The operation, called Joint Task Force Vanguard, first emerged during the June 16 indictment of 15 protesters who organized community patrols in Minneapolis for assault on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent and conspiracy to impede government operations. Now, The Lever has helped identify the operation’s leaders: Brian Lynch and Jason Kellhofer, alums of the country’s long and brutal war against terrorists at home and abroad.

According to the press release from the Department of Justice, JTF Vanguard is designed to prosecute cases under the administration’s National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM)-7, a September 2025 presidential memo labeling “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and other activities as evidence of support for terrorism. 

The Justice Department claims that NSPM-7, and a related memo designating the loose, leaderless left-wing “Antifa” movement as an organized domestic terrorist group, are intended to combat political violence in the wake of the assassination of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk.

But experts worry that such efforts are designed to deploy the War on Terror playbook on the president’s perceived enemies.

“The new boogeyman is the generalized anti-fascist left,” said Wadie Said, law professor at the University of Colorado and author of Crimes of Terror. “What are the required links between these groups? How organized do they have to be? All these questions that in the past were answered in favor of the government in international terrorism cases — they're all applicable now in the domestic context.”

Of the four known indictments JTF Vanguard has filed so far, two have targeted left-wing protesters. Along with the charges against the Minneapolis activists, the task force has filed property damage and intimidation charges against two civilians who allegedly set off fireworks that damaged property while protesting the construction of an Atlanta police training center commonly known as “Cop City.” 

The task force’s third indictment involves an Oklahoma man accused of threatening Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) over the phone. The fourth case accuses a man who allegedly affixed Nazi symbols on a Jewish community center of committing a hate crime.

In mid-June, Lynch’s and Kellhofer’s LinkedIn profiles identified them as “co-directors” of JTF Vanguard.

After several requests for comment, the Department of Justice confirmed their positions, saying that Lynch and Kellhofer “are co-directors of JTF Vanguard, reporting directly to [Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche],” per a spokesperson. On June 29, Talking Points Memo published a story independently confirming Kellhofer and Lynch’s appointment. 

“There are limits to our generosity”

According to his LinkedIn profile, which has now been taken down, Lynch spent decades working as a military lawyer within the U.S. counter-terrorism machinery.

His LinkedIn profile noted that in 2012, he was deployed to Afghanistan for just under a year to assist in prosecuting cases at the country’s National Security Court, based at the  Bagram detention complex, known as “Afghanistan’s Guantanamo” due to the harsh interrogation techniques practiced there. 

Later called the Parwan prison, Bagram once served as the endpoint for detainees in the U.S. military’s constellation of “black site” interrogation centers across the country. Lynch’s team “successfully prosecuted over 230 national security trials against suspected Taliban, Haqqani Network, and Hezb-e-Islami members,” his LinkedIn profile noted.  

Then, after several years as a state-level gang prosecutor, Lynch apparently took a 10-month assignment at the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions in 2020, where his LinkedIn page claimed he prosecuted “al-Qaida members detained at Guantanamo Bay,” a detention facility notorious for alleged human rights abuses, including torture, inadequate medical care, and indefinite detentions.

The Guantanamo military commissions, established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to try non-citizen terrorist suspects at the prison, were found by the Supreme Court to violate both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions for the humane treatment of prisoners until Congress specifically authorized the tribunals in 2006. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the military trials at the detention camp “have been marred by legal and ethical problems from day one,” because they allow the use of hearsay and evidence obtained through coercion.

The aftershocks of the Guantanamo commissions have reverberated throughout the U.S. justice system. According to Said at the University of Colorado, Guantanamo served both as a cautionary tale and a gateway for aggressive prosecutorial tactics to seep into courts in the U.S. homeland. 

“A lot of dubious practices have gotten kind of legalized or regularized,” Said said.

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From 2014 to 2020, Lynch also wrote blog posts for the conservative website The American Thinker, as Talking Points Memo first reported. In his posts, he argued against providing Taliban and al-Qaida members at Guantanamo Bay with the rights typically provided to prisoners of war. 

Lynch noted in a post from June 24, 2014, that “the Third Geneva Convention has never been applicable to the conflict in Afghanistan or the greater War on Terror.” He added that while the U.S. has afforded War on Terror prisoners with “certain protections” under international law because “we are a moral and civilized people,” “there are limits to our generosity.”

Pre-Crime Prosecutions

If Lynch built his career in the military’s massive wartime justice system, Kellhofer made his name in the U.S. domestic counterterrorism apparatus. 

A longtime national security prosecutor, Kellhofer first became known in 2010 for his work on U.S. v. Boyd, a canonical case of what critics call “preemptive prosecution.” Preemptive, or anticipatory, prosecution involves charging defendants with terrorism-related crimes based, in part, on suspicion of their ideology or speech, before any violent act actually occurs or concrete plans to commit any violence have been formulated.

The government alleged that Daniel Patrick Boyd — an American Muslim convert who fought with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan — was forming a domestic terror cell in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was allegedly stockpiling weapons and training in the forest. Kellhofer, who oversaw the case for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, helped argue that statements Boyd made in support of jihad were proof that he intended to commit acts of terrorism. The courts agreed, and Boyd and his colleagues were convicted of material support for terrorists and conspiracy to murder.

Such preemptive prosecutions were common during the domestic War on Terror. According to a study by Project SALAM, an organization that advocates for post-9/11 terrorism detainees, more than 90 percent of “terrorism-related convictions” from 2001 to 2010 had elements of preemptive prosecution. 

“The FBI used aggressive sting operations to target Muslim American communities, where they would manufacture terrorism cases out of whole cloth [and] use informants or undercover agents to create a terrorist crime,” said Mike German, former FBI special agent and author of Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy.

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Kellhofer later resurfaced in 2012 as a prosecutor on U.S. v. Muhtorov, a landmark case in which the defendant, Uzbek human rights advocate Jamshid Muhtorov, was prosecuted for providing material support for terrorism when he attempted to return to his home country to allegedly join a terrorist group. 

Muhtorov became the first person to be notified that he had been surveilled under Section 702, a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that permits warrantless surveillance of foreigners’ communications, including their communications with American citizens. 

Using the expanded surveillance powers, Kellhofer and his colleagues employed an extensive dragnet around Muhtorov. After acquiring his communications via a warrantless search, agents used the information to obtain a warrant to bug his house, wiretap him, and employ other surveillance techniques that still remain classified, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Muhtorov was found guilty in 2018 and was deported by ICE after his release in 2025.

Chilling Dissent

Lynch and Kellhofer are now leading a federal task force, under the direction of Trump’s former personal attorney, with the power to investigate Trump’s political opponents, and its early work already bears the fingerprints of the two men’s experiences with aggressive War on Terror tactics.

In the Minneapolis indictment, the task force charged the 15 protesters with conspiring to injure or impede an officer, threats, stalking, destruction of government property, and assault on an officer. But the indictment itself only lists a single incident of alleged violence against an officer: a single defendant reportedly knocked an agent’s notes out of his hands. 

Much of the rest of the indictment consists not of any violent acts or of plans to inflict harm, but of Signal messages acquired by law enforcement that discuss civil disobedience tactics, such as community organizing and tracking ICE’s movements.

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According to German, the vagueness of the charges in Minneapolis may be the point. 

“Many of the cases that they’re bringing will end up failing much more than typical in a federal prosecution, but I don’t think they’re particularly worried about that, because they know that it sends the same chill through the protest community, it heightens the risk for anyone going out to do any kind of political organizing in opposition to government policy, and it inflicts penalties upon the defendants, whether they're convicted or not,” German said. 

When asked for comment on JTF Vanguard’s practices, a Justice Department spokesperson responded that its strategies predate the War on Terror. 

“The vast majority of the cases falling within Joint Task Force Vanguard relied on traditional law enforcement and investigative techniques that have been around well before September 11,” wrote the spokesperson, noting that the task force will uphold “the cherished principles of the First Amendment, which political violence seeks to undermine.”

Lynch and Kellhofer declined to comment.

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Last week, The Lever’s David Sirota traveled to Michigan to meet with Democratic Senate candidate and former public health official Abdul El-Sayed, who has become a political lightning rod as he campaigns in one of the country’s most consequential primaries. 

Today on Lever Time, we’re airing Sirota’s exclusive interview with El-Sayed. Speaking at a coffee shop in Macomb County — the Michigan county that birthed the term “Reagan Democrats” and where Trump won twice — they discuss how El-Sayed plans to pass Medicare For All, why AIPAC is spending millions to defeat him, and why he doesn’t want corporate Democrats’ invitations to cocktail parties.

Want more essential midterm coverage? Check out The Lever’s new weekly newsletter, Midterm Madness, for election updates.

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TRANSCRIPT

Following is an automated, unedited transcription of this episode. The text may contain grammatical or spelling errors, especially for proper nouns, or attribute text to the wrong speaker. If you plan to quote any part of this transcript, please first confirm that it is correct by listening to the audio.

[00:00:00] David Sirota: From The Lever's reader-supported newsroom, it's Lever Time. I'm David Sirota. Michigan is one of the most pivotal political swing states in America, part of the so-called Blue Wall that Democrats almost always must win in order to win national elections. In the last decade, that wall has twice been breached by Donald Trump, and now in 2026, whether or not it holds could decide which party controls the US Senate.

In Michigan's big Senate race, one of the three Democratic contenders is a very different kind of candidate. Unlike his Democratic primary opponents, Abdul El-Sayed is a doctor, and he's not a career politician in elected office. Also unlike his opponents, he's centering his whole campaign around a push for Medicare for All.

Abdul El-Sayed is challenging his party's entire idea of electability. He's arguing that in order for Democrats to win a swing state like Michigan, they cannot put up a corporate-aligned Democrat. He insists the party needs a populist nominee. And not surprisingly, much of the Democratic establishment has lined up against his candidacy.

Now, in past years, opposition from the Democratic establishment might have meant the end of his campaign. But this year, with voters so angry at Democratic Party leaders, the opposite seems to be happening. According to polls, Abdul El-Sayed has surged into the frontrunner position in Michigan's Senate Democratic primary.

But with millions of dollars being spent against him by AIPAC, the question now is, will his lead hold? Today on Lever Time, I go to Michigan to meet with Abdul El-Sayed. We discuss everything from his fight with national party leaders, to his push for Medicare for All, to his opposition to America's continued support for the genocide in Gaza.

That's all coming up next

Welcome back to Lever Time. I'm speaking with Abdul El-Sayed, who's running for US Senate in Michigan.

[00:01:58] Abdul El-Sayed: Welcome to Michigan, man. It's good to see you, man. Tell us about this place that we're in. We're at the Dovetails, a independently owned coffee shop in Macomb County. Uh, we've had I think three events here, and it's sort of the hub for, uh, local organizing.

And so just we wanted to come to a place where we felt like home, so.

[00:02:15] David Sirota: So we're here in Macomb County, which is, like, I don't know a ton about Michigan, but I know that that's the famous place of Reagan Democrats. Like, in politics, it's, like, a famous place.

[00:02:26] Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah.

[00:02:26] David Sirota: I think one question just to start us off is Donald Trump won this county twice.

Why is Trump winning here?

[00:02:36] Abdul El-Sayed: You have a, a working class community. Most of the industry here is directly related to the auto industry. A lot of folks who have worked in the industry, whether on the line or, um, supporting the industry in some way. And I think what happens, and they say in Michigan is, you know, when the economy sneezes, Michigan catches a cold, and this community, city of Detroit, um, they tend to get the worst of that.

And I think what folks here have experienced is a certain frustration with the establishments on both sides of the aisle. And Donald Trump, say what you will, is a fantastic liar, and he looked different than politics as usual. And so I think for a lot of people who asked, "Who's gonna look out for me?" He was making the only argument that looked different than the status quo.

But, you know, step back, this is where Reagan Democrats came out, and I think ever since our party gave up on the idea of fighting for working people without compromising to the interest of corporations, we started to steadily watch the erosion of support for the party. And, you know, when we ultimately looked indistinguishable on key economic questions from too many Republicans, it created a space within which Donald Trump could come in and lie to folks about what he was gonna do, and he was a fantastic liar, and he exploited that, those lies.

And so I think, you know, the question in our politics, as you well know, is not left versus right. It's not red versus blue. It's locked out versus the people doing the locking out, and a lot of folks in these communities have felt locked out for a very long time, and I think we got an opportunity to unlock that system.

So I'm not gonna be surprised when we end up winning Macomb County, because we're speaking to the economic anxieties that a lot of folks have had for a very long time, and we're offering real answers to why they exist. If you wanna sit there and scream the word affordability and think that somehow people are gonna believe you when you don't really say how you map your policies to actually addressing the fact that people can't afford their housing, they can't afford their healthcare, they are worried about being priced out of groceries, then people don't take you seriously.

[00:04:53] David Sirota: So Elissa Slotkin just won a Senate race in Michigan, running as a centrist, running as kind of a corporate-friendly, I would say kind of generic Democrat, and she ran against the presumptive Republican nominee, and she won in a Trump year. And I think one question that has come up is, you're running a very different campaign than she ran.

I sense that some of the fear- If you wanna call it that, from party leaders is that we should just run a candidate like Elissa Slotkin ran, not like you're running, because we know it worked the last time, shouldn't it work the next time? And you're running with a much different message. Yeah. So just talk a little bit about

[00:05:38] Abdul El-Sayed: that.

You know, you know, I, I come with numbers, right? So- Right.

[00:05:40] David Sirota: Bring '

[00:05:40] Abdul El-Sayed: em. Bring 'em. Uh, I'm a child of immigrants- Bring 'em ... who do math.

[00:05:42] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:05:43] Abdul El-Sayed: She underperformed Vice President Harris by less than. Mike Rogers underperformed Donald Trump. So this was not some sort of insurgent win. And I think for a long time, our approach to winning has been play not to lose.

And if you can not lose, then that's it, you keep the seat. I don't play not to lose. We're playing to win, and I think we've only ever run one play, and the assumption is no other play can work. Well, too often the play we run doesn't work either, and I think we have an opportunity to fight to win. What does that look like?

That means offering policies that actually address the insecurity and anxiety that a lot of people in communities like these have. We want money out of politics. We want money in your pocket. We want Medicare for all. And I think for a lot of folks, right, it's like- Just review the history in Michigan.

This state went for Bernie in 2016, then went for Trump in 2016, then it went for Biden in 2020, and then it went for Trump again in, in 2024, right? And it's either that Michiganders are, like, s- super schizophrenic, but, like, you know, if you've met Michiganders, they're pretty steady. Or they keep going to the buffet and not finding what they want.

And so my question is, imagine you give them a perspective that is not bought off by the establishment on either side, but that's also not a narcissistic, megalomaniacal, asshole billionaire. I rather think that could speak to actually solving Michiganders' needs and also could speak to what folks in communities like this one are really looking for, and that's what we're offering.

So I'm not okay not losing to Mike Rogers by half a percent. I want to beat him by seven. I made that clear. I'm gonna beat him by seven, and I'm gonna beat him because I'm gonna beat him where he's weak, right? And I'm gonna beat him where he thinks he's strong. They run against us thinking, "Oh, we're strong, and you're weak."

All right, Mike Rogers, like, how are you gonna out-strong me cognitively, physically, morally, right? I'm gonna eat his lunch up in Namaste. I'm gonna take the fight to him. But I'm gonna take the fight to him because he is the epitome of corporate politics. I mean, he's the guy who sits at the country club and laughs at the alpha character's jokes and looks down on you because you're poorer than him.

That's who that guy is.

[00:08:04] David Sirota: I mean, when I, I... When I saw Mike Rogers, when I've seen him, like, he... Like, if you put it... If you said to me, "Think of country club guy," I'm like, "It looks like Mike Rogers."

[00:08:13] Abdul El-Sayed: Like, out of Central Casting. Right, yes. He's got the, like, Teletubby-

[00:08:16] David Sirota: Right. ... uh,

[00:08:17] Abdul El-Sayed: figure. He's got the, like, you know, the, the look on his face.

Wears way too much bronzer because Donald Trump does it. Yeah. It's funny, like, all these Republicans are just doing a Donald Trump cosplay. And he's just the worst at it. Right? Because his instincts really are country club.

[00:08:30] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:08:30] Abdul El-Sayed: But now he's bent over backwards and bent over forwards for Donald Trump.

[00:08:34] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:08:35] Abdul El-Sayed: And he's trying to walk this awkward line of being like, "Yeah, I'm MAGA like Donald Trump, but also, like, you know, I don't carry any of the Donald Trump baggage." I'm like, "No, actually, now you carry the baggage of both."

[00:08:45] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:08:45] Abdul El-Sayed: And I'm gonna show you for what you are, which is a corporate shill- Who has never seen a lobbyist PAC check he didn't like, who spent his time in Congress taking dollar after dollar from every industry and then doing their bidding, voted to raise prescription drug prices, helped to architect the opioid epidemic, then retired to Florida, made 14 million bucks.

He really wants us to know he's not a pharma lobbyist. So, you know, not a pharma lobbyist, Mike Rogers- Okay ... who's never met a pharma lobbyist he wasn't buddy-buddy with, I'm gonna eat his lunch, and the thing about it is, I'm already under his skin. That man hates me, and he should, because I'm gonna send him back to Florida, where even his golf buddies are gonna be like, "Oh, you're not a pharma lobbyist, huh?"

It's gonna be the joke he has to listen to for the rest of his miserable life.

[00:09:25] David Sirota: So tell us a little bit about what's going on in the campaign. You, you were third in the polls behind your opponents for a while, uh, your Democratic primary opponents, in what did really feel like a dead heat, and today, polls show you up by as much as double digits.

How do you explain what's happened?

[00:09:42] Abdul El-Sayed: I've spent my whole career, uh, in public service listening to folks in the worst of their pain, trying to understand what's causing them their pain. I ran for governor back in 2018, right? And I said something at the time I think folks weren't quite ready to hear, which is that Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics.

He's just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics, and the disease is the system that allows big corporations, billionaires, special interests to buy and sell politicians in ways that rig the system against us. I said that back then. You fast-forward eight years, and things have just gotten harder.

Now, I don't take shortcuts. So across this campaign, we've done 450 public events. I've been to 110 different cities now, and everywhere we go, we listen, we understand, we learn, and we say the same thing, which is the same thing I've been saying now for nearly a decade, since I got into public service. And I think now people are starting to realize, well, you know, maybe we should think differently about what's possible.

Also, there's just so much rage at both Donald Trump and the Democratic leadership. And it's funny, if, like, Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump both agree on something, the opposite's probably true, and both of them agree. They don't want me in the US Senate. So I think most people are looking out there and be like, "Oh, that guy?

Wait, neither of you want him? He must be the guy who actually wants to do something about this system that both of y'all uphold in some way or another." And, you know, the point I've been making for a very long time, that obviously Bernie's ma- been making far longer, is that so long as our politicians are bought off by the corporations, they are not going to do anything about the problems that corporations cause.

So what happens when you step up in a campaign and say, "Look, I've never taken a PAC check from them. I never will, and I'm standing forthrightly against the system that they created." And I think we actually can solve it, and I think in solving it, we can make your groceries cheaper, we can make sure you can afford housing, we can stand with your union.

If you don't have one, make sure you can get one, and we can guarantee you healthcare. Meanwhile, maybe we should abolish ICE and not spend $252 billion on an agency that has completely gone rogue and maybe not fight $300 billion wars that raise your gas prices five bucks. Not that hard.

[00:11:41] David Sirota: So one of the centerpieces of your campaign is Medicare for All.

When running for the US Senate, Barack

Obama cast himself as a supporter of Medicare for All, and said all we gotta do, paraphrasing here, but all we gotta do is get a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, and then Obama gets into office with a Democratic Senate, Democratic Congress, and the first thing in that healthcare debate that happens is that single-payer, essentially Medicare for All, is off the table, gone.

Ultimately, a public option is gone. Um, I think that raises this question of people campaign on Medicare for All, people support, voters support, a lot of voters support Medicare for All. How do you get over the hump that- Yeah ... people think that you're saying this to me, and I support you for saying it, but you're never really gonna deliver?

[00:12:30] Abdul El-Sayed: Let me say three things. Number one, you know, I think we learned a lot from that ACA debate experience. And I think the first thing we learned is that you can't pre-negotiate with them. They're gonna hate everything you do. Second, do not accommodate the insurance industry or the hospital industry. But then there's a huge difference between now and 2008 in both the way that we move information and also how dire the problem has gotten.

I think nowadays, not only is the problem worse, do we pay more for health insurance that is less durable than what we'd had in the past, deductibles are at s- you know, $5,000 average for a family of four and only going up, putting people into huge amounts of medical debt, but we also have the ability to compare across experiences.

So we're a lot less likely to be dissuaded by all the money that they're gonna spend dissuading us from having Medicare for All, right? So I mean, and it- we're seeing that in this campaign, right? $20 million already been spent against me, and I'm, I'm up, what? Double digits.

[00:13:25] David Sirota: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:25] Abdul El-Sayed: Right? Despite barely spending anything near what AIPAC is spending against me.

'Cause now more people get their information, right, through-

[00:13:34] David Sirota: Mm-hmm ...

[00:13:34] Abdul El-Sayed: digital and social media- Through this, yeah ... than they do on TV.

[00:13:37] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:13:37] Abdul El-Sayed: So I think we have an opportunity to actually take the fight out, and if I've learned anything, it's that you've got to be willing to fight for what you want. So I'll tell you this, if I get elected, I'm one US senator, but I'm one US senator with a platform, and having been elected from the state of Michigan, and if we can win on my message here, we can win anywhere And so I am going to have two principal jobs if I get elected.

Number one, throw as much sand in the gears to disrupt everything, all the corruption that the Trump administration is doing. And number two, make sure that we are building the conversation forward to be able to elect a president who is 10 toes down on getting Medicare for All and taking the fight out to the public.

So here's the thing, I, I don't just stay in Metro Detroit. I go to communities where they tell me my message has no, uh, role. I've met a countless number of three-time Trump supporters who are like, "I'm supporting you." Why? "'Cause I think you really want me to have healthcare." And I really want healthcare, and I think it's bullshit that some insurance company can just raise my rates and I got nothing to do with it.

They eat before I do, and my family does. So I think all of that has changed. I think we've learned a lot from the 2008 ACA debate, and I think it is time for n- us now to move out of that starter home, which is exactly what President Obama called it, right? It was a starter home, and the family's grown, right?

People are under pressure. They understand that they're getting a bad deal. Our job is to go and fight for what we really can have if we're willing to take the fight to them, if we're willing to accommodate nothing to the insurance industry and the pharma industry and the hospital industry, and we're willing to finally get w- what, what Americans deserve in this country.

[00:15:09] David Sirota: So one of the central arguments against Medicare for All has come from within the Democratic Party. And granted, we're back, still back in history here, but Hillary Clinton argued that it would effectively dismantle the Affordable Care Act and risk millions losing their coverage. In other words, the ACA was pit against Medicare for All.

[00:15:29] Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah. I, I mean, I think that's a bad faith argument. At the end of the day, what Medicare for All is is a guarantee of health insurance through the federal government. So if you're guaranteeing everybody health insurance through the federal government, you're gonna have health insurance. That's it, right?

Like, I think sometimes when all of us who believe in Medicare for All fight for it, we have this bad habit of admonishing people for not agreeing with us already. And I think it is smart for us to always focus on what Medicare for All will give you rather than a broader critique about what it'll take away.

And so I constantly... We, we even pass out Medicare for All cards.

[00:16:03] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:16:04] Abdul El-Sayed: Right? Which give you a sense of what it would feel like to have that in your back pocket, which is a card that comes to you the day you're born, that does not expire until the day you expire at 120 years old, God willing, after a long, healthy life, peacefully in your sleep.

There is no network. There is no premium. There is no copay, no deductible. It's just there for you. It's just healthcare. And imagine how that would feel. Imagine the security of that. You're talking about, like, a three-by-five security blanket.

[00:16:26] David Sirota: I mean, you're, you're bringing me back to Bill Clinton. Remember Bill Clinton held up the card.

I mean, I'm old e- that's how old I am. I remember when Bill Clinton held up the card. I think it was at, like, a joint address of Congress saying everyone's gonna get, forget what he called it, but something like that. Yeah. And it was very popular, but then of course, what happened to Clinton Care?

[00:16:43] Abdul El-Sayed: Well, that's the thing, is that they went up against the insurance industry, right?

They had the, uh, Harry and Louise ad- Yeah, yeah ... which we spoofed.

[00:16:50] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:16:52] Abdul El-Sayed: People disinformed about what was gonna happen, and ultimately they lost the political fight But we, we live in a very different information environment now. I mean, I just want you to think about this. I do not condone at all the murder of anybody.

But a, a health insurance CEO got murdered in cold blood, and everybody sided with the murderer. That just tells you where people are. They are sick and tired of this system. They hate it, and so they want it solved, and I think we have an opportunity to actually go and solve it for them. Like, what is politics except for trying to make sure that government can address people's biggest problems?

And healthcare right now is the single fastest growing and one of the largest line items in everybody's individual budget. It's funny to me. People are like, "Oh, well, you should focus on kitchen table issues." I'm like, "What do you think people call to talk about at their kitchen table?"

[00:17:40] David Sirota: We're gonna take a quick break.

Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Lever Time. I was just talking to the guys who run this, this coffee shop, and we were... He was saying, "I am not listening to any candidate unless it's," he said, "socialized medicine." And we were saying, it was, we were talking, and I said, "You know, if somebody said to me you take a 6, 7, 8% cut in your paycheck, but I know my healthcare is taken care of, I'm not saying I want a 6, 7, 8% cut in my, my income, and I'm not saying even Medicare for All requires that."

It

[00:18:09] Abdul El-Sayed: wouldn't even do that.

[00:18:09] David Sirota: But what I'm saying is, and, and we were talking, and he said, "It's just the security, actually, the, the psychological security of knowing it's there that-

[00:18:17] Abdul El-Sayed: Yes. I mean, and, and that's the thing about it is, like, this is one of those things that when it goes away, it literally can be life and death.

[00:18:23] David Sirota: Yes.

[00:18:24] Abdul El-Sayed: And I just wanna compare notes here. I think we do this thing too often where we compare to other countries, but most people have never lived in another country. Right,

[00:18:31] David Sirota: right.

[00:18:31] Abdul El-Sayed: So it's kind of a bad comparison because they can't understand it fully. Right. But we spend nearly twice as much as they do in countries that have this on healthcare.

So if we had it, we could spend less and have more durable, 'cause that's the thing about it is, like, I think the... You know, I wrote this book back in 2020 where I tried to diagnose this idea of an epidemic of insecurity. And what I mean by insecurity is living in a world where nothing you are building on feels secure.

[00:18:58] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:18:59] Abdul El-Sayed: Everything feels like it'd go away. So even if you are winning and you're rich, you still have an incentive to build more because you're afraid that what you need could go away from you at any given time. That's the experience of living in America. So we're all pit in this, like, dog-eat-dog world, and healthcare just is the epitome of that.

I've been grateful to be insured my whole life, but when I needed medical care, you know what I do? I don't use my PCP. I call one of my friends. Yeah. But most people don't have friends who are doctors.

[00:19:25] David Sirota: The anxiety of knowing even if you are middle class, even upper middle class, much less working class, to know if something, if somebody in my family gets sick, in theory, I could be medically bankrupted even if I have what I perceive to be at least frontline decent health insurance.

[00:19:44] Abdul El-Sayed: I'll tell you, so when I was working in government, I had to get bilateral hernia repair. I've been, you know, lifting, and all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, I know exactly what this is." Now, here's the thing about hernia repair Is that in theory, it's elective until it's not.

[00:20:00] David Sirota: Right.

[00:20:00] Abdul El-Sayed: So if, you know, you get a loop of your intestines, they get caught in the hernia-

[00:20:04] David Sirota: Yeah

[00:20:04] Abdul El-Sayed: and they do what they call it incarcerating, meaning they get stuck, and then they lose blood supply, that's a medical emergency, in which case you need to have it repaired immediately. So you're walking around with, like, a ticking time bomb in your gut. So I said, "You know what? I gotta just get this repaired, plus, you know, I, I work out enough that, like, this is just gonna get worse.

I should get it done." My deductible was $4,500. So I had to save up in an HSA enough money to be able to afford having the surgery. I was making three times as much as some of my employees. I was the director of the department, and I was just wondering, what would happen if one of my employees, who made a third as much as I did, got in a situation where they had exactly the same dilemma?

They probably wouldn't get the surgery, and it's only a matter of time until they have to, and they have to pay for it anyway. So, like, that's a worse outcome in a environment where we're all insured, the same insurance. But, like, we do this thing in this country where we force people into impossible decisions, and it's a crazy thing because for what?

So that a health insurance CEO could make 18 million bucks, which is how much the health insurance CEO that both of us would've been insured by made that year, $18 million. Every single one of those dollars comes out of the back pocket of somebody who is trying to pay for healthcare for themselves or their family.

It is a moral catastrophe, and it is a choice that we make to put the greed of a few over the well-being of the many. It is the moral fight of our time when it comes to domestic policy. Now, the crazy thing about it is they always tell us we don't have the money for it.

[00:21:41] David Sirota: You're segueing to my, my question, which is that, again, just thinking about Michigan, Senator Slotkin has said...

I mean, this is her quote, "No one can explain how to fund Medicare for All," and that's why she said she is, has been opposed to it. And she said, this is a couple years ago, that she supported Pete Buttigieg's idea of Medicare for All who want it.

[00:22:01] Abdul El-Sayed: Well, I, let me, let me take a shot at this. Yeah.

[00:22:03] David Sirota: Yes,

[00:22:03] Abdul El-Sayed: please.

Yeah. Um, I've done some thinking about it.

[00:22:05] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:22:05] Abdul El-Sayed: You tax billionaires their wealth.

[00:22:07] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:22:07] Abdul El-Sayed: Some of that goes to subsidize healthcare for everybody, and then instead of paying Blue Cross Blue Shield or Aetna or UnitedHealthcare, instead the FICA amount in your paycheck is a little bit bigger, but that means that you never lose the healthcare that you get.

It's always there for you. It's durable, and it is more accessible because there is in, no in-network or out-of-network. The idea that we can't pay for it- Is completely, I mean, belied by the fact that we already pay for it. Yeah. We just pay more for less durable healthcare with more out-of-pocket when we get sick.

So the question for us is, okay, well, can we pay for it in a way that's more durable and that costs us less out-of-pocket, and that's more funded in a more progressive fashion? And I think we can. And I think broadly, the public would like that more. So I'm gonna take a bet, having had this conversation all over my state, people are gonna vote for that.

And that if we're willing, as a country, to have this conversation, we can win Medicare For All for everybody.

[00:23:12] David Sirota: So let's talk about Israel. Israel has been a huge issue in this race. AIPAC is spending a lot of money for your opponent.

[00:23:22] Abdul El-Sayed: All the money. I mean, they've called me the most dangerous candidate for the US-Israel relationship.

I'm still waiting for the T-shirt. Yeah, so- AIPAC, you watching? A black V-neck, medium preferably. So

[00:23:31] David Sirota: what's your analysis of what's going on there? Like, what... Just your take- You know- ... on what's happening.

[00:23:35] Abdul El-Sayed: So the idea that the conversation about Israel is just about Israel misses the fact- That you don't have to go very far from here to get to a school that looks like it did 30 years ago.

If you were to drive out on this road here and drive for about a mile, you'd probably hit a pothole that could blow out your tire. You struggle for the healthcare you need, and meanwhile, our government sends a foreign country of 10 million people, that's like the size of the state of Michigan, billions of our tax dollars every single year.

And then to watch that country do a genocide on top of the apartheid that it does on baseline, and then take us to a war that we had no business fighting, that is astounding. It's astonishing. And then to realize that there is the attempt to normalize a political action committee, whose key goal it is to align our foreign policy with the foreign policy interests of that country, and then to be told you can't talk about it because, you know, if you do, it's because of your animus for any one group of people, is insane.

And so, you know, I'm, I'm not going to stand idly by while we betray our own morals by backstopping apartheid and genocide. I'm not gonna stand idly by while I got kids who I was responsible for taking care of in Wayne County in Detroit, who go to school in school buildings that are not befitting of their little minds.

And then to say that, "No, I'm, I'm not gonna talk about it." So Israel is an affordability issue. Israel is a moral issue. And then it's hard to believe that you have morals when you can't call out the systematic murder of tens of thousands of people. And so, you know, the point I often make is I was really blessed to grow up in a community where we had a very, very large Jewish community.

I'm grateful to have spent time at Seder and in shul and at bar and bat mitzvahs, which are very fun. And I learned just how many incredible contributions the Jewish community has made to this country, how beautiful a faith the Jewish faith is, and those things are independent from the interests of a foreign government and a super PAC that exists to back that foreign government.

Those are independent things. And I'll just use my own example. My family immigrated from Egypt. Egypt is the second-biggest recipient of foreign military aid. Mm-hmm. I don't think Egypt should get any foreign military aid either, or Jordan, or Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar.

Like, we could keep going. And that's because on principle, I want my money spent here in Michigan, right? When Michiganders pay their taxes, they deserve to know that their taxes are gonna be spent on them. And because I believe in international law, and I believe in basic human rights, and the Egyptian military violates all of that.

And so why are we funding them? So look, if that makes me anti-Egyptian, go ahead and say it, but, like, that's a little bit odd. And so I just think that for us, we have to identify what our principles are, that we love all people equally, and that we want to spend our tax dollars invested in our people.

Those are not hard things to say, not hard things to do. It might piss off some people who really wanna make sure that the interests of a foreign government are met, but I would ask how that's consistent with being focused on the interests of our own.

[00:26:51] David Sirota: Let's talk about the, these allegations of antisemitism, 'cause I know this has come up in, in the race.

What do you say to those who suggest that antisemitism is laundered through anti-Zionism? And where do you think about how... Do those things ever meld? I mean, I'm only bringing this up because this has been hurled at you in this campaign, and I just am curious how you think about, you know, where does anti-Zionism end and antisemitism start?

Are they completely separate? Like, how do you think through that?

[00:27:26] Abdul El-Sayed: I can speak for myself. I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people. I love and revere Palestinians and their tradition and culture and history. I love and revere the kids that I was supposed to serve, or I've been serving in Detroit and Wayne County, and the 10 million people I hope to serve here in Michigan.

And because of my love for all three of these groups, I cannot allow our tax dollars to be misappropriated away from these kids, whose parents paid those tax dollars, to go- bomb and destroy the lives of Palestinian people. I'm just not gonna be okay with that. Now, I can't speak for the intentionality of other people.

I, you know, I, I know that antisemitism exists, and it's a very dangerous force, but I also know that trying to meld the interests of Judaism and the Jewish people with the interests of a super PAC and a foreign government itself risks exacerbating antisemitism. Because just like I don't want to be held accountable for what the Egyptian government does because I share ethnicity with the people who live in Egypt, I don't think Jewish people in Michigan or America want to be held accountable for what the Israeli government does because they share ethnicity or faith with the people who live in Israel.

And so we have to be able to create a very clear line between those two. Now, I know what it's like to be discriminated against for how I pray and my ethnicity, and as such, I will always stand forthrightly against antisemitism in every form and every shape here in America, and I've called it out. And I find it deeply frustrating when people use antisemitic terms to attack the Jewish people because of what Israel and its government are doing, and I think that is wrong.

I think nobody should engage in it, and I want to work with like-minded folks to stamp that out. But we got to be able to differentiate these two things, and that goes in every direction. Whether you support the Israeli government or you don't, these are different things, and we should not try to use one to cover the other.

[00:29:30] David Sirota: So you, you've been talking a lot on your campaign about getting big money out of politics. I've been reporting on money in politics for a very long time, and I know one of the things that people talk a lot about is overturning Citizens United. Seems to me that overturning Citizens United ends the whole idea that super PACs can spend in an unlimited way, et cetera, et cetera.

But you need money to run for office, to communicate with voters. My question is about how do you get big money out of politics, but also create a way for people like you, for instance, to have enough resources to run for office?

[00:30:05] Abdul El-Sayed: Well, look, our, our political system's a gigantic arms race. I would much rather participate in a political system where there was way less money that's spent.

Way less. That'd be great. If we could just have five debates and that was it, and there was no 30-second or 60-second or 15-second glossy ads, that'd be amazing. Or even better, right? Just go and meet all the people in your state and see who wins that way. But because of that arms race, we're in a situation where, yeah, like, if you're up against an AIPAC with $17 million, you've got to figure out how to raise $17 million.

Right. And that arms race is way harder for folks who don't take money from corporations, don't bend over backwards for a super PAC interested in backstopping a foreign government. So I just think it's important for us to recognize that you actually don't need that much money to run a campaign. But you do need that much money to run a campaign when everyone else is taking that much money to run a campaign.

I think there are a lot of solves here. A, obviously, I think the Constitution is being misinterpreted by a Supreme Court that says that corporations are people and their money is speech. It's bullshit, 'cause it then means that some people have more speech than other people. Right. Which is not the nature of speech.

But in the absence of doing that, there are things that we could do, like publicly fund campaigns, where if there's a super PAC that spends on a campaign, then it triggers public funding equal and opposite to that expenditure.

[00:31:20] David Sirota: Can you please introduce that?

[00:31:22] Abdul El-Sayed: I would love to. In the

[00:31:22] David Sirota: Senate,

[00:31:23] Abdul El-Sayed: if you are elected.

I look forward to it. Yes.

[00:31:24] David Sirota: Okay.

[00:31:24] Abdul El-Sayed: I mean, I'm thinking belts and suspenders here. Yeah. Right? Or just massive limits on how, on spending across the board, right? Once you've spent X amount in a race, that's it. Yeah. That's all you can spend.

[00:31:33] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:31:33] Abdul El-Sayed: But I think there are ways to get around that sort of question of like, all right, well, you know, it's a constitutional interpretation on the part of the Supreme Court.

What are we gonna do now? I'm like, well, let's pass a comprehensive law that has multiple parts to it that does a belt, which is we're gonna, uh, we're going to pass a law that specifically bans corporations from contributing, and then pass other pieces of the law that address the same problem should this one get knocked out.

[00:32:01] David Sirota: We're gonna take one more quick break. Before we continue, I just wanna tell you about The Lever's new weekly newsletter, Midterm Madness. Every week, our newsroom brings you the elections worth watching, the money trails worth following, the numbers that cut through the spin, and the campaign moments that reveal more than the official talking points ever will.

You can check out Midterm Madness at levernews.com/midtermmadness.

[00:32:25] Abdul El-Sayed: We'll be right back

Welcome back to Lever Time.

[00:32:31] David Sirota: What's a policy position or an idea that you support or that you support in your heart that you're not sure a lot of people in Michigan might agree with you on? Is there one of those Like, is there something that you're like, "I believe in this, and I know it's controversial, and I'm not sure it's, like, a super majoritarian position in this state"?

[00:32:53] Abdul El-Sayed: I know more people in Michigan agree with me on this than in other places, but it's certainly not the majority position. I think we need smart, targeted tariffs. I watched as our economy got hollowed out with free trade, and, you know, economists will tell you all day, ah, free trade is critical for economic efficiency.

But the problem with their definition of economic efficiency is they don't actually pay attention to the distribution of the economy. So you're right, you end up making more money under free trade, but that money gets made by a small few, and the losses get sustained by the many. So I do think we need targeted tariffs.

Now, the way I think about this is if NAFTA is cancer, then tariffs are chemotherapy. If you do it like Donald Trump, which is entirely about trying to curry leverage over corporations and trading partners, you give all the chemo all at once, you kill your patient.

[00:33:47] David Sirota: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:48] Abdul El-Sayed: But if you're targeted, you're transparent, you invest in a few targeted industries that have the potential to build manufacturing jobs, and then you tariff according to certain goals, and then you start to pull those tariffs down as those industries can stand on their own two feet, I think you can incubate really healthy industries that create a lot of jobs and protect manufacturing in our country, and I think we need to do that.

[00:34:14] David Sirota: I guess what I'm wondering is, do you think that the Democrats' free trade position of the past, and there's still a faction here in, in today, is part of why the Democrats have had trouble in a place like Michigan?

[00:34:25] Abdul El-Sayed: Yes. I mean, my main opponent, who says that, you know, she's a, she is a real worker or fighter for, for auto workers, voted for USMCA.

[00:34:36] David Sirota: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:36] Abdul El-Sayed: It was watered-down NAFTA, and, you know, why? Well, because the corporations want it, so that's why. If you're bought off by corporations, you are going to do what the corporations tell you to do, right? There's a reason I earned the UAW endorsement in this race. It's because I've been very clear about the limitations on corporations, not just when it comes to free trade and the fact that it has been an anathema, and we need to, uh, really think about what a targeted tariff regime can look like, but also things like stock buybacks.

Like, why can a corporation spend its money to buy stock to artificially inflate its stock price to the detriment of their long-term viability and their workers? Like, that shit should be illegal.

[00:35:14] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:35:14] Abdul El-Sayed: Similarly, I want workers on corporate boards. Similarly, like, if you're a CEO and you're getting paid in stock, I think your stock should be locked up for 10 years because now you're thinking about, "All right, what can I do to make sure that, that this company is viable in 10 years rather than next quarter?"

So my dad, you know, worked not too far away from here at the tech center. And in 1996, he watched a whole bunch of the engineers get laid off while GM was hiring a whole bunch of, of business side staff. I remember him coming home and being like, "A car company that does not invest in engineers and invests in business is not gonna be a car company for very long."

Fast-forward 12 years, 2008, they're taking a bailout from the federal government. So these are all incentives that we've created, a function of public policy. We can fix them, and they would mean a lot for working people, and that's what we should do.

[00:36:00] David Sirota: There's been an argument that Democrats should stop talking about climate change.

That's been thrown out there of late. There was a big New York Times op-ed about it. I, that's sort of a, a question about it here in Michigan. Is it a difficult topic to discuss in Michigan because of the auto industry? Senator Slotkin was the only Democrat to vote with the Republicans to essentially force California to get rid of its EV mandate law, and it was about the auto industry, and climate change is wrapped up in that.

What do you make of climate change? Should people like you be talking about it on the campaign trail? Is there a receptive audience to it?

[00:36:33] Abdul El-Sayed: Let's be clear, like the climate crisis is an imminent crisis, full stop. We can't stop talking about imminent crises. I will say that it is not, no longer the most imminent crisis.

I think the most imminent crisis is that we have AI barreling down with zero regulations. That, to me, is the most imminent risk I think the climate crisis remains a very imminent risk

[00:36:52] David Sirota: And those are related, but the energy we use.

[00:36:53] Abdul El-Sayed: I agree with you.

[00:36:54] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:36:54] Abdul El-Sayed: But the way we talk about it has always been self-satisfied, right?

I mean, for a long time, the image of the climate crisis was a polar bear. I'm like, you know what the real image of a climate crisis is? Don't go too far away from here. You don't have to go very far. You can go to Salina School, and you can watch these children playing on the playground of Salina School.

In the backdrop is a gigantic smokestack. That's the image. Or it's the fact that, you know, we sit on 21% of the world's fresh water, and we put that at risk every single day because we don't have any regulation on that. Or it's the fact that people have to pay way too much for their energy up north. You go to the UP, and they're paying more than anybody else in the country except for in Hawaii.

Now, we have often focused the solutions to the climate crisis as being this arbitrary or esoteric debate about 1.5 degrees C- Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius or the melting of the polar ice caps or all these other things. That doesn't mean anything to anybody. To me, we need to be able to talk about this crisis in terms that people understand.

Your energy is too expensive because we've allowed, in effect, a cartel of huge oil and gas corporations to keep you from having renewable energy. The jobs that we could create are not online because they are pulling us ass backwards. So I take seriously people who tell me, "What about my energy prices and what about my job?"

I'd be like, "You're right. We could make huge numbers of incredible manufacturing jobs if we were the leader in renewable energy manufacturing. You're right. We could vastly bring down the price of your, of your energy if we were to invest in renewable energy." And those are the two things that we need to get right.

But for too long, we've kind of had a really stupid approach to having this conversation, which is talking in esoteric terms and then talking about what you wanted to take away rather than what you wanted to invest in. The real answer to addressing climate change is bringing on huge amounts of renewable energy that drop the price of electricity for everyday people and create a massive number of jobs.

That's what I wanna do. And if we did that, then we can have a conversation about transitioning, but until we do that, there is no conversation about transitioning. So let's focus on the things we can give people, which are jobs and cheap energy, while thinking about what the long-term consequences are. And so when it comes to jobs and prices, right?

We gotta be on the right side of this, and for some reason, we took a winning argument and turned it into a losing one.

[00:39:13] David Sirota: We're talking a couple days after the elections in New York. There was the elections in Philadelphia where these insurgent candidates won, and, and James Carville this week said that people running insurgent candidacies, this is his quote, "hate Democrats."

You had former DNC chair, uh, Jaime Harrison said that, his, this was his quote, "If you hate the Democratic Party, please don't run for our nomination. Don't use our resources. Don't rely on our volunteers. Don't use our infrastructure. Don't ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign."

Now, those comments were not directed at you, but they're directed at kind of anti-establishment candidates who are running without the blessing of their party. I wanna know your response to that, and th- also a related question. Do you think if you are successful in this primary and this general, it changes the entire vision or the entire possibility of How to win in a swing state in a way that disrupts the formula of the people who are apparently so angry at insurgent candidacies?

[00:40:13] Abdul El-Sayed: Correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding of, of democracy is that it centers people rather than party elites. And I think the mistake that our party too often makes is that we center party elites and not people. I've been traveling up and down my state, having conversations with folks, and they're telling me what they need and want.

And what they need and want is a government that's not bought off by big corporations. What they need and want is union representation at work. What they need and want is to be able to afford their groceries and their housing and their healthcare. What they need and want is for government to stop being tyrannical and to spend its money rather than fighting wars or, you know, paying thugs to be on your, on your street $250 billion.

They need it to actually answer their problems for them. If the Democratic Party wants to be viable and wants to win, then we would do well to listen to those people, and all I'm doing is listening to those people and trying to deliver on what it is that they need and want. So the Democratic Party is not a bunch of elites in DC.

The Democratic Party are the voters who want to make the Democratic Party what they want to make it. Now, if the voters in Michigan choose to nominate, and then the people of the state of Michigan choose to elect me as their senator, I think we are proving out a very different hypothesis that, I'll be honest with you, a lot of the party elites don't want proven out.

They don't even want it tested. Their fear about me is not that I'll lose. Poll after poll is showing that I'm the most viable candidate in the general election. It's the fear that I will win, and what that means for the kind of changes that we have to bring forward in our party. But again, democracy is not about the people in power.

[00:41:42] David Sirota: Why do you think they fear it?

[00:41:43] Abdul El-Sayed: Because I'm running in direct opposition to a system of politics that tells us that it's okay to take corporate lobbyist checks, to do corporate lobbyist bidding, to make the problems that people are complaining about worse, while telling them that we're going to try and make it better.

And I don't play games, and to be honest, I'm just not afraid. I'm not afraid of losing, but I desperately want Michiganders to win, and I think that's what they're afraid of. This game that we play not to lose, where we whittle our message down to the least common denominator that's acceptable to a corporate PAC and acceptable to the voters, and then wonder why the voters don't come out.

That bullshit has to be over.

[00:42:19] David Sirota: Yeah, but if they, I, I would, I would just ask, if they're Democratic elites, if they're Democratic power brokers, Democratic party bosses, presumably they want the Democratic Party to win, and yet you're saying that they fear a candidacy like yours. What I'm getting at, is there a corruption underneath there?

[00:42:35] Abdul El-Sayed: There's a cynicism about what being a Democratic Party elite is. It's that you want to keep being invited to the cocktail parties. You keep wanting to be an important person. You know, and in some respects, like, we're all being held hostage to a group of people who are self-important because of their positioning in a party.

And, you know, I just don't, I don't care to be invited to cocktail parties. Like, DC, don't invite me to the cocktail parties. I'm not coming anyway. I care that people in Michigan have healthcare. I care that people in Michigan have unions. I care that people in Michigan can live a dignified life, and that they look at their kids and say, "Your life is gonna be better than mine."

That's what I care about. So I think I'm gonna upset the apple cart on the cynical game that is too often played at the top of our party, and that's not because I hate Democrats. That's because I love the people that Democrats are intended to serve. This party is a vessel. The question is, who do we serve?

The party doesn't need to exist on its own terms. If it exists, it should be serving people. That's what it exists to do. So, you know, I, I would imagine that, like, I'm a threat to your continued proximity to power, and if you don't like that, come and try and beat us. They already are, right? The tens of millions that they're spending, come and try and beat us.

But it turns out that you actually have to win elections. And, you know, your tens of millions lying to people about different people's records, like, okay, you know. If you, you still, you still think that that can work, good luck to you. Abdul, good luck, man. Appreciate you, man.

[00:43:56] David Sirota: Thanks for listening to another episode of Lever Time.

Lever Time is a production of The Lever. This episode was produced by Lyna Bentehar and Natalie Bettendorf. It was mixed by Stephen Becker. Our theme music is by Nick Byron Campbell. Marketing support from The Podglomerate. Our director of podcast production is Ron Doyle. You can subscribe to Lever Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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And that makes the term useful and clarifying, but only if we ask the key question: What socialism in America do today’s critics want dismantled?  

After our recent Lever Time episode dissecting the New York primary results with law professor Zephyr Teachout and Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. MAGA Republicans and Democratic Party bosses have been trying to gin up a new red scare since the elections of socialist-coded candidates in Philadelphia and New York City, and since support for socialism is rising in polls. President Trump is depicting the election trend as the creeping rise of communism, and everyone, from James Carville to corporate Democrats in Congress, is promising their own war on socialists within their party’s ranks, insisting Democrats “are capitalist, not socialist.”

Notably, though, none of these voices are explaining exactly what “socialism” they are mad about. They all seem genuinely shook by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America, but these critics are offering very few specific criticisms of the socialist ideology they rhetorically deride. Which is weird considering that there are plenty of socialist programs and services in America for them to explicitly target and be specific about. 

There is Medicare and Medicaid — government-funded, government-run health care programs that most Americans support, and that involve far lower administrative costs and bureaucratic burdens than private health insurance.

There is Social Security — the government-funded social insurance program for retirement that most Americans want expanded.

There are roads, water systems, parks, public transit systems, fire departments, concert venues, community centers, and public pools.

There are publicly owned utilities and water systems that provide lower-cost electricity and lower-cost water to communities across the country.

There are the National Institutes of Health and all of the other government-funded medical research programs that subsidize the development of almost every major medicine on the market today.

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These are just some of the examples of the American socialism we’re all living amidst. And so, in light of all this socialism, it seems fair to ask socialism’s Republican and Democratic critics to start getting specific. When they are invited on fancy television programs or do their angry rants into their webcams, I want to know: What are they actually demanding here? What of all this socialism do they want repealed?

Do they want America to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?

Do they want the government to stop funding the interstate highway system and road maintenance — and to sell off municipal-owned utilities?

Do they want New York City to sell off Central Park, the subway system, and the pool that Mamdani plunged into?

Do they want Denver to sell off Red Rocks, and the federal government to privatize Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon?

Do they want cities to hand over energy systems to shareholder-owned conglomerates so that those companies can jack up everyone’s electricity rates?

Do they support Trump’s massive cuts to the NIH and government-funded medical research?

I’m not throwing out the kind of questions I myself refuse to answer. On the contrary, I’m more than happy to offer specifics about the kind of socialism I’d like to see expanded and created. For example: I’d like to see Medicare’s socialism expanded to a Medicare for All system. I’d like to see America reinstate rules that ensure government-funded, socialized medical research investments result in lower medicine prices for Americans. And I’d like to see a public/postal banking system that cuts out government-subsidized financial middlemen ripping everyone off on basic banking services. 

Socialism’s critics, by contrast, offer none of these kinds of policy details in their crusades — and that has to end.

If you are a politician or media influencer getting clicks and cable TV bookings from selling yourself as a proud critic of “socialism,” it’s time for you to start answering these questions. 

It’s time for you to get really specific about what of any of this socialism you oppose — and please, spare us the whole “that’s not really socialism” misdirect. The aforementioned examples are the major forms of socialism in America — they are quite literally socialized programs and services funded and/or owned by the government. And according to polls, Americans love this socialism, and they don’t want these programs privatized or eliminated. In many cases, they want this socialism expanded. 

So socialism critics: give us an answer. Which of these quintessentially socialist programs do you want repealed? What are you actually railing against? Or are you too scared to answer because you know all of this actual, real-world socialism is wildly popular?

If you can’t come up with an answer — or are too embarrassed to provide one — then that’s a revealing answer unto itself. It’s an answer about what your real agenda is.