns. I’m looking to build a movement that pushes back on the bipartisan consensus that we ought to build a politics that is paid for by corporations, Big Tech, Big Pharma, DTE [Energy], Blue Cross — and that gives you milquetoast answers to most problems.
I’m looking to build a politics that takes the questions that we’re asking head on and answer them by telling folks that we really can get past the corporate-bought version of politics that’s too often forced into our eyeballs in tens of millions of dollars of spending on ads, and to a question of, let’s solve these things because we’re not bought off by the people who caused the problem in the first place.
AL: Touching on, this flipping the left–right divide framing on its head: Have you spoken with voters who’ve supported Trump? Are you courting those voters?
AES: They come to my events. That’s the thing is, that people think you gotta kinda go to different places to court different voters.
The nature of this world — you and I are talking by virtue of a set of microphones and cameras. This is going to go out into the ether, and it’s probably going to be clipped, and then people are going to hear these clips. What that means is that it’s a lot easier for folks to hear something, and then if that sounds kinda right, they’ll come and find you. And then they’ll come to your events.
I can’t tell you how many people have come to events of mine saying, “I voted for Donald Trump three times, and I’m voting for you.” I give them a kinda quizzical look. I’m like, “Me? Me?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” I ask why, and it’s because, “Hey, I really think you want me to have healthcare.” I’m like, “I really want you to have healthcare.” They’re like “I think you really are America first, like you want to keep my tax dollars here.” I was like, “I really want to keep your tax dollars here.” And they’ll say, “Look, I voted for Donald Trump not because I agree with him on everything, but he didn’t look like politics as usual.” And they’re right. He didn’t look like politics as usual. He was like the most heinous version of the worst things about politics as usual.
I’m out here trying to say, “Look, you have an option that’s not bought off by all the same corporations. And that option is desperately clear about wanting you to have healthcare, and also wanting your kid to have a good school, and also making sure that there’s not a data center that gets planted in your backyard to automate your job away.”
Imagine what that could look like. So what happens if, instead of Donald Trump, the person pushing back on politics as usual on both sides of the aisle is a doctor who rebuilt health departments to eliminate medical debt, provide Narcan, and put glasses on kids?
“I don’t do this because I care about the future of the Democratic Party. I care about the future of Michiganders.”
AL: You’ve said Trump is a symptom of the bigger problems in our political system, not the problem itself. A core part of your campaign is highlighting what you’ve described as the corruption of politics on both sides of the aisle by corporate and special interest money, as you’ve mentioned already, as we’re talking. Democrats just launched a new campaign hitting Trump’s corruption ahead of November, tying it to rising costs for Americans. And they’re preparing to make this the centerpiece of their agenda should they take control in Congress after the midterms.
Is that an effective strategy? What do you make of that effort? Is that an approach you share, or would you do anything differently?
AES: Yeah, I think we should take on his corruption. His corruption’s insane. It’s like he’s made $2 billion off of the White House. He just took out the East Wing because he wanted to, and is now fixated on drapes despite the fact that he took us into a war he doesn’t seem to know how to take us out of.
I think the issue here is corruption, but I also think that in order to talk about corruption, it really helps to be somebody who’s not played that game at all and will never play that game. We need more Democrats who make sure that we are not playing on that side so that the contrast is clear.
Look, I don’t do this because I care about the future of the Democratic Party. I care about the future of Michiganders. But if an election is an exercise in contrasts, and your argument is that they’re corrupt, it helps to make sure that you have not taken a dime of that corruption money.
AL: Democrats can’t make that argument in your race, right? One of the most expensive primaries in this cycle due almost wholly to the spending of one super PAC, United Democracy Project, AIPAC super PAC. But why does —
AES: Akela, if I can push back on that. Actually, UDP has only spent half the amount of money: $61 million, they’ve spent $31 million of it. So the other money is, it’s buried in these shell 501(c)(4)s.
Part of it is probably DMFI money, part of it’s also probably other AIPAC money, but a lot of it is also just your usual standard issue, Big Pharma, Big Tech, big everyone else. DTE, our local utility who’s one of the worst corporate actors in Michigan. So it’s all bundled in one and the same. Obviously, UDP is just insane amounts of money. They set a record against me in terms of the amount of money that they’ve spent.
But it is everyone, and part of it is also the point that it’s just anti-democratic on its own terms. I always ask people, “OK, you’re covering this as a very close race, but would it be close if they didn’t have $60 million to spend? Would it even be a close race at all?”
Then if it’s their corruption money against a campaign of grassroots organizers knocking nearly 10,000 doors a day, what kind of politics do we actually want? One where corporations and people who want to send your money abroad get to dump $60 million into a race? Or one where young organizers are coming together to build a movement, to knock doors, to have conversations about who we are and who we want to be?
It’s anti-democratic on its own terms. And Democrats, they’re all so worried about what this all means. I’m like, “It means that we still have an opportunity to inspire people, y’all. That’s what it means, and we can win if we do it.”
AL: One of the questions that we’ve been talking about a lot on this podcast is, why are Democrats so afraid of the message that you’re sending in terms of getting big money out of politics? Could the Democratic Party exist in its current form if they didn’t rely on these kinds of outside groups spending to prop up their preferred candidates, particularly in primaries?
“Democrats, they’re all so worried about what this all means. I’m like, “It means that we still have an opportunity to inspire people, y’all.’”
AES: Look, if you’re somebody like Chuck Schumer and your experience of politics is to be able to dictate where a whole bunch of money from big corporations and their lobbyists goes, so that you can handpick your senatorial colleagues who will do exactly what you want them to do, and then you get invited to their fancy cocktail parties and have a nice life — if that’s your vision of politics, then, yeah, you’re probably scared of somebody like me. Because, A, I’m not coming to your cocktail party. B, I’m not somebody who’s going to do what you tell me. And C, I don’t need you or your money. So I think that’s why they’re all so afraid. Now, of course, they hide behind the idea of, “Well, can somebody with his politics win in Michigan?”
If you were out there solving actual problems for people — if groceries weren’t inflating like a balloon, if people could afford their gas because you actually were an opposition party that could stand up to this absurd war, if people had healthcare and didn’t have to worry about it because you weren’t so bought off by Big Pharma and health insurance corporations, I think we would have so much better an opportunity to both win races and actually govern.
The problem, though, is that there’s a cynicism to this kind of politics. You retain a certain level of power, but the other side of it is you can’t actually solve the problems because, of course, that means opposing the very corporations who create the problems in the first place.
AL: Digging a little bit more into specific policy issues. You’ve said AI has taken over climate change as the biggest risk, though the two are inextricable. How has AI and the issue of data centers come up in your conversations with voters?
AES: Yeah, I don’t want to say biggest risk, just most urgent — because it’s imminent, right? And climate change feels imminent now that we’re all worried about trying to dodge air coming from wildfires in Canada. It looks like Europe is burning. So yes, I don’t want to undercut —
AL: They’re linked. They’re two sides of the same issue.
AES: They’re linked. It’s just this one is exceedingly urgent. I want all of us to step back and just remember that moment where ChatGPT came out. It was the end of 2022. It is now the middle of 2026, and I want you to think about just how much money is being flowed into the economy to enable research that’s foundationally unregulated, that could cause danger in so many different ways.
The first is, it can disrupt the social contract as we know it to the ability to sell your human capital on a market for money, when intelligence is now automated — that part.
Then there’s the question of data centers. This comes up all the time, and it comes up usually from communities where data centers are trying to be placed. Or it comes up from young people who are actually the most avid users of AI and also have this pit in their stomach about the existential risk of not having a job in the future.
I gotta be honest with you, the worry that I have is that you’ve got probably three nine-figure super PACs that are out there in the world right now. Two of them are AI PACs; the third one is AIPAC. They are trying to throw their body weight around in a way that could render AI ungovernable.
The reason I say this, and I started with this question of do you remember where you were, less than four years ago, is that it’s only been three and a half years. So what happens in the next three and a half? If our Congress is not capable of setting the regulatory framework now, we might reach escape velocity. I don’t love that future when a few billionaires get to decide what happens with the most powerful technology that’s ever existed.
“If our Congress is not capable of setting the regulatory [AI] framework now, we might reach escape velocity.”
AL: Abdul, you’ve criticized what you say has been a conversation about climate change that’s been held in esoteric terms. This is a criticism that Democrats have faced on other issues beyond climate too — criminal justice reform, racial inequality, et cetera, talking about issues in a way that can feel inaccessible or stuck in the ivory tower. Are there other policy issues where you see Democrats making that same mistake?
AES: I think a lot of them. I think AI is one of them. I think we need to be talking about the closest risk that people perceive, rather than the long-range risk that people don’t. It’s particularly hard when the causes of the problem feel less connected to the outcome of the problem.
Then when we don’t take seriously a lot of the pushback in the short run when it comes to the climate crisis, we all know that the pathway to solving it needs to be to get to 100 percent renewable energy. But so often we’ve situated it in the well-being of polar bears or the melting of ice caps, and I don’t know, I’ve never seen an ice cap. In fact, if I ever see an ice cap, I live in Michigan, I’m trying to get it off of something. I’ve never met a polar bear, and if I did, I would run like hell.
It’s a lot easier to just talk about the smokestacks that are pushing putrid chemicals into the lungs of our kids. It’s a lot easier to talk about how we could create an insane number of really high-quality jobs and reduce the price of your electricity in the process by investing in a renewable energy future.
But because we’re so busy talking about these other things, we’ve allowed those who want to continue to run interference for the worst actors — Chevrons and Exxons of the world — to win the argument about jobs and the price of electricity. They’ve used that to drive us backwards, even though our argument is the better one.
It’s because we’re out here having this academic conversation about 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees Celsius, rather than have a conversation about, “Hey, we can create a whole lot of jobs that they want to end. We can bring down the price of your electricity, which they want to jack up, and we can do it without burning stuff into the lungs of your kids, which they seem dead-set on doing.”
We win that argument every single day, but, like, enough with polar bears.
AL: Talking about this messaging question, talk about Democrats messaging on criminal justice reform. You’ve been criticized over talking about defunding the police in 2020. You’ve addressed this, and this issue has been litigated over and over in many races, not just yours.
But distinguishing the fact that calls to defund police meant in practice funding social services and addressing the root causes of crime. You’ve deleted some of those posts and said you didn’t want them taken out of context. I’m not asking you about this to relitigate it because I think it misses the broader point and can be an exercise in beating a dead horse or confirming priors rather than clarifying something about your policy position.
But I do want to ask you about this line of attack from a strategy standpoint because you’ve talked about Democrats always being on the defensive. I think we really saw that in the aftermath of calls to defund the police in 2020. Democrats didn’t just shy away from that slogan — they shied away from doing anything meaningful to address concerns around policing.
We’ve seen this narrative coming out of midterms that this cycle, candidates who backed away from campaigning on addressing police abuse are winning. What happened there?
AES: I’ve spent the last several years leading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services. Among the roles that I performed in that job was overseeing health in the jail, and that meant overseeing a privatized contract — which taught me that you shouldn’t be privatizing anything having to do with incarceration. Because at the end of the day, who wins? It’s some private contractor. Who loses? It’s the whole system. Everybody whose job is to be taken care of, everybody who works in the system — all of those folks lose.
I also got to work alongside law enforcement. At the end of the day, all of us want to get home safely. That’s the goal here. And often, our answer to that has been a person with a gun for every problem. Turns out that there’s a lot of ways to make sure everybody gets to get home safely that is not that.
So the question of what we want is about investing in the kinds of intervention programs that can prevent a beef from turning into a full-on gun crime. The kinds of things we want are behavioral health responders who can answer a call when somebody’s in a mental health crisis. We want the mental health infrastructure that we have not funded and need to have in local communities.
And we want law enforcement, in the circumstances where the answer to a call needs to be a person with a gun, we want that person with a gun to come from the local community. So that instead of thinking of themselves as policing against that community, they’re policing with the community because those folks are their neighbors.
That means you gotta invest in recruitment, retention, retirement, so people can see themselves having a good, long-range career. If you’re underfunding the folks that you ask to show up with a gun — ask yourself whether or not you’re getting the best-equipped, most empathic folks that have the gun.
“No slogan really captures the complexity and the nuance of what we really want.”
It’s about what we want. And I think the hard part with sloganeering — which is the way we did all things in the early 2020s — is that no slogan really captures the complexity and the nuance of what we really want. But all of us are on the same idea: Everybody should get home safely. Whether you’re somebody who’s being policed against or you’re law enforcement doing the policing, everybody should get home safely.
If we keep that in our minds, I think you can architect a set of solutions that get us past the lack of nuance of a slogan and into the kind of future where people are protected, their bodily autonomy is protected, and that you are answering the call with the right kind of resource to actually make sure that you get to that goal where everybody gets home safely in the end.
AL: There’s been an effort to paint you as a socialist, right? Particularly among Republicans, but also among some centrist Democrats, though you’re not a democratic socialist. You’re not affiliated with DSA. And you’ve said you’re a capitalist who understands how capitalism works.
But why do you think it’s important to tell people that you’re not a socialist, despite having endorsements from the two biggest Democratic socialists in the country? If your policies are similar, why is that a meaningful distinction?
AES: Honestly, I’m just not out there really talking about it. I get asked about it all the time. But it’s not something I’m out there talking about. I’m trained as a scientist, and anybody who knows me knows that I demand data all the time. Make a claim, and then show me why your claim is correct.
Right now, I don’t really ascribe to any one ideology. I want solutions to problems. I know what our goal is. We want a America where everybody can get the healthcare they need, when they need it, without going into bankruptcy or worrying about their financial future.
We want to be able to breathe clean air, drink clean water. We all want to get home safely. We want an economy where everybody is dignified, they have the wages they need to be able to live their life, and nobody is oppressed upon by a few people who can extract from them. Those are all goals that we have.
“I’m trying to solve problems in the actual world.”
So I’m just trying to identify solutions around those problems, which is how I come to my policy positions. I just don’t come at it from an ideological bent, which apparently is what folks want me to do, but I just don’t. It’s just not how I operate in the world.
You get arguments from every side: “Why won’t you say this? Why won’t you—?” I’m like, because, I read a lot, unfortunately. For better or worse, I try to read about the things I talk about. The reality of it is that you might agree about a solution set to a particular problem, but when you ascribe to an ideology, what you’re also ascribing to is the extrema of both ideologies, right?
So I’m not a corporatist. I don’t want corporate capitalism; I want regulated capitalism. I’m also not a socialist because I don’t agree on the extreme on that part, either. I’m trying to solve problems in the actual world. That’s what I’m actually trying to do.
When I think about that, I want everybody to bring data — and maybe it’s just because of my training as a scientist, maybe it’s because of my training as a doctor. But at the end of the day, we’re like, all right, what actually works here? Show me what works, and we’ll do the thing that works. If we can do the thing that works, and we can get all the problems out of the way of the thing that works, then more people have the things that they need, and I’ve done my job.
AL: Turning back to money in this race, this is a big topic of discussion. As we’ve already mentioned, this is one of the most expensive primaries of this cycle. AIPAC has made its biggest investment ever spending against you.
But your opponent has been focused on your tax returns and claimed that the $2.1 million in wealth that you disclosed, including a home in Dubai and earnings from consulting and capital gains and other incomes, undermines your working-class message.
This came up in your debate with Stevens on Monday.
Rep. Haley Stevens: And you have not released your full tax returns. $300,000 in other income, while you sat in the podcast chair and you hawked junk healthcare cures that RFK Jr. would thumbs up. You talk about getting money out of politics and putting money in people’s pockets, but still no one knows who’s putting the money in your pocket.
AL: But you released your tax returns after requesting an extension that would have released them after the primary. Why did you request that extension originally?
AES: You know that property that you mentioned? It’s not mine. It is in the name of my wife, shared with all of her siblings and her parents. They inherited property, and then they sold it, and they purchased a different property. And if you’ve ever transacted with the real estate system or any system in India, it’s not the fastest system. And I would have loved to put everything out immediately. The hard part is that all of the powers that be to get us the forms to do all of those things just did not comply.
In the end, I love my wife, and I’m so grateful for her contribution in this race, and she happens to have property in different places, and that transaction happens to have happened this year, and it takes time to get those numbers.
AL: I know you’ve said you’re focused on Michigan, but you’ve also articulated, at least in private, a vision beyond this cycle for progressives in the left more broadly, talking about how progressives can win other races, primary someone like Sen. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and even put forth a presidential candidate ahead of 2028.
That approach has struck fear in the heart of the Democratic Party apparatus, which has been part of the efforts we discussed to drive fear around this idea that you’re another piece of this insurgent wave that’s threatening their existence, which in many ways you are.
But it sounds like you’re saying that in some ways, your campaign is part of this insurgent wave, but in other ways, it’s not. Is that right?
AES: My job is to serve Michiganders. Everything I’m doing is about trying to make sure that they can afford their groceries, that they know that they have stable housing, that they can get healthcare when they need it, and that their money is kept here.
Now, I’m going to the U.S. Senate because I want the U.S. Senate to vote for legislation to do those things. So part of my job is to make sure that we’ve got a U.S. Senate that can actually do that work. And my hope is that the conversations I can share with the 99 other senators, the persuasion that we can all do for the world that we want to build is enough. But also, let’s be clear, I want to serve Michiganders, and part of doing that is making sure that the U.S. Senate serves their interests.
I think that a lot of people are paying attention to this race because Michigan’s a microcosm of this country. It’s the most important state in the entire country — I’ve always known that — but I think people are starting to figure out why. And that’s because the things that Michiganders need and deserve, frankly, are the things that people across this country need and deserve.
AL: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, thank you so much. We’re going to leave it there.
AES: Thank you.
AL: We want to hear from you. Tell us what you’re following or want to see more coverage of. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com, or leave us a voice mail at 530-POD-CAST. That’s 530-763-2278.
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For the Second Time, Lawmakers Failed to Fix California’s Warning System for Teacher Misconduct
A last-ditch legislative attempt to help California school districts keep problematic teachers out of the classroom has collapsed following opposition from unions and the state teacher licensing agency that a proposed searchable database would violate privacy and subject educators to unfair treatment.
The proposed database, introduced by a Democratic member of the State Assembly in June, would have allowed schools to see if applicants for public school teaching positions had been reported to the state after they were fired or resigned over claims of misconduct.
The California Federation of Teachers pushed back, warning that teachers could land in the database even if schools had not determined they committed serious misconduct.
“We would support legislation that targets substantiated reports of egregious misconduct,” said Tristan Brown, a lobbyist with the California Federation of Teachers. “We live in a state with Silicon Valley. The state should be able to support a system that is up to date and tracking substantiated reports of misconduct.”
Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi had proposed to make it easier for schools to screen teacher applicants after a KQED-ProPublica investigation published in May. The news outlets revealed how delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, allowed educators to get new jobs after school districts reported them to the state teacher licensing agency for sexual harassment or other misconduct.
A similar effort by Republican lawmakers to address the issue also hit roadblocks earlier this year.
“When the safety of a child does not meet a legislative priority, that’s a head-scratcher for me,” said Republican Assemblymember Tom Lackey, who co-authored the first attempt to create the teacher database. “I think being sympathetic to the offender is on the wrong side of this issue.”
Both bills were modeled on a law the Legislature passed in 2025 mandating the creation of a database by next summer that will allow employers to search the names of school support staff, such as bus drivers, custodians and teaching assistants, who are under investigation by their schools or have substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct.
The database for school support staff passed after months of tense negotiations. Under that system, employees’ names would be removed from the database if school investigations fail to substantiate claims of egregious misconduct. The bill passed despite opposition from unions, but the system that will be put in place is still being refined.
But that law explicitly does not apply to public school teachers.
The system currently in place for public school educators is a patchwork with a fair number of gaps. School districts have long been required to report to the state any teacher who is fired or who resigns due to misconduct. But the state’s teacher licensing agency, which collects all of those reports, is restricted by state law in what information the agency can share while it investigates. The state’s disciplinary process typically takes one year, and teachers could be hired during the investigation period without schools knowing about the claims against them.
California’s publicly accessible online database of credentialed educators does indicate, with a red-flag icon, whether those public school teachers have been disciplined by the state. But it does not explain the reason for the sanction or provide a link to any documents. It is only after the state licensing agency recommends an educator be disciplined that prospective employers can request a summary of the case and the agency’s findings.
Without such details, California school administrators must rely on teachers themselves or their previous employers to provide key information. A law passed in 2024 requires teacher candidates to share their complete job history in education and mandates that school districts ask every previous employer whether a candidate had been reported to the credentialing agency for credible or substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct. If so, previous schools must share the relevant information. But that law keeps bad actors out of schools only if teachers and schools keep — and provide — accurate records.
For more than a year, California school administrators have lobbied lawmakers for a better way to protect students from those with a history of misconduct. “A database is needed to provide more complete, timely information so that schools can fulfill their responsibility to put trusted adults in positions that work with students,” said Dorothy Johnson, a lobbyist with the Association of California School Administrators, whose members include superintendents, principals and human resources officials.
Under the original bill authored by Muratsuchi and sponsored by the school administrators association, teachers would be added to a new database if their school districts have reported them to the state for misconduct. Before making job offers, schools would be required to check the database, accessible only to employers, for names of teachers with substantiated and credible complaints of egregious misconduct. Then, schools would be required to request records about misconduct from the districts that reported them.
California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat who introduced the teacher accountability bill, said his office was “confronted with a lot of resistance” over whether it would lead to unfair treatment of the accused.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Muratsuchi said his office was “immediately confronted with a lot of resistance,” with teachers unions raising concerns over fair treatment of the accused.
Brown, the lobbyist for the California Federation of Teachers, said the language in the measure was too broad. He said the union would not object to a database that identifies only teachers with substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct, but the bill also states that reports of “possible misconduct” would be included.
“Our opposition is really focused on making sure we’re looking at dangerous conduct that we can definitively say happened,” Brown said.
Muratsuchi, who pulled language for his bill directly from the previous effort by Republican Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, said his intent was for the database to focus on egregious misconduct reports that were substantiated and credible. Had he had more time, he said, he would have clarified the language through the legislative process and addressed the unions’ concerns.
But he introduced the bill with just weeks left in the legislative session.
Seth Bramble, a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association, the state’s most powerful teachers union, wrote in a statement that the proposed database would lead to “employment consequences for innocent teachers based on allegations later determined to be unfounded.”
“CTA unequivocally supports protecting students, ensuring that credible misconduct information is shared with prospective school employers, and preventing individuals who commit egregious misconduct from moving from school to school,” Bramble wrote.
The Trump administration singled out teachers unions as obstructions to legislative reforms to protect children when it announced a national crackdown in July on how school districts handle accusations of sexual misconduct by teachers.
“Teachers’ unions’ demonstrated commitment to shield their members from disciplinary action for gross misconduct cannot trump basic moral and legal responsibilities to students and families,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in the open letter to state school chiefs.
McMahon cited KQED and ProPublica’s finding that California’s teacher licensing agency has not revoked the professional credentials of at least 67 educators who school districts determined had sexually harassed students or committed other sexual misconduct. At least 14 of those educators were rehired by other schools. That included San Francisco Bay Area math teacher Jason Agan, who was hired by two schools despite having been fired after an independent panel determined he sexually harassed female students and massaged their shoulders after he’d been warned to stop. Agan was removed from the classroom the day after the story was published. He was replaced by a substitute for the remainder of the school year.
Agan has denied any sexual motivation in touching students and said during his dismissal hearing at his first school that he touched students only to offer them support.
The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, California’s educator licensing agency, joined the unions in objecting to the bill to add teachers to the misconduct database. Jonathon Howard, the government relations manager for the credentialing agency, told Muratsuchi in a June 19 email obtained by KQED and ProPublica that complying with the proposed legislation would “require Commission staff to commit crimes.” Howard cited state laws restricting what information the teacher licensing agency is allowed to share.
Muratsuchi’s bill, Howard warned, would expose the agency to “significant liability.” “The Commission does not oppose the goal of ensuring that credentialed educators with substantiated histories of serious misconduct cannot move undetected between schools,” Howard wrote. “However, achieving that goal requires legislation that is legally sound, operationally workable, and fair to the educators whose livelihoods and professional reputations are at stake.”
Anita Fitzhugh, a spokesperson for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, previously told KQED and ProPublica that the agency “stands ready to implement any additional public protections that the Legislature authorizes.”
Within weeks of introducing the bill and following opposition, Muratsuchi scrapped the idea of adding teachers reported to the state for egregious misconduct to the database and instead amended the bill to clarify that the teacher licensing agency may penalize administrators who don’t thoroughly vet applicants. The school administrators association withdrew its sponsorship.
Muratsuchi, whose term expires in December, said he still supports more access to information about educators disciplined for serious misconduct. But with the legislative session ending Aug. 31, time is running out.
“I tried,” Muratsuchi said. “I hope future Legislatures pick up the ball.”
hottest ever recorded in Western Europe. In addition to causing nuclear reactors and train lines to shut down, the oppressive heat killed thousands of people across the continent in the span of a few weeks. 
twice as flammable as natural forests. 
