OCTOBER 2, 2026

According to Polls, Americans Like Socialism a Lot
A crop of recent polls shows that socialism’s appeal is surprisingly broad. The transformed US political landscape is ripe for a socialist politician to capitalize on — if they’re willing to step up.
Recent polling over the past month suggest that the radicalized, anti-establishment zeal that’s taken over the Democratic electorate and opened the door for a rising socialist insurgency is still going strong, with a few surprises in tow. Jacobin via Portside

Trump Is Using Your Taxpayer Money to Pay for Illegal Election Propaganda
But as brazen and authoritarian as these ad spots are, they seem likely to backfire.
This just in: You are paying for the rollout of the GOP’s midterm messaging from the White House. A trio of election-season ad spots casting President Donald Trump as the savior of a communist-besieged America and the defender of its libertarian birthright hit the airwaves recently, once more splattering the commander in chief’s visage across the great and good republic of television. But instead of running with the standard funding disclaimer supplied by a dummy super PAC, these ads fade out under a screen legend that reads “paid for by the US government.” The ads are clear violations of appropriations law prohibiting the federal government from spending money for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin suggests they may be “felony criminal theft” of public money. The Nation

Gouged: why Americans are being ripped off — and what to do about it
How can we fix our pricing crisis? An economic sociologist urges tough new rules — and a consumer uprising
“Repeat after me: it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.” That’s the message to frustrated US shoppers in Gouged: The End of a Fair Price — and What That Means for Your Wallet by Lindsay Owens, economic sociologist and head of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive Washington thinktank. Consumer rage is rising and no wonder — we are all living through the “reinvention of the rip-off,” Owens told the Guardian, an experience that is undermining Americans’ trust in the economy. Nothing short of a consumer uprising and a slate of tough new rules is going to fix the problem, she believes. The Guardian 

In the same vein, see Tim Wu, Affordability is a winning message for Democrats — but… “To run a proper affordability campaign — one that taps into a discontent even deeper than that over high prices — Democrats should cater to [the] widespread sense of unfairness. The key message is rebalancing: a promise to level out a lopsided economy that favors huge concentrations of wealth. … You needn’t be an economist or technocrat to understand that concentrated market power is a threat not just to widespread prosperity but also to social cohesion.” New York Times

Study: High Housing Costs Contribute Most To Poverty In Maryland 
Maryland is one of 10 states where high housing costs are the strongest contributor to the state’s poverty level, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The report, released Tuesday, said approximately 21% of Maryland poverty is attributable to above-average housing costs, stretching the budgets of the state’s low-income families and offsetting positive impacts of anti-poverty measures such as federal food assistance. Maryland Matters. via Maryland Reporter

The Existential Threat We Can Actually Do Something About
Nuclear war, climate breakdown, artificial intelligence and extreme inequality threaten our collective future. Progressives may have limited power over some of these threats, but inequality — and the racial and ethnic hierarchies that sustain it — is something we can begin confronting wherever we organize.
The world is too complicated to search for one problem whose solution will save us, scholar Jared Diamond recently said. Instead, he named three things humanity must get right: climate change, inequality and nuclear risk. Most people immediately understand why nuclear weapons and climate change belong in that company. Increasingly, people are beginning to recognize the dangers of AI. Any one of these has the potential to kill on an almost unimaginable scale. Inequality can sound different; many people tend to think of it as an economic problem, a political problem, or a matter of fairness. But Diamond’s formulation asks us to consider something more unsettling: What if inequality is itself a threat to human survival? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s new book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World, makes that question even more urgent. LA Progressive

Union-Busting Comes to Campus
The Senate-passed Protect College Sports Act is really an anti-labor bill meant to restore the NCAA cartel at the expense of the athletes.
Weeks before a midterm that is shaping up as a major Democratic blowout, Senate Republicans decided to spend their final days in session focused not on affordability, the main concern of voters, but on eliminating labor rights for a subset of workers who are disproportionately young Black men through the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA), which passed the Senate 77-22 on Monday. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), thinks passing this act could win the GOP the elections. Delusion isn’t a strong enough word for it. The American Prospect via Portside

Stopping Flock
Boston has become the latest city in New England to end its contract with Flock, the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, following several smaller cities and towns in the region. Ending Flock is both a necessity to preserve our dwindling civil liberties and privacy rights; it is also a key battleground in the fight against ICE. Reid Jackson’s Flicking the Switch of Flock in Boston DSA’s Working Mass writes of that campaign and DSA’s role in it.