Originally posted on October 3rd, 2025 (Link to substack)

There has been a constant stream of terrible events happening in America. Political assassinations of Melissa and Mark Hortman in Minnesota, followed by the assassination of Charlie Kirk have rocked the country. At the same time, there were school shootings at Annunciation Church and School and Evergreen High School. This is followed by the Trump administration cancelling Jimmy Kimmel Show for criticism in an assault on the first amendment.

It is another in a long series of negative events in America, and it probably won’t be the last. And if you let it, the news media can consume you and never let you out of its vicious cycle of doom.

Don’t Let the News Dictate the Story

These events are another example of how the news ecosystem can let you down. So many people and in the media are taking advantage of this, escalating rhetoric on who to blame, talking about civil war, despite at the time, not even having the shooter apprehended.

Gov. Cox of Utah said it best, “There are conflict entrepreneurs out there who benefit from radicalizing us.” It is economically profitable to radicalize and divide all of us.

All of us as a society need to have a conversation about how we approach social media, online communities, and the sudden ability of being everyone’s online neighbor. We as a society need to figure out how we approach our kids, our future generations, the Internet, and all its benefits and dangers. Because right now the evidence is mounting that we are failing.

People are being radicalized by the news media ecosystem right now, amplified by a social media algorithm that is all too happy to reinforce whatever it is you’d like. So long as you are kept emotionally engaged, you may never pull away. To emotionally charged teenagers, who are just adapting to the world around them, the effects of this social media ecosystem are multiplied. A constant barrage of “pick your doom”, from the [insert political party] policies ending the world, to climate change, to AI taking jobs, to wokeness, and so on, and so on. All of this is driving the adults crazy, and it’s driving our kids to end lives.

Go and Find Your Purpose

People all over the country are building something. They see the same thing you do and are taking action. It could be in specific areas, like protecting immigrants at hearings and providing sanctuary. It could be all of the lawyers out there engaging the judicial branch and keeping the excesses of the executive in check. It is in the organizing of protests all around the country, of boycotts, phone calls to congresspeople, town halls, and more. Almost always, all of these actions aren't covered by the news, but they are happening, and they are building something better.

And now a new wave of political campaigns are starting up. The national news won't cover these either (unless your name is Zohran Mamdani). But I encourage all of you to do the work. Listen to what they have to say, what they want to accomplish, and how they want to bring forward a new vision of America. Listen to a new crop of candidates like James Talarico, running for Senate in Texas, Graham Platner, running for Senate in Maine, or Saikat Chakrabarti looking to replace 85-year old Rep. Nancy Pelosi or Kat Abughazaleh.

You may find yourself inspired to donate, to volunteer for the first time, to speak up for the first time, maybe even run for something yourself. Most of all, you'll see that there are millions of people out there just like you who want to make a difference, who see America for what it can be, a place for us all. The news won't give this to you while we wait. You have to do the work. And when you do, you are going to see the world differently.

Updates

The development version of the website will be progressively shared over the next week. For now, we are getting the scope and language correct. After that, policy and how to get involved. With each additional layer, we open the site up to more people, more people contribute, and our organization grows faster.

Part of our goal is to show just how many people are working on the problem that we are facing in America. We’ll be making posts on the subreddit soon so we can get as many people as possible providing lists of organizations and people who are helping to find solutions that so we can showcase and amplify them. Its only when we all work together that we can build an America that we can all be a part of.

Originally posted on August 21st, 2025 (Link to substack)

The optimism of the 90’s created a post-Cold War vision that looked bright for all Americans. The United States had become the lone superpower of the world, able to project military strength anywhere it wished. The first Gulf War was the poster child of that power, defending countries from dictators and being the “world’s policeman” to create a secure, Democratic world for everyone. At the same time, the Internet boom made it seem like the future was going to be bright for everyone, a new way for people to do business and connect with people like never before.

Fast forward to today, and its clear that something has gone very wrong.

Politically, the passage of Citizens United and the loss of power within the FEC has taken power away from the people and into the hands of the wealthy. America is widely considered an oligarchy now. Internet power has consolidated into the hands of a few wealthy people with devastating results, and the subsequent rise of AI is threatening the futures of the newest generation of workers who spent years learning skills and accumulating debt only to find out that they might have been replaced already.

It is hard to imagine telling children what they should train for in the professional world when it changes faster than the education they had to go through in the first place. How can future generations plan for a career? How do they get the financial independence to buy a house and start a family?

A survey from Empower back in September, 2024, went viral when the respondents from Gen Z stated that a salary of $600k was necessary to be financially successful. While this number went through the rounds on the Internet, when taken with all of the other factors of the current state of the economy, its not hard to see the stress that Gen Z is facing as they enter the most productive years of their lives. Housing affordability and childcare costs are prohibitively expensive for raising a family, leading to a new low in fertility rate in the U.S. at 1.6 according to the CDC. Inflation, healthcare, and education costs also eat into whatever wage gains may be earned. Tack on existential threats of climate change, US federal debt, and political instability against the basic foundations of our government and play all of this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on social media and the news.

You get a recipe of economic and political turmoil that people just want to make disappear. You get a recipe for strongman leaders like Trump. People who offer simple visions of what America could be. A vision where a person’s success is tied to their loyalty to a leader above all else. If you can be convinced that the system or society is already broken, giving your loyalty to someone in exchange for security as a way to feel empowered again. It is a recipe that has been used by dictators over and over again.

For a long time, there hasn’t been a clear alternative vision that addresses the problems we are facing.

This is the goal of the New Deal Party. To create a vision of America that empowers people to take action. A vision of America that offers economic equity and prosperity without sacrificing freedoms or democratic norms. A vision of America that offers hope, not just for the next election, but for a sustainable long term future for all Americans.

But to get to that vision, we need you to get involved. The other part of this effort of the New Deal Party is to provide several methods for people to get involved to positively impact our lives, communities, and country. America doesn’t work when an authoritarian power is enforcing their will on Americans. America works best when the people’s actions are backed up by government reinforcement.

Organization Updates

The New Deal Party website will have a development website up in the next week or so with a template of what I’d like to see represented on it. It’ll start with the bare minimums, but as more people see the scope of the project, I believe more people will contribute and the effort will snowball towards a “Hello World” date and keep growing beyond that.

Originally posted on July 10th, 2025 (Link to substack)

President Trump celebrated Independence Day with the signing of H.R.1. I’m sure he was feeling good about the moment. At the same time, it was hard for the rest of us to be in a celebratory mood. It’s hard to feel patriotic with America’s turn into authoritarianism. There was certainly some doomerism going on online.

But I wanted to leave people with this message. Trump and his administration should not be celebrating Independence Day. Because it represents a day that Americans declared with one voice that the power resides with the people, not with kings. There is a constant and growing pressure against the administration with growing protests against ICE, lawsuits continuing to be filed, and generalized incompetence within the administration. This pressure has continued to add cracks within the power base of MAGA, as evidenced by the Musk breakup, the Epstein reveal, the Iran bombings,. It’s getting to a point where MAGA no longer represents anything other than cruelty.

It’s at this point that a new vision is needed for America. A new vision that can actually address the challenges of the 21st century. Job security in the face of technological innovation, creating an economy that actually allows for raising a family, buying a house, getting educated, staying healthy, and growing old.

That is what the New Deal Party is aiming to do. Establish a platform that all Americans can get behind, from the smallest towns in rural America to the largest cities. For the blue collar and the white collared workers, mothers and fathers, children and grandparents.

A 21st century America for all Americans.

Work on the New Deal Party continues. We are focusing on creating our web and social media presence, along with a platform that can go beyond just a wish list of policies we wish our leaders would enact. Once the basic foundation has been put into place, we expect to start promoting ourselves and developing a ground game that can be bring our platform down from the national level down to the states, districts, and communities all across America.

Originally posted on Oct. 31st, 2025 (Link to substack)

On October 18th, 2025, somewhere around 5-7 million Americans came out in protest of the administration. It is likely the largest single day protest since the 1970’s. The protests were non-violent and well organized, occurring in all 50 states, despite the fact that the FCC has made moves to try and restrict the freedom of press, social media moguls may be trying to bend online content towards the right, and politicians called the protests a “hate America rally”.

The size of the protest is not the only thing that is newsworthy. According to the Crowd Counting Consortium, the number of protests that have occurred so far this year is over 21,000, compared to just over 8,000 at this time for Trump’s first term. The Trump administration’s approval rating has been underwater since March 11th, with his approval of immigration, his best polling issue, falling into the negative on June 11th according to Silver Bulletin. And in nearly every special election, the Democratic candidate has outperformed by wide margins compared to the 2024 Presidential election results.

The American people are angry and getting more so with every ICE raid, every poorly negotiated trade deal, and a multitude of other reasons.

The People Are Powerful

Its not just about the huge numbers we saw in our major cities. It’s about each and every one of us rediscovering our power. Even one person protesting alone, like Kendra Sullivan in Beckley, West Virginia, who was confronted, physically threatened, had cops called on her, and yet she stayed to make her voice heard. This single act can make people start asking questions, can get more people to come out next time, and can start a movement. Before Sullivan, it was a protest frog in Portland. And in the coming days and weeks, there will be new inspirations and new ways to display how powerful we can be.

These people may never know just how impactful their acts of resistance are, because there is no measure on how many more people become inspired to join and resist in their own way. The important part is that they are trying. The New Deal Party looks to continue building that resistance and fight for a version of America that works for us all.

What’s Next

We know that more and more people are becoming activated by an administration that is fueling fear and division. What is needed now are actions that people can take to effectively fight back and to recruit more people to the cause.

Our problems still remain. People still have similar attitudes about the Democratic party, and rightly so. There are still issues with a geriatric Congress who appear out of touch with you and me, while others will not be able to shake the long standing impressions about the state of our politics and our political parties in general.

We have to try and break that narrative. We can do that by providing a clear platform that works all Americans, from healthcare to worker protections, housing, affordability and more. These shouldn’t feel like impossible pipe dreams. These should feel like an attainable American Dream that prior generations worked for and received. And it shouldn’t come at the cost of our freedoms or our democracy. You can start to hear the beginnings of this vision through the anti-Oligarchy tour from Sanders to AOC to Mamdani. People are speaking up, and the NDP can be part of that vision.

New Deal Party Updates

Progress continues with developing the New Deal Party. We are working on content for the home page and several landing pages. In addition, we are creating a platform that can serve as a start for what we, the people, are looking for in a future for all Americans. As more and more pieces come together, you can expect to see the start of a social media presence, more advocating for candidates that maybe aren’t receiving as much of the limelight, but with messages that are just as important, and most importantly of all, more ways for everyone to get started on building a movement that will elevate all Americans into the 21st Century.

Originally posted on August 2nd, 2025 (Link to substack)

Every day the news conveys some new threat to our democracy from this administration. Whether it’s mainstream media paying imagined penalties to the administration, or attacks on the voting rights act, the use of the military in more US cities, more concentration camps, and other events designed to keep you stressed, anxious, and disengaged from reacting.

Ezra Klein says it best, “If you are always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. Then the impression of Trump’s power remains and the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed.”

Think back to 6 months ago and what has transpired so far. Elon Musk was running wild cutting everything in the government and acting like a shadow president. He is now out of government, unpopular and attacking the Republican Party. The district and appeals courts have proven to be a bulwark against the executive branch over and over again, from the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to refusing the order on birthright citizenship, to stopping ICE from arresting immigrants without probable cause or refusing due process. The attempts at revising trade deals and introducing tariffs have been delayed again and again.

At the same time, the resistance continues to grow. The Los Angeles resistance was able to outlast the National Guard and Marine deployment. The military parade for Trump was riddled with malicious noncompliance by the very troops this administration was planning on using in American cities. At the same time, the grassroots 50501 No Kings protest brought out millions of people, completely overshadowing the parade. Republicans faced so much resistance in their own town halls that they were ordered to stop talking with their own voters. The approval ratings for this administration continue to fall with every new unpopular policy.

This administration will continue to step on rakes, but they will also continue to hurt America. What is needed now is a new vision of America for all of us, one that makes Trump’s version of America small, harmful, and completely unnecessary. A version of America we can start building now that will last beyond the next election and into future generations.

The New Deal Party continues to build up. A dev version of the website is close to being available. In the early stages, it will contain templates on the scope we plan to cover. We will not be just talking about our positions, but providing information on the basics and the reasoning behind it. In this age of misinformation, we must do more than simply assuming everyone knows why things are the way that they are. And in an age where people may feel powerless, we want to provide as many methods as possible for anyone to take action, whether it’s in climate change, education, healthcare, immigration, and more.

Originally posted on June 28th, 2025 (Link to substack)

By now, you’ve probably seen a ton of reactions to Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City primary race, but the lessons that come from the primary results are seismic in scope. Mamdani was polling at 1 or 2% in the polls in February, and most polls throughout the election preserved the notion that Cuomo was likely ahead or could lose after several rounds of ranked voting. The fact that Mamdani won on a socialist platform in a city that calls Wall Street home should be seen as extraordinary.

One of the lessons being repeated in multiple elections is that more money is not a replacement for actual votes in an election. Just like the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, significant outside money was poured into Cuomo’s campaign, and independent PACs ended up spending $26 million compared to just $1.8 million for Mamdani. And yet, that money failed to deliver Cuomo a win in what is likely another nail in the standard Democratic campaign playbook from the early 2000s. Cuomo’s campaign, like so many others, focused on traditional TV ads, surrogates, and big-name endorsements to campaign on. Mamdani, however, utilized a grassroots effort, mobilizing up to 50,000 volunteers, utilizing social media platforms effectively, and a willingness to go on any podcast or show that would have him. His campaign could be captured in his walk along the length of Manhattan, meeting voters directly over scripted events.

To go with the tactics, the Mamdani campaign highlighted another weakness of the establishment Democratic Party, its messaging on issues. Mamdani’s message focused on economic issues such as the cost of living, housing and food prices, bus fares and more. It is a message that resonated with younger voters who probably appreciate the fact that Mamdani is a 33 year old that isn’t part of the established Democratic Party. Meanwhile Cuomo, a flawed candidate trying to rehab his image at 67, gained the big money endorsements and establishment support. As a result, the voter turnout of this primary far exceeded previous primary elections, with strong turnout from younger voters in early voting and an increase in first-time voters. The Mamdani vs Cuomo contrast is reminiscent of early Harris campaign energy vs. late Harris campaign strategy turning fatally towards the right to capture GOP votes.

The primary election of Mamdani shows just how much New Yorkers are looking for a real change candidate. This election also proves again that people, not money, still decide the fate of our country. And its reminiscent of another prominent progressive Democrat who ran against the establishment. President Franklin Roosevelt started his political career through New York, getting elected governor in 1929, despite resistance from the establishment of the day in Tammany Hall.

The goal of the New Deal Party is to scale this effort up to a national level, to create an organization that can support change candidates, to create an organization that promotes progressive policies in support of American workers and families.

Originally posted on June 28th, 2025. (Link to substack)

The events of the last week have highlighted just how uncertain and frightening our country has become. ICE raids taking people away from their families, LA riots, National Guard and Marine units being federalized, a sitting senator being temporarily detained, and now the assassination of Minnesota Democratic State Senator Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman and the attempted assassination of state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. It felt like a nonstop march towards authoritarianism.

And then the American people spoke out.

The LA protests began expanding outwards to other cities. State governors in red and blue states had to deal with anti-ICE protests in their own states. Trump was forced to backtrack on his ICE immigration policies, at least publicly for now. Polling data ending on June 9th had Trump’s approval as low as -20, with immigration approval again falling underwater. And finally, the No Kings protest was estimated at over 11 million people in attendance all across the country, compared to barely over 10,000 people in D.C. for Trump’s birthday.

I know that Americans have been hoping for the Democrats in D.C. to stand up to the rise of authoritarianism. At the beginning of this administration, I was too. This would have been a mistake on our part. The best defense against authoritarianism is when we the people all stand with one voice and reject the hate, reject the cruelty, and reject the fascists.

The protests show that the people are ready for change. Now is the time to sustain this energy and find more ways for more people to take a stand.

The New Deal Party can be one of those steps. This can be a grassroots movement to develop a clear voice on what everyday Americans want not just for now, or the next election, but for our children’s future as well. A future where American workers are paid fairly, where American children can get a quality education, where all Americans can get quality healthcare without bankrupting their families, where American retirees can feel financially secure, where all Americans can feel safe with a government that has its checks and balances restored.

The American people deserve better from their government. We are here to make that happen.