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Tidbits-Aug. 6: Reader Comments: Mainstream Press Covers DSA, Elections; the ‘Red Scare’: Then and Now; Todd Blanche; Dr. Fauci;; New Howard Zinn Biography; Dockworkers Unions in Six Countries Announce Day of Strikes Against War and Genocide – Oct 30

https://portside.org/2026-08-06/tidbits-aug-6-reader-comments-mainstream-press-covers-dsa-elections-red-scare-then-and
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A Government Doesn't Announce That They Have Become Fascist  --  Meme

 


 

 

Re: Meet All the New Progressives and Democratic Socialists Heading to Congress

 

Why no mention of Frederick Haynes?
 

Jeremiah Wright, Jr.




 

Re: NYT’s Embarrassing Anti-DSA Meltdown
 

"It’s racist to say a Black leader like myself is secretly operating on the whims of white people,” state Sen. Jabari Brisport of DSA told FAIR. “It implies Black socialist politicians don’t have agency.”

Jason Schulman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 

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LOL. Every incumbent should be primaried every election cycle. No one is entitled to an elected office, no matter how many times they may have been elected to it.
As TJ said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” The shitlibs need to decide, we can do this the easy way, or the fun way. Their choice.

Chip Masters
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Chip Masters:  What about FDR? Four terms and he deserved every one of them.

Nora Lapin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Mainstream liberals keep demonstrating their abject devotion to the idea that political office is some kind of perk/entitlement for service to the DNC corporation and that entire idea just needs to be Old Yellered like yesterday. It is so utterly toxic to both any concept of good governance or democracy.

Adam Bates
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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It does make me hopeful how weak they are. Now we need to figure out the right strategy to win the south. A lot of institutional barriers in the south that benefit Republicans but also very low turnout elections usually.

Byron Spencer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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There is a lot to talk about here. The Times has had sympathetic articles on Mamdani too. When they are not sympathetic there is no particular reason to think they are trying to deceive anyone. They have published critical pieces on people of almost every ideological position. What they have to say about DSA seems to me pretty mild, frankly.

There are enough stats to show beyond a doubt that nearly all NYC DSA candidates would have lost if not for the votes of largely young, white, gentrifying neighborhoods. Portside presents competing facts about the racial composition of DSA candidates and about Mamdani's victory and support. So you have two narratives that pick out numbers to make different points.

I don't feel like the article addresses basic questions about leftwing politics. What should the left say when DSA or DSA-adjacent candidates oust left/liberal politicians? Should we rally around the political flair of DSA's leftist rhetoric and ignore the feeling of minority communities that their voice is being suppressed? Isn't this vanguardism without any real socialist content? Will these victories do more than shift Congress minimally to the left while marginalizing important working class allies? I don't think there is any cut and dried case for the virtues of DSA's strategy.

Anton Alterman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Anton Alterman: I don't think there is any cut and dried case for taking anything that appears in NYT seriously

Ethan Young
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Ethan Young: I think that's a dangerous attitude. What you no doubt think of as "bourgeois journalism" is as important to preserve as "bourgeois democracy" - in fact, it's a critical component of it. Portside and 25 other leftwing publications, as important as they are, cannot hope to duplicate the international eyewitness coverage, the research, the analysis, the internal government sources, or the investigative reporting that the Times does. If you think they have made up numbers you can present the evidence, but election data is available from many sources, and it says what it says.

The Portside piece seemed to be grabbing bits of information from here and there, a few self-supporting quotes from DSA, building a case out of sticks and straws. Nothing in it showed the Times' analysis is not accurate. Pointing to the racial identities of DSA candidates does not even touch their analysis. Ditto regarding Mamdani's victory: running on the DP ticket in an overwhelmingly Democratic city he got 57% of the black vote against a corrupt, aging white guy who had to resign from office and ran as an independent. Where's the argument?

A better response to the Times would be, "Let's wait and see". Mamdani is pretty popular these days, and AOC (who was also elected on the strength of a gentrified neighborhood) seems to have broadened her base. Give the new candidates time to deliver positive reforms, and see if the ethnic and economic breakdown changes. They need to show they are effective, and not make big mistakes. Then we get "sewer socialism", which has nothing to do with socialism but incrementally improves people's lives.

Anton Alterman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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DSA is responding to the revolt of the people against the race, gender and class oppression of the two-party system. The true test of this movement is can it create the organizing space we need to further galvanize the working-class masses in the struggle to end the present regime and bring about a pathway to liberation and socialism? Pundits will do what pundit do yet one day of real movement has and will continue to frustrate bourgeois media attempts to strangle-hold the peoples movement.

Frank Chapman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page




 

Conspiracist  --  Cartoon by Rob Rogers
 

 


Rob Rogers
July 31, 2026
https://robrogers.com/
 



 

Re: Socialists Are Out-Organizing the Democratic Establishment
 

It's hard to fight with a glass of chardonnay in your hand.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page




 

Dead Man ZOOMing  --  Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz

 



Lalo Alcaraz
August 4, 2026
https://www.pocho.com/
 



 

Re: Really, Rubio? Mamdani, DSA, and More Are Terrorist Agents of Cuban Intelligence?
 

He leaves me with my mouth hanging open. But then, they all do.

Laurie Tanenbaum
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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No surprise. These people are fascists through and through.

Nora




 

Re: The ‘Red Scare’: Then and Now
 

Sharing this important article about the ways that government and private actors worked together to create the Red Scare of the 1950s and what lessons that history can offer to current resistance movements. As the article explains, "The persecution of communists and American radicals in the postwar era was not solely – and often not even primarily – a government operation. It was a collective endeavor that utilized the legal and informational framework provided by the federal government but was largely carried forward and enforced by private actors.... The most famous example is the film industry, where a leading role was played by the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA)"

Rosenberg Fund for Children
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 



 

Our Economy  - Meme
 

 




 

What Could Go Wrong?  --  Cartoon by Garth German
 

 


Garth German
August 3, 2026
Garth Toons
 



 

The Art of the Steal  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Nick Anderson

 


 

There comes a time in every constitutional crisis when the supposed party of law and order must stand up and show some spine. That time has not yet come, and I wouldn’t hold my breath.

This past weekend Republican Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis did manage to extract one concession for dropping their opposition to Todd Blanche’s confirmation to attorney general: Blanche formally rescinded a $1.8 billion slush fund meant to compensate President Trump’s political allies, likely including those fine patriots who redecorated the Capitol with bear spray and broken glass on January 6th.

What courage. What principle. What a magnificent display of senatorial spine.

Of course, the fund Isn’t really dead. President Donald Trump confirmed Monday he didn’t sign Blanche’s order that rescinded the Justice Department’s controversial “anti-weaponization fund,” which means the settlement fund could potentially be revived in the future.

Trump defended the fund, arguing the fund would have been “very fair” and “could have given” Jan. 6 rioters “some solace” after they were “treated horribly.”

“I view that fund as a positive, and a lot of Republicans do too,” claimed Trump. Regarding the order signed by Blanche, Trump said, “I didn’t look at it. All I know is that Todd Blanche is great.”

Which means Cornyn and Tillis didn’t actually kill the fund; they merely agreed to take Trump’s word that he wouldn’t use it right now, in exchange for confirming the guy who would be in charge of not using it. This is the legislative equivalent of paying a ransom and accepting a pinky promise that the kidnapper won’t ask for more money next week.

But let’s not dwell on the slush fund, because the real prize—the crown jewel of this corruption carnival—remains firmly in place. While Cornyn and Tillis were busy polishing their “tough on cronyism” credentials for the Sunday shows, they waved through the sweeping audit immunity deal that protects Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization from IRS scrutiny of their past tax filings.

So, the President of the United States sued the IRS for $10 billion because his tax returns leaked—a lawsuit that a federal judge has already ruled was filed for an “improper purpose”—and the settlement of that lawsuit includes a clause that the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from examining his taxes. Forever.

The best part? Blanche’s “concession” to the senators was to clarify that the immunity only applies retroactively, not to future filings. Oh, well, in that case, everything is fine. The President can’t cheat on his taxes next year; he just gets a mulligan on every questionable deduction, undervalued property, and suspicious loss he claimed in the past.

And here is where the comedy becomes truly Shakespearean. The very statute that Blanche will soon be sworn to uphold—a post-Watergate law specifically designed to prevent presidents from using the IRS as a personal weapon—bars executive branch employees from interfering in audits. But the attorney general, conveniently, is exempt. So once Blanche is confirmed, the man who negotiated this immunity deal on Trump’s behalf will have the legal authority to shut down any IRS examination of the man who appointed him. It’s not a conflict of interest; it’s a confluence of interests, engineered by the same guy who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney.

Nina Olson, founder of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, called this “the lowest point for the IRS since the 1970s.” She is being generous. The IRS in the 1970s was merely being discussed as a weapon by Nixon. In 2026, it has been formally disarmed by the very people it is supposed to audit. Richard Nixon only fantasized about using tax collectors against his enemies; Donald Trump has actually immunized himself against them.

The Cato Institute’s Dan Greenberg, no bleeding-heart liberal, correctly identified this as “the product of an illegal settlement.” But illegal settlements are only a problem if someone is willing to enforce the law, and the guy about to be put in charge of enforcing the law is the one who wrote the settlement.

So let us salute Senators Cornyn and Tillis for their magnificent stand. They looked at a $1.8 billion political slush fund and a $100 million-plus tax immunity deal, and they bravely negotiated away the slush fund that Trump immediately threatened to revive. They left in place a permanent shield against presidential tax scrutiny that makes a mockery of the post-Watergate reforms their own party once championed. They have demonstrated that the modern GOP’s idea of checks and balances is checking to make sure the president’s checks don’t bounce, and balancing his tax burden against the backs of everyone else.

The confirmation vote will go through. Blanche will take his oath. And somewhere in Washington, a career IRS auditor will open a file, see the President’s name, and quietly close it again because the law has been negotiated out of existence by men who swear they believe in the rule of law, right up until the moment it applies to their king.

Nick Anderson
August 5, 2026
Pen Strokes
 



 

Hot Off the Press: New Howard Zinn Biography  (Social Justice Books)
 



New Biography of Howard Zinn

The People’s Historian


Just in time for Howard Zinn’s birthday (August 24), Dave Zirin's new biography of the historian hits the shelves. The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn paints a picture of the man behind A People’s History of the United States (and many more books), examining his work in the context of U.S. history. 

It includes Zinn’s shipyard work in Brooklyn, the Air Force in World War II, college under the G.I. Bill, Spelman College where he became active with SNCC, Boston University where he was a target of the administration and an ally of countless students, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the launch of our Zinn Education Project (with Rethinking Schools), and more.


Read More & Purchase  


Hear from Dave Zirin in person on his book tour.  

Sign up for the Howard Zinn newsletter, coordinated by Teaching for Change. We send the newsletter twice a year. Receive a free Howard Zinn pen and sticker when you sign up. 


Teaching for Change  
PO Box 73038
Washington, DC 20056




 

Dockworkers Unions in Six Countries Announce Day of Strikes and Protests Against War and Genocide - October 30
 

Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30.




Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30.

by Sarah Lazare
July 31, 2026
In These Times
 





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Source URL: https://portside.org/2026-08-06/tidbits-aug-6-reader-comments-mainstream-press-covers-dsa-elections-red-scare-then-and