by Taya Graham | Nov 11, 2026 | Article, elections, midterms, Pennsylvania, Politics and Movements: US
In 2018, covering our first midterm election, we followed the ultimately unsuccessful campaign of an electoral upstart named Jess King.
King was a progressive candidate touting ideas like Medicare for All and a higher minimum wage in Pennsylvania’s deep-red 11th District. Her campaign seemed improbable at the time.
Her opponent, conservative Republican Lloyd Smucker, had won his previous race by roughly 10 points. In 2018, the district was gerrymandered to be even more Republican.
Despite the long odds, King made an argument we hadn’t heard before. Even though she was running as a Democrat, her pitch to voters was not exclusively partisan.
“I think what we see is that voters aren’t necessarily on the left-right spectrum as much as they are on a bottom-to-top spectrum,” King told us at a campaign event. “We need to talk more about two political parties that have sold out to special interests.”
Call it the inequality proposition or a power-to-the-people mantra, King made it clear that viewing politics through the prism of party was not only outdated, but destructive.
Ultimately, her pitch fell short. She lost to Smucker.
But the 2026 election may have proved that King was simply ahead of the curve. Alongside historic wins for Democrats, her message re-emerged with new potency among an electorate increasingly angry with the status quo, regardless of party.
“You hear people talking about this top-down message instead of this left-right message,” said Pennsylvania state Representative-elect Ce-Ce Gerlach. Gerlach won with the help of the Working Families Party and the progressive group Lehigh Valley Stands Up.
She said her message of economic populism trumped party politics.
“People are struggling. People don’t want to hear all this rhetoric
by Brad Reed | Nov 9, 2026 | Article, Iran, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, War
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 09, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Rep. Thomas Massie on Monday took to the floor of the US House of Representatives to introduce articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In introducing the articles, which he first filed in September, the Kentucky Republican said Hegseth has “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders” in carrying out President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, which was launched without congressional authorization in February.
“In all of this, Secretary Hegseth has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as secretary of defense, and subversive to constitutional government,” said Massie. “Hegseth, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law.”
Massie: Hegseth knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders.. Hegseth has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law. Hegseth thus… pic.twitter.com/qdvzphBPFz— Acyn (@Acyn) November 9, 2026
Because of this, Massie continued, Hegseth “warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”
Massie then made a detailed case for removing Hegseth, as outlined across eight impeachment articles alleging a wide variety of misconduct and criminality.
The Kentucky Republican argued that, in carrying out Trump’s Iran War, Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which specified that the president cannot send
by Ryan Johnson | Nov 9, 2026 | elections, Fascism, Israel, midterms, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, video
On November 3, Democrats secured a historic landslide victory over the Republican Party, securing 54 Senate seats and over 250 House seats. Five governor’s seats were also flipped, including in historically red states like Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Georgia.
According to a New York Times estimate, Americans aged 18-29 voted overwhelmingly Democrat during the Midterms. 70% of voters in the 18-29 age group voted for Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, a 33-point increase from 2024.
Americans aged 18-29 also came out in droves to support Democratic Senate nominees in 2024, with over 30-point differences in every competitive Senate race, including 44-point increases in Mississippi and North Carolina and a whopping 49-point increase in Texas.
Social Reporter Ryan Johnson sat down with Jason Stanley, the Bissell-Heyd Chair in American Studies in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto and author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, to talk through the issues that swayed young people to vote for Democrats, the global anti-fascist wave, and a lasting change in American public opinion on Israel.
Related Links:
Jason Stanley at University of Toronto
Jason Stanley on Amazon
Credits:
Production: Ryan Johnson
Post-production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Ryan Johnson:
On November 3rd, Democrats secured a historic landslide victory over the Republican Party, securing 54 Senate seats and over 250 House seats. Five governor seats were also flipped, including in historically red states like Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Georgia. According to a New York Times estimate, Americans aged 18 to 29 voted overwhelmingly Democrat during the midterms. 70% of
by Michael Fox | Nov 9, 2026 | brazil, Podcast, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Trump, Under the Shadow, Under the Shadow Season 2
On Sunday, October 25, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro by a margin of three and a half points, and almost 4.5 million votes. It was roughly twice the margin of the 2022 election, when Lula defeated Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro.
It was the first time in Brazilian history that a candidate lost the first round of voting and won the second. And it was also one of the first defeats of a far-right Trump ally in several years.
As we’ve examined throughout this season of the podcast, Trump’s Donroe Doctrine has overshadowed the region since he came back into power early last year. He’s invaded Venezuela, tightened the screws on Cuba, and twisted arms to get his friends elected in countries up and down the Americas. But in Brazil, he couldn’t. And it’s not because Trump and his Silicon Valley buddies didn’t try.
It’s because Lula supporters organized en masse. Students, workers, teachers, retirees, and everyone in between. And they hit the streets to flip the vote, despite the odds.
They rallied with weeks of around-the-clock campaigning, marches, and protests. They pamphleted and fliered. They talked to their neighbors and their relatives. Online, Lula supporters responded with creative campaigns to confuse the algorithms that aggressively pushed content promoting Bolsonaro.
As many in the crowds told me again and again in recent weeks, this election was a decision that would define the fate of Brazil’s democracy. This wasn’t a vote between two candidates in a democratic system, where one wins and the other accepts their loss. It was a decision between democracy and dictatorship. Or democracy and something else.
And democracy won.
We began this
by Plínio Teodoro | Nov 7, 2026 | Article, paraguay, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint, Trump
This story originally appeared in Panamerican Dispatch on Nov. 07, 2026, and is shared here with permission.
Former Paraguayan President Santiago Peña was moved from house arrest to a military unit within the Armed Forces overnight on Friday, October 6. The relocation followed an incident in which protesters surrounded his residence in Asunción, demanding his incarceration in a formal prison facility, which led to clashes with the police.
Peña was removed from office hours earlier, after the Senate voted unanimously to impeach him. The impeachment stemmed from his alleged involvement in the collapse of Ueno Bank, an institution that blocked access to funds for approximately 40% of the Paraguayan population.
The case bears similarities to the financial scandal in Brazil involving Daniel Vorcaro’s Banco Master, which implicated former presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, a significant portion of the Bolsonaro movement and the political right in Brazil.
According to the Argentine digital news outlet Infobae, the military organized Peña’s extraction from his home in the La Piedad neighborhood of Asunción, using three pickup trucks for the transfer. The operation took place shortly before midnight, after escalating tensions near his residence made it untenable for the former president to remain there.
Footage captured by the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color shows individuals throwing eggs and shouting insults at the vehicle transporting Peña as the convoy departed. The same outlet reported that Paraguayan intelligence identified the infiltration of agitators within the crowd, individuals who had previously been participating in a protest in the city center and allegedly moved to the residence with the intent of inciting violence.
🔴 AHORA | Trasladan a Santiago Peña al Regimiento Escolta.En medio de momentos de
by Jessica Corbett | Nov 6, 2026 | Article, California, Politics and Movements: US, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
