Dispatches From the Culture Wars — September 22, 2026
- Hands Off the Elections!
- Education is a Battleground
- Resisting ICE is More Than a Trend…
- …And So is Data Center Resistance
- MAGA Grapples With Inflation
- Women, Sports and Politics
- Here’s the Pitch, Without Shame
- The Pro-Democracy Ruling That Wasn't
- Rhiannon Giddens’s Latest
- A Discussion About Organizing
By Nicholas Riccardi and Matt Brown, Associated Press
Democratic state parties are launching an operation for the midterm elections intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up. Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers on judicial action against seizure of ballots.
Education is a Battleground
Defending Black Studies By Synai Ferrell, ABC News
Fight for Florida School Boards By Anna North, The Guardian
Cuts at UT Austin By Greta Díaz González Vázquez, KUT News
Resisting ICE is More Than a Trend…
ICE at the Polls By Mike Ludwig, Truthout
Facility Blocked in Bay Area By Olivia Hebert, SFGate
In Danger of Statelessness By T.P. Mishra, Waging Nonviolence
…And So is Data Center Resistance
By getting in the way of billions of dollars’ worth of data center construction, communities are demanding democracy from a political system that has long felt out of touch and unresponsive. These grassroots efforts could be nurtured into something politically transformative that lasts long past this November–an oppositional force in the face of democratic backsliding.
By Sophia Tesfaye, Salon
The GOP has spent the better part of the last decade telling Americans it is the party of economic populism. Eighteen months into the president’s second term, Republicans have arrived at a remarkable place: running the Biden administrations’ failed playbook on inflation. Now conservatives are fighting with one another over whether a $20 burrito is actually too expensive.
Into the Current
Novig is a sports prediction and trading platform, selling itself as the hottest new app to place your bets. Women are not even slightly considered in its new ad, other than having a woman be the centre point. If anything this ad reinforces a trope that women in sports have historically been combating through activism and rebelling against what men have told us is possible.
Here’s the Pitch, Without Shame
By Hunter Walker, Talking Points Memo
Iryna Zarutska’s death made headlines around the country, but the killing that Trump weaved into the Republican Party’s midterm pitch has also emerged as a persistent fixation and rallying cry for racist extremists on the far right. Trump’s focus on the killing was yet another example of his administration participating in a feedback loop with white nationalists.
The Pro-Democracy Ruling That Wasn't
By Claire Finkelstein, The Guardian
Last week’s supreme court decision upholding the district court’s restraining order on USPS’s mail-in ballot restrictions is being hailed as a victory for electoral integrity by politicians, political commentators and voting rights advocates alike. But the unsigned, three-sentence opinion, with only a brief concurrence and a lengthy dissent, is no such thing.
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
“If we don’t connect those dots between the struggles, we’re never going to get anywhere,” says Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. “That’s what music is for. … We have to make music with people from different backgrounds because then we have that conversation.”
By Kailea Loften, Judith Le Blanc and Jawanza James Williams, The Forge
All social movements need infrastructure capable of sustaining across multi-generational fights. But how do we build this infrastructure and ensure that we lower the cost of onboarding new people into our movements so they can grow? Continuing to recognize that our power exists in the collective is the starting point.