Wednesday, June 24, 2026
New ARG Poll Has Trump Job Approval Down To Only 30%
The charts above are from the American Research Group Poll -- done between June 16th and 20th of a nationwide sample of 1,100 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.
Senators Warren And Moreno Have A Plan To Save Social Security
The following is by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) in The New York Times:
One of us is a Republican from Ohio who built a business that generated hundreds of jobs. The other is a Democrat from Massachusetts who built a career protecting consumers from financial tricks and traps.
We don’t agree on everything, but here’s one thing we do agree on: Congress must act now to save Social Security for generations of Americans to come.
Social Security is a core component of our nation’s promise — a covenant between the federal government and Americans who pay into it throughout their working years so they can retire with dignity.
That promise is at risk of unraveling. For years, seniors in Ohio and Massachusetts have told us how concerned they are about the future of Social Security. A new report from the trustees who oversee the Social Security Trust Funds shows they are right to worry: Unless Congress acts, the fund from which most Social Security beneficiaries are paid will be significantly depleted by late 2032. After that, Social Security benefits could be cut by more than 20 percent.
That’s just six years away. Instead of cutting benefits for the retirees who count on Social Security, we need to take bipartisan action to protect those benefits, reward work and restore fairness.
That starts with a common-sense solution: lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap.
For 2026, the payroll tax cap, or taxable maximum, is $184,500. Workers and their employers each pay 6.2 percent on wages up to that amount (self-employed individuals pay 12.4 percent). Today, the maximum Social Security withholding for one worker is $22,878, or 12.4 percent of $184,500. Not a penny more, even if an individual’s salary far exceeds $184,500. Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs.
Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck than a wealthy corporate lawyer? This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.
According to one estimate, eliminating the payroll tax cap would inject around $3 trillion into the program over the next 10 years. Lifting the cap so that all income is treated the same would generate substantial revenue that would extend the solvency of Social Security for another generation.
Our plan would also help to safeguard Social Security’s earned-benefit structure, in which workers make contributions to the program from their paychecks. This structure has delivered a basic level of retirement certainty for generations. One 2025 poll found that 65 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Republicans support lifting the cap, “including a significant majority of respondents with annual household income over $200,000.”
This is a no-brainer: The wealthiest Americans, who have benefited the most from America’s opportunities, should contribute the same percentage of their income as a factory worker in Chillicothe, Ohio, or a teacher in Worcester, Mass.
Most Americans work into their 60s or 70s. Throughout their working lives, they pay into Social Security with the understanding that it will help them support themselves in retirement. With rising prices and artificial intelligence causing economic uncertainty for the future, Social Security must remain a stable foundation to help retirees afford life’s basic necessities.
Social Security was created by overwhelming bipartisan congressional majorities. Today, members of Congress from both parties must come together again to save it. That’s why the two of us are working together on legislation to remove the cap on Social Security taxes and extend the solvency of our retirement system. Americans deserve nothing less. Preserving the American dream for our children and grandchildren depends on it.
We Are In A Class War And American Workers Are Losing
The following post is by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:
The last time Americans faced such overwhelming evidence that the monied interests were screwing them over was the Great Crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression, resulting in the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, starting in 1933.
The one silver lining of the current Trump-Musk-Bezos-Ellison-Murdoch-Koch horror show is that most Americans now know beyond any reasonable doubt that they’re on the losing side of a class war, and are justifiably pissed,
America’s first trillionaire is a vicious white supremacist who’s stirring up hate around the world and backing Republican candidates with big bucks. American billionaires, meanwhile, are openly sucking up to America’s first dictator, spending lavishly on whatever he wants, and gobbling up media outlets so most Americans won’t know what’s going on.
Where has this gotten us? Workers’ share of the nation’s income has now dropped to the lowest it’s been since records began in 1947, while profits’ share is the highest since 1950 (showing up in a rip-roaring stock market).
This is morally wrong. “Income from capital risks replacing income from labor,” Pope Leo wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, his recent encyclical letter.
It’s also undermining our democracy. “America has a choice,” the jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said. “We can have great wealth in a few hands or we can have a democracy, but we cannot have both.”
It’s time for Democrats to take on the class war that’s being waged by the nation’s oligarchy against most Americans by becoming class warriors themselves.
By class warrior I don’t mean resorting to violence or name-calling. I mean recognizing that a billionaire class is bad for America and calling for bold changes to reverse it: taxing great wealth, busting up monopolies, strengthening labor unions, raising the minimum wage, demanding profit-sharing and capital-sharing, ensuring Medicare for all and a universal basic income, and getting big money out of politics.
FDR wasn’t afraid to be a class warrior: “Never before in all our history have [the monied interests] been so unified against one candidate as they stand today,” he thundered in 1936. “They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
But these days, most Democratic politicians are reluctant to take on the oligarchs. Other than Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Zohran Mamdani, who else is loudly doing it?
Instead of being class warriors, many Democratic politicians are class worriers. They openly worry that inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity are out of control — but they won’t fight for what must be done. I’m talking about Third-way “moderate” Democrats who focus on “suburban swing” voters. and Washington-based consultants who urge Democratic candidates to move to the “center.”
Some Democrats are simply class wimps, so afraid of offending the monied interests that fund their campaigns they won’t even support modest reforms.
Even here in California, the putative home of progressive politics in America, too many Democratic politicians are wimping out. California Governor Gavin Newsom publicly opposes the wealth tax initiative now on California’s November ballot, for fear billionaires will leave the state (they won’t). San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie led the opposition to a city ballot measure to expand the city’s higher corporate tax rate on companies whose CEOs make at least 100 times more than their median employees. The measure was narrowly defeated.
This has to change. Unless Democrats stand up to the oligarchs now running this nation, there won’t be any alternative to Trump Republicanism in the future, or any reason for a Democratic Party.
This should be the Democrats’ hour. With inequality at levels never before seen, with a racist trillionaire and scores of billionaires poisoning our politics, with corporate profits at record heights while most American workers struggle harder than ever just to stay afloat, with a Republican majority in Congress slashing Medicaid and food stamps to finance a tax cut for the super-rich, with the looming threat of AI destroying jobs, and with one of the most brazenly corrupt politicians in American history now occupying the Oval Office — with all of this, Democrats should be at least as loud as they were under FDR.
The Democratic Party must seek to return to the American people the wealth and power that the obscenely rich have taken from them. This should be the core Democratic message. It explains the affordability crisis. It reveals the epidemic of corruption. It clarifies corporate welfare and crony capitalism. It shows what must be done.
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
The Public Agrees With Democrats On These Issues
The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 13th and 15th of a nationwide sample of 1,549 adults (including 1,403 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.4 points for registered voters.
Most Don't Like How Trump Handled The Iran War And Want It Stopped
The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done between June 17th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 2,519 adults, with a 2,4 point margin of error.
Most Americans Don't Like Trump As A Person
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 13th and 15th of a nationwide sample of 1,549 adults (including 1,403 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.4 points for registered voters.
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